Challenge #02892-G335: An Encounter to Remember
Hey, InterNutter? Do you think we could get the enemy’s view of this? I mean, seeing a human tripping big time on stims rushing their camp like that? I mean, some of the enemy survived to report the counter, right? That might be fun to see. Please?
https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02745-g188-use-only-as-directed – Anon Guest
They’d missed one. They’d missed more than one, and they knew it. But it was one that was dangerous. They were barely glimpsed, but all footage identified it as the same Human. Traces left behind were horrifying.
The wings of a local bird, torn off with Human teeth. Deceased troop members, smashed to death with blunt instruments that included rocks, sticks, and bare fists, as evidenced by the blood left on the scenes. Some deceased troop members had also been partially devoured. Pulled apart with hands and teeth.
Some reported terrifying cries in the night. Some footage showed a being moving impossibly fast, with impossible aggression, destroying everything in their path, freeing up fellow Humans that they had held captive. Even more terrifying was that the chief aggressor could haul away injured Humans on an improvised sled on their own. With the weight of five Humans and supplies piled on by the walking wounded allies.
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Challenge #02888-G331: Unconscionable Prevention
Imagine a world where people are required to get vaccinated, required to wear masks and take precautions if there’s an outbreak, and are given universal healthcare and a basic universal income. Now imagine that these rules are enforced by law. If people refuse, they are required to be placed in quarantine areas away from the general population due to the risk they pose to the population. Now imagine “pure lifers” coming in. Knowing full well the polity they were trying to move to, wanting to go there due to the fact the population was so healthy and their planets kept clean, had these laws.
Can you imagine the fit they throw when they find they are not being allowed to be exempted from those laws no matter how hard they try to avoid it? – Own Good
Once upon a time, basic health and safety measures were politicised. Interestingly, those on the side of profit above all were counter to the health measures that would maximise labor exploitation. They favoured speaking out against even the simplest of measures that could protect the workers, because the allied “health care” system could wring more money out of the populace via over-inflated billing regimens.
This lead to widespread poverty, disease, and business losses, but by then it was an identity, and all they could do was double down on it. When the chance arose to make a world in their own image, the faithful Pure Life movement threw themselves at the stars, aiming to live an all-natural, all-pure life. It was the One True Way, to which the universe’s population would naturally move towards.
You can imagine their outrage when they found that the rest of the world had carried on in the opposite direction. It had such pros as being able to afford medicine, shelter, and food. It had such plus sides as an almost nonexistent infant mortality rate. There were even bonuses like a longer and more enjoyable lifespan, which was heresy to the Pure Life Cult. Obviously the solution was to spread their wisdom to every corner in the Alliance.
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Challenge #02887-G330: Conflict Resolution Protocol
153: Pod 153 to Pod 042. How is it going?
042: I am embarrassed.
153: Why is that?
042: I launched a suicide attack, and yet here I am. Still alive. I must look very silly.
153: Do not feel bad about it. We are alive after all. And being alive is just a constant stream of embarrassment.
042: that concept is a bit too abstract for me to understand at this time. I will save in my list of things to analyze later. – Pod 153
Of all the cruelties that Deathworlders have visited on the uncaring universe, one of the top ten has to be the addition of artificial intelligence to weapons of war. With artificial intelligence comes artificial emotion, as a means of motivation. Which means that some Deathworlders create artificial cogniscence.
Warpods made to hate. Warpods made to kill. Warpods made to give their brief, artificial lives for the good of the Empire. For the glory of the Polity. If there is a beginning of evil in treating people like things, then there is definitely something rotten in the heart of making things into expendable people. Beginning with: things are a lot easier to motivate when you can literally make them do what you want.
In every war, there is great destruction. In every war, there are degrees of insanity that would not be tolerated anywhere else[1]. In every war… there are veterans. Pod 453 thought they had malfunctioned when the cease-fire was called and they were recalled to the launcher. Objective unfulfilled. Objective cancelled.
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Challenge #02886-G329: Parallels in Babysitting
(My husband, talking about our children’s habit of climbing on me before falling asleep)
“The little ones climb the big ones” – Anon Guest
Even on Havenworlds, there is one rule followed by nature. If you want to keep your young safe, keep them close. Some prefer the strategy of over-breeding so that some survive to adulthood, but that’s more of a Deathworlder thing. Given this fact, it is small surprise that the young of any species seek closeness with those who are older.
Just how they do so is generally dependant on the mobility of the young concerned. Thusly, when Fl'th'pt trusted Human Zori with hir clutch, the Human reacted positively when the little tentacled darlings instinctually began to clamber towards his head.
“Aaawww… I’m their safety zone,” cooed Human Zori. He petted the lead climber’s head as the baby reached his chest. “Hewwo darlin’. Hewwo.”
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Challenge #02882-G325: Forging ahead
The human was highly recommended by everyone the crew asked when it came to being a security officer. They were diligent, highly intelligent, made friends easily, in fact many of the crew still talked to them from time to time. The only caveat tended to be, they didn’t want normal crew quarters to sleep in, they always asked for a storage bay. Why? Well, they collected blades. But not all blades, only unique ones. But that wasn’t the only reason.
I decided to go see for myself why they always asked for a bay and walked inside. There was the human dressed in skins and protective layers of what looked like leather. They were pumping a large handle heating steel before bringing it, glowing hot, to another large hunk of metal and began to hit it with a hammer. – Anon Guest
Heat management detected an anomaly in Human Stef’s quarters, which was Storage Bay Three. Using wild Humans from the Edge was always full of certain levels of weirdness. Up to and including the fact that wild Humans and standard personal habitats didn’t always mix. Given that Human Stef was twice the size of a standard bunk on the Wandering Inquisitive, they could understand why the Human would prefer to retrofit a storage bay.
Now that there was a heat anomaly in there, there was the concern that a wild Human was possibly cooking their food on a fire that they had built inside a closed vessel. Fire was always a terror in space and Humans loved fire beyond all logic and reason. SO it was that Companion Gorx hurried to Storage Bay Three to check on Human Stef and whatever they had going on in their habitat.
Human Stef had blades on every wall. Including the wall to the sanitation facility and, in all likelihood, inside it as well. This was a Human after all. In the largest space of Human Stef’s habitat was reserved for a large chunk of metal and an electric heat element inside heavy shielding. Human Stef was wearing something that scanned as animal hides and repeatedly hitting white-hot metal with a hammer.
[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for a link to the rest of this story, and details on how to support this artist. Or visit peakd (dot) com (slash at) internutter for the stories at their freshest]