Your use of the word "strident" seems almost as if you looked it up in the thesaurus without double-checking its precise meaning. It just doesn't seem right to describe a memory as being "loud and harsh."

The second sentence is a fragment. Perhaps you meant "washed" not "washing"?

Same for the last couple sentences in the first paragraph. They are fragments. Now, that's not to say fragments cannot be used in prose--they can--but here they are not being used correctly.

Then in the second paragraph you switch from past tense to present tense. Please choose one or the other and stick with it. There are also more sentence fragments.

As for content, I'm not sure what is going on. There are people screaming, the MC's mother is there, they're in a shuttle (in space?), but it's difficult to tell what exactly is happening here.

On "strident", it gave me pause but I would let it pass if the rest of the opening justified it. This could be a strident memory...but as it is now it isn't a memory at all.

Hmm. Okay, first of all, you post thirteen lines, you get...thirteen lines. Not enough to understand every little thing. That's the mystery to keep you reading.
Buuuut, in an attempt to answer all the comments in order: No, Yes, I see, ten midgets, and the distance from Cambridge to Rome.

Seriously, I was rewriting the beginning when I remembered that I posted the first draft, and I agree with some of the comments. However, strident is what I was going for, but I decided to just show it. "Loud and Harsh" most definitely fits.
Aside from that, I was going for an idea of a cruel relocation, but I was still playing with the method. The idea is that this is a dream of the only memory the boy is going to have when he awakens to a new life. I'm still toying with switching tenses to insert tension.
Oh, and consider this relocation shuttle a dump truck.
I also killed off his mom.

I'm posting the revised version here:

Hidden under an intricate mesh of hair-thin microtubules, their tips buried deep in his flesh, the boy dreamed.
Brilliant orange floodlights wash over the stricken faces of hundreds of young boys being crammed into the long, flat bay of a relocation shuttle. For long minutes the only movement is a slow shuffle forward, as silent rankers in dark battle armor pack as many in as possible. They use static prods for efficiency, drawing shrieks of pain from the slow or stubborn or terrified.
Toward the middle of the bay, where the movement has finally stopped for lack of room, Janus glances at the others. He wonders why he is silent, why his face is dry. He stares back down at the static burn on his arm, and already he notices the differences.

Just a few suggestions:

1) For long minutes the only movement is a slow shuffle forward, as silent rankers in dark battle armor pack as many in as possible. They use static prods for efficiency, drawing shrieks of pain from the slow or stubborn or terrified.

IMHO I would rework these two sentences.

For long minutes the only movement is a slow shuffle forward. Silent rankers in dark battel armor pack in as many as possible, poking the stragglers with static prods, drawing shrieks of pain from their mouths.

2) Janus glances at the others. He wonders why he is silent, why his face is dry. Already he notices the differences.

I would rather hear his thoughts than have you tell me that he wonders why he is silent.

Rose

First word=Janus. You have no reason not to do this, and every reason, including a half dozen unique to your specific work, to do it this way.

Everything needs to be painted as Janus sees it, and you need to keep reminding us that this is just how Janus percieves things, he really does see the static prods as efficient rather than brutal, the movement into the shuttle as a slow shuffle rather than a desperately packed milling.

By the way, Rose, one thing:

"Silent rankers in dark battle armor pack in as many as possible, poking the stragglers with static prods, drawing shrieks of pain from their mouths."

I didn't bother explaining where the shrieks of pain were coming from. I thought it obvious.
Cardinal rule: You must remember that your reader is at least as smart as you are.

I do think you ought to say who is dreaming.
Janus dreamed.
Hidden under an intricate mesh of hair-thin microtubules. Their tips were buried deep into his flesh.

Then go into the dream. But I'd like to know who he is. I think it didn't hook me because I can't picture where Janus is in the dream. Is it dark, bright, are the walls padded or sterile metal? What exactly does he see besides people?

Again, it's only thirteen lines, folks.

