Challenge #00258: Meeting as Equals
The correct way to take a feminist out on a date.
“Hey.”
“Hello.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Where do you like to go for fun?”
A smile. “Are you going to ask me out?”
“I’m going to try,” he announced. “I think you’re cute and I’d like to get to know you.”
“Have you heard of steampunk?”
“Uh. Maybe? Gears and corsets and things?”
“That’s the superficial part. There’s a band playing, tonight. You can be my plus one.”
“Should I dress up?”
“Sure you won’t embarrass yourself?”
“If it makes you smile, it’s worth it.”
*
He came in a zoot suit and spats. The tie clip was made out of clockwork gears.
“Ooo. Fast.”
“I cheated. This was my great-grandpa’s. All I did was add the accessories. And freshen up the feathers in the hat.”
“I meant the outfit. It’s a little modern for Steampunk, but you should fit in anyway. It looks nice.”
“You’re looking very… bronze.”
“Of course. Tonight, I’m mechanical.”
“Mechanical?”
“I’ll explain on the way.”
*
She’d paid for the tickets, so he paid for the food and drinks. Since they were both working, tomorrow, the alcohol was off the list. But inebriation wasn’t necessary to have a good time.
The robots on stage were amazing. It was hard to believe that, at the end of their day, they took all that off and became ordinary human beings again.
It was hard to imagine anyone here in hoodies and sweatpants.
“Wow. Everyone here is gorgeous.” Even the people not ‘magazine gorgeous’ were gorgeous. Even the sort of people his high-school friends would holler abuse at were gorgeous.
“It’s a different aesthetic,” she explained. “You don’t have to fit the mould just to fit in. Everything’s customized. Queen Bella, over there? She easily drops two thousand on each outfit.”
Queen Bella was painted gold and almost dripping with costume jewelry and gears. She also flounced with frills and sashayed with sashes.
“Where do you even go to get that kind of look?”
“Somehow, I don’t see you in a corset,” she joked.
“Yeah, but a nice waistcoat? And tails? Do you think a trilby or a top hat?”
“Mmmm…” she considered. “Maybe you could try a boater…”
*
They were laughing all the way back to her place. He lingered on her threshold. “It’ll be a shame to go back to normal.”
“You can always sneak a few gears onto your daily bling. Nobody’ll notice, I swear.”
“Possibly. Men have less bling options in the real world than the ladies.” He rolled his eyes. “Darn mainstream society…”
“I dunno. Maybe a nice waistcoat? A bowtie…”
“Bowties are cool.”
They kissed goodnight before he went home happy.
It was a great first date. May it be one of many more.
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Challenge #00257: What a Wonderful World
When truly equity is nurtured upon Mother Earth between the genders (Again, because I’m thinking of MLK.)
“So… Mari. Is that one a he or a she?”
“Gram-MAAAA…” Mari blushed. “You promised…”
“I did, I did. I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“I only let you be my show-and-tell ‘cause you promised you wouldn’t do any of the old-fashioned stuff.”
Gramma nodded. “I remember, now. I’m sorry, Mari. But… what do I do if they ask about it?”
“Remember what Mommy and Omom said?”
“Self-bowdlerize,” Gramma smiled.
They reached Mari’s classroom and Gramma got to sit in the teacher’s chair because of her knees.
Dan, who had social issues, immediately went to poke at the ink on Gramma’s arms. At least he’d learned not to poke hard.
“They’re all real,” said Gramma. “The ones on my arms go all the way up to my shoulders. I have adventure time on my left arm and Star Wars on my right.”
Dan, who had already found Gramma’s right arm, was making space battle noises.
“Dan,” said Mr Greely. “We don’t move clothes, remember?”
Dan politely backed off. “Sorry Mrs Mari’s Gramma.”
“This is my Gramma,” said Mari. “She’s the oldest person I know.”
“I was born in nineteen ninety-two,” said Gramma.
The entire class except for Mr Greely and Mari went, “Whoa!”
