[Winter Contest Entry 2020] The Warmth of a Cold Metal Heart

It was a typical late afternoon in the city. Birds flitted in the sky, chirping a meager song. The setting sun bathed the urban square in fading light. A small playground was in-between the run-down condominiums in a courtyard, lined with a hand-cultivated garden and dusty tomatoes. Children played on the jungle gym, shouting and giggling. Vince sat on a rusted metal bench off to the side. His head faced towards the playground as if he were keeping an eye on his little sister, but text and audio clips scrolled through his visual feed and commandeered his attention. He sighed and looked up at the sky before summoning a musical sheet across the visual field of his robotic eye. A vertical line started at the top and scanned the measures, letting out guitar tones as it passed notes until he was interrupted by a familiar voice.

“Vin, mom said we have to be back before dark. I want to go home now.” The thin 8-year-old, by her meek nature more than intent, snuck up on her brother. He looked ahead and phased the music away as Rose’s face appeared behind it. “Are you ready for the show? Can I come this time?” He scratched the back of his head and stood up, exhaling sharply before addressing this conversation again.

“Ain’t gonna happen. You’re too young and you know mom wouldn’t like that idea very much.” She looked to the ground, turned down yet again. “…Maybe someday, though.” The idea of a future promise did not console her. “You know I can play for you any time, anyway. You’ll get your very own private concert.” That idea made her a bit happier. She looked up with a toothy smile at the thought. “Now, come on. Let’s go, Ro.” They left the courtyard and walked a couple blocks. Rose grasped Vince’s warm left hand with her own as the two made their way along the dirty, cracked sidewalks and streets. Eventually they turned into one of the other condominiums until they found the door in the hallway they knew as home.

“Aww, are my little babies home?” The sugary sweet voice called out from the kitchen, eventually meeting them at the door while they were taking their shoes off.

“Not so little anymore, mom,” Vince said sternly.

“Fine, you can be my big baby, if you want,” she teased and gave him a pat and kiss on the side of the head. “Now come here, Rose. How are you doing down here? Mom needs to check.” She lifted Rose’s shirt which let out the teal pulsing glow underneath. Letters and numbers blipped on the screen on her chest. “So low today, you really should come home sooner. We’ll have to charge you again tonight.”

“I’m fine!” Rose pulled her shirt down quickly and wandered to her and Vince’s room. Her mom looked after her and sighed.

“It’s running low quickly these days. We should probably replace the battery,” she muttered to herself.

Vince stood next to her. “Yeah, but we don’t have too many left. We gotta make them last.” She nodded, as she knew he was right, even though it was frustrating.

Night came and Rose reclined in her bed while she watched her brother, barely noticing the cord coming from under her gown and sheets that plugged into the silent charging machine on the floor. Vince leaned against a lounge cushion on his cot with his bass in front of him as he plucked the instrument with his metallic right fingers. The plucks of the metal strings were precise, even in recognition of the artificial conduit. The bass tunes sounded out until the frail girl drifted off to sleep and the only illumination in the room was the light pollution outside the window from the city’s neon signs. Vince stopped strumming and checked the time. Only a short while now before the show. He got up as quietly as he could and headed out after saying goodbye to his mom. She wished him good luck and blew him an air kiss as she was reading an old classic novel in her chair. He held onto this moment of his home before he exited the condominium and headed to the bar as the city transitioned into night life.

