Challenge #00405 - A040: The Most Important Lessons
Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist. Children already know this instinctively. Fairytales tell children that dragons can be killed. - G K Chesterton, with some posthumous turning of phrase by others. –RecklessPrudence
Mom found her literally up to her neck in the archives. Books held her place in other books. Notes hung out of yet more books like exhausted, multiple tongues.
“It’s getting late,” she said.
Danny looked up. Then around herself. “Uhm. Heh. No time to pack this lot up, is there?”
“The librarians have given special dispensation to maintain the -ah- nest. You’re doing important work, here. Everyone can see that.”
“Some don’t.” Danny stretched and flexed her way out of her study next. “Can you believe old men are throwing things at me for inventing Garlic body spray? They keep telling me I’m a traitor to the cause.”
“Funny. I thought the cause was to eliminate the risk from the haze.”
“So did I,” Danny sighed. “Have any of the surgeons called?”
Mom looked very sad to give the same answer Danny had been hearing for months. “No. Sorry.”
“Not your fault.” She sighed. “The answers are all here. I just gotta keep straining the truth out of the stories.”
One by one, no matter what their physical guise, Danny would make certain that her dragons would die.
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Ever met someone you feel like this about?
“The first time I saw them, I don’t know, I just wanted to kick their arse. I wanted to build a machine to kick their arse. I wanted to found an empire to house the machine to kick their arse!” – RecklessPrudence
(#00404 - A039)
Rael briefly considered the effort that all that would take. “So… you think you may be in love with Hwell Barrow?”
She boggled at him. “Ye think I swallowed all o’ that pseudo romantic crap aboot attraction through repulsion? I know what real love is, thanks.”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I was worried I may have to escort you to a therapist.”
“Na, I’ll stay out o’ th’ red light district, all the same.”
He merely rolled his eyes about ancient Terran sex taboos. It was the 25th century - by her calendar - not the twentieth. “So you merely funnel all that aggression into elaborate pranks?”
“Eh… more like try tae discourage him from steppin’ up his game.”
Rael tried not to flounder, now that he’d suddenly discovered the deep end of the conversation. “Stepping… up?”
“The man’s a born shagger. I’m no’ goin’ tae be another notch on ‘is belt.”
This session was going to take more time than he had planned.
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Challenge #00403 - A038: Come Fly With Me
“If you’re falling off a cliff you may as well try to fly, you’ve got nothing to lose.” - John Sheridan (Babylon 5) c/- RecklessPrudence
Douglas Adams once said that flying is the art of throwing oneself at the ground and missing. J. M. Barrie thought that flight required pixie dust and happy thoughts.
The truth is far more complicated. Especially when traveling at terminal velocity towards impending doom.
“Can’t you shadow-jump us somewhere?” said Rael over their comms. Trying to talk directly over the rushing air was futile.
“Three words: conservation of momentum. We’d be shadow-jumpin’ until next week.”
“What about your force-twiddling?”
“I cannae break th’ laws o’ physics! I can only bend them a wee time. An I already got too much interest as it is.”
“So what else have you got?”
“Life raft.” He could see that she was digging into her sub-dimensional ‘pockets’, coming out with random debris that either floated away from them or winked out of existence. “Some bloody where.”
“A life raft? We’re in the air!”
She pulled out a small blimp with wings, strapped the both of them in, and flipped a switch.
“It’s a life raft from an air ship,” she said.
“Why are there trilobites all over it?” Rael asked. Anything to distract him from the alarming whine of the little engine’s furiously flapping wings.
“Long story.”
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Challenge #00402 - A037: First Resort of Fools
Ahh, the eternal paradox: A quick wit is best accompanied by quick reflexes, but a dull wit is best complemented by a sharp blade. – RecklessPrudence
“Ey up. Here’s trouble.”
Rael followed her line of sight. There were two of them. A big, burly lump of a biped who, because he wore grey clothes meant to wear hard, had to be the enforcement. Accompanying the cogniscent mountain was a smaller, lither being who, despite being reptilian, could only be described as “weaselly”.
If the little one could not convince them to part with their money, the big one would find a way to take it from them.
“So do you have a way to get out of this that won’t get us in trouble with the local law enforcement?” That last qualifier, knowing Shayde as he did, was vitally essential.
“Yeah. One.”
“Ah?”
“Convince th’ mook that the brains is bad for him wi'out wakin’ the brains up to it.”
“And that’s a good plan?”
“Na, but it’s the best one I got.”
*
It was later. A messy murder had happened and he had to linger with Shayde to give witness statements.
The ‘Mook’, as Shayde called him, turned out to be an illegal Uplift, tailored to attack on command. How Shayde managed to trick his owner into saying that command when his big, muscly pet was facing him, Rael would never know.
And he’d witnessed it all.
His name was Tiny, and he was rocking in place and asking his 'Boss’ to wake up.
