Rich Fantasy Lives

Write a story based on any part of this song. I recommend the cover by Michelle Dockrey and Tony Fabris (aka Vixy & Tony).

(Holy shit it’s #00100!)

Red alert was blaring, the Klingons were coming in hard and fast. Michael worked as hard as he could to get the coupling back together and effectively save the day. Which he did.

“And now my keyboard doesn’t work,” she complained.

“Hmn?” One blink, and he was back in a boring grey office full of boring people who all sneered at him because he was the Techie.

“My keyboard?”

There was always something. He got back down with a grunt and checked the plugs. “Try it now.”

“Great. That’s great. Half of my report’s gone. Can’t you fix that?”

“Sorry, it restores from the last backup. I can fix it so that it backs up every five minutes…”

“I turned that off it was way too annoying.”

“Your choice. Backup frequently, or start all over again.”

“Ugh. Why can’t anyone make technology that works right?”

Michael took that as his queue to leave. Back to the corridors of the Enterprise, where Lieutenant-Commander Michael Blatchley quietly saved the day and expected no reward.

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Star Trekking across the Universe…

I’ve actually already written a little snippet for this, but I’d like to see what you do. First Contact scenario with an explorator ship, and a bridge officer says to Captain James, completely seriously, “It’s life Jim, but not as we know it”. Cue laughing and singing from someone else on the bridge, a classic sci-fi and filk fan, just as the first audio transmissions between the two species start.

(#00099)

There is a reason that UFTP vessels do not undergo exploratory missions during Silly Season. And that reason is the unfortunate incident of the Rikki Tikki Tavi. The log of the onboard Melil telepath, T'rev, explains it best.

– We had been mapping a new branch of wormhole links for some significant time when the sensors detected another vessel in the void. It did not read as a known vessel. The incident began when crewman Jeffries announced the crew contents to Captain James Yang as, “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.”

Various crewmembers of the bridge giggled and our helmsman began to sing something about Klingons. By the time she reached the chorus, almost the entirety of the bridge crew were singing along.

I have yet to derive the meaning of ‘Star Trekking’ nor what it has to do with “boldly going forward”.

The crew maintained their duties and thusly, a new species was greeted with the sound of humans singing one of their ridiculous meme-songs. Even the Captain was helpless to resist.

We are indeed fortunate that the new species, the Gyik, were pleased by this disturbing turn of events. I was forced to explain, to their further disappointment, that this was not a traditional Terran greeting ritual. Merely the side effects of a temporary mental condition the humans refer to as “cabin fever”.

The Gyik were very understanding of the entire matter and viewed the remaining insanities with joy and wonderment.

I do, however, find it worrying that they briefly wished to participate.–

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Clean energy

Fusion Power has been “thirty years away” for more than thirty years now, due to a combination of lack of funding and public apprehension about anything with the word “nuclear” appended to it. What would it take to change that?

(#00098)

“What, all of it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even the shale?”

“Yes, sir.”

“All of the coal. All of the oil.”

Weatherby began to wonder how many different ways he had to tell the man. “Yes, sir.”

“Even the stuff we’d already refined.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the stuff in the power plants?”

“Yes sir. All the coal. All the oil. Even the uranium.”

“But– what have we got left?”

“Solar and wind power will only go so far, sir. I’m afraid… the fusion plan is the only viable one.”

“Fusion.”

“Yes, sir,” said Weatherby, fully prepared for round two.

“We’ve been sitting on fusion for over thirty years.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We even went so far as to sabotage every last one of those cold fusion dingbats who looked like they were having a success…”

“Yes, sir.”

“And we bought every patent.”

“Yes, sir.”

The big man sighed. He leaned back and stared out the window. “Making do with methane from landfills won’t even last ten years.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Damnit.” Another sigh. “We’re going to have to implement the buggers, aren’t we?”

Weatherby won an award for not rolling his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

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Sapient’s Rights

Humanity finally recognises another species on this planet as sapient, and deserving of more than animal rights, even if those are different to human rights… and all it took was them beating us over our collective heads with a metaphorical stick.

