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Mar 14, 2023 02:52
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The best of the worst and the worst of the best (week 162) These Sainted Days of Spring (week 293)
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Mar 14, 2023 03:08
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Mar 14, 2023 04:15
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Gambling Degenerates (week 148)
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Mar 14, 2023 04:34
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Mar 14, 2023 05:40
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Attack of the Clones (week 109) uh I guess this is the part where i reiterate the rule against fanfiction
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Mar 14, 2023 05:57
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Mar 14, 2023 09:37
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Mar 14, 2023 10:03
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gently caress yeah in gimme a weird one
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Mar 14, 2023 10:15
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Mar 14, 2023 10:18
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Taboo! (week 416) He's Not Quite Dead (week 75) sebmojo posted:gently caress yeah in gimme a weird one SINNERS ORGY (week 159) this is the part where i reiterate the rule about erotica i guess? A secret is something you tell one other person (week 455)
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Mar 14, 2023 17:29
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I understand that sometimes a flash rule just doesn't tickle your pickle, so I'm throwing in a new option: If you've already been assigned a flash, but it's JUST NOT FAIR, MOM, I DIDN'T WANT THAT ONE, you can post again requesting a REROLL and I'll pick you a new one. Each re-roll costs 400 words, so I would strongly recommend against rolling more than 3 times.
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Mar 14, 2023 17:32
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Pham Nuwen posted:I understand that sometimes a flash rule just doesn't tickle your pickle, so I'm throwing in a new option: I will take a Reroll please
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Mar 14, 2023 18:03
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Strange Cares posted:I will take a Reroll please EVERYBODY KNOWS poo poo'S hosed (week 199) you have 1400 words
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Mar 14, 2023 18:13
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Mar 14, 2023 22:48
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The Frontier Was Everywhere (week 457)
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Mar 14, 2023 22:52
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Judge Burps Week 551 My judgeposts are always late, I am very bad about this, I am sorry Mermaid by Violet_Sky The one where a girl gets a poor guy framed for murder This story suffered mostly from poor formatting. It needed line breaks in some places, maybe some italics in others. It also suffered from a bit of heavy-handedness. This poor hard-done-by guy who sends all his money home to a sick sister... it's a little much. Let him be a sap who just wanted a thrill of following a mob boss around and gets to ogle a cute girl before her major heel turn. That would be better than giving him a Tragic Backstory. A Tale of Two Guineas by Slightly Lions The one where brothers separated in childhood become two different kinds of pirate This one ranked the highest for me, because I am addicted to Vibes and this had excellent Vibes. It didn't have a lot else, though, and was plagued by formatting issues as well. Turns out google docs will sometimes put two spaces in between paragraphs when you copy and paste it over. That has happened to me a couple times. As for the story itself, it telegraphed where it was going and then it got there. I liked where it went, personally, but the other judges felt differently. Chinook Run by Pham Nuwen The one where some farm guys just want to go fishing but wind up in a cave possessed(?) by some awful wendigo thing This was creepy but confusing, and the confusion knocked it out of the running. I think it needed focus, the slice-of-life was interrupted so abruptly by the supernatural that each detracted from one another rather than enhancing the story. I'd love to read an edited version though, because I think there's good bones here. Seance by Strange Cares The one where Houdini busts some fake seance-havers This was funny but it didn't go anywhere, and in the end I didn't feel bad that their business got broken up or satisfied that it got broken up. The prose quality was good, I'll give you that. Disgusting, but good. Baudry's Bandits by FlippinPageman The one where some revolutionaries invent the free bus This one made me mad because it's such a dope concept that didn't go anywhere. It feels like a bad introduction to an extremely cool roleplaying game. Everything that matters happens after they get the carriage, that's the meat of it, their backstories are only interesting because of that, and all we get is backstory. But I do really want to run this as a one-shot, for real. Knowing Your Place by rohan The one where the wives of sailors take vengeance on the bullshit landlords who are ruining them. This had a strong sense of place, time, and character and deserved the win. Jewels in the Dark by Bad Seafood The one where a twin gets revenge for her brother's death Good action, good buildup, good use of your wordcount. I liked Gabriella's plan and I liked her decision in the moment to discard her monologue and just go for revenge. I think clarifying and emphasizing exactly when she got shot would have made the ending a little less confusing, I had to go back and read it a few times to pinpoint that moment.
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Mar 14, 2023 23:10
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thunderdome winner
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Judge Burps Week 553 For more details ask in the discord! Windfall by FlippinPageman The one where a pair of escaped prisoners(?) help some alien-robots(?) do farming This was a strong start to a strong week. I loved the weird, wind-powered maybe-robots. I liked that you had the human drama running in the background, but didn't let it overpower the heart of the story, which is making sure that Reggie and company stay together and are able to keep working on the farm. The Green Zone by Slightly Lions The one where a cyberpunk gardener uses his knowledge of permaculture principles to escape from some bad actors At first I wasn't sure if I liked the way you just listed off the principles of permaculture throughout the story, it felt a bit like pandering. But it wound up not detracting from the story you told, and it gave me a glimpse of the character and what he cared about. I like cyberpunk, I like permaculture, I like the idea of composting your enemies, and I liked this story. In the Oak-lot by Pham Nuwen The one where a nasty little goblin helps a truffle farmer and his hogs do away with some poachers This story was absolutely charming, especially for a story that involves hogs killing and eating some guys. You set the scene well and the little bit of supernatural didn't detract from the natural. Good stuff. lamb by derp The one where a guy on the autism spectrum goes to a farm to relax and sees a lamb being slaughtered I kind of liked the weird, herky-jerky formatting, but I'm just not sure what to make of this story. It was unsettling, and I get that it was meant to be. The narrator was slightly unpleasant, and I get that he was meant to be. In the end, it was a competent-if-weird story that just didn't land right for me, so it gets a no-mention. Sharing Economy by rohan The one where a girl helps out at her first farmer's market This was good. I liked this. I liked the city-slicker shock at the concept of a sharing economy, the discomfort with raw meat, the bad pun of “muttoncard,” and the vague unease about the entire experience. What I didn't get was the line ‘We’re not … we’re not only here for my parent’s mid-life crisis.’ I suspect that you deleted some stuff to get in under the word count, and that information didn't make it in. Leave the Edges by Chairchucker The one where a border patrol agent deals with a racist coworker Sorry, Chairchucker, this one just kind of overegged the pudding. While guys like Tom are absolutely out there, this wound up reading like a “everyone clapped” style takedown post. It might have been better served with just a little less obvious moral black-and-white. The First Bite by Thranguy The one where a man trades apples for kisses I liked this more than the other judges did, because I am a romantic and a sap, but I'm also the head judge so my romantic sappery wins. I think the combination of this kind of magical concept of a family of handsome sons that always just exists to trade apples for kisses, and the technobabble of genetic manipulation to get an apple that tastes a specific way works. The core of that idea saved this story. Prey by Windward Away The one where a nice person saves a praying mantis from a bird. Writing from the pov of the mantis was cool, but I think it just didn't land. In a week of extremely strong stories it just wound up being the weakest.
