Thanks for the depth and care of this review. It’s really helpful, and I’m glad you like the character!
Sci Fi & Fantasy / A Trip to Orbit (Analysis)
It was a very hot day – one of the hottest that summer. Garinda caught the bus a block from their building, and sat in the sweaty, humid air, with dozens of other sweating bodies, as the bus slowly lurched from stop to stop. She got off at the flea market, and walked through the doors of the flea market, which was set up on the inside of an large, crumbling, seemingly abandoned building. There was a huge central area, where the main vendors were set up, with rows and rows of tables, selling everything from food to clothing to what she was really looking for, electronic parts. She learned at one point that the building had been what had been called a “mall” – although she didn’t really know what a “mall” was. She knew that the flea market had been here for a long time.
She walked down to the area with the vendors selling electronics, and found the table with bins full of optical projectors. She rummaged through one of them, looking for the one thing she needed. Her old palmtop, the one she’d built a year ago, was starting to go – she was working on the next one – a bit faster cell, more memory, and a better optical projector. Most of the projectors in the bin were older than the one she was looking for – and many looked like they wouldn’t work.
She had been glad that she could get to this flea market this afternoon. It was Saturday, and as usual, her parents were both working. Most days that they didn’t have school, she’d be watching her younger sister, but today her sister had a sleepover at a friend’s unit, so Garinda was free to do what she wanted. She had plenty of money, that wasn’t the problem – it was just finding the time.
She finally found what looked like a fifth-generation Epson optical projector. Epsons were the best, and it was rare to find them used. Most of the time, that was because the people selling them didn’t know what they had. It was definitely better than the third-generation Canon she had – it looked about ½ the size. And it looked completely intact – which meant it probably worked fine.
“How much for this one?” She held it up.
“Do you know what that is, miss?” The man behind the table, with graying, greasy hair, and a large pot belly squinted at her.
She was annoyed already. “Yes, I do – how much is it?”
“Are you getting that for your husband?”
“What does it matter? How much is it?” She frowned, and looked at the guy behind the table. This was the part of it she hated. They never seemed to think she knew what she was doing. And they always wanted to rip her off.
“That will be 500,” the man said with a sneer, his yellow teeth showing.
“500? No way, this is only a fifth-gen. I can get a new seventh-gen for 200.” She bluffed, assuming he didn’t know it was an Epson. If it worked, it was worth at least that.
“I’ll give you 50.” She acted as if she was about to drop the projector back in the bin.
“60.”
“Fine.” She handed him 6 bills, and put the projector in her pocket. Greed always won.
Once she got home, she set on putting the new palmtop together. She had accumulated all of the tools and accessories she needed over the past couple of years. She was good with her hands, and after a while, she powered the new palmtop on, and ran a few tests. It worked well. Once she installed the new operating system, she could enjoy the experience of the new system. It had a much faster response, brighter, more vivid image in her eyes, and a much more accurate voice recognition system. That part was crucial. Most of the programmers she knew still used keyboards, but she couldn’t afford to be caught using one outside of home, because it would mean her palmtop would either get stolen from her, or destroyed by boys who thought girls shouldn’t be doing the stuff she was doing. The subvocal input device from her last palmtop was truly atrocious – she often had to an hour on what would have taken minutes on a keyboard.
She had one project she’d been really wanting to dig into – a new algorithm for the insert into Jupiter. It was such a tricky maneuver, and all of the current algorithms left something to be desired. She sat down in her comfortable chair, and got to work, the code starting to stream in front of her eyes.
In one world, the world she spent much of her waking life in, she was Garinda, a teenage girl, daughter of parents who were service workers. She was at the end of her last year of high school, and all of her female peers were getting prepared for a life as both service workers like their parents, as well as wives and mothers. Garinda would have liked to go to college, but college was all but impossible for any in her situation to attend.
But she had built herself a way out. In her other world, she was GarSix, an in-demand navigations programmer. She’d started programming more than 7 years ago, when her parents had given her an old aging laptop. She had spent hours exploring the net, and finding her niche. 3 years later, after entering (and winning) a contest for developing a new algorithm for a slingshot maneuver to get a ship from the moon to Saturn in the shortest possible time, she had devoted herself to space navigational algorithms completely.
