Challenge #00333: Look at This Photograph…

That’s what chilled me most about the picture when I saw it again, when I really got a good look the second time. Without that single detail, it could’ve really been perfectly ordinary, like any other plain old image taken a million times by a million other people. It looked so deceptively normal except for the one thing that could never, ever be normal. – Josh

It was blurry, but the eye could make out what appeared to be a white man in a suit and tie. He had no hat. He had no hands.

And he had no face.

Not even the blur of a face.

Just a white, shiny orb that took the place of a head to the casual observer.

But I knew what to look for, now. That figure had been in the background of every photograph since I turned eighteen. Every casual photograph I was in… he was there, too.

I lined them up, once, in chronological order. Put them together as a gif.

That figure’s been slowly advancing on me for twenty years.

And he’s almost caught up.

Even though he’s over my shoulder, he’s still blurry. You still can’t make out a face. But you can see that he doesn’t have hands. He has talons.

I can control the photos people I know take of me. They pass it off as vanity. Not wanting a record of my aging. They laugh. But I can’t control the photos people take… that have me in there.

I don’t know if he’s in those. They are photos taken by strangers.

And every now and again, there’s this urge. The need to take just one selfie.

To see how close he is now.

But there’s also the knowledge that that selfie may well be my last.

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Challenge #00332: Wark

Someone has been crammed into a penguin suit, protesting or not, and wow does it look good on them

The last thing he remembered was a voice demanding, “FORMAL ATTIRE IS MANDATORY,” before the minions descended.

He missed his JOAT coat the most. At least the shoes were marginally serviceable. Too shiny and too thin, but they could do in a pinch.

The pants were completely wrong. Black was not his colour. He was anti-religious. The white waistcoat fit his skill with languages, but… there was too much white. And not enough engineering blue.

And the trailing lengths of fabric hanging down the back were a mystery.

The minions shoved him through a door and vanished.

It was a ballroom. Dating from around the Nineteenth Century, according to his best guess.

Someone wolf-whistled.

He knew that whistle.

Shayde was elegantly decked out in ancient frou-frou in her usual tones of gold, white and grey. “I’d hazard a guess that our host knows some style,” she grinned. “Penguin looks good on ye.”

“I see they managed to restrain your hair,” noted Rael, valiantly attempting to ignore the effect the dress. “We must obtain the technology for civilization.”

“It’s called loads of hairspray.” Shayde grinned as music started to play. “Looks like this bubble’s going tae be easy to pop. Shall we dance?”

“What do you mean, ‘penguin looks good on me’?”

“Suit an’ tails. Penguin suit.”

He caught his reflection. Even with his blue-ish skin, he did look a bit… penguin-ish.

“Wark,” he growled.

“Aw shut it. At least your legs ain’t covered in petticoats.”

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Challenge #00331: Unexpectedly Useful

“What a good thing you had all those clockwork ducks”

[AN: Your Girl Genius fandom is showing. And so is mine, because I know exactly where that line came from]

Rael peeked through the one hole in the barrier that let him see without being seen.

“Okay,” he recapped. “They’ve got our ship surrounded. They’re armed to the teeth. And there’s hundreds of them. And only two of us.”

Shayde was checking her Pockets. Not the ones in her clothes, but the tiny entrances to pocket realities where she kept an impossible array of articles which she simply summed up as “me shit”.

Rael watched the soldiers rather than watching Shayde’s hands dip out of reality. “We’re already in a lot of trouble, just being here. You’re not going to cause any of your famous collateral damage, are you?”

“No’ if I can help it. They’re jus’ folks doin’ their job. Better tae distract them.”

That was less reassuring than she hoped it was. “Not one of your epic distractions?”

“Ha! Got it. Just the thing.”

Rael stared at the box in her hands. “Clockwork ducks?”

“Start windin’.”

*

This was not your average clockwork duck, that spasmed erratically for ten minutes, falling over in the process mere millimeters from where they started. These were the sort of clockwork ducks DaVinci would make if he had the patience to do more than one.

