Challenge #00548 - A173: Maybe a Not-Too-Distant Future
“It’s pronounced X”
“I thought it was Y?”
“No, that’s exactly the sort of mistake I’d expect from someone like you. I’m a /real/ fan, I’ve been an expert on this since before you were born.”
“Actually, it is Y, the kid was right, and you’ve no call to go around acting like that to people.”
“And who are you?”
“I’m the author.”
“It’s pronounced, ‘Rail’,” said the alleged gentleman in the trilby and Brony shirt.
“He hates 'Rail’,” said the smaller girl in a roomy JOAT coat. “It’s closer to 'Ra-el’? but you sort of run the vowel sounds together?”
“Yeah, that’s the sort of mistake I’d expect from a fake geek girl like you. You’re only here in cosplay because you get attention for showing off your tits.”
“Um. I’m clothed neck-to-toe?”
“Yeah and I noticed how much of it is form fitting. You’re welcome, you whore. Don’t interrupt, sweetie, a man is talking.”
One of the many robots wandering the halls of Genracon stopped what ze was doing to pay audience to the scene. Even though ze was wearing a skirt, you never could tell with robots.
“See, the whole 'Ra-el’ thing was canned because of a lawsuit from DC because it sounded too much like Ka-el, which you would know is the secret real name of Superman from the DC comics. If you were a real geek. I have the entire set. So of course, to avoid litigation, they swapped over to 'Rail’ which is how anybody sane pronounces a word spelled R-A-E-L… If you know how to listen, you can hear all the actors saying it in the TV series.”
“That’s because they’re all dipshits,” said the robot. “It actually is pronounced 'Ra-el’ and I went through weeks trying to teach them. It’s still in the scripts. I have a macro to go through all the non-caps mentions of his name and add the pronunciation.”
The dudebro sneered down his pimpled nose at the robot. “Who the fuck are you and why should I even care?”
“I wrote all the books, which the lady is clearly referencing. Including the short story R.T.F.M., named for the geek acronym for Read The Flakking Manual.” The robot offered hir hand to the girl. “Hi. I’m C. M. Weller.”
“Omigod, you cosplay?”
“I’ve been cosplaying since the '80’s. But back then we called it 'costuming’. Want to ditch this fake geek guy and nerd out over a hot beverage?”
“WOULD I!”
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Challenge #00547 - A172: Need to Know
Prompt: That trick where you come up behind someone and pop a paper bag to make them jump, most often portrayed when someone is working on something that could (but probably won’t) explode.
[AN: I must have hit a nerve on the Interwebs, yesterday. Twenty-three notes on one silly story because of an equally silly side-fling. Must resist the temptation to do that from now on]
To the Galactic Alliance, need-to-know information is information that every citizen, denizen and in denizen needed to know.
Things like this entry in the Traveller’s Handbook:
Humans should be well advised to avoid practical jokes in the company of non-humans. You are a robust species and therefore tolerant of surprises, shocks, and merely apparent threats to your continued existence.
Other cogniscents are not so prepared.
Further, there are some intelligent species for whom sudden surprises can result in an instinctive response.
Do not indulge in practical jokes, because slicing talons to the neck often offends.
Law-keepers and emergency response teams are always surprised to learn how often humans ignore this advice.
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Challenge #00546 - A171: Witch on Trial
“I don’t curse people, I bless everyone around them.”
The court murmured.
“It’s stated that you cursed Goodie Carswater and her garden wilted.”
“I did no such thing. And it’s a well-known fact that her little tearaways widdle on her wisterias.”
More murmuring. Apparently the only person who didn’t know this was Goodie Carswater. Who also believed that her sons could do no wrong.
“It’s also stated that you cursed Thou-shalt-not-covet Jones so that no woman would want him.”
“Covetousness Jones is of the very vocal opinion that women should be grateful for his mere presence,” said Aunty Risik, witch on trial. “He also thinks that any woman he takes to the altar should permanently wear a scold’s bridle and a chain that stretches from the bedroom to the kitchen and no further. Covetousness Jones is his own curse, thank you.”
All of the unwed ladies of the village harumphed and nodded in unison.
“‘Tis the witches’ curse,” roared Covetousness Jones. “None of these worthless cows will even look at me!”
