Collaborative Story with Scope AND Ending!

Here's my shot at a collaborative story attempt...

Intro, Conflict, Resolution, Conclusion

The Rules
1.) Each stage is a single post, written as long as the writer feels neccessary to convey their story...
2.) The criteria for each progression are set by a seperate poster than the writer...The intro is provided by giving a GENRE, PROTAGONIST, and SETTING...someone then tackles this challenge with an intro using the set criteria...a conflict is presented by another member...someone else then writes the conflict, and so on....
3.) Your subject in your reply is labeled either Intro, conflict, resolution, conclusion...use the headline tag or bold font if you want to title each "chapter"
3.) Repeat steps one through three as needed

Let me start things off...

Genre: Science Fiction
Protagonist: A facist sent from the future to subdue an all-alein gov\'t on Earth\'s moon for reasons as of yet unknown...
Setting:425 years from present, first contact occured recently, Earth is slowly being evacuated...

Good Luck!


[edit on 10/14/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

Alright...I know most of you are working on a short story for the contest, but come on now....lol

If my intro idea doesn't sound good, someone else is free to think up another one...

[edit on 10/14/2004 by EnronOutrunHomerun]

I would write something, but I'm no good on science fiction, fascism, or the future. HA!

I'd love for you to contribute Scat! If you like you can start things off with a different set of intro criteria for someone else to write - you can jump in the actual writting part later down the path...

I just chose science fiction b/c I figured more people would jump on it here...

Why don't you kick it off enron, more people might join then. It's a good idea, you should just get the ball rolling......

Originally posted by earthone
Why don't you kick it off enron, more people might join then. It's a good idea, you should just get the ball rolling......

Fair enough...

I�m changing the main character to a sympathetic representative of a disorderly and feeble fascist gov�t...make things a little more interesting...

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The Small Divide

The screen was blank. It had been blank for five hours; what�s new? Oliver was trained for this kind of situation, but his nerves had never been fully molded. He was lucky he passed training, he thought as he threw a stone into the river of time.

Broken down on the highway of time travel is the last place you want to be in 2486. Busy commuters traveling in all directions trying to catch up with their five minutes they lost ten minutes ago. No one sees you, hears you or thinks of you when your time-modulator craps out.

In a last-ditch effort that Oli, as his mother often called him, gave a final command...

�Reboot!�

A series of noises clunked on and off and then a sharp and dramatic �Hyyyssss.�

�REBOOT!!�

�System activated...User ID: Oliver G. Condannato III, Social Reform Number 45Z18Q89T...Please state your destination.�

�Thank God!� Oliver exclaimed.

�I do not recognize this destination...Please provide the year, day, and latitude and longitude of arrival location.�

�2021, August 7th, Central Park 40� 47' N, 73� 58' W.� Oliver climbed in and got prepared to reemerge. It was always painful. The time spent in the machine would not feel like a split-second, but rather several harsh minutes of excruciating pain and queasiness. Going back in time to a point at which your physical body did not exist is as agonizing for the passenger as it is for Time to accommodate you.

Reeling from his arrival, Oli remained motionless in the vehicle while he regained his composure.

Central Park had become a landing zone for time-travelers in 1992, after the first visit. It altered the entire time continuum from the future and the poor bastards on that first trip vanished only hours after they arrived. But it caused quite a stir in the media, and it was this very moment that became the most pivotal changing point in our history.

It was around 4:32 a.m. They still hadn�t figured out how to make a precise arrival in time, and Oliver was going to be feeling pretty lagged in the next few hours. His primary objective was to confront the Secretary of Defense and present to him the papers he had been assigned to deliver. Any further actions were to be a direct result of his reaction. But first, he had to find someplace to rest his spinning head.

The first breath of air after exiting the vehicle had been almost pleasant. All around was the beauty of fall, and the trees had brought central park to life with their color, color which was not present in the landscape Oliver had left. However instantly he felt a pain in his chest and Oliver knew this certainly wasn't the after effects of his time jump,

"The air."

