Challenge #00722 - A357: Food That Sings
http://callmegallifreya.tumblr.com/post/104613467865/the-magical-crawdad-mmolio-funkocide
“asexual sirens getting real fuckin pissed about all these sailors interrupting choir rehearsal”
“sirens are already asexual they dont have sex with the men they kill them”
“well no wonder they kill them they keep interrupting choir rehearsal”
“Asexual mermaids being really pleased when an asexual sailor begins singing baritone counterpoint.”
They usually didn’t pay attention to the wooden things that floated on top of their world. It would have been rather like constantly paying attention to birds or flotsam.
They sang. It was what they did. They sang their histories, or the tunes of lonely whales, and sometimes, songs they overheard from swimming close to the rare wooden things that did who-knew-what on the open waves.
They were sometimes beautiful, those Otherworld songs, and the Mer would often gather on sharp rocks or sandy bars to sing them in the air.
And that was when the trouble happened.
The floating things would float nearer and meaty treat food would come and try to have sex with them. Disgusting. But it was a way to catch food if the pod was hungry, so they just accepted it as a fact of life.
Shiriiiea was there when a miracle happened. She and her pod-sisters were singing one of the Otherworld songs when a wooden thing floated by. But this time, no meaty treat food came to have sex with them. This time, the food sang back.
Siiyer said it. “The food sings!”
“What a nice voice,” Shiriiea blurted. They sang some more, watching as the food dropped a heavy thing on a rope to keep his floating thing stable.
He bought out an instrument and played for them. Sometimes with words, sometimes with melody. Always in tune with the pod.
This was food they would not eat.
The pod swam out to sing with him. Picked up a few words of the language he called Griik. They took care to note how this one was different from all the other food. He taught them a song they would know him by. They caught him some fish to eat, and decorated his boat with jewellery of seaweed and shells.
He came back to them, to sing again. The pod loved him and his voice. He became their ‘pet’. A Griik word for an animal you feed and enjoy the company of and never, ever eat.
Otherworlders were strange.
When the storm came, his floating thing became another wreck, but the pod knew him, and fed him the Sacred Fish, the one reserved for the drowned and betrayed, who became Mer, like them.
His fins were beautiful, and the Sacred Fish made him young and beautiful, and turned his teeth sharp for the need to eat meat.
The Pod had never had a more beautiful chorus, in or out of the water.
*
They tell a tale in some areas of Greece, of a humble fisherman who was immune to the charms of the Sirens, who would go out and sing with them, in return for them helping him with his catch. They say he was lost at sea and the Sirens ate him for his hubris.
But if you go to his home village, the story changes. They say they saw him swimming with the pod, and heard his voice for many, many years after that terrible storm.
Those villagers know to only sing along when they hear a Siren. Because if you dare interrupt their song, they will kill you and eat you, and decorate their gardens with your bones.
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“Did you hear the one about the two humans?”
What if the majority (or at least a statistically-notable percentage) of the Galactic Community had mating seasons, like most animals do, so that as a result, with humanity’s decidedly non-seasonal “anytime and anywhere” sexual biology, we’re the butt of a million planets’ cheezy and/or stereotype-based dirty jokes…
[AN: Trigger warning: rape mention]
(#00721 - A356)
Of course, humans supplied some of them. Nothing cycles around quicker than a recycled joke.
“How many humans does it take to screw in a light bulb?”
“Two or more, but it’s anyone’s guess how they got in there!”
Or:
“Three humans walk into a bar… one of them would have seen it, but they were all too busy with foreplay!”
Or:
“Ya gotta love the humans, right? I mean, they’ll find a way to love you.”
Or:
“How do you capture a human? Moisten a hole and wait five minutes.”
And:
“Humans have to be insane. They invented rape, and then they invented ways to get out of calling it that.”
The humans didn’t always laugh at that one. It was, as the comedians discussed, a joke that required the audience to know its own history.
Shayde laughed the hardest at it, but then, she was more intimately familiar with the atmosphere that generated the joke. And then -much to Rael’s horror- she buttonholed the poor sod who’d been at the open mic’ to discuss it.
