Challenge #02963-H040: Stress Management Strategies

H - “I am… in a bad place right now. I will be ok when we can get back home and this calms down, don’t worry. For right now though I might not experience the same reality that you do, and I need help staying… here.”

A - “What do you need from me?”

H - “If you see me turn to look at something or listen to a sound, just say either Yes or No if you see/hear something there too. If you see me freeze up, please just call my name a few times and I should snap out of it.”

A - “Is there anything else?”

H - “… Please be real?” – SilverRey

It was at that moment that Companion Ali knew that Human Hyl was in a very bad place indeed. Wild Humans like hir always came with scars in one form or another. When the scars weren’t on the outside, they were definitely on the inside. It was Companion Ali’s job to help Human Hyl and very little of this had been covered in Orientation.

This was Ali’s first day in the field. They didn’t know everything they should, but this was the exact kind of trial by fire that would bond a Human with them for life. Therefore, they had to improvise. “Thank you for telling me,” Ali began. “I admit this is a tricky conundrum. How may I best prove that I am real?”

“I’m relying on memory and cams. If the cams see what I see, then there’s a good chance it’s a real thing. That said, I’ve been in this livesuit long enough that I could be having playback hallucinations. I don’t have detail haptics, so that’s out. Uuuuh… Oh yeah. I’ll point my eyecam at you, and close my eyes, and tell you to do a gesture. Then you do it again after I do playback for verification. I’m never any good at keeping my hallucinations in sync.”

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02962-H039: Art For All

A flashmob on a space station, please. Flash mob. Flash mob.

[AN: First link leads to a video in which Musicians keep turning up to join in playing Beethoven’s 9th, or Ode to Joy. There’s even a Chorus. Second video features a dance performance that becomes a proposal.]

Art has many facets. There’s even a form of art that aims to have the viewer question, “What is art?” Of the performance artists, there are more many and varied types than one might imagine. Which includes the Flash Mob. A group of individuals with nominal co-ordination who agree to do a public performance of something with little notice and the tools on hand.

All they needed was the ability, the time, and the tools. Convenience of transit to get to the site of the scene should have been, but it’s amazing the lengths that Humans will go to in order to create weirdness. Anywhere that population might be available to view a live performance, Humans will make surrealism for everyone else.

For example, Passalong Station. A nexus in which the motto is Hurry Up And Wait. Those who work there gain entertainment from sharing Weird Customer Stories. The work is almost monotonous, save for that. At the end of a term, they fly home to the nearby planet and take some extended time in which routine is no longer necessary.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02961-H038: Submitted For Your Approval…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0u4M6vppCI not all art is safe for all viewers. – Anon Guest

[AN: Video link leads to the stage performance video of Shia LeBouff by Rob Cantor. Contains simulated, stylistic violence and references to same]

Media Flagging and Filtering is a never-ending job. What’s “okay” for one culture is scandalously salacious for another. Even the face can be offensive if that face belongs to a certain gender[1]. There’s a lot of churn in the “exposed skin” department.

This one had reached The Theatre. It was a relatively open forum where a multiple number of eyes and minds viewing with their digits paused over so many toggle switches. So far, the media currently in question had reached the level of being safe[2] for average citizens of the Alliance, after passing through safe for all levels of Deathworlder. The theatre invited the kind of people who kept complaining about the classifications to devote their time to making the archives safe for all viewers. The current guidelines alone cause many to turn around on the spot.

This one piece of audio-visual art has been under contention for some time. Exposed skin isn’t even half of it. There’s the liminal unnatural nature of the stage in an empty theatre. There are spooky children singing in a choir. There are thousand-mile stares into nothingness, but also directly at the viewer. Then there’s the content, the actual words and the story that comes with the wrapping.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02961-H038: Submitted For Your Approval…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0u4M6vppCI not all art is safe for all viewers. – Anon Guest

[AN: Video link leads to the stage performance video of Shia LeBouff by Rob Cantor. Contains simulated, stylistic violence and references to same]

Media Flagging and Filtering is a never-ending job. What’s “okay” for one culture is scandalously salacious for another. Even the face can be offensive if that face belongs to a certain gender[1]. There’s a lot of churn in the “exposed skin” department.