Judge Farnsbury glared down his nose at Covetousness Jones. “Perhaps you should wait until you find a woman worth more than a cow before you lay such accusations?”
The man wisely closed his mouth and sat on his hands for the rest of the trial. Though he did turn increasingly red as he scowled at his shoes.
“And the pox visited upon Purity Vesseca?”
“Is cow pox. I was hired by her father to insure her against smallpox, so I did. I purposely gave the child cow pox. An endeavour for which Master Vesseca still owes me two pigs and a cockerel for.”
Murmur murmur murmur murmur…
“You… blessed… a child with cow pox?”
Aunty Risik nodded sharply. “Thems as catch cow pox never catches smallpox. Well-known fact. ‘S why poets is always mooning over milkmaids.”
“And… what other… blessings… have you performed?”
“I blessed your wife with an easier birth,” she began. “It’s why you still have a daughter and a wife. Old Master Gripley? I bless his pains away on a daily basis. Goodie Crowsie’d be getting a pig long about now if Master Vesseca paid his bills… I see to it she gets a pig every year. Her children sure don’t look after her, so I does it.”
Bit by bit, person by person, Aunty Risik revealed that she did a hundred little things to make life easier, all over the village and into its outskirts. Even Hermit Georg, who lived in a cave and was a lot peculiar in his eating habits, got a little blessing care of Aunty Risik.
“But,” complained Judge Farnsbury, “none of this is magic…”
“I remember you tellin’ me your little Chastity were a miracle,” said Aunty Risik. “And Goodie Crowsie’s downright religious about getting that pig. It’s them’s that don’t get blessings who wither in comparison.”
It was the first and last witch trial where the witch was pardoned by mass gratitude.
After that, they were certain to go after people who weren’t witches.
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Challenge #00545 - A170: Acapella
It was a companionable quiet, with the rhythmic “whud, whud, whud” of the engine accompanied by various tapping and clanking of everyone doing their jobs. Eventually everyone’s noises gradually synced with the main beat and suddenly the Lion King happened.
“I swear sir, I left for four seconds and they started a musical number"
Goryx stared out at the rows of humans - still working, of course - as they continued to sing.
"TILL WE FIND OUR PLACE,” they collectively roared, “IN THE PATH UNWINDING… IN THE CIR-CLE…. THE CIRCLE OF LIIIIIIIIIIFE…”
“Please tell me this is an isolated incident?”
“Er,” said Chamb. “Actually…”
Goryx learned much, that day. For starters, that humans could start collectively singing at the drop of a beat. And there were many, many -too many- human songs in their collective consciousness that apparently everyone knew.
Also, that it was a good idea to separate the ones who sang Under Pressure from those who sang Ice Ice Baby. Just to avoid internal tensions.
“Is this a bonding exercise?” Goryx enquired.
“It can be,” explained Chumb. “In so far as I’ve been able to understand… they do it to make their days more interesting.”
“Interesting? Interesting can be fatal.”
“Yes, sir. This is a safe variety of interesting. They get… bored.”
Bored. A human word suggesting that life as they knew it was not sufficient. That safety and satisfaction were not enough.
Goryx eventually rolled hir eyes at them all and muttered, “Death worlders,” under hir breath.
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Challenge #00544 - A169: The Fine Print
If you’re going to make a year-long agreement, you’d better be sure you know whose year you’re using.
“What do you mean I’m still under contract?” Terry demanded. She tried not to make a fist around all her vital documents. “It says five years. It’s been five years. And forty-eight hours, and that’s only because it took that long to get all the forms filled out.”
“I’m very sorry, but they’re not local years.” The clerk, a quiet and inherently nervous Lorraine, looked just about ready to cry in sympathy. “This codicil, here, stipulates that the contract is using the definition of ‘year’ according to the drafting lawyer’s planet of origin.”
“Okay… so where’s that lawyer from?”
Takatta takatta takatta. “Oh no. Oh, no… I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry… The company you signed on with? They exclusively use Ghiishemite lawyers.”
“Let me guess,” Terry braced herself for the inevitable, metaphorical impact. “Ghiishem has a really long calendar.”