The band members were all there and up shortly. Vince took a deep breath as he leaned against the backroom wall, bass strapped to his shoulder and hanging in front of him. The familiar measures scanned across his visual feed. He strummed a few notes as his bandmates gathered and smoked quickly before their set as the previous band wound down their final song. “Alright, show time,” Tommy, the lead singer, called out to the group, “now is just our warmup.” He turned his head and looked at Vince, gave a cocky smirk to his childhood best friend, and continued onto the stage. Tom was the kind of guy who got people around him into trouble, kind of like tonight. Saul, the drummer—and a real grungy and quiet guy—followed with dented steel drumsticks in hand. Vince stood up off the wall and looked down at his metal arm as he plucked a final bass chord with it before a hand pat him on the back and rubbed his shoulder. He looked up and there was Cyndi with her scarlet red electric guitar. She gave him a wink before heading to the stage ahead of him. Vince finally waltzed onto stage last and looked on as his eyes adjusted to the neon stage lights. There was a crowd of listeners, half already well-drunk and rowdy into the late evening. The band tuned, prepared, and soon gave each other affirmative signs. As Tom said: show time.

Performance was a kind of drug all on its own. One practices until automation. The atmosphere of the venue, the haze of the bar air, so many dancing and drinking bodies were sweating. The raspy acoustics never did any favors. Tunes fly in and fly by. Tom’s vocal modifications gave his singing an electric vibrance. The audience was mostly there by consequence. The people barely cared, as long as they could dance to something. The lights were bright and blinding. The house speakers were always shit. But the people felt it, and they moved. It was in that moment Vince felt nirvana. When he nailed his riffs, when his sounds harmonized with his band mates, when the echo of his solo slurred towards a sound of perfection. He felt like he was truly riding the moment. And like most great rides, it was all too fleeting. They wound down and concluded. Vince looked on from the stage and not much changed. He stood there as his friends packed up their instruments and got ready to leave to make room for the next band to take the stage. With a hefty exhale, he turned, unplugged his bass, and left with the rest of his crew.

“Great job out there, fellas. We were on top of our game.” Tom was hoarse and out of breath, but quite pleased. Cyndi, a little more pessimistic.

“You kidding, Tommy? Crowd didn’t even notice us.” She handed him a rolled cig she just lit and puffed from. He took it and waved his hand at her dismissively, the smoke following the end, drawing a pattern in the air.

“What, you expected a standing ovation? Not the scene for it, sister. You could feel it, though. In the air.” He breathed in the cig twice before handing it to Saul. “Just ask Vinny. Boy was on top of the world out there.” He gestured to Vince, who smirked.

“Don’t know if I’d go that far. But it did feel good,” Vince admitted. Saul inhaled on the cig and nodded.

“Damn straight.” Tom yanked the cigarette out of Saul’s hand and took another puff. Then he handed it over to Vince. “And you know it’s only half-time. Real show starts now…We ready?” Vince hesitated a couple seconds before reaching for the cig.

The band loaded their gear into Saul’s car and piled in. They drove through the city streets. Cars honked. People walked, drunk, high, and horny. They made their way to the outskirts in the warehouse district and pulled into a side alley without much visibility. There they parked, got out, and started to unpack and strap on different gear: Masks, vests, gloves, tools…guns.

“Alright. You know the drill. The warehouse across the way distributes goods across the city. Inside that building is gonna be tools, meds, prosthetics…batteries.” Tom nodded to Vince who was busy getting into the headspace.

“And most of the workers have gone home. Well, besides graveyard shift. And security.” Cyndi raised the pistol to test her aim: precise despite the adrenaline rushing.

“And that’s why we bust in quietly from the side. Vinny, if you see someone we shouldn’t, taze †˜em.” Vince grabbed the taser that Tom handed him.

“Well, if Saul gets us in nice and quiet, hopefully we won’t run into anyone at all.” Vince holstered the taser and then handed a backpack of tools to Saul.

“Don’t speak so soon. The size of the corp that runs the place? No way they haven’t got some kind of security measures on site,” Cyndi advised while zipping up the vest over herself.

“Yeah, and it pays to plan smart. So, let’s be ready for anything and get in there already. Follow me, team.” Tom headed down the alley towards their destination.
“Don’t treat this like a game, you idiot,” Cyndi remarked as she followed suit with Vince and Saul not far behind.