It was, in some senses, an obsession. She had always been fascinated by space, and by physics. She had gone through several textbooks on her own, encouraged by her parents. Her school was basically useless for her – it was endless lectures on history, culture, sociology. The school was public, but had been one of the few schools left, so it was run by a group of people that had wanted to create a generation of people who would, instead of submissively sink into the work of their parents, would “rise up and build a new world.” But from Garinda’s perspective, the only new worlds to build were worlds that were not on Earth. So she spent all of her time during the school day programming and doing research, and very little of it actually paying attention.
In her avid reading of the background of navigational programming, she learned that it had come as somewhat of a surprise that programmers were better than pilots at figuring out the detailed timing and combination of actions needed for complex navigations in space. Most navigational programmers were a part of ship crews, and were considered as, or sometimes more, important than the pilots. The pilots chose which algorithms to use – but the algorithms were all done by the programmers. And, for some reason, navigational programming wasn’t considered especially sexy by programmers – most of them were busy coding the massive gaming platforms that had become a regular part of life in the US. But it was perfect for Garinda, since she had always wanted to be in space.
Garinda already had three job offers to become crew. She had not hidden either her age, or her parents’ class status. Although in the US, her class likely meant that she’d probably never get off Earth, it didn’t matter to the spaceship pilots these days. They were their own country, and wrote their own rules. Her gender, however, was known to no one, and it was still really hard to make ones way as a woman in space. She had decided that she wanted to find a crew where that wouldn’t matter, either. She thought she’d found that crew, and that captain.
The captain’s name was Jesrel, and she was known throughout the merchant-class planet-faring community as brilliant, and a rebel. She was one of a handful of women captains – she’d become captain at a young age, inheriting her father’s ship. Her major run was the Jupiter run, harvesting hydrogen from the atmosphere, and bringing it back to Earth. But Garinda knew that Jesrel had other plans – plans to eventually outfit her ship with one of the new star drives – and start exploring the stars. Garinda wanted to be on her ship before that happened.
Which was why she was so happy to finally have gotten to be able to work on this algorithm. She felt that if she could provide a better, more efficient algorithm for the Jupiter mining run, Jesrel would be willing to think about hiring Garinda as an assistant programmer. GarSix already knew Hugo, Jesrel’s programmer, fairly well, and was on friendly terms with him. Hugo liked GarSix’s work, and respected GarSix.
“Garinda?”
She was startled out of her concentration on the algorithm by her mother’s voice. She looked up, to see her mother poking her head into her room.
“Yes, mom, what’s up? Come in.”
Her mother, short in stature, with dark skin, and even darker eyes, walked into the room. “Garinda, I hate to drop this on you but …” Garinda steeled herself for the worst. When her mother preceded anything with that, it was generally very bad news.
“… your grandparents are coming to town next month, and they will be here for a week.”
Garinda didn’t need to be told which grandparents these were. The only grandparents who visited were her father’s parents. Garinda’s mother’s parents had disowned her mother years before, when she married “outside the church” as Garinda’s mother would say. Garinda’s mother had grown up in the south, and had been part of a very religious Pentacostal family. Garinda’s father’s family were from Chicago, and descended from Senegalese immigrants. They were devout Sunni muslims. Neither of Garinda’s parents practiced the religion of their birth.
Garinda hated the fact of the visit – and the timing couldn’t have been worse. Garinda was two weeks away from graduation. Two weeks away from what, in her grandparent’s estimation, was prime time to get married.
“Mom, you have to promise me that you won’t entertain their discussion of an arranged marriage.”
“Garinda, why would you …” Garinda stared at her mother, with a look she hoped her mother would recognize.
“OK, yes, I know that last time it seemed that we caved in …”
“Seemed? Mom, you all but said that the next time they visited, they could bring a list! And you know that they will.”
“I will do my best, Garinda.”
Garinda did not like the sound of that.
“Mom, if you cave in, you realize that you will have to face the consequences when there is no bride at the wedding. I will not get married. Not on Earth, at least.”
“Garinda, I just don’t understand your obsession with space. You can get a decent job here – you’re very smart. You could advance …”
“Advance to what? Managing some hotel? Why bother? Mom, face it. I’m leaving. I’m sorry that you can’t understand that. But I want to be in space. And I will get there.”
...
A chime sounded in her ear, interrupting her work on another program, this time an experimental algorithm for one of the new maneuvers needed for the star drive. She had been expertly feigning concentration on the teacher’s lecture while she worked. She brought up the email, feeling a little jittery inside. She’d set her email bot to chime only when she’d gotten an email from Jesrel. She and Jesrel had been negotiating about a new position – the one she’d hoped for. In her last email to Jesrel, the response to Jesrel’s salary offer, and transport off of Earth, Garinda had told Jesrel her real name, and gender. She was fairly sure that it wouldn’t matter to Jesrel, since most of Jesrel’s crew were women. But she worried anyway.