Cogniscents waiting to gain access to the Visitor Help Centre flinched at the outraged scream of “SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE DAYS?”
Terry waited once again for Lorraine to dawn over the cusp of her desk.
“Sorry. You still have three Standard years, two weeks and three days on your contract. If you’d like? I could help you contact the Cogniscent Rights Commission? They have a standing Class Action Suit against contracts like this one?”
Three more years. Three more flakking years. And two weeks and three Powers-cursed days. “Oh yes,” she said. “Oh yes please. I would love to talk to the Cogniscent Rights’ Commission about this one.”
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Challenge #00544 - A169: The Un-Secret
Dunno if you’ll like this one, but I ran across it:
“The thing about evolving on a death world is that you don’t really realize you’re doing so until you get the chance to leave it. Up to that point the presence of carnivorous monsters, venomous micropredators, extreme climatic conditions, geological instability, the most lethal cocktail of microbial and viral life forms in the galaxy and of course the crushing gravity, seemed entirely natural. Until we left Earth we thought ourselves rather weak, frail, defenseless creatures because we only had earth fauna to compare ourselves to. You can imagine our surprise then, upon joining the galactic community to find ourselves in fact to be enormous, robust and insanely dangerous in our own right.” – RecklessPrudence
The humans had literally gone all out to ensure T'reka’s comfort while she recovered from her broken leg.
They’d made her a nest-bed and a special ward where she had a panoramic view of the human town below. And they made sure she had access to their entire database and an ever-evolving translation app. And rechargers for her own technology.
They even invented a patch for her comms system so she could check in with her origin city.
Which was how T'reka found all the archived documentaries.
Su-syn found her staring in awe as David Attenborough narrated his careful and whispery way through explaining life on a coral reef.
“You is good?” she chirped. “You is not needing more calm-shots?”
“No, is good.” T'reka shook herself. Fluffing her feathers and resettling herself. “Am now knowing human secret.”
“Secret? We is no hiding true from you.”
“You is not knowing it is a true,” T'reka soothed. “You is living be on death world, before come here. Whole planet - deadly. Big thing, small thing, big risk, all time. You not noticing. Not knowing other way.”
Su-syn smiled. Uttered a brief laugh. “You is making jokes, yes? Earth no death world. Is where all human living.”
Yes. And that’s the problem. “Earth living four time tough than Hu'lu'a living. Human four time tough than Numidid,” she tried to explain. “All you big tame animal? Still big threat to me folk.”
Su-syn made a face like something smelled bad. “Even sheep? Even chickens?”
“All,” confirmed T'reka. “You folk many much tough than most others star folk.”
Su-syn sat down abruptly. She just folded her legs and landed solidly on the floor. “Is not shock, you folk is think we monster,” she murmured. “We is promise we try no be monster for Numidid.”
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Challenge #00543 - A168: Sufficiently Advanced… Rituals
[In a discussion about technically-proficient people (of any subdivision) and the lies-to-children told to those they have to interact with]
I think we know why wizards just act all cryptic and stuff…
I imagine they had to keep explaining their knowledge of the arcane to the average peasant over and over again until they just got fed up with it.And that’s how we get wizards, mages and sorcerers who seem to delight in not giving a straight answer. – RecklessPrudence
There were those who saw Isobel as a god. There were those who saw her as an angel sent by their deity to see them safely to their distant and unreachable paradise. Some saw her as some form of divine intervention in mortal form.
One saw her as a friend.
And now… one different one saw her as a pain in their anatomy and a threat to their authority.
His title was Sir. A fact he reminded everyone of at the slightest hint of a slip. He wore ancient passkeys and sigils of authority, strung on a huge chain around his richly-robed body. He had a harem of under-dressed ladies who he apparently employed to keep him warm and distract any participants.
Pity for him her attentions were solely on the door he’d carefully blocked with his throne of office.
“None may pass,” he repeated. “None! Which word do you fail to understand?”
“I do not understand why you don’t wish to reach Eyisum,” said Isobel, feigning the unique ignorance of a foreigner.
“Eyisum is a state of mind. Eyisum is where our spirits fly. Do you wish to kill me, outsider? Do you wish to kill yourself? This chamber is sealed under the curse of Karantin.” Quarantine. “To enter is to die!”
