The City

I hope you all don't mind that I'm posting so much, but I just wrote this (it took about two hours!) and I need some feedback. Anyways, without further ado I present this gift to you! :P


The City


I was walking down a city's street.

The city was in good quality in comparison to other cities I've seen. The walls of the buildings were spotless and shone bright, like the sun it reflected.. The streets had been washed throughly. Even now, through the crowds of people I thought I could see someone washing a building's walls.

I looked up at the buildings and was completely unimpressed. They all shone the same color: a light grayish hue. They were all based on one of about four variations of buildings: A cube, a rectangular type building, a cube with smaller cubes on top of it and a rectangular prism with smaller rectangular prisms on top of it. I must have a really boring imagination.

I looked up at the sky. Clouds were moving faster then normal across the endless blue. It's like those clouds were telling me to go onward, onward, to some unattainable destiny. The sun was at it's zenith, and had been there for the entire time that I had been walking.

I then turned my attention to the people around me. They rushed onwards, as if they all had important business matters to attend to. As if you must hurry to everything, and never take any time to just look around yourself once or twice and think about something more then work. In and out of buildings they came, and they were never content. There was something else strange about them: they never looked at me. Not a single flicker in their eye, even when I ran in front of them, they paid me not a glance.

I tried to see if I could see outside of the city limits, and I jumped up. I could not, so I kept walking.

I walked for a good thirty minutes. By that time, I could see that buildings were converging on a point about at the horizon. I muttered to myself ,"What kind of mind thinks this stuff up... Oh yeah.". With a goal in my sights, I started running. Since everyone else was walking, I had to run through a few people.

I got to the building, which was quite impressive. It was at least 20 times my height. I wondered what I would have to do there. I tapped someone on the shoulder, and... nothing. Oh yeah, I forgot that the people were like that. It slips my mind sometimes. The guy didn't even spare me a glance, unsurprisingly.

I walked in the building, and I saw what I needed immediately. The room was a huge grayish building, but inside of it all there was was a big open area. In the center of the area was a switch. Thats it, I said to myself. All I had to do was hit the switch, obviously. Of course, I knew it couldn't be that simple.

I walked up to the switch and reached out my hand. Then all of the sudden everything went green.

I figured out why about two seconds later: I was in a jungle. I looked around. There was a winding path that I was standing on. I decided to follow it, but I had not taken two steps before I nearly stepped on a snake. I jumped over the snake at the last second and kept running. I wound around in a tight circle, then in a line away from the center of the circle. I then ran another circle, larger this time, in the opposite direction of the first circle I ran. Branches were a constant aggravation, and I had to dodge as I ran. I ran a third circle, larger then the first two, and then interestingly the path ran straight into the center.

I heard a loud ROAR behind me, and saw a tiger with a quick glance. I ran towards the middle and it was me vs tiger. I saw the switch in the middle, and ran faster. I reached for it as the tiger was nearly upon me and-. Everything turned white.

Once again, the reason why was evident after a few seconds. I was now in a winter like scene. The thought "What kind of mind thinks this stuff up... Oh yeah." ran through my head for the second time in an hour. I looked around me. There was a hill in front of me, and it was a BIG hill. Oh look, there were sleds over there. That was convenient... Almost too convenient. I donned a sled and started racing down the hill.

Thats when I heard a shout. Not before I had been sledding for five minutes, some evil looking guys came from virtually nowhere. They grabbed one of those sleds and began racing after me. I glanced down at my sled, and noticed there was a little countdown timer. No, not like the ones that come on bombs. But it was counting down from sixty. I wondered what it means.

The evil guys were on my tail. I tried to push them away once with my foot, they grabbed onto my boot and threw it to the side. I steered the sled to one side, but they followed. The timer was counting down: fourty-four... fourty-three... fourty-two... I saw a tree in the distance and had an idea. I lined up for it, and they followed me. Then I veered away at the last possible second. They veered as well, but they were off a little bit and hit the tree. Not full force, unfortunately, but they were now about 5 seconds behind me. The timer kept counting: twenty-two ... twenty-one... twenty...

Then I noticed that those guys weren't following me anymore. I chanced a look backwards. They were aiming something at me. I looked closer and WHOA! I swerved out of the way just as they nearly scorched me with a laser. "What kind of mind makes this stuff up?? Oh wait," I muttered to myself. The countdown now said six...five...four. I looked ahead and saw a dot. With some sort of connection of brain tissue, I linked everything together and realized that the timer was counting down to the time that I would see the dot I could see- the switch. The dot got bigger, and I realized I was right. I reached out for the switch and-

Now all I saw was black. I also felt a little dragged down. Then I got a proper look around. I was in an astronaut suit. I looked out of the suit. I was in space. I almost thought that same thought for the fourth time in an hour, but stopped myself. Then I looked some more at my surroundings. It was mostly black, with some illumination from a distant sun. I saw something off in the distance. I couldn't tell, but it looked like a some sort of...switch! I used my rockets on my suit to propel myself towards it, but it was about a mile away. Then suddenly, and out of no where again, a spaceship appeared. It had a huge skull and crossbones on it, like some sort of pirate ship in space. It shot a laser at me and missed by a mere foot. I hit the rockets harder, and started zig-zagging as to dodge the shots. As I got close to my objective, I realized that it was not a switch. It was a piece of paper. I read it. It said "The ship."

