Medallish is the name of an original story that I'm currently working on. It is still in very early development, but I'd still like some feedback and constructive criticism to see what works and what doesn't. I need to know if there are any glaring plot holes that I missed and if you people find the world/story interesting.

The idea came to me at work, during a break when I thought "What if I could just stretch my break to several hours, while to everyone else only minutes would pass?”

Daydreaming in work aside, I decided to take the idea and expand it.

Enter the Medallion, made from pure gold and shaped like the sun, it is an ancient object of unknown origins. This medallion has a very special function: it can create a portal to another dimension known simply as The Summer.

As its name would imply, the seasons which are present on Earth, are absent in the Summer. Instead the planet seems to be in a state of permanent summer-like season, with trees and other plants giving fruits year-round.

The planet inside the Summer has the same size as Earth and also has a moon, but the continents are in different shapes and sizes. Not only the flora and fauna are wildly different, they're not as tame as the creatures known to us. No beings with human-level intelligence exist in the Summer.

But above all, the most groundbreaking difference between the two dimensions is the fact that one second in our world equals to sixty seconds in the Summer.

Normally, such a difference would prevent portal travel, as most of the time the planets are in different locations around their stars. However, that is easily solved by the Medallion. You see, Earth and the planet in the Summer are map-locked. What does this mean? Well it means that if you create a portal in X coordinates in one dimension, it will lead to X coordinates in the other one. Thanks to that, appearing in space and dying is not an issue.

The portal itself follows several rules:

1. The portal is a sphere of green smoke and can be entered from all directions. Its size is about ten cubic meters and it is completely opaque, the other 'side' cannot be seen through it.

2. There are two ways to deactivate the portal. If the Medallion goes through it, it will cause an instant deactivation. The other way is to simply wait ten Earth seconds and the portal will deactivate on its own.

3. There can be only one portal activated at a time.

4. Objects are transported fully. If someone put their hand through the portal, it wouldn't appear on the other side until they passed through with their entire body.

5. The person who first touched the Medallion after the death of the previous owner is the only one who can use it.


In the prologue, a your-average-joe type young man finds the Medallion as it materializes before him. He is not the protagonist.

The actual story would be set five Summer-years later and follow the lives of a small town/colony of people who relocated to Summer from Earth. These people include the guy who found the medallion, his family, friends, families of said friends and some other people who were put 'in the know'. Keep in mind that while about 5 years passed in the Summer, about a month passed on Earth. Each chapter would follow a different person.

The 'Summer People' survive by using the resources from this new dimension (water, wood, farming, fishing, etc) but also by making frequent trips to Earth to steal various items (a portal which can appear inside a closed store is very useful).

They explore this new world, deal with dangerous animals, have their own community issues (such as the lack of a true leader or the way to deal with troublemakers) and struggle to live in a society that is different than the one they always knew. Sometimes they invite trusted people from Earth to live in the Summer, sometimes they do not. These people didn't abandon technology however, at least not completely, they have some generators (powered by a river, gasoline would be too problematic to steal/import).

One of the several minor subplots I have for the story is the government learning (thanks to various cameras seeing the portal appearing in stores and other places) about them. They set a trap and two agents ambush the Summer People and follow them through the portal. One agent actually likes the idea of living there, while the other is loyal to his agency and seeks to give the government access to the Summer. The two then have to face each other in a duel, as the loyal one wants to kill the current Medallion owner to be able to use it to go back.

Another plot would be a Lewis&Clark-type chapter showing two brothers as they embark on a journey through the Summer to create a detailed map of the continent. They would encounter dangerous, unknown creatures, strange plants and generally try to survive their mission.

There would be no big-bad villain, this isn't 'kill a dragon = save the princess' story, but rather a collection of stories detailing the lives of regular people in an unusual setting. Not counting the medallion, there would be no magic or magical creatures. While it may sound too mundane/boring at first, it is frequently the relationships between people that bring the most drama and adventures.

 

Look at the colonisation of the Americas for ideas problems.

Disease is number one. Now since there is no native humans you wouldnt get disease from one group to another but the disease humans carry might wipe out some native species.

