Challenge #00539 - A164: Come to Australia (You Might Accidentally Get Killed)

“On most airplanes, in an emergency oxygen masks will be deployed from above your seat. This is an Australian airplane however; in an emergency, we will deploy drop bears from above your seat.”

Either way, the lack of oxygen problem is quickly solved. – RecklessPrudence

“What? Why would you do something that barbaric?” Esterhazy boggled.

“Well, the oxygen systems are tied to the landing gear, see,” Shirl expanded without missing a beat. “If there’s no oxygen, then the landing gear’s got to be buggered and, all things considered, the drop bears are a more merciful death.”

“I… thought… the drop bears were endangered?”

“Endangered? Yeah sure. But they’re also tough as guts, mate.”

“There you are,” said Darleen. “Have you finished bullshitting the noob yet?”

“Yeah, nah; I was up to the screaming spiders when ‘e bloody derailed me.”

“Bullsh– Do you mean to tell me you’ve been having me on?” The look on Esterhazy’s face was more than priceless.

Both mad Australians grinned. “Aw, it’s all right. We’re just havin’ a lend.”

“Yeah,” added Shirl. “Wanted to sneak up on ya and scare th’ crap outta ya.”

“Here’s an actual fact sheet of the local things that can kill you.”

“Madam,” said Esterhazy, “This is a fact novella.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit thick,” shrugged Shirl.

“Just a bit,” agreed Darleen.

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Challenge #00538 - A163: Graveworld

The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space—each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision. – RecklessPrudence

Nobody knew what the natives called it. There were no natives to ask. Whatever had happened on this world had destroyed all but the simplest and toughest of organic life, but left the buildings and infrastructure to be slowly buried by the forces of nature.

If there was anything more frightening than a dead city up close, Quilla couldn’t remember what it was. The knowledge that this was a whole world of dead cities was strictly intellectual. Roaming the actual empty streets and staring into the cavernous depths of echoing and dark buildings was far more visceral.

The whole place set her teeth on edge.

No bodies. Not any more. Scavengers had taken care of that. Statues told her and the other explorers what these people had once looked like.

Quilla stopped at one such monument that had evidently been broken in half by a fallen tree.

“You okay?” asked Enat. They’d been working together on trips like this for years. But this was the first grave-world that they’d encountered.

Quilla gestured at the statue. “I got chills. Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair.”

The two of them trudged onwards, looking for some hint of what had occurred. Silent.

Out of respect for the dead.

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Challenge #00537 - A162: Panelbeating

“Wow, how’d you get it to work?”
“I ran a Physical Impulse Mechanical Stress Routine”
“Huh?”
“I kicked it.”
“Ahh.” – RecklessPrudence

It really only took ten minutes to fix, in the end. A little heat. And a lot of whacking with the right kind of maintenance.

She charged them an Hour for her work, part of which was a ‘luck tax’. As in, they were lucky they reached her to fix the problem.

In the maintenance log, Desiree wrote, Repaired problem caused by too much percussive maintenance.

Which was a nice way of saying, Got rid of a dent that was jamming the works.

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Chalenge #00536 - A161: Mercy Maintenance

I’ve made jokes about “Reboot… with steel toes” and “troubleshooting with a 12-Gauge - PULL!” plenty of times! – RecklessPrudence

A certain sign of doom amongst engineers is whistling backwards. It means something expensive is about to happen. When they hiss through their teeth whilst breathing in… there’s very little to be done.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” asked Rael, off-the-books-apprentice.

“Eh,” the engineer currently in charge shrugged. “Pass me the hammer.”

Rael obediently did so. “I’d have thought it couldn’t be saved by percussive–”

SMASH!

Rael stared, terrified, at the mess of parts and shattered pieces. He was certain he’d gone silver from stress, but daren’t move to check.

