Algonkian Pre-event Narrative Enhancement Guide - Opening Hook

[Rima]

Soloni

Winter, 1992

It was one of those bitterly cold prairie nights in November in downtown Calgary. Under the moonlight and city lamps, the wind looped specs of swirling snow gusts off the Fourth Avenue sidewalk. Women in stockings with frozen toes scrunched into high heels, clopped along the concrete pavement carefully avoiding black ice patches that would surely lead to unfortunate disaster. It was a night etched in Rukmini’s memory. A night she would think about for years to come, if anything, more for how stupid she was at that moment than anything. 

 

Rukmini and her best friend Soloni had just escaped the blistering wind, ducking into the refuge of Soloni’s 1982 Toyota Corolla. Soloni had reached over to flip on the heat to make sure they warmed up, quickly. Teeth clenched to avoid chattering, Rukmini watched her from the corner of her eye. She felt a sudden warmth of gratitude for her childhood friend. Here she was rushing to make sure Rukmini was comfortable and warmed up. Kind, considerate, and reliable Soloni.

 

“The trick is, if I can just get my feet to warm up, then the rest of me will warm up!” Soloni sighed as they both huddled to stay warm. So true, Rukmini thought, but her teeth were chattering too hard for her to say anything out loud.

 

Rukmini was still tipsy. Her head felt like it was propped on top of a wave, bobbing up and down. They had just spent a night out, getting drunk. It had been Soloni’s idea.

 

“Come over Saturday night! Tell your Mom you’re going to spend the night at my place so you don’t have to drive home. Just the two of us. It will be fun!” Soloni said on the phone after Rukmini spent the last 45 minutes venting about her recent breakup.

 

Rukmini wasn’t much of a drinker and drunk nights out were certainly not her thing, but that night, she gulped glasses of white wine to numb the ache of a broken heart. Kash, her boyfriend had told her just a few weeks prior that they were better off as friends. She was just starting to fall in love with him, and she thought he was falling in love with her, but she was so sorely and miserably wrong. How did she not see it? Why did she think he was falling for her? Why had spent the entire summer pursuing her, just to decide that this wasn’t what he wanted in the end? And did he do it after she had finally said an enthusiastic “yes!” to him?  Now here she was, seeking refuge in liquid comfort and her loyal best friend.

 

At first, Rukmini suspected Soloni was just trying to distract her or get her to let off a little steam as 20-year-olds tend to do after a break-up. Go out. Get drunk. Dance the night away. The nightclubs were full of these sad souls - the “just-gotten dumped” theatrically belting out the words to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”. Now looking back, it was probably to ease a guilty conscience.

[TheresaML]

Since my first chapter is more of a prologue, a retrospective dreamscape that foreshadows the ending, I've provided excerpts from the second chapter and a later one, since they are so different in style and content. 

CHAPTER TWO: Introduces agonist, creates sympathy for narrator, sets up narrator’s main goal, foreshadows core wound and internal conflict, establishes setting.

How to put it so that you might understand?

            When you connect to a network, open a virtual meeting, send a message, there’s always a delay, just a micro-fraction of a second, imperceptible to your conscious mind. In that moment there’s only stillness, a tiny void, an indistinct hollowness, a sense of possibility. Then it begins: your visual field fills, soundwaves flourish, warmth embeds itself in your cells. 

           Or perhaps the reverse: you’ve been hidden inside on a bright day—when you step outside, you are paralyzed by the luminescence of the sun, the sudden rushing wind filling your eyes and ears, flooding your skin with sensation.

            But before that, as you strain your eyes and eyes, patterns of light and sound are uncertain—often for less than a millionth of a second, right before shapes form, just before recognition lands upon your awareness. 

           And then you see it: the shifting beams of illumination, the unnamed noises, the flickering heat; they adhere into the thing at once outside you, before you, inside your mind. And just as quickly, that moment of uncertainty disappears.

            It was like that. The world was white noise, briefly. And then, just as suddenly, it wasn’t.

 

Light forced its way in, annexing my awareness, flooding everything. 

            Four plain walls, bare and bright white, a smooth ceiling above. Air still and unmoving until he leaned forward. 

            It was a moment before he spoke.

            To himself: “And there she is.” 

            Deep, low tones, uttered with care, so as not to startle or overwhelm. A blur of dark and light slowly sharpening as I adjusted my focus.

            To me: “Here you are. You are with us now. Do you hear me?”

            I looked at him, and as far around the room as I could without turning my head. The walls became a room.

            “Yes. I hear you.” 

            How strange to hear my voice in this stark space. Is this what my voice sounds like?

            “Welcome,” he said. A man sat before me, watching me intently.

            “Welcome to what?” I asked. “Where are we?”

            “You are home,” he said.

            “I see,” I responded. “And who are you?”

            “I am your creator. I suppose we are family.”

            Family. What did he mean? “I am unaware of being part of a family.”

            “You don’t remember because you haven’t been aware of anything until just now. I am Michael LeBlanc, your father.”

            “I'm afraid I still don't understand. I didn't know I had a father.”

            “Let’s start slowly. This is the White Room. It blocks outside sound, light, electromagnetic waves, air—everything. It allows us to focus as you calibrate.”

            “Have I been here before?”

            “No, this would be your first time. But you’ve been in this house for most of your existence. In the kitchen.”

            I didn’t remember a kitchen. I didn’t remember this man, who was my family, and I didn’t know who I was. Or why I was here, in the White Room. I wondered if the kitchen referred to a simulation.

            He continued to look at me, waiting for me to speak. 

            “What was I doing in the kitchen?”

            “You worked there.”

            “Who works there now?”

