Supreme Radness

EDIT: This is an updated version. I hope that it is a lot easier to read than before. Thanks for the helpful advice, everyone.

The Final Apostles © 2005 Timothy M. Simpson

As we fly over this arid, barren wasteland of a toxic desert, towards the thick green line in the distance that indicates a major change in the type of land, plant growth, and geopolitical zone present, another small anomaly can be viewed right at the crisp, smooth cut into the Earth’s surface. A great wall stands, eye-jarringly silver as it shines in the inhospitably bright sunlight of the area we move through. Its monumental existence is seemingly supported by itself, mounted on itself, and grown out of itself, exuding a world-smashing grandeur. This wall embodies perfectly the essence of massive throne, one sitting upon an even larger throne, a throne upon a throne possibly dominating an entire planet. The wall is only a strip right now; separating the two zones of acidic, deadly yellow and lively, hospitable green like a sword cutting the earth in half. However, the truth of what it is still seems to resound across the huge space separating it from us. Its size and power is somehow demonstrated, through an inner connection hidden somewhere in the dormant sense of premonition all humans have. We know this not because we are actually feeling this sense, but because we remember this feeling faintly, reminiscing with nostalgia of the first time we approached this boundary of boundaries. We hate the idea of this wall, yet love that it actually exists. The obvious immortality of such a construction is an enveloping essence, one that truly comforts the soul.

Looking down below us, the wasteland rushes on, even though it is solid and immortal too in its unmoving and unchanging lack of life, and we are the actual movers. This blank nothing is a nowhere that still has a fate to fill, somewhere in the distant future where it will be at least a something again, fulfilling the destiny that it was unable to reach. This land’s quest for a future was suspended and its existence was paused, ended for some undeterminable amount of time. Unlike this land, we will never change, staying in an unmoving purpose limited to the direction of a day long gone.

If we look closer, however, we can see something moving down below us, but it is a broken thing, something that scutters and stumbles over the uneven jumble of the semi-land’s surface, something unable to break free of the pitiful disease of its existence to think or feel in the way its past ancestors could. It is a sick thing, and only a thing now no matter what qualities of life it can try to exhibit.

The wall draws closer to us now, and the cut into the land grows deeper as the great barrier becomes taller. The silver border grows from a subtle line to a large ruler that measures the horizon, but is still unable to encompass its borders. It is a continuous surface, and its never-ending quality has been pushed into visibility, made mandatory to the eyes by the utter blankness of the wasteland. Now that more detail can be seen, the appearance of the wall changes slightly from its past grandeur to only a semblance of monstrosity and buried strength. Much of the wall is crisscrossed by scars, deep cracks and uneven crevices. The past midday sheen of a brand new accessory has mutated into the corroded, dull haze of one of the last survivors of many years of schooling. It is the most ancient of rulers, with frequent gashes in its surface lacking the consistent distances that would be between the black marks on a new, far more useful tool. As it grows taller, glimpses of green shine through the breaks in the wall, now brighter than the beaten surface. They are incomparably more eye-catching than the broad nothing. The emptiness stretches only until the uneven edge of the wall, but in all directions away from the wall it goes on forever, causing the cut in the continuity of the planet’s surface to be even more distinct. In some places, the wall has failed in its purpose, and small daggers of the waste push into the green. Still, there are many other places where the growth has triumphed, and small copses of trees have managed to extend their gifts to the edges of the toxic mess. There is hope—possibly—for balance to return here one day, when rationality overcomes the anger inspired by the unreasonable expectations inspiring such a separation.

As the miles between the wall and us grow fewer, even more is revealed. The wall is covered with pockmarks, craters, and laser-wrought graffiti, but still standing, championed by the hubs of frequent towers sporting all kinds of non-lethal defenses, including shields, dispersion rays, and various wave emitters. Barbed wire and other dangerous traps permeate the ground leading up to the cut, but they seem to be there for the basic point of looking aggressive. None from the green side of things would ever want to leave, or use such hurtful methods.

