To Sail Across the Sky - Chapter One

[the_mysterious_m]

Exactly a year ago today, I was working on the concept for what would eventually become this story. It's wildly different now, but I'm pretty happy with how it's turned out so far. I can't promise I'l update this more than every other week, but I will make an effort to do more than that. Thank you to Tanadin for inspiring me to write again and giving me some helpful advice. 

Please comment your thoughts on this, as feedback is probably the only way this will be finished and the only way I'll get better. There's always something that can be improved. Don't be afraid of hurting my feelings; I don't have any. Please enjoy!




 The waves crashed gently onto the shore.

It was a quiet night, with only the sound of piano playing being heard coming from a cozy house overlooking a sharp cliff, the lights shining from inside looking warm and welcoming in the cool of night.

A car loudly skidded down the road, swerving wildly to avoid something before crashing violently into a tree.

The cars lights flickered through the smoke as the passengers, a man and a woman, slowly climbed out of the wreckage, coughing and waving their hands in the air to blow away the smoke. The smell of burning rubber and road kill prevailed through the air.

"Elon, you're an absolute idiot." The woman said in between coughs. "Remind me to never let you drive again."

The man, Elon, stood up straighter. "Oh relax, Jill! " he said, attempting to make his face into a winning smile. In the eerie yellow light provided by the flickering headlights of the car through the smoke, it make him look more like a serial killer. "It's just the company car. Besides, I think you're missing the part where I heroically swerved to avoid that innocent squirrel." He gave a self satisfied grin and closed the car door. He cheerfully ignored it failing to close all the way, causing it to swing open again with a loud creak and hit his leg.

Jill slapped her face with the palm of her hand while shaking her head, tiredly gesturing to the squirrel carcass lying in the middle of the road, which had already begun to stink. She sighed. "You hit it anyways, Elon."

Elon visible deflated, his smile disappearing nearly instantaneously and his back slightly hunching. A thought occurred to him and he grinned impishly. "Well, it's the thought that counts, right?"

Jill raised an eyebrow. "And I suppose you would be happy to tell that to the boss, as well as what happened to the company car?"

Elon shrugged. "He doesn't have to know. We can just say we were saving a dog or something." Elon furrowed his eyebrows, more visible as the smoke began to clear. It appeared that for the time being, the car would not explode. "Does he like dogs?"

Jill opened the back door of the car and began shoving things to the side. "I think he's more of a cat person, actually." Jill said, clearing some smaller trinkets off of a large silver box that they had put in the back seat.

"Well, whatever furry critter he prefers, crisis averted." Elon said as he walked over to the other side of the car. "You're carrying the equipment, Jill? Why, thank you! How uncharacteristically kind!"

Jill then proceeded to unceremoniously drop the heavy silver box into Elon's arms. She shook her head. "Come on, Elon. Didn't anyone teach you to be a gentleman?"

Elon mumbled various profanities under his breath as he adjusted the bulky metal box in his hands as Jill smiled and looked around for the house. It was a more remote location than she was used to. The region was quite hilly, with shelves of rock jutting out. Someone had attempted to carve several staircases through the rock shelves, granting visitors access to the house, though the staircases looked to be rarely used and uneven.  From what she could see, the house was a small two story home. Warm, inviting yellow light shown from the windows, but any real detail was impossible to see, given the sporadic tree cover dotting the area.

"Looks like it's going to be a late night tonight." He remarked as the two began scaling the rock staircases to reach the house, Elon having a significantly harder time.

Jill groaned. "Don't remind me."  

"Pretty sure I've got some leftover coffee in the back in a thermos. Probably cold by now, though. How about you?"

Jill shrugged. "Didn't have time." She said, stepping over a stray rock, Elon following her footsteps. "We had to leave right after we got the call, remember?"

Elon shrugged.  "Yeah. And we were almost out the door, too..." He sighed almost wistfully. He craned his neck, trying to see above the heavy crate he was lugging up the stairs. "We almost up there? I can't see past this box."

"Yeah, we're almost up there. This is an awfully inaccessible house."

