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The Last Minute · Original Minific ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 400–750
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Pай и Aд
Stanislas grabbed the microphone on the console. “Attention everyone, this is the comrade lieutenant-colonel Petrov. The day shift is over and the night shift starts now, at twenty-two fifteen. Comrade lieutenant colonel Petrov, over.” He put back the microphone and sat on his chair, listening to the quiet music of soldiers taking and leaving their post in a strict order.

They were good soldiers, he had made sure of that. Even if watching airspace wasn’t the most thrilling activity, it required to stay focus despite the long hours of multiple checking, and to be able to react with self-control to anything that could come up on any screen.

“Your tea, sir,” said his orderly, putting a stack of papers on his desk.

Spaseeba, Oleg. Any news from the Kremlin?”

“No, sir. We’ve received the orders and we maintain the watch on high level.”

“Alright, dismiss.”

Stanislas rummaged through the report, but there was nothing new. Since they had taken down a supposedly airliner — more likely a spy plane — which had invaded their airspace, the relations between Moscow and Washington were… strained at best. A retaliation was expected, and thus, every watching post was on a high alert level.

Somehow, Stanislas was glad of this. It meant they had more things to do, more datas to analyse, and more numbers to check. At least, it will help to keep the team, and I, awake, he told himself as he rubbed his face.

Whatever the American retaliation could be, chances were low that —

A siren screamed inside the quiet office. “We have a missile launch,” shouted a sergeant on his right. “A missile launch from the West Coast!”

Stanislas’ fingers danced on the console while his brain was trying to acknowledge the informations. The Americans were attacking them! But with one missile?

“Alright, soldiers, you know the procedure,” he said. “I want everything checked twice. Dimitri, bring me your estimations on where this missile will land. Mikhail, I wanna know if our computers could have made a mistake. Roman, get the satellites’ photos and see from where the missile was launched.”

An ordered chaos ran through the room, everyone trying to stay focus on their own task, not willing to process the terrible fact: a nuclear missile was heading towards Russia. Unfortunately for him, Stanislas was the senior officer and had nothing to do. From his high position, he could only stare at the small white dot on the big screen, slowly and inexorably coming to his country, carrying death and oblivion. An apocalyptic snowflake, foreshadowing the nuclear winter that would follow if his men confirmed the datas.

“Sir, the computer center is one hundred percent sure, it’s a Minuteman!” shouted a voice on his right.

Stanislas nodded. “Roman, do you have a visual on the missile launch?” he asked, his eyes still on the white dot.

“Negative, sir. The Sun is setting on the West Coast, the visibility is bad. I can’t confirm nor disconfirm.”

“All our infrared instruments are pointed to the missile,” said Dimitri. “But we can’t tell precisely where it will land. We estimate the impact in an eighty kilometers square area with Moscow at the center.”

“Did our ground forces have a visual on the launch?” asked Stanislas.

“Negative, sir.”

“It doesn’t mean —”

“I know exactly what it means,” snapped Stanislas.

The room went quiet, except for the ringing alarm warning of the incoming doom. Every eye was locked on him, waiting for his orders. It was easier to obey than to decide, and his men were relieved to be only underlings.

A phone rang.

“Comrade lieutenant-colonel Petrov speaking,” he managed to say without quivering.

“Lieutenant-colonel, what’s the situation?” said the general.

Stanislas Petrov looked at his crew. He thought about his wife, about Russian children and American children, about the thousands of lives tied to the white dot on the screen, and about the millions of lives tied to his answer. Despite the cool air, his mouth was dry and his throat was burning.

“Lieutenant?”

A second of eternity went by before he replied. “General, this a false alarm, I repeat, this a false alarm. There isn’t any projectile.”

“Are you sure, lieutenant?”

Stanislas gulped. “Yes, sir, I’m sure. Our instruments have mistaken a solar flare for a nuclear launch.”

“Alright, keep the watch.”


Years later, even though he was the man who saved the world, Stanislas could only consider the world to have been lucky.
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#1 · 1
· · >>libertydude >>Fenton
Pай и Aд

R.I.P. Sansilav Petrov, world savior

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov


Okay, so true story, which I recognized from years ago. The protagonist just died in real life earlier this year.

The story itself is... odd. I'm not sure if this is an English writer deliberately making grammatical mistakes to do the "bad russian accent" thing, or a non-native speaker doing it by accident. The change in spelling from the normal transliteration makes me think non-native.

I guess it doesn't work very well for me because I know the end already. Of course, I didn't like Titanic (the movie) for the same reason, but plenty of others did.

I think, with the short word count, this doesn't add much to the actual history. We'd need to get inside the mind of Petrov more for that emotional connection, but there's no room here if you don't assume ALL readers already know the story (which isn't a safe assumption to make.)
#2 ·
· · >>Fenton
Hmmm… I didn't know about this story following the South Korean Boeing incident, an incident which, it turned out, had been 100% rigged by the US army to spy on Russia's eastern electronic defences and countermeasure devices.

