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.
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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’.”
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Challenge #00592 - A227: Bad Advice
When an evil god laughs. run.
When a good god laughs run quickly.
Once again, Shayde had stopped at a registered Graffito Intersection to read the collected wit and wisdom from the kinds of people who wrote on walls.
“Na that’s just bad advice.”
Rael sighed and played straight man. “What would that be?”
“When an evil god laughs, run. When a good god laughs, run quickly.”
“Oh… kay…?”
“Aye, it doesnae do any good. Running from an evil god just pisses ‘em off. Runnin’ from a good god’s even worse.”
Rael didn’t know which bothered him more. The fact that she had personal experience or that she was divulging this information to a sworn atheist. “How in the name of the Powers could a good god be worse?”
“They condescend at ye… Like, 'aw that’s cute of ya’ or 'puir wee thing’ an’ the worst of the worst is 'be not afraid’. As if ye didnae just have a good reason. Na. Best thing tae do against gods is nod, smile, and bugger off as quick as ye can get awa’ wi’ it later.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he allowed. “In the meantime, you have to keep a schedule.”
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Challenge #00591 - A226: Unreliable Witness
“The reactor explodes from something the monkey does.”
Lyr surveyed the damage. “Sir, this is not the fall-out from a reactor.” Indeed, if a reactor had gone off, they would be mopping up the damage and the dead in hazmat suits. But there were no dead. And minimal damage.
The smaller saurian nodded as if in understanding and repeated hir statement. “The reactor explodes from something the monkey does.”
“Fer the fifth time, I only flipped the fookain switch,” objected the ‘monkey’, officially-human creature of magic and mordant self-entertainment. “Correlation isnae causation.”
“The reactor explodes from something the monkey does,” insisted the saurian.
Lyr glared at Shayde. “You didn’t do anything…” meaningful wiggly fingers, “extra… did you?”
“It’s a science fair. I wasnae s’posed tae touch, but— c’mon. A bakin’ soda volcano? How’s a gel tae resist?”
“She did insist on pulling the lever,” testified Rael, “but I detected none of the usual symptoms of her -ah- extra abilities.”
“Mith,” insisted the small Mustaelid. “Mith, it’th my fault, mith. It’th not the ambathador…”
“The reactor explodes from something the monkey does,” this time, the saurian pointed vigorously at Shayde.
“Let’s hear everyone,” said Lyr. “Yes…” she checked the name tag. “Kerrit?”
“It wath me. I didn’t uthe baking thoda for my volcano…”
“Ah…?” Lyr cooed encouragingly. “What did you use?”
“Well… Um. In the cauldera, I had a mixture of water, yeast an’ dish thoap? And the thtuff that got added with the thwitch? It watch hydrogen peroxide…”
Shayde roared laughing. “Aw ye wee ripper! Ye overclocked a bakin’ soda volcano wi’ elephant toothpaste!”
“Okay,” muttered Lyr. “That explains that weird dream…”
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Challenge #00590 - A225: It’s ALIVE! …and Needs Counselling…
“What’s that? You say my creation is currently nigh unstopable and wants me dead? SUCCESS! It can move, self determine goals and figure out how to accomplish them! Now all I need is to figure out this sanity thing.”
“Master,” slurred Igor. “I don’t think you understand the severity of the problem…”
“Well, yes, there are a few little problems to iron out, but nothing a little careful negotiation can’t solve.”
“Master!”
“Yes, yes, I heard the ‘nigh unstoppable’ part. The key is 'nigh’. That means something can stop it. I’m going to need a megaphone, a jetpack, and an emergency set of retractable glider wings.”
“Master?”
“Just because I’m a mad scientist doesn’t mean I’m completely insane, Igor. I’m willing to negotiate, but I’ll have to do so from a safe distance. And that requires planning. Ooooh! And about three gallons of chamomile tea!”
“…chamomile… tea… Master?”
“Well we do want my creature to calm down, Igor. I’m perfectly willing to fix whatever it views as wrong or erroneous, but negotiating from a calm centre is advised. Poor little dear’s very likely to be upset…”
“Little? It’s nine feet tall, Master…”
“Little in terms of experience. It’s just seven hours old. Being upset with the universe is to be expected. Start brewing the chamomile!”
Sigh. “Yeeeessss, Master.”
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Challenge #00588 - A213: Explaining a Lot
Was trying to figure a way to rephrase this, but I reckon it’s probably best to send it to you in its original form: “(s)he/ze had a troubled childhood” == “They had a troubled evolution…” (a lot of the questions were me) – recklessprudence
“…and this is Ambassador Shayde. Her species had a difficult evolution.”
The assembled welcome committee aahed and nodded.
