Year 9 Term 4
‘Breaking The Mould’
Genre Study Guide
What is genre?
Watch the YouTube clip on genre and Sci-fi, then respond to the questions below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrusqQ5JftA
1. How do we decide which category or genre a text should be placed into?
2. How would you define Sci-fi in your own words?
Watch the music video for Silverchair’s song ‘Freak.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KHwuOtcALQ
1. The music videos shows that a wide variety of text types can be categorised as a particular genre,
not just novels and films. List other text types that could fit a specific genre.
Watch the YouTube clip on genre and Dystopian literature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a6kbU88wu0
1. Humans seek to create utopias; do you think we are capable of creating utopian worlds? Why/why
not?
2. Why do you think sci-fi and dystopian genres fit well together, forming a hybrid genre? Why/why
not?
3. Do you think dystopian literature might have a purpose other than just to entertain an audience?
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4. Fill in the table by listing Dystopian and Sci-fi convention. Note: a convention is a common feature
or element of that genre. I have started you off.
Dystopian Conventions
Sci-fi conventions
● Environmental destruction.
● Exploration of space
What is genre hybridity?
1. Write your own definition for genre hybridity.
2. List one text that is a hybrid text and explain its hybridity.
3. Watch the clip below. The sci-fi elements are obvious like ocular implants and advanced
technology. The society may not seem dystopian, because it appears perfect, beautiful, and
harmonious. List one thing in the clip that indicates that this is a false utopia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyPL5VKSLnc
What is genre subversion?
Watch the first part of this YouTube clip (up to 6:40min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlULG5cMjd4
1. Why would a writer subvert genre?
2. List 2 texts that attempt to subvert genre.
2
Watch the short film ‘Lovefield.’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4meeZifCVro
1. How does the director successfully subvert genre in this film?
Make it a Meme
Find or create your own clever
dystopian or sci-fi meme.
Parody and Satire
Watch the following clips on YouTube and then answer the questions below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKtlK7sn0JQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvg20DmeXMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJlbPXZEpRE
1.
2.
3.
4.
Who is the target audience of these clips?
What is the purpose of these clips?
What techniques are used to engage the viewer?
Which clip is the most effective and why?
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5. Define the terms parody and satire.
Writing descriptively
Watch the following YouTube clip on writing descriptively.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSoRzTtwgP4
⮚ Since you are all excellent writers and you know your basic techniques like simile, metaphor, alliteration,
personification etc, we will focus on higher order techniques. A big term for ‘fancy techniques.’
Write at least three sentences using one of the following higher order techniques. Your sentences must
describe a dystopian sci-fi setting or character:
●
Synaesthesia- combination of senses (combining touch, taste, sight, sound and smell).
●
Zoomorphism- describing human behaviour in terms of the behaviour of animals.
●
Allusion to mythology- alluding to a mythological figure in fictional writing.
Narrative Structure
Choose a favourite dystopian or science fiction story and complete the table below by including brief details about
each part of the story’s structure:
Orientation
Complication
Sequence of Events
Climax
Resolution
Dystopian Sci-fi Art
⮚ Imagine this is the cover image for a new Dystopian Sci-fi DVD. Create a unique title for your film.
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Establishing Setting
Watch the short animation on YouTube then complete the activities below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVLrBJYGxk4
1. How does this clip combine dystopian and sci-fi conventions?
2. Write a descriptive paragraph (6 sentences) on the setting of the final scene for Mr and Mrs Robinson.
Consider physical features of the setting such as the fence and barbed wire, as well as elements of
atmosphere such as the dark and cold.
Short Story
Read the short story by Ray Bradbury. You may like to listen to the audio version and follow along reading the text.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npk8Wi73r2c
"August 2026: There Will Come Soft Rains" (1950) 1
Ray Bradbury
In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to
get up, seven o'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The
clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time,
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seven-nine!
In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior
eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunnyside up, sixteen slices of bacon, two
coffees, and two cool glasses of milk.
"Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of
Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr.
Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are
the water, gas, and light bills."
Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes.
Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But
no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The
weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; rubbers, raincoats for today…"
And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing.
Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait
the door swung down again.
At eight-thirty the eggs were shriveled and the toast was like stone. An aluminum wedge
scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and
flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and
emerged twinkling dry.
Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean.
Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were acrawl with the small
cleaning animals, all rubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their mustached
runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they
popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean.
Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of
rubble and ashes. This was the one house left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a
radioactive glow which could be seen for miles.
Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air
with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted windowpanes, running down the charred west
side where the house had been burned evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the
house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here,
as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Still farther over, their images burned on wood
in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball,
and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down.
The five spots of paint—the man, the woman, the children, the ball—remained. The rest
was a thin charcoaled layer.
The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light.
1 Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1985), 166-172.
Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who
goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it
had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old maidenly preoccupation with self-protection
which bordered on a mechanical paranoia.
It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade
snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house!
The house was an altar with ten thousand attendants, big, small, servicing, attending, in
choirs. But the gods had gone away, and the ritual of the religion continued senselessly, uselessly.
Twelve noon.
A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch.
The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but
now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind
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it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience.
For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall panels flipped open and the
copper scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel
jaws, was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped
into the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evil Baal in a dark corner.
The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house
realized, that only silence was here.
It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making
pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odor and the scent of maple syrup.
The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran
wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour.
Two o'clock, sang a voice.
Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray
leaves in an electrical wind.
Two-fifteen.
The dog was gone.
In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney.
Two thirty-five.
Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of
pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played.
But the tables were silent and the cards untouched.
At four o'clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the paneled walls.
Four-thirty.
The nursery walls glowed.
Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in
crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon color and fantasy. Hidden films
docked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to
resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot
still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There
was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a
purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like
other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of
parched weed, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and
water holes.
It was the children's hour.
Five o'clock. The bath filled with clear hot water.
Six, seven, eight o'clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study
a click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped
out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting.
Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here.
Nine-five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling:
"Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?"
The house was silent.
The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random."
Quiet music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favorite….
"There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
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Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
if mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone."
The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its
tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played.
At ten o'clock the house began to die.
The wind blew. A failing tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning
solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant!
"Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the
ceilings. But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the
voices took it up in chorus: "Fire, fire, fire!"
The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by
the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire.
The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease
from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls,
pistoled their water, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain.
But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased.
The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone.
The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like
delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.
Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colors of drapes!
And then, reinforcements.
From attic trapdoors, blind robot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green
chemical.
The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake. Now there were
twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom of green froth.
But the fire was clever. It had sent flames outside the house, up through the attic to the
pumps there. An explosion! The attic brain which directed the pumps was shattered into bronze
shrapnel on the beams.
The fire rushed back into every closet and felt of the clothes hung there.
The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its
wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries
quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the brittle winter
ice. And the voices wailed Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high,
low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their
sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died.
In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The
panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished
off toward a distant steaming river....
Ten more voices died. In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses,
oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, playing music, cutting the lawn by remote-control
mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in the slamming and opening front door, a
thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or
after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning
mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard
for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the
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wires withered and the circuits cracked.
The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke.
In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making
breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips,
which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing!
The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlor. The parlor into cellar, cellar into
sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a
cluttered mound deep under.
Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke.
Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall,
a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped
rubble and steam: "Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is…"
Story Summary
"August 2057: There Will Come Soft Rains" is about the operation and destruction of an unoccupied, highly
automated house in Allendale, California that is the residence of the McClellan family, starting in the waking hours of
August 4, 2057 and ending in the morning of the next day. The narrative follows the house operating as if it was
occupied, including automated announcements, meal preparation, after-meal clean up, bed preparation, house
cleaning, yard maintenance, and entertainment. In particular, the house, during the morning prepares the family for
employment and school on a rainy day. The morning routine includes watering an outdoor yard and garden that
reveals that a nuclear bomb destroyed the rest of Allendale, and that the explosion singed the western face of the
house except in places where objects were directly in front of it. The singed face captured an image of people,
presumably members of the McClellan family, unaware of any danger, at the moment they were incinerated by the
bomb blast. At noon, the family's dog, suffering from radiation exposure, finds its way into the house and dies
moments later, and then its corpse is disposed by the house's cleaning systems two hours later. The afternoon
routine includes setting up an outdoor patio for a bridge game and animating, using film projectors, a nursery to
entertain children. The evening routine includes the house's automation asking Mrs. McClellan whether she would
like to hear a poem, and upon receiving no response, reciting "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Sara Teasdale, who is
noted by the entertainment system as Mrs. McClellan's favourite poet. After ten o'clock at night, a wind-blown tree
branch crashes through the kitchen window and causes cleaning solvent to spill over the stove and ignite. The fire
spreads and the house's automated systems try to fight and contain it while other automated systems start to
malfunction. The automated efforts fail to stop the fire and by the following morning, the house is a collapsed,
smouldering ruin, except for a single wall that contains the announcement system which continues to operate,
though defectively, endlessly repeating, "Today is August 5, 2057," ending the story.
