Gizmo

Love the idea of the DMD! Seems like we're already attached to such devices in our lives now.  

Well done!! I love techie sci-fi and this was a nice blend of high-tech, feasibility and a glimpse of where we could be headed.  

Trying hard to comment without spoilers....but the end was surprising, in a great way. 

Dialogue was tight, writing was tight - you have a light touch, which made this a lovely story. 

Nice story, a world where even the simplest decision revolve around what a piece of technology suggests sounds completely dystopian, and god-damn awful ~ great job :)

This was a fun little story for sure (hit a bit close to home too for all of us on our smartphones!). The end was a bit surprising only because I felt the majority of the story was light and than the ending kind of hit you. I didnt dislike it though, it was a groovy way to surprise the reader. Well done and fun!

Wow, really enjoyed this! You have a great voice and the piece flowed nicely. One of those thoughtful allegories that hits a little too close to home (in a good way). Makes it painfully clear how we allow technologies that are meant to bring us closer together push us further apart.

My only criticism would be the last line as I've seen others mention. I got what you were trying accomplish with it, it certainly got the point across, but I would like to see something more powerful, yet subtle - like the rest of your story! But I'm with you on how hard it is to close a story just right.

Would love to see this story developed even further. Nice job!

And now I know where the "What sound is made when you sit in a leather chair?" question came from! "Squelching" is a perfect choice. This is a very good story. I love, love, love the premise. I'll echo what others have said above... The DMD is one nasty piece of completely believable technology that's quietly more dystopian than anything in most of the pieces I've read in Teleport Us. Solid dialogue and pacing. I would actually love to see more of the DMD and the ways people interact with it. I also really dig the "DMD as God" angle you're beginning to tackle. Dive in! That's the good stuff. Expand this. Please.

Also, I loved Raj Mahoney. That's awesome.

Here are the only issues I saw:

When Marix and Amanda first meet, she asks "What about your family?" His response seems wrong - "My mother lives in a home near here." Maybe change her question or flesh out his answer? Her response - "My father died last year." - works regardless. Not a big deal. It just jerked me out of reading this for the briefest second.

I like that you used the "bump" as a way to sync the devices. I think its fine that such a thing has been in use for several years here in the real world and is still being used in your story in 2045(ish). What I didn't think worked was having him say "Bump it with mine and it'll give you my address." I say just describe the transfer. Just a thought.

On Page 11, there's a line of the mother's dialogue that reads, "No, dear. No for years and years." I think that should read, "Not" instead of "No".

As JR noted above, the DMD alerts Marix to three missed calls but there are four. One tiny heads up... The calls are described as "1st Missed Call", "2nd Missed Call", "3rd Missed Call", and "Fourth Missed Call". That last one should be "4th Missed Call", right?

This is great stuff. I hope the above helps. Thanks for sharing this!

I really don't have much more to say than has been said. It was definitely one of the more professional pieces I've read in this contest so far. You definitely picked up how to "show, not tell" already, which meant there was no need for out-of-context backstory, which is awesome. It was much easier to read than a lot of what I've read so far.

I'm not sure I agree with the comments above about this not having a strong dystopian theme. I just read that a machine told a woman whether or not she should have drunken sex with a complete stranger she had met online. That seems pretty horrifying, and altogether not at all unbelievable. The machines don't have to be sentient to have enslaved the human race.

Definitely good work.

I certainly think you are one of the more talented writers to have attempted the contest.  The central concept is great - I really want a DMD!  The characters are believable, and while the ending may hit slightly the wrong note, the moral of family over career shines through.  I'm not sure this fits perfectly within a short story.  Other than how it ends for his Marix's mother, there is little in the way of conflict or tension.  It's a fascinating read purely for the way in which the DMD works, and how it virtually runs the owner's lives.  There is no story arc to hold on to though.  This feels like a segment of a longer story, and I love the idea of this world being turned into a longer piece. 

Hey lovely lady,

Thanks for sharing this story with us, it was a pleasure to read. You delve into a gorgeous level of description, your writing has this sensory appeal that's kind of sumptuous. I think my favourite eample of this comes early on with this excerpt: 

Amanda took a small sip of something amber and bubbly, her eyes on Marix.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
“It’s rosewood-infused gin with a splash of champagne.” She swirled it around her martini glass. “It tastes like an effervescent Christmas tree.”