“Must ye do tha’ every time we go somewhere?” Shayde murmured.
“You don’t look very human, so the answer is ‘yes’,” said Rael. “Not very many non-human species are insane, so…”
“Humans are no’ insane,” Shayde denied. “’S nobody else understandin’ what makes sense tae us.”
“Explain figure skating to me? How about base jumping? Or parkour… How about - why pole dancing continued to have a stigma against it for two hundred years? Why did your kind create an entire field of anti-science.”
“Awrigh’ awrigh’… Ye got a point with the Creationists. But every planets’ got it’s nutbars, aye?”
“Not as many as Earth,” sighed Rael. “Your planet has enough nutbars to stock a health store.”
Shayde laughed at that. “Aye. An’ enough fruitcakes tae feed Christmas. Fine. But do me a favour an’ point out the other nutbars. I like tae collect.”
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Challenge #00563 - A188: We Didn’t Start the Flame War
You know Billy Joel’s song “We didn’t start the Fire”?
Well, there’s a really juvenile (which is admittedly appropriate for the subject, mostly) CollegeHumor take on it called “We didn’t start the Flame War”, that is surprisingly catchy. I was just wondering what a story using the title of the CollegeHumor song, but without the more egregious moments of the song, would look like.
Indulge my curiosity? — RecklessPrudence
A blur of black, white, and gold. A rushed, “Hide me!”
Rael checked his calendar. It wasn’t Twosday[1]. “Shayde,” he sighed. “You’re a six-foot-tall being with an aesthetic tailor-made to stand out. What makes you think you can hide behind a five-foot-seven JOAT with his coat on?”
“Inspired desperation,” she said, attempting to burrow into his rainbow coat from behind.
Rael gave up and hustled her into one of the agoraphobic’s comfort booths nearby, for all the cover it could provide.
“Who did you happen to, this time?” he demanded.
“I still dinnae ken what I did,” she said, nervously looking out the only entrance. “I was only tryin’ tae help some folks. Earn some scratch.”
Rael was certain that humans could end all known civilisation with the words “Oops,” or “I was only trying to help”. “All right,” he allowed. “How did you happen this time?”
“They were chattin’ aboot mnemonics on the SPOEn forum, and how kiddies remembered th’ planets, ye ken… And I gave ‘em ‘my very early mornin’ jump’.”
Rael made helpful motions and sounds to encourage her to expand on this.
“It goes, "My very early mornin’ jump starts oop nearly perfect’. Each word starts wi’ the same word as a planet.”
Rael counted on his fingers as his lips moved, working it out for himself. “Er…. you’re one over. What does the ‘P’ stand for?”
That was when she dropped the metaphorical bomb. “They asked that too, the puir babbies. It’s Pluto.”
At which point, Rael turned her in to Security for her own protection.
[1] The Galactic Standard calendar has a ten-day week and a rather practical method of naming the days therein. Oneday, Twosday, Threesday, Foursday… and so on until Tenday. It’s surprising how many cogniscents find this confusing.
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Challenge #00562 - A187: The Problem with Problems
This XKCD. – RecklessPrudence
Fifteen-year-olds can solve the world’s problems, at least on a hypothetical basis. Case in point, Trudy Mackinaw.
“You know that if they taxed money transfers at a basis of point zero one percent, they’d have enough money to destroy poverty.”
But the rest of the world in general and her parents in particular didn’t listen. Because she was a fifteen-year-old girl. They wouldn’t have listened if she was a fifteen-year-old boy, either, but that’s part of the unfairness of ageism.
But Trudy had a solution for everything.
Racism and sexism in hiring: “They should just quit wanting to see people they’re hiring. I mean, they don’t really care after they’re hired. Just have job interviews with voice modulators and give the applicants random numbers during that part. I bet everyone’d be shocked at the results.”
Racism in funding: “The best-performing schools don’t need funding. They’ve got it upside-down. The ones that do the worst should get the funding. You know, so they can afford to get better.”
The poverty trap: “You know, if they really didn’t want people to be living on food stamps, they should pay them more. A living wage means people can buy more stuff. Don’t they want a good economy?”
On abortions: “If they don’t want abortions, they aughta support birth control. That’s what it’s for. Birth. Control. And if they don’t like that either, they gotta run a foster home and be an organ donor or they have to shut up.”
On LGBTIAQ: “Everyone should have the right to do whatever the hell they want with their own body and their own identity and nobody should have the right to say a damn thing about it.”
On war: “You know, they should take all those people on separate tours through the land they’re fighting over? If they saw it was a nuked-out desert, nobody’d fight over it any more.”
On relationship drama: “All the people who read The Rules and all the people who read The Game should just pair up and leave everyone else alone.”