This one had reached The Theatre. It was a relatively open forum where a multiple number of eyes and minds viewing with their digits paused over so many toggle switches. So far, the media currently in question had reached the level of being safe[2] for average citizens of the Alliance, after passing through safe for all levels of Deathworlder. The theatre invited the kind of people who kept complaining about the classifications to devote their time to making the archives safe for all viewers. The current guidelines alone cause many to turn around on the spot.

This one piece of audio-visual art has been under contention for some time. Exposed skin isn’t even half of it. There’s the liminal unnatural nature of the stage in an empty theatre. There are spooky children singing in a choir. There are thousand-mile stares into nothingness, but also directly at the viewer. Then there’s the content, the actual words and the story that comes with the wrapping.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02960-H037: So Not Fair

A ship with a mixed crew of deathworlder and havenworlder scientists, including a few humans, find a solar system that is a nearly a duplicate of what the Earth’s solar system was like in the very beginning of the Jurassic period. The difference being, there were three inhabitable planets instead of only one. Where in the Earth’s solar system, aka Sol, aka the Terran system, the planets Mars and Venus were uninhabitable, one being lifeless without an atmosphere and the other being with a thick, toxic, acidic atmosphere with high winds and deadly pressure, in this system, three of the four rocky inner planets were roughly all the same size, had strong magnetospheres similar to Earth’s, similar atmospheres to what the Earth’s had been like in the early Jurassic period, and all three had water and a lot life. The only real differences, is two were haven worlds and one was a Jurassic-Park-Like deathworld. – Dinos

[AN: True facts - Mars is closer in mass to our moon than Earth’s, so it’s kind of amazing that it has atmosphere at all. I’m going to fudge the numbers for you though :D ]

It wasn’t entirely rare to find two planets inside the “goldilocks zone”, but it was rarer to find life on both of them. Therefore, the new system was beyond interesting as a “threefer”. Owing to their relative positions, the Planetary Survey crew analysed the most outward, then the most inward. The one life-bearing planet in the middle orbit was on the far side of the sun to the Thesis Analysis, so it was left for last.

After two Class One Havenworlds, expectations were high for the third in their queue. The Humans were very excited. For every planet with life, the odds were high to find intelligent life. Which meant new friends. Humans did love making new friends.

Human Pyn was on the observation deck, avoiding all the instruments in favour of staring at the viewscreen as she stimmed by bounding about like a flea on a griddle. “Hey diddle diddle, we’re headed for the middle,” she repeated, giggling. “The last two were empty, but this one’s gotta be a winner. Come on spinner.”

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02958-H035: Not That Harmful

Aboard a station, a man is raising a small number of bees. Yes people are frightened, yes they complain to the management. Management sends security. The man explains how these bees, though more for the safety of the bees than the people around them are being kept in a special enclosure filled with growing plants, are not the kind that are able to sting. And shows how to make friends with stingless bees.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

There are many varieties of bees and there is a type of bee that produces honey that actually do not sting. They have no stingers. They can, if provoked, give a painful bite, but the bites are not venomous, they just hurt. They are many that are far, far more docile than even European bees. The problem is they do not produce very much honey at any one time. Which is why they’re not often kept as honeybees by most who raise bees because of their very low production. They are, none-the-less, very fascinating. – Apiary

[AN: I actually met some of these guys! They’re more the size of fruit flies and don’t even register as bees to the casual observer. Their hives are firkin TINY and I’m a little bit in love]

It took Biota Management some time to find the nest and, given how it was built, only a little further time to find the apiarist. There, in their personal quarters, was not merely a vast array of Deathworlder plantlife, but a multitude of very, very small hives. It doesn’t take many hives at all to be a multitude when bees are involved. Three is sufficient. Human Baz had five. None of them were bigger than a shoe box. Some of them were barely bigger than a chocolate box[1].