They walked. They quacked. They randomly pecked at the ground. They roamed in stately grace in directions of their own choosing.

Shayde timed it so that the next duck was released just after most of the attention was on its previous copper sibling.

And, just like the obligatory stupid guards of Shayde’s old-time adventures - the guards wandered off after the ducks. Rael watched in stunned amazement as it worked like a charm.

“It shouldn’t work. It’s beyond stupid…”

“If it’s stupid and it works, then it ain’t stupid,” Shayde released the last duck, grabbed his arm, and bolted for their ship.

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Challenge #00330: Fool Me Twice

Friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies.

[TW: Rape, violence]

“Ari, what the shit?”

“I told him. I warned him. I said. You heard. I said. I told him. I’d survived one. I escaped two. I told him. Never again.”

There was no doubt she’d been defending herself. The RapeX was still clinging to his shriveling and bleeding member. Ari bore the bloody evidence of a struggle. She clung with a white-knuckled grip to the kitty-cat key ring that had very obviously been used to stab her attacker multiple times.

Were it anyone else on the floor… there wouldn’t be a problem.

Except this was the high-note senator who had championed Shelters For Survivors. Who used the cause of ending rape in all its forms to gain the women’s vote.

Ari had got in a lucky shot to his neck.

He’d bled out before he could kill her.

Ari was going into PTSD tremors. She got between her and the body. Blocked her sight. “You did good. You survived again. He only got it in once, right?”

Ari nodded.

She didn’t question that Ari wore the RapeX all the time. After the first encounter, it had been her best friend. After the second time… her security blanket. After the third… well… Ari knew and kept all the legal concealed weapons that a person could own.

Senator Whyte had used her story. He knew it. How the hell he thought he could get away with trying something on her and then ignoring every ‘no’ that must have come out of her mouth… was a mystery for the ages.

And then his wife walked in.

“John,” she sighed, “you stupid piece of shit.”

Well. Someone said it.

Pauscha Whyte bit her bottom lip, then turned around and locked the door behind her. “Right. We all know the press would never let this rest until Ari was in jail. They’d hound her to suicide. So. My stupid-ass husband has had a sudden illness. We’re going to sequester ourselves in our private resort for his health. I have lookalikes for the paparazzi. We can fake a gradual decline. Help me with the desk.”

She leaped to action. Shifting the desk away from the rug. Helping Pauscha wrap the rug around the body and, when necessary, gently steering Ari out of the way.

Then she and Pauscha shuffled the body in its rug into the panic room and the freezer therein.

Senator John Whyte insisted on panic rooms. In case his life was in danger. He didn’t think for one second that a paranoid survivor could be any kind of hazard.

Stupid shit.

Pauscha called a lookalike, also called John. “Remember that thing you warned me about? I owe you a box of doughnuts. We need you in here with a big cup of chamomile. Yeah. Ari. There’s still a spot on the carpet.”

She was busy scrubbing it out when the other John arrived. He came bearing tea, a fresh suit, makeup and a squirt bottle with a lable that read Wet Spotter.

She got the tea off John and gave it to Ari. The last thing she needed was someone who looked a hell of a lot like John Whyte in her field of view. What she needed was time apart from the world, therapy, and someone special to help her feel safe.

She and Pauscha would get Ari out. And put up enough of a smokescreen to make sure that murder was not on the menu.

Only once everything was set up and the press was watching the other John lying around in a private retreat… they’d come back and make certain his body was ready for the state funeral following his inevitable demise.

That was what friends were for.

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Challenge #00329: Old Wars, New Combattants

Getting inventive with the dress code

There is a Galactic adage: if you want something done, tell a human it’s impossible.

Kasib Campbell had purchased the JOAT conglomerate and decided to begin bringing order to the naturally chaotic JOATs at Amalgam Station.

