Challenge #00601 - A236:
“The point is, you haven’t let the lack of Seconds stop you. Or the rules. Or respect for reality, as far as I can tell.”
Shayde still wore Public Property Grey, but this time, her footwear was a pair of Hazard Yellow thongs. Indicating that she was both off-duty, and a potential danger to the public. Someone had given her a silver fan brooch, indicating that she was also offensive without training.
“I take it you’ve been freed,” said Rael in the tones of mock-optimism usually reserved for five-year-olds who ‘found’ puppies.
“Oh aye. Turns out, reliable information’s a hot ticket. I could make a mint buskin’ if I had me axe. Or wi’ info services if I had a comm link. Or an account. I could find a bunk if I had the Hours…” she fished in her pockets and bought out two Second coins. “I got two Seconds, the clothes on me back, the knowledge in me head, and a number of things in pocket dimensions nobody’d bother sneezin’ on.”
Rael thought back on the past two weeks of her incarceration. “The difference now is, you’re a free agent. You can do anything you like.”
“Aye. Wi’ nowt tae invest. I’m skint, homeless, and buggered. What next?”
“There’s always the Free Listings. Anything you can get for free…”
“Is worth exac'ly woh ye pay for it. D'ruther pay sweat equity. Least then I know it’s worth sommat…”
“You can also find those on the Free Listings.” He sighed. “Look. I’ve known you for all of two weeks and in that time, I’ve never seen anything stop you. Not a lack of money. Not any of the rules. Not even reality, in so far as I can tell… Stop looking at what’s missing and work with whatever you can get. There’s plenty of real estate that requires fixing up.”
“Reckon you could find a good one in two seconds?” she rattled her change.
He took the money. “I found it while you were busy being miserable. It’s in a forgotten area near the dry dock end. We’ll take the free transits.”
“…worth exactly what ye pay fer 'em…” Shayde mumbled.
[Muse food remaining: 31. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00600 - A235: The Challenge at the Third Act
“I never saw you face a wall that, if you couldn’t go over it, you’d not try to find some way around, through, or under, or blow it up with sapper’s charges. Or just bang your head against it till it fell down.”
Ten Standard Years can make a lot of differences. Most of them physical. They can also serve to emphasise the similarities.
Sahra sized up the area. This was open ground in the Cursedland wastes. There were no vents for her to crawl through. And she was way past being of a size to crawl through them, anyway. She had the resilient remnants of a crashed vessel’s bulkheads, a lot of similar wreckage strewn about, and a bunch of headstrong idiots shooting at her.
Ten years ago, they were her headstrong idiots and therefore valuable. Now…
“An orbital plasma cannon ain’t the answer I’m looking’ for,” she reminded herself. “Splash zone’s too dang wide anyhow.”
“Really? Orbital plasma cannon?” said Simy. “I know that isn’t you. You’re usually more subtle.”
Sahra glared at him. “You is talkin’ to the gal who rained yaller all over th’ Tuatta. An’ got the walls bleedin’. An’ vanished a whole bunch'a humans overnight[1].”
Simy considered this. “Fine,” he allowed, “You used to be a lot more creative. I’ve never seen you face an obstacle that, provided you couldn’t surmount it, you’d otherwise manage to disassemble, sabotage or otherwise just headbutt it into submission. Think. You’re good at that.”
“It’s real hard t’ think when your own folks is shootin’ at ya.”
“Fine. Then what kind of miracle would stop them?”
“Y'all got m’ spare dress? Reckon I’m up fo’ a spot o’ bi-lo-cation.”
Simy grinned, even as he transformed into Sahra’s double. “That’s my girl.”
[1] For a full chronicle of Sahra’s ‘miracles’, please read the Hevun’s Child Trilogy.
[Muse food remaining: 31. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00598 - A233: Aftermath
Thank God you’re safe and I’m going to strangle you with my bare hands.
Rael picked up a forkful of double-chocolate beignets with fruit preserve stuffing a la mode, looked at it critically, and put it back down again.
“Playing with your food?” boggled Nik the Gyiik. “For you, this is a dangerous sign. Is all well?”
He made himself eat because he knew his body needed sustenance. For Gyiik cooking, this was almost sacrilege. “You remember Shayde,” he said.
“The pain in the anatomy clothed in an enigma, wrapped in a mystery and talked nothing but riddles? Yes. I liked her. I have a recipe for all sorts of lost Terran delights, thanks to her exquisite memory.”
“She’s gone.”
“What? She was relatively young… or was it young by relativity?”
“No, she’s not dead. The alleged gods that dropped her on me took her back.”
