HTH #4: "Ryder Secrets" Chapter 1

Hello again and welcome to another edition of "Humiliating Throwback Thursdays," the part of the blog where we look back on past work and mentally applaud how far I've come.

And also laugh.

Today, I am very excited to bring you the first chapter of, bar none, my MOST popular project. Of all the tripe I've had my friends read, this particular piece of trip is still the one they're all the most angry about me never finishing.

That's right, folks. Today, I bring you:

Ryder Secrets

Cool picture from Deviantart.

Dragons... smart girls masquerading as boys... weird sci-fi stuff that seems like it would have no place in a Fantasy book... homo-erotic undertones that are actually hetero-erotic, since she'd a girl... what more can you WANT from a book?

(Oh yeah... an ending. And while you're at it, an actual plot.)

So here it is, folks... the cringe-inducing, campy Chapter One.

I.

Inspection

            “All persons to inspection. All persons to inspection.” The digitized voice echoed through the empty white halls. A long row of yellow doors swung open and lines of people filesd out. “All persons to inspection. All persons to inspection.” the speakers repeated again and again.

            The lines of neatly marching people filed through two black swinging doors, into the Inspection Hall. Student 15727, classification 9, slid her identification card through a slot in the wall and stepped through the door. In five minutes, every student had entered an inspection stall.

            15727 kept her face solid until the doors had closed, then let her muscles relax and smiled. It was prohibited to smile or let any emotion interfere with her work in public, but she had no fear for private discovery. The small robotic figure that was carefully scanning her with it’s V-ray eyes had a light on the top of it’s head, which began to flash violently. 15727 quickly ducked away from the V-ray and jumped behind the robot. She was quick at reprogramming, and soon the message in the robot’s screen, Carlian Moss, 15728, invalid, intruder. was replaced by Cadrian Moss, 15727, valid. Status: healthy. 15727 felt that the trillionth triumph over the idiocy of the genuises at the head of the Academy of Bynd didn’t even merit the effort of saying the whole word.

            17511 marched faster to catch up to 15727. “17511.” she nodded. “15727.” he nodded back and continued marching.

            All of the children let out and explosion of air and nervous laughter as they exited the white halls. There, there were sensors that detected even an unacademic emotion or whim and reported it. Out in the safety of the vandalized concrete walks, they could laugh and joke and use their names, not their nEmbers. “Why was the botty in your cove flashing, Cade?” 17511, otherwise known as Tate, asked. Carli’s heart stuttered. “She was ovecome with amazement at my incredible physique.” she grinned quickly. “Enough to turn a bot into a cyborg.” Tate poked her arm. “There’s not enough muscle in there to feed a crane.”

“That’s why I’m a sissy Ryde and not a big old dung cleaner like you.” Carli poked him back. “How are you ever going to stay on, little man, if you have nothing to hold you down?”

            Nothing to hold you down. In her room, Carli looked out of her window at Tate and their other friends throwing a ball in the snow. If only you knew how much is holding me down. She pulled her hand off of the glass and the curtains closed. They weren’t, of course, real curtains. They were holographic. But they hid the room from the outside world, and so they worked fine.

            Carli hugged her knees to her chin as she waited for her bath to run. She remembered when she was five, before the scientists had made FGC discovery. There was no more water, and it was thought that the human race would die. But then there had been the discovery of forced gas connection, and water was wherever there was air. Now most things were grown in a lab, including children. And she could bathe all she wanted.

            Steam curled around Carli, warming her cold sadness. She was thinking of Cadrian, the one who belonged in the school. He was her twin, her soul mate. They were so alike that no one had been able to conclusively tell which was the original child and which was the clone. When they had found that the five day old fetus in the simulated womb had the perfect genetic combiTateion to become a member or the Ryd, they had immediately cloned it. But through some error, Carli didn’t understand what, they had been born different. She was a girl - unfit to be a Ryde member. FortuTateely for her, the adoptive parents had insisted on keeping her, though she would never amount to anythingg. She was designed exclusively for the one thing she wasn’l allowed to do. But they knew what happened to rejected clone children. They were sent to labratories for experiments, or to factories to work. Some had their organs harvested. Carli shuddered. She loved her parents.

            Cadrian had been raised to be a Ryde. He was sent to fine schools and lived away most of the time. Carli, who was generally seen as a great disappointment, stayed at home and dreamed of the Beyond. As a result, Cade had developed an intense hatred of all things Ryde like, while Carli had become obsesssed with the proffesion.

            Almost three years ago, on the day after their thirteenth birthdays, Cade was in an accident. He was crossing the Chrailway when a craft hit him. Everyone mourned desperately the terrible accident. But Carli never cried. She knew that her brother would rather be hit by a speeding craft than become a member or the Ryde. She knew he always looked both ways before crossing the Chrailway. That he wasn’t beyond taking his fate into his own hands. The very next day, she had run away and joined the Academy under her brother’s stolen name. She hadn’t run away in a technical sense, since her parents knew where she was going. Her father warned her that he wouldn’t be able to help her, should she be foun dout. Her mother cried. But they agreed that it was worth a chance. Everyone knew, but never said, that Carli wasn’t worth two cents as anything other than a Ryder. It was what she’d been born for. She had to pay her own tuition, though, through the school’s work program.

            In her years at home, she had attended whatever schools would take her. She knew a lot about programming, and every time inspection came around, she just programed the bots to see her as a boy. It made her laugh to think of the stupidity of the intellectuial “geniuses” that controlled her small world.

            She stood up and stepped into her bath. She was almost sixteen now, and suffering from many unseen problems. Being fortuTatee enough to be small framed, it wasn’t hard to conceal any chest growth. And she was never troubled by being offended by the rude remmarks and violent behavior of the boys around her. Other typical girl problems had, of course, been corrected by science fifty years ago. Unless she wanted children, she would not have to worry about that. It’s a problem in my mind… she sighed, dressing. No. My mind is reasonable. It’s a problem in my heart! No matter how dark her mood, Carli had to grimace at her reflection. Tacky! But how do you say something that’s so true that everyone’s said it before? There’s no uncorny way to say it.

           

Before you ask, no, I have no idea what a "V-ray" was supposed to be.

I clearly made up a bunch of science-adjacent terms and just threw them all together.

I hope you schadenfreud-joyed this painful addition to my Hall of Shame.