Shayde, somehow always by his side, was seething. She’d tried to warn him, and he’d dismissed it as one of her many mental disorders. But, right now, in this room, a Campbell had come to turn their world upside down.

“You are all professionals,” said Campbell. “But when I look at you, I do not see professionals. I see a discordant spectrum of loose cannons and that image. Must. Change.”

The big screen showed a rotating average humanoid in a work unitard and a coat. The unitard and majority of the coat were Engineering Blue. The shoulders and sleeves displayed a regulated rainbow with the colors lined up neatly and symmetrically as they marched through the majority of disciplines.

Rael could tell that all of the JOATs hated it on sight.

“Since the majority of JOATs are Engineers, the engineer design is the default. If your discipline is different…” the image’s main colour flipped through some popular ones. Medical red. Services orange. Food Prep yellow. “A more readable uniform is available for you. A copy of the dress code has been sent to your inboxes. Be in your uniforms by assembly tomorrow. There will be penalties for deviations from the dress code, and the assembly rules.”

*

“Aw fook that,” Shayde said for the umpty-fifth time. They’d retreated to her Ambassadorial office to absorb the enormity of the change. “Anal retentive, OCD, pick-ass fookain CAMPBELL! Get this. We have tae assemble in alphabetical order. No more chummin’ wi’ yer pals or neighbours. No talkin’ in assembly. No food. Is he mad? Those meetin’s go on fer ages. No knittin’?”

Oh, that had to be some variety of a last straw. JOATs measured how long an assembly went by how many people were doing something with yarn. Rael was going through the minutia of the dress code while Shayde pored through the code of conduct.

Aha. A loophole. If anyone knew how to exploit it, Shayde would. “It says here, Small articles of individual heritage are permitted to be displayed on the uniform, so long as they don’t exceed two articles per individual.”

Shayde slowly grew her Ominous Grin of Doom. “Ooh aye, that’ll do nicely. Very nicely indeed.”

“Do you need help shopping?”

“And risk ye stoppin’ me?”

*

The JOATs were not happy. The uniform did nothing to flatter any body type and was equally ugly on everyone.

Shayde marched up to him and determinedly stood by his side.

“What are you doing here? The esses are on the next row.”

“Aye. I want tae be noticed.”

“What are you wearing?”

She pointed at the simple decoration keeping most of her hair in order, “Sioux hair decoration, adequate fer me station,” and then to the cloth wrapped diagonally around her torso. “Clan MacDonald war tartan.”

The Campbells, Rael recalled from ancient Terran history, used to have a long-standing war with the MacDonalds. And nobody held a grudge like the Scots.

Kasib Campbell mounted the dias like any dictator proud of their work. Peered down his nose at the rigid ranks of JOATs until he spotted the one person where they didn’t belong.

“You are out of order,” he said. The screen behind him picked Shayde out. Highlighted her for all to see.

“What are you going to do about it, Campbell?” she demanded in perfect Old Doric.

Blink. Something… changed.

Shayde had a natural affinity for altering reality on a temporary basis. Most of the time, she could control it.

This time, he wasn’t certain that she had.

Now they were standing on a fog-wreathed moor amidst the stench of blood and woad and sweat. Shayde at the head of ranks upon ranks of pissed-off JOATs, Rael at her side.

…the weight of a battle-axe and a shield in his arms…

…the feel of a tartan across his shoulder…

…the distant sound of bagpipes…

And Campbell, alone, opposite them all.

Here and now, in this instant, they were all MacDonalds after the blood of their ancient enemy.

Campbell went stone white.

Blink.

Everyone was back where they were as if nothing had happened. All that was left was the lingering miasma of bloodlust. Hanging in the air like the Cheshire Cat’s smile, only far more malevolent.

Kasib Campbell had wet himself.

Anger turned to laughter. Thousands of JOATs gave voice to their mirth.

Campbell fled the stage. The station. And then any notion of organizing the JOATs at all. Rarely to be heard from again.

It was surprisingly easy to gain permission for the bonfire to burn the hated uniforms.