“Didja have a bomb shelter in ninety-nine? 'Cause of the world going to end?”
“My parents and I went out into the desert to watch the stars, every time the world was going to end. Once in ninety-nine, and again in two thousand, twelve. We’d have a campfire, and make s'mores, and tell stories. I don’t think we thought the world was going to end. But it was a good excuse to watch the stars.”
“Didja meet President Herera?”
“No, I never got to meet her. But I do remember the fuss and bother when they made the entire constitution gender-neutral.”
“How’d it used to go?”
“It said things like, 'all men are created equal’,” said Gramma, to the oohs of the class.
“How’d it work with only men being equal?”
“It didn’t,” laughed Gramma. “And it was worse than that. Only white men were allowed to be equals.”
“White?”
“Sorry. People of European descent. We used to classify people by their skin tone. The paler you were, the better you had it. And most of them didn’t even notice.”
The class looked around at each other, trying to imagine what it must have been like to live according to skin colour. Mari could almost see their brains fusing from the effort.
“Didja fight for the vote?”
“Ha! I’m not that old. No, that was before my time. I did have to fight for my reproductive rights.”
“Re-pro…”
“The right to choose when or if I had a child.”
Gasps.
“Were you in the gene riots?”
“No, dear, I went off to the desert again. I listened to it all on the radio. Sad business. I remember thinking that I didn’t want to live on a planet where a corporation could own the rights to my babies. But - we won. That was the end of super-mega-global corporations once and for all. And the end of corporate personhood. And many, many other dark things.”
“When did 'ze’ become official?”
“Three days after my daughter, Mari’s Omom, was born. I remember feeding her and watching the news. Oh, my goodness. It broke Rush Limbaugh.”
“Who?”
“Thankyou, dear. He was a bad one. A big, wealthy, europe-descended man who believed in his own supremacy so hard that he stroked out when the third pronoun went official. He didn’t respect his body, though. Treated it horribly. No wonder it turned on him.” Gramma sighed. “He was the biggest, loudest and most popular voice of the old, rich ED men. Without him… well. They couldn’t get anyone else to say the things he said and take it seriously.”
“What kind of things did he say?”
“You’re not old enough, darling,” said Gramma. “You have to be sixteen before you learn about the old prejudices. They made the world a narrower place.”
“How?”
“Hm. Let’s see. Men who killed their lady partners went to prison for months, but ladies who killed their man partners went to prison for years. There were more african-descended folks in prisons for lesser crimes than there were ED folks for any kind of crime at all. Schools used to train kids just to pass tests… they even had police to make sure all those with browner skins got all the bad attention.”
“Police in schools? Who’d do a crime in a school?”
Gramma stared at Jimi. “That was when they ran schools like prisons, dear. They’ve learned better since. We’ve all learned better since.” Gramma sighed. “And I’m glad. Even when I forget and use the old, bad words. I’m glad it’s all gone.”
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“Why We Won’t Stop Fighting For Our Right To Purity”
Someone with an ARTICULATELY RATIONAL reason for detesting Sara and waging futile jihad against mutants because of her. (Just because I’m feeling deep in my ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ phase today being the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.) Something akin to what Luther did on the doorframe would be nice as well.
(#00256)
The photo showed a slightly-horsey girl with green-blue scales. She was smiling, but not looking at the camera. The resolution made it clear that it was taken from a safe distance.
This is a mutant. This photo was not 'shopped. She claims her name is Sara. She is not human.
There are hundreds, possibly thousands of mutants like this thing living in the united states, and they must be stopped. By any means necessary.
They mean to take over the world.
Mutants have genetic “gifts” given to them by the devil that cause them to renounce god in favour of worshiping evil-ution. Those “gifts” are dominant trait. If a mutant has sex with a human, their baby will be born a mutant. They may even have more of the devil’s “gifts” than their parents.
Mutants and humans should never breed. Miscegenation like that is against the laws of God and Nature. Breeding with humans is part of their master plan.
