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The Wall
“It’s unbearable!” the president declared. “Those strangers are a threat to our society. Soon, there shall be more of them in this country than ourselves. We must react!” And he smashed his heavy, gnarled fist on the lectern.
So the wall was born. A week after this seminal statement, an army of masons, joined by tons of bricks and mortar, invaded the northern bank of the river and set out to work on the spot. Day after day, the wall sprang into existence, gaining both in length and height, until it became a continuous ribbon of bricks and stones, five metres high, crowned in ominous whorls of barbed wire, running uninterrupted over thousands of kilometres.
Then the works ceased and the masons were told to go back to their homes, leaving behind the impervious obstacle, like a welt over Earth's crust.
A month, maybe two, elapsed in stillness, as if the strangers had been definitely deterred.
Then the first explosions began.
At first, nobody understood. But after a few days, it became clear: vehicles loaded with explosives were silently barged through the river, then hurled at full speed against the wall. The smoke had not even cleared away that a flow of immigrants rushed into the breach and through the rubble into their promised land.
And no one could have banked on the police, whose ranks had been severely depleted, to stop them.
In the capital city, the government met, and decided they should take still more extreme measures.
A few days after, the masons and all their materials were back. As they had been ordered, they diligently endeavoured to erect another wall, two hundred metres beyond the first one. And when this second wall, as ominous as the first one, was done, a throng of specialists in fluorescent jackets gushed in and began to bore the bricks and move the ground, installing kilometres of wires, slew of cameras, raws of electronic detectors, and other shiny contrivances no one except them had any idea what purpose they could serve.
At last, the last hitch was connected, the last wire powered. The gangs of workers sighed and left. Earth was put back in place, and chugging machines levelled the ground. When their task was done, quietness unheard of since months fell.
They named it “the death corridor”. Nothing, not even the smallest bug, could creep though it undetected. High sensitivity thermal detectors, advanced motion tracking cameras, sensitive pressure sensors, invisible laser barriers scrutinised the area day and night, ready to set off the alarms at the slightest unexpected waft of air. And in control centres hidden deep underground, trained operators watched, 24/24, their eyes locked on monitors, their hands hovering over the buttons that would have triggered a local armageddon.
Time went by.
First it was just a trickle. Then the trickle morphed into a brook, and the brook itself changed into a stream.
The strangers were back.
”HOW?” the President yelled, his face red with rage. “I want to know HOW!”
It turned out dozens of tunnels, some more than ten kilometres long, had been dug under the Death corridor. Some were large enough for pick-ups to drive safely inside. It had taken years for the strangers to complete their work, shovelful of ground after shovelful of ground. How many had died in the process? No one knew. What mattered was that they had succeeded.
The tunnels were flooded with water. But everyone knew it was a matter of months for others to pop up. So the president took a grave decision. Since this land couldn’t be protected from invaders, it was time for the people to leave. On Mars, they would have room to explore, land to tame. It was time for his folk to breathe the air of wilderness again.
They built rockets. Many rockets. And when they were ready to depart, they cherrypicked each applicant. Those whose background was judged unclear were dismissed.
One bright day the next winter, the first rockets took off, carrying the upper crust of the society: ministers, counsellors, congressmen, magnates, CEOs. They all boarded with bright smiles and swaggering gaits.
When they landed at Mars’s main astroport, they wondered why the area was cordoned off with burly, armed guards.
”What’s the matter?” the president asked to the local official that had come to meet him at the foot of the gangway.
“I’m very sorry,” the official apologised, “but our policy has changed. We don’t let unknown, potentially harmful strangers in anymore.”
So the wall was born. A week after this seminal statement, an army of masons, joined by tons of bricks and mortar, invaded the northern bank of the river and set out to work on the spot. Day after day, the wall sprang into existence, gaining both in length and height, until it became a continuous ribbon of bricks and stones, five metres high, crowned in ominous whorls of barbed wire, running uninterrupted over thousands of kilometres.
Then the works ceased and the masons were told to go back to their homes, leaving behind the impervious obstacle, like a welt over Earth's crust.
A month, maybe two, elapsed in stillness, as if the strangers had been definitely deterred.
