Light,
I saw your suitcase on the Anniversary Review page and thought I'd drop in for a visit. Happy 4th WDC Anniversary!
This a pretty interesting story about a young boy and his interest in communicating with plants. While I don't know a thing about how to communicate with them, I am familiar with the idea of it. The flow of the story kept me interested, but it seemed like the dialog was a little 'formal' or stilted, and not what would really be said between a father and his son, or between a young boy and his female friend. My specific comments are shown below.
Title: I like the title, but as one starts to read the story, it's easy to see where this is probably going.
Description: Very good. You don't give the story away, but caught my attention with this.
General Comments:
1. You seem to overuse comma's. There are many sentences in this story where comma's are used when they aren't needed. I have pointed a few out for you.
2. A small town family, with twin eight-year-old boys, arrived at the Washington Elementary School’s annual science fair, on a warm sunny morning. The first sentence of this story is a little different in that I first thought the small town family with twin boys would be the main characters. But they were never mentioned again, making this a different way to start this. Not a bad way, it just struck me as odd. The last part, about the warm sunny morning seemed to be tossed in, as if trying to provide a little detail or scenery buildup. If you wanted to keep this central idea as the start of the story, you might consider rewording it. A suggestion would be, It was a warm sunny morning in <insert a town name>. The <insert family name> with their twin boys were on an outing to the local science fair at Washington Elementary School.
3. Over by the school building, where there was access to power, where the booths by students in grade five and up. The second 'where' should be were. This is an example of extra comma's, you don't need one after building.
4. Henry placed a small houseplant in a box, lined with metal plates on the inside. You don't need a comma in this sentence. You could modify it a little as follows to help it read a little smoother. Henry placed a small houseplant in a box that had been lined with metal plates on the inside.
5. And, there was a pink glow from the plates inside the box. The use of a conjunction to start a sentence should be done very rarely. In this case, I think you can delete the word 'and', and not affect the read of the sentence at all.
6. As he walked up to the workbench, he saw tools, test equipment, a few baseball cards spread out; and, he saw wires attached to another plant, next to the new box. The use of the semi-colon is good here because you're connecting different thoughts. However, you shouldn't use the 'and' after the semi-colon. You could substitute 'there' for the 'and' after the semi-colon, giving the whole line and thought process better consistency.
7. Enthusiastically, he said, “Out of a one minute recording with a state of the art digital recorder, that I borrowed from one of my geek friends, I got four good samples of the noise, slowed down ten thousand times.” This sentence is worded 'clunkily' as I like to say. (I'm not an English major by any means, so I can't use the correct wording to tell you why, so I say clunkily.  ) It might be re-worded as such. Enthusiastically, he said, “I borrowed a state of the art digital recorder from one of my geek friends, and out of a one minute recording, I got four good samples of the noise, slowed down ten thousand times.”
8. I’m really sure it’s coming from the pant, Dad.” I think pant should be plant.
9. “Well, as a study partner, I am, others seem to want me to do their homework. You can delete the first comma and not hurt this sentence.
10. And, well, I like Brenda.” Either delete the first comma, or better yet, delete the first word.
11. He replaced the amplifier in the box with one that can pick up almost any frequency about a month earlier. This story is told in the past, yet this sentence reads in the present. This is because you say "He replaced", and 'can'. It could be re-worded slightly and keep the same thought process. He had replaced the amplifier in the box with one that could pick up almost any frequency about a month earlier.
12. Why are you helping him to build this interface?” You should delete the word 'to' in this sentence.
13. "No, not yet, I do know that there weren’t any languages in the signals previously known to my software.” This sentence is worded clunkily too. You might consider the following. "No, not yet. Previous signals did not contain any languages that my software recognized."
14. The chances are very slim that whatever is happening when you are receiving these signals, will work in reverse, at least not with a plant.” You should delete the first comma, it's not needed.
15. He pauses again, and his face became a little flushed. Using the word 'pauses' puts the story back in the present tense again. I would think 'paused' would work fine.
16. “I’ve turned my receiver into a transceiver¾like a two-way radio. I don't understand why you have 3/4 between transceiver and like.
Overall impressions: I'm left with two final thoughts about the story. First, you seem to want to bring in the idea that Brenda and Henry are two normal thirteen year olds. You do this by mentioning her short skirts once in a while. This whole idea has little to do with the main story. It would be fine as a secondary plot to the main story, but you need to carry it out more if that's the case. To me, this secondary plot or storyline never got off the ground, and seemed to be added in 'fluff'. Secondly, after his second transmission to Onmow113, the answer back is incredibly long and detailed. I do not think any one on the other end would give that much information to such a primitive species as humans are. They consider us not quite ready for things, yet here he (or she) is, spilling the beans about how the Earth is isolated and watched by them. I just don't see that as a response he would get. Right after receiving this message, the story ends, but to me it didn't end. There was no conclusion to things. They sent two messages to an unknown alien race, and the story ends there? To me, the story is just starting, this part here is only the prelude to a much bigger story. Would Brenda, Henry, and their parents be allowed to live? Wouldn't the aliens want them isolated or something so they can't tell others what they know? Questions that could be answered by making this story a lot longer.
Sum1{/left}
 WDC POWER RAIDER
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| (3.5)
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