Challenge #00807-B076: To Ride the Dark
On the Dark Side of the Force: you can’t let it guide you like you can the Light, you _must_ not, in fact. Rather, you have to muzzle it - or perhaps ride it, is a better analogy. Use it’s power, but do not let it run away with you. Like with a particularly independent, stubborn, and genocide-happy horse.
“You have much anger in you. That is good. It is a feeling. Feeling is life.” The Master smiled at her padawan. “What you must never do is allow your feelings to rule you. That way lies defeat. Behold - the little dog in the courtyard. It, too, feels.”
The yapping little mutt was chasing pigeons with no hope of catching them. Syla could see that the dog was just yapping after the first creature to move. “It feels that it has to chase,” she said.
“Indeed,” Master Egris nodded. “The dog expends all its energy in a useless and unfocussed chase. Ultimately, it will be too exhausted to chase, and lose any hope of a prize.”
“So I must be focussed like a cat?”
Laughter. “Nonsense, padawan. The cat focuses exclusively on one goal. It focuses too fiercely, and leaves itself vulnerable from an unforeseen attack.“
There was a cat in the courtyard, below. A mottled little beast with its amber eyes avidly on one fat bird. It was the perfect hunter. Quiet and stealthy. Low to the ground. Unobserved by its prey.
Until Master Egris pitched a pebble at the feline and it leaped, yowling, away from the attack.
“We are not animals and we should not strive to be them,” said Master Egris. “We are people. We think. We are in control of what we say and do. We learn. We can learn from animals, true, but think of the entire example.” A smile and a gentle hug. “Between the flurry of the dog and the focus of the cat, there is the ultimate balance. Enough focus to keep the goal in sight, and enough energy to prevent others from thwarting you.”
“Balance,” said Syla. “That’s very… light side.”
Egris chuckled. “There’s more in common between Light and Dark than most masters tend to admit. The Light believes that emotion gets in the way, and must therefore be eliminated or reduced. The Dark believes that emotion is one more thing to use.”
Syla screwed up her face. “So which one is right?”
“Who said either of them are right?”
Syla stared at her Master in confusion. And, once more, wondered why the hell her ancestors had even bothered building New Alderaan in the first place.
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Challenge #00801-B070: When Lorraine Met Walter
Is it bird! Is it a plane. No it’s a Plot Bunny!
[AN: This story hails all the way back to story #298 in the first One Year of Instants. Buy your copy now!]
When she first saw Walter, she mistook him for a hobo and pretended she didn’t see him.
Their second meeting was even less auspicious. Her landlord hired her to serve him a writ about the smell. She found him in the middle of a nest of typewriting, strung out on coffee and suffering the early stages of scurvy.
In a corner, as far away from the nest as it could get, was what appeared to be a rabbit crammed into a cage that was far too small.
The smell was him. He hadn’t bathed or changed his clothes inside of a fortnight and the food stains were starting to compost. Every time Lorraine went near him, he said, “Hang on, hang on, hangonhangonhangon…” or, “Almost done. It’s almost done.”
Lorraine stuck the writ to the fridge and took his trash out for him, which did only a little something about the smell. Walter, evidently, had no time for bathing, meals that didn’t come out of a microwave, tidying up, or even putting his box-meal scrapings in the bin. Or, for that matter, flushing the toilet.
He finally finished typing with an explosive, “And… DONE! YES!” He gave the rabbit the finger and lurched, zombielike, into the shower where things apparently got orgasmic over soap and water.
Lorraine, meanwhile, at least organised his piles of packrattus and took a curious peek at what he’d been typing.
It was the best thing she’d ever read.
She nearly leaped out of her skin when he tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me? Who are you?”
“Lorraine. Whelks. I live down the hall from you. Our landlord wanted me to serve you notice about the smell.”
“Yeah. Things get messy when Fluffykins gets out.”
That should have been her first warning. Hell, in retrospect, it should have been the only warning she’d have ever needed… but retrospect has a perfect view.