The enviroment that Oliver had left was extremely different. The effects of global warming had killed many people and human kind had been forced to moderate their enviroment. Normal life was now impossible primarily due to the use of fossil fuels in the twentieth Century and beyond. In Oliver's living space his air supply would be moderated with pure oxygen and clean air. Stepping out into Twenty First Century New York had given quite a shock to his lungs.

"A coffee please," Oliver spoke, in near whisper, to the lady at the counter,

"Are you alright sir?" She replied with concern,

"I will be fine."

Oliver took a wooden stool by the back window of the coffee house. Things were better now. Sipping his at his cup, Oliver stared out the window mesmerized, the thrill of travelling back had never worn off. But he had a job to do..

Thanks Earthtone...excellent job

I have below a special request from wecomeinpeace...since he hasn't received writer's status yet, he asked me to post this for him...

Feel free to take this one wherever you like guys...It's getting juicy!

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by: wecomeinpeace

But what a job. What a burden of responsibility. Oliver's heart beat faster as memories of faces flashed through his mind, faces filled with fear mixed with desperate hope; hope that he would succeed where the others had failed. The first team had disappeared - simply disappeared! Four highly-trained TimeOps specialists, missing and presumably dead or incapacitated in some way. And there was only enough precious Hawkinsium to send him alone. Time travel to timeframes within one's lifetime were a part of everyday life. People would travel back ten minutes simply because they forgot to buy something at the store they just left. But travelling back to before you were born was different. Oli wasn't much for physics - TimeOps didn't care how it worked, as long as it worked - but he remembered the problem had something to do with conservation of virtual mass in time-states of the universe. Or was it virtual energy? Whatever the reason, Hawkinsium was the key to "before-life" travel, previously the stuff of science-fiction.

"Ok, first things first" he thought.

Absentmindedly fidgeting the neural jack concealed under his hair at the base of his skull, he searched behind the clumsy-looking coffee shop's computer on his table for the cerebra-line.

It was hard for Oliver to comprehend how such a seemingly insignificant event, an event that occurred almost five hundred years in the past, could have such far-reaching and potentially catastrophic ramifications in the distant future.

"Where the hell-...?" He stopped searching suddenly, cursing himself at his own stupidity. Cerebral-connected systems wouldn't be invented for another hundred years. He should know that after such extensive training. He felt his face flush with embarrassment as the tall, wiry man wearing the baseball cap sitting in the corner opposite looked at him side-long. Maybe it was just the fact that the Historical Accuracy Department had outfitted Oliver in tight, pin-stripe suit and shiny, pointy black and white shoes, maintaining with academic assuredness that a twentieth-century gangster named Al Capone's influence on 1990's fashion was, how did they put it, "quite marked". He pushed the button on the computer and waited as it whirred into life.

Somehow he figured out how to get onto the 'Internet' and navigated his way to the New York Times archives for the day before. He thought it ironic, the seemingly unimportant content of the front-page news - unimportant compared to the events of his time. Nothing on the front page, or at least nothing that he needed to see. He scanned further until he found it.

"Terrorists Arrested - Suspicious Vehicle Siezed"

It was unmistakable. Below the article was a picture of two men and two women being led in handcuffs by a law enforcement officer on either side. The men wore wide-shouldered, pin-stripe suits and polished black and white shoes. Oliver scanned the grainy black and white picture for the TimeOps vehicle, but no, it wasn't there. The only other person in the picture was a remarkably tall, thin man with his back to the camera. Oliver looked closer and spotted something that only someone from his time would notice. Glinting slightly from just under the man's baseball cap was the small circle of a neural jack.

Oliver's eyes widened and his mind raced as the impossible image stared at him from the ancient computer screen. His hands shaked and lightning images flashed through his brain - a tall man in a baseball cap. He jerked his head up and stabbed his vision to the opposite corner of the coffee shop. The seat where the man had been was empty. His head jerked to the doorway as he heard screams. Three law enforcement personnel sprinted into the shop pointing their projectile weapons directly at him.

"FREEEEEEEZE!!!!" One of them yelled.