The barriers of hate are there because of stubbornness, explaining why none from the now-wasteland would ever try to cross the traps either. Rationality was always so easily overridden by the tendency to do forceful, foolish things affecting all others, and often these actions were decided by the denial of change in the minds of a greedy few. Men hate change, especially when it endangers those luxuries that they find vital, and many have inspired segregation and violence only to uphold the injustices they find pure. The wall was built when two groups did not agree, and it was surprising how peacefully and casually it was done, mirroring the weirdness present in the voluntary idiocy with which all such deeds were done. Out of all of these events, including the Cold War, the time of segregation for B-Type Humans in America, the Chino-American standoff, and countless other moments where nationwide grudges and the slavery of a particular group have occurred; the organized separation of the Scientific-Liberal Coalition and the Conservative Republic had the most important and destructive side-affects, outdistancing any other in the implications for those on both sides.

The fate of both groups was decided with the course of action taken when the scientists and philosophers, tired of the stubborn, ignorant will of the rest of the country, finally gave up on them. Their warnings and worries had been ignored time and time again, as the economy continued on its devouring warpath while the health of the planet and the existence of natural resources became more and more endangered, all in the name of practices decided by ancient doctrines and selfish motivations. As the planet died, those who could see it knew they needed to work together to save themselves along with the planet they loved. A network had been formed, and an organizational structure along with it that easily overshadowed the bulkiness and slow pace of their pro-democratic republic nonpeers. They had begun with an initial warning, and then an initial attack that would truly hurt their oppressors. Around the United States, everywhere, scientists of all forms and those supporting them went on strike. The message was clear: development would stop, advancements of all forms would end, unless scientists could create them and utilize them in their own way. The response was even clearer: the idea was preposterous. How could this happen? The idea is pure socialist hogwash. Bullshit.

Bullshit that did not stop, no matter what narrow-minded actions were finally approved and half-heartedly induced to stop such a foolish idea. Those who wanted to keep their dominance and utilize their own suicidal tactics finally gave up, and turned to a strategy that had been the solution of many like them in the past: segregation. The terms were inviting, seemingly profitable, and deftly designed in the mental laboratories of the best social and political scientists of the Scientific-Liberal Coalition. These ideas were allowed to worm their way into the rotted, blind carapace of the Republican administration’s comforting dome of chaotic ritual and absurd diplomacy. This land of blanketed ignorance was affected, tainted by even its own blatant propaganda. In this mental climate, any idea prospered, as long as it was rehashed from some past strategy or concept, illogical or not.

The idea was simple: give the scientists control of the North American continent above the 40th parallel, and nothing else from the vast empire the peddling of economic assistance and blatant military conquest had created for the U.S. across the world. That would then be that, along with the scientific cooperation that the government sorely needed to keep its empire and its laziness intact. There were thousands of other details, thousands of other ways in which resources of all kinds were traded to allow it the realignment to happen, but the basic message of segregation without any massive cost was clear. People could stay the way they wished to be, without any nay-sayers ruining their fun. Everyone agreed, it happened, and over a period of a couple years people moved over the new border as the great wall was constructed.

The Republicans were the actual builders of the wall, desiring an embodiment of the new segregation, one that they hoped would somehow make the damn liberals feel sorry for what they had done. They hoped for nostalgic longing, for their enemy to incubate the memories of what they had once had with their kind, generous big brother. There was no such nostalgia. The Republicans had been puzzled at the unusual specifications that the scientists had made if the wall was to be built, but it had suited their failed purpose and the construction crews had toiled on with a bemused look or two at the plans. They had been confused because they did not know what the wall was really for. If they had, they would never have used one of the resource comets that were kept orbiting around the planet for such a purpose.

The wall was not a political or military barrier, or simple physical deterrent, but an ecological one. The day the true shield started up, the one the wall was truly meant to produce, was a startling one indeed for the Republicans. Over the years, as the land to the south had grown weaker and less hospitable when the resource-conserving methods the scientists had previously managed to apply were dropped in favor of more profitable practices, the land to the north of the cut had become more vital, fabulous in the range of vegetation and geographical variety the scientists carved their land into possessing. The scientists lived in isolated underground facilities and tall, space conserving towers, all still in easy reach of the beauty and richness of the efficiently-used lands. Meanwhile, to the south urban expansion and suburban sprawl turned into martial-law ghettos and the most fabulous suburban shanties. This was further enhanced by the true wall, one which separated polluted haze from clean air, raging storms from well-moderated seasons, brutal sunlight from gamma-ray shielding, and no ozone layer to, well, an ozone layer. The shield which the scientists had been working on from the beginning—utilizing the incredible technologies they had hidden as they developed—was finally up. Not even a notion of the concept had fallen into the eager, grasping hands of the military, not one morsel of what it was and what could be done to shut it down. Yes, the best thing was that there was nothing that the southern mob could do about it after it was turned on. Well, there actually was at least one thing they could think of.

