Challenge #00829-B098: You Can’t Really Go Home
Well, at least the human was excited about the holiday, however ill-advised taking the trip to Earth with them was going to be…
“Thereitis, thereitis! Earth. Aw… it mostly looks the same…”
“I did tell you that it’s been five hundred years since your departure. Geographically, little has changed.”
“I’m goin’ tae stop in at Wales. Go see what’s happened tae home.”
Rael, a little more prepared, had tried to find Shayde’s ‘home’ on a map. There was no such place as Daffad Gweddyl ar Afon. And no hint that it had ever been. “I haven’t been able to find it on any map,” he warned.
“Aye, nowt’s changed there,” she giggled. “NO! They built a fookain space elevator. Ye wee ripper!”
“It’s for the tourists. COL-lander shuttles are much faster and more convenient…”
His warning went unheeded. “Aw, I gotta have a go on tha’!”
Rael sighed. At least the food was good. Putting up with Shayde in full tourist mode was going to be an absolute trial.
*
It had been a long hike, over hill and dale and one ford. When Shayde reached the top of the hill, her legs went out from under her. Rael caught up and tried to fathom why water was leaking from her eyes.
It was just an oak grove. And some ancient stone buildings well on their way to complete collapse.
Not knowing what else to do, he sat beside her. “Daffad Gweddyl?”
A faint croak of a voice. “…aye…”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have no frame of reference. No way to understand…”
Shayde got to her feet and strode towards the grove. Rael hurried to follow her, since it was his job to make sure she didn’t happen to anyone or anything.
“You’re not about to do anything… rash… are you?”
“Jus’ lookain fer a tree,” she choked out.
They all seemed alike, in this part of the grove, where the older trees grew in regimented lines. She was counting to herself and pointing at vegetation as she went. Finally, she stopped at one that seemed to be just like all the others, and threw her arms around it and sobbed like a child.
“Shayde?”
“M’ babbie brother planted this one. I saw ‘im. Tole ‘im we’d be old together ere it were grown…”
Oh. It had hit her. The sheer gap of time that she’d lost. Rael let her mourn, loaning her his closeness as the tears and the sobs crumpled her up. And then coaxing stories out of her about her adventures in this place. Which included a tour of the ruins. And a lecture to the local archaeologists about where they might find interesting things.
She was right. Almost to the millimetre. Which loaned further credence to her story.
She did come from here. And she could never go back.
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Challenge #00828-B097: Homicidally Annoying
Ethics. Of all the flaws for a crew member to have, why did it have to be ethics?
Do’jii had to wonder why he was carting this human around. Sure, his actions were often in a confounding chain of cause and effect that came out with profit at the other end, but at other times…
Like this time…
It was hard to see the profit at the other end.
“Let me understand the chain of events,” began Do’jii.
The adolescent male cringed in his place and bared his teeth. A nervous reaction that made Do’jii bare his more ominously.
“You went into the cargo hold, despite numerous warnings not to…”
“…’esbut,” squeaked the human. “It was Ar’jii. ‘E said ‘e’d bite me head off if I didn’t check th’ locks.”
Ar’jii was going to be reprimanded for that. Later. Much, much later. “And, once in the cargo hold, you opened the door that you were expressly forbidden to open.”
“…itwasunlocked…”
“Well…”
“Hwell, sir.”
“Why do you keep doing the things you were told not to do?”
“Um. You see. This time…“
O Gods. Not a ‘this time’er.
“This time? Sir? I couldn’t figure out why the lock wasn’t locking? So I turned on the light inside? To see if there was anything in the mechanism? You know how grit gets about? Um. And then I saw what was in there? I mean - who was in there?“
Ethics. Of all the flaws for a crew member to have, why did it have to be ethics? Do’jii scraped his talons down his spine crest in an effort to calm himself down. Must not kill and eat the profitable mammal… “So of course you felt sorry for them and called ahead to the Committee for Cogniscent Rights…”
“Yessir. I knew it wasn’t you as put them there, sir. It had to be Ba’jii. He’s a real bad sort.”