“What did they look like, these gods?” asked Nik. “I didn’t see it, but there are conflicting accounts and the securicams picked up nothing.”
“To me? They looked like really cheap special effects. Tacky, even. And I couldn’t do anything to stop them.”
Nik smiled. “Ah. I see. You like her more than you tell.”
“Not like that. Honestly. What is it with you evolvers and breeding?”
“Eh. Liking children helps there be more of us.” Nik shrugged with all his four arms. “But there is something you miss, no? Some way you are worried about her… something you’d like to see again.”
Rael tried to taste his food in a desperate effort to avoid the implication of romance. Romantic love was a dreadful cliche. And most likely impossible, given that, as an engineered life form, his breeding specs were -well- specific.
And he didn’t really want to know what they were.
“Eh…?” Nik waggled his crunchy eyebrows. He wasn’t giving up.
“All right. Fine. Against my better judgement, yes. I miss her. Not just any one thing… all of her. Even the annoying aspects.”
There was a sound like tearing silk as a black talon tore a temporary hole in reality and the unlikely entity known as Shayde slithered through it. “Ah I knew ye loved me! Gi’ us a hug.”
All his unlikely and unwanted emotions spilled out of his mouth at once in a flustered, “Thank the Powers you’re all right! I am going to strangle you with my bare hands!”
She just laughed and french-dipped him into a kiss.
“Er,” said Nik. “Any particular reason that you’re naked?”
Shayde looked down at herself, shrieked, and covered her censorable portions with her hands. “Really long story. Can I do the shadow-hop, then?”
Good grief. She actually remembered to ask first. Rael nodded mutely.
Once again, she was gone. But this time, he knew she would be coming back.
He still didn’t know whether to be elated or furious.
[Muse food remaining: 32. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00596 - A231: One Miserable Afternoon in an Observation Lounge
An attempt at discussing the weather:
“My, the vacuum is hard out today…”
There is something about human nature that compels them to look up at the stars. And, once in space, staring out a window at them will suffice. Shayde had managed to perform both, thanks to a pillow pit in this particular lounge.
The faintly luminous cushions gave enough light to find her by. Lounges like this were deliberately dim so that observers could see the stars as well as the ships that made Amalgam Station vital.
She seemed to be at rest, but there was some subtle tension radiating out of her.
It took him a few minutes to realise that this particular observation lounge was the one closest to the Sol system.
There was also something about human nature that made them look back to the place they came from.
He couldn’t ask if she was homesick. She had to be homesick. Starting a conversation on the obvious was… inane.
“Vacuum’s hard out innit?” she said.
He almost jumped out of his clothing. “You… know I’m here.”
“Aye, and I ken ye want tae talk. Or ye think I need tae talk.”
He sat primly on the edge of the pillow pit. “Psychologists say that talking helps.”
“I cannae get back to where I was. I’m forced tae move on. What’s tae talk about?”
Rael thought about this. “The legitimacy of your emotions. Where you are in the healing process. Whether or not it would do you any good to see what’s happened to the places you used to know…”
“Eh. D'ruther not. I’ll just sit and stare and cry in the dark.”
“Then I’ll sit in the dark and pass tissues.”
They watched a cargo vessel sail past, escorted by tug drones. Blinking to the night together.
“Thanks,” she said at length.
Someone on micro-debris patrol went past in their life suit, straddling a small vehicle and trailing a net.
“You’re welcome,” murmured Rael. He passed a tissue.
[Muse food remaining: 34. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
A Mother’s Curse, used elsewhere
Someday, [name], I hope you live to have a dozen subordinates just like you.
(#00595 - A230)
T'reka didn’t understand the curse. Not in her youth, when she’d innocently said, “Oh that would be delightful.” And not now, when she had achieved half a dozen subordinates, one of them human.
Her five Numidid scientists, including one student-underling - Tyrtyr, sought only to perform their tasks as carefully and precisely as possible. Even the human, Wila, endeavoured to keep up with the flock.
Human ingenuity and apparently recreational insanity had invented the Flight Suit. A set of artificial wings that allowed a human to glide once they had sufficient initial velocity. The model Wila wore included an additional set of detachable wings so that she could keep pace with her Numidid flock.
Wila, among the first humans to be born on this planet, didn’t know a life before alien contact. Ze spoke Ulu fluently and adapted the Numidid mannerisms to hir lanky, upright frame. Ze even figured out how to sit on Numidid perches where other humans knelt on the floor.
T'reka did her rounds. “Progress?” it was the only question she ever needed.
“I’ve found the gene-link,” sang Wila, indicating a dancing simulation on hir monitor. “These ribosomes can work in parallel and splice the genomes of Terran biota samples and Hu'lu'a biota samples. Theoretically, it may even be possible to gengineer a Numidid-Human hybrid.”
