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View Full Version : Re-write of the Old Sci-fi I Wrote



La Patience
27-06-2008, 01:14
Well here is the first 1,900-2000 words of the re-write I was doing (heh about time eh) well I'd love to here some feed back but I'll open a seperate thread for that okdoike (its just so there is no gaps thanks and if thats a problem let me know okdokie)

Well here it is I hope you enjoy:


Patience Alvair walked along the central corridor of the sleek space liner she was on. She had just had her evening meal in the ships restaurant, a rather over expensive meal. The ship she was on was named the Holly Bird, it was a small luxury liner intended for fast travel between planets within the Terran alliances territory. Patience had learned from her short time on it that it had around 100 crew and could carry 50 passengers. It cost Patience a small fortune to get on but the ship was fast and she wanted to get to her destination fast, very fast. Besides once she got to her destination money wouldn’t be a worry any more.

All the money, all the fame. It will all be mine; no one will laugh at my research any longer nor my inventions. Not when I show them Elmina Patience thought to herself laughing under her breath.

“It’s about time someone actually paid me the respect I deserve” This she said out loud and this raised the heads of some of the passing crew and passengers.
“Stupid woman” she whispered to herself “don’t bloat until after you’ve shown them”.

Patience had reached the passengers quarters and found her room. She unlocked it and went in to an overly lavish looking room that while very expensive looking (which it was) it didn’t appeal to Patience and it wasn’t practical. She let that thought leave her head and went on to lock the door. Once that was out of the way she turned and hurried to the bed. Beside it was a pile of clothes and spare sheets and a few pillows here and there. At first glance it just looked like Patience had been a bit messy, but as patience started pulling all the clothes and sheets off a form appeared underneath it. The form of a woman. At last the last sheet was pulled of and there sat the lifeless shape of Elmina, Patience’s pride and joy and her ticket to unlimited funding on any of her projects. In front of her was the first working, self aware android. It had taken Patience 15 years to make and well over £3million credits of money (that hadn’t been paid off) to make. It had also cost her her home, her family and almost her own life from people wanting there money back. Patience however tended to block that from her mind.

Patience looked down upon her creation and admired it, then crouching beside the lifeless body she pressed a button that was hidden behind her left ear. Suddenly the Elmina’s eyes lids open to reveal two swirling blue voids that were Elmina’s eyes.

“Elmina ready and fully operational, please state my assignment… Patience” were the first words to leave Elmina’s fully working mouth.

“Elmina use your sensors to tell me about where we are” patience asked

“We are onboard the civilian luxury liner the Holly Bird. The ship has 98 crew members and is currently carrying 28 passengers to several destinations. These destinations in the order of where we will arrive first are: Terra IV, Sygnus III, Mandara I and Simara I. The Holly Bird is a small vessel exactly 204 meters in length. Its Captain is a man called Roger Lacknor. He has run this ship since it was built and has made a successful business in doing so. There are several other things of interest about where we are shall I continue.” Elmina said in a monotonous voice.

“No, Tell me about Sygnus III” Patience asked.

“Sygnus III is a small planet located deep within Terran territory. It is the home of the research institute of machinery and bio technology. They have been trying for many years to create a Android that can learn and act independently. They develop weapons for the Terran alliances armada’s and have been given several contracts from civilian businesses to make technology for them.” She responded

“Elmina state what you are” Patience said with a growing smirk

“I am Elmina creation of Patience Alvair, I am an independent entity that can learn from a plethora of sources including observation, data ****ysis and communication with other beings. I have learned several different languages by accessing databases from several different planets. I have several features including internal/external sensors. Several ports that can be connected to a variety of computers within the Terran alliance and can interpret many different data types” she said in the same voice.

“Good Elmina, You will make me the most appreciated inventor and researcher in the Terran alliance. Now go and use that computer over there and continue your studies” Patience said thinking to herself of the fame she was in for.

“As you Request” was the reply.

* * *

Patience had gone to bed after looking at her notes and the only noise in the room other than Patience’s snoring was the low hum coming from the computer Elmina was plugged into. She was processing all the data she could on anything she could find. However she wasn’t focusing all her attention on the computer. She was actually monitoring the entire ship and the space around it by accessing the ships computers. It wasn’t hard for her to get past the security and she didn’t really give any thought to whether or not anyone was aware what she was doing, not even patience.
She enjoyed seeing how humans lived. They slept, they ate, they did many things that while may be regarded as useless or time consuming, were things that defined them as sentient human beings.

Being human, what would it be like? All that useless stuff they do. Would I be able to do that Came a small voice from somewhere inside.

