Friday Fictioneers – The Return

24 Replies
PHOTO PROMPT © Amy Reese

PHOTO PROMPT © Amy Reese

“It’s only been four months,” I said, touching the large tree growing in the middle of the platform.

Lt. Miller gave me a scolding glance then continued her search.

A beacon announced the presence of the overgrown, long abandoned spaceport. The entire planet was bathed in radio silence except for this landing aid.

What had happened on Earth as the Freedom made its round trip at near light speed? Were we too late?

Two men in decontamination suits appeared. They were armed.

“Return to your ship,” one said. “You carry the virus.”

Lt. Miller smiled. “We found the cure.”

—

Word count = 99

Friday Fictioneers is hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  This weeks prompt is here and uses a photo provided by Amy Reese.  Read more or join in by following the “linky“

Since this was a bit of a miss I did another entry for this challenge.

I made an expanded version, hopefully a little more clear!

24 thoughts on “Friday Fictioneers – The Return”

  2. Pingback: If We Were Having Coffee – 1/16/2016 | Trent's World (the Blog)

  5. Pingback: The Return – Expanded Edition | Trent's World (the Blog)

  6. Pingback: Friday Fictioneer – The Stairway | Trent's World (the Blog)

    1. trentpmcd Post author

      The “decon” guys thought they had brought the virus with them when they left Earth and didn’t want it reintroduced if they came back, perhaps starting a new pandemic. They did bring the virus with them, but they had found a cure while on the voyage.

      Like

      Reply ↓
    1. trentpmcd Post author

      I must have missed something if you got lost in 99 words. Anyway, quick synopses (hopefully less than 99 words!) They have been away from Earth for 4 months of their personal time, but were traveling at near light speed, so because of Relativity many years have gone by. How many years? Well, there’s a large tree growing in the middle of the spaceports landing platform, so it must have been a while. They left at the beginning of the epidemic, but Earth was still up and running. When they return it seems dead – there are no radio signals at all except for the landing beacon at the space port. They wonder what has happened. But they discover there still are people, and the people want them to leave since they might carry the virus that destroyed the planet’s population. However, in the last line you discover (though it was hinted earlier with the sentence “Were we too late?”) that they had discovered the cure for the virus on their 4 month journey.
      I’m sorry, I tried to pack as much meaning into each word to convey the story and the complex background, but I obviously missed something since I knew what I meant. Anyway, knowing when you didn’t quite hit the mark is just as important as knowing that it works. And it shows to me why I had dozens of comments last week and nothing so far this week.
      Thanks for the comment.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓
      1. rochellewisoff

        I think your synopsis might be longer than the story. ;) Although I appreciated the explanation.
        Do you have someone you can bounce your stories off of before you post? I find this helpful. I usually have my husband read mine. If he doesn’t get it it might not work. ;) It is a challenge to cram a whole story into a hundred words, but it’s worth the effort. I feel that it’s made a huge difference in my longer works. You start to get an idea of what’s important to say and what’s not.
        Keep at it. It’s worth the work.

        Shalom…again,

        Rochelle

        Like

        Reply ↓
        1. trentpmcd Post author

          I used the wrong word. A synopsis would be, “The crew of a spaceship discover that the Earth’s population has been decimated by an epidemic. They are relieved that some people have survived since they have discovered a cure while on their journey.” What I wrote was more of an explanation of the backstory and why I chose to tell the story the way I did, besides, of course, wanting to incorporate as much of the prompt photo into the story as possible. Actually, all of my 100-word stories are that way, that a description of the story would take far, far more than 100 words. And most of those I read are the same. I thought that was the goal, to put as much story and back story into those 100 words as possible. I think of a 20 word poem conveying the thoughts of a 1000 word dissertation.

          Anyway, I guess I missed here, which is funny since I spent much, much more time trying to get the exact right words for this one than the others I have posted.

          Like

          Reply ↓
    2. trentpmcd Post author

      Since this was such a big miss, is there a problem with adding a different story to the link up? I know most people only post one, so I don’t want to break any protocols.

      Like

      Reply ↓

Express Yourself

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s