Evidently, the meaning of smuggler vessel had escaped the humans’ notice. “Well Barra…”
“It’s Hwell Barrow, sir.”
“You are fired. Gather your belongings and your cargo and leave this ship forever.”
“Yeahbut–”
“UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH!”
The human fled.
When the CCR came around asking about the notice, Do’jii disavowed all knowledge and informed them that the human had the sole responsibility of freeing that particular batch of live cargo.
He didn’t know that there was a Four Year’s reward for their release and repatriation. And, to add insult to injury, the humans’ last, insane purchase also went for a small fortune. Of which, the human frittered most of it on charity.
The next time he got a human? It had to be one with less moral fibre.
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Challenge #00827-B096: Cataclysmic Server Event
Extinction Level Events are just the real worlds way of conducting a server update.
[AN: Apologies for the lateness. I got distracted.]
“Okay, so what kind of server reboot are we looking at?”
“Rocks fall, everything dies.“
“Seriously? How are the event quests even managed for that?”
“We’re removing most, but not all of the Saurians and replacing them with Mammals. Loads of customisation possibilities with the Evolution quests.”
“Yahuh. And what are the event quests for the Saurians?”
“Try to save the world. None of them are taking it up though. Looks like everyone’s tired of feathers and roaring.”
Tapping on the keys. “Dude! This entire species run doesn’t have the cogniscence mod.”
“Uh. Whoops.”
“It’s too late to do anything to fix it! They’re still at hunt-and-kill and nowhere near rockets.”
“Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit…”
“Damnit.”
“Well… nothing to be done about that. Start working towards the cogniscence mod on the mammals after the reboot.”
“Yessir.”
“You’re bloody lucky nobody else noticed. One hundred and seventy-five million years and no cogniscence. Crap.”
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Challenge #00826-B095: One Guaranteed Angel
[AN: Love and props to tkki who does amazing art. Go follow them. Give them moneys. Also apologies if this counts as unauthorised reproduction. Image shows a humanoid figure in black with a skull for a head. Clinging to one leg of the large, black figure is the tiny white figure of a child]
Halloween.
Ghouls, gosts, and lingerie-themed outfits ruled the streets. Az had put on a cheap rubber skull mask and pulled his hood up to hide the seam. His companion for the evening was too portly for the usual array of one-size-fits-nobody rental costumes and had resigned herself to Santa.
Sort of. There was rather a lot of ill-spirited and out-of-character grumbling coming from underneath the snowy white, fake beard.
At least until they saw the kid.
She was dressed head to toe in white. She had pale skin. So pale you could see the tracery of her veins. White hair, kept short, escaped a white ribbon. Her white dress was made for summers, not October’s autumn chill.
She was so tiny.
“Santa!” She smiled.
Az kind of faded into the background as Lyn put on her jolliest “Ho Ho Ho“s for the kid. Say what you like about her vocabulary, but Lyn was an angel in disguise.
Tiny White’s name was Claire, and she wanted an angel to take her away so her mother wouldn’t put her in the box, any more. Claire went into the box every single time she got her clothes dirty.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Lyn sighed. “Santa doesn’t make angels with the elves. We’re toys only. You only get one guaranteed angel, I’m sorry.”
Az carried her home so she wouldn’t get dirt on her clothes. Poor kid. She’d been adopted by some super-famous Mommy-Dearest type who skated away from Child Services on a cloud of money, fame and privilege. She wasn’t even home.
So Az packed up Claire’s favourite things. All her clothes were white… and left a nastygram in the box.
Children are not toys. If you want Claire back, tell the world about what this box is really for.
Az
told the staff who were there that he was taking her to some party in
the town. They were so used to this nonsense that they just let it
happen.
The party of the rest of her life, by sheer comparison.
Mommy-Dearest put on a nice sob for the media. And there was a whole bunch of ruckus, trying to find Claire. You’d think an albino kid would be easy to find, wouldn’t you?
Not after Lyn and Az were done with her. They gave her colour. A little spray-tan here. A little hair dye there. A little makeup… And a lot of rough-and-ready clothes.
