The reporter looked skeptical. "Only in one small region, professor."
"Ah, yes," said the professor, raising a finger to punctuate his remark,
"but the first success breeds others. They might have spread. They did travel a little,
but theirs is such a harsh environment. The experiment simply needs more time."
Discussion
This was my second published story, the second I gave away to Planet Magazine and have
regretted ever since. This one isn't very good, to the point where I rewrote the story
several years later and titled it "The Budget Hath No Mercy." That version has yet to sell.
In this story, the professor creates a universe in his laboratory, and has some interaction
with the occupants. In fact, their history parallels ours.
Little did I know that a guy named Theodore Sturgeon once wrote a story called A Microcosmic God,
and it parallels my story in uncanny ways. I finally read Sturgeon's take after writing "Budget Hath..."
and it's got a lot of similarities, but the stories are certainly different.
The central idea was something we talked about as kids. What if our stars and galaxies
are really just atoms in some enormous universe. The idea is as old as the hills, but
as a novice writer, I didn't know that. It's out there, for what it's worth.
There's also a real problem with dialog in this story, as in, that's about all the story is.