The story is nicely told, but yeah, since it's a re-telling of a past incident, there's no real tension here. I think it maybe would've been worth telling the story from the PoV of one of Petrov’s subordinates, or find something more original than Petrov’s PoV that we already know of.

Anyway, middle of slate.
#3 ·
· · >>Fenton
As Xepher said, there's some strange word and structure choices. I would be more confident in saying that it's stereotypical Russian-styled narration if the dialogue went for it as well (No 'Da'?) but such is not the case. Overall, it's okay I'd say, but not quite good. Nice tribute, though, to a man who certainly deserves many of them.
#4 · 1
· · >>Fenton
This could maybe use a whip-round with a proofreader, I think. Unless the English was intentionally a little off? But that would be weird, because they should be speaking fluently, except in Russian, right?

Er, I'm not sure how I feel about this as a story, because it's kinda-sorta biographical. As such, this feels less creative to me. Maybe that's unfair to you, as the author, but I think it's going to affect my judging no matter what I do.

Other than that, there's some visceral feelings here, which is good, but I'm not sure that the missile being fake worked as a 'reveal' -- even if I hadn't known this story already -- because it causes dissonance between the reader and the character. If he knows the machine is wrong, why exactly is he so worried about phoning in the call? If he doubts the call, then why does he phone it in so deftly? I dunno. I think this would be better if we knew what he was really worried about the whole time, whether that's the possibility of being wrong, or the fact that he's going to have to tell his superiors that the machine they spent X bajillion dollars on can't even tell the difference between a solar flare and a minuteman.

Nicely written, even if it is a re-telling of something IRL, but somehow the emotions just don't jive for me.
#5 ·
· · >>Fenton
This is the first time in a while I’ve seen a story based on a real person (see >>Xepher’s post above). On the one hand, I think it does a good job of capturing the anxious feelings the Cold War often produced. The idea that the soldiers like being on high alert if only to avoid boredom is a relatable feeling, and the “missile” works as a good demonstration of why you shouldn’t want too much action. I also enjoyed how the observation post feels occupied, with all these nameless soldiers and orderlies moving about. It’s detailed, but not detailed too much. Military installations are often drab enough to deserve little exposition about their environmental detail.

That being said, this is a story that doesn’t entirely mesh on an emotional level. Stanislav is portrayed as a curt military man, which is probably accurate to his real-life personality, but it makes his interactions with others easy to predict. He doesn’t have much depth, which makes it somewhat difficult to care about him. There’s also the disadvantage in adapting a real-life event for a story. Since some people already know how this story ends, there’s no real stakes for them in what happens. Personally, I thought the story ignored the most important reason for Stanislav not retaliating: his logic. He reasoned that the Americans wouldn’t start with such a paltry opening attack, so he assumed it wasn’t anything they launched. Because of this, the story makes his reasoning for not wanting to announce a nuclear attack more confusing than heartwarming. The story presents nothing but evidence of an American attack, but Stanislav ignores it simply out of some vague morality. I don’t doubt the real Stanislav thought about such things, but it’s inconsistent to characterize him as a military man and not have him evaluate the situation from a militaristic perspective (which, as this story presents it, should’ve called for an immediate retaliation).

An admirable tribute, but the event’s basis in real-life makes the story’s narrative tactics and characters not function as well as they could.
#6 ·
· · >>Fenton
Going against the above grain, I think the Russian-English felt on point. It's just off enough to feel like we're hearing their Russian, but in English, if that makes sense. That being said, rooting the narrative in real events, however "holy shit, we just avoided global nuclear war," without any unique take, or hook, does the piece a disservice.
#7 ·
· · >>Fenton
The Russian-English is a bit weird. I sort of agree with Rao that it functions in a weird sort of way if you imagine this as film, but yeah. It is distracting.

Beyond that, I'm inclined to agree with the above that this more or less goes through the motions of the event, which really misses the opportunity to try and dig deep into the thoughts of a person stuck with this impossible situation. Really, you should be starting us AT the missile launch, rather than using over a third of the max words getting us there.
#8 · 4
·
Pай и Aд Retrospective

So I’m the one who committed that, and I’m not really proud it passed the prelims. Some people were there when I was wondering if I should DQ’d myself or not, but I understood then that it would be disrespectful towards those who hadn’t made it to the finals. Still, I think I didn’t deserve it. Why? Answers below.

