Challenge #00809-B078: Flight School
“We will begin this course with some examples of deconstructive lithobraking. This 30-minute holofilm is titled ‘When the Ground Isn’t Your Friend.’”
Wherever humans go, they bring alcohol. In actuality, you are better off if they bring it, because otherwise they brew it. And you do not want to know what goes into the process, because humans will drink the byproduct of anything they can get to ferment.
And sometimes they stick Things in it, after distilling, to “enhance the flavour”.
Therefore, when you’re running various tourist traps in the Impossible Nebula[1], the best idea is to make certain there’s a bar in every mall.
And into one such bar, came a regular casualty.
She was human, of course. Only humans were mad enough to view the fast-transit ‘flight’ between asteroids as entertainment rather than a means of not having to deal with inconvenient shuttle schedules.
She walked with the help of a crutch, and half of her combination flight suit and life suit was a tattered ruin.
A table full of humans greeted her with whoops and cheers as she limped towards their company.
“Where’d you bite it, Cass?” asked another of the girls.
“I got almost all the way around to the Third Quarter. Would you believe, Sash, that I completely forgot about Big Bad John?”
The entire table moaned in sympathy.
“Yeah. Hit the Caterpillar[2] sideways. Busted my leg but good.”
“Three quarters is better than half.”
“I made it all the way around…”
“Only because you stopped at every rock, Nancy.”
“So what? I still made it.”
“You only fly the year[3] if you fly. It’s not called ‘stop and shop the year’.”
Nancy blew a raspberry. “Note the lack of broken bones and my complete absence of flakks to give.”
The bartender readied another round of Stellar Slams and rolled hir eyes at the universe. Humans…
[1] A very interesting misnomer. The nebula in question is actually an asteroid belt that has managed to maintain a breathable atmosphere between its disparate parts. All attempts to turn it into a Ringworld have failed.
[2] The ‘Hungry Caterpillar’ is a grappling-and-processing system that’s good for taking debris apart very quickly. In the Impossible Nebula, it has been adapted to preserve tourist life.
[3] The practice of flying through the entire orbit of the Impossible Nebula.
[Muse food remaining: 16. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00808-B077: What’s Your Emergency?
Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re in a truck, about 500 meters in the air, with a JATO rocket duct-taped to the undercarriage.
[Name], if this was anyone but you, I’d swear this was a prank call.
I’ll never know how he did it, but Warren got hold of a JATO. I do remember how we had a barbecue to celebrate. Lots of beer and ribs and a rambling discussion about what to do with the bloody thing.
“Strap it to your truck,” said Daryl. “Fuckin’ fly to Hawaii, man.“
“Dint they do tha’ on mythbusters?” slurred Lee. He never could hold his liquor and he’d just had half a beer too many.
“No that’s genius,” crowed Lee. “They never actually did it on Mythbusters. They had replacements for a JATO, but they never actually had a fuckin’ JATO.”
“So. What? You’re gonna give it to the Mythbusters?”
“No. Dur. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna aim my pickup at Hawaii and phone ‘em telling them the myth. Is. Confirmed.”
We laughed, and toasted the rocket, sitting under a tarp in Warren’s shed. And I honestly thought no more about it.
Warren, evidently, thought a lot about it. He made himself some wings to also strap onto his truck. And got himself a genuine army surplus cargo parachute that any idiot could use. And about a metric fuckton of bungee cord to tie it all on.
He even got hold of a life raft in case he ditched in the ocean.
Last I heard? He was checking Google Earth to see which roads pointed to Hawaii and how smooth they were.
I expected it to fizzle out at any of those stages, but Warren was determined to get into the Jackass Hall of Fame or something.
And then came the phone call.
“I phoned ‘em as I passed the coast,” Warren yelled over the background roar. “GUESS WHERE I’M CALLING FROM?”
I turned on CNN. Say what you might about their politics, but they’re pretty on the ball about showing people doing stupid-ass things. Yup. They were covering a runaway rocket truck. Footage was shaky and blurry, but it sort of looked a bit like Warren’s truck with strapped-on wings. And a rocket up its ass.
“How high are you?”
“HAVEN’T TAKEN A THING I SWEAR. GOTTA BE SOBER TO FLY,” Warren screamed.
