Challenge #00869-B138: One Mildly Hazardous Evening in the Commercial Concourse
After many stumbles and a lot of explaining and apologising, how does the first date between little havenworlder and big scary deathworlder go?
It had taken some significant time in negotiations and a lot of education on both sides. Ground rules established. Diets planned, they now sat awkwardly across from each other at Unsuitable Food Eat.
Bear cleared his throat three times before he said, “I understand you’re insectivorous? Do you mind sharing a Hakuna Platter?”
“That is…“ Ryll scrolled down the menu screens. “Ah. The abundance of carbohydrates and flesh with a few lost vegetables lost in the middle?”
“I’ll make sure we get it without pineapple. Or chili. Or. Um. Anything aggressive.“ Bear consulted his personal reader. “Yikes. Your lot aren’t cleared for much, are they?”
Ryll nervously groomed her head-spikes. “We are still working our way up to class-four Deathworlders like yourself. Your… flavour… would kill us.”
“I’m already feeling guilty about that.” Bear reddened. “Um. I usually like to eat the aggressive stuff.”
“I didn’t know you could change colour.” Ryll relaxed out of her huddle. “Is it a display of interest?”
“Sometimes, it can be. In this case, I’m just embarrassed,“ Bear scratched his chin fur. “Loads of the stuff I enjoy? I can’t share.”
“Yes. I looked up your Deathworlder entertainments under supervision.” A smile. “I only fainted twice.”
“Cheev,” Bear grinned.
“…pardon?”
“Uhm. That was an achievement. Yes?”
It was a very awkward evening.
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Challenge #00868-B137: Mistakes Were Made
After http://internutter.tumblr.com/post/119809238784/challenge-00851-b120-one-fine-evening-at-a
The deathworlder’s attempts to apologise for the earlier incident and continue to express interest in the little havenworlder
This negotiation booth had a clear barrier between the Human called Bear and the Agamid called Ryll.
Both parties had a security detail and a negotiations counsellor.
“I’m very sorry,” said Bear. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Usually those lines get a big laugh.”
“Cogniphagia is humorous?” meeped Ryll in alarm.
“Uhhh…” said Bear.
“The human named Bear is referring to some recreational procreation activities native to his species,” informed the negotiations counsellor on Ryll’s side.
This earned the counsellor a slow and incredulous boggle.
“It’s true,” said Bear. “Females of my kind are amenable to friendly nibbling in sensitive areas.”
“Your teeth are sharp,” said Ryll. “My skin is not as strong as yours.”
“Yeah I wasn’t thinking it through,” admitted Bear. “I thought that since you were in the area, you’d already got the resistance to us.”
“You’re… aware?”
“I might be a bit slow, but I’m not ignorant,” Bear smiled, carefully keeping his sharp teeth out of view. “If you like, I can escort you through a series of cleared experiences.”
Ryll meeped again. So alarming. “I must… acclimate myself… to the concept,” she allowed.
Bear offered his contact details and a promise that he would not pursue her company.
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Challenge #00867-B136: Manuals Exist for a Reason
Two people are standing in front of [Large, technical, dangerous-but-necessary item]. They are discussing how to do something highly dangerous with it that is their best hope at this point.
Person #1: [Name], walk us through this.
Person #2: First, you’ll want to [BAD IDEA]. Then [ANOTHER BAD IDEA]. After that, [NO]. Then [DON’T DO THIS] and [SERIOUSLY, DON’T].
Person #3: So…basically everything written here, in order, right after ‘WARNING: DO NOT’…
Person #2: Essentially.
The night before the Big Day.
Kevin could tell that this was bad news. Hackmeyer had promised him, Dave-o and Steve some extra credit if they helped the Professor with his ‘little adjustments’ to Katie’s “dimensional pinhole” instrument array.
“Okay,” said Steve. “What are we doing to this thing?”
Hackmeyer cracked his knuckles. “First, we disengage the safety alarm. Then we increase all the inputs in the first array three marks past the red line. After that, we move on to the secondary and tertiary arrays, moving them comfortably into the red zones. If not further.”
Kev picked up the very detailed operations manual that he had helped Katie put together. “So… just about everything in this manual, under the title, ‘This Will Kill You and Most of California if You Try It’, right sir?”
Hackmeyer glared at him. “Need I remind you, mister Polson, that you have extra credit and I have significant grant money riding on this display being one that the military can appreciate? The last thing any of us need is some little girl playing it safe so that her dollies can have a tea party in the reactor!”