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Challenge #00326: Metrics

“This homework has an unacceptably high cussing: work done ratio.”

Going to college was an eye-opening experience. Katie had seen the world, but little was more fascinating than white kids trying to be individuals when their own sphere of experience was very sadly limited.

The fact that she had become a kind of instant guru in her dorm because of her experiences was one shocker. The fact that someone had mistaken ‘in college’ for 'of age’ was a surprise to that someone - and so was the knowledge that Katie had picked up some very interesting self-defense skills.

And she’d shattered a few Granola Girls’ dreams about being one with nature with a few home truths about getting back to it.

But that had almost settled, now.

Janice watched Katie as she carefully wrote two versions of her assignment. One for Hackmeyer, which justified his erroneous grasp of physics, and one for herself, which shredded his theories into a fine dust.

“Tough night?’

"Oh aye,” said Katie. “This one’s got a high swearin’ tae accomplishment ratio.”

“I thought Hackmeyer was this brilliant physics wonderkind…”

“He was, once upon a time. The understanding of the universe has changed since his theories were world-changin’…. And in order tae fookain pass, I have tae back 'em up wi’ his own bullshit.”

“And that’s why the swear jar is getting full,” noted Janice.

“Aye. Me only problem’s gonna be not handing in my version.”

Janice watched Katie’s hand jink between notebooks. “Do you keep your versions?”

“Aye, of course I do.”

“Maybe… you should send them to someone.”

“And who’d listen to a fifteen-year-old girl?” she shrugged. Her mind may be sharp enough to get her into college young, but after that, people judged the age and the breasts first.

Janice shook her head. “Jesus. I keep forgetting you’re a kid. And Hackmeyer gropes you?”

“Accidentally-on-purpose, aye. Nobody’s doing anything 'cause of tenure.”

“Fuck,” Janice got up and put a quarter into the jar. “I’m glad I’m just doing medicine. You physicists have it rough.”

“Try bein’ a guy nurse sometime.”

“I said I stopped giving him trouble,” Janice twiddled with her hair. “I guess it’s the same everywhere. Go where you’re not expected and you catch trouble from the people who don’t expect you to stay.”

“Then it’s up to us to wake others up on occasion, aye?” Katie put her pen down and stretched. In the process of getting up, she stuffed a ten dollar note into the jar. “Fer me sins.” She toured the common room, smacking her butt to bring life back into it. “The more people as wake up and stop bein’ nasty… the better off we’ll get.”

Janice was staring out the window. “If anything happens? Like, if Hackmeyer happens to you or something? I’m gonna take your 'beta versions’ and try to publish them. The world needs to know.”

“The world probably won’t care,” sighed Katie.

“I’m still doing it,” said Janice.

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Challenge #00324: Those pesky living authors

Analysing the work of someone still living always runs the risk of “No, that’s not what I meant at all”

Page twenty. Not bad. Especially considering that she’d written it strictly for academia and not for the national newspapers. Her analysis of Hartnell’s greater literary works was getting a lot more notice than she had ever hoped for.

The phone rang. Of course she answered it.

“Hello,” said the voice on the other end, “are you the lady who wrote Hartnell, a Feminist Before Their Time?”

“Yes,” she blushed. A phone interview! Life was looking up.

“Mister Hartnell said to tell you you got almost all of it completely backwards.”

“What?”

“Mister Hartnell–”

“I heard you, I just… Mister Hartnell told you?”

“Yes, of course. I’m his secretary.”

Blush. “I… thought he’d passed on.”

“You and his agent,” said the secretary. “He’s reading it over and he says you’ll get a more in-depth rebuke when he finishes laughing.”

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Challenge #00323: But is it Art?

Toad has come along to one of Sara, Scott or anyone else’s art showings, and in this circle, his mannerisms seem to have accidentally passed him off as an expert or art critic. He’s having fun, and the artist is not sure whether to laugh at how the rich folk are swallowing all of it and buying the work, or cry at how wrong he is about certain bits.

