Challenge #00712 - A347: Jinge Bells, Santa Smells
Santa’s elves go union!
“Two! Four! Six! Eight! Hear us, Kringle, we can wait!” The chant filtered through the stained glass windows of the Head Office.
Kris Kringle, aka Santa Claus, aka The Jolly Elf of the North, was not that jolly. He was perspiring, despite the cold, and highly nervous. He cleared his throat seventeen times before he put his foot in his mouth with, “And what do you want for Christmas, little boy?”
The elves across the table glared at him in cross-armed, stony silence.
“Sorry,” he quavered. “Habit of centuries…”
The spokes-elf had to stand on his chair to slide the papers across. It was quite a thick document.
“Oh my,” murmured Santa. “Living wage? I thought we were already agreed on that. I… give you all lodgings and all the festive treats you can eat…”
“Plum pudding and candy canes don’t cut it any more, fatboy,” said the spokes-elf. “We want a balanced diet.”
Santa coughed. “Hurm hum hohoho… Er. Let’s see… I can -um- expand the definition of ‘festive treats’? I can only do Christmas food. Um. They serve a lot of salads in Australia?”
Cold glares. “Just open up access to normal food.”
“Yeah, open up a Costco or something.”
“Yes… yes I suppose. We shipped all the toy-making jobs to cheaper manufacturers.” He read further down the list. “Equal heights?”
“You might have noticed that we have to bring step-stools with us when we want to talk to you,” said the spokes-elf. “We want full mobility aids installed throughout the entire facility.”
“Walk-talk pathways. Self-elevating chairs. Standing bars,” said a compatriot.
“Lower ceilings.”
“Please,” begged Santa. “My lumbago…”
“We told you to put wheels on that sack forty years ago.”
“…it’s not traditional… I have an image to maintain. Can’t disappoint the kiddies…”
The elves exchanged a glance. “All right. We’ll talk with our fellow members about the ceilings.”
“But we insist on the right to celebrate Christmas.”
Santa looked very lost. “Don’t we already do that?”
“WE WANT PRESENTS!”
“…hohohooo… dear…”
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Challenge #00711 - A346: Saved!
Serial killer (real Hannibal Lechter-type) turns himself in to the authorities a sobbing wreck after months of being hounded by a pair of REALLY persistent Jehova’s Witnesses.
Every serial killer makes one big mistake, and for Kevin Leerie, that mistake was answering the door one peaceful morning to the door-to-door evangelists.
“Have you heard the good word of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ?”
“Rack off,” said Kevin, and slammed the door.
He should have pretended he wasn’t home, but no. That day, he had been expecting a courier parcel and therefore raised their interest. Something about him must have said ‘poor lost soul’.
They popped by.
Randomly.
They took advantage of his malfunctioning peephole and may have sabotaged it themselves. There was no proof, of course. Kevin’s landlord was already a lying asshole in near-permanent fifth place on his little murder list.
These two? They were trying to do good. He could not, in all good conscience, eliminate them like he did the very scum of humanity. Therefore, he had to put up with them at least twice a week.
“Are you prepared for the coming apocalypse?”
“Did you know that Christ is planning the End of Days?”
“Do you know what happens to you after you die?”
“Have you secured your mansion in heaven?”
They wouldn’t go away. Not even when he answered the door naked, covered in blood, and carrying a carving knife. Though their smiles were rather fixed and nervous, that day.
“There is still time to save your soul.”
“You can repent at any time.”
“Welcome Jehovah into your heart and be cleansed!”
They were relentless.
They were driving him to distraction.
And worst, they always seemed to chance on him shortly before or shortly after a kill. Hunting became fraught with the risk of them raising an alarm.
The only way out… was through.
Which was why, one peaceful weekend morning, Kevin gave them the keys to his house and car, saying only: “I won’t need these any more,” before he took a leisurely stroll down to the police station to confess.
It was rather relaxing, really. Inside a prison cell, none of them could get to him.
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Challenge #00710 - A345: Vicious Competition
MongoCorp runs across a rival business concern…AzTech.
Despite the near meteoric rise of MongoCorp Consolidated Business Concern, there was a rival in the South Americas. AzTech Incorporated.
