Excerpt – Al in Android Land

For some reason, the story of Alice in Wonderland has always, to me, lended itself well to a steampunk-future setting.  Which was where my brain went immediatly when I started writing to a prompt using the first paragraph of the novel.

Here’s an excerpt from the rough draft of my newest short story, tentatively titled Al in Cyborg Land.  It still needs a lot of work

“Allison, would you kindly pay attention.” 

Al sighed and shifted her head to meet her sister’s stern gaze. 

Margaret sat on the soft silk grass, legs primly folded under her, a tablet settled in her lap.  Al had peeked at the e-text, and having determined it had no pictures or conversations, she immediately lost interest.  However, she supposed she ought to make a show of listening, for her sister’s sake. 

“You were on the Great Android uprising, Margie.”  Al dredged the sentence up from memory.

Margaret scowled.  “And who led that uprising?”

A trickier challenge.  Al thought for a moment.  Cyborg class Y, number 487.  One of the earliest prototypes of his kind, an almost fully organic product, with nearly human-like capacity for intelligence.  He went on to develop a system upgrade for all androids, to aid in his uprising.” 

With a prim face, Margaret went back to reading aloud.  Al went back to her daydreaming.

From there it’s white rabbits in leather jackets, whacky android logic and a crazy queen who wants Al’s head for her new prototype.  It will definitely be longer than I intended, but I think I’m going to have fun with it.