I love the premise of this story. I could really relate to it, and it was so interesting to read a sci-fi story which deals with grief and relationships in such a personal way. The story could really benefit from a bit of the old "show don't tell". There's nothing wrong with the narrator having a strong presence, but some things were a little over-explained. The narrator doesn't need to explain the feelings and intentions of the characters, they've already revealed these through their actions and reactions.

Nice job! The technology was an interesting idea, and it was refreshing that it was there, but didn't take over the story.  I'm still trying to decide if potential immortality makes this lean toward utopian or distopian.  :)  I liked the doctor's scene, but was a little distracted by how easily doctor and patient handled the "BTW, you were killed in an explosion" moment.

Good characters and a good plot though, so well done!

I like this story even though the story is not one that I would normally have picked up to read. You did a good job conveying the wife's sense of lose and frustration. There were a few things that bugged me though. The explosion that killed them needed a better transition, the one curse just didn't work for me there. Something about the explosion itself rather than what the husband said might have worked better. Also, I wouldn't expect them to give up on trying to retrieve her memories if there was a way to do so. It would have made more sense if hers were known to be lost completely and there was a chance of recovering her husband's, at least to me. If there were a chance of recovering her memories, I would have expected them to not revive her until they could to avoid chance of the earlier personality "dieing" when the newer one was recovered. Or I would have expected some talk about how the two sets of memories (those of the recovered younger personality and the older one) could be safely merged. Otherwise, very well written.

I think you should add more description to the car crash scene. The next scene begins very abruptly. Also, I think you should rewrite the conversation that Betsy has with her doctor after she wakes up. It should be filled with more emotion. I don't see her reacting to the fact that her husband is potentially gone forever. 

"A coat rack stood to her left with one of her jackets (that she didn't remember) and Harold's old coat draped over one of the hooks."

The parantheses here really don't work for me. I feel like you're throwing information at us in an unpolished aside. Work that information into the description in your sentence. Something like "Harold's same leather bomber hung from the coatrack looking decidely more worn out than the last time she remembered seeing it beside a woman's red trench coat which Betsy did not recognize." 

Grant,

You have the bones of a great short story here.  My biggest hang-up were the two-sentence paragraphs, which is really a minor thing that I think judicious backspacing will fix.  I personally would have tried developing Betty more through interaction (dialogue) with others, as Ivan gets at above.  However, this is your story not mine. You did well communicating the confusion someone in her position must have felt in that stituation.  I agree the engine explosion did cut off abruptly, but given the plot, it does work well.

I had to sleep on this one. I was also tempted to break one of my reviewing rules and read through the other comments before posting, to maybe get some ideas of what's bugging me here. However, I resisted. Anyway, There is much I like about the story. The setup provides a good vehicle (heh heh) for examining issues of memory, identity, and, of course, loss--on a number of levels. Very ambitious. More, rather than less, I think you achieved it. The 'voice' of the piece feels a bit off at the beginnig, but post-accident, that narrative voice is steady. It is a melancholic one, but that fits the mood you're trying to convey and is likely my favorite part of "Fever."

But something kept bugging me. I think it's the stereotype...the "If I can't have a baby, then life isn't worth living" character--that a woman would bind up the entirety of her existence on whether or not she could have children. Yet, and yet and yet, there certainly are those people (men and women both), and so it doesn't seem outrageous to have such a character. Plus, it's vital for your story. In Version A of her life, she can't have children because of her husband's impotence. In Version B of her life, it's because she is artificial now and effectively impotent herself. In Version A, she deals with this because she loves her husband. In Version B, without him, she feels there is no reason to go on living.

Maybe that's it. Maybe that's where I'm getting hung up: that the only thing that could alleviate the lack of a child enough to not kill herself was her husband. Seems...dependant, and, in the words of Joshua Jackson in Americano, "I think that offends my delicate North American sensibilities." Heh.

It also bugs me that they were too proud (or whatever) to adopt, especially since she's so pleased about just the chance to babysit, let alone raise, her friends' child, but is also presumably the same (mental) age as when she originally made the decision to not adopt.