They profited by a pyramid franchise scheme that sent prescribed percentages of profits to the central offices in Tacuba, and busily recruited and expanded all around them.
Their flagship products were QuetzlcoatlNet and the Obsidian Drive. The sharpest technology on the planet.
But their sacrificial employee management skills were in direct opposition to MongoCorp’s. MongoCorp began making a habit of recruiting those former members of AzTech who had been cut off without insurance and expelled from the corporate structure.
Naturally, AzTech objected. They sued, claiming the usual blunt-force legal tactics of corporate espionage and head-hunting. MongoCorp countered with proof that the rescued former employees were working in areas where their former expertise was next to useless.
Similarly, the smear campaign came to nothing as MongoCorp’s loyalty incentives left AzTech’s reeling in the dirt.
They eventually came to an understanding. Though silicon was AzTech’s flagship, they also excelled at advanced farming techniques.
But nothing would stop the slow leak of former AzTech employees towards the greener fields of MongoCorp.
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Challenge #00709 - A344: The Fright of a Lifetime
‘Hey Arnold!’ meets 'Aaahhh! Real Monsters!’. Go as the Muse moves you.
“It was hideous,” he bawled, “HIDEOUS! I can’t go back there. I just can’t.”
Krumm patted his back.
Oblina soothed, “There, there, darling. It can’t be that bad…”
“You didn’t see it,” Ickis whined. “It had horrible green stuff on its face! And its hair was this awful sunshiny shade of YELLOW and it stuck out of its head like… like…” metaphors failed him. “Like Krumm’s armpit hair.”
“She sounds almost like a monster,” said Oblina. She checked the file.
Helga Pataki. Extremely dangerous. Professionals only.
“Are you going for extra credit from the Gromble again?”
“…maybe?”
*
Helga stomped down the street towards the seven eleven. She was on a mission, and she hated the world.
“Hey Helga,” greeted the love of her life, the superb and scintillating Arnold. “Where you going?”
“It’s none of your business, football-head, but I’m going to get some rat poison. Stupid vermin keepin’ me from my beauty sleep…”
“Oh… kay,” managed Arnold. “Have a good one.”
“DON’T TELL ME HOW TO LIVE MY LIFE, FOOTBALL-HEAD!”
The instant he was out of sight and listening range, she sighed. He cared! He actually cared!
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Challenge #00708 - A343: Generations Ago…
T’reka is regaled by tales of the Emu War…by smarter-than-expected emus.
[AN: This has to be a descendant of the original T'reka the Inquisitive]
She had found them fascinating on her trip to the famously dangerous Australia of Earth. And they found her fascinating, too.
When she discovered that they had a language… That was the most interesting thing to cause T'reka the Questioner to extend her stay.
Central-Australian Emus were intelligent.
“Ah nah, we’re not worried about the Domesticated ones,” said the leader. A female who called herself Great Auntie. “They were stupid enough to get caught. They’re not Us.”
Which was a very callous attitude unique to the cogniscent species that shared this planet with the humans. Anyone who’s not Us can go hang. And, frankly, many historical humans had a similar attitude about different cliques of their very own species. The only real difference was that the humans were the ones most commonly making war.
And speaking of conflict… “Did the humans give you many troubles, before they discovered your… capabilities?”
“Yeah nah not a lot,” said Great Auntie. “We made sure they got the Thick ones and the slow ones and we grew stronger. Though there was that one bloke.”
“Which… ‘bloke’?”
“Eh one of the whitefellas. Can’t tell 'em apart. It was -oooh- forty-odd summers after the whitefellas barged in? They were trying to grow tasty-seeds and we were hungry, right? Us back then, not Us now. Ever since the treaty, we’re goin’ good.”
“Of course,” said T'reka. “The human wiki says that your ancestors were after -uh- wheat?”
“Yeah, tasty seeds. Loads of them. More than the one or two we ever saw could eat, for sure. So we tried to help ourselves. ’S only natural, right?”
“Of course.”
“Stop interruptin’, Shiela. I’m tellin’ a yarn. You get rhetorical questions in a rhetorical yarn, awright?”
T'reka nodded, still busily taking notes.
“Good-oh. Anyway, we’re hungry, it’s dry, and they’re putting up fences, the mangy bastards. So of course we did what we could to get through. Wire and posts ain’t gonna stop us long, are they? And it was never our fault about the little breeding mammals.”