By the way, Ranker is another word for soldier in some countries.

Oh, and Survivor, your last point is being taken into consideration. The last one, mind you. Believe it or not, the idea actually gave me more ammo to use on my prot.

But you were impatient, expecting to understand in thirteen lines something that takes longer.

This boy is different, extraordinarily different, in fact, but for the purposes of this particular novel, you only need know he has no memory of anything before the shuttle ride, and that, to him, is his first experience. He does however, have an understanding of how basic humans work. He knows what terror and pain are, how boys of his age react to things. He just doesn't know why he isn't reacting the same. Part of his struggle is to understand why the simple things he understands, like waste functions, walking, talking, language, basic observed physics(falling down), human emotions, fear of danger or pain, these have no correlation to a time when he learned them, and in some cases, such as emotions, he is different. For example, he knows children have parents, but he doesn't remember having any, nor does he miss the ones he must have had. This very difference between himself and the others is perceived by him, but not understood.
Thus it was that I wrote:
Janus glances at the others. He wonders why he is silent, why his face is dry. He stares back down at the static burn on his arm, and already he notices the differences.
The other kids are hurting and scared and crying; he's just hurting, but he knows he should be scared and crying.

This is presented in chapter one, which is open for brutal critique.

It's hard to explain much of this story without giving it away. It's gonna be long. I'm thinking at least four volumes. I've had a lot of crap thrown at me the last year and it's given me ideas out the..well, you know. I've been tossing them around, but haven't had time to do more than write a few notes.
Think Greek Spartans/Janissaries, bioengineering, interstellar Jihad, far future (4500 AD), and a whole lotta war. I think that sums it up.

And redemption. Big concept. But you have to sin before you can be redeemed.

But that's a bit much to expect of you, I suppose.

It isn't questions that keep us reading. It's the expectation that we will get answers. The expectation that we will get those answers is not produced by raising the question, it is produced by providing answers in a logical manner, so that we gain confidence that other questions will be answered when the story allows it.

Failing to provide needed information impairs our confidence that other answers are forthcoming. Thus the less you tell us in any given passage, the less we expect to gain from continuing to read further. If you're relying on the promise of a surprise ending to keep us reading to the end....

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But that's a bit much to expect of you, I suppose.

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You are right that knowledge and experience are different. But suppose one could have the emotion muted or removed, while having the experiential memory of the concept?

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It isn't questions that keep us reading. It's the expectation that we will get answers.

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Besides, if I explained every little detail in thirteen lines, I don't have a beginning to a story. I have a very brief synopsis.
I don't pick up a book expecting to instantly know what the story is about or why the characters are in their situations. I expect to wait a few pages. I expect that if a book has been printed by a publisher, it's probably worth the few pages it takes to discover if I Want to read it. It's also why I'm selective about what I read.

In the same vein, I write expecting the customer at the bookstore to consider my synopsis, the back cover, and then take a look at the first few pages before saying yea or nay. And it's the same with the publishers. This doesn't mean I don't want the opening to be tight, but that I am patient and have faith in my work.
That doesn't mean I am not helped by critiques. I need to know if something isn't clear, or if there is something I missed. I need a base understanding of how it's perceived. And I consider the responses, but it is still my work. It's valuable enough for me to let others poke at in an effort to improve.

That is why I am willing to put my stuff out here for critique.

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But that's a bit much to expect of you, I suppose.

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I'm in favor of presenting information at the proper time in your narrative. Please don't put words in my mouth, particularly when you haven't bothered to understand what they mean.