Claire looks and acts just like any other kid, now. They let her get dirty, and bath her at night. And her health has improved for it.
Lyn and Az got married to solve a lot of questions. Traveling on the road and some shady people producing some less-than-legal documents made certain no-one would link their Claire to the one stolen from the fame-and-fortune Mommy Dearest.
And anyway, all the fuss died down five seconds after she got herself a new accessory. A large and fluffy white rabbit. Which is much quieter and matches her decor.
People look at Az and Lyn as they walk down the streets with Claire eagerly holding their hands. Him, all over in tattoos and piercings. Her, overweight and more artistically inked.
They say, “Some people just shouldn’t ever have kids.”
They don’t know how right they are.
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Challenge #00824-B093: Living in Interesting Times
The kid of the punch-clock hero and villain couple has an interesting life.
Her parents named her Everest. Possibly out of a desire to fit in with the ridiculous names of their gated, elitist community. She shared a school with three Porsche’s, two Kilimanjaro’s, and at least five kids with way too many silent Q’s in their name.
She was waiting for the very day that she was old enough to change her name to something blandly ordinary. Like Elizabeth. Or Mary. Even Kylie would do. She spent random free moments scouring books and magazines for ordinary names.
Mabel was her current favourite. Old-timey and ready for shortening to May. You could get far with a name like May. It was like Spring. Full of optimism and the hope of new things.
All Everest was full of was rocks, snow, and dead bodies.
Her ride on the bus was less eventful than normal. Only ten pretenders attempted to suck up to her in order to get one or both of her parents’ autographs. They vanished quickly enough when they found out she charged the same rates as the fan club.
And the bullies were hardly any better. Calling her ‘stuck up’ when she turned aside the pretenders. Tripping her up or shoving her around as she trod the halls. Daring her superhero mom to come and rescue her.
It was why she ate lunch on the roof with some of the other social rejects. Her few friends. Most of them were on The Spectrum. Everest didn’t mind. The silence was companionable and the sporadic conversations more interesting than hey-can-you-get-me-your-moms-autographs.
And they all had reason to despise the mainstream.
“Aw. Look! It’s the nerd central pity party.”
O great. Quellijana. The queen of the mean girls. Everest sighed her deepest sigh and said, “Go find someone else to annoy, Kelly-anna.”
“It’s pronounced Quellijana. I can hear the difference, you ignorant racist.”
“Whut?” winced Travois. “How in the name of anything is Everest racist?”
“She keeps mispronouncing my name to fit the white oppressors? I’ll have you know I’m part Gaelic, part Viking, and part Inuit on my great-great-grandmother’s side.”
“White enough for me,” said Kilimanjaro. One of the three black kids in the entire school. His skin was so dark that it had a sheen like a peacock’s feather. He was also the resident expert on what was racist. His one trump card.
Quellijana sneered at him. “Huh. That’s reverse racism. I should report you.”
“Sooo…” said Everest. “You’re admitting that racism usually comes from you?”
“Oh go jump off the edge, Everest. Nobody really likes you.”
That was the last straw. “Fine. I will.” One step. Two steps. The third met air.
That’d show her.
She changed her mind halfway down and tensed. She didn’t want to die! Quellijana was not worth killing herself over.
The final crunch at the bottom never came. She could hear people rushing over and babbling. But it was awed babbling.
She was hovering an inch above the sculpted gravel pathway.
Oh boy.
Everest thought, Up, and slowly levitated back to where Quellijana was staring, gape-mouthed, at her new relationship with gravity. “Next time you tell someone to jump off something, Kelly-anna, make sure they won’t actually do it?”
The girl fainted.
Everest stepped calmly back onto the roof as if getting her flight powers was the most normal thing in the world. “Okay. Spuds out. Let’s see who loses and has to drag her to the nurse’s office.”
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Challenge #00823-B092: Bad Day at the Office
A Punch-Clock Villain and Hero get married.
“Bye honey have a good day at work” “you too!”
