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i_am
How It Rates
Description
What constitutes life? When eHOST (Electronic Human Operating System inTelligence) fails to adhere to its programming, the powers-that-be aren't too happy about it. Witness an artificial intelligence's fight for survival, a tale that proves that even computer programs need somewhere to belong.
Comments
Hey,
tried to read your story, but ALL CAPS is just too painful.
Try without it. I think you get the robot / machine reference fine without it. In fact, I think it might even work even better. Lose the caps. Bring the noise.
I ditched the caps. Please try reading it now, please. Thank you.
Hi there,
I really liked the concept of the story. But it was hard to read, partly because of the caps, but also because of all the 'computer speech'. It took a lot of concentration to take in all the dates and times, all the command prompt stuff, etc. I found that I was skimming over a lot of it to get to the story.
My favourite part is the section starting with 'I AM ARRIVING AT QUALITY CONTROL HEADQUARTERS...' I liked how the action is described through the characters detached perspective.
I think this story needs a lot of editing, but the main storyline is good and is worth developing. I also think that if you ended with 'I AM HOME. I HAVE LEARNED MANY THINGS' that would make a stronger ending.
I hope this is useful feedback :)
Hi,
Your feedback was indeed helpful. Thank you! I agree with you that the caps, computer speech, dates and times detracted from the readability of the story and thus, I removed them. Please take another look. Hopefully, you'll find it to be a much smoother read this time around. Thanks!
Yes that's much better! :) Much easier and enjoyable to read.
As Spock would say, "Interesting..."
I really enjoy the framework of this but I had a very hard hanging with the first person perspective of the computer character. In my opnion, to much time is spent by the protagonist describing what he is going to do instead of simply doing it. Action is what propells us through a story. Without it, it reads like a binary diary.
Also, the computer needs to have a personality. The conflict is nice, but by the time you get there, you're exhausted from the, "I do this, I do that" style of the first six pages. Every successful computer character ever written needs to have some sort humanity to them, which is why they are usually AI. Nobody wants to spend a story with their grandma's 486. :-D
Despite all this, there are some positives. Your science is well developed, bordering on too much so and you have a nice sense of arc here. Just work on giving your computer character a little more life and you'll have a nice peice on your hands.
Keep at it!
I definitely appreciate you taking the time to read my story and comment on it. I wanted to take a little time to reply to a few of the issues you raised, however. The lack of personality, or humanity of the protagonist was intentional. The story reads like a binary diary because, in essence, that's what it is. The concept of this story is that the reader is looking at the program's log screen. That was more apparent initially, due to some things I'd done stylistically, but other readers found my stylistic choices distracting so I edited them out. If I were narrating this tale from a 3rd person perspective I would have made him simply "do" the things he was talking about. Things are relayed to the reader, however, in the unique manner the protagonist "thinks" and communicates. I feel that the character demonstrates characteristics of life, such as self-preservation, though he lacks human emotions and personality. My goal was to depict him as a living thing, but not necessarily a human being. His "otherness" is exactly what I was attempting to convey. Obviously, I've failed emphatically in making a story that is widely accessable. It's certainly the type of sci-fi I enjoy, but I guess it's not for everyone. Hopefully, I'll do a better job next time. Thanks again.
That was a very unconventional story to say the least. It's about the right length for the way you wrote it. Much longer and continual use of "I am ..." for starting sentences would have started to get on my nerves. It might make sense to drop the "My address is ..." bit at the beginning, it doesn't really add anything to the story overall. Also, I'd suggest using hard page breaks or some other form of separator rather than trying to use blank lines to force a page break. That approach doesn't work very well with modern word processors. Also, it's better to use a header or footer line with a page number field rather than hand entering them. (Instructions on how to do both of those things should be pretty easy to find onilne.)
Good Job!
Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment. The numbers you're referring to were actually chapter numbers. I took your advice (kind of) and got rid of them. I also ditched the "my address..." line, and made a few other subtle changes. Thanks for the recommendations!
I like this story, and I do appreciate the delivery technique. It is repetitive, but I think it works here.
You have some grammar work to do. I see some missing commas, etc...
I was curious about one thing. In the end of your story, the entity is showing what we all would call emotion. Early in the story, the entity makes claims about not being able to show remorse. One thing to double-check is to make sure the emoting is consistent throughout. I'm not sure if that's a contradiction or not, just something to check.
I had a lot of fun with this story. It's a real quick read.
Thanks for reading and commenting. I appreciate it. In regards to your concern, the protagonists change in personality was intentional. He was programmed to have no remorse but as he becomes more independent he contradicts his programming.
Great story. I had a hard time following the beginning with the computer lingo, but I think that’s what makes your story great. We go from a protagonist who only thinks in terms of ones and zeros and we watch him evolve into an entity that fights to keep itself alive. In the end, I actually cared about the little deadly dude. The one problem I had was I think his father gave in too early. What was his motivation?
Overall, great entertaining read. Good job!
~Sam
I just re-read my story today and I totally agree with you that the good doc acquiesced far too easily. I really need to work on that. Thanks for the feedback!