“Ha, I figured that, actually. You seemed so careful at times, and so … well… not male. Welcome to my crew. Hugo will probably be a little bummed to still be the only guy on board. I’ve made reservations for you on the July shuttle to Kennedy station, and your stay there for a week, until we dock there on the 13th.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. She’d be leaving Earth three weeks after graduation. She’d be in space, doing what she loved. And, she remembered, she’d be leaving right after her grandparents visit.
...
“Garinda, it is so wonderful to see you. You look very nice tonight. Fatima, get me a drink of tea.” Her grandfather took a seat in the living room, ordering his wife around. Garinda hated the way that her grandfather Moussa ordered all of the women around. The whole family, Garinda and her parents, her little sister, and her grandparents, sat together in the cramped living room of their unit.
Garinda had bowed to the inevitable, and worn the only dress she could stand – it had long sleeves and a collar, and went down to her ankles, but was roomy. It was, at least, a beautiful azure blue.
“We need to talk, Mamdou and Felicia,” he pointed to her, “Garinda here is ready for marriage. She has finished high school. I have the perfect man for her. Believe it or not, he’s going to be a diplomat. He’s a little older than she is, but he’s only 30, quite young really.”
Garinda started to open her mouth, but her father looked at her sharply, so she shut it. When she told her parents about the job, they had been mystified, but happy for her. They had been especially happy when they found out that her starting salary would be the US equivalent of four times their combined salaries. She planned to send them back money to make their lives a little easier, perhaps make it possible for one of them to retire.
“Garinda isn’t quite ready to marry, father. Give her a year.”
“A year? Why? What is she going to do? He’s going to be a diplomat, Mamadou. He already makes more money than both of you. She won’t even have to work! And he won’t wait. There are at least three other girls he’s interested in. We have to act now.”
“Father …”
“Mamadou, you must do this. This will mean so much to the family.”
Garinda watched her parents and grandparents talk as if it all was in slow motion. She knew, at that moment, that her parents were about to cave into her grandparent’s wishes. She had to speak up, no matter the consequences.
“Grandfather, I will not be getting married.”
“Garinda, hush, don’t talk right now.”
“Dad, I will not just sit here, and watch you agree to this. You know I am not getting married. Why not just tell them the truth?”
“What are you talking about child?” Her grandmother asked gently. Her grandmother rarely spoke.
She looked at her, smiling. “I’m leaving soon, grandmother.”
“Leaving? Where is there to go?”
“Space, grandmother. I was offered a job on an Earth-to-Jupiter mining ship, and I’m taking it. I’m leaving soon for Kennedy station, where I’ll meet the ship.”
There was utter silence in the room. She watched her grandparents. There were tears streaming down the face of her grandmother. She opened her purse, and got out a hankerchief, and wiped the tears from her face. Her grandfather looked, well, broken was the only word she could think of. His face had become haggard, and empty.
“Space. You are going into space.” Her grandfather croaked. She was stunned by his reaction. She’d expected arguments, demands, but not this. How was her getting married so important to him?
“Yes grandfather. I’m sorry that I won’t be getting married. I know that has been important to you …”
He shook his head. “I wanted to go into space.” His voice was almost inaudable.
“Excuse me grandfather?”
He looked as if he was gathering himself, and he looked directly at Garinda. His face became animated.
“When I was a teenager in Senegal, the African Union had just started its space program. They were recruiting new astronauts. I had spent years dreaming of the planets and stars, and I knew I would get to space, somehow. I worked like a dog to save up my money to get to Adis Ababa, where the new astronaut school was. Finally, when I was 20, I had saved up enough to get there. I started my journey from Dakar, where I was living then. I didn’t have enough money to fly, so I had to take the train. By the time I had gotten to N’Djamena, Chad, I’d heard that the AU space program had been shut down due to pressure from the Chinese. I realized then I’d never be an astronaut. So I decided to leave Africa, and come here.”
Garinda was stunned. She looked again at her grandmother, who was crying again, in looking at her husband. Garinda realized that her grandmother had known of this dream of his all along, and had mourned its loss with him.
“So what will you be doing in space, Garinda?” Her grandfather asked quietly. It was as if the conversation about her pending arranged marriage had never been.
