Hey! It looks like you're new here. You might want to check out the introduction.
Show rules for this event
Exhibit Hall
He presses the button. The explosives wrapped around his chest ignite. The shockwave liquefies his internal organs almost as instantly as it begins to propel the screws, nails, wires, and other improvised shrapnel outward toward the market crowd.
"Hold," Lizel says. "Back up three-tenths."
The shrapnel closes back in. The explosion reduces to nothing. The thumb lifts off the trigger.
"Stop!" Lizel walks around the scene, examining the angles. "Yes, this is it. Take thirty meters, but rotate it so you can see the children being hit. Focus on that boy there, with the apple."
"Yes, Mearti."
Lizel walks away as the timeslicers get to work. Her assistant scrambles to catch up to her fast pace. He is tall, thin, and grey; clearly modded for the outer belt. "We have only days until opening, Mearti. You must complete the finale."
"Yes yes," Lizel dismisses his concerns with an exaggerated flick of her tail feathers. "I already selected it long ago."
"But you must still frame it, My Artiste!"
"All in good time." She chuffs lightly at her own pun, then saunters back through the kilometers-long hall. She favors the earlier slices here, near the start of the show. A man in crude metal plates, caving in the head of another with mace; another tearing the bowels of a woman out with a curved blade; a third, hairy, with a sloped forehead, crushing an infant with a large rock outside a primitive cave.
Lizel steps forward, into the selection of frozen time. "Can we shift this one forward a quarter-sec?"
"Apologies, Mearti, but we already began the transposition with the duplicate."
Shaking her head, Lizel grunts. She'd now prefer the moment start with the cracking skull, as the audience, rushing by on their rolling bleachers, might just be able to hear the mother's scream before focusing on the next event. But covert timeslicing is an arduous process. Swapping the duplicate scene with the chrono-locked actual is hard enough. Keeping the lock in place as the excision is brought into the present is even more difficult. She realizes she'll have to do without the scream, and let the splatter of early hominid brain-matter be enough for this particular second of the exhibit. She has 3,539 others to work with after all.
"Mearti, I beg you..."
"Yes, fine," the artiste sighs.
The pair board the gallery. Lizel sets the controls to presentation speed, picturing in her mind each exhibit's chrono-lock releasing just as the audience passes. An hour long show, one exhibit per second, death after glorious, vivid death.
"Mearti..."
Her claw reluctantly hits the control and they speed up.
----
Opening day. The guests board the moving gallery. It rushes through the hall. The clock ticks down. Explosions, blood, carnage, and more, just as promised. More death than any sapient has seen since the start of the age a thousand years ago, and all brought here, real, visceral, just for the privileged few that could afford—and appreciate—true art.
The track comes to an end. Guests look at the scene, excited, but confused. Sixty seconds remain. There is only a teenage girl, saurian-mod, kneeling, head rested atop a wooden box, seemingly in some form of prayer.
A guest snaps. The others were primitives, ancients, dead long ago. But this, this is a gene-mod just like them. It's not history, it's murder.
"Why?" he screams. "She still lives! Why not save her in her moment of prayer?"
Lizel steps forward. "If I did that," she says. "Then it wouldn't be art."
Then they see it. There, high above the girl, a hinged blade.
Not a prayer.
A sacrifice.
Oohs and ahhs ripple through the crowd as interpretation dawns.
Lizel smiles.
A single clap begins, and builds to a wave of applause for the brilliant artiste. It is barbaric, a nightmare that will haunt them always, but they are willing to suffer that, to sacrifice their comfort for true art.
The scene moves. The blade drops.
Twelve seconds.
The girl stands.
The crowd gasps.
Blood begins to pour from the box. A body falls out. A young boy, his torso severed. He twitches for a moment then lies still.
Lizel grins. Her words echo over the crowd: "Art requires Sacrifice!"
Hesitant nods.
"And that," she continues. "Was my first."
Confusion.
Lizel joins her younger self. They stand in the blood.
Shock.
The younger looks to the crowd. "But you," she says, pulling out the remote trigger. "Will not be my last."
She presses the button.
"Hold," Lizel says. "Back up three-tenths."
The shrapnel closes back in. The explosion reduces to nothing. The thumb lifts off the trigger.
"Stop!" Lizel walks around the scene, examining the angles. "Yes, this is it. Take thirty meters, but rotate it so you can see the children being hit. Focus on that boy there, with the apple."
