Challenge #00241: Household Gods

Papier-mache elves.

He knew he shouldn’t ask. Technically speaking, anything that kept Shayde busy and not in anyone’s business was a good thing. Anything that kept her out of Sherlock’s notice was wonderful.

Apart from the fact that Sherlock now had her on his permanent watch list, and her alarming habit this time had been buying the cheapest paper and glue available. Which meant she was up to something.

Which meant Rael, once again, had to go, find out, and presumably stop it before it got on anyone else. Or, at the very least, tone it down to the level of minor nuisance.

Which was why he was watching Shayde apply bits of glue-soaked cellulose to a wire frame. The purpose of this was completely beyond him. Obviously, it was a form of art, since art was defined as activity without purpose, sometimes creating objects without purpose in the process.

This? This just looked like a mess.

But he had to ask.

“What are you doing?”

“Makin’ papier mache elves.”

“Elves…” he echoed. One, evidently, had a tail.

“Aye, I couldnae find the ones I was after. Bloody seeker kept sendin’ me tae the Mythos Embassy. When it weren’t sendin’ me tae the Cogniscent Rights office.”

Ah. Of course. ‘Elf’ had changed its meaning in the years she’d been jaunting through other dimensions. There were the Elves of planet Mythos, descendants of gengineered humans with pointy ears, longer lifespans, and tongue-clotting beauty on their side. And then there were ELFs, Engineered Life Forms like himself, the Skitties and, regrettably, his Wave of the Future gene-cousins, the Cleaners.

“So… you’re making… idols?”

“If that makes sense to ye, aye.” She picked up a small, stick-like tool and worked some fine detail into the glue-moistened paper. “I’m tryin’ tae make a home here, ye ken. And it’s not home without some little elves.” A crooked smile that meant that inside, she wasn’t smiling at all. “Me mum had a bitty collection. Elves from around the world. An’ she tole me the story, when I was little, about the cobbler and the little elves… So I’m makin’ the entire set. Celtic, German, French, Swiss, Russian, Tolkein, Pini, Cockrum…” A sick little laugh meant to stave off tears. “Ev'ry elf there ever was. In mem'ry o’ memum…” The laugh failed just as her voice did, and a thick tear fell down her ebon face like a meteor in the night, falling to a planet.

Homesick. It was a word he never understood. He never had any place where he knew he belonged, not even now. And the cure, a visit, was not even plausible. Her home was five hundred years ago, and millions of light years distant.

Rael sat next to her and awkwardly put his hand on her arm. Black and blue. “Tell me?” he asked. “Tell me about the happy times?”

Her hands moved again, placing paper in patterns he couldn’t fathom, let alone help with. Sometimes winding, sometimes patting, sometimes pressing… and she spoke, conjuring a peripatetic childhood, roaming between countries and continents, picking up languages like any other tourist would pick up tchotchkes. Picking up culture and learning, and never staying in one place.

Home, for her, was her family. Her mother, father and brother. And the little elves that her mother carefully packed for each move, and unpacked again when they settled once more.

She could not reach her family. Did not want to confirm that their lives had long since ended. So she was reaching for the next best thing.

An echo of home.

“May I help?” he asked. It wasn’t much comfort, but he was good at making new places to belong. Maybe he could teach her.

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Challenge #00240: Posting Bills on Jellynet

Subconsciously transmitted soul level personal ads transmitted via peer to peer, human to human internet powered by implants in the brain stem and the strange pairings that emerge from their usage. Base the story in the city you know most intimately.

It was cheap. It had no carrier feeds. It drastically reduced the volume of people who had no way to understand what life was like for other people.

People on Jellynet were almost 100% more likely to be civil, understanding, generous, polite, and just basically nice to their fellow human being.

The right wing hated it instantly.

But even then, instantly was too late. It was everywhere. Anyone could by a wire hat off anyone selling them on just about any corner. You could even get baby models for parents, so they knew exactly what their child found upsetting.

It was easy.