So pretty and it so appealing. I feel like I'm there watching, tasting, smelling with her. 

Your dystopian element was, as someone mentioned above, nice and subtle. I feel like it's not too far off what we're going through right now, and I think I felt a tad guilty for how I use my iPhone! The DMD concept and Taral character was spooky cool - it's like Siri on steroids with super awesome artificial intelligence.  I also chuckled imagining a posh sounding Taral advising Amanda to get laid.

I'm trying not to overlap with other suggestions, but I have a couple of small ones:

1. I'd really like to empathize with Max's life a bit more. When his mother dies, I feel bad for her, not him. And given he's our protagonist, I kinda want to side with him! But I disliked him from the moment he decided Amanda was a few kilos heavier than her profile suggested. Then I disliked him more for this: "Marix took her hand. She had a small widows peak and her eyes were a bit too close together. She smiled, her eyes sad, and he saw that one corner of her mouth went up higher than the other." Then I disliked him even more for bailing on his mother, just after she thought he'd bought her a way to communicate with him. This line made my heart hurt: Her eyes lit up. “Can we use them to talk?” [though, I like how in one line, we see their relaitonship for what it is.] Is there a way to make Max a little more likeable? It seems hackneyed to give him a pet he dotes on - but I'd like a little more humanity for him so I can empathize with his loss.

2. The end jarred me purely because I've dropped my iPhone in my bath and both it and I survived to tell the tale! Can you think of another death related to the DMD? Maybe you could imply (if it's not already implied and I"m not being daft) that she consulted with the DMD about ending her life... or something like that?

These two small issues aside, this has definitely been one of my favourites. :) I've got a story up, if you get a chance at all, I would love to hear your thoughts on it!

Jess

What a concept! Yes, your dystopia was subtle, but thats a good thing. Readers don't always need to be hit upside the head with ideas...it's nice to be given 2+2 sometimes and let us figure out it equals 4. The DMD sounds wonderful to Marix and Amanda, but we get the idea pretty quickly that they rely to heavily on these devices.

Your writing is enticing and light, so I felt as though the end packed a bigger punch because of that. I thought it worked with Marix thinking this DMD was a great gift for his Mom because it illustrated how disconnected he actually was from her. He's so reliant on this DMD that he lacks the common sense to warn his mom about exposing it to water (not to mention that he doesn't explain to her how to use it & then tells her to take it everywhere she goes). Ultimately, he wants the DMD to make her life easier in the same way he perceives it's done for him. When in reality, it's stripped him of his courtesy and common sense which leads his mom to her doom. I think his negligence just drives the dystopian theme home more because he chose to listen to the DMD and go to the tavern instead of using common sense to realize he should stay with his mother, (who is clearly lonely), and explain this gift he bought for her. Someone mentioned that they wished the DMD was responsible for her death and not just her proximity to it, but the way I read it, it already is to blame.

Anyhow, just my take. I love the idea of the world being too reliant on their tech to be able to function normally. Nice work!

I'm a Disney gal, so that makes me smile! 

The technology you feature here is scarily believable. Like many people said already, I don't think we're too far away from DMDs (and I don't like that prospect).

I really enjoyed your relaxed exposition - there isn't a single information dump, and yet the reader learns enough to never be left guessing. Marix, to me, read as an everyman of that world - which is probably what he was intended to be, neither too good nor too bad, facing the usual challenges a regular human does on a regular day. I sympathized with his detachment issues as far as his mother was concerned. And I liked the little moment when he decided to, basically, screw DMD's wisdom and have a date with Amanda regardless.

Plot-wise, I agree with the commenters who said that there was build-up for the spiritual aspect of DMD that didn't really get addressed. Not unlike Jess and Sarah, I was expecting the story to end with the mother's suicide, courtesy of well-meaning DMD advice (in her situaiton, it would make perfect sense). Perhaps having her die for technical rather than human reasons was subversive - but I still feel like that thread was left hanging.