“Oh aye, there was loads of it,” she said to his luckless rictus. “If ye were a gerl, ye didnae have a chance even if ye taped it. Men had a career tha’ women could ruin by speakin’ oot, ye ken. An’ the entire social structure was rigged in his favour. What was she wearin’, how much had she had tae drink, did she willin'ly do it before, did she say ‘yes’ up until the last minute, did she lead him on, what was her reputation like, did she scream, why wasnae she awake tae scream, did she fight, how stupid was she to fight and finally - what proof does she have that it happened at all. It was a horror show.”
The comedian, to Rael’s shock and awe, was dutifully writing this down. “This is horrifying. The exact line between comedy and tragedy. What else did they do?”
“Aw, there was a whole classification system after my time. Legitimate rape, near-rape, real rape, drunk rape, drug rape, date rape… ye get the idea. And loads of 'em didn’t know they were doin’ it. The absence of a 'no’ an’ all that.”
“Completely disgusting. This is right up my alley, but I’m afraid it’ll take a while to turn it into jokes.”
“Lemme know when ye do,” said Shayde. “I’d love tae know how it’s funny.”
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Challenge #00720 - A355: The Abomination
“SPACE IT!” “BURN IT!” “We’ll compromise. LAUNCH IT INTO THE SUN!”
“What is it?” asked M'ri.
“I think it’s a human artefact,” Chobb turned the object over in her hands. It was roughly spherical, and featured false fur in lurid colours. There were comical parodies of eyes above a birdlike pointed beak. Yet it had mammalian ears and ducklike feet. “I think it might be a platypus…”
M'ri ran her scanner over it. “There’s mechanisms inside it. Is it meant to do something?”
“Earth mechanicals run on primitive chemical reactions. The ones inside this were removed for safety,” Chobb reassured her. “Such an odd thing to leave in a grab-box. If we want to find out what it does, we’d have to create a new power cell for it.”
M'ri pried open the power compartment in its lurid plastic base. The compartment was empty of everything but the metal contacts. “Two pointy tents?”
“Earth symbolism,” Chobb dismissed. She put it down on the workbench. “We’d have to unriddle the meaning if we want it to be functional.”
And then the eyes moved. Focussed on them. The beak opened and closed as it said. “U nye boh do?”
M'ri had no memory of moving, but she and her business partner Chobb found themselves clinging to each other at the opposite end of the room to the artificial beast as it oscillated pointlessly in its place. Both cogniscents were trying to burrow through the bulkhead with their spines.
“…it has no power,” Chobb whispered. “How can it possibly…?”
“Wee tah kah wee loo,” said the beast.
“This is why the box was so cheap,” said M'ri. “The merchant was seeking to be rid of that thing. Before it killed him.”
“I say we space it.”
“I think we should burn it.”
“U nye loo lay doo?” said the beast.
“We compromise,” said M'ri. “We drop it into a star.”
Tales were told after the fact, of course. And the Galactic Alliance spread horror stories of the Earth machine known as Phur-bii.
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Challenge #00719 - A354: Divinity Proclivity
I am not the god of reason and understanding, I am the GOD OF THUNDER AND LIGHTNING -Thor
The halo was a dead give-away, really. Something about a God in mortal form made a visible aura of light a definite thing.
May ran through ever possible conversation gambit in her head and finished up with, “So you’re a God, then.”
“Not a capital-G god,” said the divinity. “Not any more. Not enough followers, you see. Nobody really wants what I do.”
“And… what do you do?”
“I’m Delugius, the god of precipitation.”
“Precipitation,” May echoed.
“Rain, sleet, snow, hail… Anything that falls from the sky, I can do it.”
May thought about that as she chased the stains around on the diner’s countertop. “Does it have to be Earth’s sky?” she asked.
Delugius shrugged. “No idea. Never tried for any other sky.”
“I read somewhere that it rains diamonds on Neptune,” she said. “A tiny little local flurry would be kinda cool.”
“And it would raise suspicion. Plus I’m thinking they may not be your ideal gemstone kind of diamond.”
“Well see if you can make it rain one, then. Just a random raindrop.”
He leaned on the counter. “You got an offering?” he said. “It’s usually chicken for a light storm.”
“Got a chicken and mayo sandwich, nearly fresh.”
“Sold.”
“Do I chant any thing?”
“Eh, something in the order of a prayer for a light shower of diamonds from a Neptunian sky should do it. It’s been a while and I don’t even know if it’s gonna work.”
May fetched the sandwich. “O great got Delugius, please take this offering of chicken and bless me with a small shower of rain from a Neptunian sky.”
