Hey! It looks like you're new here. You might want to check out the introduction.

The Long Road Home · Original Short Story ·
Organised by RogerDodger
Word limit 2000–8000
Show rules for this event
The World I Once Called Home
It all started long ago. Back when I had a family. A home. I still remember the way the grass rippled in the Summer breeze, the Sun slowly ascending the skies above. I will never forget the song of the birds as they floated by my window. And in the nighttime, how distant the stars seemed.

“Ray! Turn us back around!”

Not anymore.

I was back at my control board. I looked up to see Ursula, her face barely an inch from mine, bearing her signature chiseled-stone frown. Herbert, the ship engineer, spoke up:
“I suppose Grigonium is only the seventh-rarest ore in known space. It’s alright, we can always get the next Grig-rich asteroid that happens to float our way.”

“Shut up, Herb,” I said with all the confidence I could muster. “I’ve got this.”

Frantically, my hands raced for the proper controls as a steered the Godwin 180 degrees. Before us, the asteroid was still in sight. As I plotted the course towards the rock, I heard Ursula stifle a sigh of relief, and couldn’t help but grin. Our captain rarely showed emotion; it was refreshing to see she was not devoid of it. Approaching the asteroid, I was able to get a better look at the ‘Grig’, as Herb always called it, which seemed to be growing like mold on the asteroid’s exterior. As I further examined the crystals through the front viewport, I pondered how I could have missed it on the first pass. Though Grigonium was similar in color to the space boulder, it had a luminous quality that made it easily distinguishable. My heart began to beat faster. Depending on the amount of Grig, even split three ways, it would still mean more wealth than most independent miners such as themselves usually gained in a year’s work. But the money was not what mattered to me. It was what I planned to use it for. Returning to the world I was born into as a child, not the one I awoke in as an adult.

Turning my attention back to the task at hand, I maneuvered the ship until it was adjacent to the asteroid. I then set the mining laser and watched for a moment as the beam excavated the ore. My eyelids gaining weight at a rapid pace, I turned to Herb and asked him to take over for me. With a “Sure thing, mate.”, he approached my desk. After receiving permission from Ursula, I was on the way to my bunk. Strapping myself into the padded restraints in case of gravitational malfunctions, I glanced at the time indicator on the wall. Had I really been awake for twenty hours? Allowing my eyes to finally shut, I drifted into emptiness, save for the harmonic rhythm of the humming engine and the buzz of the laser.




I’m back at Residence 3141. The first thing I see is her. She is just as beautiful as I remember, and yet, there is an unusual sadness about her. Her eyes, the deepest of greens, are now a puffy red. All I can think about is comforting her. Pulling her into my embrace, I feel her body heave in my grasp, and my left shoulder becomes damp. Finally she speaks, and with every word, my heart is broken.
“Why do you have to go?” I remember now. I try to stop myself, but-
“If there were any other way…” I hear myself speak. “What they’re offering me… Amnesty... A chance to see the future…”
“Even if it means leaving us, leaving me behind?” This is all my fault. Why didn’t I stop when I still could?
“I’m so sorry.” And with that, she completely breaks down. I sit with her, listening to the sobs, the broken moans, and I weep too. Or try. Because this isn’t a dream. No, this is a memory. And in this memory, I don’t cry. I try to remain stoic for her. As I sit there for what seems like hours, the world starts to crumble. And everything fades to black.

In the darkness, I soon spot a light. Dim at first, but growing steadily stronger. As my eyes adjust, I see that I am on a barren sidewalk. And instantly, I know where I am. This is a memory from even farther back in my life. One I had buried and hoped would never be uncovered. Within the minute, a man approaches, wearing a bulletproof vest and armed with a pistol. He stands beside me, neither of us saying a word. Then another man appears, then another, then another, all armed. I look down at my side, and it confirms what I already know. Concealed in my pocket is a small, obsidian-black pistol. Finally, once everyone has gathered, the first man to show up speaks.
“Let’s move.” And with that, we begin our silent trek. Eventually, our target comes into view. The munitions compound. We reach the gate and one of the men pulls a set of tools from his backpack. He begins to work on creating an opening without setting off any alarms. While he does this, I get a better look at the compound. It is a large, dimly lit warehouse. The entrance is a steel door with a flickering light placed directly above it. There are two large garage doors on the left side of the entrance, but I already know that these are not how we enter the building.

