It's a long way to the Froxteth Nebula

This week, I’m going to do things a bit differently. I’m going to keep things short(ish) for one thing and for a second thing, I’m not actually going to say what element of storytelling I’m covering this week. All I’m going to do is present two versions of the same sequence and what lessons you learn from them is up to you.

Version 1:

Archie ran across the sky-way, a corridor of steel and glass reaching out from one tower to the next. Ahead lay a lift crowded with a gaggle of tourists. The doors were closing and Archie knew if they shut with him outside, the Mognar Slavers chasing him would have an easy capture.

He tried to run faster, but his lungs already burned and his muscles were heavy with lactic acid generated by running too far and for too long. In fact, it seemed as if his limbs grew heavier with each frantic step and his progress toward those closing lift doors slowed, rather than increased at the sight of them sliding inexorably together.

Archie wanted to glance over his shoulder, look back to see how close his pursuers were, but he dared not risk stumbling or seeing them at his back and panicking his heart more than it could bear. Instead he kept his eyes fixed firmly ahead, which left him staring at the lift doors as they finally drew shut.

He skidded to a stop and thrust his fingers into the narrow gap between the doors, but what meagre purchase he found could not prise them apart. A sinking feeling grabbed at his stomach as the floor indicator above the door counted the gaggle of tourists down from the five hundredth floor.

Archie spun around and saw the Mognar Slavers advancing. The chase had only made them look uglier to Archie – the warts were bigger and more pustulant, the tusks pointier, the exposed bladders fit to bursting with acrid urine. Their fearsome Mognar war-blades were drawn and the electro-nets they carried pulsed and sparked and promised his capture would be painful.

With the lift gone and the skyway blocked by slavers, Archie looked around for another means of escape. He was surrounded by glass and beyond that, bright blue sky.

“You’re doomed!” growled one of the Mognar slavers, saliva dripping from its tusks as it spoke.

Archie planted his feet in a combat stance and reached into the pocket of his Bermuda shorts.

“Not while I have my trusty Deus Ex Machine Gun,” he said, producing the weapon in question and taking aim at the vile aliens marching toward him.

“Ha! Give it your best shot,” said the slaver, confident in his military-grade personal force-field.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Archie, lowering the barrel of his gun and unleashing a volley of bullets that cut into the floor and then across the walls and ceiling; each impact puncturing panelling, ripping holes that let through the wind whipping around the sky-way.

The roar of the gun was joined by howling from the Mognars, who began to lumber forward. The floor shook under their passing, but Archie kept his finger tight around the trigger, emptying the last of his clip into destabilising the structural integrity of the suspended corridor such that the next step the Mognars took caused the sky-way to break away from the tower, pitching downwards in wails of tortured metal and alarmed Mognars.

Archie began to expel a sigh of relief, but an electro-net was thrown toward him and caught his foot. He reached down to free himself, but a touch of the dire mesh shocked his fingers with electricity. He tried to ignore the pain, but the weight of a falling Mognar suddenly pulled the net taut and yanked Archie off his feet.

The polished floor offered no means of arresting his desperate slide toward the broken edge of the sky-way, an edge that drew rapidly toward him and cut up across his stomach and jaw, leaving two kilometres of fresh air beneath his feet. Only his feeble fingers saved him from a plunge that would provide far too long to contemplate death by pavement.

Archie glanced down at a city floor made hazy by the thin cloud that wreathed its most towering structures and saw two dwindling dots; unfortunate Mognars tumbling earthward, war-blades still in hand. A third was closer, its fist gripping the end of the electro-net that did not spark and fire Archie’s foot with electric pain that numbed his senses. He was almost glad of that, because it almost made him forget the agonising pain in his fingers as they protested against the weight they held.

And then their protests ended, because they couldn’t hold Archie any longer and he fell after the electro-net and the Mognar slavers with his only thought being that he would have preferred a quick death, rather than one that still lay a long minute or two away.

Version 2:

Archie dashed across the sky-way. The lift doors ahead were closing…

He tried to run faster, but his lungs already burned.

Closing…

He didn’t know how close his pursuers were…

Closing…

But it didn’t matter if he could just reach…

Closed.

Archie skidded to a stop and tried wedging his fingers between the doors. No dice. The lift was already gone.

He spun around. The Mognar Slavers advanced, sparking electro-nets in hand, eager to snare him.

Save for the departed lift and the skyway ahead, there was no other exit from the glass-dome atop the tower.

“You’re doomed!” growled one of the Mognar slavers.

“Not while I have my trusty Deus Ex Machine Gun,” quipped Archie, whipping the weapon in question from his shorts.

“Ha! Give it your best shot,” said the slaver, confident in his military-grade personal force-field.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Archie, unleashing a volley of gunfire.

But he did not fire at the Mognars. His energised bullets ripped into the skyway. Floor, walls, ceiling; all began to splinter and crack under the barrage.

The Mognars howled and ran forward, but it was too late. The sky-way could no longer support its own weight. Tortured metal cried out as the corridor in the air buckled and broke away from the tower.

Archie did not have time to savour the sight of his pursuers falling toward a ground two kilometres below. An electro-net flung in desperation caught his foot. He reached down to free himself, but a sudden pull yanked him off his feet.

He slid across the polished floor toward the edge and then over, his fingers arresting his fall at the last moment.

Archie glanced down. The city was a dizzying distance beneath his feet. Closer to was the last of the slavers, gripping the other end of the net – the end that did not spark and fire Archie’s foot with electric pain that numbed his senses and almost made him forget the pain in his fingers that warned he would not be able to hold on for even one... more... second...

Archie fell.

Thus concludes today’s lesson. Oh, but in case you wondered what happened next in either case:

Archie woke up three days later in hospital. He remembered nothing of his fall to a certain death and last minute rescue at the hands of his trusty pilot Deus Ex MacReady, so when MacReady insisted this made them even for the time he broke Archie’s lawnmower, Archie wasn’t having any of it.

“But I’ll tell you what, MacReady,” said Archie, “if you come with me on one last job to the Froxteth Nebula, I’ll let you buy me a Martian Vodka on the rocks and we’ll call it quits.”

And they both laughed, though the robot nurse in the room hadn’t a clue why. Perhaps it was another nitrous oxide leak.