Then the first explosions began.
At first, nobody understood. But after a few days, it became clear: vehicles loaded with explosives were silently barged through the river, then hurled at full speed against the wall. The smoke had not even cleared away that a flow of immigrants rushed into the breach and through the rubble into their promised land.
And no one could have banked on the police, whose ranks had been severely depleted, to stop them.
In the capital city, the government met, and decided they should take still more extreme measures.
A few days after, the masons and all their materials were back. As they had been ordered, they diligently endeavoured to erect another wall, two hundred metres beyond the first one. And when this second wall, as ominous as the first one, was done, a throng of specialists in fluorescent jackets gushed in and began to bore the bricks and move the ground, installing kilometres of wires, slew of cameras, raws of electronic detectors, and other shiny contrivances no one except them had any idea what purpose they could serve.
At last, the last hitch was connected, the last wire powered. The gangs of workers sighed and left. Earth was put back in place, and chugging machines levelled the ground. When their task was done, quietness unheard of since months fell.
They named it “the death corridor”. Nothing, not even the smallest bug, could creep though it undetected. High sensitivity thermal detectors, advanced motion tracking cameras, sensitive pressure sensors, invisible laser barriers scrutinised the area day and night, ready to set off the alarms at the slightest unexpected waft of air. And in control centres hidden deep underground, trained operators watched, 24/24, their eyes locked on monitors, their hands hovering over the buttons that would have triggered a local armageddon.
Time went by.
First it was just a trickle. Then the trickle morphed into a brook, and the brook itself changed into a stream.
The strangers were back.
”HOW?” the President yelled, his face red with rage. “I want to know HOW!”
It turned out dozens of tunnels, some more than ten kilometres long, had been dug under the Death corridor. Some were large enough for pick-ups to drive safely inside. It had taken years for the strangers to complete their work, shovelful of ground after shovelful of ground. How many had died in the process? No one knew. What mattered was that they had succeeded.
The tunnels were flooded with water. But everyone knew it was a matter of months for others to pop up. So the president took a grave decision. Since this land couldn’t be protected from invaders, it was time for the people to leave. On Mars, they would have room to explore, land to tame. It was time for his folk to breathe the air of wilderness again.
They built rockets. Many rockets. And when they were ready to depart, they cherrypicked each applicant. Those whose background was judged unclear were dismissed.
One bright day the next winter, the first rockets took off, carrying the upper crust of the society: ministers, counsellors, congressmen, magnates, CEOs. They all boarded with bright smiles and swaggering gaits.
When they landed at Mars’s main astroport, they wondered why the area was cordoned off with burly, armed guards.
”What’s the matter?” the president asked to the local official that had come to meet him at the foot of the gangway.
“I’m very sorry,” the official apologised, “but our policy has changed. We don’t let unknown, potentially harmful strangers in anymore.”
So, this story isn't really cliche. However, I think I dislike it for the same reason I tend to dislike cliche's.
It's all really... easy? It's pretty simple to tell what's going to happen most of the time. It's pretty simple to guess at what the author's likely drawing from. The ending is simple, and not even really that connected to what came before except in a 'ha ha poetic justice' way that, I think, draws much too much attention to the author's involvement here.
I dunno. This is, in some ways, perfectly serviceable. I just have a hard time finding any of it particularly interesting, because it feels like cheap shots and rehashes the whole way. Maybe that's just me, though.
It's all really... easy? It's pretty simple to tell what's going to happen most of the time. It's pretty simple to guess at what the author's likely drawing from. The ending is simple, and not even really that connected to what came before except in a 'ha ha poetic justice' way that, I think, draws much too much attention to the author's involvement here.
I dunno. This is, in some ways, perfectly serviceable. I just have a hard time finding any of it particularly interesting, because it feels like cheap shots and rehashes the whole way. Maybe that's just me, though.
I think I need to agree with Not_A_Hat's view of this story. It's not bad, it's not good, it just kind of... is. It makes social commentary, but not particularly insightful or original social commentary, and it does it in a way that's been done many times before. The execution is fine, but I feel like I've read this exact story before.