“Alright, Vince. You see the cameras?” Tom whispered back as he peeked out of the alley and found the street empty of bystanders. Vince crept up behind him and looked towards the warehouse grounds. A teal grid spread out over his prosthetic eye, augmenting his visuals, and highlighting the cameras above the fence, on the side of the building, and on the light posts.

“I’ve got it,” Vince muttered as he sent out a feedback ping across the network that sent them into an endless loop of the past hour’s feed. “Got †˜em. We’re good for the next hour at least.” The four crossed the street and scaled the fence before pressing into the building and following around the perimeter, reaching a less visible side. Saul reached into his pack and retrieved his lock-buster as they approached the back entrance where he got to work.

“Schematics of the joint say this will lead us to Packaging, but the hallway nearby will take us to Inventory. Keep your eyes open,” Tom warned as the forementioned blueprints flashed into Vince’s vision. If they could make it to the hallway, they would reduce their chances of being detected by any late workers in Packaging. “From there, we’ll have to see where they keep the more valuable items.” The lock-buster cut through the metal of the bolt after Saul affixed it to the door. The sizzling hiss was drawn out, but a preferably quieter approach.

Once the bolt had been sheared, Tom pulled the door open and went in first. When they all were in and looking around, they could see down the vast open room and the aisles of shelving containing packages ready to be loaded in the morning. As Cyndi suspected, there were a couple janitors wiping the floors and processors handling final preparations for distribution. Luckily, they were able to creep by without being noticed by those too engrossed in their responsibilities. Saul closed the door as the last one to enter and they headed into the nearby hallways exactly where it appeared on the blueprints. They followed it to the door to Inventory which was guarded by an electric lock. “Chip scanner. Gimmie a sec.” Cyndi grasped the protrusion of the device with the textured plastic mesh of her palm. A few red flashes flowed from her hand to the scanner until it parsed an acceptable entry with a green light. The door slid open and the way to the dark room opened.

As they made their way inside, they could see shelves of the more specialty items and began to load their packs and bags with supplies. Vince went shelf by shelf looking for exactly one certain kind of battery, the load most worthwhile to carry, and eventually found. He lifted a couple cases into his duffle bag, worth decades of power, and slung it over his shoulder. He went over to Tom who was grabbing packages of immunosuppressants and piling them into his own bag. Cyndi was accessing a console, looking up information on the location of even more valuable goods. “Find anything, Cyn?” Tom looked towards her as he zipped up the bag.

“Yeah, and you know what? There’s a classified registry entry labelling a door right in this room that goes to…labs? In a warehouse? Hold on…Right there.” Cyndi tapped a key with a concluding strike and looked towards the back end of the room. There revealed a camouflaged back panel built into the wall’s décor that slid open slowly. A foreboding dark red light bled into a descending staircase. The four kept quiet and stepped lightly down the stairs, vigilant for what they might find. A thin hallway led to a curtain, behind which voices could be heard.

“Wouldn’t that just be a headache? Sure, it brings us greater profit, but if we slow down the suppressing agent, then there’s nothing to stop the competitors from releasing a longer lasting one,” a shrewd, male, nasally voice critiqued.

“That might have been the case if there wasn’t a…business agreement for a 6-month treaty while the market adjusts to the higher demand,” a feminine voice chose their words carefully and strategically. “We will benefit. Everybody wins. So, I want you to make the adjustments and begin phasing in the new formula for distribution.” The four bandmates looked toward each other, unsure about the implications of the chance encounter. Vince peeled the curtain aside at the parting and peeked through, revealing the two figures: an older man bent in front of a few liquid samples, and someone androgynous in a suit with neat posture. Tom stepped in front of Vince, shoving the curtain aside and raising a pistol to the pair before his three friends could process what he was doing.

“You corp scumbags! Garbage. You’re gonna starve people of the meds they need to survive just to fill your accounts?” Tom led straight into virtuous questioning. Maybe because it sounded cool in his head, or maybe because he really did want to rebel and punish this system for their oppressive plans, but it was not met with surprise, or a witty retort, or even a villain’s monologue. It was met with a bullet in kind. The prim corporate extended their hand on reflex as their pointer shifted into a barrel and fired into Tom’s stomach. The blow sent him backwards as his three friends still attempted to realize what was going on.

