A Tiny Speck in an Indifferent Universe

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is going to get a significantly expanded and revised edition soon. This version is about 5k words, the new one is already approaching 10k and will likely end at 20k words, or more. I've decided to do this because my writing group pointed out several flaws with this version: first, the lack of good descriptions of things, second, the very strange pacing with slow scenes but lots of timeskips, third, the lackluster mystery, and fourth, they just really wanted to see more of this world. “‘Whither Helios at nightfall,’ I guess.” I looked up from the newspaper at the man behind the newspaper-stall counter, startled. He was pulling on his cigarette as if he hadn’t spoken at all when I looked up. An anemic stream of smoke lofted out of the corner of his mouth and up into the sky, the red-hot tip a little glowing zit in the early twilight. “What did you say?” “I just mean, I don’t know. Does it really matter if the economy can’t stay at this pace much lon

Since the last post, I've written roughly seven thousand words; however, almost nothing has actually happened in that intervening chapter: I haven't even moved to the next plot point on my outline, which I've been stuck on for three chapters and almost 15k words if my memory serves. This is extremely discouraging, to say the least. It makes me wonder if there's something wrong with my writing process, or my writing style, and also raises the question of how much I'm going to end up editing out in the second draft — a disappointing prospect to think about barely a third of the way through the first draft. Worse, this next part was something that I hadn't really thought about in my head, and in the process of planning I've found it necessary for plot-hole-filling and worldbuilding reasons to introduce a few new elements to make the section work: specifically, an AI named Athena. In order to make that work, however, I had to give her a unique character to