Science Fiction Microstory Contest discussion
Please help me in congratulating Paula Friedman, Founding Member and Second Time Champion of the Science Fiction Microstory Contest
date
newest »
newest »
Mod
Mod
For The Garden, it took a second read to become one with the story, and I was happy for the feelings it provided me. Nice job, Paula! clap..clap..clap
Absolutely outstanding work Paula! Well done and congratulations!
Congratulations, Paula! As stated in my critique of your story, "Poetic in her skilled use of descriptive language, the beautiful canvas she paints for my minds-eye is breathtaking."
-C
Congratulations, Paula! Your way with a word is always stunningly beautiful.
Oh my. I got online this afternoon and---wow! Thank you, thank you all. I am utterly honored. Especially given the exceptional works that people wrote this month, and Justin's wonderfully formed and crafted, moving tale. And for your very kind remarks, Jot! And yes, Jot, your remarks remind me--has it been since November 2012 that you--that we all--have kept this group going and (usually) thriving? You do know, that is extremely long for a writers group,, yes? And certainly for an online writers group. Throw some of the praise your way, as you deserve it.
Again, thank you all. I'm glad you like this story, as It's one I'm happy with. And honored for the accolade from this fine group of writers!
Congratulations on your work and the praise
Hearty congratulations, Paula! Well deserved.
A very touching tale Paula - I like what you did with the tropish element of literally turning the page into a poignant ending. Beautifully executed with your enriched signature style.
Thank you, J.J.--yes, there's tropes all over the margins in this one, that's for sure. LOL. And I hadn't even thought of the Ambrose Bierce one until yesterday, lol again. Again, thank you so much---J.J., and each of you for the very sweet compliments! Greatly appreciated.
Copyright © 2017 by Paula Friedman. All rights reserved.
(699 words)
“Te gusta, esta jardine?” Jenny had reached the last page of the Lowrey novel (“not at all,” she’d told an argumentative nurse, “trite or clichéd”) and, looking up, had watched night’s lowlit darkness fade to dawn, had listened to the moans and long cacophony of teles as it spread around the ward, and heard the rising beep-beep-beep awaken the last sleepers, on that day.
Even now, she could remember—and how Jeffrey, then her “boyfriend” from the neighboring ward, also an Elder, had walked—walked!—through the doorway, fit and strong and saying “Up now, Jenny, wake, and rise!” and she had stood and glided toward him, glowing. Healthy. And amazed.
As all had been, those first hours—first years, really. Yet all that had been required, as the “headlines” on the “news sites” of those days had proclaimed (along with lengthy, because nontechnical, explanations), had been three flashes of researchers’ brilliance—the fitting together of a simple molecular splicing recognized since 2012 by geneticists at U.C. Davis and Institut Louis Pasteur (Paris 14), an earlier pre-trial procedure employing the most elementary electrolyte manipulations, and a (relatively complex) endocrine process employed since 1999. Et voila! No more cellular degeneration! Instantaneous whole-tissue regeneration! Perfectly calibrated immune response!
And, mere days after that initial infusion of The Cure into the First World’s entire population, Fast-Act, enabling unimpeded reflexes and sensory perception matching that of the fastest human athlete—and, indeed, beyond, with speed matching that of the now-extinct cheetahs, a grip like that ascribed once to “gorillas,” the flexibility of Siamese cats, adaptability as swift as any insect’s—took hold, “phase 2,” as the Rockefeller Institute described it, of The Cure.
Jenny trembled in her joy and Jeffrey held her tight as she held him. “Oh yes,” she sighed, and “Yes” he sighed as well, new-rising libido rushing through their loins, and joy.
So it began. And in those days, for those infused, there was no death. Nor for the chosen animals, nor trees, nor roses, nor of wheat or deep-rooted potatoes, nor of bees or fireflies or moths, nor cow nor horse nor stag upon the high-peaked mountains, nor of another living thing. Except of what—fruit or egg or leaf or somehow broken stem or extra roots—each life could share. And joy reigned.
Wandering through those years, eons latterly, Jenny walked—leaped, danced!—longhaired, lean, barefoot on some eco-prairie of an Interstellar Liner’s forward deck, en route to yet another planet of a long-discovered star amid some distant—ever more distant—galaxy. They sang, they made up tales, the weaved, they built a billion bridges, raised ten thousand homes, six hundred children on as many worlds. Life was an exploration, ever new and never fear-filled. Boredom, even “meaning,” had no place—no place and no need—in this unending, well-loved, loving life.
For, unfearing, their love spread to many, to all life, in their universe. Their joy. As here, lying together in the soft grass amid yellow flowers, warm on this planet’s high-country meadow between the whispering juniper and the sky-reaching grandfather pine.
A new dawn, Jenny thought, and “No, that’s a cliché,” and stroked, with two dusky fingers, Jeffrey’s taut red-gold thigh. A child ran past them. Laughing softly, gently Jeffrey sighed.
No, harshly. Harshly. He had moaned.
Had cried out. Struggling, Jenny turned, lifted herself to one dark elbow, tried to lift her head, to find him in this pallid light, this painful dawn. The walls were still half-dark around her, figures still in shadow, groaning on their beds. As if in a tableau of “Age” and “Illness.” As if bare archetypes of lone “Dying.” As if each formed—again she thought—“a cliché.” But, feeling as if falling, or rather as if the floor beneath her bed were turning, rocking forward and back as in an earthquake, she espied, both below and above, the giant page she rode on lift, and turn—so that there, bright before her, lit as if by failing rays from some lost Eden, only, this time, clichéd, the words (not at all like Lowrey’s): “And then they awoke, and found it had all been a dream.”