There is now a hole in the fence about three feet in diameter, and two men have already crawled through. It seems like a clear shot across the flat, evenly trimmed lawn to the entrance, but we all know better. It takes roughly another hour for us to reach the door and, after disabling many security precautions, we are ready. Before we enter, the first man gives a speech, and I try to tune it out. I’ve heard it before. How after tonight, our gang will finally be able to wrest control from our rivals, how we will have free reign over not only our own territory, but soon, the entire city, et cetera. It all seems so petty in hindsight. And we couldn’t have been more wrong. The man wraps up his speech, and the door is forced open. Inside are two guards, who are dead before I can react.

“Next one’s yours, Ray.” says our leader in a cold voice as we enter. That comment sent chills down my spine even when I first heard it, but now it is infinitely worse. After yet another hour of tedious, painstaking work, we reach the prize. The warehouse interior boasts crates of weapons lining every wall, each crate higher than myself. We begin carrying these, one for every three men, outside the fence, where a vehicle is now located, along with another two members. On my fourth trip back to the building, I try to brace myself. I know what is coming, and there is no way to stop it. I go to pick up the next box, but I notice that this one is placed farther from the wall than the others. I look behind it, and that’s when I see him. The man I kill. He is cowering behind the crate, but is immediately gripped by his shirt collar and dragged into the center of the warehouse by the tall, muscular man standing next to me. Soon, the news spreads, and suddenly I am alone in the center of a circle with the guard, who has been stripped of all his equipment. Everyone is shouting at me, and I realize I have my pistol out, lined up perfectly with the guard’s head.
“Do it.” says the leader. Unlike the rest of the group, his voice is calm, clear, and startlingly devoid of emotion. A million thoughts flash through my head, and before I can fully realize my action, I pull the trigger.





“Ray,” It was Ursula. “Sit up.”

“Yeah, you probably want to hear this,” added Herb, standing above my bunk with Ursula, both of whom seemed to be in much lighter spirits than earlier. I sat up, my thoughts clearing after my disturbing dreams. Not dreams, memories, I mentally corrected myself.

“We finished mining the Grigonium while you slept. There was more than Herbert or I had imagined. We’re en route to the trade center on Mars II, where you can do what you will with the your share of the earnings. If you have any questions, you know where to find me.” Ursula headed back to the bridge, leaving Herb and I together in the crew quarters.
“Well, it was nice knowing you, Ray. They’ve got great transport service off Mars II. I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for,” said Herb with a sigh. I had known him longer than anyone else. He was the one who discovered my cryo-pod floating through space. It was he who had first given me a home on the Godwin. And he knew where I was going. I had heard stories, but I needed to see it for myself. I needed to see Earth.

Soon after landing on Mars II, we had already completed the trade and I had scheduled my departure with the fastest ship I could find. Now all that was left was saying goodbye. For Ursula it was a nod and handshake, but with Herb it was a bit more meaningful. He was my best friend, after all. We sat in a bar for hours as we recounted our adventures together, but eventually it was time for my flight. As I watched the Godwin vanish into the atmosphere, I felt a pang of sorrow. Soon, however, these thoughts were forced from my head as I boarded the transport ship, which had an interior design much like that of an old Earth airplane.

The flight itself was fairly uneventful, except for the dread that was growing like a tree in my stomach. Each minute was an hour, each hour a day. When we were nearing the time of arrival, a booming voice played through the speakers in the ceiling explained for what seemed like the hundredth time that, though we would be landing on it’s moon, Earth would still be visible through our viewports. And then I saw it, rapidly approaching. Earth. It was unrecognizable. It no longer looked like a planet, but more similar to a spherical volcano. The voice continued, explaining how Earth was devastated by nuclear war, how lucky it was that there were already so many otherworldly colonies at the time of Earth’s destruction, how the human race still managed to thrive. But I didn’t care about that. I felt sick just looking at it. My vision started to blur, and I blacked out.




