Are continuations ok as prompts? Because “Bayville by Gaslight” is pretty awesome, as was the Fluttershy-meets-Nightcrawler one…

I’d rather do self-contained instant ficcage for the challenges, but I should really set some time aside to finish my old fanficcery.

Challenge #00324: Those pesky living authors

Analysing the work of someone still living always runs the risk of “No, that’s not what I meant at all”

Page twenty. Not bad. Especially considering that she’d written it strictly for academia and not for the national newspapers. Her analysis of Hartnell’s greater literary works was getting a lot more notice than she had ever hoped for.

The phone rang. Of course she answered it.

“Hello,” said the voice on the other end, “are you the lady who wrote Hartnell, a Feminist Before Their Time?”

“Yes,” she blushed. A phone interview! Life was looking up.

“Mister Hartnell said to tell you you got almost all of it completely backwards.”

“What?”

“Mister Hartnell–”

“I heard you, I just… Mister Hartnell told you?”

“Yes, of course. I’m his secretary.”

Blush. “I… thought he’d passed on.”

“You and his agent,” said the secretary. “He’s reading it over and he says you’ll get a more in-depth rebuke when he finishes laughing.”

[Muse food remaining: 8 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Challenge #00323: But is it Art?

Toad has come along to one of Sara, Scott or anyone else’s art showings, and in this circle, his mannerisms seem to have accidentally passed him off as an expert or art critic. He’s having fun, and the artist is not sure whether to laugh at how the rich folk are swallowing all of it and buying the work, or cry at how wrong he is about certain bits.

It was one of Sara’s ‘sideshow’ pieces she called The Abyss. It used mirrors to create the illusion of an endless gulf, and secret sensors to detect how long someone had been staring into it before another hidden mechanism activated a pair of eyes… watching the watcher.

Todd stared into it long enough for it to stare back, and chuckled briefly at the very Sara sense of humor involved.

The next piece along was a series of studies. Self-portraits through time. Collaged in such a way as to give the illusion of both motion and three dimensions. Which was quite a trick, because the self-portraits involved started way back before kindergarten.

And -yes- there was a photo of that self-portrait. It was still behind a discretionary curtain in another corner. This work censored it with another self-portrait covering up the non-existent naughty bits.

Sahra had been honest, sometimes cruelly so, in her self-images. The final one in this frame was an homage to Norman Rockwell, with herself in uniform and aqua skin painting the self that everyone saw every day.

He moved on, nodding at the line of folks seeking to peek beyond the curtain, to the kinetic sculpture and the room of sounds.

Kids were going insane in the room of sounds. Every noise they made splashed across the walls and ceiling as vivid colour and shape. It was called Synesthesia, but everyone who went there asked for the room of sounds.

And, regardless of the kids’ whooping and hollering, someone was watching what it looked like when they sang.

Todd noticed he had a small group of followers. Hipsters, if he was any judge. Half of them were texting.

He raised an eyebrow, “Can I help you?”

“Isn’t the room of sounds an abomination against the nature of Art?” said the spokester.

“Synesthesia,” Todd corrected, “is an exploration in interactivity creating art of the moment. By giving a tool to the common throng, as it were, the artist invites others to become artists by using themselves as part of the medium.”

It was almost ad copy from the placards outside of the doors, but the Hipsters swallowed it. Hook, line and sinker.

“And the tragic seesaw?” said a creature of black dye and multiple piercings.

“Entropy is a study in balance and movement, carefully constructed to give the illusion of frailty whilst being near-indestructable. No doubt you’ve discovered the least breeze sets it moving?”

“It has motors in it to make sure it never stops,” sneered a goth hipster.

“No motors at all. There should be gloves nearby for those who want to try and stop it. You’ll find it tricky, though. The sculpture generates its own breezes.”

That, and Sara thoughtfully parked it under an AC vent, so it would always be moving. She never stopped giggling at the people attempting to stop it to find out where the motors were.

“You talk like you made it,” noted a grunge hipster.

“No, but I am familiar with the artist’s works. You should try discovering a few things about the pieces before you critique them so… minimally.”

They scattered. Todd turned to find Sara spraining something with the effort to not laugh.

“Always gotta run away from th’ source of truth.”

“If I didn’t have so much to do, I’d have a performance piece entitled, ’Ask a Rude Question, Get an Honest Answer’,” Sara rolled her eyes at the hipsters. “They think you’re a famous art critic, by the by.”

Todd shrugged. He wore black because it was easier, some days, to not have to worry about what to wear. He had been appreciating the art, which anyone could do. And he’d been looking thoughtful and hemming a lot. “That’s their problem,” he announced.