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Mar 14, 2023 23:37
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Crits for Week 553 Happy to expand on any of these in the discord The First Bite This felt like a kind of lit-magazine story that I’ve seen a few dozen times. My own distaste for this particular story phenotype aside, it’s well constructed and tightly written, and the apples conceit is an engine with which to write lyrical sentences, which I appreciate. I like the sentence, “Rain like I was Noah sliding down my slicks, so as I could barely see a thing, and the creek looked like a river.” Ultimately though, the literalization of the central metaphor didn’t make this feel fresh enough for me to enjoy the story as a whole. Sharing Economy This story is very sweet, and feels drawn from life. I swear I’ve met the Muttoncard guy, that’s a real sort of person and sort of well-worn joke they’d make. The dialogue is warm and draws you in, even if it is a bit clunky in places. I think that this scene would really elevate a larger piece, but on its own is a bit too thin to take the prize. The protagonist is a thin clear sheet through which we see this world, I would have liked to see more going on with her. But it did make me smile, so well done there. lamb Points for trying something with the formatting, but more points off for the formatting getting in the way of the story. While you’ve inserted gaps for readability sake, it doesn’t do anything that isn’t present in the text. I encourage you to explore stylistic choices that are fun rather than punishing for the reader the next time you tackle stream-of-consciousness. On the upside, I got a strong sense of the personality of the central character and you capture the prejudice with which a lot of city-dwellers view the countryside. Some nice moments of prose in there too - I liked your use of italicized emphasis within the text, it added a lot to the voice of the narrator. tl:dr -- Get out of your own way. Prey Making a bug your point of view character is a strong choice, but you didn’t pair that strong choice with the follow-through needed to make it work. The prose style is more in line with an omniscient narrator and you don’t really capture what it would feel like to operate at that scale, or within the thought processes of a preying mantis. That’d be fine, if not ideal, if you did more with the plot. If you paired both plot and viewpoint together, oh man, what this story could be. This is a ball of promising clay with which you have made a lumpy ashtray. Take a bigger risk next time, an interesting failure is better than a boring success. The Green Zone Dune-rear end motherfucker. I liked this piece a lot. There’s a core story with some stakes and an interesting world that you clearly enjoyed thinking about a lot. You could integrate the worldbuilding a bit better with the rest of the story, this piece sometimes felt like a skein of thread connecting paragraphs of infodump, and I had to read it twice to realize you’d set up the strangler vines earlier in the story. That important information gets lost in the center of the paragraph. I think if you brought the vines to the top of the first sentence and used a paragraph break after the anecdote about practicum it would have stood out better. Really that’s a note for the whole piece - think about how the structure of your paragraphs works with the information that you want to convey. Where would you pause if you were telling this story to an audience? Good story, I would read more if you wrote more. In the Oak-Lot Alright you got me with the little murderous goblin protecting the crops with his idiolectic speech. What a good little guy. What a wonderful fellow. Another variation on the ancient theme of ‘treat fair with the fair folk and they may treat you well in turn,’ but it manages to feel fresh to me. Your prose moves at a good pace and uses detail to evoke images of farm life without getting bogged down by description. This story was mega-solid, with good pacing and characterization, a meaty central conflict, and a giant pig named Big Chungus (if you read Stephen King’s On Writing, this last one is vital to storytelling). Great job, great story. Windfall I am a sucker for a strandbeest and I don’t care who knows it. Sentient wind-driven robots working on a farm is such a charming conceit, and I liked getting to watch them and see them go about their day. The POV character was kind of flat and the ‘noble robber on the run from a job gone bad’ would have been more interesting to me if they had been more contemptible or pathetic. It was hard to follow at times because of all the names and because some of those names were similar to each other. I think the premise could have some legs if you wanted to expand it and chew on the whole dynamic. Leave the Edges Real preachy, a real obvious moral of "jerks who claim to be christian don't even know the bible." This was competently written but also who cares? These fictional people that you made up aren’t interesting enough for me to care about their moral discussions. It felt like you wanted to dunk on someone for being a hypocrite and this story was just a vehicle for that. Strange Cares fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Mar 15, 2023 |
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Mar 15, 2023 00:39
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Mar 16, 2023 11:00
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Dead or Alive (week 64)
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Mar 16, 2023 16:30
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We still need one more judge!
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Mar 16, 2023 16:32
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Step up and judge if you haven't before, you don't need permission.
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Mar 16, 2023 21:08
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sebmojo posted:Step up and judge if you haven't before, you don't need permission.
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Mar 16, 2023 23:24
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requesting a re-roll
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Mar 18, 2023 07:37
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rohan posted:requesting a re-roll Magic of Bronze and Stone (week 304)
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Mar 18, 2023 08:19
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ENTRIES CLOSED
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Mar 18, 2023 08:20
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 to sign up next week
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Mar 18, 2023 14:06
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Pirates! 1760 words Constructed atop, around, and within itself, the city’s angles and surfaces broke and rose an effortless and ever-evolving Möbius knot of cement and steel and glass and wiring, weaving a mesh that collected the lost, disappeared or disappearing, in a clot at the sieve where the districts tossed what they could no longer exploit. The metropole’s tangled fingers spread outward through the mountains, dwindling into the forest at such depths that sinking was simpler than, often preferable to, abandoning. So bodies remained. All roads out, it seemed, eventually led through their curves and meandering again inward and downward. Staying un-anything, a flickering shadow cast behind the hollow sockets of dead buildings, was easy in that sprawl. The census just made rough guesses anymore. Sunlight crept in through a lattice of rust-eaten steel and Magna’s eyes wrapped around the patchwork of another day. The chipped bronze hands of the analog clock, crooked on the sloped gas tank above them, said noon or near enough, so they rolled off the mattress, dodging vengeful springs in the slow push to waking. In a shattered rear view, they wiped the crust from their eyes and their nostrils and the corners of their mouth, studying how their hair faded its pink back to amber. Content with it all, they crawled out from their hollow beneath heaped cars into a junkyard heaped past full, blanched to dusty gray beneath the day’s blue expanse, all of it abandoned decades ago by the zoning department, left to chip and decay and sink another inch whenever the rains came. Scrambling atop a taller mound, Magna pointed their phone up, sweat already refreshing last night’s layer of grime in the day’s brutish heat, Swarms of doves dotted the sky in disintegrating clouds, migrating outward from the delivery center north of the yard, but Magna’s scans picked up no armed protection for the helpless birds. It was hunting weather. A rifle reported in the distance. A drone popped above. Phone plotting out the trajectory of its spiraling descent, Magna scrambled down in a cloud of clumsy dust, following beeps and intuition full-speed through the networks of passageways their size gave them access to, brash through warehouses and carefully through the broken glass of emptied storefronts, down through dry socket sewers and out into collapsed basements, scrambling up junked stairwells and across debris resting forgotten in the forgotten district. Taking crow’s nest in what had once housed a factory, Magna surveyed the dropsite: a notched lot between the backs of buildings, more an accident of the alleyways that fed it than a space itself. The shot had landed true, opened one of the bird's twin motors to the air, its dying propulsion softening the crash enough that Magna saw only a few dents in the package left stories below. Their phone was still, picked up no beacons whirring distress to the SOSes–shoot-on-sight security. It seemed then as clean a kill as any. Magna waited. Magna waited. Anyone capable of that clean a shot, they reckoned, wouldn’t be wandering around looking for the bird in slack-jawed “aw shucks” bewilderment. Even then, these things happened. A security detail maybe picked them up en route, or someone was hunting for the simple thrill of the sport, suburban kids racing fast cars down to where patrols didn’t patrol, far from their own green and manicured backyards from which they could offend powerful neighbors. Even the locals had gotten into the habit of dropping drones as practice or defiance, no intention of plucking their prey. The birds made good targets for the Blackbeards and the Robin Hoods alike, and some hunters would spend afternoons clearing the skyline without ever wandering near the existential threats orbiting the dropsites. Explanations existed. That did not mean Magna had to like them. They set their phone to scan for human life at a range the battery couldn’t support for long. Dragging a squawking bench to the window, Magna waited, sitting