Things like that should never happen to a marsupial.
Cogniscent Rights had him in their custody, now. They would find him a better home. Train him out of attacking. Socialise him.
“Puir little fella,” Shayde lamented.
“No, you are not allowed to take him home,” Rael pre-empted.
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Challenge #00401 - A036: Assistant’s Assistance
Once nonhuman Terran species were uplifted into greater levels of sentience, the concept of ‘service animal’ changed a great deal. (I wanna see how that concept would apply to sentient nonhuman Terran species.. Like, a blind sentient cat with a seeing-eye ferret or something - you get the gist)
Augments were legal. Uplifts were not. Especially not Uplifts like the unfortunate populations teeming about Nufurria.
They existed, and because they existed, the Galactic Alliance had to help them. No cogniscent species, however they came to being, deserved to have their basic rights denied. Which, in a long list of basic rights, included the right to assistance for a disability.
Mau had been deliberately blinded so she could not visually identify any of her former master’s clients. The previous law of Nufurria, before the Galactic Alliance came to the rescue, meant that many administrative assistants were not only blind, but confined to precisely-arranged suites and offices. Withheld from access to the simplest forms of freedom, like the ability to go out and do things for oneself.
Over, now.
But that didn’t stop Mau from flexing her paws nervously against her own knees. Nor wincing as her claws bit into her flesh. Her ears flicked this way and that. Trying to make sense out of an unfamiliar environment.
“Miss… Mau. Is that your only name?”
“It’s the only one I know. You’d have to check my former master’s printed files.”
“Would you like your sight restored, Miss Mau?”
“I…” she fumbled. She’d been trained to give pleasant, rote answers and had to fight to keep the phrases down. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I was told since I was blinded that being blind was a good thing. It made me… more valuable.”
“Well, you can always make up your mind at a later date,” said the counsellor. “In the meantime, there are options for assistance, both temporary and permanent.”
“I would prefer… the less expensive options?” Her claws flexed against her flesh again. Her species-specific desire to dig her claws into something for comfort was working against her. So was the thing, cheap fabric that her rescue squad had re-dressed her in. When and if she had an independent life of her own, she would wear thick, tough cloths below her waist. Denim. Corduroy. Fleece. Thick and able to deflect her own claws from injuring her.
“Given your grip problems, I’d forgo the stick,” said the counsellor. “And a regular animal , even with training, would slip a leash.”
“I was told you could give me better hands?”
“Yes, but they take time. Your freedom of independent action is vital for emotional recovery. The good news is that we have a B'Nari facility that can whip up an Augmented service animal for you in less than a week. Training would only take a week more. Two weeks at the utmost.”
“And hands would take…?”
“The better part of a standard year. The retrogenetic therapy and surgical procedures, combined, will mean months of painful recovery and physiotherapy.”
“I want to hold things and not drop them,” said Mau.
“Very well. I’ll add that to your file.”
*
The technicians insisted she be present for the uncorking. Someone to her left described her new friend while someone to her right guided her paws so she could 'see’.
So the Augment could smell her.
Soft, sniffing nose. Wet, warm, prickly fur. Sloping snout. Flexible ears.
“Hello,” she said. “My name is Mau.”
The snuffling and sniffing became ernk ernk noises. “I has name?” said a childlike voice.
Mau was instantly lost. She was made to help, but not be creative. She let go of her new friend before her anxious talons came out and hurt the poor baby.
Minutes old. Born with a functional vocabulary and elementary knowledge of the world. But not a name.
“Go ahead,” coaxed her helper. “Let her have a name.”
Mau thought hard. Of all her master’s clients, there was one woman who was kind to her. Who helped her whenever she dropped things. Who spent spare moments in the waiting room describing colours in terms of textures, smells, tastes and sounds. There was no other name for a creature who would help her.
“Your name is Mimi.”
Mau learned that Mimi owed a greater part of her heritage to pigs, since dogs and cats rarely mixed well once one had had a bad experience with the other. Mimi learned that Mau couldn’t see, and how to guide her through various obstacle courses. Mau learned to be careful of Mimi’s hind feet - still mostly trotters. Mimi learned to be careful of Mau’s claws.
*
Through the crowd. Her hand on Mimi’s fuzzy shoulder. The noise of perpetual babble slightly muffled by the knitted hat that replaced the fur she had been born without.
“It’s a big day,” Mimi chattered on. “Nobody else knows, but we know. It’s gene-counsellor day, today.”
“Yes, it is,” said Mau. She was well used to Mimi repeating information Mau had given her. It made the silences and the noise alike less lonely. “Dear Mimi… would you stay with me if I got my eyes back?”
“Yeahsure!” Mimi wiggled with glee. Her tail must be wagging again. “We could see things together and do puzzles and I have so many things I want to share!”
