[QCrit] SICK HOUSE, Dystopian Sci-Fi, 99k Adult Fiction (First Attempt)
Dear Agent (will personalize),
Eleven-year-old Ash enjoys a narrow world of routine: play, pills, and the next operation. Raised within the Theta facility for ailing children like himself, he doesn’t have long to live, but at least he has his nurse, Mercy, who loves him like a mother. During the isolation period before an operation to save his eyes, a girl named Violet plays with him while his bandaged eyes rest. There’s only boys at Theta, but Violet promises a whole wing of other girls to play with when he gets out of surgery. However, when he wakes, she isn’t there. Mercy says it was all his imagination, but the name-tag on his new blanket says otherwise. Now Ash must scour Theta for his long lost friend, battling his body’s limitations and the watchful eyes of staff and security devices alike, before he loses the chance to reunite with her forever.
Mercy hates her job. Caring for clones born of the last longevity fad isn’t how she expected to enter her forties, but only Theta will let her live on the premises in a derelict tank far from the city. Cities are targets for bombs. For cybernetic obsessions. For people who’ve forgotten how AI once rained fire on their lives and took back all its climate cures. Working for Theta is as perfect as it gets, but now one of Mercy’s patients is jeopardizing her livelihood. Mercy can’t live in a city again, surrounded by the memories of her war-orphaned childhood and the clankers who caused it. But does money matter more than an innocent life, or will Mercy fail to live up to her namesake?
Sick House is a 99k dystopian sci-fi made for fans of Climate of Chaos by Cassandra Newbould, We Are Dreams in the Eternal Machine by Deni Ellis Béchard, and works by Kazuo Ishiguro.
I’ve attended the San Francisco Writer’s Conference and work as an occupational therapist with both children and the elderly in a variety of healthcare settings.
Thank you for your time and consideration.