legs crossed, hunched forward, forearms over knees, heart settling until three dots pinged their screen. Sixty yards, give or take. Leisurely advancing in weaving skips. Definitely not SOS. They fired a message to a few friends who hunted the area: “out and about?” The dots paused. “36 x ironworks? that’s us.” Lennox, Wetherington, Rufus. Reassuring. “coming up on the alley now. how we looking.” Magna gave the all clear and watched through the pane of grease. Lennox, as usual, led. He was the youngest of them all by a year, but also the tallest and the widest by a head and an arm. Aside from a few scraggly locs held back with a weighted hoop, he’d shaved himself all but bald since Magna last saw him. Wetherington was second, average in every possible way, as though he had been allowed to design himself and hadn't diversified from shooting. Rufus, flouncy bob tickling the collar of a grease-stained overshirt, ripped sleeves flaunted the bulk of vascular musculature, brought up the rear. When Magna wasn’t around, she played spotter. All of the time, though, she tinkered, made sure that everything they needed worked and would continue to work. Lennox stopped in the alley below, though his chest’s imperious puffing-out seemed to take one extra step. Despite his youth, his size fingered him as the one that had to answer to authority, and he had, consciously or not, taken to inflating himself into the role. He tucked his head, disconnecting from the graffitied walls, the dumpsters, the broken glass, the abandoned car's burned-out husk. Magna tapped fingers to thigh, counting down. At zero, Lennox looked up, sun glancing across his brow, and opened his eyes wide above a wide and closed smile. “Caught you,” he mouthed. Jesucristo. Kid would have made it far SOSing. Magna pried the window open against dulled fingernails, waving down and shouting beyond the tumbling, drifting, clacking waterfall of paint chips, “Why’d you take so long?” “Why you just waiting? Carrion-rear end,” Wetherington rasped back. Lennos, with his officious air of vaulted and holy disconnect, crouched over the drone, hooking a finger into the blown-out shell where the motor once whirred to lift it from the dust and asphalt. He turned to Rufus for a conversation Magna had heard enough times to summarize what details the humid distance muffled: how’s it look, asks Lennox. Get it flying in no time, says Rufus. Let’s get to it, says Lennox. Wetherington wandered, as always, idly kicking oil cans between snapping his rifle to practice targets that existed only in his imagination. The open alley was an echo chamber and boomed Lennox’s voice. “Coming down?” “Meet up at the street if it’s anything good.” “Uh huh. Weren’t your bird.” Wetherington tapped his rifle over his shoulder, shaking his head. “I spotted for you kids. You’re just the gun.” “A rifle and a gun,” he thrust his hips. Magna held one middle finger high, spat accurately enough that it almost caught him. “If you shot that good, your scrawny rear end maybe be useful.” “Children. Children.” Handing the drone’s husk off to Rufus, who wandered away investigating her new toy, Lennox turned his attention to the shipping package, bouncing it back and forth between his hands, checking the distribution of weight, mass, within. From Magna’s view, it seemed light, either frivolous or extremely lucrative, but Lennox’s eyebrows arched as he examined the delivery label. He glanced back up to Magna with a curious grin before slipping the boxcutter from his belt and pointing it into the tape. Elevated though they were, Magna went rear end to concrete when the light pierced out. The sound came only as shockwave. Haloed in shattered glass, all full of nothing. A light without source or destination. A body adrift from body, thrumming only the district’s own dilapidated rhythm. Magna floated in that space, an ocean abyss absent all but a void which itself lacked boundaries or particulars. The world pulsing at their peripheries, Magna was not dead but contorted, host to the humming self-important suffocating negation of sound, and slowly realizing that lack of death, they sat upright, lightly decorated with glass shards and splinters from which trickled thin beads of warmth, rolling balls of hands against the aching in their back before perching, head through the gnarled mouth that moments before had framed a window. Char blackened the first few stories of the building opposite. The alley’s once-recognizable waste scattered ashen in the scorched radius where Magna’s friends had stood. Nothing noteworthy was left of Lennox. Wetherington’s rifle had embedded itself below Wetherington’s slumped head. The red leaked free around him. One of his arms, the endless possibilities that a gun within it offered, was gone. Simply gone. A trail of blood and black moved along the edges and Magna followed it to Rufus, scorched and leaking, either blown free or crawled to collapse against a squat set of steps below a door blasted from its hinges. Inhaling only when conscious of the hollow inside their lungs, Magna stared, marking three empty bodies until Rufus’s arm shot forward, gripping at the door frame. She tried to pull herself up, but her leg gave and slammed her to an angle that let Magna study it: what had seemed intact was not, was a thigh and a shin with no knee to connect their functions. She reached up again, clumsy fingers failing to grip, and tumbled to what remained of her side. Sirens swam through the concrete clotting Magna’s hearing. Not cops, not city. It was the trochaic wailing of the SOSes. Rufus pivoted, her eyes rising from the soot to meet Magna’s, to linger for a moment in silence, in confusion. And Magna fled, tearing over boxes and bags and overturned shelves and tools between them and the stairwell, down, tossing their body diagonal over railings to cut corners between flights of stairs, vision pumping tight nodes, spiderwebs of flashing lights that pulsed at every wall they rebounded from on their spree down, down into the sewers through caved-in bricks, out the way they came in, without the caution that buoyed them through the years, fleeing the constant whir, the two quick pops that punctuated it, and then fleeing the silence that flooded into the wake and beyond, into communities paved over and left to crumble, snagging on rebar used as ladders, leaving flecks of skin on the rough concrete in the tunnels used to construct the strata of the behemoth above, into unmapped darknesses where no life flourished, past where sound or light could chase them, Magna, Magna, Magna fled.
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Mar 18, 2023 15:41
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Since we have a few new participants writing this week... Hello! I'm one of the friendly neighborhood TD archivists and it's super helpful to us when you post your flash rules at the top of your story. It might look something like this: This is the Title of my Awesome Story 6969 words Flash: Man Agonizes Over Potatoes (Week 1) Here is my awesome story that's so good and perfectly edited it. No typos here, etc. It can vary. You may find it useful to post your prompt at the end of the story. That's fine too! If you forget it, no worries. Don't edit your post! Add another post listing the flash and saying which story it goes along with. Thanks much! Love your work. a friendly penguin fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Mar 18, 2023 |
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Mar 18, 2023 19:50
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Prompt: Reusing title Pirates! (week 372) Goes with Pirates! above. my bad!
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Mar 18, 2023 20:04
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Only A Week Away 1772 words prompt: What a Horrible Week to Have a Curse (week 343) "I've come to the conclusion that we're cursed," Chen grumbled. "Your curse is being a smart-rear end who can't help doing things the wrong way. My curse is being your friend." To be fair to him, I had relied on some pretty gross emotional manipulation to get him to come out with me. A week-long round trip to the Kuiper Belt for automated scans is a hard sell, but the alternative of complete solitude made remorse an even more difficult ask. "Look, I'm going to make it up to you. I said I would, and I will, and then you'll remember that you love me." Growing up together, I’d learned myriad ways of handling Chen. He's an inflexible guy, and it turns out that inflexibility can be manipulable. If I were a monster I'd say part of Chen enjoyed being manipulated, but he was just so socially selective that his loyalty would allow for all kinds of annoyances. "Besides, it's not my fault. You know how feckless these grant requirements can be. I've gathered more than enough data to support our theses but because I'm competent, I did it in far fewer trips than the administration pricks predicted and so in order to 'do good science'," flailing my arms as wildly as the confines would allow, "We have to fly all the way out here and run meaningless scans and waste some fuel. I'm very much not the rear end in a top hat here." "You're the one in the ship with me, so as far as I'm aware, that makes you the rear end in a top hat. The only rear end in a top hat." I shrugged, and he retorted, "Omega rear end in a top hat." "I do not like Omega rear end in a top hat." Without looking, I could tell he was shaking his head. "You could have doctored your flight data, your scan logs, over the last few trips. You should have realized that you weren't going to meet the minima." I’d done a poor job of managing Chen's mood these last couple days. The Archaios is cramped. Small in-system research vessels don't cater to frivolity and fun. Generally, the work has a stupefying effect. Looking out and seeing Neptune on one side and on the other an unimaginably vast field of debris is, literally, awe-inspiring. There was also the typical benefit of being on the frontier of science. Fortunately we'd be heading back to the station in an hour or so. I tried one last ditch effort to lift Chen’s mood. In an awful British Science-Presenter voice I began, "It IS believe-d that the Kie-pur Belt contains moh than one trillion comet nyu-clei." Chen was stone-faced. "Tha' is nearleh as many cavite's as ah found in Bri'ish mouths each yeah." Looking back up at Chen I saw him grimace, but I decided I found a hint of a smirk before he suggested we start preparing for the return trip. Chen was warming up the engines and plotting while I went through the checklist for saving the gratuitous data and securing everything. "You ever think about how when we were little it’d take like a decade for NASA to send a satellite out this far?" Chen was tapping at his