Challenge #02787-G230: A Necessary Education
All of the Top Schools, get ‘problem students’, some get rid of the fast. Our Lady of Purity embraced them. – Anon Guest
[AN: Throwback to this thing in case you were wondering]
Somewhere in the known universe, there is a paradise. Nothing sharp exists there. The weather is always balmy and pleasant. The sands are soft on the beaches, and the shells are always pretty. Somewhere, sweet water flows and the air is full of birdsong. This is not that place. It is, in fact, almost the exact opposite.
Rioting in the streets, buildings on fire, exploding, or in the process of collapse. Screaming and terror. Some survivors dragging the injured to a place of better respite. Grown men run in terror from a tiny little girl who is currently sucking her thumb as she surveys the latest example of pyromania with satisfaction.
A select group of students from Our Lady of Purity Preparatory School for Young Ladies of Distinction have done for this place. They are not done with it yet. After all, Planetary Takeovers are just one possible merit badge. There’s also Rebuilding Society. These girls aim to collect.
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Challenge #02786-G229: Not That Hostile
What sort of culture might arise from an Eyeball Planet? From the ring of liquid water temperature sandwiched between way too hot and way too cold? – Anon Guest
Life… finds a way. It can exist in sunless, crushing depths. It can survive under thousands of Sidu[1] of ice. It can thrive in the substrate of irradiated soil, between the burning sun above and the toxic liquid below. It can even evolve in the confounding physics of Hyperspace, where the Xyrak'l come from. It laughs at terms like “goldilocks zone”, so it definitely gets a chuckle out of Eyeball Planets.
Science theorises that no life could exist on one. Science is wrong. In the relatively thin band of temperatures between burning metal and frozen air, there is space enough for life. Someone with a telescope could, if they so wished, stand on the habitable edge of the hot side and see someone waving at them from the habitable edge of the cold zone.
Walking there might take the better part of a week, but it’s still possible to do it. Life may find a way, but it is most definitely not Human. It might not even be anthropoid. Plants and animals alike have evolved to take advantage of the winds. When intelligent life arises, it arises in the shadow of such beasts. It, too, learns to adapt its environment for the best comfort.
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Challenge #02785-G228: Helper’s Eye View
Created as helpers/aides. They are infertile, so how do they regard their charges? They are not slave or servant, even though they look after their charge. Remember Julie and Nanny, but how does the process work both from the Augment’s view and the charges. – Bonding
I am Borf. I am good dog. This is Len, they are my pup. My pup is bigger than me, and has been since I was a pup. That is the way of it. I do the things Len can not. I was made for them. We are happy. All is good.
I remember for Len. I remember mealtime, bathtime, sleep time. I remember good food and bad food and sometimes food. I help with domestic mathematics and decisions for Len’s future. Good dog.
Len helps me remember too. Len remembers fun and birthdays and clothes and makes tricky detailed carvings with sharp things. Len remembers to be careful with the sharp things. Len helps with the medicine when I make a mistake. Len is good pup.
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Challenge #02784-G227: An Edge Case
A: hey man are you ok?
B: …. yeah sorry, feeling a little burned out
A: ah, I see. Hey do you want some coffee after this? – Anon Guest
Humans are resilient. Humans are robust. Humans are strong. Humans are also living beings with limits. There is only so much stress, devastation, and chaos that even a Human can handle.
Learning this was something of a hurdle after Humanity was accepted into the Alliance.
Witness Human Doe, who has apparently reached a limit and, as a result, has retreated to something resembling a catatonic state. They had sat for a meal and beverage break over an hour ago, and were still sitting there. Their meal was untouched. Their hot beverage had gone tepid. They were just… sitting. Staring, apparently, at nothing. Face blank.
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Challenge #02783-G226: Untranslatable
I wanted to sing, but it didn’t work translated to gal-simple. So I tried a mental translators, but then I learn that it most only scan the left side of the brain for the sentence structures. Singing comes from the right side. – Anon Guest
[AN: There’s growing evidence that the left-brain/right-brain stuff isn’t as real as we once thought. However, there are other things that say it’s real in very specific directions.]
Sometimes, you just got to sing. Sometimes, those listening do not understand the language being sung. This has lead to some true travesties in the past. Fortunately, technology exists to bridge the language gap.
Unfortunately, language is complicated. Songs are even more complicated as meter, rhyme, allegory, and allusion all blend together into something in which the literal translation is worse than unrelated to the original work. Some experimentation has occurred in the area of scanning the brain waves of the singer to try and get metaphorically closer to the meat of the meaning.
Initial results were… not that great. Especially in Humans. Redundancies built upon a brain structure initially designed to find food and co-ordinate a body and little else were not made for complicated linguistics. In Deathworlders especially, this meant different areas for (a) the language itself, (b) the tonal inflections within or surrounding the language, and © any meaning within both. There were more than that, but those were the bare minimum. It was a disaster.
[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]