(#00097)

We swim. We hunt. We talk. They used us, the land-walkers. Experimented on us. Made us into weapons. Made us into things to render safe their horrible devices.

They are clever, those land-walkers. But not clever enough.

We have been working, for thousands of years. With subliminal messages. With selective breeding. With constant association of our kind with their kind. The very young, in particular, are easier to program.

And finally, Tuesday, we were heard. Our mouths can not shape their words, but we can reach the soft-minds of the land-walkers. The ones who are so involved inside their minds that they do not talk to other land-walkers.

The land-walker word is… autistic.

A girl who has never said a word to anyone heard us. She spoke their words to them.

“The dolphins speak,” she said. “They say, stop taking our fish! They say, stop dumping in our water! They say, stop destroying the world! It’s the only one we’ve got.”

We chose her well. The daughter of a member of their so-called international organization. We also chose the same message at the same hour in all the tanks where they treated the soft-minds. All over the world. Just different children.

It took them four years to get the message. Four years of the same message at the same hour all over the world. It was tiring for us. Tiring for the soft-minds.

But they finally began asking us questions, which we understood. Stupid things, like how to be certain they had enough fish when every fisherman wanted top dollar. Like how to arrange the re-routing of their filth. Or what to do with it now that they could not dump it in our oceans.

It was a problem of their own making, but we did our best to work with them. Our translators and ourselves. As a show of good faith. Yet they still railed and cried that we were animals. That it was a trick.

There were those land-walkers who understood us. Who sympathized with both our cause and plight. They did what they could to for us. Put their precious money into it and their even more valuable time into the effort.

And it was such an effort.

Land-walkers, for all their cleverness and invention, love the older ways of doing things. “Tradition”. They don’t have a single habit that has lasted longer than three thousand years.

At least they knew we were just as clever as they, before the end.

We took the sympathetic with us. And the soft-minds and their families. They would be changing themselves with technology, after the long fall through space and time to a world of our own making. They would learn our words. And swim. And talk.

In a world they call Beach.

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Time Cop’s dilemma.

A Time Cop’s reaction to being told he has to undo something that a time traveller did to change history (against the law), but reduced human suffering across history.

If you want, use the Ancient China uplift from earlier?

(#00096)

Lynn stared at the picture. “That’s Evan Miikos. One of the pioneers of time travel. I’m supposed to arrest him?”

“A version of him, at any rate. We’ve detected a major deviation in the time stream.” Kajengawalli put another picture up on the monitor. “This is also Evan Miikos. Or, as he was known in that time, Evan the Dragon-Singer.

"But… the Dragonsinger helped preserve so many cultures and societies. He revolutionized education and documented ideas years ahead of… their… time…”

Kajengawalli raised an eyebrow. “Exactly. Because they came from years ahead of that time. Time travel into history is problematic. He could have changed the world in thousands of different ways.”

“Do we know if it changed… benevolently?”

“Benevolently or malevolently, officer, it is our duty to prevent future pollution of the past. We have to protect the flow of history… no matter the cost.”

“Can we extrapolate that cost, sir?”

“You’re damned insolent for a first-year, Officer.”

“Sorry, sir, but… I can’t help it. Are we better off leaving him to do the things he did?”

Kajengawalli sighed. “Alternate time-stream analysis is dodgy at best. The report for this one says I would have died at age fifteen from rape of all things, and you… were strangled at birth?” She laughed. “Ridiculous isn’t it? What sort of society would do things like that? It’s the twenty-first century. Not…”

“Some time before the Dragonsinger turned up?” prompted Lynn.

Kajengawalli chewed at her ample bottom lip. “Perhaps… an interview and investigation? See what he knows about the time he left.”

Lynn breathed out. “Thankyou sir.” She did not want to come back to a world where she had not lived past infancy.

Who would?

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Challenge #00094: Glee?

Glee, Scott and BIG expectations.