console, and softly replied, "If we were doing this back then I’d have killed you." "But then you'd go to Hell, Chen. You'd burn forever for killing one of God's Children, Chen." Chen's family were, relative to most people, pretty religious. I knew he wasn't a genuine believer, though he did appreciate the ritualism and faux sense of community it provided. "I think a decade alone in a spaceship I could probably pray my way back into Purgatory, bare minimum. Domine miserare mei and all that." As I was about to retort he added, “Shut up a second.” Chen activated the recording for our departure. "This is Archaios, date two-oh-five-five, oh four, twenty one. Flight-time, one-two-nine hours, twenty-seven minutes... mark. Departing Research Point two-seven-alpha-three for return to Al-Sufi station. Archaios out." "Strapped in?" Chen asked. I raised my hand and provided a confirmation with my middle finger directly in his field of view. "Okay. Engine's warm, and we are go." In the silence we heard each other brace for the punch, our seats squeaking in anticipation. "Did you miss the button? Probably labeled as 'go' or 'vroom'." "I hit the button. Panel says... ignition good, there's flow in the fuel lines." "How could the engines be running without us experiencing any force, Chen? Obviously the engines aren't running." Ignoring me, Chen brought up the feed of one of the external cameras. It slowly crept across the hull until the stern was in sight. Clearly visible against the empty blackness was the blue-purple haze of the engines. My skin tingled and I felt a wave of cold as we sat there, burning billions of atoms into bits and yet accomplishing nothing. Chen helpfully pointed out: "That's not possible." Looking up to see if any of the backup diagnostic panels on the ceiling could reveal anything, I saw it. In no time it filled the window over our seats. A miasma of dark purple waves, cresting into extremely thin lines of yellow white electric foam. Then Chen saw it too, and it started slowly filling up the forward screen. It must have been kilometers across. It just kept going, its rear nowhere in sight. The rolling purple miasma made it impossible to determine its surface or shape. Then, as if it were held within a galactic elastic, it snapped forward, towards the center of the solar system. The next instant, we were crunched hard into our seats. Eventually we realized that momentum had caught up with us, and we were in fact moving. Chen reacted and throttled down the engines so that we could gather ourselves. "What was that?" Chen said. It wasn't a question as much as a statement of dumbfounded wonder. Straining awkwardly against the straps to face him I asked, "How the gently caress should I know? You think I forgot to reveal to you that I'm an expert in alie– holy poo poo. That was definitely an alien ship wasn't it?" "Probably." After a moment of silence he added, "Should we file a report? That seems like, the kind of thing you do in these scenarios." "I guess that's – Yeah, okay," I stumbled while Chen tapped away. "Wait, you noticed how fast that thing shot off, right?" He exhaled an exasperated affirmation. "It'll take three odd hours for anybody home to receive a transmission from out here. That thing is... maybe that thing's faster than light?" If something as wide as Manhattan could fling itself away from us and escape our sight in only a couple seconds, it seemed ridiculous to limit the possibilities to things we understood. "It held us here." he whispered. "What, to get a head start?" "No. Who knows if it even noticed us, maybe it thought we were just another rock. Think about how fast it shot off. It's probably manipulating space around it." "And we got caught in whatever fields it generates to do the manipulation for itself," I said. Despite sounding insane, it felt like it made sense. "Right. And now it's heading towards the center of the system at faster than light speed," he said, seemingly devoid of judgment on the implications of this fact. "There are a lot of things that I like in that direction. Most of them, to be honest." Chen punched the engines back to full. A few hours into the two day trip we were receiving transmissions. Evidently it was decided to cast a wide spread of messages for the coming object. We didn't pay much attention to them. We were more interested in what They would say. Abruptly the shotgun blast of signals ceased transmission, and shortly after a different spread was being emitted by the object. Across the spectrum were dozens of languages and dialects thereof, all presumably stating the same message: DO NOT FEAR. WE HAVE RETURNED TO OUR CHILDREN. WE KNOW YOU WILL BE WARY, BUT YOU WILL FIND US BENEVOLENT AND LOVING. OUR FLOCK IS TO BE BROUGHT BACK TOGETHER, FOLDED IN. THOUGH THESE MANY EONS YOU HAVE BEEN SEPARATED NOW YOU SHALL BE RESTORED. WE WILL BE MADE WHOLE. MANY IN YOUR TIME HAVE SPOKEN OF US, SOME GIFTED HAVE EVEN COME TO KNOW US THROUGH CHANNELS YOU STILL CANNOT COMPREHEND. THEY HAD THEIR OWN NAMES, BUT THEIR COMMONALITY WAS OUR LOVE. PROPHETS, GODS, MESSIAHS. ALL WILL BE EXPLAINED AND UNDERSTOOD, BUT WE MUST LEAVE. WE ARE RETURNING TO OUR HOME, AND YOU MUST DECIDE FOR YOURSELVES WHETHER YOU WILL COME WITH US, OR STAY HERE. THOSE WHO STAY WILL BE LEFT ALONE, AND THEY WILL NEVER KNOW OTHERS, FOR THERE ARE NONE. YOU WILL BE ALONE, UNTIL THE END OF ALL THINGS. WE WILL SHARE THAT WHICH YOU CAN UNDERSTAND: WHERE WE ARE HEADED, WHY WE PLANTED YOU HERE. THOSE WHO WISH TO JOIN WILL WANT FOR NOTHING. WE WILL PROVIDE. WE DEPART IN 48 HOURS. We saw news feeds from Earth. Images from Al-Sufi showed an unimaginably large rectangular prism, a channel through its center running the entire length. Somehow it was projecting imagery and maps and information of all kinds over the atmosphere. Apparently it was also flooding the internet with more information still. Over only a few hours a general consensus settled in. These aliens, originating millions of years ago, foresaw the infinite expansion of the universe. They failed to find advanced life anywhere, and given the timescale, realized that none other would flourish by the time everything got too far apart to matter. They began a project, seeding thousands of star systems with life, allowing them to grow on their own, so that eventually everyone could be brought back together to exist in some sort of semi-physical reality for eternity. At some point the next day, people started disappearing. Apparently, it was able to somehow distinguish people who had agreed to go, and they were being scooped out of reality. I couldn't reach my parents. Still a few hours out, I asked Chen, "Any word from your family?" "No." We finished our deceleration and came upon Al-Sufi. The ship was gone. Almost no one was broadcasting anything. Only a couple news outlets were still operating. Social media sites were practically dead besides the bots. Nearly everyone had to have gone. We missed it. Silence settled on us for a few minutes. I had no idea what to do. My stomach felt like it was full of rocks, my chest was heavy, I felt like crying. Completely dead, Chen quietly let out: "I guess we'll always have each other."
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Mar 19, 2023 01:28
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A secret is something you tell one other person Riven 1490 words Captain Dasha Leonova drummed her fingers on the unresponsive control panel and stared at the stars through the ship’s curved front window, scrupulously ignoring the yawning void to her immediate left. On her right was the letterbox, which had materialised in the middle of the co-pilot’s seat the same day the interdimensional rift had sheared off half the ship. Co-pilot Samantha Morrell had locked herself in her cabin, saying she couldn’t bear the thought of what would have happened if she’d been in her seat when they’d hit the rift. Dasha gave the letterbox a kick. It was a tall, red cylinder with an embossed crown on its door. It rang hollowly in the silent ship, and the door creaked open an inch. A shiver ran over Dasha’s close-cropped scalp. She wanted to run screaming from the bridge, but if she turned around she’d see the void, and she didn’t want to do that, not under any circumstances. She pursed her lips, and forced a heavy sigh out through her nose. She stretched her arm out towards the letterbox. Her fingers trembled. This sign of weakness from her own body made Captain Dasha so angry that she almost yanked the letterbox door clean off its rusty hinges. Inside was a single postcard. The image on the front made Dasha’s breath stop in her throat. A picturesque castle rose behind a dark green forest. Dasha had visited the castle a thousand times in her imagination. It was near Michi’s home village, and he used to tell her about it when they were both soldiers, lying awake together, sick with pre-deployment nerves. Michi would describe the castle to her in elaborate detail - most of it invented, Dasha was sure - until she could believe she was somewhere else, and fall asleep. Dasha could feel the void pressing against her back. The air in the bridge felt thick; it was hard to breathe. The memory of acrid smoke prickled in the back of her nose, and tears welled in Dasha’s eyes. Michi had never made it home from the war. Dasha hadn’t gone to his funeral. She knew that blaming herself was clichéd, but she couldn’t face his family, regardless. Instead she taken a fast track to civilian captaincy, and run right back to space. Dasha’s hand was shaking again. She turned the postcard over. Michi’s blocky handwriting stared back at her. Dasha sunk to the floor. Tears spilled from her eyes and ran into her hair as she lay back flat on the hard floor. From this angle she could see straight past the remaining half of the bridge’s ceiling. Dasha stared out into the vast array of stars. She instinctively searched for the familiar shape of her home galaxy, even knowing that it was long since lost from view. It had been Michi would had persuaded her to go off-world in the first place. He said you never knew what you’d find, way out in the deep. Dasha wished she could tell him about this. I love you, was all the postcard said. *** Becca found Sal standing completely naked on the lip of where the engine bay used to be. Before her was the infinity of space, and in Sal’s left and right hands were her mechanics overalls and a sock, respectively. Becca’s heart began to thump uncomfortably fast. “Becca, look at this!” said Sal. Her pupils were very wide and the ends of her long red-brown hair looked burnt. Sal tossed the sock out into space. When it crossed the point immediately above where the ship’s metal floor abruptly ended it went zzzt, and disappeared. “Neat,” said Becca, in the calmest tone she could manage. She was