“Then I think I shall see about getting new eyes, too,” she decided.
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Challenge #00400 - A035: The Growing List of Things Rabbit Should Never Do Again
“And that’s when I discovered my hoodie could get stuck on my nose”
“She walked in-to a pole five times,” added Hatchworth.
“What? It was a fre-freindly p-p-pole.”
“Not that friendly,” noted The Spine. “It knocked half your face off.”
“It was t-t-t-t-tryin’ ta help, Th’ Spine. Not its fault it doesn’t have hands.”
“I did try to tell them that this was a bad idea, sir,” said The Spine, compelled to get the facts solidly out there.
“We did give up af-ter Rab-bit scared three chil-dren,” supplied Hatchworth.
“Only ‘c-c-c-cause I was trying find my face.”
“I wan-ted to have the hood-ie.”
The Spine looked heavenwards and sighed steam. He couldn’t have written Why me? any clearer on his face if he’d used a sharpie.
“Ya can’t have a hoodie and a hat,” Rabbit argued. “That’s a fa-fashion faux passé.” She sniffed in an exaggerated manner and, almost predictably, got her nose snagged in the hoodie again.
Bebop shut them down before they could get into another loop.
Peter Walter VI sighed and bought up The List. There was a list for every steam-powered automaton, but this one got the capitals owing to its size. Of course it was the list of things that Rabbit is no longer allowed to do.
Somewhere on the top was “Buy a toaster”.
Peter scrolled down to the bottom and added, “Wear modern clothing.” After that, it was just a matter of finding out where GG had hidden the scissors, this time.
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Challenge #00399 - A034: Creative Critiquing
An excellent “non-sequitur, thud”. 8.4, minus a 0.5 because you didn’t faceplant into the convenient messy food.
When one has a real, live almost-human from Earth’s twentieth century as a resource, one can expect a certain amount of things. Revivals, for instance. Things got dredged up from the extensive lists of entertainment footage in possession of the Archivaas. T-shirts made a comeback when they really should have stayed away.
Disco came back from the dead.
And, thanks to Shayde, so did Vaudeville.
On the upside, he was earning quite a bit of his recordings of her reacting to things she watched and/or listened to. It never ceased to amaze Rael how people would fall over themselves to gain access to a recording of someone talking over a ‘movie’.
The downside was, in order to gain the profit, he had to spend time 'cozied up’ to Shayde.
Popcorn helped, but not enough.
This example was a series of skits with people pretending to be robots. The makeup was effective, as was the mime, and this one had some degree of technical difficulty, owing to the fact that it was shot inside a mansion that did not actually exist.
“I have a ques-tion,” said the designated ditz of the crew.
“And what would that be?” asked the straight man.
“Why is pea-nut but-ter?”
The straight man, naturally, malfunctioned and impacted a food-filled table, face first.
“Excellent non-sequiteur-thud,” said Shayde. “Eight point four. Minus point five fer missin’ the convenient, messy food.”
“To be fair, they would also miss out on two more hours’ of applying makeup,” Rael felt compelled to point out.
“Aye, there is that. This lot’re still low-budget. 'Studio time is valuable, darlin’.”
Great. Yet another reference he’d have to look up and annotate for the Archivaas. Not that it didn’t pay well, but… Just once, he’d like to have a conversation with her that didn’t involve research.
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Challenge #00398 - A033: Come for the Spectacle…
Inspired by this: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/weird/NATL-Mom-Eats-Monstrous-Steak-in-Under-3-Minutes–239490021.html
Competitive eating may have been a thing before humans or it may not have, but they certainly made it more interesting: It suddenly jumped three rating warnings, and became a spectator sport for those brave enough to watch.
The first interspecies restaurant had a glass-walled enclosure for the humans. Polarized glass walls. Those who did not wish to view human eating habits could purchase or rent shields for their eyes that were also polarised so as to render the glass walls black and opaque.
The restaurateur had the brilliant idea of having them on offer for every non-human table. In a box that could only be unlocked by an Hour coin.
But after the food contests started amongst the humans, sales of the glasses dropped.
The sight of one human attempting to ingest a pizza the size of a table, or a burger the weight of a stripling child, or a mountain of chicken parts was, simply, too much to resist.
And then there were the times they deliberately, competitively, attempted to ingest what could easily be fatal amounts of capsaicin for each and every audience member combined.
And when the humans hosted a food-themed game show there…
Well.
The restaurateur simply changed tactics, and charged clientele extra to take the glasses away.
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Challenge #00397 - A032: Performance Peace
The much anticipated performance piece entitled, ‘Ask a Rude Question, Get an Honest Answer’
Naturally, it was a human who did it. The Galactic Congress, just getting used to the idea of humans as a recognised cogniscent and not a dangerous animal, attended in droves.
Even the common throng, who usually avoided ambassadorial exhibitions like the plague, attended.