"Agreed. I guess we know neither of them are in wheelchairs."

The house was indeed remote. Standing among a rough forest that reeked of a lack of care and jagged limestone cliffs that threatened to unintentionally skewer anyone who got too close, the small house gave off a warm, welcoming light, a sharp juxtaposition to the surrounding landscape. The lighthouse near the house completed the picture; the cold weather-beaten tower standing tall, no longer emitting any light, as if a monument to the house's isolation.

Jill shook her head. "I don't think it was the wife who called. She sounded too young."

"You think the wife died? Maybe it was his nurse or something."

"Maybe." Jill shrugged, noticing they were almost at the door. She tilted her head, just hearing something. "Is that a piano playing?"

Elon listened closer. "Yeah, I think so." He said, finally getting the box over the last step. "You want to knock on the door already? I think my shoulder is slipping out of its socket."

"I dunno. You willing to trade?"

Elon frowned, attempting to adjust his grip on the box. "For what?"

 

"5 minutes of silence."

Elon gave her the finger as best he could as Jill knocked at the door.

There was no answer.

Jill understood why. After all, there was a dying man in the house.

It had been a while since the doctors had set foot in a house that didn't have a dying man inside. She remembered exactly how long, actually. Three weeks ago, to be exact. Three weeks ago she had stepped into the house of a dying woman.

She never came to save them.

"We should start wearing black cloaks and carrying scythes." Her colleague often joked. Or, at least, she hoped it was a joke. You never could tell with him.

Elon, or Dr. Tesla as he preferred to be called, finally decided to set the heavy box down while he waited. He always said the name gave him the impression of being a mad doctor or an evil scientist, though the name made him sound neither mad or evil, nor even remotely witty.

He pushed his heavy reflective glasses up his nose. The clerks at the store where he had bought the glasses had looked at him with an eyebrow raised when he had picked them out, asking if he wanted to get the reflective properties removed. He had asked in a matter-of-fact tone if he could have them extra-reflective. He had happily walked out of the store wearing a pair of two one-way mirrors covering his eyes. He strutted around with them with pride. They may have been a bit heavy, and had the tendency to slip off of his nose at times, but they were well worth it to avoid the nosy gazes of strangers.

The waves crashed loudly hundreds of feet beneath them. The wind blew, rustling the thick lab coats the two doctors wore.

"Not a bad place to retire at, huh?" Jill remarked, not that she necessarily wanted conversation, just a bit of a break from the constant going-ons of the crashing ocean waves and the whistling wind.

"Eh, I could do better." Dr. Telsa said, giving a quick glance around the area and shrugging. "Night shifts, love 'em or hate 'em?"

"You know the answer you stupid owl." Her co-worker had always been nearly nocturnal, doing his best work at night. Not that that was saying much, considering how much he slacked off during the day.

"You realize this is probably going to be an all-nighter, right?"

Jill sighed, irritated. "Yes, I'm well aware." She knew her partner was teasing her. She promised herself if he did it one more time, she would snap at him to shut up. She knocked again, impatiently

"And we don't have any coffee-"

"Shut up."

"...and the ocean will sing lullabies..."

"Not through your incessant blabbering it won't." She knocked again, this time hearing someone nearing the door. To both of their surprise, a young woman looking to be in her mid- thirties was the one to open it.

"Hello!"She said, smiling, although a tone of sadness pervaded her voice and expression. "I presume you must be Dr. Milner and Dr. Tesla."

Jill gave a small nod of affirmation while Dr. Tesla mumbled under his breath: "I didn't wear the name tag to be presumed."

"Thank you for arriving so quickly and on such short notice." She stepped out of the way of the door, allowing the light to come through. "Please, come in. Jimmy's just upstairs."

Jill frowned. "Umm, Miss? If this is a child, I don't think we're the people you're looking for."

The woman shook her head. "Oh, my apologies. His name is Mr. Oblitus, but he always insisted that everyone call him Jimmy. Says it makes him feel young."

The two stepped into the house, ready for just another night on the job.

