Challenge #02664-G107: Killing Philosophy
“Ain’t no kill like overkill.” – SilverRey
When there is no diplomatic recourse. When trade restrictions fail. When there are no other alternatives… they send in the humans. A small team, an individual, an army… Humans are sent in to deal with the problem.
Pinpoint accuracy is preferred, but there are other times… regrettable times, when one despot will simply be replaced with another. The revolution comes full circle with another power-hungry iron fist in charge, promoting those who agree with them, and otherwise making certain that all good things flow their way, and all the bad things flow to everyone else.
It was not a problem of people. It was not a problem of power. It was a problem of culture. There was only one way to kill a culture - and it wasn’t in the killing of people. It was in creeping in via cool things and changing the culture by sinister osmosis. Humans are experts at this.
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Challenge #02663-G106: All Signs Point to…
“OK. This place is disgusting. I don’t think there is enough bleach on the planet to make it safe…”
“I found this stuff! It was in the cleaning section, and while I can’t read anything on it it has a 5 page booklet of what I think are warnings… At least all the skull and crossbones and hazard signs look like warnings.”
“Grab three. Anything with that many warnings has to be good.” – SilverRey
There are reasons why some hulks are classified unsalvageable. Some few are even marked hazardous to scavengers. Of course, once in a while, some Humans think that they have a good plan for skating past these laws[1]. They subsequently took it on themselves to salvage a designated hazardous vessel for profit.
Many of them are completely unfamiliar with GalStand, neither simple nor elaborate. They were, relatively speaking, barbarians. More accurately, they were under-educated, somewhat desperate, and ingenious enough to get themselves into terribly enormous amounts of trouble[2]. Two such Humans on one such enterprise have just entered their target vessel and realised that they may have made a mistake.
“What a wonderful new smell you’ve discovered, Princess,” snarked the first.
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Challenge #02662-G105: Bring Your Own Roadblock
“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” - Roosevelt – SilverRey
Welcome to Pantibole Prime. Mind how you go. Picture, if you will, a planet divided. For centuries, the Ventith and the Tigraas have been, if not at war, then at minimum intense rivalry since their history began. It has always been aquas against magentas. Either in bloody war, guerilla conflict, or beating the pants off the opposing side in sportsball… there has always been a rivalry between the two.
They heard -through various misadventures and at least one prehistory encounter with a colonial Human[1]- the phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick”. Thanks to varying misinterpretations about how this is supposed to work, this has lead to the leaders speaking the softest and wielding the biggest sticks.
They are no longer mere lengths of wood, but elaborately carved extravaganzas of woodwork, inlays, and beset with gemstones. They are herculean efforts of artistry, impressive in size, width, girth, and weight. They jangle with dangling charms and, after the treaty of One-Person-One-Stick, the maximum possible weight that a singular Phantibi can lift and move on their own[2]. Much care is taken with the centre of balance, as well as the artistry involved.
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Challenge #02661-G104: Sorry to Cause a Fuss
Human to Alien: Could you please have the head of engineering come here? Don’t worry, nothing is wrong. I just… saw a way to improve this! I am holding it so I don’t lose track on the spot I want to talk to them about. Please hurry… I don’t want to “forget” what I want to tell them.
Human to Engineer: So… Please keep this quiet. I don’t want to cause a panic and make this worse… But, if I let go of this everything is going to get REAL bad REAL quick. If you can find a fix or bypass immediately I would appreciate it… Not to stress you any but I am pretty sure my hand is (burned, frozen, bleeding, damaged) to much for me to use anymore already so we are kind of running on death grip right now. Sorry for the trouble. – Anon Guest
Engineer Grorx stared at the Human, and looked past them at the hand they were concealing from more public view. It appeared to be a reasonably healthy skin colour, but… it wasn’t the same skin colour as the rest of the Human. Scans indicate that the flesh there - half-frozen and half necrotic - was all that was preventing a major systemic collapse. The Human had evidently intervened when it was a small and ignorable trickle and, at a loss for what else to do, had used their own body to prevent catastrophe.
A part of their own body that was evidently and clearly sacrificed for the greater good. The rest of the Human was showing some undeniable signs of stress, so Engineer Grorx got on the private comms and arranged for the necessities to occur as quickly as possible. It wasn’t just an engineering problem. It was also a medical issue, a PR problem involving civilian foot traffic flow, and an administration issue since several authorisations were necessary for all the other re-routing needed in order to actually fix the problem.
Worse, this was, at maximum, a space for only four butts at a time. Medik Lati would have priority over the injured Human, of course, and most of the other business could conceivably occur outside of this particular hallway junction… However, if anyone was going to insist on sticking their nose into things, it had to be second-shift Captain K'naax. He was exactly the type of captain who would insist on overseeing everything during his duty phase.
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Challenge #02660-G103: Minimising All Possible Harm
“Don’t fix what’s not broken.”
“If it’s not broken, you haven’t tested it enough.” – SilverRey
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.If it isn’t broken, test it some more. – Conflicting Human Axioms.
Some things need fixing before they break. Emergency services anticipate even the ridiculous emergencies so that they can be ready before they happen. This has lead to the ‘zombie plague’ and 'black hole’ plans in the emergency systems all over Alliance space.
Zombie Plague has been on the books in Terran Emergency Systems since before the Shattering. As an emergency plan goes, the forces of entertainment have created an imaginary monster that covers all potential pandemic precautions. Those, of course, including the need for isolation, containment of the infected, tracking and monitoring of infections, proper hygiene and decontamination procedures… the list goes on.
[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]