“No. How far up?”
“OH! RIGHT. ALTIMETER BROKE AT FIVE HUNDRED.”
“Okay, let me see if I’ve got this straight,” I said. “You’re in a truck, about five hundred feet in the air, with a JATO rocket duct-taped to the undercarriage.
Warren, if this was anyone but you, I’d swear this was a prank call.“
The roar cut out. “That’s it,” chirped Warren. “I’m coasting from here on out. There’s not a lot of signal out here, but I’m gonna–”
The call cut out next. All I could do was watch the footage and pray he made it there alive.
Some are born to greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them. And some, like Warren, actively seek greatness despite only having two neurons to rub together. If I was you? I’d watch out for the third kind.
[Muse food remaining: 15. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00807-B076: To Ride the Dark
On the Dark Side of the Force: you can’t let it guide you like you can the Light, you _must_ not, in fact. Rather, you have to muzzle it - or perhaps ride it, is a better analogy. Use it’s power, but do not let it run away with you. Like with a particularly independent, stubborn, and genocide-happy horse.
“You have much anger in you. That is good. It is a feeling. Feeling is life.” The Master smiled at her padawan. “What you must never do is allow your feelings to rule you. That way lies defeat. Behold - the little dog in the courtyard. It, too, feels.”
The yapping little mutt was chasing pigeons with no hope of catching them. Syla could see that the dog was just yapping after the first creature to move. “It feels that it has to chase,” she said.
“Indeed,” Master Egris nodded. “The dog expends all its energy in a useless and unfocussed chase. Ultimately, it will be too exhausted to chase, and lose any hope of a prize.”
“So I must be focussed like a cat?”
Laughter. “Nonsense, padawan. The cat focuses exclusively on one goal. It focuses too fiercely, and leaves itself vulnerable from an unforeseen attack.“
There was a cat in the courtyard, below. A mottled little beast with its amber eyes avidly on one fat bird. It was the perfect hunter. Quiet and stealthy. Low to the ground. Unobserved by its prey.
Until Master Egris pitched a pebble at the feline and it leaped, yowling, away from the attack.
“We are not animals and we should not strive to be them,” said Master Egris. “We are people. We think. We are in control of what we say and do. We learn. We can learn from animals, true, but think of the entire example.” A smile and a gentle hug. “Between the flurry of the dog and the focus of the cat, there is the ultimate balance. Enough focus to keep the goal in sight, and enough energy to prevent others from thwarting you.”
“Balance,” said Syla. “That’s very… light side.”
Egris chuckled. “There’s more in common between Light and Dark than most masters tend to admit. The Light believes that emotion gets in the way, and must therefore be eliminated or reduced. The Dark believes that emotion is one more thing to use.”
Syla screwed up her face. “So which one is right?”
“Who said either of them are right?”
Syla stared at her Master in confusion. And, once more, wondered why the hell her ancestors had even bothered building New Alderaan in the first place.
[Muse food remaining: 16. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00806-B075: Permanent Hold
“Your custom is valuable to us. Please be patient and an operator will get back to you.” And you can have fun with this.
[AN: My dash looks like this right now. I’m sincerely hoping that this post is not similarly FUBAR’d. Appropriate prompt is hella appropriate]
The music stopped. She took a preparatory breath in. But there was no human on the other end of the line.
“Your call is important to us,” said the automated voice. “Customer satisfaction and service is our number one priority. Please hold the line and a representative will be with you shortly.”
Sandra Vristen III sighed and kept a note in her journal. She had her name from her Grandmother, who started the call. And who dutifully logged the complaint. The error was still there, of course. She checked daily.
And, because of the laws, she had to have the same name as the person who started the call. It was a global problem that was also in the list of complaints in her generational journal. It was in everyone’s generational journal.
And why, for the most part, history on this world had stopped.
There was the thin hope, every time the music stopped, that there would be a representative this time. That help would be coming.
And in the meantime, she performed the rest of her tasks and her life with her headset almost permanently attached to her ear. She had an app that would recognise an actual customer service representative and wake her up, should they come through while she was sleeping.