Her scanners were thorough and had detected nothing in there that could harm a rat. And had, in fact, only picked up rats inside there. Large ones, certainly, but not deadly.
“Then it seems in your best interests to let me pass,” she finagled. “If to go through that door means death, then it seems the quickest and easiest way to prove my hubris to all.”
There it was. The telling flicker. He was a smart enough martinet to know that the machine-gods of Arta were not performing as advertised. Therefore he feared that the forbidden zones had similarly lost power. His power relied heavily on that of their gods. If that power was gone, so was his.
“To enter is to die,” he repeated. “I have men with crossbows to ensure that fact.”
“And I have micro-meteor-rated space armour,” she countered. “Your men are welcome to try it.”
“Enough of this nonsense,” he sneered. “Defense grid, fire internal lasers co-ords eighty by five-three-niner by twelve!”
Isobel heard them warming up and neatly stepped off the entirely suspicious and freshly-repainted X on the floor. Even then, they could barely have managed a first-degree burn on an unprotected citizen.
He’d lost. He’d very clearly lost.
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Challenge #00542 - A167: One Familiar Face
“That’s 19, last question.”
“Ok, it’s a person, a guy, dark haired, kinda short, amnesiac, fast healing/possibly immortal, older than 200 years, uses bladed weapons, knows lots of martial arts, and fights against people trying to take over and/or destroy the world.”
"Yep.”
“Is it Wolverine?”
“What? No, it was Van Helsing.”
“…”
“…”
*dawning realisation*
“No way…”
“Mr Logan?”
“Yeh, Tallwater?”
“Remember how you had me researching… you?”
“Yeh…” He put the cap back on his beer. This sounded like it was going to be an interesting one.
“Well… I ran your turnaround through facial recognition and… um…” Sara fidgeted nervously with a manilla folder. “I think you’re even older than you think you are…”
“Yeh?”
She edged closer and bought out a print-out. “This is a contemporary portrait of a vampire-hunter known as Van Helsing.”
The resemblance was downright uncanny.
“And this is the only known portrait of a man going by the name of Jean Valjean.”
Okay. That was officially scary.
“There’s more of you, all through history. You age, sometimes? But -um- there’s… some evidence of a cyclical nature to your mutation? You… sort of… regenerate… In retrospect, I’m guessing you might be glad that they didn’t put you in mausoleums or whatnot. They’re rather harder to escape. And the trauma of escaping graves no doubt did disturbing things to your memory.”
Exasperation. And it took her two whole minutes. She was getting better. “What are you trying to tell me, Tallwater?”
She grinned. “Yer a Time Lord, Logan. Well. Sort of. You don’t have two hearts or a TARDIS, but I’m sure with a little time and engineering…”
“Tallwater,” he warned.
“Hm?”
“Stop.”
She sighed and deflated a little. “Sometimes, you are no fun.”
“Make that all the time, darlin’.”
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Challenge #00541 - A166: Ancient Curses
Fragmen of stupri mauris. Quare non opus est? — RecklessPrudence
[AN: I ran this through a translator and got: “Piece of fucking shit. Why not work?” :D LOL ]
There’s working on repairs with trained technicians… and then there’s working with someone who’s learned certain things by rote as part of a holy ritual. Someone who - though she had the brains to work out that the rituals were supposed to be useful, and had successfully applied some of them in other circumstances - still applied those rituals because they were the only way she knew.
Isobel could tell when her friend and ally Jem was reciting an incantation. Mostly because they were far more eloquent.
“Cock-sucking son of a bitch! Work you firkin dick biscuit!”
Sometime, possibly when they were on a break, Isobel would educate Jem on exactly what she was saying. And what some of those ritual gestures meant at the time they became part of the ritual.
As it was, she took it as a general sign that Jem was having trouble. Which left the problem of communicating what the trouble was with an ancient dialect that neither of them could use with accuracy.
Yep. Toasted circuit board. She’d have to fabricate a new one. “This one?” She disconnected it and showed it to her. “Bad-bad beans. Meringue umbrella. Jello roof.” And, in final clarification, turned her thumb downwards and blew a raspberry.
Jem blew a raspberry in agreement. “Fuk dup the ass.”