The more mutants there are, the more danger that honest, god-fearing humans are in.
A video. Showing Sara in all her greenish-blue glory, fading in and out of view. Using the Xi Qong Peace Poke against four guys bigger and heavier than her.
As you can see, this one mutant and her devil “gifts” is more than enough to defeat four normal, red-blooded American men. This thing claims it’s a female, but as you can see in the video, it is decidedly un-feminine in appearance and behaviour.
We cannot allow creatures like this to take over our world.
The Bible says that God appointed humans as stewards of the planet Earth. There is no mention of mutants anywhere in the Bible. This must mean that they are the spawn of the devil, put on this Earth to try and conquer Earth in the name of sin.
Another video. Blurry, shaky footage of mutants playing Calvinball in a lightly wooded area.
The blue devil you see at 1:15 is obviously a descendant of the Jersey Devil. This means that mutants have been vying for supremacy for a very long time. Perhaps even the 'alien’ visitations have actually been mutant attempts to violate humans and engender more mutant babies.
More evidence of mutant deception of humans.
This federally-funded test(non-working link) alleges that mutants are uniformly more intelligent than their human counterparts. This means that we must constantly be on our guard! Mutants are therefore capable of more devious tricks than any human alive.
You can not know a mutant by looking at them! Even those as aggressively different as the thing at the top of this page can hide themselves with devilish technological tricks.
A photo pf a very clunky sports watch.
This is the Stark Industries Personal Holographic Electronic Disguise Device (SIPHEDD). It is formerly-secret military technology meant to protect our troops in the battlefield. Aggrassively different mutants use these to appear human during their infiltration missions in YOUR schools, stores and places of business.
IF YOU SEE SOMEONE WEARING A SIPHEDD DEVICE, BACK AWAY. DO NOT ENGAGE IN ANY FURTHER CONTACT.
Unfortunately, you can not notify the authorities. They have access to top-of-the-line military technology. This means that they already have the authorities in their sway.
Join the register of pure humans now!(another broken link) We must band together to preserve the true human race.
How to prepare for war.(Survivalist how-to’s)
How to legally acquire weapons suitable for killing mutants.(Broken link)
Could YOU be a mutant? Take our quiz! (A link to a broken quiz)
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Challenge #00255: The wall and the Hypocri-sea.
The invisible fence, 15 feet high that divides the America that lectures others on “multiculturalism”.
It was a rich white girls’ party. Anyone watching the video could tell. It wasn’t in a house. It wasn’t even in a mansion. It was in a palace. The theme was multiculturalism.
She was wearing sexy lederhosen with a chinese shirt and Inca shoes. She also sported a rainbow sombrero and a necklace made of ‘fangs’.
“Welcome to my party! I am the spirit of acceptance, tonight. There’s something on someone from every nation!”
And there was. Russian fur hats. Australian cork hats. An almost abominable miss-mash of every stereotypical garment from everywhere around the world. Most of them in bright and unnatural colours.
All of the partiers were white.
“And in the spirit of acceptance, I invited a special guest. Tito should be coming on down, soon.”
He stood out like a sore thumb. He wore crocks, jeans and a T-shirt with a band on it. He held a fraying straw hat like it was an abomination that he wished he could use as a weapon.
Anger.
“Tito! What the flying hell? You’re not in costume!”
Tito stood tall. Defiant. “Your people invaded my country. Your people told us our ways were wrong. Your people tried to erase our culture and our history and turn us all into this.”
It was a Mexican Peon costume. Replete with a fake donkey and a horrible felt mustache. The white person wearing it on the package label was having an insane amount of fun with the half a donkey erupting from his crotch.
“You’re ruining my party!”
“I expect the truth would,” said Tito. “None of us are this. You call us lazy and shiftless, yet you hire us to work at everything you do not want to do for yourselves. You make us pick your food, clean up your messes, and then you laugh at us because we can only afford to live in squalor. You steal any excuse to party from us. The Quinceanera. Cinco de Mayo. The day of the dead. All of it is just an excuse to drink alcohol and wear our poverty for a day.”
