Based on a short story I wrote a few years ago, that a lot of vets from PT here will probably recognize is my new rewrite of Before. I've added the planned sequels into the story and I'm going for a 60-70 thousand word goal for a full novel.
I'm currently working on the second chapter but due to writers block and me being so damn busy it might take me a while. Here is the first chapter;
I'm currently working on the second chapter but due to writers block and me being so damn busy it might take me a while. Here is the first chapter;
Quote:Chapter 1
Seth Aaron
The White Room
I look around the white room. The light is a calm voice to my usual aching head. My memory is hazy, and I don’t know where I am.
I sit up and let my eyes wander around the circular room. A door separates the room to another. I lay on a white bed, covered in thin silky sheets. The soft pale shirt flows as I stand up and walk around the room.
Where am I?
I sit back onto the bed, and an almost quiet female voice announces through an intercom on the roof that I now realize is the only thing in this room that isn’t white.
“Hello Seth Aaron. Welcome to the Domes. We have received word of your return and would appreciate if you would report to head office. A map will be printed, and we will send a transportation device to the outside of your room. Please feel free to have a light snack at your personal kitchen before your departure.”
The bedside table almost comes alive as a small piece of paper flows out of the top. I step towards it and pick it up. A small map with short arrows showing where my room is, and an almost futuristic building.
I walk towards the large door, which flows downwards as I get closer to it. A hallway which leads to a small bathroom, and a kitchen. I approach the kitchen and the closets come alive, showing me the different cereals, fruits and other items.
I begin to eat an apple, still holding the little map with my left hand.
My feet, in almost a trance begin to guide me to the end of the hallway.
The door materializes the same as the other, and a large floating seat welcomes me. An automated voice asks me to politely sit down. I reluctantly step off of the platform and onto the seat, a seat belt flows over my stomach, locking me into place.
It lifts itself up and begins a slow melodic start forward. It feels like a large hallway, something you would find in a large downtown building. This feeling of floating is really sensational, and is almost a dream.
Is this a dream?
The hallway ends as the seat takes me into a massive circular room. Hundreds if not thousands of people float into different rooms. I catch a glimpse of one as it passes me.
I almost gasp as I stare at the body. It looks almost translucent, and the face doesn’t hold emotion. The head stares directly forward with it’s large dead grey eyes. The whole face reminds me of a zombie off of those old horror flicks.
It floats away and I realize my heart is beating twice normal. I stare down into the large abyss and see the grates that let out air into large vents.
I have a sudden feeling of nostalgia.
The chair is whisked away into another long hallway. I see the first human since I arrived, who floats into where I just came. He gives me a quick glance and his face becomes surprised but is thrown out of the room before he is able to speak.
The floating chair comes to a stop at a docking station. I step off it and it thanks me for using its services.
The door ahead of me is plated with words, “Head Office” underlined in smaller letters with “Enra Growls”.
I step forward and the door flows downwards, beckoning me inside. I step nervously into the room. The first color is shown to me through a red rose. A man with a trimmed black beard sits at the desk that holds the flower. He studies me for a moment before speaking.
“Hello Seth. You are probably very confused at this moment. Please take a seat.”
A small backed seat floats out of the ground and I slowly walk towards it, “Who are you?” I sit down slowly.
“I am Enra Growls, the leader of this particular Dome. You can regard this dome as 3073. Many of the residents living in domes go by their Being Number. You will learn of this in good time.”
He sits back and takes a small package out of his coat pocket. He places it onto the table and begins to unwrap it. The contents contain a package of normal store-bought gum. He tosses it to me and speaks again, “You’ll need that. Chew a piece every once in a while.”
I stare at the packaging. Cherry flavored. I place it into my pocket. I look up and my mouth moves before my mind does, “What the hell is going on? Who are you people and what do you want?”
He sighs, “Seth, this place, the domes, is where life on earth is created. To be blunt I was hoping not to have to get into this kind of discussion with you because it may make this situation a little harder for you to understand then if you were just to go along with it and let us do everything.”
“You are very special Seth, we have been watching you carefully in the past few years especially. You are the top of your grade in every class, and your continuity to show exceptionality overall in life on earth has shown us that we need you for a different area. We plan to use your soul in a different body, as the soul will change the body to what it truly is inside, and through your soul we will use it for a more special purpose.”
My whole body feels numb and he continues, “We, as the more advanced beings, have to keep a balance in the world, of good and bad. Equilibrium. It is more or less the laws of life if you want to look at it in a logical way, although there is a whole lot more to it then what is shown, and you Seth just happen to have been a small mistake of placement.”