There Will Come Soft Rains Questions
1. Who is the only character in this story? (Think outside of the box, a character doesn’t have to be a person).
2. How does the poem, recited by the house, give us insight into what has happened to the population?
3. Provide an example of juxtaposition in the story. Record two quotes, one showing the perfection of the
house and the care it takes and the second showing the ugly reality of the outside world brought inside by
the intruding dog.
4. Locate three other effective literary devices used in this text. Record the quote and the technique used.
5. Why is this story categorised as dystopian Sci-fi?
6. Does this story contain a message or warning?
Write your own opening for a dystopian sci-fi story
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1. Write your own opening for a dystopian sci-fi story. This is not a complete story, just the opening (300
words). Focus on establishing setting and introducing a key character.
2. Peer evaluation task- get a friend to read your story and provide feedback.
Peer Feedback checklist
Is the text engaging, does it grab the reader’s attention and make us want to keep reading?
Does the story opening use the conventions of the dystopian sci-fi genre?
Is there a strong description of setting?
Is there an introduction to a key character?
Does the text contain a variety of literary devices? i.e. sensory language, metaphor etc.
Has the author edited their work, ensuring correct spelling, punctuation, and paragraphing?
Provide a written feedback comment:
Creating Character
Watch the short animation on YouTube then complete the activities below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuZs9b_dQpo
1. What clever twist was present in the concluding scenes of this film?
2. Write 300 words establishing a character in a dystopian sci-fi world. They could be a scientist, like the central
persona in the clip, a robotic overlord like the figures in the clip ‘Model Citizen’ or another character of your
own choosing.
Themes
Watch the short animation on YouTube then complete the activities below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIx0a1vcYPc
1. A theme is a main idea or issues in a text. Even though there is no dialogue in this film, it conveys powerful
ideas. What are the key themes present in this film?
2. Are robots, essentially created by humans, ever truly free of the corruptive elements of humanity?
3. How has the composer used cinematic techniques to create a dystopian setting?
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The Critical Moment - Climax
Watch the Short Film "Abiogenesis" - by Richard Mans 4:25min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTuL_-S0egQ
1. What is the climactic moment of this film?
2. Even though dystopian societies are dysfunctional futuristic worlds, the film offers a glimpse of hope. How is
this achieved?
Quotes About Dystopian and Sci-fi Literature
⮚ Select one of the quotes below and explain that quote in your own words.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is
strength. George Orwell (Dystopia)
Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would
voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a
network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at
them in government buildings, shopping malls,
subways and stadiums, would have seemed
unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had
surrendered privacy and anonymity. Jeffrey Rosen
(Dystopia)
Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and
doesn't exist yet, but soon will, and will change
everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be
the same again. As soon as you have an idea that
changes some small part of the world you are writing
science fiction. It is always the art of the possible,
never the impossible. Ray Bradbury (Sci-fi)
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and
although problems and catastrophes may be
inevitable, solutions are not.
Isaac Asimov(Sci-fi)
Evaluating Texts
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⮚ Read the following short story by an Extension English student. Write a short evaluation of the story. Points
to consider: Did you find it engaging? How does it fit our genre study? What literary and/or structural
features of this story stand out to you?
THE STRINGS OF DESTINY by Jordan Isaac
It was the article by Doran Verdwalen that led me to make the decision…
I had remembered every word of it.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF HOMO DESTINS
An Article by ~ Doran Verdwalen
The creation of the Filum Trial, in 2085 — more commonly known as the Destiny Strings — was the experiment that irreversibly
altered the world.