Also bio diversity, they wouldnt be able to tame the animals of summer in a few years, it would take generation so they would need to bring some from Earth, another case of cross contamination that might decemate local species.

Also accidental crossings, weeds and plant seeds left on people cloths when the cross over become a big problem in summer, and vise versa, maybe how the site of old portals is discovered is by a weed that grows where they used to be.

 

Thank you for replying, S.

Yes, I think I shall take diseases under heavy consideration. After all, who knows what kind of stuff can one get from plants/animals in the summer? A blue apple could be pretty tasty, but could also infect you with a disease which turns your entrails into liquid shit.

Good point on the animals, I already thought about them bringing chickens from Earth, but in the process some rats are accidentally transported as well. Now rats, being the assholes of Earth they are, spread like wildfire in summer (this is a world that is always warm and gives fruits year round, so they'll get plenty of food and place to live).

Accidental crossings of plants is not a thing I have thought about. True, Earth-grass or other weeds may end up being a problem. Also, not all people are experts on plants/gardening, so they may introduce some Earth plants for convenience, but it ends up backfiring as they either can't grow in the summer, or end up killing other plants in the area (some types trees are poisonous to each other).

One specific Summer-native animal I thought about is called by the colonists the Redbug. Redbugs are fist-sized, flying scarab-like insects that feed on blood of other animals. They hunt at night and during the day they sleep in small holes in the ground. As they are nocturnal, strong light drives them away, but initially there will be accidents and even deaths. Imagine a big horde of buzzing blood-suckers attacking your tent at night.

 

I just finished reading the book Guns, Germs and Steel which does a nice job of covering the development of society in all its aspects across the world.

You can also have planets be a good thing, one might be a wicked arse drug, that while fun, becomes a problem when people spend weeks high as a kite. Or a plant that they discover is a natural cure for something (not cancer since its over done but maybe it reversed the effect of parkinsons or alzhimers) which they discover when one of the old folks get better after drinking or eating a locally made food and they work out what it does. Then they are stuck with the moral problem, of do they take this back to earth to help them?

Also what is the point in the time difference? Does it serve some underlying point or is it just a curiosity? From your run down it seems more like "and the planet runs 60 times faster". The only real issue I see is that unless you mean to live there forever, that by visiting, you are quite literally, sacrificing years of your life where you wont see the peopl you know and love grow and maybe die.

 

The entire concept started with the time difference. I wanted to make it clear that while returning to Earth is always a possibility, it is one which becomes less and less attractive with time. Why? To have two things: a steady influx of new immigrants, but a heavily reduced number of emigrants.

Consider this: A young couple (both around 25 years of age) move to the Summer and have a one year old child. They live there for about 6 years and the kid grows up to be 7.

Now, on Earth only about a month and a half has passed. From the point of view of government officials, the kid is still one year old. To them this older child is a different person which curiously has no valid identification of any kind.

And it also provides a problem of modern resources and technology. Say you wanted to import food from Earth. You would have to make frequent trips from Summer to Earth, let's say one big trip per month. But on Earth it would look like you were appearing once every 11 hours. Highly suspicious, to have a person enter a supermarket and buy food for an entire month so frequently.

I even made a small conversion table for quick reference:

EDT - Earth Dimension Time
MDT - Medallion Dimension Time

1 EDT Second = 60 MDT Seconds
1 EDT Minute = 60 MDT Minutes
1 EDT Hour = 60 MDT Hours
1 EDT Day (24 Hours) = 60 MDT Days
1 EDT Month (Avg 28 Days) = 60 MDT Months
1 EDT Year (365 Days) = 60 MDT Years

1 MDT Second = 0.016 EDT Seconds
1 MDT Minute = 1 EDT Second
1 MDT Hour = 1 EDT Minute
1 MDT Day = 24 EDT Minutes
1 MDT Month (Avg 28 Days) = 11 EDT Hours and 12 EDT Minutes.
1 MDT Year (365 Days) = 6 EDT Days and 2 EDT Hours.

 

I think an important point to reflect on here is how much is this fantasy and how much is this science fiction? Or, perhaps more daringly, are you trying to write a story that could be interpreted as either (doing so requires carefully writing scenes so that fantasy elements are hinted at not actually being pure fantasy)?