“Niiiiice,” said Delugius. He took a bite of the sandwich. “MMM! I can feel it working. Here goes, here goes, here goes…” Delugius winced, grunted, and a scattering of black crystals rained down in a circle around May.
“Good news, it works,” said May, sweeping them up. “Bad news, I would have to convince someone that these were actually diamonds.”
If she put them in a saucer, they looked like black grit. And they were a pretty good size, compared to any real diamond she’d actually seen.
“Even if we knew where it rained gemstones, I’m pretty sure it’d be out of my range. I think Neptune was pushing it.”
May ran a fingernail through the pile, watching the little black blobs scatter and fall in the saucer. “I wonder if I could sell a story to some dealer…”
“Just tell them the truth.”
May snorted. “Yeah, that wouldn’t work at all. We’re the only diner that caters to semidivine organisms.”
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Challenge #00718 - A353: One Afternoon in a High School Classroom
“The Mongols sent diplomatic caravans to establish an alliance with them, and they responded by massacring them. Twice. Subsequently the region’s population dropped by 90% or so for some reason.”
[AN: My internet is a sack of suck at the moment, so I’m doing the most recent prompt. My apologies to those who were waiting for their prompt to turn up. I will find a way to get to your prompt]
“Whoah, whoah, whoah…” Mrs Green stopped Darla in the middle of her presentation. “Really? You couldn’t find the reason why the population dropped? Everyone knows it was the Mongols.”
“There’s no historical evidence for that, Mrs Green,” said Darla. “The Mongols weren’t big on keeping records and survivor accounts could be biased. It could have easily been a rival faction in disguise.”
“The Mongols had motive,” Mrs Green argued. “Their envoys were slaughtered. And following the second offence, the people in that area were almost wiped out.”
“Correlation is not causality, Mrs Green,” Darla argued. “And a counter-argument is that the survivors didn’t like the Mongols anyway and claimed that the deaths were due to them in an attempt to gain allies against them.”
Mrs Green sighed. “Do you have any other evidence for your theories?”
“No more evidence than ‘the Mongols did it’, m’m.”
“I want your sources, of course.”
“I have a bibliography, with page numbers, paragraphs, and ISBN’s.”
“…of course you do…” muttered Mrs Green. “Continue…”
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Challenge #00717 - A352: Pre-Luddite
The first cyborg hate crime probably happened around the time the first peg leg was ripped off with malice aforethought.
“Ereb… ka… heb…” Lynn dutifully wrote down the hieroglyphs and checked the translations. Her quest for extra credit had her translating old manuscripts that had been collected from, apparently, the dawn of time.
This was an ancient form of writing, from the super-early period of Egyptian civilisation, so translation was especially tricky.
She stretched the kinks out of her back and re-read over her translation.
It was a legal document. A court case.
And the earliest evidence of prosthetics.
Kef the Butcher bought his case against Horeb the Priest before Pharaoh himself. They had been through a number of lower courts, and the antagonism between the two arguing parties lead them straight to the living incarnation of Ra.
Horebb protested that the Gods had a plan for every living thing, and the fact that Kef had lost a finger and a half to a bumbling apprentice was part of the larger plan. Therefore, Kef had no business at all wearing a strap-on finger and a special ring that replaced those lost digits. He should be proud of his scars and not rely on artifice.
Kef complained that he was still unmarried and, on the occasions that Horeb had stolen yet another set of replacement fingers, Kef noted that all his romantic overtures were more likely to be ignored. If the Gods had a plan for him, then why did all the offerings he made at the temple not grow his fingers back? The Gods had given him a brain and his brother a magnificent skill. Could they therefore not mean that Kef was entitled to wear his new hand pieces to win love?
Pharaoh listened in silence to them argue case and countercase. Finally, he held aloft his flyswatter and decreed thusly:
Horeb the Priest should no longer speak for the gods. He shall go into the desert to find clarity. And if death should find him before wisdom does, his wealth shall go to Kef the Butcher. If wisdom does find him, Horeb the Priest will therefore pay Kef the Butcher the full value of all the fingers he has stolen.
Lynn managed to get so much extra credit from her work that she managed to swing Salutatorian.