"Yes, Mearti."
Lizel walks away as the timeslicers get to work. Her assistant scrambles to catch up to her fast pace. He is tall, thin, and grey; clearly modded for the outer belt. "We have only days until opening, Mearti. You must complete the finale."
"Yes yes," Lizel dismisses his concerns with an exaggerated flick of her tail feathers. "I already selected it long ago."
"But you must still frame it, My Artiste!"
"All in good time." She chuffs lightly at her own pun, then saunters back through the kilometers-long hall. She favors the earlier slices here, near the start of the show. A man in crude metal plates, caving in the head of another with mace; another tearing the bowels of a woman out with a curved blade; a third, hairy, with a sloped forehead, crushing an infant with a large rock outside a primitive cave.
Lizel steps forward, into the selection of frozen time. "Can we shift this one forward a quarter-sec?"
"Apologies, Mearti, but we already began the transposition with the duplicate."
Shaking her head, Lizel grunts. She'd now prefer the moment start with the cracking skull, as the audience, rushing by on their rolling bleachers, might just be able to hear the mother's scream before focusing on the next event. But covert timeslicing is an arduous process. Swapping the duplicate scene with the chrono-locked actual is hard enough. Keeping the lock in place as the excision is brought into the present is even more difficult. She realizes she'll have to do without the scream, and let the splatter of early hominid brain-matter be enough for this particular second of the exhibit. She has 3,539 others to work with after all.
"Mearti, I beg you..."
"Yes, fine," the artiste sighs.
The pair board the gallery. Lizel sets the controls to presentation speed, picturing in her mind each exhibit's chrono-lock releasing just as the audience passes. An hour long show, one exhibit per second, death after glorious, vivid death.
"Mearti..."
Her claw reluctantly hits the control and they speed up.
----
Opening day. The guests board the moving gallery. It rushes through the hall. The clock ticks down. Explosions, blood, carnage, and more, just as promised. More death than any sapient has seen since the start of the age a thousand years ago, and all brought here, real, visceral, just for the privileged few that could afford—and appreciate—true art.
The track comes to an end. Guests look at the scene, excited, but confused. Sixty seconds remain. There is only a teenage girl, saurian-mod, kneeling, head rested atop a wooden box, seemingly in some form of prayer.
A guest snaps. The others were primitives, ancients, dead long ago. But this, this is a gene-mod just like them. It's not history, it's murder.
"Why?" he screams. "She still lives! Why not save her in her moment of prayer?"
Lizel steps forward. "If I did that," she says. "Then it wouldn't be art."
Then they see it. There, high above the girl, a hinged blade.
Not a prayer.
A sacrifice.
Oohs and ahhs ripple through the crowd as interpretation dawns.
Lizel smiles.
A single clap begins, and builds to a wave of applause for the brilliant artiste. It is barbaric, a nightmare that will haunt them always, but they are willing to suffer that, to sacrifice their comfort for true art.
The scene moves. The blade drops.
Twelve seconds.
The girl stands.
The crowd gasps.
Blood begins to pour from the box. A body falls out. A young boy, his torso severed. He twitches for a moment then lies still.
Lizel grins. Her words echo over the crowd: "Art requires Sacrifice!"
Hesitant nods.
"And that," she continues. "Was my first."
Confusion.
Lizel joins her younger self. They stand in the blood.
Shock.
The younger looks to the crowd. "But you," she says, pulling out the remote trigger. "Will not be my last."
She presses the button.
This was awesome. Beautiful prose and this sinuous rhythm throughout the piece that really makes the ending that much more gut-wrenching. I don't quite understand Lizel standing beside her younger self, and I think that clarifying this point—even slightly—would improve the piece.
Fantastic job, author.
Fantastic job, author.
Was about to complain of cliche "shock" intro with a suicide bomber, but the rewind saved it.
"Timeslicers," "modded for the outer belt," "Mearti?" Okay, jargon peaked my interest, and "tail feathers" cements it.
Hokay, so... that went dark! I'm... not quite sure what to make of this. Some weird future art show? Past people brought forward just at the second of their death, to die on display? WTF? Not bad WTF, just... WTF.
I... I really don't know on this one. It feels like a decent twist at the end, turning it on the audience themselves, but the story feels a bit rushed. Like >>FloydienSlip I had to re-read the last part a couple of times to realize the "teenage girl" in the final scene was Lizel's former self, and also that she was missed by the blade that hit whatever hapless kid she'd hid in the box. Originally I thought "young Lizel" was just entering from offstage or something, or the blood from the box was theater/fake. Could definitely use expansion there.
