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Precision
Somehow, in some strange way, things always work out. The perceived difficulty in life is merely an effect of the human invention known as "the present." Come tomorrow, the problems of today will seem far less pressing. Tonight's worries will be tomorrow's joke. Given enough time, all problems are solved, all troubles disappear, and all hardship is forgotten. The trick to getting through today is to realize it's merely another yesterday that won't happen until tomorrow. The reason time heals all wounds is because our misunderstanding of it causes most of them.
Or so I thought... But I see now that our very precise understanding of it causes them as well.
Amir woke to the sound of gunfire. Aleppo was full of it these days. His wife lay beside him, still asleep somehow. Their daughter likewise slept through the noise on her mat in the far corner of the room. Amir sighed. The sounds were fairly distant, and it was probably best to return to sleep himself.
Far, far above, a wonder of the modern age circled the globe, its solar panels spread to capture the sun, which glinted off the gold and silver foil of its minimal structure. Inside, a vacuum even more perfect than that of the space surrounding the thing itself. The vacuum was flooded with precisely constrained magnetic fields, in which a tiny number of cesium atoms were confined, their vibrational modes tuned to exacting specifications.
For each vibration, the sensors in the machines recorded a tick, and that tick was added to a sum. Those sums added to higher and higher numbers, until the machine transmitted a signal, indicating this to all who would listen. Dozens of other metal birds, kin to this one and nearly identical, all orbited in their own given tracks, and did the same.
Far below, but still far above, another machine of fantastic construction flew over the city as its many cameras leered down. These images were sent to other kin of that first satellite, and back to operators on the far side of the world.
A camera turned, and switched to infrared. It began tracking a fixed spot on the ground. Moments later, a button was pressed, a signal was relayed, and the bird of prey passed that signal onto its payload. The payload released, and quickly began mixing oxidizer and fuel. Seconds later, it was streaking over the earth at several times the speed of sound.
On board that tiny, fast device was a radio, listening to that first satellite and all its friends. They each told it a story, the same, exact story, about those vibrating atoms, and just how fast they were twitching. But the story of each sounded just slightly different, the notes of the song shifted by the merest fraction of an octave. The little computer used those to learn where it was. It could do this, because it knew just how fast light itself could go. So the satellites a little further away were just the merest bit behind the ones closer overhead. But the satellites all sang so perfectly that those difference let it even measure the distance between its own nose and tail.
What that computer wanted to do was make its position match the one it had been given. So it twitched its fins in tiny movements to steer itself toward the destination. When it got close, it aimed down toward the ground, and smashed into the building, detonating the high explosives in its body.
It missed its target by less than three inches. A precision strike.
It wasn't the guidance that made the mistake, but the people setting the target. An ISIS stronghold looks no different than a civilian apartment building when viewed from space.
And that's why I'm now standing here, watching as Amir, tears in his eyes, tells his story of awaking later that evening when the building fell around him, and how he lost his wife and daughter. He holds the detonator for his vest high in the air as he tell us of his loss, and all I can hear is the tick-tick-tock of some imaginary version of that clock, hundreds of miles over my head in space, measuring out the precise picoseconds needed to guide a missile to a target by relativistic time dilation. We made clocks so good that Amir's daughter is dead. We understood time so precision that Amir now wants to kill us.
I was a bit lost in the technobabble, and in the story. I think the end was trying to tie the story all together, but it didn't, for me.
I'm not sure what the relevance of the beginning quote is to the rest of the story. Most of the story is spent explaining how precise this strike system is, to reveal it was off slightly. And then Amir is at the end, to show the consequences of the system being off slightly. I don't understand how it all ties together.
So I don't have any feelings for this story, either. I guess I feel bad for Amir, but that's about it. It wasn't all that engaging for me. The technobabble definitely didn't help, although I know that's a taste thing.
I'm not sure what the relevance of the beginning quote is to the rest of the story. Most of the story is spent explaining how precise this strike system is, to reveal it was off slightly. And then Amir is at the end, to show the consequences of the system being off slightly. I don't understand how it all ties together.
So I don't have any feelings for this story, either. I guess I feel bad for Amir, but that's about it. It wasn't all that engaging for me. The technobabble definitely didn't help, although I know that's a taste thing.