In its simplest terms, life as we knew it was remodelled to sustain the advancements of the new technologies manufactured by our
Moirian Government and their scientists. Its stated aim was to further understand how a person’s destiny was influenced by
the Filum Serum— a process that effectively created a new species of Human— Homo Destins.
Us.
Those responsible, known only as The Originals, and perhaps not even meaning to, corrupted the foundations of humanity’s moral
and ethical codes.
They produced a serum for the world’s inhabitants that had the ability to warp time and space that surrounded an individual’s
future. It would be injected through the filum terminal in the spine— a delicate strand of fibrous tissue that proceeds downward
from the apex of the conus medullaris and connects to the hippocampus. The effects of the serum was designed to ignite and rewire
each section of the brain, preparing and uploading the required knowledge and life details needed to live their “chosen” future.
As a result, no longer did the individual have the multiple ‘futures’ they were born with. Instead, the Destiny Strings allowed the
Moirian government to control every Homo Destins future. Choice and ambition were no longer an option. Any personal goals and
ambitions the individual might have aspired to, were eliminated.
Their future had been ordained.
The Originals had discovered the method known as Folding Destinies which revealed likely pathways of a person’s life. But an
insurgent group called the Moirai stole The Originals’ discovery and claimed it as their own.
The Moirai soon displaced The Originals, and using the Filum as a weapon, assumed world leadership. The trial of the Destiny
Strings became government policy. Individuality was lost forever.
The Moirian government exercised its control by drugging Homo Destins with the illusion that they were giving us a choice of
secure future. They had stolen our futures.
Now we existed solely for the purposes of the Moirai— a policy that had been suggested by Greek mythology.
According to the myths, the Three Fates were incarnations of destiny which inspired our governments name, the ‘Moirai’. The
Three Fates would appear three nights after a child’s birth to determine the course of its life through a ceremony of metaphorical
strings. The baby would choose, and unknowingly, set out its future by plucking one of the sacred strings.
Like this legend, the Moirian Government created a similar tradition to generate peace throughout the world— the Trial. It
purported to easing the restless minds of society, but we blithely surrendered free will, and unwittingly, our futures.
And thus, we became pawns in the Moirian’s perfect plan. As a new race — Homo Destins — we were perfectly planned to fit
together and designated to play a part in each other’s destiny. This was a policy synchronised, balanced, and controlled by the
strings of our Moirian Government to serve its purposes.
In essence, we are but a mutual chain of purposeless souls, each with a scheduled destiny we must abide by. And, if we dared to
stray from our chosen future and disturb the conformity established within the Moirian System, we would be shunned and cast
away with the greatest punishment of all— anonymity.
***
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My reverie was broken by the honeyed voice over the speakers above my head.
‘It’s your choice,’ it announces, the pale blue lights flickering with each syllable.
I mentally refold the article and shove it back into the overflowing cabinets of my mind. ‘You control your Destinies. We
simply hold your options until your trial date,’ the voice reverberates around the room.
***
I had received my essentials package, the night before, slipped through a hatch in the room provided for those awaiting the
Filum trial. As I piled its contents onto my bed, I found the crisp whites of my Becomer’s uniform and the Official Moirian
Guide and Regulations of the Filum Trial documents.
And strangely, tucked into the shirt pocket, was a neatly-folded letter with a glossy crimson stamp embossed on it— the
initials ‘D. V’.
The letter contained the article, A Brief History of Homo Destins. It purported to explain the creation of Homo Destins, and
how our New Earth came into existence. However, the heretical statements clearly targeted the Moirian government and
were threaded throughout the entirety of the piece.
I couldn’t help but wonder- who was this author, Doran Verdwalen?
Was he some madman— daring to criticise the government?
But why did he sound so calm and calculated and so focused in his expose?
Was he elaborating on our history, or planting the seeds of rebellion with his blasphemous language?
And why did I feel he was targeting me?
I was mesmerised and disgusted all at once.
Who was this ‘Doran Verdwalen’ indeed, to seek to undermine my own thoughts and opinions?
And why was this article even in my package?
***
But my mind was clear. My path was true.
I should not be reading this again.
Terminate File.
I could hear the remaining Becomer’s repeating the relentless motto outside my room, echoing through the waiting room of
the Moirian Trial Chambers.