Humans can be impaired in their terror response through a variety of means. It's true that most of these also impair cognitive function to some extent, but evidence taken from the remainder still doesn't match your method of description. There is not simply an abscence of terror (or, indeed, any other supressed/removed neural function). The human mind senses the supression/trauma as a positive phenomenon, an extant barrier or sensation in it's own right. For example, in the case of a young man who was involved in an accident that damaged the part of his brain that allowed him to react emotionally to the visual recognition of his parents, he percieved this lack of emotional response as a positive and very distinct sense that his parents were actually nearly perfect imposters. Back to the terror example, most subjects feel a shield or barrier that is preventing them from becoming terrified/having reason for fear. Whether the result is a feeling of invulnerability or of suffocation, the feeling is very distinct and real. Subjects describe it in concrete terms of mass, size, even transparency.

This research is all available to you, I'd expect you to have perused the subject.

Our expectation of getting answers comes first from our experience as children, getting information from our parents or caregivers. We then apply that to other modes of communication such as stories and then books. As adult readers, we hold that expectation conditionally whenever beginning to read anything, but it has become a tentative expectation, we are ready to be disappointed.

You are going to be submitting your work to an editor, if you want to use conventional publication as a prop to the reader's expectation of sensible information. But editors (and their slushreading minions) hold the expectation of sensibility even more tenuously than do experienced readers, they've read thousands of unpublishable, nonsensical openings for every compelling story they've ever read. They will have far less mercy than I do.

Your assertion that "cart before the horse" is understandable would gain a great deal of credibility if you could apply it to your assertion that you can keep readers interested by virtue of information you will only reveal later.

I tend to agree with many of the comments already posted. Maybe if you stop butting heads with Survivor you will understand what he is trying to tell you. While this could be a very workable and compelling story, you are not there yet.

There was another post a while back about a low intelligence character being tortured. The issue for several readers was "Why would I bother reading this? EWWWW!" So be careful with graphic torture/violence to the young or the helpless, which is where it sounds like you are headed.

I do think you want Janus's name in the beginning because I wasn't sure (although I assumed) Janus was the boy having the dream. Be careful with dream openings, I almost stopped at the first line because dream openings are overdone. Depending on what the rest of your story is you may want to start with the loading of the boys and not his recall of the event in statis. It would also give you a better chance to show us how Janus is different from the rest of them, age, etc. Things I want to know right away.

Something along the lines of:

The boys around him sobbed and cried for a "Mommy" or "Daddy". Janus knew the words should mean something to him, but there was nothing. No connection. The words registered in the empty cavern of his mind as just words.

**

"He wonders why he is silent, why his face is dry. He stares back down at the static burn on his arm, and already he notices the differences. . . "
***

Without your earlier one page post describing why he his different I was completely lost at this point. I know the post was shortened due to the 13 line requirement but, you might want to reorder the sentance stressing the differences.

Maybe something like:

He is different than the other boys. His face is dry. He stares at the static burn on his arm, it hurts but he has no memory of receiving it. No understanding of why the others cringe away from the rankers.
**

Okay, so that it laying on a bit thick but still. Tell me he's diferent first and them immediately show me why through his POV or just show me that he is by comparing his actions to the boys around him and trust me to understand that he is different.

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Maybe if you stop butting heads with Survivor you will understand what he is trying to tell you

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You need to paint the memory as he remembered it, not as it really happened.

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It's not my work I'm defending, it's the notion of Survivor's that I don't understand terror. That is one emotion I am intimately familiar with, and I resent the statements of someone always ready to critique others, but unwilling to share his own work for criticism. As I posted earlier, some things never change.

Consider, how do you rate the opinions of someone if you can't see what they themselves can do? Anyone can talk in longwinded dialogues and make pretentious comments and find people, like novice writers, whose egos are so fragile, and their confidence so low, that they will eat up every word that smacks of sense.
Intelligence does not imply wisdom, and when someone calls themselves a writer, but does not write, then their opinion, educated as it sounds, has little value for me.

I consider that person a reader, and their opinion merely market research.

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The boys around him sobbed and cried for a "Mommy" or "Daddy".