The suit proceeded to raise their other hand to their ear calling into a communicator inside their head. “Send back up to me now, we’ve got trespassers.”

Cyndi was the first to react. “You bitch!” she yelled and fired her own pistol hitting her target in the head, immediately neutralizing them.

Vince composed himself and aimed at the man with his taser. “Ah! Wait—” he protested before Vince shot him with a blast of blue light, sending him convulsing to the floor. Cyndi and Saul grabbed Tom and tried to pick him up by the arms. Vince looked towards his old friend and hoped he was conscious, but that red-soaked shirt told him that the vest did not do enough to fully protect him. A persistent question nagged at Vince’s mind: What had just even happened? He felt dizzy and confused from everything moving too quickly.

“Come on! We’re getting out of here!” Cyndi’s shout grounded Vince to reality as he watched them drag Tom a few feet and help him up. Tom limped with their aid across the hallway and up the stairs. Vince grabbed Tom’s gun from the floor and noticed he was in fact conscious, but his breathing was slow and ragged. They managed to leave the warehouse through the way they came in, noticing Packaging was clear of the workers. They left the building not knowing how they would get Tom back over the fence, but as they walked around towards the front entrance of the warehouse, they found the gate down as two black cars drove in and turned to their sides. The occupants noticed the group and got out, the four doors sliding upwards revealing a group of goons in suits with weapons in hand and ready to fire. Cyndi and Saul fired at them, blasting the front group as the rest took cover behind their cars and fired back. They brought Tom behind a waist high concrete wall in front of the warehouse to serve as their own cover and leaned him up against it.

“Vince…give me my gun,” Tom muttered out as his friend did as he was told. He turned his head, slung his arm over the wall, and fired on the mooks near blindly before reloading the clip when it expired. “You know what to do, Vince…Shut †˜em down.” Vince knew what he meant, turned towards the front, and peeked over the wall, scanning the cars as the teal grid lined his vision. His friends fired on them to give him some time. He could see their electric makeup, most notably their batteries. With focus, he hacked the batteries into overcharge.

“There. Aim for the front corner. Right under the hood,” Vince took cover once again as the teal reticle faded from his face. Cyndi waited for an opening from their fire, aimed carefully, and shot spot on, igniting the leaking hydrogen, and exploding the car. The car besides it followed and the assailants behind both were sent flying. The bandmates looked passed their concrete shield after hiding from the blast. It appeared that the guards were either unconscious or dead. Either way, the band took the opportunity to leave, getting Tom up and heading out the front gate.

Right when it seemed they were in the clear, Vince watched ahead as Cyndi, Saul, and Tom were hit by what appeared to be a steel pole swung from behind the front gate. Vince looked to where it had come from and was suddenly face-to-face with a tall, broad, monster of a man with chrome arms and legs. Vince’s friends were sent flying forward into the street from the blow. Vince took a step back, but the man charged towards him, grabbed him, and lifted him off the ground by his vest with a single arm. “So, you’re the rat problem we’ve got on our hands. Bunch of street rat punks.” He tossed Vince across the street sending him crashing into the ground and rolling. The cybernetic man walked closer, coming in for another blow, but a gunshot pinged against the back of his head, deflected by the chrome exterior of his trapezius. He turned towards the shot. Vince leaned up to see it coming from Cyndi with Saul running down the alley towards the car. Vince took advantage of the distraction and shot him from the front with his taser. The zap of electricity surged through him and caused him to yell out, drop the pole, and face Vince again. “You’re dead, street rat!” he yelled as he charged forward again, but from behind him, Tom leaped onto his back and wrapped his legs around his waist and arm around his neck. The man tried to reach behind himself and smashed Tom and his back against a stone pillar in front of the warehouse. Although it made Tom wince from the pain, he raised his pistol to the side of the man’s head, firing once, twice, three times into the chrome exterior, which only slightly dented it, then once, twice more into his exposed temple and cheek, instantly eliminating him and causing him to fall backwards onto Tom in turn. The weight of the man collapsing down on him caused Tom to scream out as something within him crushed.