And that should have been the first warning.

Jellynet was a whirlwind of creativity. Like minds fissioned with instant access to each other. Ideas came to fruition in less time than it took via traditional channels.

And then, just as the world was becoming a better place, the adverts came.

They came to the shared dreamscape(you could certainly sleep in the wire hat. It was eminently comfortable), where groups of heroes regularly fought of nightmares and strange structures came and went like mist.

This one was a gigantic tub of washing powder.

Dreamers around it stared at it for a while, and then went elsewhere to have some fun before they awoke.

Melanie thought no more about it. Someone dreamed up bright orange bubble chairs that floated from a fountain and she’d spent most of her night touring the dreamscape in it. She went through her little routine in absolute private, taking off the wire hat to visit the loo and have a shower and pick her face and brush her teeth. All before putting the hat back on.

Some people, she knew, never took the hat off. She’d installed TMI filters, anyway. She didn’t need to know who was jacking off or who was on their period. She didn’t want to know, either.

Breakfast came with a monumental flash of a brand of cornflakes she never liked. Her disgust echoed around five of her neighbours. Weird. She got on with her day.

In realspace, she was just Melanie Tyler, checkout chick. In dreamspace… well, there was another reason she took the hat off. In her afternoons, she was writing a book, inspired by her dreams. She had to stay off Jellyspace, lest her daydreams be suborned by someone else into a new thing. Her Jellynet friends wished her well and that was enough for her.

Brisbane was cleaner, since the Jellynet hit. Even the weeds in the cracks on the pavement were vanishing.

Except dandelions. People liked them.

It wasn’t a long walk between her flats and the Queen Street Mall, nor from there to the shop where she worked. And in the early morning, Brisbane was a quiet place.

It was easy to believe that she was alone in the world, if not for the gentle hum of Jellynet in her head. Distant Americans were ending their days. The New Zealanders were already at work. A pair of hoons were approaching. They were thinking it might be funny to remind her that she was just a girl and girls existed for men.

Except Jellynet informed them in instants that that sort of thing was not nice and made them feel bad about it.

The guy on the passenger side ended up yelling, “You’re looking wonderful! Have a great day!” out his window without ever knowing precisely why.

Melanie grinned and skipped the rest of the way to work. Another day of stocking shelves, asking if the customer had Fly Buys, stuffing bags with purchases and otherwise earning her keep.

She was halfway through first shift when another one struck. It was for an artists she’d never hear, let alone heard of, but the music itself was a persistent and annoying ear-worm.

Then someone started replacing the words. New images rippled around. Someone turned it into a minecraft fid. Someone else turned it into a Star Trek fid.

It was the last time anyone tried putting advertising onto Jellynet.

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Didn’t We Already Fix That?!

A recurrence.

(#00240)

“Hey, check this out,” the fellow queuer passed over a pamphlet.

It was the immunoflu update, naming the diseases that the adjusted virus would protect the infected from.

A pointing finger indicated the anomaly. “What the heck is measles?”

“I know, right? That’s like… some weird human name or something.”

“Yes, but viruses have taxonomic names,” she argued. “For something to have a common name, it has to be around for hundreds of years. That just doesn’t happen any more.”

At which point, debate sprung up amongst her neighbouring queuers.

“I heard there was an anti-immuno deep-time colony. The viruses mutated and bred into this super-virus.”

“I heard it was just a regular deep-time colony from before they made the old viruses extinct.”

“I heard it was a string-runner? Trying to make a weapon? It killed them, of course.”

“I heard someone dropped through a space-time anomaly and skipped five hundred years.”

They all stared at the last speculator.

“Like that could possibly happen,” she scoffed.

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Challenge #00239: Elemental, my dear…

Following someone around wearing a deerstalker and peering through a magnifying glass, whilst deducing things. With someone named Sherlock around, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Bonus points for an exasperated Watson getting dragged along.