You seem to be going into a lot of technical details, specific rules, and analogies to historical events, which pushes this towards sci fi. Moreover, biodiversity and spread of disease are traditionally sci fi topics, rather than fantasy issues. Again, that does not necessitate writing your story a particular way, but I think it's something to keep in the back of your mind. Good science fiction really does utilize the science, whether it is in a discussion of the relationship between technology and culture or by making technical challenges a central theme in the story.

That is not to say that fantasy cannot tackle hard hitting questions. I find it a bit disappointing that the closest most fantasy I read comes to doing so is by writing straw conservative villains who are evil because they fear werewolves, vampires and other monsters. (Trying to liken literal bloodsuckers to oppressed ethnic groups is probably not the right message... but that's a digression for a different time.)

 

So the medallion is the only way to connect both worlds? If so, what would happen if someone is left behind on earth because of some complication? Say they are discovered in one of their trips and they have to make a run for it. True, the time difference in Summer would allow them time to plan the retrieval even if it's only a few minutes so you would have to think of a really dire situation for it to become an issue. Of course, worst case scenario would be to separate medallion from owner by making the medallion go through the portal without him.

You could also have one of the Summer inhabitants have second thoughts. After all, to form a comunity is to start from scratch and not everyone can handle that. Or you could make him have a really charming conversation with that pretty store Clerk who won't recognise him next time she sees him because of the time difference.

You could have them invite one of those trusted people to stay only for them to refuse. Can they really trust them not to reveal the secret if they let them return to Earth?

Resources like food and medicine aside, what about housing? Who builds their houses? It's not like they can constantly go back to Earth while doing it and leave the materials at the mercy of the elements.

Personally I think that for now you should focus on the characters, like what type of person the owner is, what kind of friends would he have, how would he go about proposing the idea.

 

Sounds like the movie The Beach with sci-fi/fantasy thrown into the mix

 

Not counting the medallion, there shall be no magic or aliens or anything like that. So I'm guessing it won't be fantasy. There will be no demons or immortal people, nobody wanting to take over/destroy the world or anything like that. Just people. And people being people, bad and good things happen.

Yes, the only way to travel across dimensions is using the medallion. As such, whenever someone wants to travel, they need the owner to go with them.

If a group from Summer goes to Earth for resources and one of them is left behind, then for him only minutes pass, while the rest of the group has hours to plan a retrieval.

Good ideas, I already wanted to make someone have second thoughts.

They are counting on the fact that nobody would believe them about alternate dimensions. And besides, what is everyone going to do? You can't invade the Summer if you don't have the medallion.

They are going to build their own houses and it is going to be as hard as it sounds. Sure, they can bring prepared materials from Earth (planks, steel pipes, electrical wiring, furniture etc), but the assembly will have to happen in the summer (no way to transport an entire house).

Yes, characters and their lives are going to be the main drive of the story, so they need to be interesting.

However, I don't want to focus too much on the Medallion Owner, because his position already would make him a too powerful character. He has basically power over an entire new community and nobody can replace him without him dying first.

As for his personality, consider that after getting an interdimensional magical artifact, he decided to create a new society with his friends and family. He also agreed to steal from Earth stores using the medallion. What does that say about a person?

 

Was expecting a story about Sean Connery winning a medal in the Olympics. So disappointed.

That said, it's an interesting concept, seems more like a collection of short stories rather than one long connected narrative. Maybe think of it as a one-author anthology of short stories set in Summer and on Earth to help you figure out the best way to start and end each "chapter".

Beyond that, it seems like the big question that will be posed and should be at least written on is where the Medallion came from. It'll be up to you how you answer and if it's a clear cut or vague response. Think of an origin and then decide if it's something you really want to explain or not.

 

Yes, I was thinking a collection of short stories. Which is why each chapter will follow a different person (though never the medallion owner).

As for the origins of the medallion, I want to make an epilogue-like chapter set after 200+ summer years where a descendant of the medallion owner finds out the truth and contemplates whether or not to reveal it.