“Tommy!” Cyndi called out and rushed over to him, trying to get him conscious. Vince made his way over and helped Cyndi push the chrome man off him, revealing the splatter of viscera underneath. The sight nauseated Vince and he could feel his vision fade. Saul pulled over the car to the side of them in the street. “Come on, Vince…Help me get him in. We’re not leaving without him,” Cyndi pleaded. Saul opened the door and got out, then helped them drag Tom into the back. Cyndi got in with him and stroked his head in her lap, trying to get him conscious, sniffling through tears. Saul got in the front and slammed on the pedal as soon as Vince got in the front passenger seat after piling their bags and tools in the trunk. They fled the district as fast as they could, the sounds of police sirens let loose in the city behind them.

The memories of the rest of the night into the morning blurred for Vince as if it were barely reality, a lie, a nightmare, a heist gone wrong and in the worst way. Tom losing his pulse in the car, Cyndi’s wails, giving his best friend a back-alley burial he didn’t deserve. They split up, not knowing how safe each other would be. Vince got home exhausted with the rising sun. He stood there in the hallway in front of the door to his home. He hesitated but eventually unlocked it and entered. He closed and locked it behind him, making sure it was locked, as if it would seal away everything that had happened. He laid his bass against a wall and eventually slumped down on the couch in the main room, placing his duffle bag between his legs. He looked down towards it, containing his only worthwhile treasure from the heist. He picked it up onto his lap and unzipped it, peering inside. Vince’s mother came out of her bedroom in a robe and noticed him on the sofa. She called his name, but he did not respond and barely heard her. She walked over to him and saw the open duffle bag in his lap containing busted up cases of broken batteries. He leaned his head against the couch as he began to sob; tears streamed down his face as the emotional turmoil of the events spilled over and broke him into pieces. His mother sat down beside him and brought him in close, cradling his head.

Vince stayed awake and poked through the cases over the next couple hours. His mother did not ask questions, although she could draw a connection to the morning’s news which reported several fatalities at a warehouse due to what they were calling armed robbery. Investigators claimed the video surveillance at the scene was tampered with, pointed to a group of sophisticated criminals. The mayor pegged it on gang violence, decrying the criminal underground and how these acts justified his plans to implement increased surveillance and institute a greater number of checkpoints in the warehouse district to protect the safety of private citizens and their property.

In time, Vince found a few batteries from the cases that were functional, enough that it was not a total loss, putting them with the slim remainder they had in storage. Rose eventually woke up and asked Vince to tell her all about the show. She brought him his bass and so he played her a few tunes as their mother made breakfast. While he was playing for a content sister, he wistfully glanced outside the condo window at this town that was rotting from the inside out. In this city, they said there was endless opportunity, but also endless corruption, so you had to make do with your slice of paradise. He felt like a part of him died along with Tom. To live with loss, and to move forward and take care of family. Finding the strength to mature was only one trial he needed to overcome if he wanted to carve a place in this city for his loved ones. The other was navigating the hindrances this crooked system tossed their way. He had to safeguard his family and friends from this shady metropolis, for as long as it took. This struggle is what defined the people of the city, that beat within each of their cold metal hearts.

Either everything in this happens to be the biggest coincidence in the history of coincidences, or... yeah, this is straight up Cyberpunk. And I don’t mean the aesthetic, I mean the game! I’d say inspired, but it’s a bit too on the nose to be simply inspired. Down to the lines and names, haha.