I like that this is quite experimental, and you stay true to the character at all times. I completely get why you write it in the tense that you do, but I did find it difficult to stay with it as the short sentence structures didn’t make for much in the way of flow. The self-awareness and survival instinct is good, though father does agree very quickly, and counter-intuitively given his role. The conscience-style virus was good, if a little underplayed. I think you deserve props for the experimental nature of the piece, and for being true to the nature of the protagonist, though it didn’t quite work for me personally.
This is a very creative story bravely told. That's really nice to see. I've thought a bit about non-human characters, and actually to write them in a non-human form is risky. If you do the alien perspective well, as you do, you succeed in alienating the human reader. :) It's a bit of a double-edged sword. You also took the risky stance of writing in first person, present tense. This can make it hard to keep the flow of the story going, even without the repetitive sentence structure you used.
Considering all the challenges you took on, you succeed pretty darn well. I think the formal things do work [at least in the version I read]. If someone were to ask me if they should try this for some sort of contest, I think I would have tried to discourage them. But you did rise to it, and managed better than I would have. Good job on that.
On the level of the story, it moves very well up to the scene with Dr. Severinson [as others have mentioned]. He seems a bit of a puppet character, but also the protagonist suddenly becomes emotional. Maybe the virus. . . ? It's not clear. He seems to argue from an emotional perspective, appealing to paternal sentiment. He suggests that there is a relationship with responsibilities between them. Hmm, OK. But then he happiliy escapes into the network at the end without another thought about his father, who was attacked and may have been killed helping him escape. The ping-pong between engaged emotion and disengaged existence does weaken the story for me.
I also got hung on the scene with [what we later learn is] the virus. Although it should be completely digital, one presumes, it interacted in a very human manner with the killer. That felt strange. And the argument the virus used seemed to appeal to human sentiments within the killer software [that fact that it functioned via argument at all instead of altering instruction sets was another issue].
It could have been that the killer program was developing a moral sense [on its own? caused by the virus having rewritten code? if so, what was that whole exchange about then?], but this doesn't play out by the end. I felt like the software developing a human-like awareness or perspective was supposed to be [should have been?] the central element of the piece. The ending really didn't give me that, even after his sudden "conversion" in the scene with the doctor.
Overall, an excellent attempt to use some risky means to tell a difficult story. *I* think there is a marketable piece here [like I would know!], and you should definitely try working through some these things, at least to your own satisfaction. And thanks for posting it here! :)
I agree with everything you said. Thanks for commenting. Much appreciated.
I made some changes to my story, based on some of your comments. Please re-read it, if you have time, and let me know what you think. Thanks.
Having read through the comments, I get the impression that you got rid of many of the time and place stamps you had in the story earlier. I'm getting a feeling that they would've worked better for me than section breaks. When reading, the reader doesn't tend to keep close track of the time - just seeing that things are happening one after the other is enough.
A few stylistic nitpicks - the AI narration style is always crisp and precise, but you slip into human-speak a few times, when you start your sentences 'but' ('because' works, being a clear cause-effect indication; things like 'but' indicate notes of contradiction/self-contradiction, something a machine would be free of). The most human bit is in the conversation with the Creator - "But, fortunately for you, there is one more way to tie up this particular loose end." I'd definitely drop the "but", or maybe everything before "there". Alternatively, you could rephrase it as "There is more than one way to tie up this particular loose end. That is fortunate for you."
Another similar stylistic thing is when your AI says, "I am fastening shoulder sling about my person." Compared to every other description of where the weapons go, this one feels slightly vague.
On a more general note, I think this definitely works as an experimental piece. I'd pay particular attention to the exchange with the doctor at the end - it's supposed to be the big reveal and confrontation (Matrix-Reloaded-Neo-and-the-Architect style), but as it is, it happens too fast and too smoothly. I agree with the comment about wishing to see some sort of reaction to the doctor being injured and/or killed - even complete lack of reaction would work, as long as it's pointed out as such.
Thanks for posting the story, and good luck!
Maria
I'm honored you took the time to read my story and post a comment. Your analysis was quite insightful. I made some final edits, taking several of your suggestions in to consideration.
Firstly, I reinstated some of the time stamps. I agree that demonstrating the passage of time helped push the story forward. I should have stuck with them, despite the early comments.They also make it more evident that this is the protagonist's program log, we, the readers, are viewing.
I attempted to correct a few of the more glaring instances of "human-speak", as you called it, on the part of the protagonist, as well. You were right about the shoulder sling line. I made it more specific and it seems to work better now.
The convo with the doc has probably been the most difficult thing to pull together on this project. I'm still not sure it works as well as I'd like. He still gives in pretty easily, but I, at least, feel that I've now given him a believable reason to comply--covering his own ass and fear for his own life.
And finally, the protagonist now acknowledges the attack on the doc as he jettisons himself into cyber space. His response is devoid of emotion, but he, at least, mentions how the incident does (or does not) affect him.
Thanks again, for your feedback. You've helped me improve my story immensely :)