I know I've seen this one before. Is this just a really old draft, finally seeing the light of day?
I'd get rid of "distinctly high number", which is fairly unscientific. Otherwise, yeh, up up.
Concurring with you when you say you've seen this one before, as well as your choice to updoot. Fantastic work.
Somewhat conflicted on this one. On the one hand, I definitely enjoy the story being told, and find the characters and suggested background quite engaging in the small glimpses seen. There's some clever story-telling here.
On the other hand…. mixing the elements of major reality bending, the wooden box, and Alzheimer's disease feels by having him spontaneously create extremely convenient flashbacks feels… cheap, fake-y, and, well, overly convenient. Sort of… Alzheimer's can have much more drastic symptoms, and -1 is basically a god within the box, but somehow that only translates into producing these occasional neat little vignettes. It doesn't help that the old man and box contents seem so Dickensian, which feels slightly fake-y.
I might feel better if there were an indication that he occupies his time with something in the box (one would assume writing), so there's a reason he's not just recreating yesteryear on a much more regular basis and with much less context.
I'm no-voting for now, I might reread it later.
Yeah, I was thinking about different ways to do it. I could have had the visions appear out of order, but it wouldn't have had the same impact. Alternatively, it could have other scenes interpersed and have the important scenes listed B-G-H-O, and leave the non-story scenes out, but then that doesn't make sense for the foundation. Why would they leave incidents out, unless they were unimportant, but if that's the case, then would -1 recreate them? If anything, if there were episode that he recreated from the war, where he was displaying his reality bending abilities, wouldn't a scientist be more interested in that than him and his wife chatting? If I were to include scenes like that, it would detract from the story, distracting from the important bits. So, yeah, it winds up being a little convenient, but each other option is bad storytelling.
I think you could imply or even depict the existence of non-story scenes- ones that weren't significant from the external or internal points of view- with the justification that a) Alzheimer's does stuff to people, or b) in his more lucid moments, he might have a strong preference for not staring the horrors or failures of his life directly in the face.
He might just reminisce about a quiet night at home, before the war and the ark, before things started going wrong. Or a moment from the time of the war, but not from the fighting- a moment when he was off-duty and gave himself leave to relax with the men. Or scenes from his courtship with his wife- dates, a wedding, a honeymoon, his son's childhood. Something he'd want to remember.
The story this is telling is interesting, and the idea of a reality-bender who literally can't think outside the box amuses me, but the tone needs some serious work. The descriptions and designations should be much more clinical.
+1, but with the hope of tone revisions
Is there any chance this was inspired by The Closet Chronicles by Kansas?
Actually, believe it or not, it was originally inspired by Night Wish - Last Ride of the Day. The original version had a much larger interior space (like a tardis) and was going to have scenes playing on a loop at different locations inside. It was going to be a story about people trying to save their world, and ultimately failing. The feel of the story was going to be hopeful, and then crushing at the end.
(Clearly, it's been revised a few times. :) )
I don't get all of it. But what I get, I like. +1
containment vault Tophat-3
O_O …K
The concept intrigues me, although I'm not totally clear on the entirety. I'm still going to upvote though.
I love this, and I can't help but think that seeing as he refers to the "ark" and "saving them from the encroaching end" you were inspired by Noah's ark from the Bible in some way.