“Muahaha I will destroy Blahtropolis!” “Not if I stop you first also here you forgot your lunch dear.”
[AN: I keep getting reminded of those old looney tunes cartoons with the punch-clock sheepdog and the wolf who looked astonishingly like Wile E. Coyote…]
“Dear… have you seen my hair thingie?”
“Didn’t you put it on the counter, last night?”
“Well if I did, it isn’t there now.”
“Uuuuuuggghhh…” Marvelonia stepped away from breakfast-making to find her beloved’s hair thingie. “I don’t know why you need this, darling. It never looked good.”
“The fans expect it,” sighed Malicia as she put it in. “Its awkward and it scratches and it’s responsible for fifty-four percent of my defeats…”
“Nerd,” she sighed lovingly. “Come on, or the bacon’s going to burn.”
“I’ll get the coffee.”
Everest slumped into her seat at the table.
“Good morning, my greatest creation,” chirped Malicia.
“Y’ say that ‘bout all y’r dumb machines…”
“Your mother’s machines are not dumb,” chided Marvelonia. “And you’re our greatest creation. Unless you’d like a baby sib…”
“O god nooooo…”
“Eggs? Bacon? Toast?” offered Malicia.
“J’st lea’me alone,” grumped Everest.
“She’s at That Age,” whispered Marvelonia. “Just remember, darling. Whichever life path you chose, we’ll love you regardless.”
“Uuuuuuuuuuugggh…” Everest rolled her eyes and slouched her way towards getting a bowl of milk and cereal.
“Here’s your cape. Fresh from the dryer,” chirped Malicia.
“Life’s been so much easier since we decided on wash-and-go super suits.
“And the no-makeup look is so much faster. Loving the self-stick mini-masks.”
Everest moaned in complaint all the way through her share of getting ready for the day.
*
“MWUAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA… And now! With the aid of my greatest creation, I shall take over Herotropolis, and then the woooooorrrllld!“
“Not on my watch, Malicia!”
“Marvelonia! Didn’t you have a runaway train to catch?”
They got to grappling. Super-powered hero against mistress of machines. “That train wasn’t on the schedule today. But I did find that bus full of orphans on time.”
“Damn,” whispered Malicia. “I forgot it was Wednesday. Crap.”
“You always mess things up on Wednesday, damnit,” Marvelonia whispered back.
She cleared her throat and rallied magnificently. “Curses! You failed to fall into my cunning trap!”
“Maybe your traps need a little more work. I’m not so easily distracted as I seem.”
*
“Ooof. Ow. I need three hours in the Healotron and one of your Super Massages.”
“Sorry about the eye, babe.”
“Yeah. I know. It looks great on the front page.“
“You ever think of quitting and living off the proceeds from your patents?”
“Sometimes…” Malicia stretched until her back crackled. “But what would we do for fun?
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Challenge #00822-B091: Ordinary Super
“They all think they’re six foot tall and wearing the Superman suit”. Police officer’s explanation.
They called it God Complex, and it disconnected the mind from its pain. Like GHB, it caused harm, but it also made its victims think they could do anything. And, worse, people who took it regularly… began to gain strange powers.
Which soon became a problem for the officers.
“FREEZE!”
“Don’t shoot! I’m white!”
Officer Klein blinked. It must have been a trick of the light that lead him to believe. Oh my god I almost shot a real person... “Sorry, sir,” he said, holstering his weapon. “Mistaken identity. We were alerted to a criminal presence in this area. Have you seen a black man carrying a grocery bag full of stolen goods?”
“No sir. This is my shopping. Here’s the receipt.” And it was a receipt. Even later, when the spell wore off. Legally purchased with real money.
“Thank you. Have a good evening.”
It happened like that, all over the United States. People on God Complex yelling, “Don’t shoot! They’re white!” And, criminal or innocent, more people survived their encounters with the police.
Courts could not scan or screen for God Complex. As far as chemical make-up was concerned, it was invisible when compared to normal biochemistry. And an amazing amount of court cases and appeals came out in favour of the defendant when anyone on GC shouted “That man/woman is white!”