Overall, a great read. Thank you for posting it!
Maria

Hi,

Congrats on winning a author review - and I'm also playing catchup on any I didn't get to read!

Snappy start, fun. A few small typos that (I find!) reading your work aloud would help catch :

"tipped this glass" - presumably "his"

And I'd be careful with "and Marix had nowhere else to go." - makes him sound desperate. "Nothing better to do" might be closer to the mark?

I wonder if the tech of the DMDs (not the programming, but the hardware) seems a little antiquated? CAPITAL LETTERS and voice readings - and presumably these are tablet sized devices. This is 2045 +, so should we expect more? In the store, I'd make the pamphlet (for example) appear directly on a DMD device, go paperless! And maybe everything else-less - have the DMD BE the phone, not sync to a phone?

I wonder if in the DMD store you can play UP the more powerful power source, but play down the waterproof ness. Maybe mention "be sure to read the safety instructions" - which he never does. Can it made more a twist? Also, you leave a question unanswered - why was Sandra calling him? And was she calling him from the bath? Maybe, the DMD she had, should record her thanking him for the DMD, something poignant?

The religious "upgrade" makes me wonder a bit, it's not strictly necessary to the story, perhaps (though it indicates a bigger aspect of letting them make your decisions for you...) but it feels a little disconnected, and a little like you could lose it, without fundamentally changing the story? Something to play with, perhaps!

Finally, and yes, I know you are only 5 words from the limit, I want a slightly better paced ending - it's a tad abrupt. But I really do like the story, so I want this to deliver the full potential! Good work,

Liam

The first things I'm going to address is how well the story matched up with the contest prompts.

Explore a utopian/ dystopian theme:

To be frank, I didn't see this. This is a world that seems very much like a near-future version of our own. I think the DMD technology could have been a dystopian element, but to do so, you would have had to make more explicit the role that this tech has in people's lives.

Feature a technology that's scientifically plausible:

This was present, and well done. The DMD seems very much like a logical extension of current smart phone tech, with the addition of web-tracking of behavior. I really liked that you did not fetishize the technology - it was just present, a part of everyday life in this world.

Feature a non-human character:

This is another element that I didn't quite see. Amanda refers to her device as Taral, which leads me to believe that the DMDs were supposed to be the non-human characters, but it doesn't seem that much different that having Siri. It's a smart technology, but doesn't quite rise to the level of being a character in the story.

The reason I started here is that, if you are writing towards a specific prompt - for example, you're submitting a story to a themed anthology - you need to make sure you incorporate all of the elements. Otherwise, no matter how good your story is - and you have a lot that's good - your story will be rejected.

As to what worked and what didn't on the level of the story - your dialogue is good, and your sentence level prose is very smooth, and a pleasure to read. And you have the beginnings of some really good ideas in here - I think you're saying some interesting and potentially chilling things about our relationship with technology. But what I think you need to do is push further into the emotional core of the story. Think about the relationships between the characters.

So, with Marix and Amanda, the thing that really struck me is that there is basically no chemistry between the characters. Yet, because of their devices, they hook up, and seem to start a relationship. This made me wonder - can people in this society disobey their DMD? What are the consequences if they do? Does the device actually change their behavior, or does it just offer suggestions? You might try using their meeting as a way to give your reader this information about the technology and society.

With Marix and his Mom, I got the feeling that they weren't actually that close (he couldn't answer a lot of the questions at the DMD store, and it turns out he was wrong about his answers.) So I wanted to know why he bought her the device, which seems like an expensive gift. Guilt, because he wishes they were closer? There doesn't seem to be a true emotional connection between them, so that when she dies, there really isn't an emotional reaction from the reader. Yes, it's sad that she died, and especially as a result of his gift, but there's nothing unique to the story about this sadness. Give us more of a connection - maybe the DMD is him trying to rekindle their relationship? - and then we'll have genuine emotions about her death.

One minor thing - I think the title could be stronger. "Gizmo" seems like an afterthought. If you want to stay simple, maybe, "The Device"?

I think if you can get that depth into the story, it will be really strong. It's a believable world, and the tech is well-integrated. The characters read like people, rather than just names attached to words, and you've got good detail and flow to the story.