Sunday 23 December 2012

Thomas is angry

Hi everyone,

Did everyone enjoy a good end of the world party? I had dinner with my family.  Pretty normal, nothing out of the ordinary.

So here is the answer to last week's prompt.  I used Thomas, a character from the second tome of my work in progress trilogy (more on this coming at the beginning of the new year), and tried to see how I could tell a lot about him by showing rather than explaining.  Hopefully, it worked.

I would really appreciate it if guys did a little work for me on this one.  I would like you to tell me which voice you preferred and also what you learned about the character from the two different style. And yes, I totally did write more than one paragraph...



*** Prompt 277 - Write a single paragraph that conveys a lot about a character's life.  Think about how this can be achieved with voice and rhythm an repetition. ***



Thomas plopped onto the armchair and pinched the bridge of his nose with his long, soft fingers. He looked at the empty capsule in front of him.  It should have been glowing with blue light, humming dully as liquids came in an out in transparent tubes. His right leg shook incessantly of its own accord.  He got up.

On the virtual board, he flipped a few screens before stopping on one.  Equations upon equations covered its entirety.  There was barely enough space to add any comments.  He squinted at one particularly messy corner, rubbing his chin.  It was all there, under his eyes, yet, he couldn’t make any sense of it. Damn Dale! Had the man been tidier maybe he could have understood this madness.  He sighed and pulled out his glasses out of his smock but didn’t put them on.  Instead, he started to bite at the hinge.  He had, after all, perfect vision, but this human artifact always helped him think. 

He touched the screen, trying to enlarge a minuscule glyph.  He scrutinized it for a long moment only to come to the very same conclusion he always did: this was not a standard symbol.  It was the only possible explanation.  He had used that code for centuries, nothing about it eluded him.  Damn Dale and his imagination!  A nagging voice in the back of his head whispered that if it wasn’t for him, the man would still be around to help decipher his scribble.  Thomas looked at instruments on the table.  Then, with a sudden roar, he sent them flying across the room.  Panting, he went back to his seat to resume his regular, comfortable thinking.

*****

I plopped onto my armchair.  It was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable but it was the only place I could think.  I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose.  This wasn’t working.  That empty capsule should have been full with amniotic liquid and a test subject.  My leg shook, restless.  I was feeling something close to defeat.  I got up.

I turned on the virtual board once again and flipped impatiently to the screen I was looking for.  I would have to set a bookmark.  I kept telling myself that but always forgot.  I looked up at the right corner.  There it was, that foreign glyph, mocking me.  Oh I had tried to decipher it, to bend its shape to match the characters I knew, some I had even created but deep down inside I knew that it was a useless task.  Nevertheless, I took out my glasses and started nibbling on the hinge.  Like my chair, they helped me cogitate.  And just like my chair, they were proving useless.

I touched the screen like I always did, enlarging the glyph. This was clearly Dale’s brainchild.  The man had been – probably still was, in fact - a genius.  He was always looking for ways to improve the equations.  I felt guilt.  If it wasn’t for me, he would still be working in this lab.  The guilt suddenly, but not unexpectedly transformed into anger.  He had been the instrument of his own downfall; I had nothing to do with it.  I looked up at the character, then at the lab.  The table was covered in numerous devices and instrument, taunting me.  To my own surprise, I roared and cleared the table in one swift movement.  The sound of glass shattering brought me back to reality.  Panting, I walked back to my seat and resumed my reflection. 
 

0 comments:

Post a Comment

ShareThis