“Let’s not make any new species before we classify the ones we already have, all right?” suggested T'reka.
“Yeah, right. Hands already full,” Wila laughed and got on with hir work.
Tyrtyr, on the next desk, held up a presentation frame. “This is the third one,” she announced. “Seventeen subspecies of arboreal moth, labeled and arranged artistically as a gift to retired Mayor T'terik a’ Srii.”
“Your grand-uncle will love it,” T'reka examined the display appreciatively. “And they’re cross-coded with their archive reference. Well done.”
Tyrtyr almost glowed with pride.
Lilip had a supplicant’s posture and a presentation display… and an eager gleam in her eye. “I have finalised a plan to investigate the chasm at co-ordinates fifteen, seventy-one, gleep-thirty.” She set up the display and activated it, “With a team of volunteer humans and their s'pee-loonk-aing equipment, we should be able to fully investigate the caves, collect samples, and map the entirety of the cave system. Including the use of aerial and aquatic probes, of course.”
“I assume you have a team of humans already in mind.”
“Er. Well. They’re already going. May I escort them?”
“No flying blind.”
“Yes, Honoured-Teacher.”
T'reka still couldn’t understand the curse. Maybe it had something to do with her leadership style.
[Muse food remaining: 35. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00594 - A229: Peggy deCulco
“The [name] family motto might as well be, Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving”.
She could see the immigration clerk’s eyes widen at the name on the galactic passport.
“You’re a deCulco?”
“I’ve spent my life being the black sheep of the family,” she smiled. “You can relax.”
Not that there was much trouble to be expected at a station called Podunk. She wanted to disappear. Become someone else. Be anything else than a hero from a long line of heroes.
And it was looking like a great idea. Until the Hol’vath showed up.
They were deathworlders with their minds bent on unthinking conquest. Loot and pillage, but, thanks to their being descended from some kind of newt, raping was out of the question.
They caught Peggy while she was shopping for bathing supplies. She’d lashed out with the only weapon she had.
A bottle of Easy-Squeezy soap.
Which turned out to be deadly poison to newts.
She then filled her trolley with boxes of squeeze-bottle soap and threw them to any survivors capable of using them,
Peggy’d never wanted to be a deCulco. She’d wanted to be obscure. To labor along with the common throng.
And then she became the Saviour of Podunk Station. With a bottle of soap.
Catapulted into the spotlight, she had only one thing to say, “The deCulco family motto might as well be, ‘Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving’.”
[Muse food remaining: 36. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00593 - A228: History Lesson
For decades Earth’s biosphere, at least insofar as supporting human civilisation, basically rested on everyone being very rational and _not_ pushing the shiny, candy-like button and firing _all the nukes_. How we got in that situation is textbook humanity, but being in that situation, pushing ourselves as far and as hard as we did, with all the diplomatic and military provocations - but _not_ managing to go that step too far? That’s not how humanity behaves… It was basically two of the largest power blocs in human history playing ‘chicken’, with the future of the entire human race held hostage.
Tyrtyr took rapid notes. It had taken her all of five seconds to work out the tablet and two hours to figure out the human alphabet. There was even an add-on built just for her so that she could take notes in Ulu.
But now, months into her full recovery, she took notes in Human English so she could practice.
There was more than one way to fly.
The political situation that gave rise to the Cold War… boggled Numidid minds. She considered it part of her work to study these humans and translate their convoluted and conflict-ridden history into Numidid understanding.
Two vastly conflicting theologies. Presented equally in the classroom. Neither side presented as ‘wrong’ or 'right’. Each presented with their fatal flaws. For capitalism, the desire for profit ultimately causing the ruin for the workers. For communism, leaders not wishing to surrender their power and truly share the wealth, paired with administrivia slowing the sharing down until the goods were rendered worthless.
Two extremes fighting for what they believed was right. Both in charge of weapons that could have melted their world.
Both playing games of espionage, sabotage, and puppet governments that later caused more strife when one side inevitably collapsed.
Tyrtyr wrote, Humans are so used to conflict that they used to unconsciously sow the seeds of more conflict in other nations. Used to. Not here. Here, they were striving to make a better world with less conflict. Here, they went to illogical extremes to ensure that all children were treated equally. That all hues of hide were valued. That they were inclusive, not exclusionary.
Even to the point of allowing another cogniscent life form in their classrooms.
She raised her hand.
“Yes, Tyrtyr?”
“Query… How is it that neither nation opened fire?”