Things only got worse from there on in.
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Challenge #00798-B067: A Solid What?
That most interesting of currencies, The Favour.
“It is not worth my Time, patience and anguish to even go near that piece of retro insanity you call a personal vehicle.”
Shayde thought she was upping the ante when she said, “I’ll owe ye a solid…”
He glared at her. “A solid what?”
“A solid favour. It’s a thing. Like ye need me tae do som'att ye don’t want tae do or I could only do but I don’t really like, ye ken. I’d do it ‘cause I owe ye a solid.”
“Favours are nebulous and cannot be quantified, therefore it is illegal to trade in them.”
She looked so crestfallen and disappointed. “Aaaawww… they did awa’ with friendly barter? That’s no’ fair…”
“…and who said we were friends?”
“Na, na, don’t be like tha’… Yer important tae me. Very important. Yer the only one who bothers tae try an’ learn what I’m talkin’ about half the time.”
He folded his arms and turned away. “As your interpreter, I have to. And it earns me a lot of bonuses.”
“Gi'wa’ wi’ ye,” she scoffed. “If that were true, I would'nae have those four little words you love tae hear…”
“Don’t say them. I’m not interested.”
“Powdered. Doughnut. Pancake. Surprise.”
Damnit. Rael sighed. He could already feel his personal energies draining pre-emptively. “What’s gone wrong with it now?”
“It’s the overbluff manifold,” she said. “It’s no’ gettin’ along wi’ the spline retriculator. I tried everything’.”
“Except not putting a modern Grav Drive in a recreation of an ancient technology your peoples used to visit your local satellite planet.”
“I think it’s cool,” she huffed. “Are ye doin’ it or not?”
“Praline Ganache on the pancakes?”
“Do I look like a savage? I’ll even put sprinkles in t’ batter.”
“All right,” he sighed. “Grudgingly. And my favour is that you change the name of your… 'motor’.”
Shayde whined. “Do I have to?”
“I’m not spending any more time than I have to in any vessel named The Vomit Comet.”
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Challenge #00796-B065: These Humans Are Crazy
An aliens reaction to the punch buggy game
“Punch buggy white!”
“Hey! One, that is clearly blue, and two - we’re in a freaking car museum. Knock it off.”
“Where’s your sense of humour?”
Janice gritted her teeth. “We’re in front of ambassadors,” she grated. “You’re embarrassing your entire species.”
Meanwhile, Ambassador Vrex was taking notes. Humans are instinctually violent. Even their games and jokes rely heavily on aggressive physical contact.
[AN: GAH I got major-league sidetracked today. Mia culpa.]
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Still in South Park
Kurt and Todd, still in South Park. The “184th” line has pretty much become their soundtrack. Todd is rolling with the weirdness, but Kurt is nearing a breakdown (shot at by Jimbo and Ned, witnessing Kenny die multiple times, constantly stalked by geneticist Dr, Mephisto). They’re walking down the street discussing this, when they see Jesus and Satan at a cafe having coffee. Cue freak-out.
(#00787 - B056)
“…so hungry…”
“Yo, hungry’s your default state, Fuzzy.”
“It takes calories to teleport, freund. And I’ve needed to teleport a lot.”
“Speakin’ of. Shotgun nutso’s, eight o'clock.”
Kurt leaped before the distant, “IT’S COMIN’ RIGHT FOR US!” could echo against the buildings, and was out of sight before they could get a bead.
Todd had taken a very long time to figure out why Fuzzy was so great at dodging people with guns. Now that he had it confirmed, he felt compelled to take Fuzzy’s side.
Thus, he crossed the street with his fists primed and his het up. “Whassa problem wit’ y'all? Why you gotta shoot at my friend? Y'r assholes, you know that?”
Ned raised his device to his throat. “Nnnnn… we’re-just-trying-to-make-a-living.”
“Son, we’re running a very important local cable show and your pet is the hundred and eighty-fourth weirdest thing in South Park.”