An astounding amount of racism revealed itself.
Lawyers started taking it in order to get their clients tried as rich white men. The victimised took it to convince their oppressors that they were no longer oppressable. People who thought they were victimised took it and suffered an extreme personality change when they had the epiphany that their lives beforehand were their own fault.
The only real downside was the heroics.
People on it, apparently, thought they were Superman. And in that vein, more people died by attempting to save others than ever before.
But then, there’s a downside to everything.
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Challenge #00821-B090: Super Ordinary
Just because you’re wearing the cape doesn’t mean you can fly.
[AN: Trigger warning for suicide mention and suicidal narrative]
Ellie had been clinging to life by her fingertips. The hardest question of her life before her. As well as the end of it. The question to be answered was… would anyone really care? Sure, for about ten minutes, she might be a splashy headline. For two hours, she’d be a job to clean up.
And the world would forget she ever existed.
Even the police, far below, seemed disinterested in helping. They were standing around and occasionally looking up. She hadn’t even stopped traffic.
She stopped looking down. Staring out at the buildings across the void.
If that kid would just turn away… I’d drop off in a cold second.
The kid did look up. Tracking something dropping…
Shit. No. Someone stole my thunder?
Ellie looked up. A bare glimpse of a lurid lycra costume and a flapping cape… And someone landed next to her. Or more accurately, someone flung a bungee lasso around the stonework and eventually bounced to a stop next to her.
There was a bright red cape. Brilliant, sparkling, amber helmet and elbow pads. Green tights and skivvy. The knee pads and boots were silver and chrome. The body armour bright purple. As was the silicon diamond-pattern mask stuck to their face.
“Hi,” said the breathless stranger. “Thanks for letting me drop in.” She had a completely useless and way-too-short silver skirt on. Possibly in an effort to make up for her streamlined physique and practical pixie cut.
“Hardy har har,” Ellie deadpanned. “Of course this is a joke. Why not? Get everyone to laugh at me.”
“Sorry,” said the wierdo. She was hammering in pitons. “You’d be surprised how often a lame joke works in this situation. I honestly don’t find your situation humorous.” She added cable to a shockingly invisible harness and reclaimed the bungee. “I go by Aunty Gravity, by the way. What’s your name?”
Ellie almost answered her truthfully. “Deadfall.”
“You really wanna go by that?”
“All things considered?” The kid across the street was jumping up and down. Mama mama mama come lookit! “Yeah. Matches my fate.”
“I’m here to listen. I have all the time you have for me.”
The kid’s mother finally turned up. And started recording the proceedings on her phone. Why not? It wasn’t as if things could get much worse. Ellie adjusted her grip on the rooftop wall. She sighed. Readied herself for an influx of the usual violence and began: “Do you have any idea how hard it is to Transition in Texas?”
“Actually yes. And it’s worse when you’re not white.”
Serious eyes. Serious face. The subtle signs jumped up, now. This was a girl who didn’t start off life as a girl. When she drew her first breath, the doctors made a very critical misdiagnosis.
Just like Ellie.
“I fought so hard for so long,” Ellie whispered. “I’m tired of it. I’m tired of my cheques being made out to EARL McKean. I’m tired of having to sneak into the disabled bathroom because everyone has guns… and there’s laws now that let people shoot people like me…“
“They won’t call you a girl until you get The Surgery, right?” said Aunty Gravity.
“…’es.”
“Can’t afford it, can’t get it, don’t want to?” she prompted.
“More like… have to find a doctor who will… and have to declare myself insane to get it… and have to spend time in an asylum again[1].”
“Sounds like it’d be saner to move out.”
“Except they won’t update my ID and they won’t let me out of the state without it.”
“They’ll let you out of the country without it,” said Aunty Gravity. “Your passport isn’t issued by Texas, it’s issued by the US Government. So pack up everything you want to keep. Sell everything you don’t, and catch a train to Mexico. Then, any time you want, you can catch a cruise boat to California. Your choice for surgery or self-identity thereafter.”