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Challenge #00716 - A351: As the Station Turns
Aliens of all kind discover Soap Operas, have fun with the adaptations and scripts and of course the fans. — knitnan
Serialised drama is nothing new. The fact that it invaded the known universe before the humans made themselves known is the only thing from stopping the accusing finger pointing at those dangerous primates. And there is a legend that some baffling ancient alien went around the universe and introduced infant species to the concept. But some people will say anything…
Even the Archivaas have trouble tracking down the oldest one. Some proudly display Kerinat’n Place as the oldest and longest running of them. Others exhibit All My Daughters as the most inclusive.
Only humans called it ‘Soap Opera’ and there was a certain amount of foam and inadvisability of consumption in the end product that made the name spread.
There are those who love it, those who abhor it to the point of outright ostracising the entire topic… and those unfortunate souls who feel compelled to explain it, despite the clear and evident disinterest of their audience.
“…an’ when it turned out that they were twins, I cried. I fair cried.”
“Wait,” said Rael. “These are two disparate species. One of them is oviparous.”
“Na, na, na. Y’ see… his egg cracked an’ they had tae transfer ‘im tae new digs, ye ken,” explained Shayde. “And the best place was sharin’ space wi’ her pseudo-uterus. And then the unit got misfiled, an’ that’s why they have their Unty Briix.”
Rael growled. “Anyone with a modicum of science education knows that that is… what’s your phrase? A complete load of bollocks.”
“Aye, I reckon it’s all a plot by T’sert’ser tae ruin their happiness.”
Rael glared at her as he processed his latest mouthful of Gyiikish experimental recipes. It could, in his opinion, use a smidgen more hollandaise sauce. “How did you get into this nonsense in the first place?”
Shayde grinned. “Let me tell ye about my wee girl Apples…”
One day, Rael promised himself, he would learn to keep his curious mouth shut.
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Challenge #00715 - A350: The Truth is Out There
Assume the plane in prompt 00691 - A326 is the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, or another mysteriously vanishing flight. It finally lands on the planet and the pilots try to flag down a passerby to ask for directions home.
25th of May, 2003.
As soon as they were out of range, a party broke out on board.
“We did it!”
“WOO!”
“We got our own goddamn JET!”
Shrieks and whoops and general celebration lasted all of fifteen minutes before the vortex had them.
Well, that was what they called it. None of the thieves had any idea what to name a swirling tunnel of purple clouds and conflictingly-coloured skies. Or what to name the oppressive blackness that seemed to convey great speed, eons of time, and pants-wetting terror all in the same moment.
The next thing they knew, they were flying over an alien land mass.
“What the hell?”
“What the flying fuck is this?”
“What button did you press, Dave?”
“I didn’t do shit.”
“We told you not to touch anything, Dave!”
“I didn’t do shit!”
For the next five minutes, the flight recorder dutifully preserved for posterity the sound of five men asking variations of, “What the fuck is that?” before Jonno called for calm.
“Okay. Obviously, something went wrong.”
“Was the SATURN in orbit your FIRST clue?” asked the luckless Dave.
“No I reckon it was the purple shrubbery,” said Paul. “We can’t keep flying and hope we get back, that’s stupid. That’s Twilight Zone level shit.”
“Did we check the passenger list for a Rod Serling?”
“Shut up, Warren, you’re not helping.”
“There’s a field! We can do a rough landing and try to ask for directions.”
“Everyone buckle up, this is gonna be a son of a bitch.”
*
Military Sergeant Tiyibb poses with some of the alleged alien wreckage found in Slorlëw, Numekscae.
The Sergeant was clearly holding rumpled tinfoil, much to the outrage of the witnesses. They knew that whatever had crashed in a farm outside that sleepy town had not been a weather balloon.
There were four of them, Yarnethi wrote in her journal. Taller than me. All different colours in their skin. One was really dark, like he was made out of shadows. One was very pale. Almost a porcelain pale. The other two were in-between. They had strange soft growth that came out of their heads.
One was lying down. It was bleeding. Their blood was so dark and it stank and the ground underneath that one foamed and sizzled. Two were helping the one lying down and the fourth was going in and out of the wreckage, salvaging things.
They were horrible giants. Thick-limbed and loud and obviously strong.
I couldn’t understand the words they said, but it was clear they were communicating.
I saw what landed in Slorlëw. And it sure as hell wasn’t a weather balloon crewed by experimental animals or shop dummies.
I just wish I’d brought my camera with me.