That out of the way, I found it good. I thought for a quick Cyberpunk themed story, it hit all the bullets. A morally ambiguous main character who wants to do right but does wrong? Check. A corrupt city that’s bleeding its citizens dry? Check. A group of friends with cybernetics doing cool nifty tech stuff against some shady gang or group? Check! I’d say it did a good job incorporating all these. These tropes are well known for a reason when it comes to this theme: they work. I wish I got a bit more back story about how all the techs worked though. Like do they all have mechanical hearts or is it just his sister? If it’s just her, how did she get it? I feel like a few throwaway lines might have helped fleshed out Vince’s family and might have made me care for him more. Though, I understand if others would rather connect the dots and leave it to speculation. As the story progressed, I started realizing that he wasn’t just a kid who played in a band. You did a good job setting that up that I was quite eager to see when I would get to see Vince’s other side. I feel like it really fit the personality you were trying to go for. The story was quick and precise and could have benefitted from a bit more length, but once again, maybe that’s just me. I really enjoyed the descriptions during the action scenes since I could clearly picture it in my head; especially when they fought the Big Bad. I’m a sucker for descriptive action scenes and the fancy tech just made it better. The lulls were also really good. Despite me saying things could be fleshed out more, I think these lull scenes did a great job with flow and with giving insight into Vince’s moral standing. If anything, I wish these scenes were a bit longer!

Overall, I enjoyed this for what it was. Like I’ve been saying, I would have preferred a bit more length to really get things more established and maybe get me more invested, but that’s just me. It took the Cyberpunk skeleton and added a reasonable amount of story flesh that I feel could have been fattened up a bit more. Or should I say augmented?

...

It was good, Xen. I’ll let myself out now before I say something else stupid.

Thank you for the thoughtful post and analysis, crazr! You are so good to me.

I'd say you hit the obvious nail on the head when it came to inspiration, haha. I set out to write quite the trope for a cyberpunk story in my excitement for the game and ended up referencing things from it, believe it or not, without even meaning to. When the game came out, all the news of bugs and stuff made me think it was better to just wait, so I haven't played it at all beyond making my character. Then with the contest up, I figured it was best to just not play it anyway so that I could write my story fresh without too much bleeding into it, but I guess the excitement I had in the back of my mind made that inevitable. I realized pages into my story that V, the guy main character of the game, is called V because it's short for Vincent and I just about facepalmed, but said screw it. This is on top of discovering a notorious car death scene in my research of the game while in the middle of my writing that, even though I have not played it yet, ended up being dissappointingly similar. But I was simply too far in to scrap it and there wasn't enough time left to rewrite it just to try and hide that, so I just moved forward since I was having fun writing it out anyway. If it is any consolation at all, all of the names I selected in the story (even Vince!) were not chosen randomly, but selected from famous classic rock musicians of the 70s and 80s. I'll leave the guessing who to you!

That being said, I'm pleased that you appreciated the detail in the action scenes. I spent some time wondering if I was wasting too many words on the details, as they always say "show, don't tell," but I tend to usually settle on a descriptive style and tried to make comprimises by leaving some parts more to the imagination. From someone like you, an action-writing king, to have enjoyed them, that is quite a compliment, so thank you. Also, 10/10 pun.

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my story, I am very excited to get started on yours!

I’ll always give you a little comment, you’ve been doing it for me for so long, that it’s the least I could do. Plus, I genuinely enjoy reading anything you write, so it’s more of a fun thing I love to do after reading a story.

The similarities to Cyberpunk were fine, I actually found them quite amusing. I love the action scene, yes. It reminded me of and felt like when I’m describing what happens in a fight in D&D. Oh, and thank you for the comment about the way I write action scenes. Honestly, it very nice of you to say. I’ll definitely have to do some musician referencing after you pulled that JoJo style nomenclature. Haha.

I like it overall, but I do have problems with it. I think my main issue is it took longer for me to get a sense a conflict than it probably should have. I don't really get one until the mother checks Rose's battery life. Even then, it didn't feel that urgent to me. I wasn't sure if this was going to be a major conflict in the story, or just another problem Vince has to deal with.