Overall, I get a lot of potential from this one, but as with "Jump at the Sun" and "In Sparking Skies" I'd want to read more if it was there, but these are pushing the boundaries for this length/format in their current form.
"Timeslicers," "modded for the outer belt," "Mearti?" Okay, jargon peaked my interest, and "tail feathers" cements it.
Hokay, so... that went dark! I'm... not quite sure what to make of this. Some weird future art show? Past people brought forward just at the second of their death, to die on display? WTF? Not bad WTF, just... WTF.
I... I really don't know on this one. It feels like a decent twist at the end, turning it on the audience themselves, but the story feels a bit rushed. Like >>FloydienSlip I had to re-read the last part a couple of times to realize the "teenage girl" in the final scene was Lizel's former self, and also that she was missed by the blade that hit whatever hapless kid she'd hid in the box. Originally I thought "young Lizel" was just entering from offstage or something, or the blood from the box was theater/fake. Could definitely use expansion there.
Overall, I get a lot of potential from this one, but as with "Jump at the Sun" and "In Sparking Skies" I'd want to read more if it was there, but these are pushing the boundaries for this length/format in their current form.
This is Horizon's prose for sure. Or someone that imitates it quite competently.
I dunno what to get from this one. In a way, this is very much like Cold's former story about the girl which, for art's sake, complies to whatever order is given to her.
It strikes me as a purely intellectual exercise. Interesting prose, dense, packed with powerful imagery, but the jargon doesn't add anything to it, and it sounds ultimately sort of bombastic—maybe it's intended to replicate what the artist thinks of herself here.
I don't see the point of introducing alien races, besides Horizon's obsession with them.
I'm not sure what's the takeaway here. It sure is a wonderful piece of English, but, as I said, maybe it is intended to resound exactly like modern art resounds for most people: unpalatable, hifalutin and most of the time simply meaningless.
I dunno what to get from this one. In a way, this is very much like Cold's former story about the girl which, for art's sake, complies to whatever order is given to her.
It strikes me as a purely intellectual exercise. Interesting prose, dense, packed with powerful imagery, but the jargon doesn't add anything to it, and it sounds ultimately sort of bombastic—maybe it's intended to replicate what the artist thinks of herself here.
I don't see the point of introducing alien races, besides Horizon's obsession with them.
I'm not sure what's the takeaway here. It sure is a wonderful piece of English, but, as I said, maybe it is intended to resound exactly like modern art resounds for most people: unpalatable, hifalutin and most of the time simply meaningless.
So, they're pulling dying people out of the past and watching them die? That's... fairly ingenious, as a plot concept. I think it could be a bit clearer, though.
Hrm. I guess she does something to the crowd? Or is it her older self? 'Remote trigger' sounds like it should be a weapon, but... mm. Lacking a bit of context, I think. Does she blow them up?
Saurian/feathers kinda threw me at first. Maybe that was intentional, though, to keep the readers from realizing the scene was supposed to be herself.
Her being named Lizal but called Mearti threw me. Is that a title of some sort? An indication of that might help.
I feel like the ending is 'no wait--no wait--NO WAIT!' trying to top itself too hard, too fast, with too many twists, and not enough context.
Is this trying to make a statement about shock value in art? Or about destruction and brutality? If it is, I'm missing it.
I guess, as much as I want to like this, it feels a bit too jumbled for me to really feel sold on it. I read it two or three times and mostly figured it out, but the ending still feels like it's a bit too loose to grasp.
Still, it was entertaining, even if I did have to read it twice, it wasn't really a chore. The style is fairly crisp and the prose is pleasant. I just wish I knew if this was supposed to be high-concept or caricature.
Hrm. I guess she does something to the crowd? Or is it her older self? 'Remote trigger' sounds like it should be a weapon, but... mm. Lacking a bit of context, I think. Does she blow them up?
Saurian/feathers kinda threw me at first. Maybe that was intentional, though, to keep the readers from realizing the scene was supposed to be herself.
Her being named Lizal but called Mearti threw me. Is that a title of some sort? An indication of that might help.
I feel like the ending is 'no wait--no wait--NO WAIT!' trying to top itself too hard, too fast, with too many twists, and not enough context.
