Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The Next Line 27

"I need to try and stop them before they murder half the Settlement's population."

"You and what army? You can't possibly think you can solve this on your own."

"I appreciate the sentiment, mr. Beckett, but this is not your problem."

"They made it my problem the minute they shot me down." Aidan ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "Look, Syméon. You don't mind if I call you Syméon, do you? You have no way of contacting anyone as long as they keep jamming the signal, and it's at least a three day walk to your cottage. That's three days too many for the dragons."

"What do you propose?"

"We need to disable whatever's blocking the signal."

Another raised eyebrow. "And you know how to do that?"

"Of course I know how ... Wait a minute. You don't?"

By now the eyebrow thing was getting old. "I'm a healer, mr. Beckett. Surely you know what that means?"

"Call me Aidan, please." Aidan said as he tried to remember what he knew about mixing technology with magic.

"I can only handle low level technology, like radios, I cannot risk getting close to anything more advanced."

"Then I'm afraid the Settlement is already doomed," Aidan told him. He shook his head as he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his Blackberry 8800.


Dialogue: Anita Dapperens.....The Next Line: EE

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is an interesting bit of dialogue, Author. I did have a few questions, though. For example, in this portion:

"You and what army? You can't possibly think you can solve this on your own."

"I appreciate the sentiment, mr. Beckett, but this is not your problem."


What sentiment? From that line, it did not sound like Aidan was offering to help. Maybe there was something that came earlier that indicated that he was. Or was Symeon being sarcastic?

Also, why not capitalize "mr."? I kept thinking "typo," but you did it twice, so I'm guessing that it's a stylistic choice? For those, like me, who are cursed with a nitpicking editorial eye, it's distracting. If you had a good reason for it, though, I could get over it.

This sounds like something that I'd read; good luck with it.

Blaine D. Arden said...

Thank you, Foggidawn :)
Aidan indeed (though not in so many words) offered his help right before this section of dialogue.
And though Syméon can be rather sarcastic, he wasn't here.

the mr. is not exactly a typo, more the result of inattentiveness on my part. (I'll make a note and fix it later)

EE:
a Blackberry 8800. For his own sake I hope Aidan left his at home, since he's going to need Syméon's healing powers :)

Robin S. said...

Hi, Anita

I like this. It reads very well.

I am curious, like foggidawn, to know about the lower case m in mr.

And I'd read on. I like the mix of technology and magic idea.

McKoala said...

I struggled to follow who was speaking; maybe my fault for skimming. 'you and what army' is usually 'you and whose army' and seemed very contemporary, although maybe this is. It didn't seem to be. Oooh, dragoons! Submit to Miss Snark, pronto!

Nifty continuation.

Lots of stuff today; EE are you spring cleaning?

Evil Editor said...

Trying to get rid of The Next Line submissions.

McKoala said...

Thought you might be. Goody. I was never any good at those.

Bernita said...

Gives me that info dump feeling, which in context it might not.