“Lunch?”

“My thoughts exactly,” he grinned.

Behind them, the hipsters were having a chicken fight with Entropy, in an effort to catch all the swinging, dipping, and swaying parts. The cameras would catch it all for Sara’s later amusement.

[Muse food remaining: 9 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Challenge #00322: Amphibious

We haven’t heard from Todd for a while, or Mortimer, or any of your incarnations of mister Toynbee. Quick, what’s one of them doing right now?

Ha! This was the little bugger. He got it! He got the little bastard. Mortimer cackled to himself as he extracted the bug - Sammy’s pet phasmids had escaped and this one, sadly, never learned to stay out of electronics - from the system. He wrapped the sad remains in a tissue and set them aside.

A little solder, a little duct tape, and then all he had to worry about was putting it all back together and not improving it on the way.

“Oh, Mortimer,” came the slightly disapproving sigh of the one person who meant everything. The one who made him proud of ‘Mortimer’ all over again.

Carefully carrying the bug out with him, he emerged from the bowels of the machine. “Uh. The good news is, I found one of Sammy’s stick insects…”

“The bad news being that it met its end inside a fifty-billion-dollar training mannequin?” guessed Sara. “You missed lunch. Again.” She set down the tray.

She’d grown since they met, and it looked good on her. Tall, elegant, refined… his uptown girl. Everything looked good on her. Even him.

He watched her sit and had to stop himself from composing even more bad poetry inside his head. “I know the drill, love. Put it back the way I found it and write down the improvements.” The lightning had left its mark on his voice. There was a lot more croak in it to lend truth to his codename. “And send 'em along to Stark Industries.”

“Not that they pay the slightest bit of attention,” added Sara. She peeked at the dead phasmid. “Aw. That was Eminrae.”

“You’re better at th’ circle of life talk,” he offered.

“You just don’t want Sammy accusing you of roasting her for your dinner.”

He put his greasy hands up. “You got me. D'ruther stay out of it.”

“Well, you’d better not 'stay out of it’ when it comes to ours, dear husband,” she admonished. Sara gently picked up the tissue and the little body before rising like another poem he couldn’t write. “I might become righteously vexed.”

“Right you are,” he said absently, attacking her gourmet fare with a fork.

She got all the way to the door before he said, “What do you mean 'when it comes to ours’?”

His answer was a winsome smile and an, “I knew you weren’t listening at breakfast. Finish up and then I’ll tell you again.”

He had never worked faster in his life.

[Muse food remaining: 9 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Challenge #00321: Cupcakes! Cupcakes! Cupcakes!

Nobody was entirely sure whether to curse the humans or begin worshipping them for introducing the cupcake to the galactic community. 

The human capacity for invention - alongside their notorious insanity, of course - knows no bounds. Therefore it should have been no surprise that both extended to their food.

Bread is universal. Leavening is not. Cake is known, and has saved some species from extinction. Fruitcake - a human seasonal delicacy - has saved civilizations.

And don’t get anyone started about popsicles.

And then, there’s the creation that can be traced back to a salvage company working in the vicinity of Argo…

*

There was a tower in the centre, in place of the much-anticipated cake. It was festooned with brightly-coloured objects.

Ch'chiva examined it as much as she dared. It was pretty, but human party food was also decorative and some, she had noted, were edible works of art.

Ah, just in time. The human chef emerged. He of the unpronounceable name and the endless smirk. There was a very large bowl of some caramel-corn creation in his hands. The crew loved it, of course.

“I was looking forward to cake,” Ch'chiva tried not to sound reprimanding.

“Those are cakes.”

“Even the round things on the sticks?”

“Yes. Cake-pops. Human food-on-a-stick.” Victor set down the caramel corn -there were peanuts in it! Ch'chiva almost squealed in delight- and plucked out an array of them. “There was no consensus on flavour, this time, so all the -ah- small cakes are colour coded for convenience. Chocolate, strawberry, banana and vanilla.” He pointed out each in turn.

“Many desire chocolate, but it is not a healthy food,” Ch'chiva noted. “Smaller doses would mean less time in sickbay.”

“Only for some,” smirked Victor. He put the cake pops back in their display.

“Is there a name for the larger small cakes?”

“Yes. We call them ‘cupcakes’.”

“It is a very small cup.”

“Beverage containers were smaller when the term was coined." 

"Cup. Cakes,” Ch'chiva toured around the table. “A single serving with none of the dissection. This is excellent food for semi-hostile negotiation.”

