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Exercise #306: Craft
Posted 3/6/09
Today’s exercise idea comes from Carlisle.
This one is a bit different. Today, the exercise will include a “SUB” and your task is to send in a critique of it. The critique you do becomes your SUB. Confused? Review the piece below (used with permission) and send in your critique of it with the subject line
SUB: Exercise #306/yourname
You may include parts of the exercise piece in your SUB, just as you would if you were really critiquing another author’s work. Other Desk Drawer members will then critique your critique. Even if you don’t like the genre of the sample work, seriously consider attempting to critique it. This can be an excellent learning opportunity to increase the quality of the critiques we get (and give) here.
Word limit: none
Please use the subject line
SUB: Exercise #306/yourname
Piece for your review:
The Light Yearling
Chapter one - Beek and me
I stood alone, about as alone as anyone ccould be .
When the pioneers saw this sight they thought earth thoughts and the moon's brought up thoughts of wolves. The thought of wolves and people and a new land suggested naming the moons Romulus and Remus. The moons inspired them greatly and this planet apparently did not. It never got a name. It is just BQ12.31.7. If my mother could see me standing here in this desert, casting two shadows at midnight, she might think her sacrifices for me were indeed in vain.
On Romulus there is a colony that left here 10 years ago. Remus is two years into geoforming and currently uninhabited. Here on Beek the terrain is formidable and forbidding and too large for current geoform technology to be effective.
I have been here alone for 53 Beek-days (19 earth-hours each). When morning dawns this night-white sand and rock will take on a pumpkin-orange glow and rock temperature will reach 140 degrees C. Right now my enviro-panel indicates that my suit is surrounding me with 68 degree air and separating my feet from minus 50 degree C. rocks. In another 25 years technology will have advanced and there will be breathable air all over this planet as well as lakes, grass and trees . hold on! I'm about to hyperventilate. Right now there's just a little lichen surviving on a rock at the south pole. I'll check on it in a month or so when the mother star is in the southern extreme.
While terraforming this planet is still a bit away, my terra-dome is well within current technology. Two years ago a vanguard landed here and began using indigenous materials to create glass and steel to build a hemisphere to cover a 2-acre plot to be home for the caretaker, me. It is essentially a self-sustaining terrarium in which the only mammal is me. The Vanguard brought frozen fish and frog eggs to stock my pond. The first thing the team did was to find enough minerals containing H and O to make H2O. My pond was one reason and then there was the human need for potable water. But the largest need was for temperature control. The dome had channels thru which water flowed, heating up in the sun and cooling at night keeping the dome air at a nice 68 degrees. The water generator runs constantjy adding water to an underground storage tank.
The dome is actually 2 shells, an outside one letting the mother-star (ok. Sun) radiance heat the water and the inner shell filters the sunlight during the day.
Enough tech speak- I'm heading for my Dome sweet home and a cigar with my rum toddy.ha. I don't want to be out when the sun comes up. It's a drain on the suit's air system battery.
As I approached the dome, there appeared to be a light coming from inside near the top of the space. As I got closer, it appeared lower and to blink. At a hundred yards out, it was clear that the light was not in my space, but I was seeing it through the glass dome, coming from a far hill. After un-suiting I went to the remote telescope viewer and tried to locate the source of the light. By then it was dawn and the light was no longer visible. I widened the telescope's field and left the view on my remote monitor and made a note in my log. I could hardly rest for imagining what might have caused that light on my hill. No being I'm aware of could live out there without life support. Maybe a survey satellite had crashed, but I would have been warned if any satellite orbit were decaying. It was probably a reflection of a reflection . from the rising sol.
I must get some sleep while my suit is recharging so I can investigate at sundown.
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