I'm a person that likes slow-building (pardon the pun) stories, and this seems like one of those. I like the progression, and how it builds itself up to absurdity. I think the prose is well-written as well.
Where it falls flat for me, personally, is that it seems to rely on current knowledge of conceptions of immigrants. Not to make a social comment here, but the ending doesn't tie in with the rest of the story. Spoiler warning for the rest of the readers: the President doesn't begin to connive ways to enter Mars like the immigrants did on Earth. The empathy for the whole situation isn't there when the President can't reflect on what's going on; it's poetic justice, but it's lacking in that drive to bring the whole thing home. The measures that are taken on Mars to keep people out aren't explained well, so there's not much of a reflection between Mars and Earth. I think this could work out extraordinarily well as a poignant longer story, but it doesn't work at this length.
Overall, I'd call it competently written, but with not a lot of punch to it. I would like to see you continue on with it.
Where it falls flat for me, personally, is that it seems to rely on current knowledge of conceptions of immigrants. Not to make a social comment here, but the ending doesn't tie in with the rest of the story. Spoiler warning for the rest of the readers: the President doesn't begin to connive ways to enter Mars like the immigrants did on Earth. The empathy for the whole situation isn't there when the President can't reflect on what's going on; it's poetic justice, but it's lacking in that drive to bring the whole thing home. The measures that are taken on Mars to keep people out aren't explained well, so there's not much of a reflection between Mars and Earth. I think this could work out extraordinarily well as a poignant longer story, but it doesn't work at this length.
Overall, I'd call it competently written, but with not a lot of punch to it. I would like to see you continue on with it.
The Great
Competent writing throughout. The narrative flow is smooth and escalates nicely, despite being a minific.
The Rough
Not a lot of stuff to say here. A few little errors, use of raw instead of row, repetition of the word last in a sentence, etc.
The biggest problem is that I am left feeling a little underwhelmed. I feel like the punchline should work better than it does, but something holds it back. I want to say that it is, in part, the momentary confusion about the guard corps on Mars. Based on statements, I sort of expected an uninhabited Mars with unknown aliens rejecting the earthlings or something. The fact that the metaphor at least, to me, reads like a criticism of American policies, and America is a major world power, it is weird for them to be blocked by apparently another government in that way.
Competent writing throughout. The narrative flow is smooth and escalates nicely, despite being a minific.
The Rough
Not a lot of stuff to say here. A few little errors, use of raw instead of row, repetition of the word last in a sentence, etc.
The biggest problem is that I am left feeling a little underwhelmed. I feel like the punchline should work better than it does, but something holds it back. I want to say that it is, in part, the momentary confusion about the guard corps on Mars. Based on statements, I sort of expected an uninhabited Mars with unknown aliens rejecting the earthlings or something. The fact that the metaphor at least, to me, reads like a criticism of American policies, and America is a major world power, it is weird for them to be blocked by apparently another government in that way.
I liked the Fairy-tale like structure. The almost undefined temporal and geographical collocation added to the charm, as did the repetition and the lack of names. The story itself is a little moral tale, a thing which we see quite rarely nowadays. From this point of view, it was quite successful in emulating that style, and it got it a few points in my completely arbitrary and unscientific write-off entry judging metric.
Now on to the criticism. I think the story lacked a bit of punch. If I had to make a suggestion then I would have exchanged the martian guards at the end with another wall or a similar impersonal obstacle. I also kind of miss a third repetition of the wall construction, which would, IMHO, have been another recall to the fairy tale structure.
Regarding the politics of the piece, while it clearly refers to the current American situation, I have to pop a bubble and say that similar rhetoric is used almost everywhere through the world. We have a couple of examples here, on the other side of the ocean, too.
Now on to the criticism. I think the story lacked a bit of punch. If I had to make a suggestion then I would have exchanged the martian guards at the end with another wall or a similar impersonal obstacle. I also kind of miss a third repetition of the wall construction, which would, IMHO, have been another recall to the fairy tale structure.
Regarding the politics of the piece, while it clearly refers to the current American situation, I have to pop a bubble and say that similar rhetoric is used almost everywhere through the world. We have a couple of examples here, on the other side of the ocean, too.