His tutor put the hammer down. “Now we write in the report, attempts at maintenance accidentally destroyed the part and it had to be replaced.” He nodded in satisfaction. “Honestly, if we had repaired it, it would have been a last-gasp situation. Which, considering that this is a freighter, means lives are at stake. Sometimes, a quick and clean kill is the only medicine available.”

Rael cleared his throat and quoted the famous stop-and-go mechanic, “Just shoot this shit, it’s only fair?”

“Nailed it,” said his tutor with a grin and a snap of his fingers.

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Challenge #00535 - A160: Rève-rie

“Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.” - Oscar Wilde c/- RecklessPrudence

Everyone who met her knew that there was something wrong with Sai’dut. She would talk to herself, or stop her appointed tasks to stare at something irrelevant, she would grow forgetful or latch on to some asinine entertainment and learn everything that nobody wanted to know about that thing.

Her fellow Cheletes tried to help her. gave her constant lessons on being one with her fellows. Or at the very least how to pretend to blend in with the greater hive.

Little ever took hold.

Sai’dut couldn’t help being the way she was, and drifted to the corners to do those things that she found satisfying.

Which was how she found the humans.

Only it wasn’t that direct.

It began with a cautioned file. Warnings abounded on a traded relic of a broadcast from a distant planet she had never heard of. It had lingered in the data equivalent of a back drawer for some time. Not important enough to remove and not vital enough to be accessed.

Sui’dut opened it to see why there were so many warnings on it.

Someone had taken the time to translate the human words into GalStand subtitles. But the important part was the puppet frog who told her that though being what she was was not easy, it was its own kind of beautiful. And then the same puppet sang about the wonders of rainbows.

She devoured all related information with a voracious hunger that she hadn’t known until she’d accomplished that little taste. In passing, she learned of Jimhenson and Muppets and Sesamestreet… and all the wonderful things that the humans did.

She learned of Harryhausen and Generoddenberry, and hundreds and thousands of other dreamers.

People who made pretend worlds. And shared them. And made things interesting. And made art.

Other Cheletes scoffed at her efforts. They called her mad. They said she was wrong.

But in the end, when the collision happened between the ship she was a passenger on and the malfunctioning Terran vessel from a planet called Britania, it was Sai’dut who made contact and succeeded in communicating with a human named Harry.

It was broken Sai’dut and a tea lady who wound up saving the day and improvising a way to keep everyone alive until help arrived. Because dreamers also live in nightmares, and ponder daily how to conquer them.

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Challenge #00534 - A159: Exceptions to the Rule

An Outside Context Problem is the sort of thing most civilisations encounter just once, and which they tend to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encounters a full stop.
-“Excession,” definition of an OCP c/- RecklessPrudence

Thus it is that the Cogniscent Rights Committee has passed numerous laws to prevent them. Shipping through inhabited systems with recognised intelligent life native to them is generally forbidden until such time as that native population has regular and reliable space flight.

Similarly, leaving an inhabited planet to face disaster without aid is criminal.

Thusly, interstellar groups are extremely careful when they encounter an inhabited system. First contact situations are usually kept to a minimum and, if possible, orchestrated.

There are two exceptions: the humans, which is self-explanatory, and a species known only as the Greys.

Little is factually known about them, save that they are a plague to pre-interstellar systems, and vanish without a trace once those civilisations stretch beyond their own star.

The Cogniscent Rights Committee has an outstanding reward for anyone who finds the Grey’s base of operations and brings the species to justice. There are nigh-infinite counts of purposely engineering Outside Context Problems for civilisations unprepared to encounter them.

The humans want to talk to them about numerous human-made landmarks. But that’s humans for you.

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Challenge #00533 - A158: Relative Cartography

Google Maps is accurate. Apple Maps is the product of Dali and Picasso smoking a joint before painting the child of a canary and penguin with a frightened cat used as the paint brush, then selling the result as a map. – RecklessPrudence

There’s an old human saying, that there is no such thing as an accurate map. Maps lie.

For a start, they compress thousands of square distance units into flat expanse capable of -for instance- being held by your average humanoid in two hands. Or to compress a station the mass of a large dwarf planet into an accessible  hologram with a zoom feature.

