Challenge #00625 - A260: Original Meaning
Saying something in all earnestness, not realising that it’s been twisted far from what the words actually _mean_ by scum and then used as a warning sign by people more socially aware than you, and that you just marked yourself as one of those scum. All because you were using the words as they were meant to be used.
[TW: rape]
Sometimes, there’s a big problem with being a card-carrying member of SPOEn - The Society for the Preservation of Original English. One of those problems was that you could only really talk to other members of SPOEn, all of whom had different ideas about what Original English was.
“I'faith, I have a trial most vex’d,” said Old William. “In where to take my debate next.”
“That’s a nice sentiment,” said Paul. Practiced listeners could tell which ‘nice’ he meant. This time, it was the one that indicated a lack of intelligence.
“Ugh, stop raping the conversation, Will… You’re totes gainax.” The young girl known only as Pong didn’t even look up from her replica vintage gaming device.
“Shut thy meat-hole for making noise, thy conversation lacketh poise!”
And then there were moments like this, when all you wanted to do was leave the room. Preferably, running and screaming.
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Challenge #00624 - A259: Slippery Slope
The uselessness of the “reassurance”, which fortunately I’ve only ever seen in fiction, that ‘You know you’re not evil by the fact that you still worry about your morality’. You could quite easily not realise that you’ve already sunk to new depths of depravity, and still worry about it.
[AN: I almost deleted this because of its similarity to yesterday’s prompt. PLEASE space out your similar prompts with other muse fuel. Thanks.]
“It’s for the best,” he repeated. “Isn’t it, Miol?”
The catlike creature across his shoulders purred his sweet song. “Of course it’s for the best. You tried everything else to convince them. And now they have a leader to inspire them in their unthinking rebellion.”
“But… killing him? That can’t be necessary…”
“Just remember,” cooed Miol. “It isn’t really evil if you’re still worried about it…”
It still didn’t feel right. Which was why Lord Jev the Dark sent the bare minimum of opposition against the rebelling hero. Why he never used his ultimate weapon until it was far too late.
He never wanted to press that shiny, red button.
Miol had no such concerns.
And it was why, when they killed Miol and imprisoned him for trial, that he wept. Not for Miol. Not for his lost glory. But out of sheer relief that it was over.
It was all someone else’s problem, now.
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Challenge #00623 - A258: What Do You Mean, ‘Going’?
The uselessness of the “reassurance”, which I’ve had given to me in real life, that ‘You know you’re not insane by the fact that you still worry about your sanity’. You could quite easily not realise that you’re currently insane, and still worry about it.
“You said you loved me,” sang Annie Lennox, “Or were you just being kiiiind… Or am I losing my mind?”
“Good question, Annie,” I murmured. They’d said that too long in space did things to the mind. I knew that. I did checks, regularly. I had all the tricks.
I had CoSy on my side. An AI that helped on the long haul to give the illusion of companionship, someone to talk to, and to help maintain mental health.
And lately, I had Beulah.
She was a good addition to the crew. Not that she did much. But the ship was less empty with her in my bed and occasionally by my side. And she sang along to all my best tunes.
And I have my letters home. Vlogs. Whatever. It’s less lonely when you have someone to talk to.
Beulah has a wonderful singing voice. I wish you could hear it.
But you’re zillions of miles away.
“Don’t worry about it,” soothed Beulah in her typical wisdom. “The fact that you’re concerned is sign enough that you’re still sane.”
Good ol’ Beulah. She’s my rock.
Freddie Mercury came over the speakers next, and we crooned along about finding somebody to love. And laughed. You see, we already had each other. We didn’t need anyone or anything else. Alone together.
When you have someone to be alone together with… Well… even a crappy old salvage crate like this one is Heaven.
Don’t tell Beulah, but… I’ve taken to jettisoning some of the cargo when we get close to red-line. Just to stay out longer. Oh, don’t give me that face. It’s cracker-jack stuff. The least valuable dross from our adventures.
Nothing to set off the alarms.
Man, we’re gonna be rich when I can’t get away with that any more.
Speaking of… I tucked Beulah in and made my ‘final rounds’ before hitting the sleep sack again. Gotta keep a schedule. Gotta save power by only running the gravity when we’re awake. Gotta save and shave, just to spend more time out here.
The sargasso field is beautiful by the starlight. Beulah and I spend most of our nights chatting about it until we fall asleep.
But this time… this time there’s more than one red light. More than one fire to put out.
Food stocks are red-lining. Cargo capacity is red-lining. The plants need maintenance. The algae tubes need flushing. Audio systems failed. The entire ship needs a week in dry-dock.
No…
No.
NO!
We have to go home.
“You’re crying,” said Beulah.
“Yeh,” I sighed. “Nothin’ for it. Home-time.”
“It’s okay,” soothed Beulah. “I want to see your home. I’d love to see a sky. It isn’t that bad. And when we get back? I’ll treat you to some Real Steak.”
She knows me too damn well. She made it easy for me to press the button. Even though I knew… I knew something bad would happen when we got there.
