I need help editing this giant ass pile of editing and renditions I have made on a book I hope to get published. Sooner or later.
Title is undecided, plot needs revisions, editing is quite profoundly clean.
Version One
Heavy boots crunched on old concrete. He walked briskly, his worn leather satchel bouncing as he jogged along. The life down here was not as pleasant as Uptown was, nor was it as clean, but it worked for him. Just a few days away he’d cause the Revolution, the one everyone had been dreaming of. He’d change science, then the world.
He checked the time, lifting up his watch to his visor. The visor was grimy, an old gas mask hefted from his father's garage. It had a large visor, but about half of it had become tainted by chemicals spilled on it. The beaten watch was also a hand-me-down, or rather a build it yourself. It had a rickety metal casing, old LED display, cracked plexiglass cover for the display, and a cut up piece of leather as a strap. It was tied to a special loop of leather that he had stitched onto his jacket.
The time was barely readable, but he bet that he was already late. They’d be turning out the lights soon. He walked briskly beneath the flickering glow of feeble street lamps, some lying forlornly in the street. The street itself was derelict and decrypt, cracked and dysfunctional. Barely anything drove along those streets anyway, only the thickly clad inhabitants.
He was walking along one of the long causeways that connected the districts of the Lower Darnn, which at one time was an industrial city of its own. Cbrown towns of slag and molten metal flowed beneath the causeway he was crossing, now those cbrown towns were home to toxic waste and homeless people. The city had been beaten up pretty bad, and finally he came upon the large solid metal gate.
The gate marked the entrance to the Poppy Centre, a nickname for the Habitat Sector 7. The nickname was used because a lot of people, like him, lived there. They were all the supposed crazy people that ranted on and on about hope. Hope was not given so readily in the Darnn, and in fact it was forcefully outlawed. The Poppy Centre in reality was a rebel occupied district, protected by the rebels and owned by the rebels.
Long ago they had taken it, to house their future revolutionists, and for the past years of his life; he had been in that organization. He gave a hearty wave to the heavily armored and armed guard as he opened the gate with a push of a button. The gate slowly opened inward, revealing yet another place in disrepair. The large square was paved in crippled looking cobblestones, riddled with the work of a drunken painter.
In scraggly maroon letters, Thy Hope Forever was written. He walked on across the square, which straddled the width of the large Enforcement Hall; now converted into a barracks and infirmary for the rebellion. He veered down a wide boulevard to the left, passing the looming apartments, tenements, and dormitories that had been set up in record time. They weren’t exactly the place to live in, but they did well to house the fifteen million rebel citizens.
He walked on passing towering, crumbling building after another. He passed the large street market, which stretched on into the distance, lined with the twinkling lights of vendor stands.
He passed a guard tower, it’s thick concrete walls pock marked with holes, evidence of conflicts with the Enforcement. He finally got to his apartment building, a Skiny Rize as it was called.
The apartment building towered fifty stories, the apartments only a garage wide and a good ten meters long. It was big enough to house two hundred cramped souls, but luckily he didn’t share a room. He had the lowest room, a one room apartment that was designed to be divided by the owner. Bare cinder block walls were left due to cost and efficency issues, and the apartment itself had been cut into to make room for other buildings.
In fact, recently the rebel engineers had installed a mortar tube in the corner of his kitchen. It stretched up to the roof, and then ended in a turret, which was a small inconspicuous dome in between the two buildings. He stomped up the concrete steps, the little robot scrappy greeting him with a happy giggle. He always hated that scrappy.
He shoved open the irritating heavy metal door, a blast door used by the cheap builders; because they couldn’t afford a real door. They hadn’t even bothered to install proper door handles, so the owner of the apartment installed a pipe to serve as a handle. He now pushed that door inward, sending it crashing inward. It closed with a loud boom, and he inspected the wall it hit. A medium sized hole now sat in his wall.
He opened the slightly less heavy door of his apartment, an airlock door due to the air quality in the Darnn. He stepped inside quickly, shutting the door quickly, and with a satisfying hiss and a bout of steam; his room was sealed. He took off the gas mask, spluttering at the musty smell of it; he had to get a new one. He put his satchel down on the sad looking sagging couch he had, tossed his coat onto the same couch, and then tossed his boots into the convenient receptacle on the wall.
He looked out the plexiglass window, a large uneven spot marking vandalism repairs. His bed was suspended from the ceiling, a twin size mattress if you could call it that. The metal cage the mattress sat on he made himself. Under the hanging bed was a little crawlway, protected by a hatch, leading to the garage hidden in the next building. He looked away from the window, and into his apartment. The feeble glow of the dying incandescent tube bulb cast over his equally sad kitchen.
The stove had to be repaired, he had gutted it to make a microwave; the cabinets had all been removed for burning fuel; the fridge he had souped up with some bartered nitrogen coolers, and the dishes were all plastic hand mades. He could simply run water over them at the pump in the small courtyard behind the apartment. The empty space between the kitchen and bedroom was occupied by the large furnace.
The furnace was spitting out licks of flame, which didn’t hurt anything much; the whole apartment was concrete, stone, steel, and plexiglass. He felt the heat radiating from it, warming his lean frame. The wool sweater he had cut up into a t-shirt was now ill fitting, but it was warm. He smiled, tomorrow would be a good day.
He woke up the next morning to the wailing sirens indicating an attack. He undid the bindings for the rifle he had been given to help defend the city. He donned his attire, and stepped outside with the legions of other men running out to help with the defense. He heard gunfire, shouting, shells whizzing through the air, and then shells coming down on the houses right beside him. Debris blew sideways and upwards, knocking down and killing many of the men he ran with.
They were all heading to the square, to meet up with the General for the defense of Poppy Centre. They kept running as debris flew everywhere, screams of children and woman punctuating the din of gunfire and shelling. Hell was upon him, he thought. Out of breath, he stopped for just a second; and a large piece of concrete came hurtling to decapitate him.