“Hey! Step off!”
“You step off!” Tito whirled on the drunken jock. “You think you are doing a good thing here? Why don’t you take the college fund you’re going to piss against the wall at your frat house, and actually do something constructive with it? You’re only going to drop out before you inherit your daddy’s firm, anyway.”
“That is wrong. You can’t just single out someone and expect them to be a stereotype.”
“Like you did?” said Tito, waving the costume bag. “Racist.”
“I’m not a racist! You’re my friend,” wailed the privileged white girl.
“As long as you think I’m this?” he tossed the bag at her. “I am not your friend. And unlike the rest of you, I have to work, tomorrow.”
The girl made a noise of disbelief, facing the camera. “What is his problem?”
The party resumed in a few minutes.
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Challenge #00254: Honey, and Plenty of Money
Bees.
[AN: Any relationship between certain corporations in this fiction and certain poison companies is strictly imaginary]
Fantraxin did not kill bees. That was its primary selling point. It killed all other insects that may predate on crops, but not the bees. How it did so, of course, was a company secret.
A secret that made them the largest corporation on the planet, almost overnight.
Or, at least, it would have. If they weren’t already the biggest global power ever to rig the game in their favour.
The use was, of course, instantly cleared in the United States. A process smoothed by the fact that the FDA was a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporation. Those who allied with the states followed. They believed.
They believed it was good to be friends with a company that made as much money as Fantraxin did.
And the fact that the bees were still dying…
Well. There was no proof it was Fantraxin.
And they made sure any proof quickly vanished. Or got discredited. Or simply overwhelmed by factual knowledge about Fantraxin, sponsored by Fantraxin, on popular networks owned by Fantraxin.
The thorn in the side, though, was the little island nations who never bought it. Who didn’t need it. Who actively banned it.
And who studied it in strict laboratory conditions to discover the unthinkable.
Fantraxin did not, in fact, kill bees.
They killed a symbiotic mite that lived on the bees. And then the bees got sick and died without their microscopic helpmates.
But, by then, the company was busy inventing pollenating machines.
To replace all the bees.
That the tiny island nations refused to export.
Because the places the bees were going was not safe.
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Challenge #00253: I’m Sorry, We Can’t Help You
Greater Deregulation’s more esoteric moments.
“But I don’t have any of my papers. My house burned down.”
“If you had signed up for the TrakMe program…”
“I had. My parents signed me up just after I got a name. I’ve been trying to sign on with or without their help for forty years.”
“You can voluntarily sign up for the TrakMe program at any time,” recited the sallow, callow creature on the other end of the counter. “You need three forms of ID and a blood sample.”
“Which part of ‘house fire’ did you fail to understand? And it needs more than that. I know. I had the three forms of ID and the blood sample and I was still rejected. Turns out I needed to be identified by a non-relative who’s known me for at least ten years.”
“That must mean you’d been red-flagged.” Tap-tap-tap-tap. “Reasons for red-flagging include a criminal history,”
“Nope.”
“Association with a criminal,”
“Not knowingly.”
“Relation to a criminal,”
“Nope. No family left to be criminals.”
“Resident in a criminal zone?”
“How the hell would anyone find that out?”
“You’d need to be on the TrakMe program to gain the benefit of being aware of criminal residential areas.”
“How the hell can I get on the TrakMe program to get those benefits if I can’t get on it without those benefits?”
The creature behind the counter ignored her. “Your face has been processed. Please list your former residential addresses in order.”
She’d been through this too many times. It had become a song that she had to resist singing. The rhythm pushed through, regardless.
Stare. “Uhm. I don’t… type that fast.”
She slowed it right down. Laboriously reciting the numbers and spellings and streets and what those streets were now.
“Ah. Hum. You stayed primarily in West Esterbrook.”
“Yeah, it was recommended by our TrakMe administrator.”