Hers was just one of many accounts, written or otherwise recorded by the people who had seen or been part of the Slorlëw Incident. Rumours of conspiracy theories and aliens being held in secret government facilities persisted for decades.
But nobody knew - or was able to tell - what really happened to the wreckage or the aliens that crash landed in Slorlëw.
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Challenge #00714 - A349: One Thing in Common
Video Prompt!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4dT8FJ2GE0
6 people singing an Icelandic hymn in a German train station with excellent acoustics.
If there was one phrase Rael learned to dread, it was any variation on, “Let me get my axe,” from Ambassador Shayde. On one hand, it meant something historical was going to happen. On the other hand, it meant that she would gather crowds.
And there was always at least one who thought he was part of the show.
But not this time.
It was one of the spontaneous instances of Human Music that he’d heard of, but never seen. Two fellow citizens waiting for the transit started harmonising. An old tune about plants, reminiscent of the season’s celebrations.
Although what parasitic weeds had to do with Terran Christmas, he could never figure.
Shayde provided the backup music and more harmonies. And three more completely random humans joined in. Rael recognised people from five disparate planets. Some of whom were busy bickering with each other via extended trade negotiations.
It was simultaneously profound and ridiculous, as so many human things often were.
They sung the song flawlessly, in old pre-shattering English. And finished to the applause and raining Minutes of the audience.
“What do we play next, then?” asked Shayde.
And then it turned out that none of them actually spoke pre-shattering English. At least, not the way Shayde did. Some barely spoke GalStand. And yet, all seven of them came to a consensus and communicated their desire.
“Falala!”
“Falala?”
“FALALA!”
Shayde just cackled and lead them in.
“DECK the halls with boughs of holly! Falala lala la la la la…”
Another old Terran song with mystifying traditions. And few of the singers understood the words.
Humans… they were so… weird.
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Sonic Rainbows
Neil Harbisson’s TED Talk “I Listen to Colors” (I recommend checking it out first) is what inspired this submission idea, as did the phenomenon of synaesthesia. What if, somewhere in your Amalgam Universe, there was an alien race out there for whom normal perceptions of color and sound were not like humans, but color and sound were interrelated - fashion was chosen for how it sounded rather than how it looked, portraits were heard symphonies, and music and speeches could be presented as paintings, that sort of thing…
[AN: If you want to check it out, you can watch his talk here. Artificial synaesthesia is pretty darn cool. And I need an ear-bug to warn me not to stay in the sunshine]
(#00713 - A348)
The universe is colour. The universe is sound. It’s also taste and smell and all the other senses, but for C♭, those were the two that mattered most. They were one and the same.
But there were subtleties. There was a difference between sight-sound -the way something sounded when she looked at it- and sound-sight, which was the way things looked when she heard them. Mostly, they agreed. An ugly person sounded ugly when she looked at them and looked ugly when they spoke.
But the humans? They were always surprising. They were the reason she joined the Loyal Order of Hitchhikers.
A human could sound unpleasant on first impressions, but turn out to be the most vivid of speakers. Or have a Van Gogh singing voice. Or be able to tell stories worth an art gallery.
Some, unable or unwilling to do any of those, could take out a portable instrument and create symphonies.
One she met could do them with knitting.
C♭ was very pleased that she was allowed to both keep and wear that masterpiece. And did so at every possible opportunity.
But it was when she stopped in at an Unsuitable Food branch to enjoy the Opuses composed live that she met the most interesting one. She looked very sombre, mournful and dour, but sounded like a fresh spring day full of lilies.
“Ey up,” she chirped. “What’s with the loud sweater, then?”
“Loud?” echoed C♭ in confusion. “This is much quiet. Peaceful serenade, and calming comfort that also keeps me warm.”
A sharp snap of her fingers, briefly illuminating the soundscape with its light. “Aw, yer a Sweet-RIff, yeh? Lemme ge’ ma axe…”
Her arm briefly vanished into a shadow and re-appeared with a guitar. Then she played the name of C♭’s people flawlessly.
“Yes! That’s us! You know the songs of my people?”
“No’ quite, but I can jam. You lead, then.”
It took four songs and quite a lot of change raining chartreuse tingles into her hat before someone told C♭ that the entity known as Shayde was an Ambassador.
She was the best one C♭ had ever met, capable of making her feel at home even though she was hundreds of jumps from her home planet of Chorus.
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