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 #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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Challenge #00719 - A354: Divinity Proclivity
I am not the god of reason and understanding, I am the GOD OF THUNDER AND LIGHTNING -Thor
The halo was a dead give-away, really. Something about a God in mortal form made a visible aura of light a definite thing.
May ran through ever possible conversation gambit in her head and finished up with, “So you’re a God, then.”
“Not a capital-G god,” said the divinity. “Not any more. Not enough followers, you see. Nobody really wants what I do.”
“And… what do you do?”
“I’m Delugius, the god of precipitation.”
“Precipitation,” May echoed.
“Rain, sleet, snow, hail… Anything that falls from the sky, I can do it.”
May thought about that as she chased the stains around on the diner’s countertop. “Does it have to be Earth’s sky?” she asked.
Delugius shrugged. “No idea. Never tried for any other sky.”
“I read somewhere that it rains diamonds on Neptune,” she said. “A tiny little local flurry would be kinda cool.”
“And it would raise suspicion. Plus I’m thinking they may not be your ideal gemstone kind of diamond.”
“Well see if you can make it rain one, then. Just a random raindrop.”
He leaned on the counter. “You got an offering?” he said. “It’s usually chicken for a light storm.”
“Got a chicken and mayo sandwich, nearly fresh.”
“Sold.”
“Do I chant any thing?”
“Eh, something in the order of a prayer for a light shower of diamonds from a Neptunian sky should do it. It’s been a while and I don’t even know if it’s gonna work.”
May fetched the sandwich. “O great got Delugius, please take this offering of chicken and bless me with a small shower of rain from a Neptunian sky.”
“Niiiiice,” said Delugius. He took a bite of the sandwich. “MMM! I can feel it working. Here goes, here goes, here goes…” Delugius winced, grunted, and a scattering of black crystals rained down in a circle around May.
“Good news, it works,” said May, sweeping them up. “Bad news, I would have to convince someone that these were actually diamonds.”
If she put them in a saucer, they looked like black grit. And they were a pretty good size, compared to any real diamond she’d actually seen.
“Even if we knew where it rained gemstones, I’m pretty sure it’d be out of my range. I think Neptune was pushing it.”
May ran a fingernail through the pile, watching the little black blobs scatter and fall in the saucer. “I wonder if I could sell a story to some dealer…”
“Just tell them the truth.”
May snorted. “Yeah, that wouldn’t work at all. We’re the only diner that caters to semidivine organisms.”
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Challenge #00718 - A353: One Afternoon in a High School Classroom
“The Mongols sent diplomatic caravans to establish an alliance with them, and they responded by massacring them. Twice. Subsequently the region’s population dropped by 90% or so for some reason.”
[AN: My internet is a sack of suck at the moment, so I’m doing the most recent prompt. My apologies to those who were waiting for their prompt to turn up. I will find a way to get to your prompt]
“Whoah, whoah, whoah…” Mrs Green stopped Darla in the middle of her presentation. “Really? You couldn’t find the reason why the population dropped? Everyone knows it was the Mongols.”
“There’s no historical evidence for that, Mrs Green,” said Darla. “The Mongols weren’t big on keeping records and survivor accounts could be biased. It could have easily been a rival faction in disguise.”
“The Mongols had motive,” Mrs Green argued. “Their envoys were slaughtered. And following the second offence, the people in that area were almost wiped out.”
“Correlation is not causality, Mrs Green,” Darla argued. “And a counter-argument is that the survivors didn’t like the Mongols anyway and claimed that the deaths were due to them in an attempt to gain allies against them.”
Mrs Green sighed. “Do you have any other evidence for your theories?”
“No more evidence than ‘the Mongols did it’, m’m.”
“I want your sources, of course.”
“I have a bibliography, with page numbers, paragraphs, and ISBN’s.”
“…of course you do…” muttered Mrs Green. “Continue…”
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Challenge #00717 - A352: Pre-Luddite
The first cyborg hate crime probably happened around the time the first peg leg was ripped off with malice aforethought.
“Ereb… ka… heb…” Lynn dutifully wrote down the hieroglyphs and checked the translations. Her quest for extra credit had her translating old manuscripts that had been collected from, apparently, the dawn of time.
This was an ancient form of writing, from the super-early period of Egyptian civilisation, so translation was especially tricky.
She stretched the kinks out of her back and re-read over her translation.
It was a legal document. A court case.
And the earliest evidence of prosthetics.