“I’m a navigational programmer, grandfather.”
“Navigational programmer? Is that like being a pilot?”
“Not really – it’s kind of like a lot of guidance and help for the really complex maneuvers pilots need to do.”
He was quiet for a moment, then asked, in a hushed tone, “How much does it cost to get to the Kennedy station?”
Garinda was surprised by the question. “It’s 500 USU, which is the equivalent of about $20,000.”
He was quiet again. Then said, with certainty, “I’d like to go with you. Just to get to orbit. It will take my life savings, I’ll have to borrow some money … but to get to be in space, before I die – I must do it.”
...
He had his hand around her shoulders. She’d never felt this close to him, he’d always felt a threat to her, someone who bossed the women in his life around, and who could affect her fate. But she had learned, in these last few weeks, how much he had covered over, after his disappointment about getting into space. They had talked for hours about space, and space travel, and what her future was going to be like. She realized how much they had in common.
“Garinda, look at all of those stars. I can’t believe I’m seeing them from here. They don’t sparkle. It’s remarkable.”
They were standing on the observation deck of the Kennedy station, having arrived in the shuttle several days before. Garinda had been able to finagle a cabin with bunk beds with her reservation, so her grandfather could stay with her for the week without paying the exorbitant fees that it would cost for him to get his own cabin. It was tight, and cramped, but he was so happy to be at the station.
Her parents, particularly her father, had been bewildered by the whole thing. Apparently Moussa had never told his son about this dream of his, and it was a dream neither of her parents could understand.
The Windjammer, Jesrel’s ship, had docked, and Garinda was saying goodbye to her grandfather. He was going to stay one more night, then take the next shuttle back to Earth.
“Garinda, I knew that someday, I’d get into space. But I had no idea it would be because of my granddaughter, who I had been so eager to marry off. Will you forgive me?”
Garinda smiled. “Yes grandfather. But you must promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“Don’t bring a list with you next time you visit, to marry off my little sister, OK?”
He smiled. “No lists. I’ll let your little sister do as she pleases.”
Garinda gave him a hug, picked up her bag, turned, and walked toward the Windjammer.
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DragonQueen reviewed Version 1 -
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andersda reviewed Version 1 -
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I gave you high marks for talent overall. This is a nice coming of age story with some interesting twists. I thought yhere are some problems, though, that you may want to address. This isn;t tough love, It’s what I do whenever I look at a piece. The following is what I noticed on my read through.
“It was a very hot day” It may be just me, but this is dangerously close to “It was a dark and stormy night.” I read further on to see if you used this as a metaphorically or in some thematical element but, if it was there, I missed it.
The second and third sentences are bugging the hell out of me. They don’t seem right. Suggest “and sat with dozens of other sweaty bodies in the humid air. As the bus slowly lurched to a stop, she got off and walked through the doors of the flea market. Start the next sentence with inside.
“for, electronic parts.” use semicolon or a dash
“really” You’re as bad as me. I use this a lot and have to go back through my work and weed these out. Really, really doesn’t add anything and can usually be deleted.
““I’ll give you 50.” Nice. I like this whole negotiation.
“she set on putting the new palmtop together” I looked ahead to see if she had to work on this in more than one setting in which case she began to put together would be okay. It’s better just to say Once she got home she put the palmtop together. Subsequent sentences need to be reworked for this.
“she often had to an hour” appears to be missing “work for over an hour”
“But she had built” delete had
“her an old aging laptop” delete old redundant.
“algorithms completely” either a comma between them or move completely to after herself.
“It was, in some senses, an obsession” since you don’t expand on those senses how bout just “It was an obsession”
“had been one” you may only want to use past tense rather than past perfect.
This bit has other challenges suggest; The school was public, but was one of the few schools left. It was run by a group of people that had wanted to create a generation of people who, instead of submissively sinking into the work of their parents, would “rise up and build a new world.”
“were considered as, or sometimes more, important than the pilots.” vs. were sometimes considered more important than the pilots.
“programmers. And, for some” use a comma and don’t start a sentence with And.(Yeah, I know. I see it all the time in books)
“programmers – most of them” start new sentence with “Most”
“had three job offers to become crew” vs. three offers to join a crew.
“hidden either her age” delete “either”
“Earth, it didn’t” Earth. It didn’t
“pilots these days” delete “these days”.
“She had decided” decided is already past tense
“as brilliant, and a rebel” suggest “as a brilliant rebel”
“The captain’s name” this whole para needs to be redone.