WE LIVE ONLY FOR THE FUTURE.
WE LIVE FOR OUR BECOMING.
WE ARE THE DESTIN’S, NOT THE NOW’S.
PRAISE FOR OUR UPCOMING.
I was one of them. But now, I face my test.
At twenty-five years of age, I’m experiencing the perfect stage of full prefrontal cortex development and accurate maturity
levels.
It is all perfectly calculated. Just like the rest of our lives.
I wrinkle my nose and grimace, my fingers nervously tapping against my wrist. It was a calming method taught by my
Mother to maintain composure in times of tension. In other words: Don’t ruin this, girl. We worked hard on you. You must
not fail.
(As if I were an assignment).
Now it is my time, my turn for the Filum Trial. It is what we, The Elites, have all trained for since the day we were born.
I straighten up out of habit. No slouching. No elbows on armrests, or comfort of any sort for that matter. Reputation is
everything, to be sure, especially one as admirable and sought after as mine. Most would not risk leaving the safe
confinements of a home if they had inherited the same illustrious last name as me. But, growing up in a mansion of lies and
manipulation, hallways echoing with whispers of betrayal and the high expectations and legacy of generations to uphold —
you become well acquainted with the uncomfortable, the unsettling, the fear. So much so, it becomes normal, a routine.
I had learnt to fear and obey the Moirai. After all, my parents selected their Destinies and became Moirians themselves. I
face my own government at home.
Can I break the cycle?
This is my time to undergo the Filum Trial.
I am called.
‘Enter, Viatrix Alithis: Daughter of the True Voyagers, Class of the Elites: Ranking 01. You may complete the Filum Trial.’
I stand, eyeing the entrance of the chamber where my future would be chosen and presented to me by the Moirai.
I search the files of my mind once more, desperately trying to ignore that article. I recognise the deception that lies within. It
was nothing but a subversive analysis of the Moirai and their intentions.
How dare he?
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The Chamber is a void of darkness when I enter. It strangles my sense of direction and wraps its wraithlike tendrils around
my throat.
Verdwalen’s article and his contaminated words rest on my lips. I shiver. I must put it aside.
Terminate File.
Three iridescent strings appear before me, connected from floor to ceiling, emitting an electrical hum that bounces off the
reflective walls of The Chamber.
My Destiny is ready to choose me. Am I ready to choose it?
I pluck the first string.
My vision ripples like a pebble that skips across the liquids of my eyes. I get a glimpse of my first Destiny…
Snippets of pristine white lab coats and scientific formulas and menacing technical equipment, flash wildly. My parents
smile and point out their favourite workshops. Their pride, practically radiating as my chosen existence follows similar
footsteps to theirs. My name in bold letters, printed onto large headlines, advertising the creation of my new and successful
line of products. My hair is pulled back tightly, forming a sharp point at the crown of my skull. My skin is pale and plasticlike with no hint of ageing, almost artificial.
I pluck the second string.
The scene of a party unfolds. I am dancing in knee-high boots with a scandalous leather outfit, given to me by my admirers.
Everyone cheers my name, and the spotlights light up my stage. I dance and drink in a pool of rose petals and money. My
fellow co-workers congratulate me on my successful progress in the fashion industry. I am a designer. And all the models
with potential, the greatest stars of our time, come to see me. They want me.
I pluck the last string.
‘I love you, Viatrix.’ A man with kind eyes and handsome features caresses my cheek. ‘I love you, Doran.’ I reply. The man
grabs his briefcase and coffee, winking at me before he leaves the room. My husband is an author, a journalist, and a father
to our three kids. My name is Viatrix Verdwalen.
***
‘Choice and ambition were no longer an option.’ Verdwalen’s words pulse before me.
That madman becomes my husband?
No— I don’t want this. I don’t want any of these futures. I choose none.
Terminate File. Terminate!
Yet, I know that I cannot erase a truth that rings so loudly.
I take the scissors out of my package and cut the Destiny Strings.
All
of
them.
Getting Creative
14
In pairs select a dystopian, sci-fi or hybrid text of your own choosing. Create a book or
film trailer for your text. Consider the images you input, transitions, music, sound
effects, text (must be minimal), camera angles and symbolism. Your trailer must be
engaging and persuade an audience to read or watch your text.
15