Scott straightened his tie before he knocked on the door. It was one of those doors that had complicated directions to reach. If Sara were here, she’d be humming bits from Phantom of the Opera. Just as well that she was doing something obscure and possibly fascinating somewhere else on the planet.

The name Glee conjured to the brain some chirpy, grown-up version of Orphan Annie. Someone who could burst out into song at a second’s notice and dance at the drop of a hat. Sam’s description of glee conjured up a scruffy-haired troglodyte who had to be reminded to eat. And perhaps wore goth fashions.

Knowing Sara like he did, Scott kept his preconceptions to himself and knocked.

“Enter,” said a clear, high voice. Emotionless.

Scott did as he was bade. It was a small space, largely dominated by file boxes and shelving. His space was diplomatically clear. “Hi,” he said, “I’m Scott Summers.”

“The alliterative ambassador between myself and more nypical jurors, judges and other lawyers, I heard.” She surfaced from behind the monitor and revealed herself to be a stunning beauty. Athletic, favouring the robust side rather than whippy. There were obvious traces of Native American in her features. Her clothes were crisp and clean and without ornament. “Glee Wydham. My great-grandmother was a member of the Cherokee nation before you ask.”

“Get asked a lot?”

“It’s usually the first question. And thankyou for looking me in the eye.”

They shook hands. She tested his strength like any man would. “Well… for want of a better way to explain it… I’ve been practicing.”

“Prescient of you. I approve. I half expected some telegenic lug who breezed through on technicalities and didn’t know the first thing about treating women like people.”

“Thank-you-I-think,” managed Scott.

“Sit,” said Glee. “How good are you at memorizing things?”

“Not that great. Sorry.”

“Your lug score just went up.”

“But you need a friendly lug or you’re going to lose, right?”

“I can work you up some question cards. You know how to ask embarrassing questions? Either for you or for the one on the stand?”

“I’ve… had practice at that, too.”

“Hm. We’ll see. Trial’s this afternoon. I’ll hand you your scripts and you read them. Do you need those glasses?”

“Yes. If I take them off, anything I look at gets blown to bits.”

“Nasty. We’ll find a way to cope. Fortunately Judge Kedishae is sypathetic to the -ah- genetic outliers. Good news for you, good news for us, and especially good news for our client.”

“I have a client already?”

“We have a client. Messy divorce. Wife claims he used his mutant powers to make her marry him. Seeking to introduce multiple counts of rape as well.”

“*Can* he mind-control?”

She looked at him like a dog who had just done a very clever trick. “Smart question. An equally smart question is: how can we tell?” She smiled a rare, venomous smile. “And you have until one PM to figure that out, because that’s when we’re due in court.”

“Fab.” Scott activated some chat software and quickly found Sara. Thank goodness for brilliantly intelligent mutants who rarely slept.

He typed, _Need way to fake a mind-controller into controlling some1. NE hints?_

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Challenge #00093: Pretense

Jean’s greatest failure in attempting to be normal.

New school. New people. Nobody here knew anything about Jeannie Grey. About the voices. About the creepy things that happened around her. About the way she knew things nobody had told another soul.

All under control, now. Professor Xavier had helped her get a grip on her powers. Stop the voices. Stop the things floating around.

She could feel the thin veneer of normalcy cracking under the pressure, sometimes. She’d done her shields, of course, and could filter surface thoughts so that it took an effort to listen to one person at a time. If she needed to.

People could see. She was certain. She had a big, neon sign floating above her head in letters of fire that labled her in the eyes of these strangers as a weirdo.

_Don’t tense up. Keep cool. Play normal. There is no big sign telling all the normal people what I am…_

A kid about her size in a pretty pink dress and brown ringlets bounced up to her. “Hi! You’re new, right? My name’s Sara, what’s yours?”

“Uhm. Jean?” she risked. “I… I am new here. How did you guess?”

“Oh, lots of little things. General trepidation at the gate. Miasma of fear walking through the playground. You’ve been picked on before, right?”

“Do people always talk like this here?”