He sits forward and presses something that looks like a touch screen and two cups flip onto the table, “Would you like some coffee?”
I shake my head and he begins to drink his, “We’ll be placing your soul in a family in the western coast of Australia, we have some specific plans for you.”
This is a dream. I ask him if there will be anything else and he shakes his head, “Your scheduled for the rebirth in the next couple of days, you will be notified when this time is made clearly. Until then you may mingle among the other beings. Lunch is being served in the cafeteria; I will call for a transport for you right away. Any last questions?”
He looks at me through his dark eyes as he moves his fingers across the touch screen, signaling for the transport.
I stare at him, then my mind starts to work again, as if it had a hiccup without air, “Yeah. What are those dead things that floated around that large room?”
“Human souls. Here in the domes we place souls into bodies in humans when they are born. Without us, Earth would be nothing more then a civilization of animals, and humans would act completely on instinct like that of a cat or dog. We create souls in these facilities so that earth can truly live.”
How does one create a soul, when one is living with one? I ask.
“To explain the illogical to a logical being would be impossible,” He stares at the desk and a window of information appears, “Your transport is here.”
He picks something off of the desk and hands it to me, “Here is your transport card, you’ll need it anytime you want to go somewhere. If you want to head back to your room later on just swipe it and tell the chair home. It will take you back to where you woke up.”
I get up.
~
The white is very calming. In this place, you rarely see color, and when you do the vibrancy of it gives off warmness that you never really understood when color was as common as it is in life.
The cafeteria is large. The whole feeling of these domes feels like your smaller, a worker in a complicated system where you’re little part affects everything else.
I begin to glance at the people who sit at the tables eating some milky brown soup. It feels like a crowd you would see on Earth, although there is a lot more diversity between the races.
My face is turned by a sudden voice, “Your Seth aren’t you?”
The voice belongs to a scrawny teenager whose black hair slides over his forehead. I nod and he continues, “I’m Connor. You’re the human they took back for replacement right?”
I nod again and he motions for us to start walking to the food line, “My father works with the replacement facility, I saw you when you were being brought in from the soul room.”
An old man walks by and stops when he catches a look from me. He stares for a moment, then continues walking, shaking his head and mumbling something to himself.
I turn to Connor, “Soul room?”
“You know, the place where they take people back from Earth. I don’t really know a whole lot about it.”
The woman behind the counter hands me a tray with the brown soup in a bowl, “Mileo today.”
Connor begins talking to the woman as I begin to walk towards a table. I sit down and stare at the brown soup. The texture feels like something you would see in a swamp, with the different shades and mix of different browns.
My head looks up as Connor sits down, “Tell me more about this replacement thing.”
He begins eating the soup, I place my spoon down onto the table, “Well, the beings here work in the soul area of protecting earth. We place the souls into the humans on earth, making sure more intellect souls get into the right bodies and areas on Earth. We balance the earth so that it doesn’t become a wasteland. You wouldn’t want a soul that has a heart of science who ends up stuck on an island alone for the rest of his life. He wouldn’t do anything worthy to life.”
He wipes a drip of the soup off of his mouth, “Sometimes, the people who work in soul placement put a soul in a body where the difference it will make on Earth won’t work well to how the soul is made, or the opposite. Remember Hitler?”
I nod and his eyes almost grimace, “Yeah, that had this place in a bit of an uproar. A bit of a mistake. The mother was supposed to abort, and she almost did, but right near the end decided not to. The soul placement facility miscalculated her choice a little.”
He sits back, “So when a mistake is made, the soul replacement brings back the human, depending on the situation, in either plain soul form, or in your case, human form.”
I ask how they take them back.
“They send somebody to Earth to follow the human, and when they are alone, they kill them with this machine that takes back the soul, and basically bring them back here. Humans don’t remember it ever happening because they go into the brain and kill the memory cells carrying the memories.”
The thought of having something happen to me without knowing it begins to really bug me. What else have they done to my brain? I can’t trust anyone here.
Connor finishes the bowl of soup and looks at mine, which is still untouched, “What’s wrong, not hungry?”
I stare down at the soup, “What is this?”
He laughs, “Mileo. I know it doesn’t look amazing, but just taste it.”
I lift my spoon and bring the lukewarm soup into my mouth. I almost jump back as the taste of warmness floats downward into my throat. The feeling tastes like nothing I have ever experienced. Amazing. My expression must have been quite surprised because Connor begins to laugh, “You’ll get used to it.”
I begin to eat the soup, “So what are the difference between being human and what you are?”
