Play Time?
Early morning, 1898…
The baby Petes were sleeping soundly. Making noise to wake up the babies was a time-out offense.
Ma and Pappy were sleeping soundly, too. That was bad.
Rabbit was bored.
Rabbit joined her automaton siblings. Watching Pappy breathe. It was still dark, so the lights from their eyes shone in his face.
Pappy screwed up his face. Squinted. Blinked and shielded his eyes. “Wh’t? Wh’z goin’ on?”
“Is it time to p-play, yet, Pappy?” Rabbit begged.
“Ya we wanna play,” added Three.
Pappy sort of moaned. “It isn’ even sunrise. Le’me sleep ‘till it’s dawn… at min’mum…” A big yawn, and burrowing under the covers until no light could reach him.
Now…
Rabbit watched the eastern sky in eager anticipation. As did The Spine and Hatchy. Any minute, soon…
It would be time for the humans to wake up! Time to play!
A big, long day of music and fun and setting the carnivorous chair on fire!
Seconds ticked by.
The first light of dawn kissed the horizon. Yes! At last!
“GOOD MORNING, THE SPINE!”
“GOOD MORNING, RABBIT!”
The humans didn’t always appreciate the earliest part of the morning, though. Rabbit never did find out why.
O What a Beautiful Morning
[AN: This is bonus content for giggles. Thanks to bee-the-gatekeeper for the idea of the bots versus their human counterparts. And thanks to whoever gave me the idea of switching my wake-up music to One Way Ticket just as I was starting to get tired of Hatch Fever (heresy!). And now I headcannon the bots as Very Annoying Morning People]
4:35 AM
The first light of dawn delicately kissed the horizon. Any minute, now, the Walter Manor Wake-Alarm would sound.
“GOOD MORNING, THE SPINE!”
“GOOD MORNING, RABBIT!”
“GOOD MORNING, HATCHMEISTER!”
“MER-RY BREAK-FAST!”
Ungh…
Walter Worker Sam lurched out of his bunk and zombie-walked all the way to the Big Kitchen.
“GOOD MORNING, W-W-WALTER WORKER SAM!”
“…coffee…” Sam mumbled.
Rabbit seized his hands before they could brush against her boiler vents and waltzed him over to the coffee machine. “D-d-d-don’t get to fresh wit’ her, now,” singsonged Rabbit. “She likes t-t-t-t-to take it slow. And she’s with me.”
“…coffee…” Sam’s hands found the vital ingredients before his brain could warm up to the idea of opening his eyes. Besides, he’d probably left his glasses on their hook again.
“It’s looking like a wonderful day, Mister Luke,” cheered The Spine. He gently folded the non-dairy creamer into Sam’s hands.
“…coffee…”
Hatchworth was singing to himself and preparing the usual feast. At least, a feast for anyone who dared to risk the culinary experiments of a robot who had catered exclusively to spiders for eighty years.
Rabbit was flirting with the coffee machine as it rattled and hissed its way through providing a hot, steaming cup of vital essences.
The Spine harmonized with Hatchy. The words, what he could decipher of them, were nonsense about how wonderful early mornings were.
They must die.
A plate appeared in front of Sam’s nose. “…whut…?”
“I made you some veg-an ba-na-na sur-prise pan-cakes,” said Hatchy.
“…what’s th’ surprise?” Sam asked, sipping his coffee.
“Co-coa nibs.”
He peered myopically at the brown dots. Actual real cocoa nibs. Not anything else that looked like little dark dots.
Sam accepted the plate. “You may live,” he decided.
[Help support this writer: Buy my books!]
Last prompt I promise
OK. In line with the SPGapocalypse art prompt…
Imagine the year 3000-something CE. The robots have been wandering in an underground labyrinth for roughly a thousand years.
They finally find a way into the surface and take stock, only to find none other than Lumpy Space Princess.
LSP: Haaaayyyyyy sexeeeeeeeyyy…
Robot of Your Choice: That’s it. Back into the labyrinth.
Pax Industrius - InterNutter - Steam Powered Giraffe, MASH (TV) [Archive of Our Own]
Yes, current continuity has erased this, but I still think it’s pretty darn brilliant so there.
Built to Last - InterNutter - Steam Powered Giraffe [Archive of Our Own]
Of course my prompts would not be complete without THE fic that makes people cry :D
All my random SPG ficcage
Just follow THIS LINK.
That’s: http://internutter.tumblr.com/tagged/SAMprompt
for your convenience.
Legends of Sanyago - Chapter 1 - InterNutter - Steam Powered Giraffe, Doctor Who [Archive of Our Own]
Pick a scene, any scene :D
Challenge #00849-B118: Tough Crowd
A species that has a language where musical vocables (La, de, dum, da etc.) are all either swearwords or very rude.
“I d-d-d-d-don’t know what happ-p-p-ened,” complained Rabbit.
“We were going so well,” said The Spine. “It doesn’t compute… it doesn’t compute…”
“…i don’t want to be mus-ic-ians an-y-more…” sulked Hatchworth.
Pete 17, urgently directing repair teams of Walter Workers, took a deep breath. “What the heck happened? Everybody loves your music…”
“I dunno,” said Rabbit. “W-w-w-one minute, I was all, ‘Attune your ears to the g-grinding gears’, and the n-n-n-next, it was a rrrr-rrr-riot.”
“They don’t like Brass Gog-gles,” said Hatchworth, huddled in a corner.
Realisation hit like a truck. “I told you not to put that in the set list,” complained Pete 17. “I told you for a very good reason. Do any of you remember what that was?”
Hatchworth put up his hand. “I know, Mis-ter Wal-ter! Pick me!”
Sigh. “Yes, Hatchy.”
“The cul-ture and lan-guage of this plan-et puts our lyr-ics in the naugh-ty box.”
“What?” said Rabbit.
“We were sing-ing rude words.”
There was a moment of relative silence. Filled by the noise of tools and urgent repairs.
Finally, there was a single summary of realisation from The Spine. “Oops.”
[Muse food remaining: 15. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
He’s so unhappy about this.
…System initializing…
….10%….20%….30%….40%….50%….
The Spine expanded his awareness from internal systems to external stimuli. What there was of his thought processes encompassed, What have they done this time?
60%….
Ever since the military decided he should have a stealth reconnaissance form, they had done things with his humanoid body or his snakelike spine-self. They just couldn’t help themselves. His robot siblings thought it was the greatest joke in the world to start his day with some kind of prank.
70%….
Most of the time, it was something simpler, like fake facial hair glued to his silver features. Once, they decorated him like a Christmas tree. And, usually, they exchanged his trademark fedora for something ludicrous and loudly colourful.
80%….
This time… it wasn’t.
90%….
Not only had they carefully, expertly removed his detachable spine from the rest of his body, but someone had taken the extra time to tie a knot in him.
100%…. NumberOneSilver fully initialized error checksum 0. Thank you for choosing Walter Robotics.
The Spine opened his eyes. Flexed the links in his famous titanium alloy body part. Began to work his way loose.
And while he was doing so, he knew just who to blame.
“RRRRRAAAAAAAABBIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!”
(via internutter)
Challenge #00795-B064: Come to Scenic Gravity Falls
Mabel Pines and Francouer.
(if you don’t watch Gravity Falls a. Do it and b. this is now a free prompt day)[AN: I do watch, I’m just not into the decoding stuff because I’m daft. I let everyone else do that.]
“I’ll show you all! I’ll summon a monster from ages past to destroy you all! Destroy…