That's what I came up with overnight.

And I guess I don't know how old she is three years after she got married, but would she have had gray hair then to notice that she didn't have it in the Sim?

PS (post reading the comments above): Indeed, maybe if the lack of the baby was brought up earlier, emphasized more. Not sure. Ethan Cooper's idea of having it be about reconciling two different 'ages' of the husband and wife--one with memories of the missing years, one without--is a good one. But, of course, that makes it a completely different story. Whatever you decide to do there, I concur about the car blowing up. Even "there was a flash and a brief moment of pain" would do wonders for the transition from that scene to the next. I also agree about the title. "Fever" doesn't connect with the story in its current form.

Good luck! :-)

The word count seems to have been a real issue for you, but you do well to squeeze an awful lot into the story in terms of the emotional weight.  The one area that I found a little jarring was the transition between “waking up” and taking a cab home.  She seems to adjust a little too well to both being back in a different form, and appearing 12 years into her future.  In a bigger story I think you could mine some real gold out of that situation.  I think if I woke up as a spare in 2025 I might trip over some of the changes, and if spares still have the same emotional capacity, it could well be dangerous to send them out back into the world alone with little preparation.  The baby angle is a heck of a tough one to tackle, but I think you’ve done it pretty well.  The character remains believable and doesn’t lose sympathy which isn’t the easiest to do.  The happiness in the ending for me is that she gets her husband back, and forms a close relationship with Jeff and Eliza… getting to look after the baby is an extra, but perhaps you put just a little too much weight on it.  With maybe double the word count, I think you’d have something good here.

This is a great framework and outside of the contest I think it's worth you revising until you've got it polished :)

Most of my thoughts have already been addressed above. I see C Patrick's point a bit, and I will guess that if you hit it big and this lands in a future version of Norton's Anthology, feminist criticism will have a field day with it. On the other hand, I'm 36, married, and we don't have kids. Or choice, but I can vouch for the fact that the ache of an empty house can really be that bad, even when you don't want kids.

In fact, I thought you could have made her even more emotional, especially around her husband's death. In some cases she seemed to have the serenity I'd expect of an old woman who's already seen and felt it all, but mentally she's still a young woman. 

I look fowrd to reading this again sometime :)

Grant - 

I like this concept, and I think the story has a lot of potential. It tends to suffer from a fair bit of "telling" rather than "showing", and I think that makes it hard to sympathize with Betsy. Also, there are a few perspective shifts (in the beginning, we start with Harold, but then shift to Betsy, and at the end, we're back to Harold); even in 3rd person, you should be careful to maintain a single POV, otherwise it becomes too difficult to stay with your MC's emotions (or at least, I find that to be the case). 

Also, I wasn't sure Betsy's reaction to her 12-years of missing memories was fully believable. There were some instances where she mentioned that things must be hers, but she didn't remember buying them. Why would she assume something was hers? I'd need to know more about the objects or why she feels that they are things she "would" buy, etc. I think that, if I were in her situation, I would feel very disoriented. Her house would feel like a twilight zone version of home; photos of things she didn't remember would feel like photoshopped fakes; nothing would seem real. And her reaction to being a new body - there's a lot of room for interesting stuff there! How do you move when your arms and legs aren't the same as you remember them? When your center of gravity is at a different point? When you look and feel and move like an automaton. I think I'd have to fight to keep my sanity if I found myself in a strange body. 

As you mentioned, there is a little bit of stereotyping/cliche in the "sterile couple" story, but I think there's always room to work within established stereotypes to make them unique and bring a fresh perspective. The important thing is to make us feel what Betsy feels - don't just tell us how she's feeling, but let us experience it with her. If you've got a workshop membership here, definitely take advantage of the craft essays that you can access - they can give you a lot of great ideas for how to make people feel what your character feels without flat-out telling them.

Anyway, I think you have the start of what could be a really gut-wrenching story. Turn it up to 11 and rock it out! 

Good work, and happy revising!

--Christa