On the wage gap: “If everyone got paid based on how much hard work they do? The politicians and banisters would be living on food stamps and the cleaners and teachers would be driving porches.”
And even on overpopulation: “We really should colonise some other planet. Overpopulation’s a big problem and I bet loads of people would love to make a planet in their own image.”
All problems can be solved in fifteen years. Just wait for a fifteen-year-old to have an opinion. Some of it might just be workable.
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Challenge #00551 - A176: Party Life
Person 1: Didn’t you blow up a planet somehow while you having a year long kegger?
Person 2: First; it was merely rendered uninhabitable. Second; the party lasted two and a half years. — RecklessPrudence
There are generally two ways to react when one is the last of one’s kind.
Kirov chose the other one.
He had but one life to live, though it was a long one, and elected to enjoy every last moment. He travelled from world to world, seeking the best of entertainments and some good, old-fashioned debauchery.
Of course he maintained the funds to support any half-breeds that occurred. He willed them his old home-planet -for all it was worth- and continued on celebrating the end of his kind.
It is said that a being exists for as long as other beings speak their name. And Kirov seemed bound and determined to become a galactic legend.
But it wasn’t all parties and sex. He enjoyed the quiet as much as any other intelligent creature.
This morning, he settled in to one of Amalgam Station’s Observation Benches to watch the chaos surrounding the new Jogging Track. Though it was festooned with cautionary signage, the sight of a running human or more still caused a panic.
He’d bought popcorn.
The nearest sign read: Humans run here for fun. Remain calm.
Another, nearby, read: Caution! Humans running recreationally.
Kirov guessed that they would be posting more at half Distance Unit lengths, before long.
Here one came. A tall creature with ebony skin. Her white hair bound up in a bouncing braid. Well… most of it. The rest of her was clad in a track suit in hazard colours. She spotted him and slowed to trot in place.
“‘Ere I know you,” she chirped. “Yer that feller that blew up a planet in a year-long kegger.”
“It was a two-year festival and I merely rendered a marginally-uninhabitable planetoid to be completely so,” he corrected. “Rumours of my effect on places is greatly… distorted. I funded the inevitable evacuation and the clean-up. Keeps some folks in employ.”
She grinned at this, still bouncing, and showing off sharp, white teeth. “Oh aye. Ye got tae swing round next Ambassador Meet. Liven the place oop a touch. T’ wee girlie from Hevun’s got the right idea, but you? You’d make it special.”
Definitely human, for all appearances to the contrary.
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Challenge #00550 - A175: Black-boxing It
Taken from an author talking about a piece of tech in their setting:
They’ve tried reverse engineering the displacement engine before. It goes a little like this:
Your moon is now a pretzel.
Your research is invalid. – RecklessPrudence
“So what is it?”
“I can’t figure it out,” said Helba, getting her facts out in the open. “I know what it does, it makes the gravity in this… place…” Station, ship… installation felt better, but it had plainly been here long enough to become a small planetoid.
The cargo cult seeing to its upkeep did a surprisingly good job for a bunch of mammals, but how it ran… That was the mystery.
“There are some elements I can understand but…” she shook her head. “There’s no reason for it to work. Yet it obviously does.”
Thokin scratched at her brow-ridges. “Can you try to figure it out? This technology could be revolutionary. We could solve the Long Flight problem. We could… we could build bases like this! Off planet. No central mass to keep things stable. Just… one of these. All we have to do is reproduce the technology.”
“I could try to black-box it. Replicate what it does.” Helba shook her head. It already seemed a daunting task. “I’ll come out the other side, either a genius or a mad thing.”
“The trick,” said one of the apparently-meditating natives, “is to be both at once.”
They shouldn’t have ignored him just because he was a male.
*
From the Last Journal of Helba Greyscale:
I can see it now. I’m so close. The key is the madness and the madness is the key. These insane little mammals made a calm machine, but mine is hungry. It demands a sacrifice.
It shall have blood. And when it has feasted it shall be the very glory of the empire!
Eeya mork g'risin f'thagen daas
Eeya mork g'risin f'thagen daas
Eeya mork g'risin f'thagen daas
*
The Nae'hyn reverentially sealed the invader vessel and tethered it to all the others who had tried and failed to copy their work. The remains would, in time, freeze-dry in their metal tomb.
They offered tours. They offered teaching. They offered to work for them. But every generation, the ones who ‘discovered’ their little station ignored their good advice and tried to repeat the impossible. And therefore went insane.
“Pay heed, my apprentices,” schooled Master Sun Swallow. “When copying unfamiliar technology, it is advisable to never throw yourself into your work. Figuratively, or literally.”
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