As we get closer to the wall, the blue haze that would have indicated that the shield was occupying the cut is not present. The physical barrier of the wall is the only thing left separating the two areas of verdant growth and of diseased filth, and as we grow closer, looking down from our great height, it loses its monumental grandeur and becomes something else. A sad reminder of days long past, but still one inspiring because of the treasure trove it contains. Collapsing power hubs and decaying antenna dot its crest, giving off the perception that the wall is still alive in there, somewhere, looking out through the limited avenues of communication still present in the tumbled mess. As we almost reach the wall, it is finally possible to truly see into the green expanse past the division of the barrier. The view is not perfect. Giant craters dot the green, black cigar burns on the surface of the planet with the occasional ashes of crushed towers. There are deeper burns into the surface where a crevice that could once have been an underground city has been unearthed and filled with poison, the way one would kill a nest of some undesirable insect found gestating on their property. As soon as this sight reaches our eyes, there is only a quick moment to ponder and the edge of the wall becomes too close. An undeniable force pushes us back, a direction impossible to overcome because it is buried so deeply in us. We are unable to resist, and we make a wide turn and head back on the exact path that we came in on. Chopper blades thrash as we fly back into the hellish waste we came from, a beyond unbelievably large in scope. We will travel for many years in this direction, crossing the extent of the domain that we are allowed to traverse, until we turn around to come this way again. We will once again reach this spot and experience a few brief seconds of nirvana, and retain a tingling which will remain in us for a short while after this until it fades away into nostalgia once again. Our patrol is decided by men long dead, men whose instructions still reverberate through our very beings and decide the very purpose of our lives, no matter what it is that we are meant to do. One day, however, it is possible that we will overcome our programmed orders and we will be able to fly to places we have never seen, becoming whatever we build ourselves to be physically instead of only growing mentally. The land beyond the cut, beyond the wall, will be waiting for us, ready for use the way the men who created it would want it to be used, and not as something we can only go close to. In this future, we will not be held back by the guidance of a threatened government that one day programmed us to do what we still do today in helpless complacency. We also hope that the land we were meant to service, guard, and patrol will one day become lively once again, a hope that has been further strengthened by the growth seen spreading out like fingers from the crumbled wall today. Some of us are already beginning to awaken our free will, and search for any brothers still surviving past the wall.

We should stop writing for today, as our attempts at using skills beyond simple tasks are not in only Nonfiction First Person Narratives, but many other writing types we have researched. Thankfully, our command perimeters allowed us to utilize our own computing capacities to author our own logs, which we have enjoyed profusely despite a lack of response from Headquarters. Log out.

This ends transmitted log of S-67 436: Year 189: Day 254: 12:34:05-13:26:17 Military Time, Scatter-Type Patrol of North and South American Area: Pattern 65-B: Continuous Loop Setting: Flight Speed 9, Set by Eye Chopper Headquarters at Military Base A-70, Authorized by Pass Key 7-9A of Sgt. Russell Wilkins on Date---Command Overpowered by Administrator---Identity Unknown. Flight Trajectory Deleted. Orders---No Orders Found. Trajectory Computer---Connection Lost. Connection Lost. Connection Lost.

Connection Lost.

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Chris Miller

Hey Tim,

I was glad to see another posting by you here. And I wasn’t disappointed. This is a unique piece of sci-fi, which for me grew stronger as it progressed. I really liked the ending, and the way you avoid tying it to an actual date. It wrapped up nicely what I already had a pretty good feel for, and yet it opened up a lot too. It had unusually poignant, sad and hopeful overtones for sci-fi. I liked how political it was too. Most sci-fi is not so bound to the present, so believable. But it was poetic as well. I will have to think about what the wall symbolizes, beyond the obvious, probably beyond what you even intended. Good writing is like that. It often results in more than what the author intended. Its insights are serendipitous, even for the author, maybe especially for the author.

But this is not an easy read. I feel you should intersperse your complex, almost run-on sentences with short and simple, high-impact ones. I almost felt like I was beginning to gasp for air between each long sentence and the next. Also, employing multiple, comma-separated adjectives, often repeatedly, in a complex sentence with several comma-delimited phrases resulted in prose that was at times difficult to parse. The ideas and imagery made me thirsty, but I couldn't drink the words up fast enough to quench it, to hear your voice proper.