*
“Worst case of Iso-madness I’ve ever seen,” sighed the medtech.
“Why is she hanging on to that rock?”
“She calls it ‘Beulah’. When her CoSy and audio feedback failed beyond her ability to repair it… she did whatever she could to stay sane. Including inventing a companion.”
“Miner-Ell Salvage takes full responsibility, of course. We’re going all over her logs to find the point of failure.”
“That’s -what- months of footage?”
“Yes,” the lawyer touched two fingers to the monitor and the image of the salvager within. “Something like this should never happen again.”
On the monitor, Ijon Smith cuddled and kissed her ‘companion’ rock. A vaguely human-shaped pillar of a light material no-one had yet been able to analyse. Salvager Smith was very protective of her Beulah.
“It’s okay, baby,” she cooed. “We’ll see the sky, soon. We’ll see the sky.” A moment of silence, staring into nothing, and her reedy voice began to sing, “Running down the avenue… see how the sun shines brightly…”
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Challenge #00622 - A257: Simple Exposition
Constant exposure to the internet has done terrible things to their sanity.
Trel peeked through the narrow observation window. Inside was a bedlam consisting of pale human males attempting to argue with themselves.
“WOMAN!” shrieked one.
Crap.
They’d seen her!
She retreated to the safety of her guide, a robot that was neither apparently male nor female.
The humans inside the enclosure alternately cajoled her for sex and demanded she prove her worth by answering confrontational trivia questions.
Some just cut to the chase and accused her of being a prostitute.
The robot just pressed a button to flood their rooms with anaesthetic gas. “It’s better that you remain unobserved in the future. They are… rather confrontational.”
Which was an understatement tantamount to calling a black hole “a little on the heavy side”.
“Is there anything you can do?”
“Attempts are being made,” allowed the robot. “So far, we have yet to create a working female surrogate that will pass their tests and be allowed into their group.”
Trel decided to pay attention to the signs plastered all over the walls.
Nice Guy Ward, they said. Keep All Femininity Concealed.
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Challenge #00621 - A256: Spitballing
I am actually serious here, insofar as one can have a serious discussion about the cost/benefit analysis of destroying the universe.
“There’s only really a benefit if you have a working means to exit the universe, otherwise you destroy yourself in the process.” Paua’tul’xand’l side-eyed her human companion. “You haven’t been experimenting with methods of leaving the universe, have you?”
“I promise I’m not working on it.” Eiridd held up three fingers of one hand and made an X across her chest with the other. “I’m just spitballing, you know. Something to fill the time in.”
Ah. Yes. Humans had cornered the market on boredom. It was what drove their species to seek interesting new places to be, things to do, and life forms to attempt mating with. “Sometimes, it astonishes me that your kind made it to space with so few fatalities.”
“Thanks,” Eiridd grinned. “Obviously, there’s a lot of speculative factors, you know. There’s no such thing as a complete map, for a start. There’s no way to know the ultimate worth of our universe from the perspective of another.”
“You could try asking a Xyrak’l.”
Eiridd sighed. “You are really lousy at thought experiments, did you know that?”
“The last twenty times you told me, yes. And thank you.”
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Challenge #00619 - A254: A Cunning Plan…
“Don’t worry. It’ll all go according to plan,” I reassured her that my plan was flawless.
Now I just needed to come up with one.
Rule one of coming up with a plan: work with what you’ve got. In this case, two rubber bands and a paperclip, and the clothes she stood up in if she was really that desperate.
Rule two: The environment is also what you’ve got. Nigh-seamless corridors made out of something that conserved energy by putting it back into the thing that hit it. One ricochet could, theoretically, wipe out the entire ship.
Alouette got a wicked smirk as she removed the rubber bands from her wrists and reconfigured the paperclip. “Did you know that there are reasons why they’ve successfully banned projectile weapons in space?” she said conversationally.
“What?” Princess Gaart made the universal what-the-hell-is-this human-doing face. “Everyone knows this…”
Alouette strung the rubber bands between her index and pinkie finger and gave the enemy the Devil Sign as she drew back her missile. “When I say ‘duck’…” she warned. Aloud, to the aliens, “I have a projectile weapon and I’m not afraid to use it!” She drew back the adjusted paperclip.
“Listen to the human,” shrieked Princess Gaart. “They’re level four Deathworlders!”
It was the first time she’d bluffed her way out of a pickle with a weapon that might just actually work for a change. And possibly the first time anyone had threatened anyone else with a paperclip.
Rule three: It’s not a dense idea if it actually works.
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Challenge #00617 - A252: Stick to the Plan
“This is according to your plan?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of plan was that?”
“The plan was -Do not die.- All is still going according to plan… barely.”
“This is why,” raged Krel over the gunfire aimed in their general direction. “This is why I never get involved with humans!”
“Awright,” admitted Jude. “This is something of a tight spot.”
“TIGHT? We’re cornered and pinned and any minute now, a hover drone is going to get us from above! Amphibian anuses are not this tight!”
“One: it’s ‘frogs ass’. Two: There’s always a way out. Three: How close do these drones fly?”