I think I have to disagree with a lot of what >>FrontSevens-senpai said. For me, the technobable is by far the best part of the story. I found it interesting, I understood it, and it taught me something new. And I thought that the quote at the beginning did a decent job of tieing the story into the prompt, though I did think it was a bit odd to put it in a quote box, since it's still just part of the narration.
And I think that the whole thing does tie together. (Front, the problem wasn't that the system was off slightly, it was that they thought the apartment was an ISIS building.)
However, the story is really hurt by Amir and the fact that I have absolutely no sympathy for Amir. Yeah, your family was accidentally killed. Yes, that sucks. A lot. But do you know what? Turning into a terrorist and murdering other innocent people is the wrong response. He is just perpetuating the cycle of death and destruction, and he has become far worse than the people he hates, because while his family was killed by accident, he is intentionally murdering innocents.
So screw you, Amir. I won't say you deserved what happened to you, because it shouldn't happen to anyone, but I also have no sympathy for you.
Sorry, author, but trying to justify the actions of terrorists and make people feel bad for ISIS is just not going to turn out well.
If you wanted to make this a likeable story, you could have had Amir become an advocate for peace, and this entire story could have been a talk he was giving to try to convince people that war is bad. In fact, you probably could have kept everything but the last sentence or two to make us think that Amir was a terrorist, only to then reveal that Amir was just giving a presentation and the detonator was a prop. (That's what I probably would have done, but I like twists.)
The writing here seemed pretty good to me, so I think you know what you're doing, author. I just think that you chose a bad story to tell.
And I think that the whole thing does tie together. (Front, the problem wasn't that the system was off slightly, it was that they thought the apartment was an ISIS building.)
However, the story is really hurt by Amir and the fact that I have absolutely no sympathy for Amir. Yeah, your family was accidentally killed. Yes, that sucks. A lot. But do you know what? Turning into a terrorist and murdering other innocent people is the wrong response. He is just perpetuating the cycle of death and destruction, and he has become far worse than the people he hates, because while his family was killed by accident, he is intentionally murdering innocents.
So screw you, Amir. I won't say you deserved what happened to you, because it shouldn't happen to anyone, but I also have no sympathy for you.
Sorry, author, but trying to justify the actions of terrorists and make people feel bad for ISIS is just not going to turn out well.
If you wanted to make this a likeable story, you could have had Amir become an advocate for peace, and this entire story could have been a talk he was giving to try to convince people that war is bad. In fact, you probably could have kept everything but the last sentence or two to make us think that Amir was a terrorist, only to then reveal that Amir was just giving a presentation and the detonator was a prop. (That's what I probably would have done, but I like twists.)
The writing here seemed pretty good to me, so I think you know what you're doing, author. I just think that you chose a bad story to tell.
Okay, after talking about this story in the chat a bit, I think I've realized that my biggest problem with this story is that I just don't care much for tragedies. I especially don't care for this sort of tragedy, where the real tragedy isn't that Amir's family was killed, but that he made all the wrong decisions afterwards.
Stories like that tend to leave me feeling like "congratulations, you're life is ruined, and it is completely your fault." And I just can't muster up much sympathy for characters like that.
So maybe the biggest problem with this story is just that it was the wrong genre for me.
Stories like that tend to leave me feeling like "congratulations, you're life is ruined, and it is completely your fault." And I just can't muster up much sympathy for characters like that.
So maybe the biggest problem with this story is just that it was the wrong genre for me.
This story is difficult to gauge.
On the one side, the technobabble is partly wrong. Caesium atomic clocks do not work that way, but by locking an auxiliary clock on the dip caused by atomic resonance. That's what we call a PLL in radio.
On the other hand, I don't know what you want to prove with this pamphlet. Militaries have always made errors since time began and it's not going to change, no matter how technological we become. And those errors have always led to innocent victims. It might be more shocking to an American reader, given that America has never been shelled, but I can assure you that over here in Europe, families having lost at least one member in a bombardment is not an exception, but rather the rule.
And I'm unsure about the end. Subtext here is two-faced: either you mean “don't do anything because you will always make collaterals victims on which the beast feasts” or “rather than sending killer birds while safely seated somewhere in a remote centre, take a gun and go there”. In either case, it's not great.
