So, without further ado, I present to you my latest project, or rather the introduction to it. I'm trying to write a Sci-Fi adaptation based on the Robin Hood mythology, but with my own personal spin, so let's see what people think so far. As with most of my projects, I still don't have a title yet, not even a working one, so any suggestions would be appreciated.
Anyhoo... To the story!
The world had become a lurid place, Drake mused as he sat on
top of one of the few actual buildings remaining in this section of Outertown.
He glanced to the dusty street below at a woman, begging for scraps or a few
coins with which she could feed herself and her family; nobody was alone in
Outertown. That was one of the things that made life here both difficult, yet
almost bearable: dependency. People had to find ways to provide not only for
themselves, but for their loved ones also, but it was also those loved ones who
gave them the drive to keep living. Drake had no family; he had no ‘loved ones’
that relied on him, and yet he still had that drive. He considered each and
every person within Section 18 to be a part of an extended family, and it was
for that family that he lived.
The Spire shone in the distance; it was never truly dark in
the sections, for there were always lights from the Spire. Like the ancient
stories of the Tower of Babylon, it reached up from the ground to the very
heavens, all for the sake of energy. Fifty years ago, the pollution levels grew
so high that the clouds of smog began to block out the sun to the point where
crops began to dwindle, energy reserves began to falter and grow short, so a
plan was put into action. Scientists developed a new type of nano-machine, the
‘Solarite’, and using these Solarites, they created a network of panels above
the obscuring cloud of grime that absorbed the missing solar energy from the
outer atmosphere and relayed it through a web and into the batteries down on
the earth below. These batteries fuelled generators, which then fuelled the
city that was inevitably built around them, the city that became the Spire; a
haven for the rich and the required, for anyone able to afford the luxury of self
perpetuating energy, leaving many outside the Spire’s walls, living on the
residual energy that could be scrounged, bargained for or stolen.
Alarm bells began to ring and a sense of panic cluttered the
air as people began to hurry to their huts. Few things warranted an alarm call
in Section 18. It usually meant either a Waste Beast had broken through the
border, or the less likely, yet more dangerous possibility; Section 12 were
running another raid.
Little was known about Section 12, other than they were barbarous
in nature and had no respect for those weaker than them; being considered the
weakest Section, 12 had a particular disdain for 18. As such, whenever Section
12 decided that they were short on supplies, it was usually 18 that they
raided.
Drake hopped from his rooftop perch and landed in the small
alley between the building and the hut next to it. He glanced into the street
and saw the last few people clear into their homes and the dust slowly settling
back on the ground. The only people left out in the street were three of the
Section Wardens, each clutching their shock-staves and readying for whatever
had caused such panic. Drake drew his own weapons, a pair of matched
shock-sticks; not his favoured weapon, but in a situation where he didn’t know
and couldn’t see what would be attacking him, it was better to ready and get
close in, he assumed. That was Warden training 101. Drake was a Freelance
Warden, able to be assigned to any Section, and with more intensive training
than regular Section Wardens, but he chose to stay in 18, and he wasn’t about
to let whatever this threat was ruin his Section, or his day.
That's all for now.
Craiggy.