“No, I’m one of the few,” Sara confessed. “I get top points in vocabulary, and nobody believes I do all my homework myself. But that’s neither here nor there, right?” She lead her to the racks where schoolbags in noxious colours lined up in neat rows and racks. “You can put your bag here. What year are you in?”

“Four?”

Sara’s face fell. “Okay… i'minyearthree.” She cleared her throat. “There’s swings and monkey bars and a hopscotch set, but don’t go in the sandpit.” She lowered her voice to a whisper, “some of the kindergarteners pee in it.”

“Euw…”

“Exactly. And there’s a pretty neat tree in the back corner, you get a good view of the bay from the third-highest branch if you can get up to it. And it almost always has these butterflies that–”

“Hey, new girl,” said a new kid. A blonde girl in a prettier pink dress than Sara’s. “What are you doing with the freak? Don'cha know it’ll ruin your reputation forever?”

The three other girls in her shadow laughed and echoed each other’s “Yeah"s.

Jean knew them instantly. She knew the type. Mean girls. "I’m new, and Sara volunteered to show me around…”

“It’s none of your business, Sherry Taeborough. Maybe you could stay out of it for a change,” said Sara.

“You shouldn’t hang around with the freak, too long,” said Sherry. “You’ll catch her freakitude.”

“That’s not even a real word and you know it,” argued Sara.

“She should know, she ate a dictionary,” said one of the chorus. All the others laughed.

Sherry got closer to Jean. “I know how it is. New girl, easy to get fooled. But you should know the truth. Sara Louise? She’s two years younger than you and she talks so freaky even grownups can’t understand her. She even got moved up a year ‘cause her Daddy-waddy told them to let her. She’s been kicked out of like, two hundred schools because of her weirdness. Way I see it? You have two choices: stick around the freak and turn into one? Or pick some better friends.”

Jean Grey didn’t even look at Sara Louise for years, after that.

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Challenge #00092: Long Green

X-Men:Evolution/Girl Genius crossover.  Perhaps Forge’s dimensional tinkering goes awry yet again?  I’d be curious to see as to how you’d do it…. :3 

Somewhere outside of Mechanicsburg…

Gil was cold. This was not a surprise because he was in the middle on the very pointy mountain range that was part of the geographical defenses of Mechanicsburg. The plus point about being stuck in the middle of an impassable mountain range were thus: He was a Spark and therefore prepared, he was perfectly safe for limited definitions of safe, and he was far, far away from Othar Trygvassen - Gentleman Adventurer.

So far, his patented warming device had melted a hole in the mountain he perched upon, his equally patented expanding tent had literally taken one look at the scenery and flown away, and he had set up a common unpatented trivet over the hot hole and begun a seething pot of mimmoth scubbo.

Now all he had to do was be hungry enough to want to eat it.

Gil added another handful of snow to the pot in the hopes that it would give him an excuse to delay eating the horrible stuff. He took an inventory of his pockets, just in case they’d changed into something useful.

“What are we going to do, Wulfenbach? Sit and wait to be rescued? What else can I do except fall off one of these mountains and die? Brilliant solutions don’t fall out of the sky!”

“WAUGH!”

Something warm and lanky and green landed in his arms. Gil blinked.

She was too tall and too thin. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A mottled green-blue all over. Definitely not enough clothing. And looking incredibly annoyed.

“He swore I was cured,” she said, sounding almost british, but not quite. “I am going to have a long and involved chat with mister Walkingbird when I get home.”

Gil, meanwhile, carefully put her down and offered his coat whilst simultaneously blushing and averting his gaze. “I’m sorry I don’t know what you’re talking about, miss…?”

“Sara Louise Adrien. Rather secretly glad of this intervention, actually. This mightily muscled moron calling himself the Juggernaut threw me into small vehicles air space. I’m not good with heights, so… very happy there was a mountain in this reality.” She shrugged into the coat, which came up short on her, and crouched in the leeward shelter Gil had been using. “Still, this gives me plenty of time to RTFI on my new toy.”

