The Future Vision XPRIZE running right now, with a submission deadline of August 15, calls for a three-minute video and a twelve-page treatment plus logline and synopsis and personal statement. The content is to portray a hopeful, compelling and optimistic, technology-forward vision of our species’ future.
Well, shoot, that’s what I’ve been writing about for the past six years.
The grand prize goal is to make a feature film to inspire the next generation of innovators, much as Star Trek TOS did in the ‘60s. Lesser prizes will help develop scripts and such.
My three novels (fourth in progress), several novellas and double handful of short stories are all protopian, that is, I write about a future that will be incrementally better every day. My stories are grounded in actual science and feasible extrapolations, taking into account the frailties of human nature and exploiting my scholarship in the history of technology. Rich material to choose from.
I’ve picked out my most likely novella, Skyboard. Years back, it earned a Silver Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future competition. So it’s got potential, I guess. I’m giving it a rewrite and working up a three-minute trailer for the film. Let’s see what I can do.
Here’s the current draft open. Critiques and encouragement welcome!
by D. A. Kelly
A perfect day for flying, for running as fast and as far as I could. Early morning sunlight diffracted rainbow gleams through the translucent deck. I shifted position to correct a subtle roll and pitch, feeling the steady hum of the thrusters underfoot, the white noise of airflow barely a whisper. A light breeze ruffled my hair and fluttered the tattletales taped around the deck’s edge. I scanned a cloudless horizon in all directions but directly astern, where a weather front massed in the distance. The treacherously clear air revealed my aircraft to anyone in line of sight.
I could’ve wished for a persistent fog or a low cloud deck. Flying would’ve been uncomfortably chilly and damp, but I would’ve worried less about observers. Nothing moved in this open countryside but slowly rotating wind turbines on a distant ridgeline and robot trucks on a highway, but I wasn’t reassured.
Of course, I wouldn’t actually wish for bad weather on a test flight; that’d be insane. It might also interfere with my measurements and observations, and I do like my science clean whenever possible.
This maiden flight of my skyboard should’ve been a triumphal occasion, a prolonged ‘Eureka!’ Instead, my thoughts were coerced, divided between piloting, observing the test flight, and attempting to analyze the multiple threats that had pressed me into this hurried course of action. I had over eight hundred kilometers to cover before nightfall in an untested experimental aircraft while remaining unobserved. This was not the way things were supposed to go.
My flight suit was warm enough, and the pressure of my goggles wasn’t uncomfortable. My stomach growled and I realized that I hadn’t eaten anything since before midnight. I ate a pocket snack, a bar rich in fat and salt and sugar, and sipped from a water bladder. I barely noted the taste of cashews and dark chocolate.
The aircraft’s remote control weighed down my dominant hand. My off hand counted off one two three four, thumb to tip of each finger in rapid succession, four three two one and back again.
My heart rate should’ve been steady, close to resting. Instead, my pulse randomly shot up as if I were facing a fight, and only fell off slowly. My adrenaline had also spiked repeatedly, from no apparent cause. I was on the edge of a panic attack.
Why did I have to be on the run from a demonstrably unstable federal agent? Why had another stranger tried first to damage, then to destroy my invention, nearly immolating a dozen people in the process?
My skyboard was unique, a prototype and proof of several concepts, evidence of a series of achievements, and a valuable fraction of my assets. I couldn’t afford to lose it or my own freedom and agency.
I shouldn’t have had to be worried about either. I’d been transparent, civil, friendly, sharing news of my experiences with like-minded colleagues. I’d been making an effort to be social, and the social conventions didn’t imply that anything like this would happen.
Until I had answers for this betrayal, I needed to hide my skyboard and myself.
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