This is a first draft of a sci-fi / horror story I have written, it still needs a LOT of work, but I would still value any comments on the story so far. It is a complete story as it is, but there are many improvements I want to make. There is an updated version, but nobody is reading it until that draft is ready. There is also a sequel and once that gets to a readable version I will upload that one too.
There are a few gory bits, so it may not be suitable for younger people. If you do not like that sort of thing then please press the back button now.
6:45
Even as I had been waking up that fateful morning, I had known that the coming days were going to be momentous and extremely unforgettable for some as yet unforeseen reason.
I had awoken in my room much earlier than I would have normally and it had still been quite dark in there. I laid there for a while barely awake trying to make out the strange silhouettes that were being projected on my ceiling in such a surreal way. Its so strange how such normal objects can create such weird shadows when car headlights are shining through the window. I had a really strange feeling of terror and dread.
It was going to be my first day at Bexatonia Universal Technology College, but I knew that today was going to be more important than any of the many other first days I had been through in the past.
I climbed out of bed and after switching on the light I went over to the corner of my room and got some food out of a bag in the cupboard to feed my two pet rats Far-Ted and Jiwani. I gave them the food and filled up their water container. Some of my friends were scared of them, but most thought they were really cool.
It seemed like a good time to start getting ready and so as I thought I better make an effort to fit in for once, so I put on some of my coolest clothes. I normally tried not to fit in, but I wanted to see if I could go through at least one day of being 'normal'. I had always hated that word, it sounds so boring to me. I had never been that kind of person and I was not going to start now. I put on the best pair of black jeans I own and a black Lada T-shirt. All of the cool people wear Lada as they are one of the coolest labels on the market. It was hard to believe that they had started off making cheap cars. Just look at how they have changed now. I suppose that some things have to change, car companies in particular. When the car price war of 2005 happened most car businesses had to shut down. Only three survived and they were Lada, Ferrari and General Motors. Lada finally gave up the car business after a lot of pressure from Ferrari and changed to a clothes company. Ferrari and General motors came to an arrangement and Ferrari was given complete control over the European car industry. That meant that if I had wanted to buy a car it would have to have been a Ferrari.
I went down stairs and headed into the kitchen for breakfast. I did not know how much of that genetically modified nutritional garbage I could take. My Granddad has talked to me about the food that was around when he was young. It sounded so very good to me. He said that they used to put flavourings and colourings into the food to make it much more interesting. It could not have been any worse than that grey flavourless slop that I had on the plate before me. They said that if you eat this kind of food all your life then you can live to the age of 120 without having any major health problems, but I would have gladly give up a few of those years to be able to enjoy my food for once.
7:45
Before I went to college I decided that I wanted to play a computer game to help me relax. I went through the box of disks to find the ones I wanted. It was Syndicate Wars VR 3 that I was trying to find and it was such a big game it came on two DADE disks, each of these hold over ten terabytes each and are only just over two centimetres wide. Because of their small size they were also ideal for sneaking into college and playing there, as I would do anything to brighten up an otherwise boring day. I inserted the disks into two of the four small disk drives on the front of my Sony Frontier games console and powered it up. I put on the VR headset and after I had logged on to the Psybernet the title sequence of the game began. I skipped through that and selected my favourite weapons. Then started the game and got straight into the action. I found it strange to think that people used to play games on small flat screens. These days the headsets use direct retinal imaging to project the pictures straight into your eyes using special lasers. This technique creates very high resolution graphics that are almost as good as the real world. The virtual reality environment that they create is so good that some people stay in there all the time that they are awake. I have even heard stories of some people dying in there. This is supposed to be because their brains got so used to the virtual world that they could not cope with the real world once they came back out into it. I can understand how this feels as I have played this game once for eighteen hours without a break. It had taken me a couple of days to really get back to normal life in the real world. I do not normally play for this long in one go, but that day I was not going to give up until I had won a game. I suppose that is the only problem with playing against a team of Amyger's. They apparently have better developed brains than humans. Some say this is because their planet is in what scientists have called a dark light system. It is a series of planets spinning round a black hole. Until the Amyger's arrived on this planet 20 years ago no one had any idea that such a star system was possible.
I looked at the watch on my virtual wrist and the time was 8:35 so I decided I better leave for college. I always felt nervous on my first day at a new school or college. It would not have been as bad if it was the start of the term, but unfortunately it was halfway through the year and I would be the only new person there. I knew what this was like as I had done this many times before. My parents were always moving from town to town because of their jobs and we had never really been able to settle anywhere. Despite all the practice I have had in the past I have never been very good at making friends. I wondered if there would be anybody at this college I could make good friends with.
I had only really stayed in touch with one of my friends from the all other schools and colleges I had been at. I had known Chris for around eight years and he was the closest thing I had ever had to a best friend, but I only saw him every now and then. He was a hacker like me and we had become friends while studying computing together. Time was ticking on so I grabbed my things and headed out of the door. I went to the bus stop and waited for the next one in the rain. You would have thought with the invention of hover buses that they would be much more reliable. How wrong could you get, they have all this technology and yet they are still always late.