On the one side, the technobabble is partly wrong. Caesium atomic clocks do not work that way, but by locking an auxiliary clock on the dip caused by atomic resonance. That's what we call a PLL in radio.
On the other hand, I don't know what you want to prove with this pamphlet. Militaries have always made errors since time began and it's not going to change, no matter how technological we become. And those errors have always led to innocent victims. It might be more shocking to an American reader, given that America has never been shelled, but I can assure you that over here in Europe, families having lost at least one member in a bombardment is not an exception, but rather the rule.
And I'm unsure about the end. Subtext here is two-faced: either you mean “don't do anything because you will always make collaterals victims on which the beast feasts” or “rather than sending killer birds while safely seated somewhere in a remote centre, take a gun and go there”. In either case, it's not great.
This is, for the most part, a delightfully well-written piece. Sure, there's the odd problem here and there (I think that should be "precisely" in the final sentence, for instance) but on the whole the writing conveys a true fascination and wonder with the inctricacy of GPS... even if, as >>Monokeras suggests, the real-world technology may not work precisely as described. So far as the words on the screen go, author, you've won me over.
(As an aside, I think the technobabble is a wonderful touch—this is a story about precision, and your ability to describe in precise detail the mechanisms of this system is a fantastic way of representing that theme. I'm a huge fan of pairing writing style with content to reinforce a theme, and that's exactly what you've achieved here. Almost every word you use is chosen to reinforce that sense of accuracy, and I like that a lot.)
But I also think that something in your story fails you, author—there's a clash of ideas between your introduction and your ending that doesn't resolve as well as it should. Introducing a story with one idea and essentially presenting the bulk of the story as an anecdote to demonstrate that idea as false is a wonderful structure, but I don't think that's quite what you've gone for here—and in a way, I don't think it would have worked. In fact, what I find amusing is that you [i]begin[i] with a similar kind of structure: stating a quote and then immediately contradicting it is a lovely hook, though it feels like it's a little long-winded here and perhaps using up a few too many words given the nature of this contest. But starting that way reinforces the idea that it is the contradiction that is correct, and almost insists on the idea that your story is about how a precise understanding of time is to blame for the deaths of Amir's wife and daughter.
You reinforce this, too, with your final lines, but by this point the reader has already been introduced to the idea that (at least, the way I see it) should be the focus of the piece:
Okay, there's no way I can keep going on talking about this and phrasing it like it's a writing-thing and not an ideas-thing, so I'm just going to get right to it: as much as I fundamentally disagree with warfare as anything other than an absolute last resort, I cannot and will not accept any argument that a greater precision in strikes such as those described by the story is a bad thing. And you've stated my objection right there: people might make mistakes, true, but if people are making mistakes then it doesn't matter how accurate their weaponry is—there is almost certainly going to be a casualty of some kind. But accuracy of weaponry means that when people don't make mistakes, nobody gets hit who shouldn't be. That is... well, not necessarily a good thing, but certainly it's better than any alternatives beyond not bombing people in the first place. And since the world generally doesn't seem to agree with my pacifist tendencies, I guess that makes it the best option available.
So I guess my problem with this entire story is that it's set up to suggest that our understanding of time, and thus the accuracy of our weaponry, is what causes these tragedies, when in actual fact it's simply our misunderstanding of what is and isn't the target we're looking for. And while you treat that point really damn well in the paragraph you deal with it for, I think you spend both your final paragraph and the final sentence of your introduction drawing the reader's attention to the wrong things. I guess what frustrates me most is that even though you literally come out and state that it's the mistakes of people and not the mistakes of these machines that causes this tragedy, the entire structure of the piece seems designed to undermine that point. If you want my advice, I would honestly suggest cutting the introduction entirely, and maybe making some comparison between Amir's detonator and the button that was pressed—certainly, in some way, bring the actions of the people who ordered this strike into focus in the final paragraph, because otherwise the penultimate paragraph loses all of its power.
All in all, author, I don't think there's all that much to worry about here. You've framed the story in a less-than-ideal way, but that's really not as big a deal as all that rambling argument I made above would suggest it was. You've written this story well, and there's not much that needs to be changed to make it more satisfying. That said, I would second J's word of caution: be very careful when your story starts straying close to the direction of justifying the actions of terrorists. I don't believe J is right, and I don't believe that's what you're trying to do here (in fact, I think you portray Amir as feeling trapped and without any choice, which is actually a really interesting story in and of itself because it's very clear that he does have a choice in this matter. I'd really like to see that explored, but you're right to exclude it—it's irrelevant to this story!) but I think it's wise to be very, very careful nonetheless.
