Life in California in the Year 3910

Life in California in the Year 3910 (This story is the paper I turned in for English last week. Yes there are a few mistakes. Tell me what you think, just please be kind. Thank you. Katharine (Kate) W.)

Today we are going to be following the Park family. The Park family consists of four members one mother, Natalia, a father, Leon, and two sons, Mark and Alex. Mark is eighteen years old and in his final year of high school. Alex is sixteen years old and is a sophomore. Alex and Mark attend the same high school. Leon works for a large corporation in San Francisco and leaves for work around four-thirty in the morning many hours before the rest of the family is awake. It is now six-thirty.

A loud beeping sound comes from the master bedroom. Natalia wakes up, turns off the alarm clock, and gets out of bed. She looks at a large cylindrical object leaning against the wall.

“A-17, go and wake up Mark and Alex.” Natalia says to the cylindrical object, which stands and lights up.

“Yes Ma’am. Would you also like me to bring you a cup of coffee?” A-17 asks in a mechanical voice.

“Yes, thank you.” Natalia responds and watches as A-17 rolls out of the bedroom door and down the hallway. Natalia sits in a chair next to one of the windows and puts on a pair of glasses. She taps the side of the glasses’ frame lightly and they turn on and scroll through her email and check the weather report. A small silver golf ball like object floats through the air and lands on the arm of Natalia’s chair.

“Mrs. Park, you have a call from your husband waiting. Would you like to answer it?” the silver golf ball asks.

“Yes I would.”

A tiny green light blinks three times and then Leon’s voice comes out of the silver golf ball.

“Good morning Natalia. What do you thing of the new communications bot?” says Leon. Natalia looks appraisingly at the silver golf ball that is the communications bot.

“It’s interesting, and it takes some time to get used to it.” She responds.

“Okay, I was just wondering. Well, my break is over. Have a great day.”

“Thank you Leon. I hope that you also have a great day.” Natalia says and the bot cuts off the call. At that moment A-17 rolls back into the room holding a cup of coffee. “Thank you A-17.” She says and takes the coffee from the maid robot. “How are Mark and Alex this morning?”

“Mark is doing well. He is currently finishing some homework. Alex was awake when I entered his room and he claims not to feel well. His console glasses were next to him and it looked like he had been up all night. Should I page the nurse robot?”

“No A-17. That won’t be necessary.” Natalia says and walks to Alex’s room. She knocks loudly on the door. “Alexander Slade Park, I know that you aren’t sick. You were up all night playing with your console glasses weren’t you? Don’t make me get the nurse robot because I will.”

Inside the room Alex flinches at the sound of his full name which his parents and family members only use if he is in serious trouble. His mother slams open the door and he hastily shoves his console glasses under his pillow.

“I thought so.” His mother says when she sees him trying to hide the glasses. “Give them to me.” She says and holds her hand out palm up. Alex reluctantly takes them out from under the pillow and places them in her hand. “Your father and I will talk about this later, and you are grounded for two weeks.” She then turns around and walks away. He sighs and walks over to his closet.

“Jeans and a tee shirt.” He says and a touch screen pops up with all the possible jeans and tee shirt combinations he can make with the clothes that he has. Alex yawns and selects the combination of a pair of black jeans and a blue and white-stripped tee shirt. “The weather for today.” He says and the weather report for the day appears on the same screen. It is supposed to be sunny and clear today with highs around fifty degrees. Alex looks at this and yawns. “Selection of clean sweatshirts please.” He selects a black sweatshirt with a hood and then presses select all. The screen disappears and the doors open and the clothes he has chosen are folded and stacked on the floor. He picks them up and changes into them before walking to the kitchen to have breakfast.