Eridite Watson passed from transitory population zones to residential in a cloud of chemicals. She dutifully breathed in the immunoflu, after breathing out her own local germs for Medical to catalogue as harmless. All before she put her clothes back on.

At least they let her have relative privacy and female attendants on request.

This was a strange and unusual place. Socialism abounded and corrupted everyone. But instead of the dismal and depressing picture given her by Greater Deregulation (Hubwards), it was brightly lit, overflowing with plants, and oddly colourful.

Good news, there was a directory. Bad news, it was in that god-awful phonetic mish-mash called GalStand.

Good news, her tourist-goggles had the technology to translate it into good, old Greater Deregulation (Hubwards) English. Bad news, she had no clue how to even turn them on.

“Ye put ‘em on and press the bridge, ye ken. Yuir techies’ve already adjusted it for ye.”

The creature was speaking to her in English. Her English. But the accent was… bizzarre. Nobody on Greater Deregulation (Hubwards) spoke like that.

Watson tried it. Ah. English floated over the GalStand mess, but wasn’t very helpful.

“I’m looking for the offices of the Security Chief. I have an extradition treaty for Gareth Wifnikov-Smythe.”

This earned a sharp-toothed grin from her criminally dark face. “Ah, finally and at last, then. Good riddance tae bad rubbish. Name’s Shayde. I could walk there in me sleep.”

That should have been her warning sign. But she introduced herself, regardless. “I’m Lieutenant Eridite Watson.”

“Lovely!” An enthusiastic pumping of her offered hand. “It’s almost too good! You stay right there, I’ll just be a tick.”

And, without any further warning, the strange woman fell into her own shadow and was gone. Watson stared in confusion at the patch of floor she had been standing on. Poked it with her foot. It was solid, so how–?

“Ah,” said someone else. A shorter man with sort-of mauve skin. What was it with her and attracting coloured people, today? “I’m sorry. Shayde’s happened to you, hasn’t she?”

He, too, was speaking Greater Deregulation (Hubwards) English. But it looked like he was making the greater effort.

“She told me to wait,” Watson bit down hard on a 'sir’. This… thing… was not a 'sir’. Despite appearing to be male, it was a dangerous and polluting alien with all sorts of alien diseases. For all she knew, it was readying a blood-attack with a special, weaponized ring. “My name is Lieutenant Eridite Watson and I have an extradition treaty for Gareth Wifnikov-Smythe.” She dug the flimsy out of her jacket as proof.

“Watson, you said,” asked the little blue… not-quite-man.

“Ye-e-es…? The…. Shayde. Seemed to think it was good…”

“…powers…” muttered the thing in the rainbow coat. “If we keep on our toes, we can get this over with quickly. I apologize in advance for… the oncoming event.”

Shayde stepped out of another shadow and bounced all the way over to the little blue not-man, making high-pitched squealing noises. She proceeded to embrace… him… and continue to bounce.

The blue not-man’s expression told Watson everything she needed to know about the… oncoming event.

*

“Sherlock… May I introduce ye tae Watson.”

The alien was busy forcibly removing a deerstalker hat. “Right. That explains that nonsense,” he said in sharp GalStand. The tourist goggles provided subtitles. “What’s your nonsense?”

“No nonsense, sir.” Damn! Aliens were not 'sir’s. They were things. This place was corrupting her already. “I have an extradition treaty for Gareth Wifnikov-Smythe.”

The alien took it, read it through a monocle - fending off Shayde and the hat the entire time - and finally swore. “We’ve almost rehabilitated him and you want to take him back -stoppit!- back to your… own facilities…” pronounced, 'mediaeval torture chambers’, “in a system where a criminal has no choice but to remain a criminal.”

The blue one finally snatched the hat off the black one and glared her into stillness.

“I have been charged to secure and retrieve Gareth Wifnikov-Smythe and return him for proper punishment as befits a criminal of his nature,” said Watson. “What happens to him once he’s out of your jurisdiction is not important.”