The concept spread like wildfire. Not only did the very human concept of food-on-a-stick expand even further, but the cupcake became dessert du jour for all ambassadorial meals. Any meal where knives weren’t possible became ideal ambassadorial fare. Especially in the presence of other ambassadors.

But then there were the heated debates about who got the last chocolate one.

[Muse food remaining: 6 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Challenge #00320: Homo S. Cuisine

Considering how many toxic things humans ate, it was a little surprising that their cooking was not only edible, but delicious.

“YE-HE-HEEESSSSS! It’s here!”

The nervous Passeri crew gathered at a safe distance to watch the Ship Human - somewhere between lucky mascot and terrifying on-board entertainment - cackle and sing to herself.

They had been told that female humans were far more trainable than the males. That they were, on the whole, quieter and less dangerous than the males. The Passeri had since become convinced that they were told lies.

Right now, the human was singing “It’s here,” over and over as she towed the large freight box towards the segregated kitchen set aside for her bizarre human foods.

Inside the box was a series of smaller boxes. Something Vaishnavi greeted with glee. “Sweet! Individually wrapped. You’re getting five stars, InterShip Galactic.”

The smaller boxes had warning stickers on them. Biohazard. Caustic substance. Carnivorous enzymes.

“My pardon,” said Tyrti, the closest Passeri crew-member the human had to a friend on board, “those stickers are… normally cause for alarm. Why do you express joy?”

“These?” a negligent wave at the brightly-coloured warnings. “This is just alarmist rubbish. They do the same sort of thing for cheese.” Yes. Some human cheese had escaped at Sygnus Twelve. The entire installation had to be heat-sterilized off the surface of the moon. “These are just pineapples.”

The surrounding Passeri took a collective step back, as if the human had said ’it’s only uranium 238’ instead. Only Tyrti stayed in her place. Thus, she was in a prime position to watch Vaishnavi gather ingredients. These included some biohazard-isolated cheese, a caustic material called Tomato Paste, and the ever-present tins of the Terran delicacy, Spam. There was also a flat disk of something bread-like. Thankfully, the packing labels declared that the biohazardous yeast had been killed by irradiation.

“You cook now?”

“Why not? I’ve been waiting for these babies for ages. I want to celebrate.” And, out of deference to her ship and crew-mates, Vaishnavi turned on the isolation protocols before proceeding.

The number of things humans just casually ate without concern inevitably boggled the galactic assembly, so Vaishnavi’s cooking inevitably gathered an audience. It was why all four walls of her kitchen were transparent.

Vaishnavi treated it as an opportunity to educate, and ignored the gasps as she sampled various ingredients. “Today, little birdies, I’m cooking an Earth favourite all over the world - Pizza. Pizza began in a nation-state called Italy…”

What was most surprising to the crew was how… delicious it smelled. Many were barely restraining coos of hunger in anticipation of being fed. They had seen the toxic ingredients. They knew it should have been hazardous. One of them had fainted when the human negligently ate a piece of raw pineapple.

Yet all wanted to try some.

It was almost as if the legendary human insanity was… infectious.

They watched in eager anticipation as the steaming creation journeyed through the scanner to determine exactly how toxic it was to the ship and her crew.

Many cheered at the green light. It passed the first test. It wasn’t poisonous.

Tyrti the Brave tried the first piece. “This defies logic,” she announced. “It tastes of beauty.”

Vaishnavi grinned. “Share and enjoy, birdies. I’ll get some batches going.”

And that was how the phrase Unsuitable Food got coined.

[Muse food remaining: 6 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Challenge #00319: In Memorium

Found on a gravestone, “Name, date-date, (Killed 99 bears) We pray he has found rest”

We pray he found rest. We’re not sure, but we hope so, because nobody ever found a body, and 99 may not have been enough.

(replace bears with appropriate sentient or nonsentient species at your discretion, especially in the case of early-contact humans :P)

If any being needed any further proof of human insanity - besides ten minutes’ contact with any number of the species - all they had to do was visit Memorial Moon at Velliguas Three.

There is a temple, there. Carved out of a mountain. With Bas-reliefs depicting heroic deeds. And a statue of a human in a space suit and in a heroic pose.

And a plaque.

ANDREW JONES, it reads, 234598-234632. Destroyed 99 planet-eaters. We pray he has found his rest.

Then the visitor reads about the exploits in the Bas-reliefs. Sees the recorded videos depicting skin-of-teeth, seat-of-pants, luck-of-idiots combat style that ended ninety-nine of the swarming creatures that ate planets.