Which still doesn’t solve the timeless question of all map apps.

“How the fook do I get directions outta this heathen thing?”

A small child, still wearing three locator bracelets, stopped to stare at Shayde.

Shayde looked down at the little sprite. “If I gi'e ye a penny, will ye go awa’?”

“Are you lotht?”

Fabulous. The kid had a lisp. Small children were already her vulnerable point. Small children with lisps had her firmly by marshmallow zone. Shayde sighed and dropped into a crouch. “I’m new to the technology,” She took off her info-monocle. “It’s no’ shown’ me how tae get to B from A, ye ken.”

“You talk funny.”

“Aye, an’ it gets worse when I’m stressed.” She put the app on display mode. One of the accidental features she’d repeatedly tripped over on her quest to get directions. “I can get it tae show me where I’m aimin’ t’ go. I can get it tae show me where I am. More or less…” The relevant, happy, green X hopped about in its margin of error. “Woh I cannae do is get it tae tell me how tae get there.”

The small child peered at the app and poked about. “Thith ith the default app. You need to get the better one.”

“Oh aye? Ye know a better one?”

“Mm-hm. Ama thayth the default app'th given out free ‘coz of how nobody’d want it.” The child nodded sagely. “You need t’ get My Thtathion from the thtore.”

Shayde fiddled with the interface and finally found, “Ee, there’s a baker’s dozen…”

The sprite pointed to a friendly-looking icon. “That'th the one Ama got for me.”

“Oh aye? Is it the one Ama uses too?”

“Mmm-hm! Ama liketh it way better than th’ grownup app.”

She couldn’t argue with that recommendation. Plus the kiddie’s app was free. Shayde dug out one of her Special Pennies, and pressed the apparently ordinary copper coin into the kid’s hand. “Keep this aboot ye. It’ll bring ye good luck.”

The sprite peered at it. “That'th a kangaroo… They’re from Earth.”

“Aye. So was I, once.”

“Who'th the man on the other thide?”

“That’s Edward the Eighth. The king who never was. You be guid tae tha’ coin, yeah? It’ll be good tae ye right back.”

“You’re funny,” said the kid. “I like you.”

“Awa’ wi’ ye,” Shayde mock-scolded. “I’m sure there’s someone oot looking fer ye.”

“Bye, demon-lady.”

The favoured app was so simple to use that Shayde hardly needed the pastel rainbow tutorial. She did turn off the syrupy music as soon as possible, though.

And, a bonus, she could turn off the directions by simply exiting the app.

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Challenge #00532 - A157: Pee Ode

On a scale of one to “I will invent a time machine explicitly for murdering your parents,” how mad do you think [person] is? – RecklessPrudence

“Ambassador Z0rk? He’s always tetchy.”

“That’s tetchy?” Shayde boggled. “Remind me never tae get him PO'ed.”

“Pee… ode?”

“Pissed off. Angered. Riled. Bluidy furious.”

Humans. They were equally confusing in any temporal zone. At least she wasn’t mysteriously speaking of uric poetry. “Ambassador Z0rk has had something of a grudge against organic life since his before elevation.”

“Aye?”

“He started off as a shipping drone. Apparently, a Nae'hyn Hitchhiker decided to twiddle with him and… now he’s part of the AIA.”

“The Artificial Intelligence Alliance. Got it.” Shayde paused to inspect the graffiti in a registered graffiti zone. “Ere. Ain’t he the feller who chucked oot th’ Consortium o’ Steam fer bein’ too human?”

“Yes. That was him.”

“Fook. Feller’s go’ his virtual knickers in a twist.”

That was the singular best description he had ever heard for Ambassador Z0rk in his life. He’d have to pass it on to Sherlock.

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Challenge #00531 - A156: Hidden in Plain Sight

“But, how did you know that the file contained their secret plans for world domination?”
“Because it was labelled ‘secret plans for world domination’.” — RecklessPrudence

K’orvoth could not believe that the humans would be that stupid. Or stupid enough to lable said plans in all known languages where anyone could read it.