But she didn’t believe it would happen while she was alive. Which was why she combed her daughter’s hair. She was also Sandra Vristen. Just as her son also carried his father’s name. And it was also why she filled out a daily application to staff the customer representative job application for MegaGloboCorp. They had to need new hires.
It was almost as if the entire help section was empty.
*
“Another record year,” crowed the CEO of the only company on the planet. He toasted his board members and grinned. “One hundred percent usage, and zero complaints!”
“Yes sir,” said the shifty-eyed representative of the Customer Service division. Nobody else knew nor cared that his staff had been entirely imaginary for generations. All that mattered was the entry-level paycheques shunted around until they got to his bank account. He even used the names of the people who kept applying for non-existent jobs. For verisimilitude.
Not that anyone cared.
The money kept rolling in. And why not? They owned everything.
[Muse food remaining: 16. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00805-B074: The Ultimate Punishment?
“Oh I’m not going to give you time in prison. Your punishment is going to be far much harder. You! are going to help judge Children’s Talent Quests. May the Deity of your choice have Mercy on you!” Have fun, endless repetitions of the same routine come to mind, but be as evil as you like.
[AN: This might work on thieves and killers, but it would not be the thing for pedos or molesters]
“Betcher bottum dolleeeeerrrrr… that tomorrOOOOWWW… there’ll be fuuuun!” Screeched the kid. Evidently this ‘little darling’ had opted for volume over tonal control. And they didn’t know the words.
What passed for a dance were spasmodic gyrations out of sync with any known beat and a beat behind the more sophisticated moves the mother was doing just inside his peripheral vision.
The kid didn’t have rhythm. They didn’t have music. They weren’t even telegenic and their ‘costume’ looked like one of those store-bought smocks made out of flimsy shopping-bag plastic.
He wrote his notes in cryptic cypher and called for the next kid.
Their costume was overalls and a styrofoam Minecraft Pick. They proceeded to holler out a rendition of I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.
These kids had to be the most tone-deaf, uncoordinated, talentless piles of consumers that had ever been born. And ugly. Yikes. Forget being beaten with the Ugly Stick. The entire population of this dirt water area had grown up repeatedly smashing themselves into the Ugly Forest.
Sure, Gareth had repeated crimes. He’d done damage to communities… but did he deserve the rest of his life with this?
He decided not.
After the twentieth rendition of Little Boat on the Sea, he decided. Gareth stood up. “That’s it. You can all go home. They’re all ugly, talentless little bastards who can’t dance, can’t sing, and can’t act.”
He didn’t even get as far as the final “Fuck you all.”
It was suicide by mob.
[Muse food remaining: 15. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00805-B074: Further Proof Humans Are Insane
“You do That! for fun?”
“What the heck is that?”
Charlie peered past Kress’ shoulder. “Oh. That’s my wingsuit. I use it for base jumping.”
Kress screwed up her saurian features. “Base… Jumping.”
“Yeah,” Charlie grinned. She started to bounce in her enthusiasm. “It’s like skydiving, only instead of jumping out of a plane, you jump off of something really tall, build up speed with the suit, and then rip silk.” She hastily amended, “Uh. That means pop the chute.”
Kress backed up. “Just when I start to forget that your species is insane… you do me the favour of a periodic reminder.”
Charlie gave her a half shrug. “Glad to be of service.”
[Muse food remaining: 16. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00804-B073: BSOD’d? BPFB!
This is the pink rabbit of happiness. If your story has subject matter that you’re wholly uncomfortable with writing for any reason, the pink rabbit steals the prompt and replaces it with “Write a short story about a pink rabbit”
[AN: The whole point of challenges is that I find my boundaries and ways to wriggle around them :D Image shows a pink, plush rabbit toy with floppy ears and a bow around its neck]
There’s all kinds of damaged robots who find their way into Walter Robotics’ Home for Abandoned Automatons. The broken, the malfunctioning, the virus-riddled…
And then there’s Bitzer.
She arrived in a wooden crate and a perpetual state of worry and panic. She preferred to hide under staircases and needed constant reassurance that the Walter Workers there would not “ruin Maman’s good work.” And she laboured under the misapprehension that her creator, her Maman, was both still alive and somewhere “out in the wide world”.