Dave-o and Steve agreed with Hackmeyer. None of those three men had read the explicit details of exactly what could go wrong with Katie’s dimensional pinhole. And, after all, this was America. Bigger was better. Why have a pinhole when one could have a sinkhole?
Therefore, he tried desperately to covertly unfuck everything that the others fucked up. And he left Katie’s dummy ‘safety switch’ in the covert ‘alert’ position.
He just had to hope that Katie could fix everything in time.
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Challenge #00866-B135: When You Have a Hammer…
Person #1: Great! You just gave an engineer a problem that can’t be solved with duct tape. Now we’re going to be stuck here all day.
Person #2: There are problems that can’t be solved with duct tape?
“Maybe if I recalibrate the spline actuator frigit…”
“What’s the first rule?” demanded Captain Dalia.
Sub-lieutenant Branley sighed and toed at the metal plate floor. “Never give a stop-over mechanic a problem that can’t be solved with ductape,” she droned.
“And why do we avoid doing that?”
Another sigh. Another drone, “Because they get excited and try to fix every problem there is on the ship whether we want it fixed or not.”
“Exactly,” cooed Captain Dalia. “And to make sure you learn this, you’re helping him.”
Branley groaned in anticipatory agony.
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Challenge #00865-B134: One Blood-Soaked Evening in a Norse Battlefield
Valkire. They were the choosers of the slain in Norse mythology, see what you can do with it.
“OI!” Thagr the Unbelievable waved down a passing Valkyrie. “What’s the matter with you lot? I’ve been waiting for ages!”
The battle maiden sneered down at him and declared, “You are not worthy,” before attempting to move away.
“OI! OI! You can’t do this to me! I died in battle, I did. I’m entitled to entrance to Valhalla! It’s the rules.”
She sighed the long sigh of someone who’d been through this argument too many times. “It’s not just that you died in battle, Thagr… It’s how you died in battle that counts.”
“What?”
“You died in an arrow volley.”
“Yeah. So?”
“All the arrows are in your back.”
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Challenge #00864-B133: Versatility
string, 1001 uses.
“Um,” said Rael.
“What?” said Pix.
“It’s more than a thousand and one,” he said, reaching slowly for a handbook datachip and slotting it into his reader. “The uses for string pile into the billions, if not quintillions. Of course, some of it is dependant on the originating fibre and the definition of ‘string’.”
Pix glared at him. “I might not have enough funds for an infodump, sir.”
Ah. Right. People paid to hear information. He was still very much used to being tested. “Does it show that I’m fresh out of tutoring?” he readied a few Seconds, just in case.
“Very blatantly. You’ll get over it.” She waved off the offer and got back to her own entertainments.
For Rael, fresh out of Hippo Mining Station and so figuratively green that he could sprout new leaves and become a hedge… the strangeness of being a fully autonomous individual was just beginning.
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Challenge #00863-B132: Shattered Fables
It turns out that some species’ mythical creatures are almost identical to real creatures found on the home planet of another species.
K’karik almost forgot to breathe. There, sitting in the enclosure of the Terran zoo, was clearly Skybear. It was grey like a storm cloud, and sitting up against a tree. Its ears were the white puffs of high stratus clouds.
Just like in the stories.
Legend said the song of the Skybear was a marvel to behold.
Legend didn’t say anything about them eating noxiously pungent leaves. And their gaze didn’t instantly bring down the lightning. If anything, it regarded K’karik with an almost insolent apathy.
“Are they tame?” she asked a human guide. She asked it in a reverential whisper.
“Yeah. Well, tame enough. Sort of. You can’t really tame a Koala.” Her nametag declared her to be Sandy. “Would you like a photo with one?”
A picture? With a Skybear? “They allow people to hold them?”
“They’re noncogniscent mammals,” soothed Sandy. “And they’re socialised, so they won’t kick up. Too much.”
Of course, the Terran version of ‘kick up’ was many other cogniscents’ version of ‘fatally maim’. Therefore, K’karik followed the Terran Guide’s instructions to the letter.
The Skybear clung to her as it had clung to the tree. Its fur was soft. And it had two thumbs.
“Peace of the land for peace of the air,” K’karik whispered in awed reverence.
Sandy managed to take the photograph mere seconds before the Koala urinated. All. Over. K’karik.
Legends were not meant to become reality.
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Challenge #00862-B131: Escape
Masquerading as a normal person day after day is exhausting.
Our Glorious Leader, Membrixel Spite, has decreed that he shall make ours a perfect nation. And to that end, he is correcting and eliminating the Anomalies.
