Challenge #02743-G186: Gifts For the Pack
What happens when humans are so pack-bonded that even other species start acting like them? The same willingness and madness you’d see from a human instilled into a havenworlder,
Would they really be a havenworlder anymore? – Anon Guest
Humans will pack-bond with anything. This is known. They will back bond with other intelligent life forms so hard that the pack-bonding works both ways. This has been fatal to some. This has been life-saving to many. For most, though, it just is until such a time as the Galactic in question realises that they have become, wholly and completely, a fellow member of some Human’s pack.
Some people never greet this information well.
Companion Thriq was good at their job. They were a very good Companion to Ships’ Humans and the rare Human population that was trusted to run relatively loose on stations. They had an encyclopaedic recall for faces, names, familial attachments, allergies, and all the little peculiarities that went with knowing Humans for more than a handful of consecutive minutes.
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Challenge #02742-G185: The Motivation Factor
For quite some time it’s been well known that human life spans are so much shorter than havenworlder’s, save for those factions that have found other means, electronic or body-swapping, to extend it. But one scientist has been working with a family for a very long time on changing that at the genetic level. Now, with his research in hand, he does a presentation to a scientific panel about his research with the family, how it could benefit humans and extend their life spans, and how it could be applied in the future. And, waiting not far was his constant companion who’d become more than just a friend. She was strong and healthy and well at over 150 years of age, still quite spry. She smiled with love in her eyes for the one standing there giving his presentation. Her name was Pam, and not long after they’d met, they’d fallen in love. And now, he was giving others hope as well. She was so proud.
This is based off of the prompt from 7 months ago in Steemit called “Concerning Countdown”. But it keeps listing the link I add as SPAM. I’m sorry. – Anon Guest
[AN: That would be this one as Anons can’t post links in my forum for some weird reason. I’ve tried and failed to unriddle it. If you don’t want to join, that’s fine. One of my members is very diligent at digging up the links.]
Nobody lives forever. Technically, the B'Nari can, it’s just that they don’t want to. The oldest known B'Nari “hung around” for an extra century “just to prove they could”. According to their own journals, it was the dullest one hundred years of their life.
No intelligent life was ever made to be immortal. I kept telling my Lox that. He was four hundred and mumblety-something. I was Twenty-five and fresh to the family job. It didn’t matter then. It still doesn’t matter now.
He never groomed me. We just… talked science. Telomeres and life-extension and the thin line between potentially infinite rejuvenation and cancer. He once spent an entire decade -on and off- trying to convince me that printing myself a new, younger body to inhabit wasn’t stealing a life. I even saw a documentary on the entire process. New bodies aren’t cloned and grown - they’re printed. like you’d print any piece of furniture. The last step is stimulating the heart and lungs before the old mind-pattern moves in.
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Challenge #02741-G184: A Helping Hand
“Do you enjoy this? You’re an adult.”
“Yeah, but I have the emotional maturity of a child, because my emotional development was stunted by repeated trauma while I was growing up. So, if I watch stuff like this, it helps me feel like doing stuff around the house, because I’m really, really impressionable. Also, I have to clean my living space, it’s disgusting.”
“So you’re watching a children’s show to help you clean your home.”
“And now you know why I have diminished responsibility.” – Anon Guest
Therapy for Humans is a strange realm to begin with, and then you have the peculiar group of Humans who attempt to hack their own brains. They are, after all, the first responders to the chaos inside their heads. Some know their patterns. Some just realise that they’re going through some ungulate excrement and attempt to apply whatever brakes they have access to.
Others choose motivation, with varying degrees of success. Some attempts are doomed to failure. This was looking like one of them. Human Kat was watching an animated entertainment aimed at children. One evidently familiar to her as she was singing along with some of the songs under her breath.
Companion Uinn attempted to unriddle this particular inactivity. Human Kat was one of the ones with Diminished Responsibility and a greater need for assistance at personal-level minutia. She could reliably feed and dress herself, but the issue was in cleaning up any messes. Which had evidently happened since Uinn had last visited Kat’s domicile. “Do you have a story to tell about this?”
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Challenge #02740-G183: Got Your Back
Bold of you to assume I reached peak dumbass – Anon Guest
There are plans that are works of art. There are other plans, much like this one, that seem to have been produced by wiping one’s bodily waste expulsions all over the blueprint page. There’s half-assed plans and… whatever this was.
It was equal parts improvisation, desperation, innovation, and flat-out perspiration. After the lingering echoes of all the explosions died down and they were safe in the middle of a host of Mediks, Throq finally found the power of their own words under their control once more.
“That,” Throq announced, “has to be the stupidest, least-thought-out, idiotic, dumb-ass move of all time!”
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Challenge #02739-G182: Do Not Pay Your Heart
This is from this prompt :-)
https://steemit.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02446-f256-do-no-harm
The medic known as Allie had gained quite the reputation. She had managed to save people that everyone else had said were not savable. She’d managed to cure those that were said to be incurable. More than one elite had made it a point to find the station she was working at to bring sick relatives and have her see to them.
But now a choice was being given to her. Several were offering large sums of Time for her to work for them and leave the station. But here at the station, there were hundreds who needed her, many could not pay, of course, but without her they, or a family member, would likely perish. But how to explain it to the wealthy ones who thought such talent was wasted on the poor? – Anon Guest
When one is talented at giving the hopeless hope, giving those without a chance a new chance, or giving those facing their ends a new start, one gets to be known. Medik Allie was both Medik and Lucker, giving her Luck to others so that they could have another chance. Following the Vorax Rescue, the wealthy had noticed.
Galactic Economics tends to prevent obscene wealth accumulation, but the Alliance can’t be everywhere and they can’t stop every loophole. There will always be the kind of person who’s the head of an amount of wealth akin to the body of a swollen tick about to paralyse its victim. The kind of person who, like the tick, are not healthy to have around in large numbers.
Technology can only do so much. Genes can only be cleansed of imperfections so many times. Organs can only be replaced so many times. And, in the era before B'Nar made its technology available[1], only so many times one body could be repaired. Some retreated into techno-sarcophagi, with nanotechnology keeping their brain alive when their body failed. They would pilot humanoid puppets and pay extensive amounts of money to keep their machines alive. Sooner or later, those parasites ran out of profits and fell by the wayside. One did not want to live and die like that.
[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]