She shouldn’t have worked at all, the way she was put together, but she did. And Walter Workers knew better than to interfere with something that worked. Not even to find out how and why. The spare parts and mechanical leftovers that went into her making were almost a century old. Some, more than a century. She was 117 and still suffering from New Bot Narcolepsy. And her patchwork plating needed a thorough going over. And worse, she hadn’t had an oil change for decades.
Which was why one morning found the junk-made robot thoroughly wedged under the stairs, repeating, “Non, non, non!” to the crowding Walter Workers. All of whom were varyingly attempting to get her out of there, get her to accept new oil, get her to accept new clothes, or just to find out what the hell she was doing under the stairs this time.
It was at such a point that a serious intervention was in need, and why Matter Mistress Caroline hustled the crowd into the break room for twenty minutes.
She ducked under the stairs long enough to say, “It’s all right now. I’ve made them go away. I’m coming back in just a few minutes and then we can have a nice, quiet talk.”
Bitzer gave a very quiet and uncertain whimper, but didn’t move.
Caroline dashed for the emergency calm kit (cold water and the best oil) and fetched a pink, plush bunny that was big enough to use as a bean bag, and dragged the whole lot back to the space under the stairs. Once there, she set up a little picnic between herself, the rabbit, and the still-huddled Bitzer. Her scarf for the picnic blanket, of course. And hardy plastic teacups from one of the playsets also stored under the stairs.
With great ceremony, Caroline poured everyone alive a cup of cold water. And mimed giving invisible tea to the rabbit.
This was enough to spark Bitzer’s curiosity and get her to join in with the picnic. “Quaes’que c'est?” she whispered. She had yet to talk at what anyone else considered a normal volume. Or, for that matter, act in any way but defensive and cautious.
“It’s just water,” soothed Caroline, and demonstrated by taking a sip of her own. “You can swap cups if you don’t trust me. I don’t mind.” She made a show of putting her cup down and folding her hands in her lap.
Bitzer settled into a kneeling position opposite Caroline and the bunny. Picked up her own cup and sipped. Then downed the entire thing. A sizzling indicated that her boiler had been running low.
“Another?”
“…’es please…”
It took four cups to refill the boiler to a point where Caroline wasn’t worried about Bitzer any more. And even then, she readily refilled the cup whenever it was empty.
“Who is the gentleman?” the junkbot asked.
Oh. Right. Pink was a manly colour before World War Two. “Well, to anyone else, he’s just a pink plush bunny. He needs a friend. And a name. Would you oblige?”
“Bonjour M’seur Lapin,” she reached across to take her hand and allow the toy to ‘kiss’ her knuckles. “Je m’appelle Bitzer Kludge.”
“All soft toys enjoy hugs,” said Caroline casually.
It wasn’t long after that that Bitzer had an enormous pink rabbit mostly between herself and Caroline. And it wasn’t long after that that she was quietly confessing all of her fears and concerns. Things that could have been easily addressed if the rest of the Walter Workers had just taken the time to both listen and address them.
The only drawback to the ‘treatment’ was that Bitzer henceforth insisted on the escort of M’seur Lapin. Everywhere she went.
[Muse food remaining: 17. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00803-B072: How the Flakk do You Stop Human?
Human sweat is so acidic, it can corrode metals. By micrometers and over years, but still
Something there is, an ancient poet wrote, that does not like a wall. The poem was about the forces of entropy versus cogniscent-made structures, but Rael knew for a fact that that ‘something’ also pertained to humans.
They were practically a force of entropy on their own.
Case in point: Shayde.
Not only was she obviously isolated from current societal norms, but she had a large volume of oppositional habits that other humans had been trained out of since birth. Like her habit of running her fingertips along the walls.
“Ey oop. Som’at’s wrong wi’ t’ wall…” Now she ran the entirety of her palm over the surface. Closely followed by the other palm.
Rael sighed. “It’s an early experiment to discourage humans from touching walls. The micro surface was scientifically designed to create a sense dichotomy that would lead to feelings of depersonalisation and therefore frighten the humans away from touching it.”
“It looks smooth but it feels fuzzy,” Shayde giggled, and pressed her cheek against it. “Eee, lovely. I wonder if anyone’s tried makin’ a dress outta it…”
He physically dragged her away from the wall by her collar. “It used to be prickly. Before your species’ skin acids got to it. The scientists forgot to factor in your bizarre fascination with things that make your senses argue.”