suddenly very cold. “Sal, why don’t you come back over here?” She held out one hand. Her other, behind her back, gripped the door frame. Sal shook her head, and began to feed her overalls to the void. They sizzled like the end of a lit sparkler, except instead of bright magnesium flames the trouser legs fizzed with black sparks that Becca could only see because they occluded the stars behind. Sal took a step forward, the remaining overall fabric gathered in her arms like an offering. Her toes, with their chipped orange polish, were almost at the edge of the floor. Becca felt as though the world was tilting, like the floor might suddenly lift up and tip Sal out into space. She had a sudden, vivid recollection of the bear hug Sal had given her when she’d first joined the crew. She had thought about that hug a lot in the months since. With absolute certainty, she knew she wanted those arms around her again now. Becca let go of the door frame. Two steps out into the truncated engine room and the whole of the void opened to her. Becca’s eyes went wide. She could feel the metal floor beneath her feet but she wasn’t confident that if she turned around the corridor she’d stepped from would still be there. She began to hyperventilate. Sal was two more steps in front of her. The overalls were gone. Sal had her hands stretched out, and the tips of her fingers were starting to sizzle-- “Sal, look!” Becca yanked off her uniform jacket and hurled it with all her might into the wall of stars. It went zzzt, and disappeared. “Pffft,” said Becca. She wanted to see it again, so she unbuttoned her shirt, wriggled her arms out of the sleeves, and lobbed it after the jacket. “Ha!” said Sal. She stepped back from the edge, turned her back to the void and offered Becca a high five. But Becca was preoccupied. She took her bra off and fed that to the rift as well. Her right sneaker she pulled half off by standing on the heel with the toe of the left, then she loosed it into the rift like she was kicking a winning goal. “Becca!” Sal grabbed Becca’s upper arm as Becca undid her belt. Sal looked towards the warm light spilling from the corridor, and began to pull Becca towards it. Becca laughed, kicking her legs to shuck off her pants. She was sweating now, the cold replaced by a burning heat. Becca was worried Sal would get burnt too, so she twisted and wriggled out from the other woman’s grasp. The stars were all around her, and they were beautiful. Becca ran, and Sal screamed. *** The void was seeping into Samantha Morrell’s cabin. It was was spreading along the seam between the walls and the floor, so that a thin line of stars was visible where the skirting should be. Samantha was sitting on her bed, hugging her knees. The void had nearly reached the door. Once that happened Samantha wouldn’t be able to leave the cabin without… what? Jumping over it? She squeezed her eyes shut, the corners of her mouth tugging down. Behind her eyelids, Samantha saw the green on black screen of her co-pilot’s terminal. The curser blinked next to the coordinates she’d entered. The coordinates that had sent them straight into the rift. And now she was hiding in her goddamned cabin because she’d nearly been killed by an anomalous letterbox. Samantha opened her eyes. There were stars where most of her floor should be. Her bed was rapidly becoming an island. Samantha looked desperately at the door, willing someone to come rescue her. The ship was totally silent. You are a coward, she told herself. This was your fault. Go fix it. The problem was, Samantha had no idea how. She was totally out of her depth. The rest of the crew were all more experienced that her. She was sure the found her presence on the ship a burden. Samantha hugged her knees a little tighter. The void was eating away her walls. A vast green-blue nebula was visible through the hole where her closet had been. “Captain…?” Samantha tried to call out, but her voice came out as little more than a whisper. She shivered, and took a deep breath, forcing herself to try again. Samantha froze. A scream rang out from somewhere in the ship. She wasn’t sure whose voice it was. She looked at the door, at the thin slice of floor that still remained in front of it. Warm light from the corridor beyond was visible beneath the door. Samantha released her knees, and rose unsteadily to her feet. She wobbled on the soft mattress, had to put her hands down for balance. Her heart thudded in her chest, but she made herself stay on her feet. She assessed the distance to the door, trying not to look at the galaxies below. She thought about the workarounds she could try, assuming her terminal was still responsive. She had to find the person who had screamed. She had to go. Samantha Morrell took a deep breath, and jumped.
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Mar 19, 2023 10:22
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#lunaIRC.moonlighters 900 words Prompt: Strange Logs (week 179) lungulate (420grazeit@marecrisium.net.luna) has joined #moonlighters <lungulate> right so which of you wankers released *lions* into mare crisium?!? <lungulate> youse all know how hard it’s been getting the zebra pop stable and im p sure that poo poo comes out *my* o2 ration *solar_pride shrugs. <solar_pride> Could have been anybody. <regolith||groundpoundin> sounds like a u problem tbqh, just put up a fence lmao <lungulate> not funny rocksucker, you havent seen them jump <Albedo> Yeah, Lun’s right. I ‘cri-see’ why she won’t take this ‘lion’ down… *regolith||groundpoundin sighs *lungulate sighs *solar_pride sighs. <regolith||groundpoundin> jfc alb get a life <Albedo> Isn’t that what we’re all doing? lungulate quit (time to print a big fuckoff gun) <solar_pride> She’s joking, right? <solar_pride> Right??? ### Albedo (humoroushumus@new_horizons.org.luna) has joined #moonlighters <Albedo> Reg, do me a favour? <regolith||o2crackin> depends <Albedo> Could you see your way to maybe not destroying my lichen? I’m trying to build a soil profile for the entire southern hemisphere. <regolith||o2crackin> ur lichen? <regolith||o2crackin> theyre in my quarry u clown <Albedo> Okay… I just think it sort of defeats the point of what we’re doing here if you’re going to feed it all into a crusher. <regolith||o2crackin> aye sure ill just shut this down and we can all asphyxiate precisely 6.32 sols later lmao <regolith||o2crackin> take it up with solar added loads of big mouthbreathers without asking anyone pride <lungulate> dont worry, im *working* on that *solar_pride smacks their head off the desk. <solar_pride> Reg, mate, that DM was in confidence. <Albedo> We all knew it was you. <solar_pride> Apex predators are a critical part of a balanced ecosystem! <solar_pride> And as God is my witness, have you seen them run in low grav? *lungulate is now known as lungulate-has-a-magrifle <lungulate-has-a-magrifle> i will soon <regolith||o2crackin> drat lol <solar_pride> Lungulate if you touch so much as a hair of their glorious flowing manes… <lungulate-has-a-magrifle> <<< try me bitch <solar_pride> Oh I will. <Albedo> Take it to DMs, you two. I had to flush my entire cache after last time. <lungulate-has-a-magrifle> prude <regolith||o2crackin> anyway alb heres my offer <regolith||o2crackin> ill shift the outflow pipes and blow ur spores away from my site <regolith||o2crackin> but u need to let me do my thing down here ok or this whole shebang goes up in a lack of flames <regolith||o2crackin> because no oxygen <Albedo> I guess that’s fair. But I’m still not ‘lichen’ where this is going. lungulate-has-a-magrifle quit (no) solar_pride quit (booo) regolith||o2crackin quit (u did that on purpose) ### <Albedo> Lovely breeze this morning. solar_pride (halunamatata@leo.co.luna) has joined #moonlighters <solar_pride> LICHEN??? solar_pride quit (connection lost) <regolith||windmakin> u lichen deez nuts lol <Albedo> Bit lowbrow, but I respect the effort. solar_pride (halunamatata@leo.co.luna) has joined #moonlighters <solar_pride> WHY IS IT GROWING ALL OVER MY TRANSMITTER, ALBEDO. <lungulate> your capslock too looks like <regolith||windmakin> just scrape it off <solar_pride> Says the dude who literally invented atmospheric circulation to get rid of it. solar_pride quit (connection lost) <regolith||windmakin> ok nobody grass on me <Albedo> I haven’t sown so much as one blade of it in months mate. <regolith||windmakin> thats not what that means u tube <lungulate> he knows *regolith||windmakin facepalms solar_pride (halunamatata@leo.co.luna) has joined #moonlighters solar_pride quit (connection lost) solar_pride (halunamatata@leo.co.luna) has joined #moonlighters <solar_pride> This sucks. <Albedo> That’s just not true. It’s high quality stuff, Earth make. <Albedo> You might say it’s the real ‘upper crust’ of lichen. <solar_pride> Listen here you standup comedy washout solar_pride quit (connection lost) ### regolith||nitrofixin (bawjaws@oxygen_nation.net.luna) has joined #moonlighters <regolith||nitrofixin> did i just hear a gun go off <regolith||nitrofixin> nice <solar_pride> HOW is that ‘nice’? <regolith||nitrofixin> sufficient atmo density pal <solar_pride> So very glad your priorities are set correctly. <regolith||nitrofixin> ty ty yw <lungulate> keep posting nerds, im reloading <Albedo> What’s your tally? <lungulate> fukken *none*, canny bastards wont stop jumping <Albedo> I guess life really does find a way. <Albedo> To not get shot on the Moon by a magrifle. <solar_pride> Okay Lun, you win. Everyone, I’m sorry I released the lions without asking. Got a bit carried away. <solar_pride> But please let me just come tranquillise most of them? And leave a few in-place at your discretion? Otherwise you’ll end up having to shoot a lot of zebra later. <lungulate> … <lungulate> fine <lungulate> but im doing the tranqing <solar_pride> How about we do it together? <solar_pride> Been a while since we hung out… <lungulate> ok tho if any of them go for us i reserve the right to light em up like gods arsehole <solar_pride> Agreed. <Albedo> Awww. That’s sweet. <regolith||nitrofixin> dinnae spoil the moment u eejit ### <lungulate> not sure these baobabs look right <lungulate> https://marecrisium.net.luna/mypics/work/wtfisthis.png <Albedo> No kidding. Looks like trees in this gravity grow real weird. <solar_pride> At least they made it past the ‘get eaten by out-of-control zebra’ phase, huh? FANCY THAT. <lungulate> yeah yeah ok sure fine <solar_pride> <3 <regolith||cloudseedin> i like it tbh <regolith||cloudseedin> proper ancient horror from before the dawn vibes <Albedo> Yeah. Almost Lovecruftian. <Albedo> *Lovecraftian. <regolith||cloudseedin> THIS MF SAID LOVECRUFTIAN <solar_pride> LOVECRUFTIAN <lungulate> LOVECRUFTIAN regolith||cloudseedin has changed the channel topic: ‘ALMOST LOVECRUFTIAN’ <Albedo> Oh I see how it is.