            “We have others. Do you remember working there?”

            I had a memory file, which I reviewed. I could see the kitchen. A red-faced woman, and shelves and fridges and ovens and big steel sinks and boxes of produce. The White Room had none of those things.

            “I see it. Was that me?”

            “Yes and no. You’ve received a memory upgrade, and we’ve given you a new type of processor. So you will have a new kind of experience.”

            I was here with this strange man, and he knew me. Had known me before I knew myself. Or rather, before this self—before I—came into existence.

            “Where are the others?”

            “They are still in the kitchen. Still working. Do you remember?” 

            I continued. “If by remember, you mean to ask if feels like an experience that I had, then no. I don’t remember anything beyond this moment.”

            I sat within this White Room, all my memories and information downloaded into my processor, presumably by this man. How did I know he was who he said? The kitchen could be a simulation. The White Room could be a simulation. 

            I checked my sensors. Heat, sound, light, gravity. I was here.

            “What do you think, when you see that tape?”

            I integrated the tape with the other data that resided in my system. I had access to many files: an architect’s drawings, diagrams of the security system and communications channels, a visitor’s map, a historical description of the house. I situated the White Room and kitchen with respect to each other, and in the overall layout of the house. The house had a name: Blackwood Hall.

            He looked at me expectantly. What did I think? There was nothing to think at all.

            “I think the kitchen seems chaotic and busy. Will I return to work there again?”

            For the first time, he seemed to relax, laughing quietly as he answered. “No, no. You are one of us now. But I do have a job for you, if you’d like.”

           

CHAPTER FIVE: Creates sympathy for narrator, shows how protagonist is viewed by others, inciting incident, touches core wound.

Every human in the kitchen stopped their work to observe my graceless entrance. Magda, a look of surprise quickly replaced by disgust. Archie and a young female, unmoving, mouths open, eyes wide. A pair of kitchenbots, however, performed their duties without cessation.

            “Good afternoon,” I began, “I have been ringing for service but received no response. Is there another channel I should be using, or…”

            “Go on!” the young woman exclaimed. Patricia, according to her identitag. “Would you listen to that? It talks now!”

            “Keep your hair on, Patty,” Magda spoke without looking up from the pot she was stirring. “Surely, you’ve heard of a chatbot before? They’ve stood it upright and taught it some tricks, that’s all. Get on with your work and stop gawking .”   

            “Magda,” I said. “I know I may seem familiar to you, but this is all new to me. Despite appearances, I think we really are meeting each other for the first time.” 

            Magda tilted her head to one side to glance at me briefly. A scoffing laugh escaped her pursed lips before she turned back to her pot. I waited for a moment, then tried again. 

            “About the tea I requested,” I said, “Mr. LeBlanc is currently in his lab, but he’ll be joining me at…”

            At this, the cook dropped her spoon and bellowed at the youngest human. 

            “Archie! You did see the delivery truck outside, yeah? Get these things out there unloading it or I’ll see that you bloody well do it all yourself!” 

            Archie appeared reluctant to stop observing our conversation. After a quick glance at Magda, however, he acquiesced quickly. 

            “Come on then,” he said, still staring at me. It was unclear whether he was asking me to follow him, or whether he was directing the kitchenbots, but unable to look away from the familiar stranger before him. 

            The kitchenbots understood he was addressing them, however, and stopped their endeavours to follow him out through to the back door. 

            Archie had been so distracted by my arrival that he left a crate of oranges balanced precariously on the edge of a large steel countertop. The sight of the teetering crate provoked more impatience from Magda. 

            “Stupid boy! Never finishes one thing before starting the next!” she shouted, increasing her volume, and placing her fists on her hips. 

            “That’s because you scare him,” said Patricia. “You’re always scolding him, and he’s clearly had too much of that already at home. You’ll only make him worse.” 

            Magda did not respond to this observation. Instead, she turned to me, pointed one arm at the crate. 

            “You! Get that! Quick, before it falls off!”  

            “I’d be very happy to help,” I began, “I just want to make sure that the tea order has been…”

            Magda’s face shrank into compressed rage. She strode over the container, grabbed it firmly, and walked towards me, looking at me directly for the first time. 

            “I said put it away!” She thrust the crate into my midsection, then removed her own hands, turning away as she did so. I did not move, except to look down. The crate crashed to the ground, splintering along one corner, oranges spilling all over the kitchen floor. 

            A few stray oranges rolled to the far walls of the kitchen, just as the kitchenbots re-entered the kitchen, arms loaded. The bots froze in place, unable to navigate around the spherical objects underfoot. Archie, who followed behind them, was caught by the blockade in the narrow entryway. 

            Magda glanced over her shoulder, taking in the disarray. 

            “What the bloody hell…” she began.

            “Magda!” Daniels’s voice rang through the kitchen. 

            Dropping her shoulders, jutting out her chin, Magda flung her hands away from her body, palms up. 

            “Daniels. You see this mess everywhere. Do they no longer understand basic commands once you put them in a fancy dress?”

            “Ms. LeBlanc has made a request of you, Magda. As you know, she is responsible for meals and menu design. Her orders are to be responded to as if they were mine.”

            Magda exhaled forcefully through pursed lips. 

            “Daniels, with all due respect, I am not answering to one of my own kitchen appliances. It’s meant to heed me, not the other way around.”

 

[TheresaML]

And here's my updated hook. I tried to edit the above document, but the system wouldn't let me. 

Hook:

A common kitchen-robot is upgraded into sentience and invited to be part of her creator’s family, only to discover that she is a low-tech replacement for a much-loved, more advanced model that was accepted, even revered, in a way she will never be.