“Er… rabbits?”
“Yeah them. Whitefellas brought 'em in and then acted surprised that they mucked everything up. Idiots. So you got hungry Us, biggest dry spell in ages, and them swearin’ at us for wanting to eat, right? Then this big, white shitstain comes at us with bloody machine guns. Machine guns, I ask ya. What the flying hell was he thinkin’? The whitefellas tried t’ round us up, but we were having none of that. We’re too bloody smart. Scattered to the four winds.
"Then they tried pickin’ on bigger groups? But their bloody mechanical gun jammed, right? Big loss for them and we were in the wind, mate. And you know the really insulting thing? They didn’t even wanna eat us. We were just rubbish to them. Bastards.
"But of course we were too clever and the whitefellas just had to bloody put up with us, eh? Some of the buggers tried to claim that we were bloody bulletproof. Nongs, th’ lot of 'em. They can’t kill Us that easy.”
“Evidently,” said T'reka. “How long did it take you to communicate the treaty?”
“Aw bloody ages… Humans are Thiiiiiiick…”
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Challenge #00707 - A342: Honey-Bunny Booboo
A window into the daily life of a mixed family roughly one generation after “The Invasion of the Rabbit Women!”.
[AN: For those too busy to scroll through their dash or my blog, that’s this post here: the-hunt-begins ]
A century following the invasion and colonisation of Sol, much had changed. Most of those changes were completely lost on Tirena, age six. She had a happy home, and the best parents and siblings.
Tirena had been flipping channels on the holovision and stopped because the viewer was showing two-D monochrome pictures. The presenter was talking about a king named Martin Luther.
She was so enraptured that she sat still enough for one of her bun-sisters to plait her hair up into mock-ears.
There was even footage of him speaking. “I have a dream…”
Tirena listened to the nice words and let her baby sibs, human and bun alike, occupy her lap. It was a very good dream that came true like that.
And then she found out that some people shot him. And killed him. For no real good reason.
There was only one person to make the scary things go away. “MAMA!”
Both parents came running. “What is it, Honey-bunny Booboo?” Daddy cooed, automatically landing in a hug. “You okay?”
“Why’d they kill the man,” Tirena pointed at the holovision. “He didn’t do anything mean…”
Mama, a big beautiful bunny-lady, took Tirena up in her strong arms and hugged her and kissed her and snoodled her, which tickled Tirena almost into giggles. “Oh, sweet baby child… Your people’s history is full of mean, mean things.”
Daddy, lots shorter than Mama, reached up to pat Tirena on her back. “Once upon a time, humans like you and I used to judge people on all sorts of silly criteria. Who they loved, how they loved, the way they presented themselves and even skin colour and gender expression.”
“Why?”
“Because of a big bad book that told people that being true to themselves was evil. Lots of people followed the words of that book, but didn’t pay any attention to the lessons it was trying to teach.”
Tirena tried to fit that description into her world. “You mean like that man on the street corner who calls Mama a ‘false god’?”
“A lot like him, yes.”
“How’d they get anything done if everything was evil?”
“A lot of the time, they didn’t,” soothed Mama. She took Tirena into the big snuggle couch and everyone huddle-cuddled up to feel den-safe. “When my people came along, there were men who wanted to kill women who didn’t want to have babies. And there were people who didn’t want other people to raise unwanted babies.”
“They didn’t have the Uterus Machines, then,” explained Daddy. “And many men viewed in-body gestation as a punishment, too.”
“There were all kinds of immoral moralists,” sighed Mama. “And silly people who said and did very silly things.”
“Most of them are gone, now,” soothed Daddy. “But it’s important that we know they were there, in their time. Context in history is everything. The pale-skin people in charge thought Mr King was a threat because he didn’t like the way they bossed around brown-skin people like us.”
“Pale-skins picked on brown-skins?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That’s deeper history. The pale-skin people were very lucky at the right time and place and practically took over the world. They thought it was because their god wanted them to be in charge. So they picked on everyone who wasn’t a pale-skin.”
“That’s silly,” announced Tirena. “That’d be like picking on my baby sibs because they got spots in their fur.”
“Exactly. Very silly.”