It was one of Sara’s ‘sideshow’ pieces she called The Abyss. It used mirrors to create the illusion of an endless gulf, and secret sensors to detect how long someone had been staring into it before another hidden mechanism activated a pair of eyes… watching the watcher.

Todd stared into it long enough for it to stare back, and chuckled briefly at the very Sara sense of humor involved.

The next piece along was a series of studies. Self-portraits through time. Collaged in such a way as to give the illusion of both motion and three dimensions. Which was quite a trick, because the self-portraits involved started way back before kindergarten.

And -yes- there was a photo of that self-portrait. It was still behind a discretionary curtain in another corner. This work censored it with another self-portrait covering up the non-existent naughty bits.

Sahra had been honest, sometimes cruelly so, in her self-images. The final one in this frame was an homage to Norman Rockwell, with herself in uniform and aqua skin painting the self that everyone saw every day.

He moved on, nodding at the line of folks seeking to peek beyond the curtain, to the kinetic sculpture and the room of sounds.

Kids were going insane in the room of sounds. Every noise they made splashed across the walls and ceiling as vivid colour and shape. It was called Synesthesia, but everyone who went there asked for the room of sounds.

And, regardless of the kids’ whooping and hollering, someone was watching what it looked like when they sang.

Todd noticed he had a small group of followers. Hipsters, if he was any judge. Half of them were texting.

He raised an eyebrow, “Can I help you?”

“Isn’t the room of sounds an abomination against the nature of Art?” said the spokester.

“Synesthesia,” Todd corrected, “is an exploration in interactivity creating art of the moment. By giving a tool to the common throng, as it were, the artist invites others to become artists by using themselves as part of the medium.”

It was almost ad copy from the placards outside of the doors, but the Hipsters swallowed it. Hook, line and sinker.

“And the tragic seesaw?” said a creature of black dye and multiple piercings.

“Entropy is a study in balance and movement, carefully constructed to give the illusion of frailty whilst being near-indestructable. No doubt you’ve discovered the least breeze sets it moving?”

“It has motors in it to make sure it never stops,” sneered a goth hipster.

“No motors at all. There should be gloves nearby for those who want to try and stop it. You’ll find it tricky, though. The sculpture generates its own breezes.”

That, and Sara thoughtfully parked it under an AC vent, so it would always be moving. She never stopped giggling at the people attempting to stop it to find out where the motors were.

“You talk like you made it,” noted a grunge hipster.

“No, but I am familiar with the artist’s works. You should try discovering a few things about the pieces before you critique them so… minimally.”

They scattered. Todd turned to find Sara spraining something with the effort to not laugh.

“Always gotta run away from th’ source of truth.”

“If I didn’t have so much to do, I’d have a performance piece entitled, ’Ask a Rude Question, Get an Honest Answer’,” Sara rolled her eyes at the hipsters. “They think you’re a famous art critic, by the by.”

Todd shrugged. He wore black because it was easier, some days, to not have to worry about what to wear. He had been appreciating the art, which anyone could do. And he’d been looking thoughtful and hemming a lot. “That’s their problem,” he announced.

“Lunch?”

“My thoughts exactly,” he grinned.

Behind them, the hipsters were having a chicken fight with Entropy, in an effort to catch all the swinging, dipping, and swaying parts. The cameras would catch it all for Sara’s later amusement.

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Challenge #00322: Amphibious

We haven’t heard from Todd for a while, or Mortimer, or any of your incarnations of mister Toynbee. Quick, what’s one of them doing right now?

Ha! This was the little bugger. He got it! He got the little bastard. Mortimer cackled to himself as he extracted the bug - Sammy’s pet phasmids had escaped and this one, sadly, never learned to stay out of electronics - from the system. He wrapped the sad remains in a tissue and set them aside.

A little solder, a little duct tape, and then all he had to worry about was putting it all back together and not improving it on the way.

