Recently, I've been spending my accumulated free time writing a fictional story. It took me a week just to hammer out the setting of the story, which takes place approximately two centuries in the future. It is written in the first person perspective of a seventeen year old (who will age) of undecided gender whose personality and ideas, and do not resemble mine. I'm not very far into planning or writing, but I will attach my rough draft to the end of this post; if you decide to read it, I would really appreciate some feedback. There is crude language in it so readers discretion is advised.
I have never had a passion for creative writing, but I am really enjoying working on this little project of mine so far.
The story:
The sky was blue and bright with several sharp edged powerful clouds. The San Francisco colony was nestled quietly in the distance on the clear day. It was nice, it inspired some new thoughts but I would've much rather been sitting in my room playing music and spending my valuable time doing nothing. I was unhappy. I didn't know what would make me happy. I glanced at my watch, not because I was concerned about the time, but to imagine what others were doing at this time. I was a lonely person, and being with family made me fall farthest into the well of thoughts always present. It was my grandfathers birthday. He was sexist, racist, and dying. He did not have a disease, he was just old. He brought the same thoughts to my mind as does an old bridge or warehouse.i So many untold and insignificant stories trapped in the sunken chests inside of ships sleeping at the ocean floor continuously eaten away by time which were the minds and memories of other lonely people. We were on an air bus floating above the murky bay; the bus had some sort of historical importance, that of which I did not care to find out. I looked at my watch again to find only a minute had passed and now it was 12:34. What the fuck am I supposed to do for an hour. All of a sudden a wave of physical consciousness hit me and I could feel the clothes against my body and manually controlled my breaths. I pulled my sleeves over my wrists and shivered. A whole fucking hour. I was standing at the front of the boat feeling all the wind and mist the bay would offer. It wasn't pleasant, but it made me feel some sort of comfort, the reason unbeknownst to me. I stood there. This is my life I reminded myself. When I was little, I always pictured my future self as who everyone else thought I would be, not a future me who had any of my actual personal traits. I don't even look like the future me I had imagined. I watched the view and let my mind sprint and run free, letting everything just pass by and not getting submerged. The ride ended. I said goodbye to my grandfather and my cousins monotonously comparing the goodbye to those I've had with friends, and feeling sorry I wasn't guilty about not caring for my family. The ride home was numb; I excluded myself from the pointless wandering conversation of my mother, father and sister. I rested my head on the glass of the ATV's window watching the scenery play out before my eyes. I could see several cars below and hoped I would never have to drive one. School popped into my head. I had bad grades but I did not have the motivation to raise them. I understood the material and felt that the homework was just a gift from EduCorp's to all of their morons. I thought about what class must've been like back 200 years ago. The government controlled education and never spent decent money on it, but it seemed so much less corrupt. EduCorp was a big part of my life and would continue being a huge part until I either left the program or went to some sort of college to extend my education. A bright flash of burning light interrupted my thoughts, I couldn't see, and felt the need to roll my eyes up inside of my head but ignored the instinct out of curiosity. I struggled to focus my eyes but the ATV was all of a sudden thrown by a deafening invisible force throwing me into the ceiling of the cabin. I stayed there for less than a second in some sort of unnatural suspension with my hands clawing at my ears and my eyes shut tight. A moment before I could regain my senses I was rocketed face first into a wall. The cabin continued to roll. I laid there broken for what felt like an eternity. I kept my eyes closed as I propped myself up against a wall of the cabin and I felt the blood run down my neck. I felt my face, and what I felt was foreign. My left eyebrow was caved in and my swollen nose was running with blood. I couldn't even cry. I used my fist to wipe the blood from my right eye socket. I could see. My sister and parents were hanging from what was now the ceiling of the cabin by their seat-belts. I sheepishly remembered rebelliously avoiding buckling my seatbelt. I looked at my watch. It wasn't broken but it was off so I checked my sisters, whose wasn't working either. I checked her pulse, she was alive. I didn't even check to see if my parents were alive. I crawled through what was moments ago a window to the outside world. The blood kept gushing from my face. I stood up to see the world around me devastated by what I was sure was some sort of bomb. I tore my EduCorp shirt off and used it to keep the blood out of my face so I could move. I began to walk but remembered my family; I stopped to calculate the most appealing decision. There was something about the day that made me walk away from my family that day. It wasn't anger or frustration. Maybe it was. I left them. I walked away stone faced free. This was the beginning of the rest of my life.