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Good idea by the way. That definitely would have been happening enough for him to remember. Brainless of me to forget.
Btw, He does know what parents are, and what significance they have. I had included that in the next chapter but I'll have to move it back now.
You must understand, it is not that Survivor knows nothing of writing; his words say otherwise. Else I wouldn't have agreed with him in the past, such as when he points out the need for control of POV earlier in this thread. He's right.
The tone I'm taking with this work is such that my POV is omniscient, after the fact hindsight historian recall. It' also a rather dark work as well. So what details are mentioned are relevant; what isn't mentioned is relevant too.
But I'm confident enough in the storyline to be patient with some details. Not all, and of course the opening will be revised many times before I'm through. What is there now is the skeleton, the sketch of my introduction to this universe. As I'm still exploring this place, it will need to be refined.
It's still rough, which is why I reposted. If I was done I'd just go on, and you guys could read the finished copy when it comes out in paperback.
I just can't stand pompous comments. It's been too long of a year.

One last thought and I will leave you on your own, your POV isn't omnicient, at least in the portion you posted. It sounds like Janus's which is what a number of the comments address.

I can accept honest criticism gratefully.

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Enveloped by biomodification creches deep in the bowels of a sterile facility, 400 young boys slept deeply.
All were five years old. All but one had peaceful dreams.
In creche 216, his body invaded by billions of cilia-like nanopolymer conduits that joined him to the biomod systems, the boy Janus lay in the throes of a nightmare.
Brilliant orange floodlights paint with stark brightness the stricken faces of hundreds of young boys as they are crammed into the relocation shuttle. Blinking in confusion and blindness from the light,, Janus hurries into the deep bay of the shuttle along with the rest. The burn from the ranker’s arc baton makes his arm spasm in agony. He instinctively struggles to block the sensation, but cannot. His thoughts are tangled and brittle, and he can only endure it.

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But that's a bit much to expect of you, I suppose.

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For the record, I was saying that it would be unreasonable for me to expect a writer on this board to understand what it's like to be incapable of experiencing human terror. Somehow, Netstorm interpreted this to mean the opposite and to be derogatory. I don't know how it's possible to take both those interpretations, but I don't dispute that this is what happened as a result of my failure to properly disambiguate what I said. I really didn't know it was happening, though.

Letting the whole "friggin" forum decide who's right...KDW wouldn't like that, I'm afraid. It sounds like fun, but then I think it over and realize it would be just the sort of thing that doesn't fit in with our ethics. I may be evil, but I'm not totally irresponsible, after all.

As for the issue of readers vs writers...I wear my "reader" hat when I critique. That is, I restrain my impulse to mark down everything that I would do differently as a writer, and only comment on those things that bother me as a reader. Generally, we try and encourage the members here to do that as much as possible when giving critiques. We discourage things like totally rewriting entire passages and drastically overhauling the characters. The point of a critique is to help the author tell the story, not to jump in and tell the story our own way.

I also happen to have a "writer" hat, but I don't usually wear it except when I'm working on my own stories (this is a metaphorical hat, by the way). But that isn't important to this discussion.

I'd prefer a different phrase than "deep in the bowels", which I have seen used a lot. Also, you could use a stronger verb than "lay", if his nightmare is that intense. (Or explain, if his creche requires mechanical paralysis.)

Arguing with critiques http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/001622.html

Keeping secrets from the reader http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/002021.html

Why the problem with the first 13 isn't that it's too short
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/002662.html

Just tell me http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/002716.html

About the discussion: it works great to say "thanks" or "please clarify" -- and little else. Even if it does make you want to explode, it keeps critiquers believing you want their help.

I like your last modification a lot. You totally have me with those first two paragraphs. I understand what's happening, and I want to know more.

I didn't like the dream so much, because
* it doesn't seem like a dream, but a memory. *I* never have such coherent dreams. So it's a plausibility problem for me
* if it is just a dream, I don't know how much is taken from life -- and what I really wanted to know at this juncture was more about Janus's bizarre situation.
* if it's really a memory, I find it confusing, because I don't know the significance of the events.