It is now seven o’clock and Mark is sitting in the kitchen, which is a huge room, and watching the scenery change as the house slowly revolves. The house completes one revolution about every hour and is levitating thirty feet above the ground. The neighboring houses have been programmed so that they cannot be seen from another house because that would detract from the view. Mark gets bored with the view and looks around the kitchen. There are pots and pans hanging from large racks suspended from the ceiling. A large stove and refrigerator sit against the far wall and the sink is in an island not too far away. A kitchen robot attends to a waffle iron and takes plates out of the dishwasher and puts them into a cabinet. Alex enters the kitchen and sits in one of the chairs that line one side of the island with the sink. Alex looks watches the robot make a few waffles and then asks for one. The robot refuses to give him one until he uses complete sentences and says please. Mark laughs at him and then sits next to him. Alex glares at Mark and eats his waffle in silence.

“Good morning Mom.” Mark says as Natalia walks through the kitchen. She is dressed for work. She is wearing a gray suit with a purple blouse and gray pumps. Alex ignores her because he is still upset about having his console glasses taken away and being grounded.

“Good morning Mark and Alex. You need to hurry up and finish your breakfast because the school shuttle should be arriving soon, and you do not want to miss it and be late for school again.” Alex finishes his waffle and Mark goes to get his backpack out of his room. The two of them walk out the front door onto the cyber walk. The cyber walk is a completely invisible form of sidewalk that connects the houses and keeps people from falling out of the house and onto the ground thirty feet below. The shuttle arrives and Mark and Alex head to school. Natalia leaves for work about fifteen minutes later in her hover car.

Wow! O.O

You weren't kidding that is interesting :D

I like the way its framed with the cutting to all the characters. Nice one.

Haha! Makes me wish I had been born in 3910! Very awesome, Kate!

Thanks Bill ans Drac.

It's a really interesting piece of writing Kate :P I like it a lot actually! :D Same as Billeh, wish I was in the future :o

Very good. But I would say that when yo describe something describe it with some more describtive words. And when you describe the a charector give as much as posable. Also when someone is speaken give more describtion of how they actted.

EX: Alex is a sixteen year old boy, Tall and langy with deep black hair as the sky with no stars or moon, and eyes as blue as the sky.
EX: The silver like golf ball plunged to Natalias' side, with a flashing light.
EX: Alex gave up his concel glasses unwilling with the the sign of sarow and disguste in his eyes.

Do something like that. But that main subject and every thing else is great. I love it!

I would have given more description and stuff, but we had a very strict word limit.

I think that the slightly less description was very good and worked well, something that the writers of this community occasionally miss is that to write a long and good story, heaps of description is often not necessary, and leaving the reader to create their own character and almost their owns story creates a wonderful read. When is see a story with a paragraph to describe how a person moved from the fridge to the kitchen bench often annoys me, I find a fast-paced, less-descriptive story much better quality and a better read overall. Well done Nami, I know you said it, but try to check it a bit better next time :p a tip is to actually read it out loud, it will only take a few minutes and the result will be much better. But again, well done Nami, cool story. Lol, I just did a story review when I meant to compliment someone and present my views on a subject. Soz hahahahaha.

Just wondering Kate, before I give you feedback, was there a certain topic that you had to write to? Like in Australia for school creative writing we're always given either a theme or a phrase we must base the story around, so if I'm going to give you feedback it'd be useful to know if there was one =o

Thanks for the tips, review, and opinion Zev. ^_^

Yeah there was a topic Azk. We had to write about and describe part of a day in California in 3910, so what we thought life would be like. There was also a compare and contrast section that I wrote, but didn't really feel like publishing because it wasn't really part of the story.

Alright, well I think you did really well for the topic, you've written it so that it sounds incredibly natural to have robots flying around the house and 3D console glasses, I really liked it. Just to shove a little grammar criticism in here, you might just want to watch your tenses, you've written the story in present tense, e.g. "A loud beeping sound comes from the master bedroom. Natalia wakes up, turns off the alarm clock, and gets out of bed." though in a few sections you've switched over to past tense, e.g. "Yes, thank you.” Natalia responded and watched as A-17 rolled out of the bedroom door and down the hallway." Just might want to watch out for that. Apart from that though, it seems really good grammatically.
I love the way you were able to make everything seem so natural, I feel it really captured family life in the year 3910 and I think you made it very coherent and easy to read and understand. Very nicely done :D Good luck on getting a good grade for it.

I edited the story. I think I got most of the tense problems fixed.