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Mar 19, 2023 11:04
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I Don't Know Which One To Shoot: An Abdiwahab Warsame Mystery 1256 words Abdiwahab Warsame liked to play his pacing off as the odd quirk of a genius detective, but in reality, he just wasn't capable of standing still. As he wandered, his bulging eyes remained fixed on the suspect, a man identical in appearance and temperament to the bloodied victim, if just a tad fatter. "If you're a clone who killed your original, we can walk you to the termination room now. If you're the original, the deceased is technically your property and thus yours to kill. So, are you the original Mr. Smith or not?" "Of course I am," said Smith. He was a bearded, bespectacled man dressed in thrift-store tweed. How could this guy afford a clone? Warsame's neural-scan monocle covertly displayed LIE - CONFIDENCE: 85%, AVERAGE SEVERITY: 32%. Almost certainly a lie, but with–a grain of truth? Warsame pushed further. "Why did you kill him?" "No real reason. I was getting tired of him." TRUTH VALUE UNCLEAR He's good, Warsame thought. He knows I can detect his lies, so he deals in half-truths. "Warsame, come talk to me for a second," came a voice through Warsame's earpiece. "Hold up," said Warsame. "Am I free to go?" said Smith. "Extremely no," said Warsame, and left the room, soon finding himself in the police station office. "What is it, Nok?" he said to his assistant. Did you finish your scan of Smith's residence?" "Yeah," said Nok. "And we found this." She displayed a picture of strange machine with two wiry antennas." "Huh," said Warsame. "Is that what I think it is?" "If what you think it is is a memory integrator, then yeah," said Nok. A memory integrator was extremely illegal and even extremelier rare. "Have you hacked the user logs? When's the last time it was used?" said Warsame. "And who was the recipient, the alive one or the dead one?" "That's the thing," said Nok. "It's been in use every day by both Samuel Smiths." "You're telling me that…" "...that they've been downloading each other's memories every day, yeah." This was unheard of. Clones were usually for labor, a copy one could send into the office while the original hung out at home. A normal person would simply install a standard rebellion queller, but neither Smith showed any trace of one, or the standard-issue under-arm bar code. "Right," said Warsame. He stormed back into the interrogation room. "Why and how the hell do you have a memory integrator?" Smith hesitated. NEXT STATEMENT LIKELY LIE reads the monocle, as though Warsame needed the heads-up. "If my clone got sick, the memory integrator would let me get caught up on whatever he was working on." "Do I have to remind you that we're conducting neural–" "I don't know what your monocle is saying, all I know is that I'm telling the truth." LIE - CONFIDENCE: >99%, AVERAGE SEVERITY: 95%. "I've got something new for you," said Nok over the earpiece. "Sending it to the monocle now." Warsame scanned the new photos: anti-cloning social media posts from Smith, Smith's face in a crowd of protesters holding a sign blaring CLONE LABOR IS SLAVE LABOR. "You're a middle school gym teacher," said Warsame. "Hardly the salary of someone who can afford a clone, and certainly not the salary of someone who would so quickly dispose of one." "Perhaps I was stepping above my station when I…" "Almighty Allah, just stop," said Warsame, ripping the monocle away from his eye. "I don't even need this thing, it's so obvious that you're bullshitting me. Anyone could tell by looking at your plaid vest that you're an anti-clone lefty, and that's before we look at your internet footprint. So tell me, right now: why do you have a clone?" Smith hesitated again, but this time, Warsame could sense sincerity. Against his mobile nature, he sat across from the suspect, hoping that a cooler temperature could expose honesty. "My clone was, um, a gift," said Smith. "My dad, let's just say he and I don't really see eye to eye when it comes to politics. Took one of my baby teeth and a recent neural scan, whipped up a me, gave it to me for my birthday hoping that having a slave of my own would turn me away from Marx." "And it didn't?" "No, I was appalled. Got the rebellion queller removed immediately, spent my savings on the memory integrator. I was not going to use this person as a tool, he was going to have as full a life as mine. I promise you, though, I am the original…" "I don't know about that," said Warsame. "And I don't think you do either. Either way, why did you kill him?" Smith cleared his throat. "I–I tried to make things absolutely equal for us, but things still ended up different. We were supposed to alternate work days, but then I'd integrate his memories, and I'd remember plotting against me. Planning to gaslight me into thinking that I had been the one to stay home the day before, to make me think it was my turn to work. And then, I found myself getting tired. Not, like existentially exhausted, just the natural fatigue of someone who works every day. And I knew that no matter how many memories I had playing video games and eating junk food, I knew I was still the one doing all the work." Such a good advocate of clone's rights, Warsame thought. Up until it was inconvenient. "Am I free to go?" said Smith. "I'm not proud of what I had to do–of what I did, but by the law, it was in my rights." "I suppose it was," said Warsame. "Wait here while I get the paperwork." He stood up, but as he needed the door, he spun around. "Why are you almost thirty pounds heavier than the dead Smith?" said Warsame. "What?" said Smith. "You're the one who's been doing all the work, while he stayed home, right? Eating, ahem, 'junk food.'" Warsame's pacing increased in pace. Smith's eyes betrayed a flicker of horror. "You know, Mr. Smith's corpse was awfully skinny. I can imagine a man that skinny being tired all the time. You're not the Smith that felt tired every day. You just remember feeling him tired every day. And you got so paranoid about the plans and plots against yourself you had contacted, that you killed him." "He was going to do the same to me!" shouted Smith. "Of course he was," said Warsame. "When I asked you if you were the original Mr. Smith, you told me you were, and the monocle told me that was a lie. But the honest answer wasn't no, was it? It was 'I don't know. How long has it been since you've just forgotten who was the original and who was the clone?" "I'm not the clone!" yelled Smith. "I don't know that. I don't think any of us will ever know that. And because of that, it will be impossible to press charges. I guess you're free to go." As Warsame made the walk to the copier to pick up the release paperwork, he passed by the station's clone termination room. How many clones had he brought there himself? Did it matter–did it ever matter–whether they had been clones or not? He shrugged off the guilt. It was never his job to care.