“was startled out of her concentration on the algorithm by her mother’s voice.” vs. Her mind absorbed by the algorithm, she was startled by her mother’s voice.
“Garinda hated the fact of the visit” vs. Garinda hated that they were visiting”.
“entertain their discussion of an” vs. entertain any discussions of an
“I figured that, actually” delete actually
“your stay there for a week, until we dock” delete “for a week”
“and worn the only” vs. wore
“It was, at least, a beautiful” vs. At least, it was a beautiful azure blue
“down the face of her grandmother” vs. down her grandmother’s face
“Her grandfather looked, well, broken was the only word she could think of” vs. Her grandfather looked broken.
“to space, somehow. I worked” vs. to space. Somehow. I worked
“living then” delete then its already past tense.
“how much he had covered over, after his disappointment” Vs. how much he covered up his disappointment
“about this dream of his, and it was a dream neither of her parents could understand.” vs. about this dream of his that neither of her parents could understand.
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Bluedolphin reviewed Version 1 -
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“Garinda caught the bus a block from their building”
Their – Made me question who? So far I was only introduced to one character.
“Which was why she was so happy to finally have gotten to be able to work on this algorithm”
Wording doesn’t seem right.
“Once she installed the new operating system, she could enjoy the experience of the new system”
Maybe use a better phrase instead of repeating the word – system
“she often had to an hour on what would have taken minutes on a keyboard”
Wording? – she often had an hour on what would have taken minutes on a keyboard
“Garinda steeled herself for the worst”
Maybe you could find a better word then steeled
“She breathed a sigh of relief. She’d be leaving Earth three weeks after graduation”
Maybe add more emotion – I think she would be exploding with excitement at the acceptance
“When she told her parents about the job, they had been mystified, but happy for her”
Mystified?
Overall – Good story, interesting, I really liked it!
Kimbers reviewed Version 1 -
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Whoa whoa!!!
What happens next? You can’t leave me hanging like this. I was really getting into this piece!
You’ve made a really great start with this piece, introducing your character almost immediatly and succinctly.
Your tech knowledge and incorporation into this piece is certainly solid enough for the reader to believe it from the get go. Using brand names that are around today gives the reader a familiarity to latch onto.
One thing that simply oozes from this piece is GIRL POWER!!! Your protagonist is spunky and knows exactly what she wants. And is not afraid to go up against the system to get there. Here is a smart teenage girl, about to graduate high school with clear plans for her future. She has the expertise, the guts and the downright stubborness to get where she wants to go.
Initailly I was unclear at the time frame that this piece is set in. Yes, I knew it was futuristic when you said, “She learned at one point that the building had been what had been called a “mall” – although she didn’t really know what a “mall” was.” ’Was’, past tense to let the reader know that the times of the credit card temples had passed. Unfortunately I couldn’t figure how far forward the piece was until I read about the Jupiter run. Maybe clear this up slightly with a brief history lesson.
Garinda is certainly the kind of girl with her head firmly on her shoulders. She has plans for her future and the fact that those plans don’t seem to co-inside with those of her grandfather doesn’t seem to phase her. Yes it’s a situation many people find themselves in today, having their families make the decision about their future for them. And feeling like they are obliged to complete those plans to keep their family happy, but Garinda breaks the mould completely. Not only does she go against the family plan but she also announces it to everyone. Nice!
This piece is certainly heartwarming when she finds out not only how close her own dreams are t fruition but also how close they are in similarity to her gradfather’s. Shared dreams bring the two closer together than they had been previously and more than Garinda could realise. Her gradfather asking to go with her seems to span the void between the two and make them realise just how much it means to them to see the stars from orbit.
As I read Garinda I started to get this Bollywood princess image of her in my head that gradually adjusted to something more stronger and gung ho! Maybe a little description regarding Garinda just to get the reader imagining her as you see her in your head.
One thing I’d like to see more is the description of the world around them. Phsically, I mean. The buildings and architecture. How does it differ from today? The class system you’ve mentioned sounds interesting too. The vehicles, people and other technology that makes this world tick would give the reader a more tangible clue enabling them to imagine the world more clearly.
I knw you’ve stated that this is to be a short story, but so much more seems to be asking to be drawn from this piece. I certainly hope you develope it further. Now all I want to see is the crew and ship and how Garinda interacts with them. An all girl, bar one, crew certainly promises to make life interesting.
More, more, mooooooorrrrrreeee!!!!!!
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