Okay… Isobel could work with that one. This whole first contact situation was going to give the Archivaas conniptions.
There were no replacements on their vessel, now called some variant of Home. Arta. They called their ship Arta.
Isobel would have to make a new one. Good thing they had plenty of raw material.
Jem kept treating the tech printer as an amazing holy relic. Isobel’s attempts to show her it was just a machine had negligible influence, but Jem would happily watch something come from component elements in avid and reverent fascination.
And holy song.
Such a pity that the ancient engineers of her ancestry had had a very crude taste in music.
Isobel would never have believed, before her arrival in Arta, that Charlotte the Harlot could have ever been sung reverentially.
With the new circuit in, the air generator whirred sluggishly into life. Isobel helped Jem restock it’s necessary supplies and tweak it into full functionality.
"Effing eh?” prompted Jem.
“Effing eh,” Isobel agreed. “Nek minit? That dick biscuit,” she selected the machine that looked ready to collapse.
Jem’s face said it all. “Jussinbeebur…” she muttered.
Isobel felt inclined to agree.
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Challenge #00540 - A165: Opus Apparatus Spurius
Series of posts, each blank line denotes a new poster:
[Comparing real-life understanding of tech by the people maintaining it to a fictional universe] Of course, this is minus the stupid witch doctor rituals.
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” comes to mind. And a lot of other rituals.
Doesn’t that actually help with a significant portion of callers?
[Fictional universe organisation] rituals work too, except when they don’t. Doesn’t make it any less of a ritual that is performed without understanding why it might help.
Clearly. The next step is ritualizing it. Add some latin chanting as well.
I think the orthodox chant is “Fucking piece of shit. Why isn’t it working!” repeated in a low mumble. Just translate it into a language the people around you don’t speak and you’re done. – RecklessPrudence
Isobel was suddenly very grateful for her camouflage field. She kept to the walls as she followed the chanting people in what was once a functioning generation-ship and was now a floating hulk. A floating hulk bare inches away from disaster. A floating hulk on the precipice of the catastrophe curve and inhabited by… tribes.
She had no doubt that their names translated to ‘the people’, but they had very obviously devolved into primitive tech-worship. Isobel had seen them maintaining machines that had very obviously failed. Performing repair tasks on artefacts well beyond repair.
Using dead remotes as religious totems.
There were some patches of leftover cogniscents who were almost completely sealed off from the rest. They used air vents as a mode of travel. Air vents! If they were working properly, then the denizens would have been chopped to pieces by the fans or eradicated by the blockage destruction systems.
It was like watching someone trying to cross a canyon by stretching dental floss across the gap and then traversing it like a tightrope.
This time, the ritual worked. This time, the machine that made the air whirred into life again. This time, there was great rejoicing.
She stood, contemplating the one machine that kept the entire… mess… alive. There were others, but they had fallen into disrepair and disuse, though they were still altars for these poor, lost people who believed their distant and unreachable destination was heaven.
If she cannibalised the defunct machines to repair one other…
To what end?
These people were doomed.
One of the priestesses also lingered at the temple that was once the air recycling system. Staring, apparently, right at Isobel.
There’s no way she could see through…
“Ghost! I command you be gone!” She said. An old form of Terran English that fascinated Isobel. “Canhazchizburger!” And she threw a handful of salt and poppy seeds at Isobel.
Salt and poppy seeds that caught in the seams and folds of her suit. That effectively rendered her camouflage moot. Isobel turned it off and raised her faceplate shielding. “I am no ghost,” she said carefully. “I come in peace for all mankind.”
“You am come to save us?”
Well, crap. That counted as a distress call. “Yes,” she said simply. She was going to have to call for backup… but since her own love of history just landed her in this pickle, she could very well use it to unpickle this whole gen-ship. “I am name Isobel. You am name is–?”
“Jem. Me am name Jem.”
“How is you see me? I are hidden.”
“Eyes be seeing less,” answered Jem. “Some colour they go bad. You have many more bad colour than everything. Is look like Solja in gilly suit.”
Wait. She was colourblind? This was going to be some extreme variant of fun…
“We begin, make more new air?” Isobel offered.
Jem nodded vigorously. “Can has new air kay th'x bye.”
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