Is this trying to make a statement about shock value in art? Or about destruction and brutality? If it is, I'm missing it.
I guess, as much as I want to like this, it feels a bit too jumbled for me to really feel sold on it. I read it two or three times and mostly figured it out, but the ending still feels like it's a bit too loose to grasp.
Still, it was entertaining, even if I did have to read it twice, it wasn't really a chore. The style is fairly crisp and the prose is pleasant. I just wish I knew if this was supposed to be high-concept or caricature.
I actually really enjoyed this piece. The idea of murder as art isn’t new, but this story definitely added some unique twists to the concept (i.e. manipulating time for subjects, nonhumans looking to human violence). I also liked how the art patrons aren’t simply nameless psychos, but somewhat concerned with the subjects she’s presenting. It gives them a little more character, and it makes Lizel’s psychosis all the more unnerving (when people who shop for violence think you’ve gone too far, you’ve gone too far).
That being said, the first half of the story goes on for a tad too long. I get that it’s meant to show the capabilities of Lizel to utilize time travel for her art, but that shouldn’t have required that much word space. Manipulating time isn’t a new idea, so I doubt many people would need this much elaboration to wrap their heads around it. I also thought the assistant was a largely extraneous character, as he was just there to talk to Lizel. It doesn’t help that everything important is mostly explained in the third-person narration, making him even more unnecessary. Finally, the story’s conclusion doesn’t seem to fit, ending with a twist that didn’t flow very well. It felt like the author just needed a snappy ending and chose the “murder the audience” twist because…Lizel’s nuts? I’m not against twists, but this one didn’t really add anything to the story and just made Lizel’s motives more confusing than sinister.
A good story that just needs a little trimming and a better ending.
That being said, the first half of the story goes on for a tad too long. I get that it’s meant to show the capabilities of Lizel to utilize time travel for her art, but that shouldn’t have required that much word space. Manipulating time isn’t a new idea, so I doubt many people would need this much elaboration to wrap their heads around it. I also thought the assistant was a largely extraneous character, as he was just there to talk to Lizel. It doesn’t help that everything important is mostly explained in the third-person narration, making him even more unnecessary. Finally, the story’s conclusion doesn’t seem to fit, ending with a twist that didn’t flow very well. It felt like the author just needed a snappy ending and chose the “murder the audience” twist because…Lizel’s nuts? I’m not against twists, but this one didn’t really add anything to the story and just made Lizel’s motives more confusing than sinister.
A good story that just needs a little trimming and a better ending.
I believe this may very well be the most original concept I've read in the current lineup, and certainly one of, if not the, most interesting ideas presented. Strong writing, evocative descriptions, managed to fit in a barebones explanation of the process for capturing these moments in time in the small allotment of words, wrapped up with a solid twist (although I did predict it fairly early on). Sentence structure could have used a little mixing up, with personal pronouns leading many of them, but that's a minor complaint that is probably only an issue to me (I have a pet peeve with repetition like that). Overall quite possibly my favourite.
Well.
I think Ion nails the fact that some of the wording and sentences could use mixing up. I think with a bit more space we could get a better idea of how the ending proceeds. But those are details.
Excellent work.
Edit: After thinking about it a few seconds longer, I'm a little unconvinced that you can wrap up a story like this by explaining the character's motivation as "hey, it's art!" I feel like that's the easy way out.
I think Ion nails the fact that some of the wording and sentences could use mixing up. I think with a bit more space we could get a better idea of how the ending proceeds. But those are details.
Excellent work.
Edit: After thinking about it a few seconds longer, I'm a little unconvinced that you can wrap up a story like this by explaining the character's motivation as "hey, it's art!" I feel like that's the easy way out.
Trying to get through these and talking some of them out, so let's use my own words from chatter! (Apologies for doofy formatting)
The biggest issue (IMO) is that it fumbles the end hard.
Like, I get the jist of it, but I'm actually still pretty... unsure of exactly what went down.
I also think the more complex sci-fi elements were a detriment, as they eat up word count without actually adding much beyond a bit of novelty.
(And I realize I'm saying this as the jackass who basically does nothing but that)
But the gene-mod and odd quasi-time travel stuff I think are just too much in the space
The piece does have a story and does arc fine, but... yeah? I kinda end up not really feeling anything at the end.
Art requires sacrifice, but I really don't come away with a particularly grander view of what that means. Which might be asking for a lot in a mini.