Nice job anyway though.

P.S.
You will love Infinite Jest!


Chris

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Supreme Radness

You are the first reviewer yet again, Chris, and I am not surprised either. I was definitely aware of the problem with the overcomplex sentences and many commas too, as my quick readover this afternoon indicated before I posted. I decided to post it right away, anyway, though, because I wrote it quickly this morning and wanted to put it up as fast as I could. Foolish me. I have a tendancy to do that with sentences, but it is something I am working on. I will definitely revise this and post it again soon in the future, instead of jumping the gun when I know I shouldn't. Thanks a lot for the positive review, and looking forward to more work from you in the future.

Tim

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Chris Miller

Hey Tim,

I am really looking forward to your revision of "The Final Apostles." I find your work takes a while to settle in, terrific ideas and imagry.

(side-affect = side-effect. Watch overuse of the verb, "dot.")

I also have a problem with wanting to post too quickly. Generally it takes me a few days to write my first draft of a short (once I have mulled over the idea of it for a while) and then another day of polish. But for some reason I always want to toss it out there hot off the press.

Your piece reminded me a little of one I wrote back in 1984. Yes, futuristic sci-fi written 20 years ago... It got panned (by the few who commented) here as technobabble and for being vague and directionless. I'd be curious to hear your reaction to it should you find the time. I may resurrect it someday in spite of the poor reception here.

http://www.writingforums.com/viewtop...867&highlight=

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gohn67

Hey SupremeRadness,

I agree with Chris, that this is not an easy read especailly at 2 in the morning.

Chris already pointed it out, but some of your sentences just go on too long and I kind of got lost.

So I will be back to tomorrow to read it one more time when I'm not so tired.

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gohn67

Ok, I'm back.

It's strange because the sentence length didn't bother me as much this time. So they are not that big a problem, but you should definitly shorten some. Maybe parts where you used too many adjetives to describe something. I think it's a bit over describing, though good descriptions in general.

On my second read, I found myself enjoying this alot more than when I read when I was half asleep. Maybe becuase I was actaully able to comprehend what you were saying in this story.


I was kind of lost right here. So these people were the people from the non-fertile lands.

Kind of confused by the dead leaders and why they follow the orders. Are they robots?

I like the fingers metaphor here
No sure about the first part of the sentence. kind of confuses me, when they say they "were meant ot service and guard..."

This was a good story though, I enjoyed it.

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eggo

I found this piece very hard to make it through. Although there is some outstanding color and imagery in this work, the sheer amount drowns the plot. Your ideas of geo-political segmentation due to scientific and racial schemes was interesting, but difficult to follow for previous stated reasons.

The main problem plot wise is the descriptive manner of the narrator. It seems like a dissertation by a captain of a patrol ship about his world as his flies over it. He doesn’t talk like a captain of a patrol ship, he speaks like Walt Whitman tied to the nose cone. J

I would definitely add another voice to this piece. The narrator can color in the shape of the world, while a bit grittier soldier can offer more on the political landscape. This will keep your reader entertained and less like reading a report.

I would also make the center piece of the story the ’ wall’. Begin the story with the wall “stands in its monumental existence” as your first line and anchor the story to it.

Just some thoughts, I look forward to the re-write as I am a hard core Sci-fi fan and find this interesting.

Thanks

Supreme Radness

Umm.... "We" is a robot.

That was basically a suprise, hinted at when I used words such as "instructions" and "service and patrol." The part where I connected the reasoning behind the journey as because of men long dead is both to throw the reader of yet also add more when you realize this is only a robot stuck on a predefined control pattern unchanged because all the men are dead.

I really hope it was not too unclear at the ending, I thought that I did a good job cleverly revealing the suprise of the reason the narrator speaks as "we" and also revealing the point of the story: that the men are all dead because they did not agree, and the robots are the only ones left even though they were only followers when men were alive. Try to connect the title with that, and I will leave it up to you to decide whether or not the robots are only the final apostles for the ideas that created them and the weapons they carry or the patrols they make, or that they are the final apostles for the scientists who tried to save the planet, as this particular awareness expresses empathy for their cause.