Kef the Butcher bought his case against Horeb the Priest before Pharaoh himself. They had been through a number of lower courts, and the antagonism between the two arguing parties lead them straight to the living incarnation of Ra.
Horebb protested that the Gods had a plan for every living thing, and the fact that Kef had lost a finger and a half to a bumbling apprentice was part of the larger plan. Therefore, Kef had no business at all wearing a strap-on finger and a special ring that replaced those lost digits. He should be proud of his scars and not rely on artifice.
Kef complained that he was still unmarried and, on the occasions that Horeb had stolen yet another set of replacement fingers, Kef noted that all his romantic overtures were more likely to be ignored. If the Gods had a plan for him, then why did all the offerings he made at the temple not grow his fingers back? The Gods had given him a brain and his brother a magnificent skill. Could they therefore not mean that Kef was entitled to wear his new hand pieces to win love?
Pharaoh listened in silence to them argue case and countercase. Finally, he held aloft his flyswatter and decreed thusly:
Horeb the Priest should no longer speak for the gods. He shall go into the desert to find clarity. And if death should find him before wisdom does, his wealth shall go to Kef the Butcher. If wisdom does find him, Horeb the Priest will therefore pay Kef the Butcher the full value of all the fingers he has stolen.
Lynn managed to get so much extra credit from her work that she managed to swing Salutatorian.
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Challenge #00683 - A318: Different Perspective
Free prompt! This ticket entitles the writer to do any daily drabble that just needs to be written, and may be used out of sequence.
[AN: The following is a preview of sorts for my book-in-progress, Kung Fu Zombies. However the point of view presented may not appear in the book. Essentially, I’m cleansing my mental palette]
If she wanted to be kind, E would say that Aiden astonished her. Amazed, confounded and confused. Maybe even a little bit of surprise.
But really?
When she got down to it?
She didn’t much want to be kind.
Especially in moments like now.
It was a mall. Like many other malls post-plague, survivors were progressively raiding it for anything that seemed or was deemed useful. Some animals were inhabiting it already. A burst pipe lead the underground parking lot to become flooded. Which meant that many animals were coming for the water. Including some fish from the mall’s fountains. They’d landed there, evidently, when some idiot had set off ordinance in the middle of a crowd.
E had told everyone to be careful in this mall. The army’s last-ditch efforts had made everything way more difficult than it had to be.
She’d told everyone twice.
And she’d made sure to tell Aiden five times, because he was exactly that kind of person.
She should have gone for a sixth.
“Oh. My. God,” whispered Torque. She pointed. “You need to step up your game, love.”
E tried to sight along Torque’s arm. “What are you talking abo–?” That double-cursed idiot kid…
Aiden had actually strapped a noisemaker to his left arm with a piece of the duct tape she’d specifically told him to hold in reserve for emergencies. Was he going to make a career out of not listening to her?
And he was headed straight for the pit that lead to the new and improved goldfish pond in the basement.
And the dangling light fixture that could not possibly hold his weight.
Oh great. “This is another idiot plan to ‘impress me’,” she sighed.
Torque made realistic vomiting motions and sounds.
“Yeah, I know. Come on. Let’s go save his sorry ass.”
“Why?”
“Bait like that, you don’t let die all at once.”
“Meh, good enough.”
They were careful, as always, getting to a place of strategic advantage. But Aiden made them rush. So they made sure they stayed on areas they knew were stable.
Neither she nor Torque wanted to make the other watch them die. And they had the extra advantage of Aiden’s show drawing all the Infected straight for him.
Which was a considerable disadvantage if they wanted him to survive for very much longer.
…which was a point of some debate, back at the Fort.
He was an annoying, whiny, self-centred ass who couldn’t see the facts in front of his face. But, dammit, he was super-effective at what he did.
Which generally manifested as falling into the midden and coming out with a shiny gold ring.
E arrived with Torque, careful to stay where most of the Infected couldn’t climb, weapons ready and watching for trouble. And they arrived just in time to see Aiden leap for the cable.
He did not swing, which would have been the stupidest move, ever. He did not climb, which would have been a move in the top ten.
No. He clung to it like it was his last hope… and transferred the noisemaker from his arm to the cable of the light fixture. Then he grinned at her like he had just solved all the world’s problems.
The Infected going after the noise fell down the gaping hole and into the flooded basement.
Torque got comfortable on their mutual perch, a tank that had fallen victim to the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune. E followed her lead. They watched the show for five minutes and then E signed, “Great work. How are you going to get out of there?”