They tried to arrest her, of course, because balancing a closed environment is a serious job and the least little thing can tip an entire ecology into utter chaos. Anyone bringing in unauthorised and uncleared life forms was in for a heap of trouble. Public Endangerment was just the beginning. Unfortunately, Human Baz had an unbreakable defence - the proper paperwork.

Folders of it. Reams of it. Miles and miles of red tape. If put into physical form, it would have occupied two and a half moving boxes. Human Baz had dotted every I and crossed every T. Slowly. Methodically. Carefully. Including registering the swarms as pets so she could go through all of the testing necessary to be certain that the bees were as harmless to the stations’ biota as they seemed. One of those tests was the release of one sterile hive in a restricted zone, with protections to be sure that they didn’t interfere with any other systems.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02957-H034: A Wholly Owned Subsidiary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvANy49Kqhw – Anon Guest

[AN: Nonny wanted to link to this particular song, but it was found in this playlist. Enjoy at your leisure]

If there was one upside to the situation, then Bo would never run out of things to do. There was always something that needed doing. Something that needed fixing. Something that needed sweat and muscle and time to do. The downside being that Bo had swapped life in one crapsack situation, for life in another.

At least in a prison, there was an end to the sentence. The contract had sounded tempting and, thanks to an entirely engineered education disparity, Bo could barely read very much of the contract at all. Boilerplate, they said. Standard stuff, they said. You’ll never serve another day in a cell, they said.

Technically… they weren’t wrong. Bo didn’t see any such thing as a prison wall. No barbed wire, no chain link, no guards. There was no point. Even if he ran from the colony in progress, he would not last long. The native flora and fauna required extensive processing to be edible or non-toxic, and there wasn’t enough of it in easy reach to even try surviving on. It was stay in range or run off to die. He was free to make that. Some choice. Work his butt off or run away from it all and slowly starve. He’d seen a few who’d tried Option B. One look was too many.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02955-H032: We, the Undersigned…

The Dereggers gave up their trash planet, a toxic hell-hole that would’ve cost them a fortune to clean up. They signed an iron-clad contract that had every single i dotted and t crossed. Not so much as a gnat-sized loophole anywhere. And it was signed by their leaders and several leaders from the Galactic Alliance as witnesses, and him, of course.

He took all that was there and made enough time to make himself an insanely wealthy man. Wealth he then turned around and invested, instead of hoarding it, using it to terraform a toxic dump into a paradise. The poisons removed, the debris, gone, the air and water as pure as if the planet was newly discovered. The planet had been turned into a world even the weakest havenworlders would find beautiful and humans would think was nearly heaven.

However, now the De-Regger leadership was pissed. They demanded a change in the deal, but it was too late. But as he decided to give these angry men an object lesson, could they learn, or would they continue to scream foul? Still….. it did feel good to see the looks on their faces when they landed on the paradise that was their former trash planet, confronted with the fact they didn’t own it anymore.

A sequel to this gem:

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02883-g326-learn-something-guys – DaniAndShali

Some phrases have a special magic. Ask, “What’s the worst that can happen?” merely invites a better demonstration of the worst that could possibly happen. So does, “It can’t get any worse,” because of course it can. “That was mine,” is one guaranteed to stiffen the spine of any given Deregger CEO or Executive Administrator to draw breath. So, too, is, “It’s making a profit now.”

Dereggers have very rigid standards. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work harder, appear strong, appear virtuous, and never take a loss. So long as the money floweth towards a CEO, then they are doing the will of their deity. No matter what the unread texts might have to say about it[1]. The mere concept of rubbish being turned into profit flies in the face of everything they believe in[2].