Sigh. “…and I had such hopes…” He shook his head and handed over a device with a friendly map on its screen. “This will guide you to his cell. Please use ethical restraints until you’re on your own vessel?”

That pushed an automatic, instantly regretted, “Yessir,” out of her mouth. Red-faced, Watson focussed on the map and left without any courtesy. These were things. Things didn’t get courtesy.

*

“A-a-a-awww…” said Shayde. “But– Sherlock and Watson. Ye were meant for each other.”

Sherlock rubbed his temples. He already had a busy day. He didn’t need Shayde making it interesting on top of that. “Rael, get her out of here before I find a reason to arrest her again…”

“Yessir. Sorry, sir.”

The hat, at last, went back into its glass case behind his desk.

Humans…

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Stop, in the name of cheesecake!

“Next time we’re both after the same thing…” she offered, “perhaps we can call a truce in the name of cheesecake.”

“Work out which is really the best? Sounds like a plan, then." 

Raven and Rahne meet again, not quite so "off duty” as before.  Jokingly, as part of the typical “witty banter” comicbook fights always have, one of them does call for the “cheesecake truce”, and to their surprise, the other remembers it and takes them up on the idea.

[AN: If this looks like it was submitted by me again, it was Josh. Apparently anons and non-account-holders turn up as submissions by me o_O]

(#00238)

Each side had taken the fight outside. Both knew the value of their surroundings and had decided mutually to not trash the museum.

It was what gave Rahne the idea to try it in the first place.

That, and the straight line.

“We’re almost clear. Nothing can stop us now!”

“Not even cheesecake?”

Mystique put the brakes on. “Hold!”

The rest of the brotherhood stopped and stared in confusion as Rahne went full-human and Raven dropped her disguise. Both stood a respectful distance from each other. Raven kept the booty tucked under her arm.

“We need this to–”

“–power an ancient relic, aye,” Rahne finished. “Problem is, the fine print was in a Museum in Moscow.”

“Don’t tell me, guarded by an eldritch horror?”

“Also summons an eldritch horror.”

Raven swore. “Why do they even have that cosmic link?”

Rahne shrugged. “On the other hand, Stark can use that crystal to power a generator that has no added horrors at all…”

“Were either him or Sara consuming caffeine at the time?”

“No.”

“Good. Had to make sure.” Raven relaxed and handed over the prize.

“WHAT?” demanded the Brotherhood.

“Trust me,” said Raven. “It’s for the greater good.”

“Aw man, Magneto’s going to kill us…”

“The cheesecake was still worth it.”

“Amen,” agreed Rahne.

Nobody on her team could believe how it happened.

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Challenge #00237: Pressed Seconds

Perpetual springtime.

Ellie had been hired to clean the garden. That alone made little sense to her, but this was Isinglass City, where the richest and the Eternals lived. Those who had the most time and the most money spent both in fascinating ways.

There was a definite border to Isinglass City. Nothing ugly was permitted to exist, there. Not even the average was permitted to exist. It was like a giant play-park with no rides.

And even inside Isinglass City, there were the Estates. High-walled fondants of architecture, preserved under glass -no- plasma barriers in perfect soap-bubbles.

If Isinglass City was a play park, the Estates were enormous sculptures set with jewels.

At least her uniform was pressed and clean.

She arrived by the underground tunnel, and didn’t even see the garden until such time as a small staff had ‘fixed’ her every last physical detail. In the event that the Eternal who owned this place saw her, she would not offend their eye.

Ellie was given a sort of duster attached to a hose and pushed out of a small door and into what must have been the garden. It was like no garden the world had ever seen, nor likely ever would again. It was a fabricated springtime. Literally.

The cherry trees were made of muslin. The blossoms, chintz. The very grass was a giant terrycloth rug. The roses were eternally blooming velvet. and every bush held blooms of a different colour. This was a spring meant to last forever.

A garden that never grew. For an owner who never aged.

Ellie got to furious dusting, lest she be fired on her first day. Part of her catalogued everything. There was even a jewelry spider set decoratively in a web made of tulle.