“West Esterbrook has been randomly selected as an area of potential criminality.”
“Since…?”
“West Esterbrook has been randomly selected. The -uh- date is… Twenty years before you were born?”
“Why would a TrakMe administrator recommend someone stay there?”
The creature’s console bleeped. “Ah. Yes. We can not help you. I’m sorry.”
“So how do I get hold of at least some ID? I need work! I need food!”
“Please keep your voice down.”
“I’m starving.”
“Your… bloodline… has been randomly selected as a potential criminal element. I’m sorry. We can’t help you.”
“So… what? I turn myself in at the nearest prison-factory?”
Smile. “That would be incredibly helpful. Thankyou.”
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Challenge #00252: Be Careful What You Wish For
Agent Pertwee and the first moments he realized that his job sucked for reasons he didn’t expect.
[AN: Once again, it’s Jane Pertwee :) ]
The FBI had been covertly watching this school for some time. Now, with the Mutant Registration Act, it was watching more overtly. As in, agents in the field, tailing their respective suspects, and making sure that a bunch of teenagers with superpowers….
Well…
Didn’t wind up acting like a bunch of teenagers with superpowers.
Agent Jane Pertwee checked her dossier against the milling brownian crowd of kids. There he was. Red specks. By daylight, known as Scott Summers. His costumed code-name was Cyclops. The pictures explained why.
Apparently, this terrorist was packing a bazooka behind each eyeball.
The shorter, hunched one beside him pointed her out with two fingers before vanishing in a puff of smoke. Pertwee spared a brief, cynical grin for the fate of Agent Manning, whose job it was to keep track of a teleporter.
Summers strolled over. “Hey. I’m guessing you’re tailing me, today?”
“Yeah, Troughton quit.”
“I know this is against procedure, but can I bum a lift? My car’s in the shop again. Brotherhood.”
Ah yes. The other factor in this amusing little powderkeg. Not only were there teenagers with superpowers, but there were teenagers with superpowers in gangs. Fun.
Pertwee sighed. “I suppose it beats tailing you while you walk to -uh- where are you going?”
“Do you know Bargain Basement Bernie’s?”
O God… “Unfortunately…” Her last partner, Baker, had insisted on stopping there for cheap knitting supplies.
“Great. My order’s come in.” And, like a good little supplicant, he piled into the back. “Are you allergic to Alpaca?”
What? “Al-what-a?”
“Alpaca. Like a Llama, but cuter. I’m trying different textures of felt to get the right kind of moss look… aaaannnd you’ve already glazed over. Nevermind. It’s a hobby thing.”
This, Agent Jane Pertwee mused, was looking to be a long day full of suck in a long line of days full of suck. Now she knew why Troughton wanted to quit…
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Challenge #00251: Terror Watch
Agent Pertwee and his take on watching the terror with the textiles.
[AN: Agent Pertwee is a girl :P]
Agent Jane Pertwee sighed. She’d signed up for Terror Watch because it was the fast-track past the glass ceiling and on to better things. She should have known that the dicks upstairs would have picked the one least likely to do anything worthy of garnering promotion by stopping it in its tracks.
Right now, she was holding up a wall watching a man with bazooka eyeballs practice needle-felting cute, fluffy miniature kittens.
Her niece would be ecstatic about cute, fluffy miniature kittens. So would her sister-in-law.
Not Jane.
Jane wanted some desperate terrorist undertaking. Some derring-do.
ANYTHING but needle-felting fluffy animals.
“I sell these on Etsy,” said the mutant terrorist. “Helps fund the other stuff.”
And since the current ‘other stuff’ featured part of a dead whale… she could see why he needed funding.
“Why be an artist?” Jane demanded. “You’re packing a bazooka behind each eyeball. If I had power like that…”
“I only killed once,” said the mutant. “Court said it was self-defense. I wanted to be locked away forever.” The needles moved. “I was twelve.”