The hundredth planet-eater… destroyed the vessel Jones was piloting. The Velligulae never found any remains to bury, though they did have to gang up to vanquish the last of the beasts where one human had previously sufficed.

Put in association with the humans’ reputation for being unkillable, and one could see exactly why the Velligulae pray Andrew Jones found his rest.

[Muse food remaining: 6 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Some questions should remain unspoken.

“I can’t believe you just said that. I am so glad they ended the call before they heard you.”

“What? It was a perfectly valid question.”

“I don’t care, it’s downright rude! And kind of disgusting.”

“But now you’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

“…yes, damn you.  Next time you wonder something like ‘How do conjoined twins decide whose hand wipes their shared ass when they poop?’, keep it to yourself!”

“Aww, but I had so many other questions about them…” – Josh

(#00318)

What people don’t know about the Insulter Pin is that there are several levels.

A plain, mirrored fan means that the wearer is frequently unintentionally insulting and doesn’t always understand when they give offense, or why it is offensive.

A mirrored fan with a black trim means that the wearer will, on occasion, be deliberately insulting. Often in retaliation for an emotional injury. This is rarely done with forethought, and if there is any, there is generally a warning involved.

A mirrored fan with black-and-yellow striped trim means that the wearer is frequently deliberately insulting, but no-one can tell when they mean it or not.

Shayde has graduated through all three.

They’re working on the codification of the fourth level.

[Muse food remaining: 6 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Challenge #00317: Common Band

Different cultures, different vocal physiologies, and different mechanisms of hearing certainly make for interesting music nights.

Of all the past human phenomena that proved endlessly fascinating, the one that Rael could not turn away from was ‘channel surfing’. Every time either one of them found themselves at the other’s residence, Rael always let Shayde have the entertainment remote.

Not because she had good taste, but because what she did fascinated him.

Even the humans used to limited entertainments picked a select few channels to view. Or selected series based on their interests and rarely strayed.

Shayde wanted to view them all. No filters (though she did finally put some on the gore and sex content) no restrictions… just hopping from channel to channel to see what was playing.

And not once did she ever succeed in going 'round the horn’.

This time, she stopped at a music show. According to her expression, it was due to the train wreck factor.

“Who th’ fook is this, then?”

Rael looked. “Ah. They called themselves the Common Band. They composed and played music based on the sounds and words all known species could appreciate.”

“That’s two hundred words an’ about three notes if ye don’t count half an’ quarter tones,” said Shayde. “That’s nuts…”

“Bethoven got a symphony out of two notes,” countered Rael.

“It’s unbelievable.” She dialed up information on them from her personal info-reader. “And they’re a hit?”

“For forty years,” sighed Rael. “They have a very wide fan-base.”

“How th’ fook can anyone get forty hits out of two hundred words and three notes?”

“You would be amazed,” said Rael. He hoped she’d pick up the remote again, but a new song was starting.

“Ee, this one’s catchy…”

Damn. Too late. The Common Band had found another fan.

[Muse food remaining: 7 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

Challenge #00316: Sing-along

Humans burst into song spontaneously all the time, usually started just by one humming and becoming a little quartet or a vocalist and backing choir very suddenly.

Add in various aliens, and the somewhat macabre lyrics for the beginning of Bohemian Rhapsody

The humans called him Captain Ted. It was the closest they could get to Tyd'r'kaad and, compared to the many other things they said and did, it was only mildly annoying.

He was the first galactic captain to have a mostly human crew, at the ratio of five humans to one Sognati.

The humans got stranger in large groups, so the Galactic Evaluation Committee had charged him and his crew to empirically experiment with group numbers and take notes.

And now there was this. Captain Ted dutifully recorded it, but he couldn’t fathom the significance.

A group of humans had spontaneously started singing.

“No escape from reality…”

On the next line, practically the entire sorting bay was doing it.

“Open your eyes. Look up to the skies and seeeeeeeeee…”

One, located at a noted acoustic spot, took the solo. “I’m just a poor boy.”

“Poor boy” sang the rest.

“I got no sympathy.”

“Because I’m easy come. Easy go. Little high. Little low. Anyway the wind blows, doesn’t really matter to me…”

“To me,” sang the soloist.

Up until this point, Ted had thought it was a religious observance, as they did at more festive times of their year.

Someone, somewhere, was singing music.

“Mamaaaaa,” sang the soloist. “Just killed a man.”

What?

“Put a gun against his head. Pulled my trigger. Now he’s dead.”

This made less sense than the female who was singing about being a poor boy. Obviously, the words had no relation to reality. But, he was also obligated to record the entire performance.

In all its macabre surreality.

[Muse food remaining: 3 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]