“Nnnnn… He’s-on-our-list.”
“He’s not an animal, yo! He’s a human being!”
“Well he sure as shit don’t look like one,” retorted Jimbo.
Todd sighed. He was getting really sick of these lunatics taking pot-shots at the closest thing he had to a friend on this crazy journey. “Look. I don’t want you killin’ my friend, awright? Y'all never done catch and release?”
“Nnnnn… That’s-for-pussies.”
“You could interview him. Have him on your show and then - done. No more need to shoot him.”
Jimbo glared at him. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Somewhere down the street, Kurt screamed. Todd flipped the hunters a double-barreled-one-finger-salute, and literally leaped down the street.
There, at the local cafe, Satan was sipping coffee with Jesus and amicably chatting about relationships. Or they had been before Kurt broke down sobbing in the streets.
Todd hustled him off the road. “Dude, what the hell?”
“It’s okay,” he said, wide-eyed. “I have faith. I shall be reborn like that little boy who keeps gettink killed, ja? And this time, I shall have ze body on an angel…”
Jesus said, “Yae, I am not going that far.”
Kurt giggled. It wasn’t the giggle of someone having a good time. It was the giggle of someone who had stared too long at the Elder Gods and was failing their sanity check.
“Could'ja go as far as -Idunno- GETTING US THE FUCK OUTTA HERE? This place ain’t no good fo’ his health, yo.”
“Um….” said Jesus. He looked pleadingly to Satan.
Satan sighed. “All right, just this once I’ll be the good guy.”
Todd had to drag Kurt through the whirling vortex.
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Challenge #00733 - B002: Buggier Than a Backyard Barbie
You know, the only good thing about [operating system] is that even the viruses have compatibility issues.
Yusslisstek BSOS had only one advantage over other, more stable systems. It was almost completely immune to any kind of virus, trojan, spyware, malware or worm ever concocted by the devious minds of hackers anywhere.
This was mainly because BSOS was a collection of kludges held together by the willpower of the coders and, some suspected, dark sorcery.
It would certainly explain why, when it was installed, the cooling fans of the hapless computer would soon sound like eldritch chanting.
And if it wasn’t for the invasion of the Yobsidith, BSOS would never have gained fame. All it took was Junior Technician Tammy convincing them that that OS was all they needed to conquer the world.
It took all of twenty minutes before the Yobsidith fleet caught fire.
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Challenge #00724 - A359: Technobabble
From a forum conversation on technobabble: “we’re running low on pixie dust and the containment breach can’t hold any more rabbits so the ship is going to explode from thermal expansion and kill us all”
Responded to with: “Pfft, everyone knows pixie dust is self-containing.”
They called it the Ark.
“So… you got all the StarMetal that was ever made, and turned it into… this?”
“There’s also magically re-enforced Dweomer Steel. It’s all been turned into an alloy, and used for the plating. It’s charmed to hold together and keep the air inside.”
“Air,” repeated Jogoth the Mage.
“Well, yes,” explained Featherleaf the Crafter. “The higher up you go, the less air there is, so we need to take it with us.”
Jogoth boggled at her. “Where are you taking this… abomination to the eyes?”
“Up,” Leatherleaf chirped. “The StarMetal comes from the sky, far above the moon, right? So in order to get more, we have to get up into the sky.”
“Right. And you used all the StarMetal you could get in order to get more.” Jogoth shook her head. This was something that usually required a padded room.
“YES!” Featherleaf jumped and clapped as she grinned in enthusiasm. “StarMetal is rare because it doesn’t fall so very often, but if we get it before it can fall, we can have tons of StarMetal. Can you imagine having tons of it? The progress we can make! StarMetal vehicles! StarMetal re-inforced buildings! StarMetal everything!”
“And you’re certain you won’t die,” prompted Jogoth. “…taking all the StarMetal with you…?”
“That’s what all the wards are for. The air stays in. The dangerous things stay out. And anything that tries to impact will be slowed and then it will just stick to the outside. With the right levitation spells, we can return safely to where we started.”