But it does make it sorta ring hollow to me in the end. She thinks killing people is rad, so she kills more people.
I think even a little more insight into -why- the killing is rad, or even a more consistent view of what makes death art would probably have done well with me?
Like I sorta suspected at points it had to do with surprise and shock and all that, which would mesh with the end, but I don't think that carries through.
General writing quality is pretty high outside the end.
I'm -still- unsure about how the time thing works
Like are they creating a time duplicate and replicating it in the exhibit?
Or are they creating a duplicate to replace the original
But yeah, I feel explaining that just EATS the word count
For very little gain.
(There -is- stuff to be mined with that idea)
(But I think it is underplayed here)
The biggest issue (IMO) is that it fumbles the end hard.
Like, I get the jist of it, but I'm actually still pretty... unsure of exactly what went down.
I also think the more complex sci-fi elements were a detriment, as they eat up word count without actually adding much beyond a bit of novelty.
(And I realize I'm saying this as the jackass who basically does nothing but that)
But the gene-mod and odd quasi-time travel stuff I think are just too much in the space
The piece does have a story and does arc fine, but... yeah? I kinda end up not really feeling anything at the end.
Art requires sacrifice, but I really don't come away with a particularly grander view of what that means. Which might be asking for a lot in a mini.
But it does make it sorta ring hollow to me in the end. She thinks killing people is rad, so she kills more people.
I think even a little more insight into -why- the killing is rad, or even a more consistent view of what makes death art would probably have done well with me?
Like I sorta suspected at points it had to do with surprise and shock and all that, which would mesh with the end, but I don't think that carries through.
General writing quality is pretty high outside the end.
I'm -still- unsure about how the time thing works
Like are they creating a time duplicate and replicating it in the exhibit?
Or are they creating a duplicate to replace the original
But yeah, I feel explaining that just EATS the word count
For very little gain.
(There -is- stuff to be mined with that idea)
(But I think it is underplayed here)
>>FloydienSlip
Thanks, and I'll try to work on that.
>>Monokeras
Ha! I am not, in fact, Horizon! Also, they aren't aliens. (More on that in a minute.)
>>Not_A_Hat
Word count hurt me a lot here.
>>libertydude
Thanks for the feedback.
>>Ion-Sturm
Thanks! Amusing this praise comes from the one author that beat me! Congrats, BTW!
>>Cold in Gardez
Thanks, but it wasn't meant to be "It's just art" as an ending.
>>AndrewRogue
All good points, thanks for the feedback!
But seriously, thank you all for replying and critiquing. Let me start with the standard "What I meant" bit...
The concept here is:
First, in the far future, humans have genetically modified themselves so much that they can be whatever they want. Thus, "base" humans from the past are as far removed from their modern concept of "human" as homo habilis is to us today. Lizel is saurian-mod... feathers, claws, dino-mod stuff (because why not.) Point is, there are no aliens, just "the past is a different country" sort of thing.
Second, "Mearti" is a shortened/pidgin version of "My Artiste" and is an honorific. Obviously this was a bad choice here because I didn't have room to make that clear, and plenty of other language is contemporary, so I really wasn't doing linguistic evolution a proper service.
Third, the main conceit is that Lizel is literally pulling people out of time in the instant before their death. Her team then replaces the removed people (and surrounding detritus) with inanimate stuff good enough to fool the forensics of the day and thus avoid changing the timeline. E.g. they're swapping actual people out for organic goo a second before the explosion.
Fourth, the "point" of the "Exhibit" is literally to showcase a historic (and barbaric-compared-to-the-far-future) cavalcade of death in high doses, one incident per second for an hour straight. The audience doesn't react to most of this, because they feel no more remorse for these "prehistoric" deaths than we do at seeing a museum scene showing the death of Caesar or some such.
Fifth, the last scene is a "modern" gene-mod human, actually Lizel herself, as a teen. Instead of Lizel being killed though, it was actually the night of her first murder (and the future doesn't really have many murders, so it's confusing to the audiance.) Beyond that, Lizel doesn't just show the past, she brings her young self forward (violating the timeline) to actually help murder the modern audience as well (there's basically a bomb/poison/whatever under their seats rigged to the remote.)