So, when a known refuse world and money sink was given in lieu of payment to a Galactic, the CEO’s of Greater Deregulation Lower North congratulated themselves on their own wit and trade genius. They were less happy when they learned that the Galactic in question was making a profit they had missed out on. That, in their mind, was a heinous insult. So they did what any Deregger would do. They tried to sue.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02955-H032: We, the Undersigned…

The Dereggers gave up their trash planet, a toxic hell-hole that would’ve cost them a fortune to clean up. They signed an iron-clad contract that had every single i dotted and t crossed. Not so much as a gnat-sized loophole anywhere. And it was signed by their leaders and several leaders from the Galactic Alliance as witnesses, and him, of course.

He took all that was there and made enough time to make himself an insanely wealthy man. Wealth he then turned around and invested, instead of hoarding it, using it to terraform a toxic dump into a paradise. The poisons removed, the debris, gone, the air and water as pure as if the planet was newly discovered. The planet had been turned into a world even the weakest havenworlders would find beautiful and humans would think was nearly heaven.

However, now the De-Regger leadership was pissed. They demanded a change in the deal, but it was too late. But as he decided to give these angry men an object lesson, could they learn, or would they continue to scream foul? Still….. it did feel good to see the looks on their faces when they landed on the paradise that was their former trash planet, confronted with the fact they didn’t own it anymore.

A sequel to this gem:

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02883-g326-learn-something-guys – DaniAndShali

Some phrases have a special magic. Ask, “What’s the worst that can happen?” merely invites a better demonstration of the worst that could possibly happen. So does, “It can’t get any worse,” because of course it can. “That was mine,” is one guaranteed to stiffen the spine of any given Deregger CEO or Executive Administrator to draw breath. So, too, is, “It’s making a profit now.”

Dereggers have very rigid standards. Pull yourself up by the bootstraps, work harder, appear strong, appear virtuous, and never take a loss. So long as the money floweth towards a CEO, then they are doing the will of their deity. No matter what the unread texts might have to say about it[1]. The mere concept of rubbish being turned into profit flies in the face of everything they believe in[2].

So, when a known refuse world and money sink was given in lieu of payment to a Galactic, the CEO’s of Greater Deregulation Lower North congratulated themselves on their own wit and trade genius. They were less happy when they learned that the Galactic in question was making a profit they had missed out on. That, in their mind, was a heinous insult. So they did what any Deregger would do. They tried to sue.

[Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)

Challenge #02954-H031: Operation Comeback

They were runners-up last year at the Zombie competition. However, their squad got wiped out in the start of the third hour. This year they were determined to make it through the semi-finals and into the finals. But it would take a lot of practice. However, this year, they had a long haul from the station they’d been at to the competition arena. They had plenty of time to practice.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02723-g166-just-add-zombies – Competition

Zombie tag had somehow become a seasonal sport. Points were awarded for the Zombies remaining in character, of course, so roleplaying was a draw for Team Zombie. As for Team Live… the excuse to go into a mock battle with Deathworlders and have a chance of winning. It was great for epigenetic strengthening of the genome.

This year, Team Zombie were trying to come up with a strategy to outlast Shar the Destroyer. There was a profile picture and some of the winning stratagems playing on loop. “Ze has many names,” said the Team Zombie leader, briefing the starter crew for Team Zombie. “Shar the Star, Shar the Scar, Death From Above, Silent But Deadly,” the leader paused for the more childish members of the team to get over their giggles. “As well as The Sneak. Ze’s a Level Three Havenworlder with the ability to climb and glide. Her rate of descent per DU traveled is point one per DU horizontal. Keep that in mind when you’re lurching towards climbable structures.”

“Yeah but we’re supposed to lurch towards the last sound we heard. Zombie rules.”

[Experimental posting format. Reblog or comment if you see this post in the tags. Check the source to see the full story]

(Source: peakd.com)