His face was a book with large print. It said, Uhm…
“How long can you hold on?” Torque signed.
Aiden looked like he suddenly needed to go to the bathroom.
“You’re right, he’s so entertaining,” Torque whispered.
E snorted and got out her rope. It was good rope. The kind rock-climbers used to protect themselves from falling. It didn’t make the best lasso, but it could be tied to a wire coat hanger.
Good old wire coat hangers. They were like enormous paperclips. And there were always times when you really needed a piece of bendable wire.
Aiden’s ignorant grin came back as he realised what she was doing. He got ready to catch the hanger.
It was a simple enough process. Especially because Aiden had finally absorbed the repeated lesson on not swinging on things that weren’t designed to hold a human’s weight. They carefully pulled him closer to their perch. And he carefully eased further down the cable so that he could be closer.
And, when the time was right, she and Torque helped him on to the tank.
“That was almost suicidal,” she admonished in a whisper. “Don’t do it again.”
“Had to improvise,” he murmured, “They were between me and the levis.”
And then there were times like this. When he was super-effective at being blindingly selfish.
“Kill him later,” advised Torque. “We have a shopping list and he’s an extra pair of arms.”
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Challenge #00679 - A314: Ancient Beasts
Australian Pelicans are like something out of Jurassic Park - like they remember when things like them ate things like you, and are just biding their time. (I literally asked a zookeeper “do they run off with toddlers?!?” when I saw one for the first time)
[AN: I have not met any other kinds of pelicans, so I just assumed they were all like that. And for the record, they prefer fish.]
Irwin glared at the current batch of temporal tourists. Another bloody baby buggy. “Folks, you’re going to have to wait a few minutes before you can walk the path.”
“What? We paid for an hour. Our time’s already running out.”
“Were you told at Current-side that babies had to have extra protection?”
“We signed the waiver,” said the husband. “It’ll be fine. Nobody ever gets hurt on these things.”
“Yeah nobody gets hurt because we take every precaution to make sure nobody gets hurt. Which means having a stock of buggy cages here at Past-side and fitting all the baby buggies with them.”
“You want to put my daughter in a cage?” yawped mother.
Irwin sighed. She hated these kinds of tourists. She activated the hologram. “These are the gigantic pelicans we keep telling tourists not to feed. Of course, the tourists ignore us and flick them sandwiches, chips and stuff like that. Then when the food runs out? They go after small children. Last time that happened, Harry lost his arm. We’ve been using cages ever since. You either wait for a cage or go back for a refund because I’m not letting you out there to blame us for your idiocy.”
They stared at the pelican. They stared at Irwin. They looked at their darling little brat, who was far too young to appreciate dinosaurs, anyway.
“We’ll… go back for a refund,” said mother.
“Smart choice,” said Irwin.
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Challenge #00643 - A278: Culinary Compromise
Why would you hate the [species]? The [species] aren’t eating everyone because they’re evil, they’re eating everyone because they’re fucking delicious.
“We need the meat alive for surviving,” said the Horg Captain. Griis. “Is forever the way.”
Of all the deathworlders they had ever met, these were on the most extreme scale. Their world was so badly a class five that it almost qualified for new categorisation as the first and only known class six. Before they left their planet, the chief survival tactic was breed like flies and eat anything that didn’t get out of the way fast enough.
They were only hunting other life because of a plague amongst their chief food animal. Selective breeding and monocultures had almost wiped out their food. And their metabolisms were like suns. They didn’t have the time to cook.
“Get all the tank meat, vacu-pack it and ship it over,” ordered Captain Jezebel. “Let’s see how they like steak.”
“On it, sir. The crew isn’t going to like Nutri-Food bags on the way home.”
“The crew can suck it for a week.” To the Horg, she said, “We’re sending over some high-density protein in a drone shuttle. If you can eat that, we have some factory planets growing this stuff in bulk. And in the meantime… let’s talk metabolic stabilisers…”
The Horg took their first Ambassadorial conference at the tables of Heretical Food Eat, where they could safely devour any protein they chose without the need for death.
Captain Jezebel ordered a Humanburger to show willingness. Griis had a family sample platter.
“See? You can digest cooked things faster. My species discovered this in the stone tool era. Cooked takes time, but cooked works better.”
“Liking cooked much,” agreed Griis. “Liking other world technology. Liking many of shiny things.”