It was a very cozy home. Soft yellow light  bathed the room in a nice glow. The in front of them was a large piano. To the right was a small alcove with a couple of paintings and a pot of purple flowers that rested against the black wall, with a patch of flowers in the middle missing. A small oak wall clock took of the wall leading to the stairway, silently counting the seconds. The bottom floor was a single large room combining only the most essential rooms, giving the impression of a house built by someone who was both in a hurry and on a budget.

The woman, who Dr. Milner realized had never introduced herself, led them up the stairs and into a small foyer. She then opened the door to the left and into the patient's room.

The bedroom was small. The bed in the middle took up the most space, looking empty with its one inhabitant, an old man with grey hair. Next to him was a IV stand and a basic heart rate monitor. The steady sound of the monitor beeping carried throughout the room. Another woman with grey hair and a lab coat, presumably the doctor, monitored his condition. She turned her head at the sound of the door opening.

"Ahh, you two are here. Good." She said, nodding at them in greeting.

"How much time does he have?" Dr. Milner asked, motioning to the man she assumed to be Jimmy lying on the bed.

"His condition is stable, for now.  It's likely that he'll last for the rest of the night, though past that we can't be sure."

"So we're going to have to get started, then." Dr. Tesla said, walking towards the patient and setting the heavy equipment down next to the bookshelf against the back wall. "But first, we'll need to find a way to trigger his most recent memories. We could also use the time to find out some information about him that could be useful later."

"What would trigger a recent memory?" The woman asked

"Anything that he's interacted with recently should do the trick. A piece of music he's heard or played, or a smell he's associated with a moment he would deem worthy of remembering would work." Dr. Tesla explained, glancing around the room in hopes that something would immediately jump to attention. "Do you have anything in mind?"

The woman, who Dr. Telsa now assumed to be Mr. Oblitus's caretaker of sorts, possibly his daughter, snapped her fingers. "He recently planted flowers by his wife's grave. The flower pot he took them from is still downstairs. Would the smell of those flowers work?"

Dr. Telsa nodded. "That would do the trick." He turned to his colleague.  "One of us should stay back and set up the machine."

"I can do that. You go grab the flowers and look around for some information."

"But of course" Dr. Tesla said, turning his head at an angle. "After all..." he said, dramatically turning his head to the side. "I did play Sherlock Holmes in our high school play."

Dr. Milner frowned. "I remember you playing Watson."

Dr. Tesla shook his head and shrugged. "Holmes, Watson, it's all semantics, really." he said, ignoring Dr. Milner's halfhearted exasperated objections.

"I'll set up here. Good luck." Dr. Milner said, turning to open the box.

He turned around and opened the door and heading downstairs.

Time to learn about the life of another guy who was about to die.

</cut>

Comments

[tanadin]

Oh, this is a fascinating start. I look forward to seeing more of this and meeting these characters, I don't know where you're going with this but I'm sure it'll be interesting.

Some feedback on your actual writing:

"Oh relax, Jill! " He said, attempting to make his face into a winning smile.
should be
"Oh relax, Jill!" he said, attempting to make his face into a winning smile.

and, similarly,
"Looks like it's going to be a late night tonight." He remarked as the two began scaling the rock staircases to reach the house, Elon having a significantly harder time.
should be
"Looks like it's going to be a late night tonight," he remarked as the two began scaling the rock staircases to reach the house, Elon having a significantly harder time.

The end of the sentence isn't at the end of their quotations if you then add on a "he said" or similar at the end, therefore you use a comma and not a period and lowercase the pronoun after. You keep the punctuation if its a question or exclamation mark, as that's a bit different, but you carry on with a lowercase pronoun if it's just "he said." Unless that's the end of the sentence, and after that you're going into something entirely different, of course. Like this...

Dr. Telsa nodded. "That would do the trick." He turned to his colleague.

...is good. You don't need to change that as it's three different sentences.

Just figured you might want some feedback on that, it's a really easy mistake (I had to correct /every single instance of that in the entire Monstrous trilogy/ and it SUCKED) but it makes it slightly annoying to read for some people.