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Challenge #00706 - A341: Tonight on Border Patrol…
Team of Japanese Magical Girls encounter their greatest threat…Customs Agents.
“Do you need an interpreter?”
“My am English very good,” said the Japanese girl with a big grin. “No worries mate!”
Her friends looked decidedly more dubious about her skills.
“All right,” the Customs Agent Veronica sighed, “Do you know why you were called over here?”
“Chucka su-rim-pu on-u baa-bee!”
“…riiiiight.”
A brief argument in Japanese resulted in a different girl of the crowd of six stepping forward. “Very much sorry. Best friend say she handle everything. She say, know best Australian. Not meaning offence.”
Veronica cleared her throat. “And you are–?”
“May, please.”
“Okay, May. Do you know why you were all called over here?”
“We are… in trouble? Not knowing problem, please.”
Veronica brought up the X-rays on the big screen to show them. Six bags. Six anomalies. Six red circles showing six interesting lights.
Six suddenly very nervous faces amongst the girls.
“Now, we couldn’t detect any explosives in these devices,” said Veronica, “but they’re still emitting radiation of some sort and we need to know what these are.”
The original ambassador for the group fought free of her friends. “G'day g'day. How you goin’? Ow’s the ankle bite-ahs?”
More arguing in Japanese. This was going to be an interesting day…
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Challenge #00705 - A340: Someone Thought of the Children
Various cable news channel’s reactions to Kermit T. Frog running for political office as an Independant, with the re-animated corpse of Fred “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Rogers as his running mate.
Fred Rogers looked just as he did when he was alive. He had the same ready smile and the same sparkle in his bespectacled eyes. He had the same sweater on that he wore in his last show.
But that wasn’t the disturbing part.
The disturbing part was Kermit. He was still a muppet. Not a real, living frog. He moved and sounded just like he did when Jim Henson played him. The only difference was that he no longer needed the rods on his hands or a small team of ninjas to walk.
He wore a suit and talked like an adult on a late-night talk show.
“No, no, we’re not calling ourselves democrats. We’re not calling ourselves republicans. We’re not libertarian, we’re-we’re not any of that. No,” said Kermit. “We’re here for the children, and we expect to get voted in by any parent who cares about their kids.”
“And you aren’t afraid of becoming a -uh- puppet… government?”
“Hahaha,” deadpanned Kermit. “That’s the fifth time someone’s said that. We’re just living up to the principals we believe everyone should hold. And if someone tries to use us for their own profit, that’s going to be their problem.”
“We’re not going to turn the senate or house into the Children’s Television Workshop,” said Mr Rogers. “Though I’m certain we can all think of a few senators who need a time out.”
Laughter.
“We’ll-we’ll-we’ll discuss that later,” said Kermit. “We just want people to be honest and actually think about the children.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr Rogers.
“What do you have planned on this ‘honesty in politics’ platform?”
“There’s too many liars in office,” said Mr Rogers.
“Yes,” agreed Kermit. “You look at most of the talking points they have. They say they’re about jobs, but they don’t subsidise American manufacturers or make it easy for smaller businesses to hold their own. They say they’re pro-life, and then they-they-they cut funding for single moms or axe the school lunch programs. We think that’s very bad.”
“We’re reforming the tax system, too.”
“Oh yes. If you’re an American citizen, and you have holdings overseas? You gotta bring that back to the US or pay a fifty percent tax on the estimated value. If you try to cheat and leave the US before you can pay? We’re going to be working with the UN to seize the lot.”
“We have to pay for the school initiatives somehow,” smiled Mr Rogers.
It’s all going to be about quality education. Sesame Street will be on television and we’re going to trim the real fat.
“Starting with the presidential budget.”
“Yeah, neither of us need to eat so that’s a whole billion dollars that can go somewhere else.”
“Somewhere useful.”
“We’re-we’re hoping other senators and officials will-will work out what they need and what they don’t need and donate to the people of America,” said Kermit.
“We’re from PBS,” said Mr Rogers. “We’re used to asking for donations.”
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Challenge #00704 - A339: And Yet it Moves
A child learning that their planet moves, so when they jump up, they can never come down in exactly the same place.
Paulie considered the sidewalk. It had been in front of her house forever. Mom let her draw on it before it rained. This time, the chalk in Paulie’s hand had been purloined from the art box in secret.