Sixth... I had NO idea what I "meant" as far as a message or whatever here. Seriously, I just had an idea in the last two hours or so before the deadline of "death as art" and "last minute" made me think time travel. There was not meant to be any deeper message about the nature of art, or anything like that. Of course, that doesn't mean my subconscious didn't wedge something in there or anything, just that it wasn't my intention to make a statement, merely show a sci-fi horror story with a twist ending, and what better twist than murdering the audience..
I think I'll try to improve this a bit. I definitely got hurt by word count on this. I need to make it clearer what the strange terms means (the gene-mod stuff, "Mearti", the technicalities of the time-slicing, and others.) I also need to expand the personalities of Lizel and her assistant to make them more "real" to the reader. The initial version of this was over a thousand words, and that was already rushed. Trimming to 750 hurt, and bottom line: I tried to pack way too much stuff into too short of a space. Ironic, as this story literally about packing 50,000 years of human history into 3,600 one-second scenes.
So yeah... thank you to all who liked this. I'm genuinely surprised at taking 2nd place. In my own rankings I placed this story around 7th overall, as there were many better entries IMHO. I'm very pleased to be outvoted on that however!
Thanks, and I'll try to work on that.
>>Monokeras
Ha! I am not, in fact, Horizon! Also, they aren't aliens. (More on that in a minute.)
>>Not_A_Hat
Word count hurt me a lot here.
>>libertydude
Thanks for the feedback.
>>Ion-Sturm
Thanks! Amusing this praise comes from the one author that beat me! Congrats, BTW!
>>Cold in Gardez
Thanks, but it wasn't meant to be "It's just art" as an ending.
>>AndrewRogue
All good points, thanks for the feedback!
But seriously, thank you all for replying and critiquing. Let me start with the standard "What I meant" bit...
The concept here is:
First, in the far future, humans have genetically modified themselves so much that they can be whatever they want. Thus, "base" humans from the past are as far removed from their modern concept of "human" as homo habilis is to us today. Lizel is saurian-mod... feathers, claws, dino-mod stuff (because why not.) Point is, there are no aliens, just "the past is a different country" sort of thing.
Second, "Mearti" is a shortened/pidgin version of "My Artiste" and is an honorific. Obviously this was a bad choice here because I didn't have room to make that clear, and plenty of other language is contemporary, so I really wasn't doing linguistic evolution a proper service.
Third, the main conceit is that Lizel is literally pulling people out of time in the instant before their death. Her team then replaces the removed people (and surrounding detritus) with inanimate stuff good enough to fool the forensics of the day and thus avoid changing the timeline. E.g. they're swapping actual people out for organic goo a second before the explosion.
Fourth, the "point" of the "Exhibit" is literally to showcase a historic (and barbaric-compared-to-the-far-future) cavalcade of death in high doses, one incident per second for an hour straight. The audience doesn't react to most of this, because they feel no more remorse for these "prehistoric" deaths than we do at seeing a museum scene showing the death of Caesar or some such.
Fifth, the last scene is a "modern" gene-mod human, actually Lizel herself, as a teen. Instead of Lizel being killed though, it was actually the night of her first murder (and the future doesn't really have many murders, so it's confusing to the audiance.) Beyond that, Lizel doesn't just show the past, she brings her young self forward (violating the timeline) to actually help murder the modern audience as well (there's basically a bomb/poison/whatever under their seats rigged to the remote.)
Sixth... I had NO idea what I "meant" as far as a message or whatever here. Seriously, I just had an idea in the last two hours or so before the deadline of "death as art" and "last minute" made me think time travel. There was not meant to be any deeper message about the nature of art, or anything like that. Of course, that doesn't mean my subconscious didn't wedge something in there or anything, just that it wasn't my intention to make a statement, merely show a sci-fi horror story with a twist ending, and what better twist than murdering the audience..
I think I'll try to improve this a bit. I definitely got hurt by word count on this. I need to make it clearer what the strange terms means (the gene-mod stuff, "Mearti", the technicalities of the time-slicing, and others.) I also need to expand the personalities of Lizel and her assistant to make them more "real" to the reader. The initial version of this was over a thousand words, and that was already rushed. Trimming to 750 hurt, and bottom line: I tried to pack way too much stuff into too short of a space. Ironic, as this story literally about packing 50,000 years of human history into 3,600 one-second scenes.
So yeah... thank you to all who liked this. I'm genuinely surprised at taking 2nd place. In my own rankings I placed this story around 7th overall, as there were many better entries IMHO. I'm very pleased to be outvoted on that however!