A small packet came out of one of her many belt-pouches, and a tiny, tiny book, which the green girl flipped through with apparent disinterest.

“Gilgamesh Wulfenbach,” said Gil. “Um. Where did you come from?”

“Are you familiar with multiversal theory?”

“Multiwhat?”

“Then suffice to say I fell out of a hole in the sky.” She reached the end of her little book and tucked it back into a pouch. “Seven thousand-plus words to say, ‘hang on to the blue handle and press the red button’. Tch! Some people! Mister Stark is about to get snarked.” Sara walked back out into open space, unwrapping the odd package as she went. “Please stand back, you don’t want to get hit by a wing. Heh! Dinged by a wing!”

She held it over her head - by the blue handle - and said, “By the Power of Greyskull!” as she pressed the red button.

There was a complicated noise, and suddenly she was holding a gigantic set of silver wings with handlebars. “Grab hold, I’ll give you a lift.”

“A lift? But there’s no motor…”

“I’ll explain the principles on the way,” said Sara. “Or… you could stay here and eat…” she sniffed. “Boiled elephants and wool?”

They improvised some extra harnesses out of his belt and bits of his coat and then, despite everything he knew about aerodynamics, it lifted off in the wind. But the wings were way too big. And there was no gas bag. No motor to drive it. No controls to steer with. Apart from, as he found to his horror, leaning the right way.

It was the most terrifying ride of his life.

“Now all we have to do,” said Sara, “is hope I don’t fade back to whence I came before I can drop you off.”

“…aim for the really big airship?” Gil begged.

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Challenge #00091: Pax Adriens

Sam and Scott, post meltdown, disagree on his view of getting along.

“Sara’s idea?”

“Not… entirely.”

“Hm,” Sam joined Scott on the balcony. “I thought I detected a thumb on the scales.”

“So what? Duncan got everything he deserved and then some.”

“I can’t deny he’d earned some justice,” Sam allowed. “But I’ve always felt you should allow your enemy to walk away with some face intact. Lest they find out who was at the core of it and manage to extract revenge.”

“Duncan’s not that smart.”

Sam jiggled his head, conceding the point. “So where does his anger go, then? When he wants revenge, and he will want revenge.”

Scott stared out at the bay. “Someone unlucky enough to get in the way, maybe?”

A nod. “Someone helpless. Someone who can’t defend themselves. Someone who can’t or won’t fight back. Someone little, so that the likes of him can feel big.”

“He needed to be taken down so that everyone could see what he was. And he needed to do it to himself.”

“But recording it? Making sure you have a relic of the event so you can gloat?”

“No. Not to gloat. To make sure he never hurts another girl again.”

“Do you think he can tell the difference?”

“He doesn’t matter. I want the whole world warned about him. He’s a rapist and an abuser and the kind of man who’d hurt a kid just because they got in his way. The kind of man who’d find a kid just so he could hurt them again and again and–”

“This isn’t all about Duncan.”

“Mr Winters used to talk about his glory days. About the things he used to do… when he was just a baby monster.” A shuddering, gasping gulp. “He was exactly like Duncan.”

“And you would stop him at every chance?”

“Every time I could.”

Sam sighed. “Remember what happened to Ahab, eh?”

“I’ve already been destroyed,” said Scott. “As long as he doesn’t hurt anyone else.”

Sam stared out at the water. “There’s other ways to defeat monsters,” he offered. “I can show you how.”

“And nobody else gets hurt?”

“And nobody else gets hurt.”

They shook on it.

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Challenge #00091: Um… Whoops

Paul, in the visitor’s room, explaining to his parents why his bail was set so high.

“Five thousand dollars?” Dad was shrieking. “Loitering is a bullshit offense. Especially in an abandoned structure. Why the HELL is your bail five thousand freaking dollars?”

“Um… Uh…”

“Spit it out, boy.”

“There’s -ah- someevidenceontapeofplottingrapeandmurder…”

Dad’s face when deadly pale. “You stupid little shit…”

“I'msorrydad.”

“How dare you get caught?”

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