And there she was. The Eternal. She was one of the Relics, from before Temporetain™ had been invented. Anyone who could afford to be Eternal now did so before they needed vanity surgery.

She, too, was a work of art. Her last surgeon had sculpted her perfectly. Except, perhaps, the lips. They were pulled so tight across her perfect face that they were almost ready to snap.

She strode barefoot across her toweling lawn, confident in the knowledge that nothing in her fabric garden would hurt her. Not even the padded robot noodling across the green expanse, eternally vacuuming the least speck of dust out of the spotless, plush and padded expanse.

Ellie worked harder. Worried that this Eternal had somehow taken offense, regardless of Ellie’s efforts.

She didn’t look up. She just concentrated on vacuuming the already spotless canvas leaves. Making sure she got every last square micron cleaner than clean.

“You’re rather prettier than the average maid,” said the Eternal.

And no others were here, so Ellie knew the Eternal was talking to her. “Thank you, m’m.”

“Do you sing?”

“It’s my job to clean the garden, m’m.” Not a denial. Not a confirmation. Just the facts as she was assigned them.

“Sing. Anything.”

Ellie, still cleaning, sang the song her mother put her baby sibs to sleep with.

This did not impress the Eternal. “Needs work.”

Ellie watched her journey to the bar and pour herself a drink. A mocktail. Of course. Alcohol damaged the liver. Eternals dreaded any variety of damage; because in order to heal, they had to spend time off the Temporetain™.

“Tell me,” the Eternal shouted. “How would you like to live forever?”

Forever didn’t seem worth it to Ellie. But rather than offend, she said, “It’s my job to clean the garden, m’m.”

“They don’t hire me for the screen, any more,” said the Eternal as she sauntered to a (of course) padded lawn chair and arranged herself in it. “I make my money from spotting pretty little things like you… and sponsoring them on the way up. Fame, fortune. Medical cover for your relatives. All of them.”

Ellie paused, just for a moment. Medical cover. It was expensive to be poor. It cost a fortune to be poor and sick.

“Yes, I knew that would get you. Your kind are all the same. It’s all family first until you realize you don’t need them any more.”

Ellie felt nauseated at the very idea of not needing family. Then she realized. This woman had outlasted anyone who was close to her.

How could she stand to be that alone and that old?

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Challenge #00236: Weighty Problems

Heavy the head which wears the crown. Heavier still the corset laced improperly.

Valeria had practiced for this. There had been fittings and rehearsals and an entire day getting used to the weight of the crown for this ceremony. She’d be knighting all day. And, for proper pomp and circumstance, all formalities had to be observed.

Including the ritual underwear.

Valeria, as royal crown of Eass, was not permitted to dress herself and, owing to the complexities of the full royal regalia, she could not feed herself, either.

She stood, arms akimbo, while three maids fussed with the petticoats and undershirts and lacings, while a fourth fed her intermittent mouthfuls of breakfast and made certain nothing spilled. She was not even permitted to rearrange her generous breasts herself.

Which inevitably lead to disaster.

Her usual body-servant had a cold, and her junior was unpracticed, and worse, only had little green apples herself whilst Valeria was ‘blessed’ with prize-winning melons. The naive little creature saw no reason to adjust Valeria’s person and went straight on with the lacing.

And every time she opened her mouth, her breakfaster fed her.

And a Queen could not speak with her mouth full.

They got all the way to the ceremonial ruff before something vital went 'ping’ and the entire left side of the edifice of her ceremonial robes slumped visibly.

“Oops,” said the apple-breasted lesser idiot.

The Duchess of the Wardrobe sighed as she entered. “Undo the lot and start again. I’ll inform our knights to be that they shall wait on your majesty’s pleasure and you–” she pointed out the young maid, “–make certain that everything heavy is supported.”

Well. This made everything an hour longer than it had to be.

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Challenge #00235: Dealing with fridge thieves

Coffee jello. Inspired because of this video.