He sighs, “I studied it a bit when I was younger, but the main difference is what we are, the beings, are just better. I don’t really know how to explain it really, but we are just smarter, more athletic, and just overall just an upgrade to what humans are. The brain is also developed to a much higher degree. Cells can be remade even if they were destroyed. They also live a lot longer. The length of life for humans is about eighty years right?”
I nod, “Beings live to be around three to four hundred years, give or take a few decades depending on how the person lived.”
I look down to an empty bowl, and we both stand up and drop our plates into an almost garbage-like machine and begin walking.
I feel the gum package in my pocket as I being to take steps and take it out, “Do you want a piece of gum?”
He looks over at me with a puzzled face, “Where’d you get that?”
“That man Enra gave it me. He told me I needed it.” I open the package and begin chewing a piece and pass him the package. He mumbles to himself as he takes a piece., “That’s odd.”
I ask him what is.
“This place doesn’t have gum very often, and I’ve never seen gum being given to a human here. Enra hates humans, although he doesn’t really like anyone. This flavor also, the only person I ever knew who chewed this was Colten, and he’s been dead a long time.”
We leave the cafeteria and enter a room filled with the transporting chairs. He walks over to one and then asks me, “So when are you scheduled for the rebirth?”
I shake my head and tell him I don’t really know, but in a few days, “How does it work?”
He leans against the chair ahead of us and begins to explain how they have this machine that takes the soul out of the body, and they then take the soul and through a long process place it into a baby ready for birth. The soul placement is what triggers the baby to start labor, and a baby is born.
He then tells me of how often when the process isn’t done right a miscarriage can happen, and the baby dies from the problems of the soul. The fact that soul placement is a lot harder then you would expect.
“What happens to my body?”
Connor sighs, “Uhh. I think they usually just get rid of it. You get a new mind on Earth and your body here is just safely taken away. I don’t really know actually. Haven’t thought about it.”
A new mind. To lose this one. This is a dream. I find that lately I don’t really care about anything. This place feels like a haven, the white gives off a calming feeling, like nothing really matters.
The daze goes away when Connor asks me what I am going to do before the time to go. I realize I have no idea where I’m supposed to go.
“I have to go work but if you want to come along I’d be glad to have some company.”
I agree to come and we both get onto the transporters. This place is so different from the usual routine.
The slowly floating chairs bring us to a shopping hallway. The chairs drop us off at a docking station and I follow Connor through the bustling crowd looking at different objects and foods.
I catch up to him and ask him how people here make money.
He turns to me with a puzzled look and asks me what money is. I begin to explain to him the economy of the earth when he interrupts me, “Oh! The stuff you use to go between a trade right?”
I nod and he laughs, “Here people just take what they need.”
We arrive at a computer store a man begins talking to Connor. I walk around the store looking at the different computers and monitors.
A sudden thought comes into my mind and Connor walks over to me, “Why do they let people who are brought back just do what they want? Wouldn’t some rebel against the rebirth?”
Connor starts picking up a box that is beside me and I begin to follow him into the back room, “They actually don’t usually let people out. I did hear from my father that you were a special case. Actually, my dad was the one who told me to say hello to you. Make sure you were alright.”
“I’d like to meet your father.”
He rips open the box and takes out a large chip and begins working on a different computer, “We can tomorrow if you want to.”
I help out my moving boxes around. A few people come into the store and take a computer back they left for repairs. A girl scans her card and her information comes up onto the screen.
Sandy Watson. Underneath holds a number; F378C2783UD3073. The computer is scanned and she leaves.
I turn to Connor as she walks out the door, “What was the bar code underneath her name?”
“Being Number. Everybody has them. They sort by Gender, Race, and the Dome they work at,” He looks at the number, “In this Dome, 378 is the gender number, F is for Female. She was Caucasian so C2783, and the Dome we are at is 3078. It’s fairly simple.”
“Wouldn’t some people have the same code?”
He picks up another box, “No, after the race is the room area, where the person has his permanent home. 2783, her number is the second area., seventh hallway, and her room number is 83. Here, you’re assigned a number when you turn twenty, and your moved into your permanent room.”
We continue to move computers and fix them for the next while, then a man comes to let Connor off work.
He tells me he has to go back to his room for a while, and tells me to meet him here the next day in the morning. We split ways.
I walk around the market. This culture is a lot happier. The feeling just gives off as you walk past people. I only see one child walking with an older mother.
I make my way for the docking station and sit down onto the chair, swiping my card over the sensor.
“Hello Seth Aaron. What is your destination?”
I mumble home, and the seat floats off.