“Oh, Mortimer,” came the slightly disapproving sigh of the one person who meant everything. The one who made him proud of ‘Mortimer’ all over again.

Carefully carrying the bug out with him, he emerged from the bowels of the machine. “Uh. The good news is, I found one of Sammy’s stick insects…”

“The bad news being that it met its end inside a fifty-billion-dollar training mannequin?” guessed Sara. “You missed lunch. Again.” She set down the tray.

She’d grown since they met, and it looked good on her. Tall, elegant, refined… his uptown girl. Everything looked good on her. Even him.

He watched her sit and had to stop himself from composing even more bad poetry inside his head. “I know the drill, love. Put it back the way I found it and write down the improvements.” The lightning had left its mark on his voice. There was a lot more croak in it to lend truth to his codename. “And send 'em along to Stark Industries.”

“Not that they pay the slightest bit of attention,” added Sara. She peeked at the dead phasmid. “Aw. That was Eminrae.”

“You’re better at th’ circle of life talk,” he offered.

“You just don’t want Sammy accusing you of roasting her for your dinner.”

He put his greasy hands up. “You got me. D'ruther stay out of it.”

“Well, you’d better not 'stay out of it’ when it comes to ours, dear husband,” she admonished. Sara gently picked up the tissue and the little body before rising like another poem he couldn’t write. “I might become righteously vexed.”

“Right you are,” he said absently, attacking her gourmet fare with a fork.

She got all the way to the door before he said, “What do you mean 'when it comes to ours’?”

His answer was a winsome smile and an, “I knew you weren’t listening at breakfast. Finish up and then I’ll tell you again.”

He had never worked faster in his life.

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Challenge #00321: Cupcakes! Cupcakes! Cupcakes!

Nobody was entirely sure whether to curse the humans or begin worshipping them for introducing the cupcake to the galactic community. 

The human capacity for invention - alongside their notorious insanity, of course - knows no bounds. Therefore it should have been no surprise that both extended to their food.

Bread is universal. Leavening is not. Cake is known, and has saved some species from extinction. Fruitcake - a human seasonal delicacy - has saved civilizations.

And don’t get anyone started about popsicles.

And then, there’s the creation that can be traced back to a salvage company working in the vicinity of Argo…

*

There was a tower in the centre, in place of the much-anticipated cake. It was festooned with brightly-coloured objects.

Ch'chiva examined it as much as she dared. It was pretty, but human party food was also decorative and some, she had noted, were edible works of art.

Ah, just in time. The human chef emerged. He of the unpronounceable name and the endless smirk. There was a very large bowl of some caramel-corn creation in his hands. The crew loved it, of course.

“I was looking forward to cake,” Ch'chiva tried not to sound reprimanding.

“Those are cakes.”

“Even the round things on the sticks?”

“Yes. Cake-pops. Human food-on-a-stick.” Victor set down the caramel corn -there were peanuts in it! Ch'chiva almost squealed in delight- and plucked out an array of them. “There was no consensus on flavour, this time, so all the -ah- small cakes are colour coded for convenience. Chocolate, strawberry, banana and vanilla.” He pointed out each in turn.

“Many desire chocolate, but it is not a healthy food,” Ch'chiva noted. “Smaller doses would mean less time in sickbay.”

“Only for some,” smirked Victor. He put the cake pops back in their display.

“Is there a name for the larger small cakes?”

“Yes. We call them ‘cupcakes’.”

“It is a very small cup.”

“Beverage containers were smaller when the term was coined." 

"Cup. Cakes,” Ch'chiva toured around the table. “A single serving with none of the dissection. This is excellent food for semi-hostile negotiation.”

The concept spread like wildfire. Not only did the very human concept of food-on-a-stick expand even further, but the cupcake became dessert du jour for all ambassadorial meals. Any meal where knives weren’t possible became ideal ambassadorial fare. Especially in the presence of other ambassadors.

But then there were the heated debates about who got the last chocolate one.

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