“Yes. Ordinarily, eating intelligent people -cogniphagy- is a big no-no. This is cultured meat. Grown from donor cells. No death. No crime. All good.” And damnit… people were delicious. “There are two ways you can approach fitting in to the Galactic Alliance. Gengineering, medication, or medication used in combination with gengineering and selective breeding. Medication alone means that the rest of the Alliance will avoid you.”
“Liking many of shiny things,” Griis played with her fork. “Trade must be good, yes?”
“Oh yes. Trade very good. But trade won’t happen if everyone thinks of you as mindless eating machines. You have new situations. New planets. You can afford to curb your appetites.”
“Forever way ending, new forever way is needing.”
“Yeah, you get it. Now all we have to do is convince your elite to go along with it.”
“Not be hard much,” said Griis. “Sending freighter of grown meat. Plenty good peace offering.”
Captain Jezebel became the Horg’s sponsor. She was forever quoted as saying, “They’re not bad. They’re just hungry.”
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Challenge #00642 - A277: Forbidden Fruit
Heresy is Delicious. Don’t believe me? Put Kosher mustard on a ham and cheese sandwich and find out for yourself!
“So… you decided to open a restaurant on the greater thoroughfare of the business district.”
“That is correct,” said the lizard.
“All the forms and paperwork are correct… but you also decided to sell foods ordinarily under social and religious restrictions.”
“That is also correct. Cogniscent Shayde performed the idea in public.”
“Open Mic Night at the Tunnel Cafe?” said the technical-human in question. “I was doin’ a stand-up routine…”
Sherlock glared at her. “We’ve spoken before about your ‘heresy is delicious’ chain of thought.”
“I even had a wee card up. 'Don’t take anythin’ the human says seriously’. Just in case they missed the whole point o’ stand up.”
“Yes, well after some research and legal consultation–”
Sherlock groaned in anticipation.
“–I came to the conclusion that a wide variety of taboos are, in fact, delicious. Hence, heretical foods.”
“Including,” Sherlock consulted his info-stream. “Cultured cogniscent flesh.”
“From willing donors!” The lizard put up hir hands in protest. “It’s all certified and sealed.”
“You do know that there are planets who have recently reformed from cogniphagy,” said Sherlock. “The eating of cogniscent life forms is illegal.”
“Er. Actually. The law states that killing a cogniscent for the purposes of eating them is illegal. No death is involved in my cultured meat. You can still talk to all my donors. I was completely transparent.”
“And then there’s the matter of Brav'nu…” Sherlock maintained his iron glare. “Citizens there believe that sharing the flesh of a passed loved one is a form of hand-me-down immortality, as well as remembrance. How many Brav'nu citizens came to you seeking a way to cheat their spiritual system?”
“I’m aware of their theology, sir,” said the lizard. “Once I explained the details, they lost interest.”
Sherlock sighed. “I have hundreds of Ambassadors up in arms because their fellows from home are up in arms about your menu. There is nothing, strictly speaking, illegal about the food. And, unfortunately, you are well within your rights to maintain your restaurant.”
“Thank you.”
“However, I am also obligated to remind all visitors that it is also well within their rights to refuse to patronise your business.”
Now the reptilian face fell. “Oh…”
“Next time,” said Shayde, “Pay attention to the wee card.”
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Challenge #00641 - A276: BSOD
Emergency Brain error reboot Y/N
Error encountered at local clock 13:25:57
Erasing subsequent data
Restarting from automatic backup…
The spinning wheel annoyed her as she waited in etherspace for her hardware and software to agree on a stepstone. It was one thing she had in common with the organics.
Sound came first, as the audio receptors booted up. Her assistant was explaining the boot-up process and the need for lexicon patches to the luckless cogniscent who had said the wrong thing.
“I’m so sorry,” said Ambassador Belle. “I didn’t know she wasn’t pun-proof. I thought it’d break the ice. I’m so sorry. Does it hurt?”
Her cameras came online out-of focus, and her servos were laggy. Her speakers made a grinding noise before she could stop it.
“No, it does not hurt,” said E.M.I. “This unit only senses physical damage. Please refrain from lexical pit-traps in the future.” Self-assessment routines took up the next few minutes. “I’m missing three minutes’ worth of data. I assume that’s when the pun was told?”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
E.M.I. adjusted her face-screen to show a pleasant smile. “Now,” said the Emergency Medical Interface. “Without jokes, what is the problem?”
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