Wow, thank you for the response. I also had concerns about the dialogue being too constructed, but I haven't really had the time to go over it and make big changes. My intention is to make Simon still awkward and learning at this stage (almost like he's in very late beta testing stages), but I haven't really conveyed that in the writing, at least not yet. At any rate, I admit that Simon saying "how are you today?" was just weirdness on my part, not the character's.

It's true too that I should reword that sentence about his beliefs. I wanted Simon to mean that it's unknown to him on an emotional level, that feeling of thinking there's something more out there, but that isn't really made clear in that sentence.

Also, the issue with "seemed to smile" is that the MC was supposed to be unsure as to whether or not it was a smile. Again, that was probably poorly constructed, though, because it sounds like a redundancy or something like that. And using "atomic" was a last minute decision because I liked the sound of the word, but you bring up a good point that nobody ever really uses it anymore.

As far as the rest of the writing is concerned, I think a lot of that is the remnants of a lot of stylistic issues I still struggle with. When I was in middle and early high school, I would use the passive voice a lot, because I thought that was the mark of a good writer or something (I don't know, I was young; cut me some slack). Hell, it wasn't until I looked it up myself that I learned what active and passive voice meant, and then I saw it everywhere in my writing. So, in that sense, I still can be susceptible to using it, as well as some other things you pointed out which I recognize as being "crutches" that I started to use to avoid passive voice, that aren't necessarily better.

Anyway, thanks a lot for taking the time for all of this, it gives me a lot to think about and refine in my writing. I really do appreciate it.