“Is there still prickly bits? Can I feel ‘em?”
Ugh. Typical human. “No.”
[Muse food remaining: 16. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00802-B071: Diggy Diggy Hole
“Didn’t anybody tell you that when you are in a hole of your own making, Don’t keep digging.”
Hwell called it a ‘fox hole’, but its dimensions were closer to that of an elephant. And it was now very deep, because the native pests had a long reach that went along with their fear of falling.
It was past dawn. They were gone, now.
“We’re in a hole,” said Hwell. “Um. Too wide to climb out. Loose soil, anyway. Wouldn’t work. Even if I hoisted you out, there’s nothing near that’d help you hoist me out…”
“That’s assuming I want to,” added Ax’and’l.
“There’s only one rational solution,” concluded Hwell. “Dig more!”
Ax’and’l hid the shovel behind his back. “Explain to me how digging ourselves deeper is in any way related to progress towards our escape?”
“Who said anything about digging deeper?” He grinned. “We gotta dig sideways.”
Ax’and’l checked the air for any trace of human intoxicants. Then he scanned Hwell’s breath.
The human used this as an opportunity to steal the shovel back and start attacking the walls of their hole. “No worries! I got this!”
*
It was later. They were successfully in orbit.
They were also covered in mud and Hwell had yet to let go of the stasis cage with a representative sample of the aggressively carnivorous birds. He was cackling.
“Gotcha ya little bastards. I gotcha little bastards… I gotcha. I gotcha.”
There was only one thing to do with Hwell when he was in this manic state of victory. That was agree with him until he calmed down.
“Yes,” intoned Ax’and’l. “You got them. And they’re little bastards.”
“That’ll teach ya. Oh yeah.”
“Never mess with a human,” recited Ax’and’l.
“Neeeee-ver mess with a human,” cackled Hwell.
Ax’and’l draped the misaphobic blanket over him and locked the console on autopilot. About all Hwell could do now was interfere with the music player. “Enjoy your victory, O mighty hunter,” he snarked. “I am going to enjoy a wash.”
Hwell continued to cackle. “I got ‘em. I got ‘em.”
It was going to be a long ride back to the gene-samplers.
[Muse food remaining: 17. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]
Challenge #00801-B070: When Lorraine Met Walter
Is it bird! Is it a plane. No it’s a Plot Bunny!
[AN: This story hails all the way back to story #298 in the first One Year of Instants. Buy your copy now!]
When she first saw Walter, she mistook him for a hobo and pretended she didn’t see him.
Their second meeting was even less auspicious. Her landlord hired her to serve him a writ about the smell. She found him in the middle of a nest of typewriting, strung out on coffee and suffering the early stages of scurvy.
In a corner, as far away from the nest as it could get, was what appeared to be a rabbit crammed into a cage that was far too small.
The smell was him. He hadn’t bathed or changed his clothes inside of a fortnight and the food stains were starting to compost. Every time Lorraine went near him, he said, “Hang on, hang on, hangonhangonhangon…” or, “Almost done. It’s almost done.”
Lorraine stuck the writ to the fridge and took his trash out for him, which did only a little something about the smell. Walter, evidently, had no time for bathing, meals that didn’t come out of a microwave, tidying up, or even putting his box-meal scrapings in the bin. Or, for that matter, flushing the toilet.
He finally finished typing with an explosive, “And… DONE! YES!” He gave the rabbit the finger and lurched, zombielike, into the shower where things apparently got orgasmic over soap and water.
Lorraine, meanwhile, at least organised his piles of packrattus and took a curious peek at what he’d been typing.
It was the best thing she’d ever read.
She nearly leaped out of her skin when he tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me? Who are you?”
“Lorraine. Whelks. I live down the hall from you. Our landlord wanted me to serve you notice about the smell.”
“Yeah. Things get messy when Fluffykins gets out.”
That should have been her first warning. Hell, in retrospect, it should have been the only warning she’d have ever needed… but retrospect has a perfect view.
Things only got worse from there on in.
[Muse food remaining: 16. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]