Plenty of punk and cyber.

Here are some other things I noticed.



Got nothing against this characterization for Tom, but I think it would have been better to show it rather than tell it. I hate that phrase for some reason, but sometimes I think it's right.



Didn't get much characterization for Vince. There was this moment during the concert, and then a lot at the end of the story after the climax. For the most part however, you just describe his actions. I think it would have been nice to get into his head more.



It's a short story so space is at a premium, but this part falls into that classic cliche of the characters discussing something they should already know just for the benefit of the reader. I can't help but wonder if there's a better way to get this information across.



I've noticed a couple moments like this that describe someone's dialogue, and I don't think it's necessary. I think in this case it's obvious, and even in other cases when it's not obvious, some would argue that the story would be better served by trying to re-write the dialogue to make it obvious rather than add description.



This is confusing. There are two people she could be aiming at.



Should be "past". :)

Hey, my pleasure. I often think back to how much fun I had reading through the action scene from A Young Man's Journey between Reimi and Stacey for being why I would give you that well-deserved moniker. It sticks out in my memory as a proof why you would know a good action scene.



Hey, d! Thanks for dropping by to give your comment on my story.

These are all deserved critique and there definitely are parts where I had the same thoughts as you about spelling things out too overtly for exposition. A clear sign that a heist is unrealistic is when the team discusses details during or right before it, and I absolutely commited that one here knowingly. I will have to give more thought in the future for how to appropriately convey this kind of exposition through action and, corny as it is, showing and not telling.

I appreciate your commentary on pacing and characterization. There certainly was a conflict of voice between third-person and Vince's that I struggled with while writing this. The additional description following dialogue is a habit I picked up from my annoyance with dialogue tags and trying to create more variety while making it clear who is speaking which lines. I do think your commentary on it here has merit worth thinking about when they come up in my writing in the future.

And thanks for catching that word choice error!

No problem.

What I do see a lot of in place of dialogue tags are character actions just before dialogue, and readers will understand that the character who just performed that action is the same character speaking. Also, if you keep dialogue tags to "said" and a few other simple ones, they become invisible to readers because they're focused on the dialogue itself. They look to see whose name comes at the end of the dialogue, and move on.

I keep reading and the story keeps unfolding evermore plot.

Futuristic setting, MC living in poverty (or at least a situation where living must be difficult), there's music, a heist, some background dealings with companies, and of course the aftermath of it all. I didn't think I'd be reading something so full-bodied when I started. I'm impressed that you were able to fit it all.

As for criticism, I feel like the story is both very dense and part of a much larger picture. It reads something like prologue to a story that would eventually have Vince as it's main character. There are details such as the music, Vince's relationship with his band mates, and his personal home situation that makes me want to know more. I understand that Vince's household is having it pretty hard, and that Vince has begun to resort to robbery. It's alluded that this is also not their first heist, which also begs the question of how they were able to get so good, and why they were able to rob this place at all.

Perhaps this is just the constraints of the short story format at play. Always so much you want to add, but not enough room.

Overall though, I enjoyed it. It makes me want to really understand the full picture - the setting, Vince's situation, how his band mates have ended up. Particularly, I quite liked the somber ending. Vince having to cope with loss, and the narration framing his situation in the context of the corrupt city helps me take it all in. It helps me realize that this place must be pretty harsh.

Thank you, xnine, for coming to leave a thoughtful comment.

I acknowledge your critique about the density of the work. This has always been an issue with my form of writing. In recognition of this, to hear that you would still enjoy learning more about the world and aspects of the story is a great compliment and I appreciate it. What you said about the necessity of building a short story and limiting the information you can include, it's very true, as I'm sure you know well. I try to set up the narrative into acts, and that kind of helps keep my storyboard aimed in a meaningful direction.

Thank you for taking the time to read it and enjoying it, and I'm glad to have once again enjoyed another year of the contest alongside you.