I had no perception of where I was. All I knew was that I was somewhere in between the san fransisco colony my residential colony farther south. I could hear the screams and cries around me, the havoc. A moment of chaos in everyone's perfect little lives and they broke down. Everyone had the mental organization of a dropped glass of wine. People were everywhere, but once again I felt alone. My head was still bleeding as I ventured farther from my landing site. Eventually I sat down at a bench imagining I was someone from one of those old screen movies, reading a newspaper and just relaxing. I fell asleep.
I woke up in the a docking station for the Magnitran on a makeshift cot. I couldn't move my neck or mouth and could barely see with my right eye. I could hear the loud mind numbing combination of cries and moans of pain and the white noise of many voices. I felt as if consciousness was a rope I was hanging from over an abyss. I held on. My jaw was swollen but I did my best grumble to try and attract attention. Nobody came. I started slipping. I forgot what was happening. I imagined my friends from EduCorp sitting around me. It felt so real I grumbled again but they didn't listen. I fell from consciousness.
I woke up again. This time in an actual hospital. There was a mirror above my bed; my face was covered in a cyan medigel, underneath was what looked like the thin veiny skin of an embryo. I yelled. A doctor slowly made his way through the curtain around my bed. "How are you feeling?"
"Good" I answered before I even considered the fact I felt like shit.
"Do you remember what happened?"
"What do you mean?"
"How you got here"
"I was asleep"
"When you got injured"
"I don't remember" I said after recalling my memory of the crash
"What's your EduCorp ID number"
"I don't know"
"What's your name"
"I don't know"
"Well neither do we."
How could they not know my name? Everyone is registered in the government DNA database. Is this not a real hospital?
"Why don't you use my DNA?"
"We don't have access to it right now."
"Why?"
"Because of the terrorist attacks, I'm busy"
He wormed his way out of the curtain. I noticed he wasn't wearing a watch. I pulled my wrist in front of my face my watch was still off. I rolled out of my bed and struggled out of the curtains making sure I didn't get medigel on anything. My head felt like it was going to explode, my watch was caught on a corner of the curtain. Some sort of anger or frustration manifested itself in a strong tug which brought the curtain and the rail to which it was attached to the ceiling raining down, I hit the back of my head on the ground. I squeezed my eyes shut and hyper ventilated untill I slipped out of consciousness once again.
I woke up in another bed, but not surrounded by curtains, in a small room with another bed with a middle aged woman who looked as dead as she did alive . I remembered curtain incident and how ridiculous I must've looked covered in medigel tangled in a curtain, mangled and unconscious on the floor. As soon as the muscles in my face began impulsively to pull into into a smile I felt the thin embryo like membrane tear on my cheeks I went into a paroxysm of pain. I rested my face and the cool medigel relieved the pain from the torn nerves. I sat up in my bed. On the small table next to my bed there was a small index card with a drawing that crudely resembled my appearance before the accident with
"~17 aka Curtains" written adjacent to the sketch. I figured that Curtains was going to serve as a placeholder for my name. 'Curtains'. I liked it.
I sat up in my bed and called the moniter. It didn't respond. I softly leaned my head back until it touched the wall and then I sighed. I rested my eyes. I nodded awake; I had no perception of time. The room had not changed at all. Everything was the same, even the possibly dead woman in the other bed. I rolled my way out of bed and stumbled over to the cell restroom. I walked in and turned to the mirror to see my face. Gross. I had pink medigel on today. There was a glass of water, three nutritional supplement tablets, and a tiny handwritten list on the table next to what I was sure was my only identification. I took the glass and the pills and set them on my lap, then I snatched the note.
"~17curtains:
Privileges:
-social hall
-tablet distribution
Waiting for facial reconstruction"
Facial reconstruction. I tossed it around in my mind. The hospital had none of my identification records except for the hand drawn picture which thy drew of me and a nickname; which meant I would be responsible for providing some sort of guide for the reconstruction. I got out of my bed, I was wearing a light blue floral set of scrubs. I looked like a moron. I stretched my arms and pointed my toes and there was no pain. I swung of the bed and stood up. I felt euphoric. I did a jump kick like I had seen in countless movies out of happiness. I felt happy, I was the instigator of my life for once. No identification with a facial reconstruction on the way. I was my own person. I was curtains. I gained some speed and slipped into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I still looked hideous. I snapped my fingers and did a spin and I jumped into a slide out of the bathroom. The lady was still there. She was pale, with short black hair and she was still. The burst of energy I had been feeling ended abruptly. I walked over to her slowly and stood beside her bed looking for a trace of life. Her face was at complete peace. I reached slowly for her wrist to check her pulse; it was absent. I wondered why a corpse was occupying a bed that instead could provide comfort to someone who needs it.