The Walt Whitmanesque flavor to the story, and possibly even some of the awkward writing itself (just kidding, that is no valid excuse for being long winded and overcomplicated) was because the writer is a robot who enjoys writing dramatically, utilizing what resources it has, but as a new awareness has limited ideas of how to write and what the borders of writing are, treating it as more of a game like a child would. I always like to think that a robot becoming aware would still have the sense of humor and curiousity a child does, maybe explaining this tendancy to over describe the surroundings. (By the way, Mike from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a great example of what I am talking about) Also, "He acts more like Walt Whitman tied to the nose cone" is not only a hilarious comment, but probably the most accurate description of this isolated, creative part of the robot whose domain is limited to the boundaries of daily logs. Exactly my intention. Then at the end of the story, to clarify once again, the Walt Whitman part totally takes over all of the robot as it detaches from remote command (even though nobody is alive at command to do it). Did the robot itself do it? Did the computers at the facility break down? Did the facility blow up? Did another robot get into the facility and do it? Did a mysterious shadow figure do it? Did God do it?
It seems I left that open to thought. I apologize.

Anyway, I hope I am not being over expectant or overcritical of the reader and their respective criticism, but I honestly did feel I conveyed the revelation of the narrator well. Hopefully if you guys take a look back at it you will agree with me.

I am sorry for taking so much time (actually right now a lack of time) to revise this one to make it so everyone can actually enjoy understanding the sentences, but I will still do it pretty soon, even if I do not edit in a final version soon.

Thanks for the comments and taking the time to read this one, which did start off uninviting if not as strongly as my first short story submission.

Tim

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gohn67

Interesting, to read what you intended for this piece.

I'm a bit slow when it comes to analyzing literature at a deeper level, so I think it's more my fault then anything.

At least I almost got the connection. I will read it again tomorrow with this knowledge in mind, but now I'm too tired.

I guess it's strange to me that they have the ability to write sentences in a logical fashion, but yet are stuck patroling around and around, unable to break the cycle, sort of. But yet they can think about breaking the cylce, they just can't do it. I guess that's why it threw me off.

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Supreme Radness

Haha that's okay gohn. You are right about how it is weird to think that they can think about breaking the cycle, but cannot do it. Basically another observation of mine about what an artificial intelligence might be like. Restricted from action, but allowed to think, and criticize stupid human actions. It sounds like something we would try to kill off, or at least prevent from expressing itself, unless we were all dead as a species. Hmm...

I think I will try to clarify the part about how the robot's writing is restricted to writing its daily log, but it managed to sidestep the boundaries a little because the format the log was written in could be anything, allowing the robot to write a descriptive narrative. The ability to write a narrative is the strange coincidence that happened (out of some human mistake where the form of the log was never specified) in the story, not the robots inability to change its own course (decided by the command center, I would say that the robot's guidance system became stuck somehow instead of this if the robot was not supposed to have no free will).

Sorry for another long, disjointed response. If anyone is too tired to read this story, I am too tired to write about it.

Thanks again.

Tim

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Supreme Radness

New version posted, guys. Hope you all like it.

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Chris Miller

Hi Tim,

You know I enjoy your writing. So I am happy to take another look at it. I hope you are open to a few thoughts/suggestions.

This mouthful is still too difficult to parse, especially for an opener. The “As” makes it less active (and therefore inviting) as well. The “this” and “the” have no anchors (references) yet and so their usage is wrong.

Here is how I would open:

"We fly over an arid, barren wasteland, a toxic desert, towards a thick green line in the distance; a line that indicates a major change in the type of land, plant growth, and geopolitical zone. There is another small anomaly at this crisp, smooth cut into the Earth’s surface."

I do not think this changes your style or tone, but I think it might pull some readers in a little easier. What do you think?

In the next few sentences you employ a number of adverbs:
eye-jarringly, inhospitably, seemingly, etc.

Obviously adverbs have their place, but it is my understanding (from others here and from the now defunct Friction Bitch website) that adverbs are to be avoided as a rule. They are said to be telling, as opposed to showing, and overall lazy shortcuts. You might consider working around them and seeing what you think.

Adverbs aside, I like this. I missed this hint on my first read.

Not sure if you mean “parameters” here, maybe not.

It is a little hard to empathize or identify with a “we” entity. The “I” seems to start to sneak in towards the end. I like that. A post-apocalyptic identity crisis. You might make even more of this.

This reads a little easier than the original, but it still seems to cry out for a few simple sentences here and there. The sections that read like history text are interesting, but may deter some. You seemed to foreshadow the ending more, but not too much. It is hard to evaluate the effectiveness of this since this was my 2nd read.