“I read your file,” Jane rolled her eyes. “If you’d just gone power-mad…”
“Agent Pertwee… I spent a majority of my life under an asshole with power. I never wanted to be like him.”
“I’m still spending my life under assholes with power.”
“Why do you even want that kind of authority?”
“So I can get ahead. Duh.”
“And then what?”
Jane stared at him. “Huh?”
“What would you do with unlimited power? Would you make the people who hurt you feel your pain? Would you stop there? Or go out and hurt everyone who became an asshole? When would you stop and notice what you’d become?”
It was sobering to hear that coming out of someone on the Terror Watch list. It was more sobering to think that he’d already thought of all this. “With great power comes great responsibility, huh?”
“Something like that,” Scott smirked. “Pity those in power never think that way.”
Yeah. It was.
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Challenge #00249: What Monsters Hath Science Wrought?
Catbug.
Mythos Entertainment Inc. was working on all manner of new things. Their bio-labs were cooking up foetuses at the rate of knots.
Graham Ptolowitz stared at the thing in the pen. This was the angel/fairy production team, and the abomination before him had originally been a cat.
“We were working on a hexapodal mammalian life-form,” said Dewitt. “So splicing and activating the hexapodal gene was primary priority.”
“We did attempt bat wings, since they are mammalian wings, but - uhm…”
“It didn’t take, this time,” said Dewitt.
The kitten, evidently entranced by Dewitt’s expressive hands, leaped. Its gossamer wings buzzed and, though it missed, the animal drifted gently downwards. It landed and tried again.
“No-one’s going to want to see that,” squeaked Graham. “That’s neither an angel nor a fairy, nor anything else I want in my park!”
“It’s just a prototype, sir,” said Polson. “Once we crack the mammal wing problem, we can use bird DNA to make proper, angelic wings…”
“I don’t want demon cats running loose! I certainly don’t want things like that running loose!”
The kitten successfully seized and monstered his finger in a way far too catlike.
“That’s why we tweaked the wingspan so it could only glide.”
“We have an aviary planned.”
“No,” said Graham. “No monster cats. Scrap the angels. Re-engineer the fairies. Go with -Idunno- singing butterflies or something. No. Demonic. Cats.” He detached the creature from his hand and tossed it back into its pen. It drifted down to floor level and started grooming itself.
Graham made a noise and left. Disgusting.
Behind him, Polson started to cry.
“It’s all right,” soothed Dewitt. “He didn’t say to destroy them…”
And that was how planet Mythos is host to a unique breed of flying cats.
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Challenge #00248: More Deadlier…
Magnificently mundane…and yet still formidable.
It is said that women are like tea leaves. You don’t know how strong they can be until you put them in hot water. Mavis had always laughed at that. She was as mild as milk! Meek as mud.
Until the invaders came.
She’d just turned her back for a second. Let go of the pram for just long enough to grab a can of beans. And when she turned back, there was some… thing… investigating Arbie.
There was no time to think. There was no logic or reason. Just instinct and white-hot rage.
The can of beans almost flew through what passed for its head. Ichor spattered everywhere.
Another was coming.
Mavis grabbed what looked like a weapon from the dead one and, aiming it at the other one, figured out where the trigger was. Found a way to hold it comfortably and - literally single-handedly - freed Arbie from the pram and carried her baby close to her heart.
The invaders never stood a chance.
Mavis emerged at the other end of it, bloody and bloody furious, to aim a few, lingering pot-shots at the massive invading ship overhead. Arbie had fallen asleep in her mother’s arm. People were cheering.
Hot water, indeed.
She shocked herself by snarling at the first EMT to try to take Arbie from her arms. Actively fought to regain the thin veneer of civilization that had formerly been most of her personality.
“…i’m sorry…” she mumbled.
“Don’t be,” said the EMT in almost reverential awe. “I’ve seen soldiers break down over less.”
All over the world, mild-mannered mothers like Mavis had turned the tide of battle. All because nobody….
Absolutely NOBODY…
Hurt. Their. Babies.
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