“And you’ve tried this?”
“Just to the edge of the stratosphere, so far. I collected twenty ounces.”
And it took a Karat’s worth to make a StarMetal sword. “Twenty…”
Featherleaf dashed into her workspace and returned with a small box. The StarMetal inside were jagged fragments, not the rounded nodules that Jogoth was used to seeing. Nevertheless, it was several kingdom’s ransom worth of the stuff.
And she’d casually put it in a plain wooden box without a lock.
“There’s tons of it up there,” whispered Featherleaf. “Tons. The sky-band we can see through telescopes? It’s all made out of floating StarMetal mountains. And I need all the mages I can get.”
The sheer potential had her hooked. “Consider me hired.” It was insane, of course. But the potential to pay for all the cool stuff a Mage could ever want or need. Both, belike.
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Challenge #00722 - A357: Food That Sings
http://callmegallifreya.tumblr.com/post/104613467865/the-magical-crawdad-mmolio-funkocide
“asexual sirens getting real fuckin pissed about all these sailors interrupting choir rehearsal”
“sirens are already asexual they dont have sex with the men they kill them”
“well no wonder they kill them they keep interrupting choir rehearsal”
“Asexual mermaids being really pleased when an asexual sailor begins singing baritone counterpoint.”
They usually didn’t pay attention to the wooden things that floated on top of their world. It would have been rather like constantly paying attention to birds or flotsam.
They sang. It was what they did. They sang their histories, or the tunes of lonely whales, and sometimes, songs they overheard from swimming close to the rare wooden things that did who-knew-what on the open waves.
They were sometimes beautiful, those Otherworld songs, and the Mer would often gather on sharp rocks or sandy bars to sing them in the air.
And that was when the trouble happened.
The floating things would float nearer and meaty treat food would come and try to have sex with them. Disgusting. But it was a way to catch food if the pod was hungry, so they just accepted it as a fact of life.
Shiriiiea was there when a miracle happened. She and her pod-sisters were singing one of the Otherworld songs when a wooden thing floated by. But this time, no meaty treat food came to have sex with them. This time, the food sang back.
Siiyer said it. “The food sings!”
“What a nice voice,” Shiriiea blurted. They sang some more, watching as the food dropped a heavy thing on a rope to keep his floating thing stable.
He bought out an instrument and played for them. Sometimes with words, sometimes with melody. Always in tune with the pod.
This was food they would not eat.
The pod swam out to sing with him. Picked up a few words of the language he called Griik. They took care to note how this one was different from all the other food. He taught them a song they would know him by. They caught him some fish to eat, and decorated his boat with jewellery of seaweed and shells.
He came back to them, to sing again. The pod loved him and his voice. He became their ‘pet’. A Griik word for an animal you feed and enjoy the company of and never, ever eat.
Otherworlders were strange.
When the storm came, his floating thing became another wreck, but the pod knew him, and fed him the Sacred Fish, the one reserved for the drowned and betrayed, who became Mer, like them.
His fins were beautiful, and the Sacred Fish made him young and beautiful, and turned his teeth sharp for the need to eat meat.
The Pod had never had a more beautiful chorus, in or out of the water.
*
They tell a tale in some areas of Greece, of a humble fisherman who was immune to the charms of the Sirens, who would go out and sing with them, in return for them helping him with his catch. They say he was lost at sea and the Sirens ate him for his hubris.
But if you go to his home village, the story changes. They say they saw him swimming with the pod, and heard his voice for many, many years after that terrible storm.
Those villagers know to only sing along when they hear a Siren. Because if you dare interrupt their song, they will kill you and eat you, and decorate their gardens with your bones.
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“Did you hear the one about the two humans?”
What if the majority (or at least a statistically-notable percentage) of the Galactic Community had mating seasons, like most animals do, so that as a result, with humanity’s decidedly non-seasonal “anytime and anywhere” sexual biology, we’re the butt of a million planets’ cheezy and/or stereotype-based dirty jokes…
[AN: Trigger warning: rape mention]
(#00721 - A356)
Of course, humans supplied some of them. Nothing cycles around quicker than a recycled joke.