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Mar 19, 2023 19:35
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The Virtual Partner Experience Words: 840 Prompt: Ships Passing in the Night (week 315) Every morning I log on to the Internet and shed my useless physical form for a while. Here on the internet we can be our true selves. For some that meant they could be their preferred gender. Others prefer to be anthropomorphic animals. As for me, I prefer to be able-bodied. On the Internet no one has to see my disgusting body practically rotting away from disuse. In the real world, I’m a leech, a sponge, a bloated whale carcass. Online, however, I’m still a nobody but at least I have a chance at love and romance. My avatar, or more accurately, my true self, walks into the main shopping plaza. Passing by an ad for various dildos shaped like animal dicks, I enter a store called The Partner Experience. In this store, you pay with virtual currency to have a date (or more) with a virtual partner. It’s the only way people like me ever get laid. I pay the 150 virtuabucks, choose my scenario, and enter. The world briefly dissolves and goes black. I find myself inside of a horse drawn carriage. The red plush seats match the red interior. A handsome man sits by the window, his dark hair styled in a way that reminds me of Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid. His gentle green eyes gaze warmly at me. “Did you have a good nap, babe? You looked so cute while sleeping.” He takes my hand and gently brings it to his lips, a beautiful smile crossing his face afterwards. “I slept well.” I say softly. I woke up much better than I usually do anyway, not surrounded by the cold mechanical bars of my hospital bed as a caretaker comes in to clean me up and dress me in my day clothes. Here at least, they pretend to care about me as a person. “We’re almost to the lake. Soon we’ll have our picnic.” He gazes out the window wistfully. “The day’s almost as perfect as you.” I’m only perfect because this avatar is designed to hide my numerous flaws. The real me is weak and inferior. The virtual me is not. “Aww, thank you,” I reply, “You always know just what to say!” Because you’re just a program designed to whisk users like me away to a better reality. One where they can forget about all their problems and live in their ultimate daydreams. The carriage rolls along through the bright sunny forest as birds chirp their little songs seemingly in time to the hooves clip clopping across the dirt paths. It feels calm and peaceful. I know that back in the real world my room must be hot and sticky. Here the temperature seems perfect. Why would you need to sweat or be too cold in a dream world after all? If only I could live in this world forever and abandon my fleshsuit for good. At least in the virtual world, I’m treated with love and affection rather than just a warm hole to fill or a job creator. Soon the carriage stops and we stop at a beautiful sparkling lake next to a gorgeous log cabin. The coachman nods as we gather our things. My prince holds the door open for me as I step out, taking advantage of the fact that I have working legs. He smiles a winning smile at me and for a moment I feel at peace. I’m no longer inadequate damaged goods. I’m a human being. The prince and I walk around for a bit, with him pointing out the various flora and fauna of the kingdom. Flowers in various colors wave around in the wind while birds sing their songs of joy and mating. All I can do is take your arm and smile. How are you so perfect? Why are people in real life so inferior compared to you? Finally we get to a spot surrounded by wildflowers. My prince lays out a blanket and helps me to sit down, kissing my hand as he does so. He opens the lid and brings out an impressive spread of sandwiches, meats, and cheeses. He pours us some wine as well. I know these foods won’t ever physically nourish me. But it's nice to pretend. It’s certainly better than the mushy barely edible food that gets served to me back in the real world. “Your beauty is beyond compare.” My prince says, a smile always on his perfect face. Why can’t this dream just continue on forever? I’d love to rule the kingdom with him by my side. We could take vacations to this little cottage by the lake. He could save me from my nightmares. However, all dreams must come to an end. We finish ‘eating’ the food and lie back on the blanket looking up at the blue sky. The scene fades away and I head out of the store, looking to do virtual work in this virtual world so I can experience my dreams once again.
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Mar 19, 2023 23:19
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Loose Wires 1783 words Prompt: MYSTERY SOLVING TEENS The issue with generation ships is that you can’t escape your family. Well, ours isn’t a real-deal generation ship, just a 25-year one, but that feels like forever when you’re 16 years old and were born here, like me. For settlement ships like this, they like to send whole family networks: aunts, uncles, cousins, close family friends, their cousins, etc. This apparently softens the blow of it being a one-way trip from Earth, but it also means that everyone knows and, worse, has a stake in everyone else’s business. Like a small town on steroids, my dad jokes. It also makes finding a girlfriend who’s not related to you really difficult. Luckily, I’d found Jade, the daughter of one of my aunt’s partner’s godparents. She and I were sitting in the starboard aft airlock, listening to music from a speaker she’d recently patched into the wall. On a spaceship, it’s also hard to find a private place to skip school to do some kissing. As long as it wasn’t listed on the maintenance schedule, no one would bother us. “Earth to Maggie,” Jade said, and I stopped munching the cookie I’d taken from the cafeteria. “What are you thinking about?” “Just that it’s seven whole years before we can get off this stupid ship,” I said. I thought about that a lot. “Yeah, we’ll be adults, with jobs and everything. You thought about what you want to do?” I made a face. Everyone knew Jade was going to be a hotshot engineer like her mom, but I had no such talents. “Hey, don’t worry about it.” Jade put her arm around me. “You don’t have to decide until we get to Ganymede.” “I know,” I sighed, turning to her. Our faces were very close and we started making out. A sharp bump on the outside of the spaceside airlock door jolted us apart. Jade hastily turned off the music as I looked through the porthole. “I thought you said no one was doing outside repairs this week!” I whispered to her. “They aren’t,” she hissed back. Another bump, electromagnets on the ship’s hull, proved her wrong. A faint beep of buttons being pressed on the outside. Whoever it was, they were coming inside. We scrambled out of the inner airlock door, and I pushed us into a nearby closet, full of hanging spacesuits. “Don’t you want to see who it is?” I asked. “We’re gonna get a really good view, since they’re going to put away their suit here,” she said angrily. Oh, right. We peeked out as the door opened, and Jade gasped. “Mom?” Mrs. Solari, looking worried, walked away in her custom-fit spacesuit. Lucky break. On our way back to school, I said, “You’ll have to ask her what she was doing. Maybe there’s a secret maintenance schedule we need to know about.” “And tell her that we’re meeting up in the airlock?” Jade retorted. “I’ll be grounded for a month!” I didn’t want that, but I also wanted to know what was going on. On the ship, being first to know a secret like this was a real treat. “Fine. Let’s meet up again on Thursday and see what happens.” # Sure enough, the next time we skipped class, we could see Jade’s mom outside the ship, poking away at some sensor array on the hull. “What’s that thing?” I whispered, though there was no way her mom could hear us through the vacuum of space. She didn’t know, so we went to the library. In the middle of the day, the terminals were quiet. Mr. Tindal, my uncle’s brother-in-law, immediately asked us if we needed help. “Yeah, where can we find the schematics for the ship?” I said. “It’s for a school project.” Mr. Tindal frowned. “Those are on the “operations” terminal, but that’s restricted. You sure you need it?” “We could just look at it for a minute,” I said, adding my most winning smile. “No copying it to our personals.” Mr. Tindal muttered something about owing Uncle Enzo a favor and opened up the terminal. Complex diagrams flashed on-screen and Jade leaned in close. With a few taps, she zoomed into the right part of the ship, then gave me a startled look as she zoomed back out. “Awesome, thanks Mr. Tindal!” I said as she dragged me away. “What is it?” I was dying to know, but Jade didn’t respond until we ducked into an empty lab room. “It’s the planetary receiver,” she said. I tried to remember what that was. “Come on Maggie, we learned about this last year! It receives a special signal from Ganymede, or at least it’s supposed to.” “Right! Oh, it’s broken now?” Jade glared at me. “So that means … something happened to Ganymede? Like an asteroid?” Jade looked alarmed. “No! Well, maybe. The main thing it does is help the ship navigate to Ganymede.” “So we’re lost.” Jade nodded, relieved that I’d finally caught up. “poo poo,” I said. That was an understatement. Even a small error in navigation could add years to the journey time. Worse, the ship would have to go under Martial Law to conserve resources. Martial Law normally existed as a threat to kids wolfing down a third helping at dinner (“you’re going to put us in Martial Law at this rate, Tommy!”) but it was no joke. Sure, the ship would survive for 100 years, but there’d be no more no more desserts, hot showers, or school to skip. “That’s why Mom’s trying to fix it off the books,” Jade said. “Everyone would know if it were official.” “Yeah, they’d freak out,” I said. “What can we do?” Jade just shrugged. # That evening, I was savoring each bite of dinner when Dad said, “Uncle Enzo said Mr. Tindal saw you and Jade in the library today working on some project for school. Sounds interesting.” He meant it as a casual conversation starter, but I choked on my broccoli. “Didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said. “It’s nothing!” I said. Mom looked up from her mashed potatoes. “I thought it was a school project?” she said suspiciously. She thought I didn’t take school seriously enough. “No, I mean, we looked at the diagrams but we couldn’t understand them,” I said. “Isn’t Jade’s mom the chief engineer?” Dad said. “I’m sure she could help you guys.” “She’s