Ellie stared at her in disbelief. “That… works?”
A big, wide grin. “Worked for me. Worked for a dozen or so more. As long as we don’t talk about it online, the idiots in the capital are no wiser. And more asinine laws don’t get passed.”
“Are you going to help me?”
“Of course. I’ll even turn up out of costume if you want me to.”
Ellie made a decision. “Ellie.”
“Joanne.”
“Get me back up onto the roof, please?”
“Sure thing.”
It was harder than climbing out, climbing back in. Possibly because the threat of an unwanted death was back on the table. And despite the swarming cops and the waving guns and the fact that Auntie Gravity just… bounced her way out of the line of fire… Ellie had never felt lighter.
Nobody could fly. Not yet. But in this minute, in this hour? Ellie felt like she could soar all the way to the sun.
And she felt it again when Joanne O’Malley turned up as her lawyer. In a green power suit with a Superman brooch on her lapel.
[1] Extrapolated from the already boggling anti-trans laws happening in the US right now.
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Challenge #00820-B089: Going Viral
:Speaking of real-life, actually-happened biological warfare development:
After deployment failed, killing only five hundred million individuals before the target population began developing immunity, development started on another attempt using a different disease. Loss of containment on that one killed ten million during testing, and let the unfinished virus into the wild.
(…The twist is it was the testing of RHD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_haemorrhagic_disease) in Aussie attempts to control the rabbit population after myxy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myxomatosis) didn’t finish the job)
Exerpts from Report on the Efforts of Redesigning a Deathworld by Blixxo Maxx:
Having taken note of the mating habits of the resident mammals, we then concocted a virus that would attack their immune system and leave them vulnerable to the planet’s abundant diseases. The long incubation period was a deliberate design choice to remove the association of cause and effect, as well as to maximise spread.
Initial results seemed successful, tracking by infection rate, large portions of the population were infected within three decades. However, mutant strains arose, as did awareness of the virus.
Then those apes did something unprecedented. They tamed a virus designed to kill them and used it against something else that was killing them. Then they designed a drug to defend themselves against the initial virus.
In desperation, my learned colleague attempted to fan the fires of the native’s anti-vaccine movement. He reasoned that the elites and the believers in conspiracies would wipe out a majority of the population intelligent enough to insist on preventative measures.
Fear is an excellent motivator for these balding apes. They have and will willingly walk into peril in order to avoid an astronomically small chance of a feared outcome.
To that end, I am pondering the invention of a purely mythical disease. These apes will believe anything they find on their own entertainment networks. The prevention method, of course, will be something that kills them or at least renders them infertile.
We may yet rid ourselves of intelligent life on this planet, but I have my doubts. These are a resilient species. In the end, we may have to be satisfied with them wiping themselves out.
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Challenge #00819-B088: True Words
Beware the happy person with power tools.
There was a sign over the door to the maker-space. Warning: Happy people with power tools inside.
Shayde thought it was a joke until she stepped in. Sure, it had been a few years since she got together with fellow nerds and a bunch of tools to create something. At least, in subjective terms.
In real-time terms it had been closer to five hundred years.
The very concept of maker-spaces had changed while she was away. It wasn’t nerds with jig saws, hot glue guns and sewing machines, any more. It was nerds with three-dimensional printers. Nerds with full-out forges. Nerds with sketchpads talking to nerds with devices she couldn’t even fathom.
Someone, in a corner, was working on a fully-functional battle armour.
Somehow, her idea of a Mew-Mew Puffy Sama lolita dress wasn’t all that ridiculous, any more.
“First time?” said one of the local nerds.
“Sort of. Me an’ me mates used tae take over a garage or a sewin’ room in th’ day… This is…”
“Yes?” the local nerd grinned in anticipation. They liked freaking out the Mundanes. Even when the Mundane in question was a six-foot-tall shadow elemental.
“Heaven,” she sighed.
This was not the right answer. And now, somehow, she had become the Alpha Nerd.
She rubbed her hands in glee. “Show me tae th’ cuttin’ tables…”
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