“Ah yes. Well… they both had charge of a weapon so terrifying that neither would risk retaliation with the same weapon. They were called nuclear bombs because they utilised explosive nuclear fission. Numerous tests conducted at the time demonstrated the power they had. Thus, they were scared to shoot, and also scared to blink.”
“Could they have not come to a co-operative arrangement?”
Sigh. “They could have, but they didn’t.” The human teacher clapped his hands. “Which leads us to our thought experiment. What could have changed to make the Cold War end earlier? Come back with your thoughts tomorrow.”
[Muse food remaining: 37. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Beware the Creatures of the Night…they have Lawyers!
Lawsuits filed by supernatural beings. Bonus points for mentioning Wolff and Byrd!
(#00589 - A224)
“All rise.”
Lou Pine looked meek and mild at the defendant’s bench. Bracketed on one side by a tall woman with distinctive white hair, and on the other by a small man of seemingly permanent nonchalance. Noth lawyers seemed very happy to be defending miss Pine.
“Your honour, this is a blatant case of harassment,” began Ms Wolff. “The local police know miss Pine has a prescription for Wolfsbane on a medical concession she won in this court just last year. The police continue to harass her and stop and frisk her more regularly than any other citizen of that neighbourhood.”
“We have evidence to back that up,” added Byrd.
“It’s clear that the police want to start trouble with Miss Pine simply because of her medical condition.”
“Which is–?” prompted the judge.
“Lycanthropy, your honour.”
The judge made a little groaning noise and muttered, “…I thought this was one of the normal ones…”
“May we approach, your honour?”
“What’s going on?” whispered Miss Pine.
“I’m very sorry,” murmured Mr Byrd. “But it looks like we might have to present this case in front of another judge. Prejudice and all that.”
[Muse food remaining: 41. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00583 - A218: Draco Nobilis
“Which is better,” asked the ancient dragon, scales dull, horns broken, but eyes bright as he regarded the one sent to slay him, “to be born good, or to overcome an evil nature through great effort?” – Josh
[AN: JOSH! You live! You’re one of my fave anons :D I was getting a little worried that you’d fallen down a hole or something]
The Knight Gainsborough lowered their lance and became lost in thought.
“To struggle against evil would have to be more noble. Being born to virtue is to have no challenge. Maintaining virtue would therefore be easy. A virtuous child has but to remain virtuous. But a nefarious child must struggle against their inner demons on a constant basis.”
The elderly dragon nodded sagely. “Just so. Your lord sent you?”
“I sent myself.”
“Endeavouring. I appreciate it. So why did you come to slay me?”
“You have burned the Forest of Greeb. You have slain fifty head of cattle, and stolen a further fifty sheep. Your very presence threatens my lands.”
“Those sheep and cows… were they young and strong?”
“Uh…”
“Did you ask?”
“By… the accounts and book-keeping… the livestock you stole were bound for the slaughterhouse, anyway. They were old.”
“And the Forest of Greeb… do many go there?”
“Uh…”
“Go ahead,” said the dragon. “I can wait.”
“No. It’s infested by imps.”
“I have a deep mislike of imps. They torture wayward travellers. My methods of… pest control… direct and effective. The forest will recover. The imps will not.”
Gainsborough took off her helm. “You’re telling me that you’re doing my lands a favour?”
“Against my instincts, yes.” The old dragon lifted a wing to reveal a few very portable sacks of gold. “This should reimburse your impoverished farmers. And do let it be known that, so long as I live, I shall buy any livestock I eat. Should they have animals they can not sell, I shall buy them, too.”
“And if our enemies attack?”
“Should the need arise, while I can still make myself useful… I will.”
Which is how the hamlet of Gainsborough became known as a retirement home for dragons. And eventually became renamed as Dunbyrning.
[Muse food remaining: 44. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Douglas Adams
Aliens discover The Hitchhiker’s Guide.
(#00581 - A216)
Space, the text said, is big. Really big. If you think it’s a long way down the road to the shops, that’s peanuts compared to space.
“People paid money for this?”
“I think it’s some of their Terran humour…”
“I don’t see any references to trousers falling down in this narrative.”
Bloz glared at Kenka. “You and I have access to different worlds of humour.”
Kenka fluffed her feathers. “It said ‘guide’ in the title. There is very little contained herein that is useful. I’ve been to Traal. There are no Bugblatter Beasts.”
“Perhaps they went extinct.”
“Shall we ask a JOAT about the informativeness of this text?”
Bloz swiped through a few pages. “This is not an informative text. This is an entertaining text. It tells a story.”
Kenka fluffed and resettled her plumage with a nervous shake. “Then why are there so many who treat this as a religious text?”
“One of the mysteries of the Universe.”
[Muse food remaining: 46. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]