I’m back on the sidewalk. It’s still just me, none of the other men have arrived yet. I try to look down at my side, just to make sure it’s the same memory, though knowing the attempt will be futile, when I do it. I look down. This time, I’m in control. I test once again with my arms, my legs. This time, I’ll make the right choice. I see the first man approaching, the leader, and I start to run. Faster than I have before. Even though it is a dream, it feels so lifelike. I start to think about what effects this could have. The gang will come after me. They’ll kill me.

But I keep running. This time, I have a chance at a life. This time, I will not kill anyone. I will not end up in prison. I will not become a government experiment, thrown in a cryo-tube and shot into space, all for a chance at amnesty. And this time, I’ll stay. I’ll stay with her.



I’m back at Residence 3141. I see her again, but this time, she’s happy. When I embrace her, it isn’t to wipe away her tears. Then time fast-forwards. I see our marriage, our children, and finally, the last day. We’re still in Residence 3141, but this time we’re on our 31st floor balcony. But something is wrong. The sky is red. I realize what is happening, but I don’t feel any hate or resentment. I don’t have any regrets. I look into her eyes, and I can see she is scared. We kiss one last time as the world burns around us. And I realize that this is what I should have chosen.
« Prev   13   Next »
#1 ·
· · >>NightLord
Not going to lie, I had to read this a couple of times to fully get it. Repeat readings should enhance the experience, not be a requirement to get the full enjoyment.

But hey, maybe I just didn't get it. I still feel the back and forth between real time events and flashbacks could have been better integrated. Had something happening in the story that triggered the flashback instead of seguing into dreams, the connections could have been streamlined without compromising much of the subtlety of the story.

Let me say that I liked the story that you told, it's a nice tale of loss and regret , I just didn't fully appreciate the way it was presented.
#2 ·
· · >>NightLord
So, you've kinda sorta got two narratives here.

And they kinda sorta tie together?

The thing is, they don't really tie together very strongly. I mean, not strongly enough to convince me you actually need both of them. Most of what they seem to do is simply give an in-media-res kinda feel to stuff, without adding significantly more depth that I can see.

Sure, the rolling reveal is alright. But parts - like him shooting the guy, or being in the gang - don't really seem to do a whole lot, plot-wise. I dunno. Overall, this feels pretty choppy and disconnected, without giving much in return for that obfuscation.
#3 · 2
· · >>Crimmar >>NightLord
So. The World I Once Called Home. What's going on here that made me stop and write the whole digression of >>horizon out?

It's this: virtually all of my frustrations with this story can be summed up in that mistake of mixing up Idea and Story.

We have here two perfectly cromulent ideas. A space miner strikes a jackpot and uses it to cash out in hopes of returning to a home that no longer exists. A man with a dark past mentally confronts the mistakes that haunt him. But it feels to me like this is treating idea as story, and plowing through to its ideas as directly as possible rather than route-finding.

The line that keeps itching at the back of my brain every time I think about this is:
Depending on the amount of Grig, even split three ways, it would still mean more wealth than most independent miners such as themselves usually gained in a year’s work.


These folks have just hit the jackpot — a few minutes' worth of work for over a year's salary. If I'm reading the story right, it looks like they all quit their jobs and cashed out. And yet the only dialogue we ever get about the magnitude of their discovery is a cynical joke about how they'll fly by it and hit the next one, and a "Well, it was nice knowing you" as they part ways?