[the_mysterious_m]

Huh. Didn't know that. Thank you for the feedback! I'll have to go fix that, because I'm sure I do that a lot. Thanks for taking the time to type that out!

[scara]

I'm intrigued as to where this story is going to end up M, you've certainly got me hooked and wanting to know more about these characters and what they're up to.

[the_mysterious_m]

Well, that was the idea! Glad you enjoyed it so far!

[scara]

Indeed, it is a good hook ^^

[(Anonymous)]

Now, I'm not entirely sure on this, but I'm pretty sure it would be good to have a hyphen here.

'a pair of two one way mirrors'
a pair of one-way mirrors

Also, you've already mentioned it's a pair, so adding the word two is unnecessary and confusing. I'm not too familiar with my hyphen rules, so you might want to ask Tana, but definitely avoid 'a pair of two'.

Other then that, I'm intrigued. My brain is trying to place the setting in four or so vastly different possible situations at the same time, and the result is some strange mixture of clue, the Manhattan project, The Giver, and the grimm reaper. Great job and keep up the good work. (::) (::) (::)
-Observing Anon

[the_mysterious_m]

Just looked it up. Pretty sure you're right about the hyphen, but I couldn't really find a clear answer. It has a hyphen in the dictionary, so I'm going to assume that's correct.
A "Pair of two" is how the glasses are constructed. One way mirrors are actually layers of materials, with a thin half-silver coating acting as the reflective property. When he got the reflective property enhanced, they added an extra coating, therefore making it effectively two one way mirrors per lens. Should have made that more clear. The word effectively used to be in there, but I took it out because it made the sentence cluttered and awful. Sorry for the bad explanation.

The story is in a more contemporary setting than all of those. Although, I haven't read half of them, so I'm not sure.

and thank you for your comment!

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for clarifying. I didn't know that about one-way mirrors.

Clue as in the board game, the Manhattan project was the name of the nuclear research that was done in Los Alamos during WWII, the Giver has the weird memory stuff, and the grimm reaper as in the person. Basically mystery, interesting but secretive science, capturing memories, and the one line about the people always dying and them waiting made me briefly think they were collecting souls or dead bodies. Not necessarily setting, but random aspects I got from the mood.
-Observing Anon

[the_mysterious_m]

Hmm... Interesting. It's a few of those things. I recognized the Manhattan project reference. They don't collect the bodies, they just have a hand in making them. Some may say they do make them. >:D You're close with the interesting and secretive science aspect, although the stuff they're doing isn't as secretive as some people might like.

[(Anonymous)]

Oooh, interesting. I'm glad you got the reference, usually when I mention specific stuff related to nuclear bombs in WWII everyone looks at me like I'm crazy.
-Observing Anon

[(Anonymous)]

Also, I'd say hyphens are probably up in the top three most confusing and unclear punctuation marks, so don't worry too much about them. I only really use them in sentences with lots of adjectives when I want to better indicate which adjective applies to which word.
-Observing Anon

[quaznarx]

Ooooooo, nice opening!
The setting is really gloomy and mysterious, and I'm excited to see it develop with the story.
Also: WHATS IN THE BOX? XD
I'm really interested to see where this goes, M ^^

[the_mysterious_m]

Thanks! I tried to establish a gloomier and forlorn tone, with occasional splashes of humor from Elon and Jill. I think I did an alright job. If there's anything I'm good at, it's being mysterious.

We'll find out what's in the box next chapter, don't worry. Was that a wander over yonder reference?

Thanks for commenting!

[quaznarx]

Yeah, the bits of humor lighten the mood just a tad so everything isn't bleak and dreary. It was good.
Nah, it's a reference to the movie Se7en. (I haven't actually seen the movie, just know of that scene XD)

[(Anonymous)]

This is very good! I'm interested to learn more about it and see if it evolves into an overarching plot.

[(Anonymous)]

-Scott

[the_mysterious_m]

Thank you! I can assure you this will evolve into an overarching plot.