If you find this after I am gone, you will know. Not only did I fail, but I have also been found Anomalous and taken for correction. Or execution.
Did you notice? Are you reading my words any more? Does it even matter that I put down this record? I think I may have stopped caring. I will be made to vanish, soon. All that matters is that I have done this.
I am an Anomaly. And no matter what Our Glorious Leader says, I matter. I think. I feel. I laugh and cry. I may not Fit In, but I matter. And with that much treason in my heart, I shall give you the history as it is not written in the authorised books.
It began with concern, of course. Concern that we, the citizens of our great nation, were not healthy. And who could blame Our Glorious Leader? Many of us were fat. Many of us were lazy. But the lazy people were not fat. And the fat people were not lazy.
Convenience and cheap food was plentiful for those who had no time to cook.
It began with good intentions. Mandatory salads. Caloric control. And a slow but steady reduction in portion sizes. And finally, when nothing worked, the fat poor were sent to work camps. Where they sweated all day and ate thin gruel.
And the people were happy.
Next was the concern for the mentally ill and the physically incapable. What help the government deigned to afford was never enough. And they were, in the end, rounded up too.
The people never saw them again. But they were still happy.
Our Glorious Leader needed perfect soldiers, after all. And if you could not be a perfect soldier, you had to be a perfect service worker. Making sure our brave soldiers could continue the good fight.
Then came concern for the infertile. Making them have babies. Making people who could not afford infants to have infants. And then taking them away into the state orphanages when inspectors found their accommodations lacking.
And the people were not very happy, any more. Not all of them. But by then, it was too late.
Our Glorious Leader is Concerned for you. You should not be doing the things you do. They are Anomalous. You don’t want to be an Anomaly. Anomalies get rounded up, for the good of our great nation.
In way, I’m lucky I’m a girl. As long as I keep my head down and stay quiet, they don’t pay me much heed. All I need is to keep making babies and hope that they don’t catch my genes.
But that isn’t enough.
Something must be done.
There are people found Anomalous now, who used to be Normal. The definition of Normal is shrinking. Soon… our glorious nation will be in a genetic bottleneck. Our Glorious Leader has gone too far,
Which is why I’m going to try killing him tonight.
Whoever you are, wish me luck. We all need it.
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Challenge #00861-B130: The Inadvisability of Truth
The greatest truth in the universe is that the truth exists. The hard part is admitting we have no idea what it is or even where to begin finding it. I am sure we will eventually invest something that will let us invent something so we can discover something that will let us invent something that will give us a clue as to what we might need to invent to figure out what direction we should start looking for advancements in order to find a hint of where the truth is.
This was it. The machine was complete. Sally stood back in awe at her creation. This machine would be the one to tear away all the lies.
Anyone inside, once the machine was on, would know the truth.
And there was only one way to test it.
She stepped inside…
Turned it on…
*
They found her, later. Much later. Blood had finally stopped pouring from her nose, though she would never stop soiling herself for the rest of her life.
She would never talk again. Sally met the world with either hysterical giggling or baby-like sobs.
She had forgotten the very important thing about the truth.
It’s only as good as one’s ability to face it.
The machine worked. They had no doubt. It tore away all of the lies.
Even the ones we tell ourselves so that we can get through the day.
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Challenge #00860-B129: Cue Maniacal Laugh
“Oh no, he’s won! Now the mad genius is going to destroy the world!”
“What? No. Why would I destroy the world? I like the world. It is where I keep all my stuff.”
“But– You’re going to destroy the infrastructure. The economy. The Pax Consumerist!”
“Nonsense,” sad Mad Doctor Valerie. “I’m just destroying the part of it that keeps people down. Translation, I’m unseating you and all your upper-class ilk by distributing all wealth evenly.”
It was such a small button, but the evidence was plain on the screens. All money, everywhere, went briefly into a centralised account, and then went spinning off into even portions into every single back account in the world. Even Mad Doctor Valerie’s.
“And just so the stock market doesn’t go do-lally, it’s now owned by nobody. Any profits get shared out evenly too. Any company with enough shares has them doled out evenly… but there’s no company with that many shares, yet. Call it a contingency plan.”
“You’re insane!”
“Probably,” Valerie grinned. “But now everyone starts of with a truly even footing. The people with the real work ethic will rise. Those without will fall. A real meritocracy. Nobody is handed anything on a platter.”
“…no…” Andrew Hilton whispered. “…my empire…”
“Not yours. Not anyone’s. Earth belongs to those who want to work for it.” Valerie grinned like a shark. “Ready to flip some burgers… sweetie?”
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