I'm not sure what my exact reaction would be if I stumbled across a winning $100,000 lottery ticket in the street, but my reaction certainly wouldn't be nothing. Even if I didn't laugh or weep or dance around in glee, I'd certainly call my friends, post a photo to Twitter with a string of "OMG"s, and spend the next day or two obsessed with planning my windfall. Point is, for such a personally and professionally momentous event, the entire crew just shrugging the find off is deeply weird. The more so since the second scene apparently establishes that they know Ray's plans, and yet none of them congratulates him or tries to talk him out of his decision, or talks about how they're going to spend their share, or anything that turns them into characters. To me, this reads as a giant failure of that idea->story crafting process, a huge missed opportunity. The idea was to hit the core idea of Ray's trip home, so that's what got put to the page.

(And I totally get that, in a Writeoff context! I know there's a number of stories this round that were written in a single frenzied pass late at night, and given those limitations, this is nothing to be ashamed of. It's got an actual character arc (Ray makes the decision to follow through on his trip home despite Earth being destroyed by nuclear war), and clearly the first lines were written with the last lines in mind so this isn't a total seat-of-pants thing. Grammar and spelling are clean. This isn't a bad-writer thing, it's a failure-of-time thing. But the solution to structural problems is to examine your approach.)

I'm not sure how much detail I should go into here — because it's definitely not just the reaction to the discovery, I'm just using that as a prominent example — and I don't know how useful vs. demoralizing it would be to list the misses here. I'm trying to help, not pile on. But I'll point out the other big thing in hopes it gets your brain primed about what sort of questions to ask when plotting:

• What conflict did you want this story to be about? What is the biggest conflict that the story resolves? Because you've got two different ideas here that got merged into a single story — the miners' jackpot, and Ray's coping with his past — and right now those have separate conflicts that don't meaningfully connect. As soon as Ray corrects his mistake and gets to the asteroid, the miners and the discovery are just sort of there, and vanish once Ray gets his money; as far as your A plot is concerned, you might as well have just had him cash in an inheritance or something. If this is about Ray's past, then every scene you write should drive that conflict or raise the stakes on that conflict. And you've got a very good way to do so — after all, you've established that his crewmates saved his life, took him in, and know and care about his trip home! Don't they have opinions of their own about it? The tragedy here is that Ray's chasing a doomed dream of a dead lover … what would make that conflict hurt more? What if, for example, Ursula (or Herbert) are in love with him, and Ray has to choose between that and going back to Earth?

So, basically … I spent a lot of words here not because this story is a trainwreck, but because I want to offer some food for thought on what sort of tools can take technically proficient but narratively shallow writing like this to the next level. And talking about how to write is a LOT more complex than talking about how it could have been done differently. I'm not sure how well this does the former, and I'm definitely not trying to pick on you (sorry if it comes across that way), but I wanted to make the effort.

Thanks for writing. You've got good stories ahead.

Tier: Needs Work
#4 ·
· · >>NightLord
>>horizon
Gotta say that I agree with a lot of it. All in all I think that taking one of the two stories and running with it would work a lot better.

The beginning, I kinda rolled my eyes at. I'm sorry, but it felt like a space movie I've seen a hundred times before with a hundred different titles.

It didn't pique at any point, and it didn't give me the slightest sense of how much time had passed. How long has passed between the two narratives? A decade? Centuries?

All in all, it is a loss to speed it had to be written with, and a story too large in scope to be sufficiently told in so few words.
#5 ·
· · >>NightLord
I'm afraid I don't have much to say, since everyone else seems to have it covered. It's an interesting idea, or rather, two independent interesting ideas smooshed together... But we don't really get to see much of it. We don't get much feel for the characters, or their personalities, or anything.

Also, a minor quibble... But a mere 'nuclear war' would not destroy the biosphere, let alone reduce the Earth to a 'spherical volcano.' You'd need something a lot more energetic than a few nukes to manage that. I'd have just said something like "It was destroyed during The War" and avoid specifics.
#6 ·
·
>>ZaidValRoa
>>Not_A_Hat
>>horizon
>>Crimmar
>>TheCyanRecluse

Thank you all for your feedback. I agree wholeheartedly that the ending was rushed, and in a future draft I will work on that. I will also connect the two narratives more, and just polish the whole thing. Again, thanks.