Every performance was guaranteed to be unique, because every audience was a mixture of the curious and the vocal alike.
The artist sat in a comfy chair with small snacks and a bottle of water, and gave the audience leave to ask any question they like. And, more to the point, she had to answer honestly.
Some were baffling, (“Why are you endothermic?” or “Why are you insane?” or “If you’re a mammal, where is your fur?”) some were invasive, (“How do you have sex?” or “Is your excrement as acidic as your stomach?” or “Why do you predate on everything?”) and some… were just silly.
“Why are toenails?”
Nevertheless, the human answered. “Our tree-going forebears found an adequate grip to be of greater use than claws.”
“Why ever-growing fur?”
“Our hair? We were partially aquatic and remain so. The hair serves a double purpose as insulator and cooling apparatus.”
And finally, “How did human?”
The audience leaned forward, as one being. Watching the human artist contemplate the question.
She got up. Paced around her comfy chair, cradling her microphone as if it were an infant. Masticated some nuts. paced from one end of the stage to the other and, at last, when inspiration struck, she sat back down.
Her answer was: “Evidently.”
That performance won five standing ovations.
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Challenge #00396 - A031: To Stop Human
After all those dramas and documentaries about how terrifying they were, you’d think somewhere it would have been mentioned how surprisingly ineffective stabbing was against humans.
(“multiple stab wounds” is a critical but in a lot of cases not actually immediately life threatening situation unless one hits a major blood vessel or one of the more important organs. Survivors with over 100 have happened a few times)
Taken from the Lectures of Koq'riix the Human Slayer:
They call me the Human Slayer, but the truth is… I haven’t killed that many humans. What I have done is survive ten encounters with the beasts.
(gasps from the audience)
Yes, that seems amazing, but not one of you has any idea what huge amounts of effort it takes to kill a human. I only managed that once. I believe the specimen is still preserved in the Museum of Disturbing Things. Those with greater fortitude can go see the immense damage it took.
I stabbed that thing two hundred times and it still came after me. I broke most of its limbs. I broke its ribs. I broke its hands and feet. I tried to poison it with nitrous oxide and it just fell asleep. It wasn’t until I cut its neck to the bone… well… you’ll see if you go.
Humans are hard to kill.
If anyone has dreams of being a Human Slayer, I have one word of advice:
Don’t.
(murmurs)
But I do have some advice on how to avoid or stop humans. On how to get away.
First: Stay out of areas of space infested by humans. There’s maps for sale in the foyer that clearly indicate jumps down which humans are living. They also indicate areas in which humans can occasionally be found.
Second: If you encounter a human - run away. Get out of the area, get out of local-space, get to safety. If you’re quick, if you’re lucky… the human won’t pursue you.
Believe it or not, they have other interests than tracking us down and eating our flesh. Most of the time? A wild, lone human will go about their business and leave.
Third: If you are cornered, do not make any hostile moves. I’m about to play you some footage of a more common encounter with a human that I experienced while salvaging in the greater doldrums.
[The vid pickup from a helmet cam showed the viewer turning a corridor, and seeing a human in a space-suit turning the opposite corner. The human froze in space. Carefully put the thing it was carrying down, and showed empty hands]
This is a human submissive gesture. It’s showing me that it has no weapons. Not that it needs them. When I copied this gesture, the human gathered its belongings and backed away.
Needless to say, I didn’t stay in that derelict long.
Learn this gesture. Do your utmost to copy it. A human is remarkably capable of understanding that some cogniscents do not have the same range of motion as they do.
Hands open and empty. Held away from the body. Legs bent and apart. This shows the human you do not mean to harm them.
And there is no tool in the world that is worth taking if a human approaches.
Leave everything and get out.
Four: human space vehicles usually do not contain rotating segments. They have their own gravity field. How they manage this is a scientific mystery… but if you spot a human vehicle - you know to avoid that area.
Stay long enough to get its vectors, and that is all. Use those vectors to escape.
This is vital knowledge that you must all share for your safety. I offer it free, so that all may learn.
[Archivaas Note: Koq'riix also kept some disturbing footage to herself until the day of her passing. This follows]
A security feed from Koq'riix’s salvage ship. A far younger Koq'riix is sleeping soundly. A human wriggles through the airlock and, crouching, makes its way through passages too small for it to move comfortably. It is carrying a tool clearly made for Koq'riix’s species.
It finds Koq'riix and lays down the tool in the middle of the floor. Then it takes out a small, coloured rectangle and puts it on top. The human retreats and leaves without any further action.
[Archivaas Note: The rectangle is a two-dimensional image of the specimen in the Museum of Disturbing Things, and another human. The writing on the obverse side has yet to be translated.]
[Archivaas Addendum +250 Standard Years: The writing reads, I forgive you. The remains of the human have been repatriated to his home-planet and interred with his wife.]
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