Apologies if this is a bit of a ramble, author—this was a difficult issue to get my head round, and I wanted to make sure I conveyed my problem with this story as best as I could. I don't think it turned out as well as I'd hoped.
(As an aside, I think the technobabble is a wonderful touch—this is a story about precision, and your ability to describe in precise detail the mechanisms of this system is a fantastic way of representing that theme. I'm a huge fan of pairing writing style with content to reinforce a theme, and that's exactly what you've achieved here. Almost every word you use is chosen to reinforce that sense of accuracy, and I like that a lot.)
But I also think that something in your story fails you, author—there's a clash of ideas between your introduction and your ending that doesn't resolve as well as it should. Introducing a story with one idea and essentially presenting the bulk of the story as an anecdote to demonstrate that idea as false is a wonderful structure, but I don't think that's quite what you've gone for here—and in a way, I don't think it would have worked. In fact, what I find amusing is that you [i]begin[i] with a similar kind of structure: stating a quote and then immediately contradicting it is a lovely hook, though it feels like it's a little long-winded here and perhaps using up a few too many words given the nature of this contest. But starting that way reinforces the idea that it is the contradiction that is correct, and almost insists on the idea that your story is about how a precise understanding of time is to blame for the deaths of Amir's wife and daughter.
You reinforce this, too, with your final lines, but by this point the reader has already been introduced to the idea that (at least, the way I see it) should be the focus of the piece:
It wasn't the guidance that made the mistake, but the people setting the target. An ISIS stronghold looks no different than a civilian apartment building when viewed from space.
Okay, there's no way I can keep going on talking about this and phrasing it like it's a writing-thing and not an ideas-thing, so I'm just going to get right to it: as much as I fundamentally disagree with warfare as anything other than an absolute last resort, I cannot and will not accept any argument that a greater precision in strikes such as those described by the story is a bad thing. And you've stated my objection right there: people might make mistakes, true, but if people are making mistakes then it doesn't matter how accurate their weaponry is—there is almost certainly going to be a casualty of some kind. But accuracy of weaponry means that when people don't make mistakes, nobody gets hit who shouldn't be. That is... well, not necessarily a good thing, but certainly it's better than any alternatives beyond not bombing people in the first place. And since the world generally doesn't seem to agree with my pacifist tendencies, I guess that makes it the best option available.
So I guess my problem with this entire story is that it's set up to suggest that our understanding of time, and thus the accuracy of our weaponry, is what causes these tragedies, when in actual fact it's simply our misunderstanding of what is and isn't the target we're looking for. And while you treat that point really damn well in the paragraph you deal with it for, I think you spend both your final paragraph and the final sentence of your introduction drawing the reader's attention to the wrong things. I guess what frustrates me most is that even though you literally come out and state that it's the mistakes of people and not the mistakes of these machines that causes this tragedy, the entire structure of the piece seems designed to undermine that point. If you want my advice, I would honestly suggest cutting the introduction entirely, and maybe making some comparison between Amir's detonator and the button that was pressed—certainly, in some way, bring the actions of the people who ordered this strike into focus in the final paragraph, because otherwise the penultimate paragraph loses all of its power.
All in all, author, I don't think there's all that much to worry about here. You've framed the story in a less-than-ideal way, but that's really not as big a deal as all that rambling argument I made above would suggest it was. You've written this story well, and there's not much that needs to be changed to make it more satisfying. That said, I would second J's word of caution: be very careful when your story starts straying close to the direction of justifying the actions of terrorists. I don't believe J is right, and I don't believe that's what you're trying to do here (in fact, I think you portray Amir as feeling trapped and without any choice, which is actually a really interesting story in and of itself because it's very clear that he does have a choice in this matter. I'd really like to see that explored, but you're right to exclude it—it's irrelevant to this story!) but I think it's wise to be very, very careful nonetheless.
Apologies if this is a bit of a ramble, author—this was a difficult issue to get my head round, and I wanted to make sure I conveyed my problem with this story as best as I could. I don't think it turned out as well as I'd hoped.