As usual when I’m not really inspired, and not because of the prompt, I started thinking about this late. The obvious direction was one minute before the Apocalypse, but I wanted something a bit different, and I remembered Stanislas’ story. I looked for some informations about him and started writing a few hours before the deadline. Unfortunately, because I hadn’t much time (I had other things to do, like finding a job), and because the wordcount is also very short, I haven’t been able to convey the main thing I wanted to convey, that is, the personal experience of a man who has the power to start the nuclear Apocalypse. That’s why I didn’t started directly with the missile launch, I wanted to have the character starting his normal day, not expecting something as big as a possible nuclear war, so that I could emphasize how his decision wasn’t really one he had time to think about. Moreover, I wanted to spend more time in his head, describing how I imagined he could have felt at the moment, the power he had between his hands, and how a simple answer (yes/no) could determine the future of our world.
Fortunately for everyone of us, he took the right decision.
That’s why the main reproaches you raised are more than valid. Without enough time and enough words, I couldn’t spend enough time in Stanislas’ head, and I also couldn’t have this proofread by a native. The language is off not because it was my intention all along, but because I’m just a bad non native.
As for the title, I also didn’t have time to really think about something meaningful, thus, I chose the name of an album by Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell, and translated it with Google in Russian.


ANSWERS

>>Xepher

I think, with the short word count, this doesn't add much to the actual history. We'd need to get inside the mind of Petrov more for that emotional connection, but there's no room here if you don't assume ALL readers already know the story (which isn't a safe assumption to make.)


I explained a lot above, but I want to add that I always assume that my reader doesn’t have any knowledge of past events, so I think I have to detail what happen. But because I couldn’t manage to fit the emotional journey, it ended as simply a retold of an historical event.


>>Monokeras

Telling the story from one of Stanislas’ subordinate is an interesting idea, but for what I wanted to do, it would have undermined how powerful and clutch Stanislas’ decision was.
And yeah, not any real tension here because of what I’ve said.


>>Ion-Sturm

You were right, it wasn’t supposed to reproduce a stereotypical language of Russians talking (why would they talk a bad English if they were in Russia and the only speakers were Russian).
And yes, more than our gratitude, Stanislas should be an example for everyone. I’ll develop that part later.


>>Not_A_Hat

Yes, it could have used a whip-round with a proofreader, definitely, and no, the language wasn’t off on purpose (see above).

Er, I'm not sure how I feel about this as a story, because it's kinda-sorta biographical. As such, this feels less creative to me. Maybe that's unfair to you, as the author, but I think it's going to affect my judging no matter what I do.


It would have been unfair if I have managed to add Stanislas’ thoughts and emotions to the story. As it is, it’s mainly a retelling of past events. Thus, calling it less creative is something I can agree with.

As for what happens, it wasn’t a solar flare that caused the instruments to think it was a missile, but a reflection on clouds that the satellites interpreted as missiles launches, but it takes more words to say that than to say solar flare.
Also, he is not sure if the missiles are real or not. The only informations he had is that:
Their software says there is a missile launch from an American base
The satellite photos doesn’t show any launch from the base, but the visibility is terrible, because the place is between day and night
The ground forces in America haven’t seen any missile launches
A month ago, Russia has taken down a airliner flying in Russian space
There is only one missile coming (in fact, there was one, then four more) so it doesn’t look like a strong retaliation
With these informations, he decides to believe the Americans haven’t launched any missile, but he can’t be sure of that. He simply choose to believe in a greater good. Stanislas said himself that even if the missiles were real, he didn’t want to be the guy who started the nuclear war. He was ready to let thousands of people dying to let millions and millions of others live.


>>libertydude

Thank you for the praise, at least I’ve managed to do something right in this.
As for Stanislas’ reasoning, I couldn’t really fit his train of thoughts in a such a short wordcount. I agree that logic is probably what has made him take this decision, but for story and entertainment purpose, I wanted to emphasize the fact that the informations he had at the moment couldn’t help him deciding if the missile was real or not, thus reinforcing his decision on a goodness level.
Too bad I didn’t manage to convey that clearly.


>>Rao

If you keep doing that, I’m gonna start thinking you’re too kind for your own good, Rao :)
If you felt that the Russian-English was on point, it was just a coincidence.
As for the unique take, like I said, I wanted to convey how tough the decision to not retaliate was.


>>AndrewRogue

Starting at the missile launch would have probably allowed me to spend more time with Stanislas, thus describing his feelings and his thoughts. However, I felt more comfortable starting before, in order to have a strong switch of space and mood between the calm of a normal day and a possible incoming nuclear destruction.


Answers are now out of the way, I want to thank everyone of you for your comments. I was already aware of some of them by the time I submitted that, but having people confirming them is still valuable, because it tells me that I’m becoming more and more, well, aware of my flaws.
But before ending this retrospective, I would like you to learn about Stanislas Petrov, because what he did, choosing to not retaliate, gives me hope. Our world tends to become cynical and to value that way of thinking, claiming that humanity is bad, it only thinks about war and death and reproduce and money and a lot of other shits. But, this man proved that no, humans have great things to offer to each others and to the world. They can be good, selfless, generous, they can be a lot of good things. So take a moment to think about this man, what example he has set, and start to believe the world is good, and that is a face. The more people believe it, the more it can actually becomes a fact.

Thank you, that would be all.
Take care and be safe.