This voice was a constant companion to Elmina, she didn’t know what it was, maybe it was a program that Patience had created. Elmina never asked questions so she never got answers. She had once attempted to search a computers database for ’Inner voices’ but just got crime records of people who murdered people because a voice told them to. This thoroughly put Elmina off, she didn’t want to be such a person. She hadn’t tried to find anything out about inner voices since.

While Elmina observed other people doing different things she was also aware of the space outside the ship. She could detect the little particles of dust littered about and of nebulae that the ship was passing by. She also became aware of another anomaly outside the ship. One that was growing, fast. She searched her data banks along with the computers for information on it and found nothing. This was something that had either never been encountered or that had never been reported. Elmina then searched for similar anomaly’s but it didn’t help. The thing whatever it was growing and she could see via the surveillance equipment she was hacked into that up on the bridge they had detected it to and they looked just as puzzled. This puzzlement soon changed to fear when the thing caused the ship to stagger and it began to get pulled into it. Elmina watched as the captain issued commands to get the engines up to full power and all emergency boosters be activated.

Outside in space the ships engines lit up as more power rushed into them and from openings littered around the back end of the ship more thrusters appeared and began to power up as well. It wasn’t enough the ship was starting to break apart as the two apposing forces strained on the Holly Bird. Elmina was aware of this but if the crew up on the bridge were they weren’t showing it. They all seemed to be running around the bridge and a few of them were running through the ship to what she discovered was the escape pods. Useless was all that Elmina could think to that.

Elmina became aware that Patience had gotten up and was only beginning to realise something was wrong. Staying connected to the computer she turned around to speak inform her of what was transpiring.

“We are currently being drawn into an unknown anomaly Patience, the bridge crew are unable to do anything and have begun acting erratically. The ship has engaged all engines and emergency thrusters but this had in fact worsened the situation, the ship is now ripping itself in two. We will have a hull breach in about 30 seconds and the ship will enter the centre of the anomaly in approximately 2 minutes. What shall we do?”
Elmina said in that now disturbing monotonous voice.

Patience just stared as she sore her dreams breaking, breaking right in front of her and now her pride and joy had so calmly informed her of her impending death. She wanted to scream.

“what can we do, can you do anything, CAN YOU!!” patience all but creamed out.

“Yes I can at least prevent from breaking up, so much” was the reply.

“DO IT, DO IT NOW” patience was beginning to cry all her dreams were over, she was becoming as erratic as the men on the bridge or that were on the bridge a minute ago were.

She turned and began to work on saving the ship, it was however to late a huge metal scream arose as the hull broke apart and from the survallance equipment she sore several crew and a couple of passangers get sucked out into space, these were on there way to the escape pods. I knew it was hopeless came the cold inner voice of Elmina, she ignored it. The ship had activated its force fields and the ship continued into the anomaly. Elmina had accessed the helm controls and was now powering down the engines and re routing all the power from non essential systems into structural integrity and force fields. It was having some effect. She turned to see how Patience was doing but all she sore was Patience sprayed out on the floor. Obviously she had fallen and knocked herself out when the ships hull had breached.

The Holly Bird was now entering the anomaly and a great jolt shook the ship, Elmina flew from her chair to the ground and the cable connecting her the computer was ripped from her. Without the sensors from the ship she had only a limited range to see with her own sensors. She had no idea what was happening around her or the ship. Every time she tried to move she was shoved back down again by a force.

* * *

The Holly Bird entered the centre of the anomaly and began to fluctuate. The ship kept rocking back and forth as something happened, something that no one could see or begin to comprehend; And then nothing. Just void around the ship. Not even the lights from the Holly Bird made any difference. It was pure nothingness. It stayed this way for what could have been years or just a second, there was no way to tell but suddenly the ship materialised somewhere, somewhere different and it was falling….fast.

La Patience
07-07-2008, 22:47
A New possibility

Elmina finally got up from the floor as the force pushing her down was gone, Patience was still out of it and the ship was accelerating fast. Elmina used her sensors to asses the situation but they were not powerful enough so she got to her feet and went to the computer. The access port was still occupied by what remained of one of her connection cables. She yanked it out and inserted her spare one. Immediately she integrated her sensors with that of the ships. The power was down but emergency power was still active, it was the only thing keeping life support and the force fields active. She re-routed power from life support on the decks without occupants and put it into sensors.

What she found wasn’t good. They were accelerating towards a planet and were about to enter the atmosphere. Quickly she activated all the emergency thrusters but it was too late, they had entered the atmosphere of the planet and the hull was starting to heat up. The Holly bird wasn’t one for landing on planets, it would dock with a space dock and take on passengers there. Another thing that was odd about the planet. There was no space dock on sensors.