She made an X on the pavement. Right by her gate. And stood on it carefully. Concentrated. Jumped!
And came down on the very X she started from.
Except… not quite.
Paulie, very carefully, drew around her own sandals before jumping again.
Her feet refused to land in exactly the same place.
‘Gramma’ Joe, the oldest lady in the neighbourhood, was walking her pug towards Paulie. The old lady saw what Paulie was doing and laughed. “So you’ve heard, then.”
“Heard what?” challenged Paulie, not one to surrender information easily.
“The planet is moving. And you’re testing it yourself. I remember doing the exact same thing, though I was older than you at the time.”
“You’re always older than me,” countered Paulie.
“Well let me tell you something, miss. It’s as true as the fact that all grownups used to be babies.”
The pug, Dominic, sniffed and snuffled at Paulie’s ankles. This was the first time she ignored him, because she was too busy boggling at Gramma Joe and trying to imagine her as ever being a baby.
“The ground under your feet is part of a planet that is spinning around its axis at a thousand miles an hour. And the planet itself is orbiting the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour.”
“What’s a thousand?”
“It’s ten times one hundred.”
Paulie blew a raspberry. “Numbers never get that big. That’s imaginary.”
Gramma Joe chuckled. “There’s more than you think in this universe. The sun also moves. It’s busy orbiting the heart of our galaxy. And the galaxy is moving. For all we know? Our universe itself moves. Even if you come back to the same relative point you started at, it has moved in space and time.”
Paulie looked down at her feet, and Dominic, who had perched on her toes so he could bite his own leg. Even though she was standing still, if Gramma Joe wasn’t spinning a make-believe story, she was moving at squidillions of miles an hour.
“Why can’t we feel it?”
Gramma Joe smiled. “We’re moving, too.”
It all seemed too incredible to believe.
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…Primitive Technology?
“The first great technological innovation in this ancient and primitive society,” the documentary host said with a small chuckle, “was the idea of attaching a very big blunt rock to the end of a very long stick to smash their enemies and prey at a relatively-safe distance, rather than attempting to engage them at closer range and bash them with a somewhat-smaller pointy rock held in the hand…”
A pause for effect as the camera passed across the array of crude clay-and-reed huts and their hide-clad dwellers.
“Needless to say, with the concept of weaponry established, things more-or-less spiraled down from there, and it remains nothing short of a miracle that they still exist today, and still in the same relatively primitive ‘wood, bone, and stone’ stage of technological development as they were thousands of years ago…”
It was at that point one of the “primitives” could be seen in a hut in the background, passing by an open window… with what clearly appeared to be a laptop computer tucked under one arm.
(#00703 - A338)
“What?” Tel boggled at the outtake. “These people are pre-tech. We checked. They’re definitely pre-space. How the flip—?”
“Never heard of asymmetrical development?” said a newcomer. Not one of his camera crew.
One of the natives. She was still wearing animal skins and feathers.
There was no way they could have learned Tel’s language. No way they could have seen where the hide was. Where his base camp was…
And yet…
There she was, in living colour.
“How—?”
“We didn’t think it was necessary to have architecture. We worked on our minds and philosophy and -yes- technology.”
“But your homes, your weapons… How can you have advanced technology and live in mud huts?”
“The need for huts is recent. We couldn’t stay in the caves, following the comet strike. Our geology’s become unstable and we’ve had to adapt.”
The native -Zerka- took Tel on a tour of the most stable of their previously industrial caves. Most of the space was taken up by manufacturing equipment. Still and silent, now.
Starting to rust.
“Because the comet caused massive tectonic shifting, we have to rebuild above ground. Until recently, we’ve had no need of architecture. We still have teams working on the most stable and safest designs.”
“Really?”
“We’ve got into the habit of making sure everything works before we turn it into reality. That’s why all our technology uses background radiation as a source of power. It lets us gather and hunt and then devote our downtime to more cerebral pursuits.”
That night, Tel entered the a clay hut with Zerka to watch in awe as a team of ‘primitives’ ran simulations over a cloud network that relied on subterranean beacons instead of satellites.
There was always an opportunity to learn. And Tel was glad to be proven wrong.
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