Hello,

I've just written a short chapter for a book I am planning to write and would love some feedback!



The light blue 6:59, displayed on a panel to the left of the bed, ticked seamlessly into 7:00. Instantly, the room began a silent stir to life. The wall opposite the bed, at first white and opaque, appeared to thin out. It took on a milky pinkness at first. And then, slowly, shapes began to appear – an abstract outline of darker hues cutting a jumbled horizon, shadowy columns jutting upwards from the hazy form, and above them smoky wisps burnt increasingly bright against the creamy, rose-kissed expanse. As the opaqueness continued to dissolve, the cloudy forms became more pronounced, more defined, more intricate. The heavy warm darkness that had enveloped the room just moments before was gradually displaced by a delicate light. The increasing brightness appeared to trigger a transformation. Beside the bed a metal square split in half, noiselessly. Through this new hole a plastic box emerged, perfectly symmetrical and perfectly white; it filled the shape of the oval hole exactly. When it reached around seven feet the cylinder slowed and, with a silent click, halted its climb. It was quite a large container, around 8 feet across, its exterior the most flawless shade of white. A metal screen in the centre of the bedside table had similarly opened, sliding silently apart. And through the hole a pure white mug had appeared, its contents steaming in the faint morning light.

It was at this point that the man awoke. He opened his eyes, blinking away their morning blur, and slowly raised himself to a sitting position. Arching his back, he drew a deep breath and with a yawn reached for the coffee to his left. As soon as the coffee was taken from its place the ventilation panels, which ran alongside the bottom of both side walls, began to rotate, letting in the distant calls of morning birds. The whirring silence that had previously filled the room was punctuated by the comforting tweets of birdsong. And with the morning sounds came the morning smell. A fresh breeze rolled through the discrete slits, replacing the air of the night before. The man breathed deeply, feeling the cool, crisp air fill his lungs with satisfaction. Clasping his coffee in both hands he turned his attention to the wall in front of him. But there was no wall anymore, or at least it appeared that way. The foggy forms had transformed themselves into a vast cityscape. On closer inspection the image was still not clear -its edges were confused, towers blurring into one another, as if a sheet of tracing paper had been placed across the scene. But slowly, like a focussing camera lens, the details sharpened. And the wall finally disappeared completely – revealing a breath-taking view of Alpha-A.

The rolling stratums of cloud, painted orange red by the morning sun, appeared small in comparison to the extensive intricacies of the city beneath. Countless buildings of white, touched with the pink of the sky, stretched endlessly in all directions. Towers of all shapes reached perpendicularly toward and sometimes through the clouds, thick peaks of white competing for the warmth of natural sunlight that was so scarce in the lower depths of the metropolis. Snaking pipes, barely visible from this position, embraced the towers in complicated networks. Like spider webs the tubes were largely invisible, odd sections occasionally glimmering brightly in reflected light, but if you were to press yourself against the now invisible wall, the extent of the piping would become apparent. Over three million miles of high speed transporter-pipe encased every building in the city. Connecting. Most of it, of course, was hidden from view, buried deep in the ground, and encased within the impenetrable carbon structures of the cities buildings. But the above-ground network was still visibly immense.

Alpha-A was an impressive sight. Although the natural land had long been lost beneath the great carbon giants of the urban sprawl , the huge and sweeping bowel that housed the city was still apparent. But to call the bowel natural would require a loose definition of the word. A huge army of construction bots had been deployed almost as soon as the deadly nano-virus had been released; moulding and shaping the landscape to its creators design. A doughnut, with a radius of one hundred miles, began to appear. The walls grew, higher and higher, until a steeply sloping bowel, one thousand six hundred metres tall, rose from the previously flat and barren land. But the identical height of the ridge was not how it would stay. Four points around the doughnut - north, east, south and west - were raised to an impossible height of three thousand six hundred metres. From these great peaks the land fell, fairly sharply, back to its one thousand six hundred metre base, before rising again to meet the next summit. Hierarchy. The purpose of the undulating doughnut had been clear to its architects. Only the upper-levels of society would inhabit the rim. And only the greatest of those individuals would inhabit its peaks. Of course, this was all thousands of years ago. The soil that encased the carbon structure of the doughnut had long been lost to the pervasive mass of human habitation. The bowel, however, continued to perform its functions. Buildings littered the sloping walls on the inside of the bowel, reaching as far as they were allowed to be; never encroaching upon the view of the housing above. The visual effect was spectacular. Confusing, disorientating, but stunning. From the vantage point of the upper-complexes the buildings swept viciously downwards, into the ever thickening depths of human structure. Brilliant roofs of pure white, sloping and curving downward towards the vast basin, entwined by the winding networks of transporter-pipe.

- fin

Thanks!
Edd