Or to leave such things on an unsecured commconsole in the open.

He could not believe this windfall. “Decrypt it at once,” he ordered. “We will soon see how these humans plan to conquer us and foil them at every turn.“

The progress bar was alarmingly fast…

Then every monitor on K’orvoth’s vessel began playing the same data. Syrupy, synthesised chords filled every speaker. A human in loose-fitting clothing danced like a spavined marionette against a pastel background.

"Oooh… We’re no strangers to love,” it sang in Human. “You know the rules and… so do I…”

*

“What do you mean, you ‘Rickrolled the entire enemy fleet’?”

“Um,” Tahir tangled her fingers. “Well… I never thought they’d fall for my honey trap? So… I kinda made the virus file super-agressive? Andum… it’s spread like wildfire.”

“Officer Tahir, there is a special blend of genius and outright lunacy. I think you got the gold-plated version.”

Tahir grinned like an embarrassed school kid. “Uhm. Thanks?”

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Challenge #00530 - A155: The Human Effect

First submission since the identification of an ableist slur. Edited from original form, thusly:

I love the image of his brain just clearly rebooting because too much ridiculousness and unbelievability is hitting it at one time. – RecklessPrudence

Harry stared up at the edifice that was Security Chief ‘Sherlock’. It was hard not to. Sherlock stood at 6'4" and she was a diminutive 5'2".

“…i know i’m in trouble, there’s no need t’ loom…” she squeaked.

“I just want to know exactly how it happened,” he said, easing his distance between them with a casual shift of his weight. “Ambassador Z0rk is not happy. And when he gets unhappy… he tends to share that around.”

“Um…” Harry twiddled with her apron ties. The aliens who found her, and found her amenable, had replicated her uniform in various shades of gold. And that was the least disturbing facet of her adventures. “I’m not qualified t’ be here, sir… I… I’m just a lunch-lady. I bring the tea cart around…”

“Sadly, that’s not grounds for disqualification. You currently have the most experience with Galactic affairs, and they have the most experience with you.”

“But I ain’t– I’m not trained,” she almost bit her tongue out for that slip. She was from Northern Scouse and it tended to leak through in her speech. She tried to keep speaking The King’s English, but… in times of stress and worry -like right now- it kept coming out.

“Many aren’t. Ambassador Z0rk forgets he began his career as a shipping drone. He tends to throw his weight around.”

“Ee, that’s considerable throwin’,” she blurted. Then 'eep'ed and covered her mouth with both hands.

“Hm,” said Sherlock. “Now tell me, please…” he leaned conspiratorially down. “What did you do to get that old fossil flustered?”

“…thought I’d tell a joke,” she squeaked, sure this was a tactic of some kind to get her shipped back home in chains. Or whatever these strange aliens did. “…y'know? Break the ice?”

“Aha. And what was the joke?”

Tears sprang up in her eyes and leaked into her already-wobbling voice. “…a blonde, a brunette, a redhead and a rabbi walk into a bar,” Harry quavered as she twisted her apron strings into tighter and tighter knots. “…clang, clang, clang, but the rabbi du-u-u-ucked…” She sobbed softly into her own apron.

Sherlock made a strange noise. He shook and snorted and made a grinding noise… and finally erupted into a surprisingly jolly and warm laugh. “Hahahaaaaa… that’d do it,” he cheered. “I love the image of his brain just clearly rebooting because too much ridiculousness and unbelievability is hitting it at one time…” He cackled as he made his way back around to his desk. “I’m going to have to start a file. Things to tell Ambassador Z0rk when he is getting… on… my… nerves…” He was typing as he spoke. “Do you have any others?”

Sniffle. “You ain’t mad at me?”

“Dear lady, I owe you. Do you have any realisation how much… Ambassador Z0rk has been a pain in my arse?”

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