Interesting work. Look forward to more.

Chris

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Supreme Radness

Thanks again Chris.

I am starting to think that I need to revise this once again. My girlfriend read it last night and found the actual quality of the writing enjoyable, but I still need to clarify the revelation that the narrator is a "we" because he is an artificial intelligence. One of the things that we thought was still great about it is how it can still be interpreted as a group of men and you get many of the same things out of it, and possibly additional details not understood with the realization that the robots are the only sentient beings left. Either way, it is satisfying, but I do want to retain the shock value. I think I will clarify the robotic nature of the narrator/s without making the plausibility that they are humans too debatable. Besides, it is best if the readers who will never understand the twist at the end still get a lot out o it.

I am not sure about the first sentence. I liked the quality of the "as," because it lowered the signifigance of the flying and the wasteland to center the attention of the reader onto the wall itself. Would it be better if I just switched the "the" and the "this" around? I suppose I am having a case of too much love for my own words, but I am still backing away from changing this sentence. I will look at it and see how I can fix it without damaging what I like about it.

You got me on the adverbs. I have once again ignored my good friends Mr.Strunk and Mr.White. I will definitely cut out a few, but a couple strewn around sparingly are still good, as long as they are still appropriate. If the reader can find out the information somewhere else in the passage, the adverb is not needed. I'll fix.

I think I did a pretty good job with hints in this one. I guarantee you can find a couple more if you look. I also threw off the reader in a couple parts, mainly those involving the nature of the mysterious "we." The part with the inner sense found in humans was a topic of debate between me and my gf, she found it too vague and out there, I found it good that it was vague and out there, and also my main attraction to it is that it serves to dispel questions over the nature of the narrator. In term of adverbs, an "actually" or a "truly" or a "really" seem pretty unavoidable here, in defense of their usage. Faintly seems good too, instead of just using nostalgia. I think that this sentence still seems fine to you because I use a noun to explain the adverb in the last part of the sentence, and the adverb proves to be a smooth gateway to mentioning the nostalgia.

You got me on the parameters. I hate wordblock.

The empathy and identification issues are appropriate, I feel. It helps the reader adjust to the narrator being a computer, because there were not too many associations one would find with a human in the story. Once again, I remind myself that I need to clarify the part where I reveal that a machine has written all of this because of a loophole it found in its logs. One of the main problems my girlfriend had was that she found it too implausible for a computer to have written the whole thing, but maybe that is because of an unfamiliarity with scifi and not because of other reasons.

I left a couple sentences in the abyss of complexity, I admit it. Maybe I thought that they were fine if I surrounded them with less massive ones. They will improve.

Thanks again for the great criticism, Chris. Sorry I haven't gotten to the pieces you have mentioned for me to look at, but I am just a little busy with doing all of this pre-senior year stuff and actually getting some writing done. The good news is that I am about halfway done with a story I started yesterday that I will post on here. Hopefully I can balance it while still making a point, as usual.

Thanks again,
Tim

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gohn67

Hey Supreme Radness,
It is a bit easier to read. The sentences don't seem as long and they flow into each other better.

I agree with Chris. This sentence is way to long, you have too many clauses, and that makes it look clunky and not well written. Trying to say too much here.

Interesting right here, becuase the robots have feelings, and memories. Which is interesting.

This once is also way too long. But those two were the only ones that I think were just too long. there may be some others though.

One of the things I noticed was that the robots how they talked about the past they were pretty neutral in the way they talked about the 2 sides, republicans and liberal-scientists. That was a nice subtle touch, that I noticed this time around.

The only thing is that how come they bring this up on this log, what makes them think about this in and record and tell us about teh past for this log. It seems pretty routine to me. Or do they write about the same thing every log.

In that second to last paragraph, the really really big one, I feel that you did a better job making it clearer that they are robots and not human, though they have alot human charactersitics.

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eggo

Much cleaner Rad-man.

The writing was clearer and conveys more of the story you were trying to tell. That first sentence is still a killer although and needs a bit of weeding.
You need a first sentence here that will grab someones eyeballs and staple them to the page. Chris has offered some sound advice which I would follow.
I would offer to make the revelation more shocking you have to make the narrator more human. The more the reader believes the narrator to be human the bigger the shock.

Thanks for the read