Sara fumed. This was the fifth time someone had stolen her obsessively-labled lunch. It was almost enough to make her insectivorous again. And providing a lunchbox troll hadn’t discouraged the fiend, either.

The inconsiderate soul behind this was obviously trolling for some passive-aggressive antagonizing, but he (it was almost always a ‘he’) had yet to match wits with Sara.

She had Methods.

The “moldy” sandwich wrapper hadn’t stopped him. The food colouring in the bread hadn’t stopped him. The spring-loaded 'orrible 'airy spider hadn’t stopped him… for longer than forty-eight hours.

And shy of poisoning…

Hmmm. Sara could almost hear Todd murmuring, Sara, no-o-o-o-o… in the back of her head. All right. Maybe just severe gastric reflux.

So, after stopping by the sushi place down the road for a heinously expensive lunch, Sara went shopping.

The next day, her lunch consisted of “special” fried rice - with mealworms replacing the rice, beondogi replacing the peanuts, and crickets, amongst many other things - “special” coffee jello - made out of her heart-stopping wake-up juice - and a flask of gourmet apple juice - tainted with cascara.

She included the lunchbox troll for verisimilitude. And waited.

Sure enough, come lunchtime, her luncheon was gone. She calmly went and bought some replacement sushi and ate it at her desk while she composed an informative missive about what, exactly, was in her repast, this day.

It finished with, “And the apple juice, as you are no doubt discovering, was doped with cascara. I will be picking random items of my lunch to poison in future. Only I know where the poison is. And, thanks to a generous coating of genitan violet, I will also know who the thieves are.

"Don’t try to wash it off. You’ll only make it worse. Sara (The green one).”

Interestingly, four people at the office had to go and get their stomachs pumped. All four had purple hands. Internal Relations had a field day as a direct result.

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Challenge #00234: Intricate details

The black fellow and Scott’s riveting discussion about felt.

“I knew you were lying about something,” the fellow in tweed grinned from ear to ear. “You said you only work in artificial plants and things that aren’t alive.”

“Yeah, I did. So?”

“That’s clearly moss on Echoes of Summertime.”

“No, that’s felt.”

“Seriously? Felt?”

“Yeah. I wanted a moss look and none of the substitutes were right until Sara told me about back-brushing felt. Then it was just a problem of finding a thick enough felt.”

Most people started to zone out at this stage. Not his speciesist friend. “Really? I thought felt was felt.”

You really want to go down this road? Okay… “Most felt on the market these days is the minimum thickness you can get without the stuff falling apart. You hold it up to the light, you can see the fibres. Which is great for lamps, but rotten for back-brushing. I ended up having to go around to places that made the stuff themselves. If you want a really great moss you need a minimum of three millimeters, the right kind of dye, and five different brushes. There’s the horsehair, the straw, the nylon soft-bristle, the nylon hard bristle, and the super-soft baby toy brush I found in this yard sale, but it’s perfect for getting just the right amount of counter-fluff going.”

Amazingly, he was not nodding and nearly nodding off. “What’s counter-fluff?”

“Sara warned me about this. You get into something deep enough, and you start developing your own lingo. Counter-fluff is the fibres that end up going in different directions, which is hard to do when you’re using natural fibres. I’m picky about my moss, so I’ve ended up making my own. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make the right gauge of felt out of alpaca fleece?”

“Alpaca? I’d have thought wool was the way to go.”

“Sheep’s nice, but unless you treat it with all sorts of chemicals, it doesn’t behave properly… and I’m already on one terrorist watch list, I didn’t need any more visits from the FBI.” A negligent wave to Agent Pertwee, who was supposed to be undercover. “I did experiment with rabbit, but the staple isn’t quite right. Dog’s too rough, and nobody nearby has llamas, so I went with Alpaca.”

“I’d love to see your experiments, I’m into textiles, myself…”

That evening, Scott made a friend out of an enemy with artificial moss.

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