1st 5 Pages November Workshop - Jiordano Rev 2

Name: Toasha Jiordano
Genre: YA/New Adult Dystopian
Title: Epoch Earth; The Great Glitch

PITCH

Seventy-five percent of Earth's population died off back in the Great Glitch of 2352, but Synta only cared about one of them. Her father. She and the remaining few Citizens are forced to remove their chips or go into hiding. Many choose replacing them with recylced chips by back alley 'doctors' than a life without the Net.

Almost overnight the land won't yield; crops and livestock extinct within a year. Starvation and another wave of Glitches sends the sparse population into a frenzy, turning on each other. Synta and her best friend Howie must grow up fast to care for their younger siblings and ailing mothers. Now, just seventeen and nineteen, they're faced with their toughest decision yet.

Do they trust the same government that may have caused the Glitch, and board ships bound for a new terraformed planet? Or do they stay, and live at the mercy of the angry Earth?


CHAPTER 1


Synta was thirteen the first time she saw someone glitch out and die.

He barged into the room where she stood not setting the table, mentally cussing the stupid dress her mom forced her to wear. As he pushed past, close enough to knock the forks out of her hand, the mental cussing shifted to him. Then her wits caught up. Daddy? He clawed behind his ear like a savage. What is he doing?

Synta opened her mouth to ask him just that when she caught a whiff of him. His flesh sizzled and the distinct smoky scent of steak swirled toward her nostrils. Synta huffed hard out of her nose like a dog to push the tantalizing aroma from her head. Synta’s cheeks burned in accusation of her liking the way her father’s meat smelled.

He fell to his knees, tears and spit running down his face. And that face! It didn’t even look human anymore, much less like her father. The agony masked his features so much that she feared him as she would a monster. Yet she stood there, motionless. Synta’s heart thudded in her chest begging her lungs for air.

Both his hands covered his ears and a low growl erupted from his pursed lips. Synta watched, frozen, as he dropped to the floor and dragged himself over to a small wooden table in the corner.

The world around Synta went black and her father crawling across their dining room floor was the only image burning itself into her brain. With pinpoint clarity, she noticed the discolored patch of skin behind his ear, the blood matting his dark hair to his neck, and the tag of his shirt still miraculously untainted by the carnage.

The fingers on her father’s left hand dug into the hardwood floor, nails crunching as they broke. His right hand scraped at the back of his ear the whole time. Synta grabbed the wall beside her to stop the world from spinning, and to hold steady her legs that wanted to bolt. Still, she never once thought to help.

As his fingers found the table leg he pulled himself upright. The growls turned to pitiful moans, which tore at Synta’s gut more than the former. Kneeling unsteadily, her father hunched over as if to vomit. Before she could wonder why he crawled all the way over there to puke, he bashed his head on the table. The dull thwump of a splitting watermelon rattled both their brains. Synta winced with each new thud.

Her father wavered; his legs buckled, threatening to drop him to the floor. Yet he persevered. Charred chunks of skin slid down his neck onto the table. Synta’s breakfast burned its way back up her throat. Her father’s bloodied hands still tore at the flesh behind his ear between bashes. His finger disappeared knuckle deep into the small hole he’d made.

Heavy seconds ticked by as he worked diligently to retrieve his prize. Finally, he let out a content squeak, holding up a microchip between two fingers. His chip was larger than most, half an inch square. Upon seeing it, Synta heard a low moan, then recognized it as her own.

Congealed blood hung from the corner of the chip, ready to drip in the already darkening puddle of her father on the table. His face softened, eyes lifted to the sky, the hint of a smile across his lips. Synta deflated against the wall. A hollow sigh escaped her father’s lungs as he flopped to the floor, twitching. The plates on the table rained on top of him. I should have set the table.

Synta’s mother screamed in the background void and glass shattered in the distance. The commotion snapped Synta out of her daze as the woman rushed to her husband’s side. Synta’s tunnel vision focused on her mother cradling her father’s mutilated head in her arms. She kissed his forehead and chanted his name.

“Sam… Sam… Sam…” Her tears erupted hard and fast over the carnage on his face.

Her mournful wailing harmonized with his last gurgles creating the most gut-wrenching noises. Her head flung back, dark locks of wavy hair soaking up his coagulated blood. Synta’s legs turned to jelly and she tightened her grip on the wall. The forks in her hand fell to the floor with a loud clang.

Through her fingers Synta watched the chip-to-chip mind meld between her parents as they synced. Fear strangled Synta, air stuck in her throat. Her mother, breathing ragged and shallow with her father - as one - escorted him on his journey out of this world. Only the whites of her mother’s eyes were visible now as they rolled deep into her head.

Never did Synta run to help her father or cry out for her mother. She just held her breath and stood idly by as her flesh and blood was reduced to a pile of, well, flesh and blood. It took every ounce of will inside her to not flee. Finally, her mother’s grief song died as her father’s lungs emptied.

Complete silence blared after her father’s body expelled the last of itself onto the floor of their dining room. The floor that a week ago he’d sworn to finally get around to polishing. The floor where her mom had just yelled at her for leaving the holopad. This is the floor where Synta’s father glitched and died, taking the innocent little girl inside her with him.

The electric charged air stung Synta’s chest as her body forced her to breathe.

Her mother’s cheeks returned to near pink. The woman’s eyes, black and barely open, settled back into their normal positions. She straightened herself, smoothing damp matted hair down her blood-stained apron. Turning those empty eyes toward Synta she whispered, “Go find your brother.”