Some of the emergency thrusters had been ripped off and the force fields were not going to hold to such force. There were not anyone left on that deck and Elmina turned off the force fields, she used the free energy to reinforce the hull of the adjacent rooms and corridors.

The thrusters were not doing much to change there dive, there just wasn’t enough thrusters to do the job. The main engines would take up a lot of energy and she was going to have to sacrifice some vital systems. Without thinking of the consequences she put life support to a minimum on all decks includes her room, and put it all into the main engines. They had left the atmosphere now and were heading fast towards the ground. Elmina sore that it wasn’t water they were going to hit. This was getting worse. She activated the engines and immediately went on to level there decent, they were going to crash that was inevitable, all she could do was limit the destruction.

Form the sensors she could see that they were heading towards a large amount of.... something. The sensors must have been damaged and she couldn’t get a clear image of what was ahead.
To make matters worse several bio readings were failing, the passengers were dying from lack of sufficient life support. She had got the holly bird onto a smooth but still fast decent and re-routed the power from the engines to life support again. Now she just had to slow them down, using what was left of the emergency thrusters she put them into reverse but they weren’t doing it. The last thing Elmina sore before the Holly bird hit the ground was the site of trees. Ahead of them was an immense forest and they were about to hit it.

+ + +

The Holly bird hit the ground hard but this didn’t slow the wrecked ship down at all. It crashed into the tree’s and was leaving a line of destruction in its wake. It showed no sign of slowing down, there was a huge amount of rocks approaching, something which Elmina had not seen coming and wasn’t going to, when the ship had hit the ground she and all the other people on board had been slammed to the floor with extreme force. The Holly Bird crashed into the rocks and the hull gave into them, there was a huge tear in the hull and body of the people who had been crushed by the crash fell out as well as there luggage. Patience wasn’t one of them. The Holy Bird was beginning to slow down and at last stopped when it hit another big rock.

The site of destruction of not just the ship but everything behind it was something that would never be forgotten by a viewer.

+ + +

Patience got up and screamed, her leg was broken as was her arm. Elmina lay mangled next to the computer which was now showing the blue screen. She couldn’t move and when she tried she screamed again.

“Oh my god why did this happen, WHY I was going to be famous and now I’m..I’m oh god I don’t know where I am.” Patience wailed out in half anger, half hopelessness.

She tried again to move cursing to everything she could think of but she just hurt herself. She hadn’t the foggiest as to what where they were or if anyone else was alive. She could still use one of her arms and looking around she found some broken wood and chucked it at Elmina. “Elmina respond, ELMINA RESPOND” Patience said with increasing volume.

There was movement in one of her arms and suddenly her eyes opened up.
“What is your request Patience” Was all she said
“What does it look like” Patience aid with a sarcastic tone “Help me up and tell me where the Hell I am”

“As you wish” She replied and moving slowly she got up and to her discovery her spare connection cable was destroyed. Never the less she moved on to patience and grabbing her, pulled her up while Patience screamed out of the pain.

Once that was done and while Patience told cursed her in many different ways, Elmina ran a short ranged sensor scan of the surrounding area, and of the ship itself. The results were not very promising, nor was the semi large object that was approaching them slowly.

“We are on a planet with breathable air and the ship will never again be space worthy. There are 28 life sign on board the ship and further more there is an object moving towards us at a steady rate”.

Patience just groaned at the life count or death count as it was, out of how many they started with they only had 28 people left including her. And what was this approaching object.
“Elmina take me to where we can see this approaching object”

“As you wish” was the usual reply.

Elmina took the continually cursing Patience out of there room and through a completely wrecked corridor to an observation room. Many of these were littered around the ship as it was a good place for couples to go.
There were bodies littered around the room and none of them were the lucky few who were still alive. They turned to look at the huge window and Patience gasped. The approaching object looked just like an old Terran sea ship. The kind used before electricity if Patience could remember right. But what was most interesting about it was that it was floating, no flying was the word and it was coming strait towards them.

Then an explosive sound happened and a metal ball hurtled past them, they couldn’t see what it was fired at but Elmina could via her sensors. There was another object behind them. Another explosive sound and this time the metal ball hit the visible ship.
The visible ship took position on its side and a long line of cannons appeared.

“Great Now I’m stuck in some kind of battle between floating medieval ships great what bloody next” this was answered by a cannon ball hitting the Holly Bird.

“Why do I bother” was all Patience said before sinking into one of the chairs on the observation room.

Elmina wasn’t about to tell her that the emergency power had just failed ant that any hit would damage the ship, or worse cause an explosion. She just stood there looking at the visible ship.