Young Writers Society

Adams stared reverently down at the petri cells holding his first successfully injected eggs. The little spits of biomass looked like eyes – hundreds of fragile, half-transparent eyes – returning his gaze behind a half inch of plastic. As a collective, they watched him, trembling in their nutrient culture, naked, unprotected, and very much alive to him.

Adams couldn't help smiling.

Here he was, fresh out of college holding the building blocks of an actual military Clone: something he had dreamed of doing for most of his adult life. Here he was, playing God in a Cloning vat, one hundred miles off the coast of Florida, making future soldiers for the military. Adams was now an actual Geneticist, only twenty-seven years old, and being paid over ninety thousand bucks a year. His smile widened as he flipped down the casing lid of each of the petri cells and stamped on a serial number which connected the Clones to the social security of their dead Originals.

Plasma lights cast a harsh glare throughout the vat as he carried the eggs from the injecting station to the incubators, painting shadows on the mechanical wombs, illuminating banks of microscopes and providing light for the other three hundred odd Geneticists toiling for the government. He wound his way around orderlies pushing carts of cyclin tubes - a chemical used to jump start cell division – and garbage men collecting dead and aborted embryos from the insides of the gurgling green liquid wombs. Adams passed by the birthing room where tired nurses dumped babies, wailing and punching the air with balled up fists, into plastic bassinets. In the birthing room, there were no anxious fathers or irritated, drug-pumped mothers. No eager relatives. All the Clone babies met when their eyes first focused was a two inch needle and rough latex hands.

The Geneticist rounded a corner and passed into the incubation chamber. He glanced down at the eggs as he opened the glass door of a rotating cylinder. They were already dividing. Twos begat fours. Fours begat eights. Adams recognized it as the cyclin kicking in. The eyes trembled and seemed to blink.

Silently, Adams punched the button which halted the rotation of the cylinder and slipped the petri cells into a slot. They fit perfectly; keys to locks. A friend of his patted him on the shoulder and asked him if he wanted to take some time off of work to catch a movie with a date. Adams shook his head. He had no time for play. He was determined to become a rising star in the world of genetics within the year. Movies were for those who settled for mediocrity. The Cloning vat was only a temporary home.

As his friend shrugged and walked away, Adams shut the glass door of the cylinder and watched it begin to rotate again. Here he was watching millions of lives spin around in a carousel the size of a microwave. Here he was watching spits of biomass become even bigger spits. His eyes glowed and he smiled again. In less than three months his eggs would be coming out of a mechanical womb, covered in slime, and into the hands of a nurse, as a fully developed baby. A baby which would wield a gun for the military in the very near future. All across the nation vats like the one off the coast of Florida churned out these infants; some for the military, some for factory corporations, and some for organ harvesting. The army babies would be shipped off to foster families, the factory babies to sweat shops, and the organ babies would be euthanized and confined to a cubicle for the rest of their lives. It was the same story throughout the world. And here Adams was in the middle of it all, a Creator of Clones.

Smiling - always smiling - Adams walked away from the incubators and back towards the injecting station, checking off his first cloning of the day on a computer pad, his lab coat billowing out behind him, entering back into the heart of the assembly line which busily mass produced it's product of artificial human beings...

This wasn't too long, so I got to it earlier than expected.

I haven't read much of your writing, but from what I've read here, I can see that you have a very good grasp on the English language. Your word choice, sentence structure and phrasing worked very neatly - I have next to nothing to complain about there.

I'm just going to address a few things...

Description in General

The way you phrase and insert description is marvelous; however, I would like to point out two little things...

1. Telling. I understand this is your prologue and it doesn't seem that you want it to be action oriented, but I felt you that you did a lot of telling. Some telling is fine, especially the way you do it, but it seemed a bit overboard. I am by no means asking you to go back and show everything and eliminate all the telling. Please don't do that. But I do suggest going back and judging what is necessary and what is not as well as considering how else you could portray some of these things.

2. The Emotionally Invested Reader. Because you did so much telling, this section seemed emotionally removed. Now, sometimes this can be intentional, but even if it is, remember that this is your prologue. This is your first impression on your reader, your first chance to drag them into your story. Your character is obsessed with his work in an almost sickly way - so make the reader feel sick. Your character is involved in a rather disturbing job - so unsettle the reader. Think about it.

Also: Watch out for blocky sentences. Your sentence length is pretty good, but I can see that you are like me and like to use large, complex sentences. Beware of making them too long.

Those are my two main suggestions for this. It was very good, but I feel that if you toy with these things, you can make it even better. If you post more of this, I will definitely be looking for it. Nicely done and keep writing! PM me if you have any questions or need anything. Toodles!

I enjoyed it greatly. I have just began getting in sci fi and this entertained me for a few moments.

All i can actually do is agree with WritersDomain.

Hey Kylan, well i got to this earlier than expected, but it was awesome. I am a huge fan of sci-fi and this sounds like a really great story. There was some punctuation missing that i caught so just go through it again and see if you can spot them. Also listen to what Writersdomain said about description. I noticed it and was going to say something about it, bu noticed she had already said it.

I think that Adams may have a differebt view of cloning later in the book but that is just my thought. Well keep writing this well because in my opinion this is better than my writing.

-92

Wow...I liked this, your writing is very good, though there's always room for improvement

Suggestions:
This so far seems heartless, and I know it's early on and creating clones isn't exactly...well...an emotionally happy thought for many people, but it wasn't just heartless...it was emotionless.
Try adding some more emotion, if not to the clone making itself, but to Adams. He want's to move up the ranks, have people remember him, put some more emotion into that. Make your reader want that for him, not just because it's what he wants, but because they want him to have that. If that makes sense. PM if it doesn't...I'm sure I can think of another way to expain.

I agree with WD about telling, as opposed to action...so instead of reiterating what she said, I'm just going to suggest you read over what she said about that, and take it into further consideration. =D

K, well that's all for me for now. I'm gonna go read chapter one right now. Once again, good job, your writing is awesome.

-JC

Yeah.......I liked it It looks like it's gonna be awesome. Now I have to go read Ch. 1.

Hello Kylan. For science fiction, this feels right at home. The world-building was excellent.

A few qualms:

--There was too much description and not enough action. While describing environments can be fun, there does need to be a treat for the reader. We need a carrot hung in front of our face in order for us to follow. The best way to do this would probably be to add some conflict, right off the bat. If someone reads your prologue and gets bored, that is definitely a bad thing.

--I feel we don't need to know that much about the babies. We can sort of guess what will happen with them. And if you want to tell us, add some dialogue to the story which will help with the action and moving it along. Although the genre is infamous for its poor use of scientific explanation through dialogue, I think it would be appropriate here.

You have a lovely grasp of language. Keep writing.

I read it. I like it. And I will now comment on it. XD

and being paid over ninety thousand bucks a year.

This phrase sounds so different from the rest of the writing. I mean, here you are talking in a very educated sense, and then you stick the word 'buck' in there. I'm not sure, I think it's just me, but try "dollars" or something else more formal to fit the tone of your story.

I also agree with JC about the emotions. Maybe in the future chapters, you might want to reveal how he became so proud of himself. And in your writing, you give him the sense of a stuck-up scientist. Is this meant to be? Or is there some hidden feeling, maybe guilt, maybe insecurity, maybe anger, something to motivate his fondness for genetics and his cloning? Or maybe it's because of the money.

I love the description, very colorful, absolutely fitting to the story.

Very good, just be sure to tweak it a bit more.