“How many humans does it take to screw in a light bulb?”
“Two or more, but it’s anyone’s guess how they got in there!”
Or:
“Three humans walk into a bar… one of them would have seen it, but they were all too busy with foreplay!”
Or:
“Ya gotta love the humans, right? I mean, they’ll find a way to love you.”
Or:
“How do you capture a human? Moisten a hole and wait five minutes.”
And:
“Humans have to be insane. They invented rape, and then they invented ways to get out of calling it that.”
The humans didn’t always laugh at that one. It was, as the comedians discussed, a joke that required the audience to know its own history.
Shayde laughed the hardest at it, but then, she was more intimately familiar with the atmosphere that generated the joke. And then -much to Rael’s horror- she buttonholed the poor sod who’d been at the open mic’ to discuss it.
“Oh aye, there was loads of it,” she said to his luckless rictus. “If ye were a gerl, ye didnae have a chance even if ye taped it. Men had a career tha’ women could ruin by speakin’ oot, ye ken. An’ the entire social structure was rigged in his favour. What was she wearin’, how much had she had tae drink, did she willin'ly do it before, did she say ‘yes’ up until the last minute, did she lead him on, what was her reputation like, did she scream, why wasnae she awake tae scream, did she fight, how stupid was she to fight and finally - what proof does she have that it happened at all. It was a horror show.”
The comedian, to Rael’s shock and awe, was dutifully writing this down. “This is horrifying. The exact line between comedy and tragedy. What else did they do?”
“Aw, there was a whole classification system after my time. Legitimate rape, near-rape, real rape, drunk rape, drug rape, date rape… ye get the idea. And loads of 'em didn’t know they were doin’ it. The absence of a 'no’ an’ all that.”
“Completely disgusting. This is right up my alley, but I’m afraid it’ll take a while to turn it into jokes.”
“Lemme know when ye do,” said Shayde. “I’d love tae know how it’s funny.”
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Challenge #00720 - A355: The Abomination
“SPACE IT!” “BURN IT!” “We’ll compromise. LAUNCH IT INTO THE SUN!”
“What is it?” asked M'ri.
“I think it’s a human artefact,” Chobb turned the object over in her hands. It was roughly spherical, and featured false fur in lurid colours. There were comical parodies of eyes above a birdlike pointed beak. Yet it had mammalian ears and ducklike feet. “I think it might be a platypus…”
M'ri ran her scanner over it. “There’s mechanisms inside it. Is it meant to do something?”
“Earth mechanicals run on primitive chemical reactions. The ones inside this were removed for safety,” Chobb reassured her. “Such an odd thing to leave in a grab-box. If we want to find out what it does, we’d have to create a new power cell for it.”
M'ri pried open the power compartment in its lurid plastic base. The compartment was empty of everything but the metal contacts. “Two pointy tents?”
“Earth symbolism,” Chobb dismissed. She put it down on the workbench. “We’d have to unriddle the meaning if we want it to be functional.”
And then the eyes moved. Focussed on them. The beak opened and closed as it said. “U nye boh do?”
M'ri had no memory of moving, but she and her business partner Chobb found themselves clinging to each other at the opposite end of the room to the artificial beast as it oscillated pointlessly in its place. Both cogniscents were trying to burrow through the bulkhead with their spines.
“…it has no power,” Chobb whispered. “How can it possibly…?”
“Wee tah kah wee loo,” said the beast.
“This is why the box was so cheap,” said M'ri. “The merchant was seeking to be rid of that thing. Before it killed him.”
“I say we space it.”
“I think we should burn it.”
“U nye loo lay doo?” said the beast.
“We compromise,” said M'ri. “We drop it into a star.”
Tales were told after the fact, of course. And the Galactic Alliance spread horror stories of the Earth machine known as Phur-bii.
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