"The ship"? What kind of clue was that? Then I realized with a sinking feeling exactly what it was saying. The switch was on the ship. Oh good.

I used my rockets again (they were convenient) and propelled myself over to the ship. I had a momentary shock while I remembered that I was still inside that light gray building. Then I stepped onto the ship. Then I noticed two things odd. First of all, why was boarding the ship so easy? Second, why was there no one on the ship?

I then heard a computerized voice. "Time until self destruct: One minute." Gee, how cliche. I must just have a cliche mind. I then realized that if I didn't find the switch in 55 seconds that I'd probably never wake up. I ran through the passageway. It took a right, and I ran down it. Right behind me a flame trap exploded, and I was very nearly incinerated. Yikes.

I ran down the corridor which was surrounded on both left and right by some very complicated computers which didn't seem to be doing anything, and then took a left. The countdown was now at fourty-four...fourty-three...fourty-two. I had a vague sense of deja vu. I ran a little more, then took another left. I saw a long hallway - it looked about 1 mile in length, and the at the end, although I couldn't see it, I knew that there lied the switch. I started running, but I knew there was no way. The countdown was at sixteen and I had hardly gotten halfway. Then in a jolt I suddenly realized I was still wearing my astronaut suit! I hit the rockets down that corridor and at two I saw the switch. I hit it.

I woke up with a jolt and sat up in bed. "Finally!!", I said. "I swear, those dreams are a pain. I don't think I want to sleep next night," I said. Then I got up.

In space, about twenty-five years away from planet Earth, an unmanned spaceship exploded with a loud BOOM.

Wa? I got so confused why you wrote this. but it was nice. i give you a 8/10 but im still confused.

Shrug. I just had an idea on my mind, and I developed it. Thats what it turned into. I don't really have any reasons of why I write stuff, other then to get comments. I can never be quite sure where it's going, really. I'm glad that you thought it was nice.

Wow. *VERY* good; I love it! It's alot like a Japanese movie called 'Millenium Actress' (About someone who spends eternity in different places looking for someone else). I followed it, but it was confusing at times. I think, however, the idea that he's sleeping should come as a shock, there were too many too large hints.. "running through", "hand passed through"...And whatnot, but other then the lack of surprise, I really loved it. (There's a really great Lovecraft 'ministory' about a guy, same kind of theme)

-Tyl, who loved this story. 9.75/10

I guess I'm gonna overrate you because I love fantastic stories so much... and according to that nice ending it is one

My rating (yay!):

Before you read my rating, know that I use different scales in order to have a global rating out of 100 that takes in consideration all important parts more than the others.

Script: 14/15 — Fantastic stories rulez

Imagination: 10/10 — Not "another story about Warcraft", some serious stuff, a lot of imagination with that switch, and a superb ending

Descriptions: 18/20 — The very beginning with the description of the city was excellent. I was just closing Unreal Tournament 2003 when I read this - and you strangely described the universe of this games. But, sadly, with each new switch, you make less descriptions.

Writing skill: 10/10 — I don't think I noticed a single typo or grammar error, and the text is well made in spaced paragraphs so we can breathe a bit.

Action: 14/15 — Fast paced actions, full of clichés, but I guess that's wanted.

Humor: 17/20 — The story itself is funny, and that's quite rare in fantastic stories

Transposition of the author: 10/10 — Let me guess... that story was YOUR dream last night, eh? Else, I only can say "WTF GW OMFG" because you seem 100% implicated in your story


Global rating: 93/100 - How come I can give such high ratings? Just make more stories ^_^
BTW I'm writing right now the first part of a story I'm gonna post on the forums :p

Johnfn, a small note. Make sure you don't use numbers, as the acual number. When your writing only ever use the word number (six, five, four) and so on. The only time you can write numbers as numbers is when your using them in either: a date, time, or in an adress.
Keep it up.
~Azhag~

Heh... you forgot one ^_^

Soldier: "- Capitain, what shall we do now?"
Capitain: "- Soldier, instantly phone the zero-one-two-eight-one-zero-two-nine-seven-three!!"

HEY! I was tired!! lol, yes I forgot phone numbers as well.

I'm sorry about that, I got a little lazy towards the end :s


*whistles*

If any of you read Pendragon, you'd see where a whole lot of this is comming from (but not intentionally at all, in fact I made most of the connections after I finished)


If I had dreams like this I would never want to wake up. (I never get good dreams :/ )

Heh heh heh... I will. Now that it's weeked I have more time to devote on wasting my time writing stories!! (Hardly a waste, but thats ok)


I have a habit of doing that. It just saves me time I guess.

Well thanks for all the positive comments people :) It made my day.