“Two meters for facial identification… why?”
Jude grinned. She scrabbled at the mud in the roof gardens and smeared it liberally all over her head. Then splattered a generous handful onto Krel.
“What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?” Krel demanded.
“Makin’ it fly closer.”
It was an insanity typical of the species. The human waited until the drone got close and aggressively sabotaged it before it could fire.
“Quick question,” said Jude. “Are they silly enough to send up another drone to see what happened to the first one?”
“Uh. Yes?”
“Brilliant,” the human had a wild fire in her eyes and a manic grin.
If she lived to be a thousand, Krel never wanted to see that look on a human’s face ever again.
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Challenge #00615 - A250: A Lesson For Humans
Don’t want to have people commenting your sudden bout of suicidal stupidy by taunting murphy?
How about not taunt murphy?
[AN: I did leave instructions on the Submissions box to only pick up to three tags. Otherwise I have to whittle your collection of tags down to three so I can add my own tags. Please remember this when picking tags for your prompts.]
This media was not only old, but it had been played to the point of nearing uselessness before it had been transferred to the Archivaas’ more permanent methods of storage. the sound warbled and wobbled. The pictures occasionally flickered and warped. There were scratches and hair and dirt…
“Humans,” said the narrator. “Are you aware that your behaviour can be disturbing to other cogniscents in the Galactic Alliance?”
“Golly,” said the human on the screen. “I had no idea.” It was plain that this human was being portrayed by a lizard in a bad rubber suit.
“Well that’s why I’m here,” said the narrator. “To give you little tips and guidelines on how to behave now that you’re a recognised Galactic Citizen.”
It started with the simpler do’s and don'ts, and quickly got bizarre.
“Ah-ah-ah, human. That’s a ridiculously dangerous thing to do.”
“But it looks like fun.”
“Let’s think things through, human. If you do that thing, you’re going to hurt yourself and you’re going to be exposed to ridicule and comment for thinking that doing the thing was a good idea in the first place. You don’t want other cogniscents pointing at you and laughing, do you?”
“Gee whillikers, no!”
“So maybe you should think about it. Next time you want to do something that looks like fun… remember that you could be taunting Murphy’s Laws. And we don’t want to taunt Murphy.”
“Thank you for your very important lessons. I’ll try to remember.”
*
Althei blinked as the lights came back on. “This was meant to prevent human incidents?”
“It was an effort,” said her honoured tutor. “And in answer to your next question: no, it didn’t work.”
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Challenge #00614 - A249: Explaining Business
Don’t worry. He comes up with crazy ideas, but they’re so crazy they actually work half the time.
“…hey!” said exhibit A, aka Hwell Barrow. “I’ll have you know I have a ninety-eight percent success rate.”
“It’s the two percent that bites my tail,” Ax'and'l managed through gritted teeth. “And we agreed that there would be no bickering in front of potential clients.”
“If we agreed that, then we agreed not to introduce me like that,” Hwell said through a false smile. “Because if you keep introducing me like that, then I’m going to argue like blue bloody blazes, my friend.”
“Oh, don’t say that. Whenever you call someone ‘my friend’ it never ends well…”
Their audience, a Havenworld Avian safely behind a plexiglass booth, apparently watched the interchange with naked curiosity. “Have no fear, cogniscents. Your client is currently safe. I will enjoy the entertainment.”
Hwell deflated. “Aw, now you’ve just gone and taken the fun out of it…”
Ax'and'l gestured. “Case in point.”
“…hey!”
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Challenge #00613 - A248: The Human Argument
And, isn’t sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you’re good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit!”
“Awright. Yes. Humans as a race are kinda nuts,” Hwell admitted. “There’s lots of things I can’t immediately explain.”
“And your individual susceptibility to Silly Season,” added Ax'and'l. “What evolutionary advantage is there on picking up a mood from the surrounding environment? And you all do illogical things when you panic.”
“Panic’s never a logical thing and you can’t tell me otherwise,” Hwell added a glare. “The point is… the point is…”
Ax'and'l waited patiently for Hwell to remember if there was a point.
“The point is… Sanity can’t be all that great. Just look at all the booms and weird new directions that humanity’s introduced to the Galactic Scene.”
“Yes. Including the stunning array of interesting ways to kill people.”
“Yeah? What about the gravity drive? Or Steelulose? Or Nutri-Food? What about us, hm? You were scraping along following the rules and wondering why they didn’t work for you, and now look. We’re a corporation! Hwell Barrow-Ax'and'l Limited Traders. We’re within three good trades of franchising. Franchising. I’m telling you, friend. Insanity is just a way of ignoring the invisible walls.”
Ax'and'l sighed. “One: you said we were within three good trades of Franchising some fifty trades ago. Two: We’re only a success because I hold you back on a short leash. Three: The number of times your ignorance of walls -invisible or otherwise- has got us into the cacky are innumerable! Working with you is like operating on the catastrophe curve.”
“Yeah? So why do you keep signing on during Reneg Month?”
A growl from the saurian. “…becauseyourinsanityisprofitable…”
“Damn straight.”
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