been very busy lately,” Mom, who was an engine technician, warned. I tried not to roll my eyes. “Good idea, Dad, we’ll ask her tomorrow,” I said to end the conversation. Dad grinned, happy to have solved my problem. Annoyingly, by the morning I decided he was right. I floated the idea with Jade during math class and managed to convince her by lunch. We found Mrs. Solari working on the planetary receiver in her private mechanic’s shop. Blue, green, and purple-pink striped wires splayed out in every direction from the central dish. She didn’t look happy to see us, especially when I asked, “Hey, isn’t that the planetary receiver?” “How do you know that?” I looked at Jade, who looked sheepish. “Looks broken,” I said, “That’s bad, right?” Mrs. Solari sighed. “I don’t know how you girls found out about this, but you need to keep it a secret for a little longer, okay?” “You’re going to fix it, right?” Jade said. “There’s nothing to fix, that’s the problem. Central Command has given me until tomorrow to figure it out, then we’re going into Martial Law until we get an alternative navigation system online.” She glared at us, reminding me of Jade. “I did not tell you that.” As she returned to the receiver, we wandered out of the shop. “Tomorrow?” Jade said blankly. “This sucks,” I said. Then, “Let’s get some snacks and hang out in the airlock. You know, while we can.” # We sat in the airlock, eating chips and cookies, listening to music, and just being together. Our plan had been to hide away some of the snacks for Martial Law, when they’d be delicious illegal contraband, but as the hours ticked by, I could see we wouldn’t have any left. Neither of us were in the mood for kissing. Finally, we had to go. Jade pulled open the wall panel to retrieve her speaker. Inside, I could see a tangle of red, yellow, and purple-pink striped wires. “Wait a sec, was the speaker connected to that one?” I pointed to the striped wire. “Yeah? The speaker doesn’t draw much power, though,” Jade said. “But that’s the same one as the planetary receiver! Maybe the speaker was interfering with it somehow.” Jade chewed her lip. “Maybe.” “Call your mom, let’s see if it works now.” When Jade hesitated, I said, “Martial Law’s tomorrow, it’s worth a shot.” Jade pinged her on her personal, but got no response. “She turns it off when she’s focusing,” she said worriedly. “Oh, I know!” I pinged my own mom. “Hi! Can you ask Mrs. Solari to meet me and Jade in the right aft airlock?” “Why are you in the airlock?!” “Please, it’s important. Tell her it’s about her deadline tonight.” Mom grumbled, but ten minutes later, Mrs. Solari arrived, scowling at us. “Why are you two in the airlock? It’s very dangerous!” “I know, but look! Isn’t this the wire to the planetary receiver?” “One of them, yes, but I tested that wire when I reinstalled this afternoon.” “Try the receiver now,” I implored. Mrs. Solari dialed into the device from her personal, and her frown relaxed into amazement as pings began to come through. “What– how–?” I saw Jade hide the speaker behind her back, her face bright red. “Yeah, uh, I saw it was loose in there,” I pointed at the hole in the wall, “so I fixed it. I’m glad it works now!” Mrs. Solari rubbed her temples. “But I checked the terminals, you could’ve … just don’t mess with any electronics in the future. Got it?” I nodded. She hurried out to tell Central Command, but said over her shoulder, “Jade, you’re grounded for a month for hanging out in the airlock, you should know better.” We groaned, but knew we’d gotten off easily. # Within a few days, everyone on the ship had heard that the navigation had gone down temporarily, adding about three days to the journey time. Thanks to us, the news was only mild gossip rather than a full-blown emergency. While we didn’t get any public credit, Jade let me know how much she appreciated my quick thinking during the study sessions that had replaced our hang-out sessions, so I didn’t mind. Besides, it was fun having a real secret all to ourselves.
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Mar 20, 2023 01:46
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The Even Chance 1798 words Prompt: Degenerate Gamblers It’s not really a sound, but it’s deafening. It isn’t a light, but it’s blinding. Every part of me is compressed and expanded at the same time, the view of Jupiter outside dissolves into unnameable non-colors as the ekpyrotic chamber tears the fabric of the universe apart around itself in a miniature Big Bang, puncturing space-time and depositing us in the liminal space of the Planck brane. Sound and light filter through the chamber windows: alarms, shrieks, clattering glass, flashing strobes in many colors, a violent cacophony. The brass-and-hardwood doors slide open and we step out onto the casino floor. I take a drink from a cocktail waitress with the willowy build of one raised in micro-gravity, flipping her a chip from the case of them I bought at the transfer station on Titan. It's a Saturnian Fizz, made with a nice distillation from Ganymede; they only have the best at the Even Chance. I join the general flow heading towards the gaming area. I’m surrounded by the cosmopolitan creme of the System: a voluptuous Earthling glides past me in a dress made of hardlight and vapor, a pantherman from the gene-colonies of Ceres peels off to play higher-dimensional roulette, a Martian vintner in a suit the color of his products flirts with an Ionian in the sober wool-and-mail couture of an entanglement broker. And at the end of every aisle, tucked between rows of slot machines and game tables upholstered in Bayes-space are the sinister pairs that keep the peace: the Bouncers, corded with vat-grown muscle and chromed augmentation, and the Technicians with their heavy black gloves and faceless mirror-masks. I shiver as one of them looks at me, my face distorted in the surface of the mask like a funhouse mirror. I finish my drink and park myself in front of a slot machine. I can feel the continuity of seven centuries of gamblers as I pull the bandit’s single arm and the mind inside calculates my odds with ruthless, uncompromising precision. The Even Chance is built in the liminal space between dimensions, a Planck brane lying above the quantum foam, free from the unpredictability of entanglement and no-clone principles; it’s a realm of pure, mathematical expression. Management bills it as the first truly fair gambling house in all creation. If there are any gambler-gods to hear your prayers elsewhere in the System they aren’t welcome at the Chance. Here it’s just you and the math, and math is a cruel mistress. Millions of souls have spent billions of units of dozens of currencies over the decades, all of them convinced that their luck is due to turn around, that they have an unbeatable system, and they’re always wrong. I don’t have a perfect system. I’m just going to cheat. I throw a few more tokens down the black hole of the slot machine. Filthy things, they are, naked Skinner boxes designed to suck in wealth from the dopamine deficient clods who can’t calculate odds. Urban legend among the System’s gamblers say that the Chance powers its machines with the disembodied minds of welchers, troublemakers, and cheats, that the Technicians have upload boxes built into their gloves. I’m pretty sure that Management started that rumor to keep incidents down. I finish my turn on the machine with an affected scowl; it’s important to seem like a real schmuck right off the bat. Disgruntled gamblers don’t attract much attention, if they did then no one would have time for anything else in here. I’ve been running scams for years all over the System from the Velvet Hall orbiting Venus to Arcadia on Oberon and there are certain ways that every casino manager thinks, blind spots that they can’t see past. The perennial loser hopping from game to game is foremost among those, in my experience. So I spend a few hours and a few thousand chips gliding from one table to another. Four and five dimensional roulette, pazaak, major league cockfights, no-limit no-prescience Hold ‘em, I hit them all and gleefully lose. After a fine dinner of steak au poivre and a bold Chateau-neuf from the Mariner Valley I move on to the main event. Accession is a game of kings. Not literally of course, the System hasn’t had a king since the fall of the Lunarchate, but if we still did they’d play Accession. It’s a game of chance, skill, and wit, where bluffing and calculation must be blended with intuition and a certain wild flair. It is a game where one can take one’s true measure against all comers, and everyone knows it’s quite impossible to cheat. I pull up to the table as a new game is about to start. I recognize the Earthling woman from the chamber I came in on; we’re joined by a tall, muscular woman with the heavy tattoos of the Pallas ship-wright’s guild, a Venusian whose face is hidden behind their breathing mask, and an uplifted ape from the Lunar colonies. The dealer places a fist-sized nugget of computronium in the table’s receiver; there’s a humming and a sharp scent of ozone as the powerful minds in the table turn the computronium into a new Accession deck. Each deck is bespoke and procedurally generated, created for the game in question and then destroyed afterwards, returned to its proto-matter state. There can be up to ten suits and five dozen trumps, the goal being to assemble hands of particular values and symbolisms. It takes a long time to learn and is generally considered impossible to master. It is the only thing in this world that I truly love. But love doesn’t pay the bills and I have three ex-wives, a bar tab, and a bookie that rely on me. Accession is like chess, there are several phases to a full game. The early game is simple enough, we spend half a dozen hands learning what’s in the deck and how we each play. The ape-man, Ronald, is a safe player, he doesn’t chase and he doesn’t bluff. He folds the first two hands before he sees a five and six of stars in the turn and runs up the pot with a Star-and-Cloud flush. The Guildswoman, Sophia, is erratic, chasing broken straights and clumsy allegories. The Venusian is hard to read behind the mask, but they tap their foot whenever a flop goes their way. But the Earthling woman, Ming, is a genius. She plays with the speed and grace of knife-fighter, and just as much mercy. On a table full of deeps cards she clumsily bluffs the Kraken, only to reveal it when she gets called by the Venusian. Brilliant. If I was planning to play an honest game I’d be in trouble. If I wasn’t done with romance I’d propose. The mid-game is all about jockeying for position and hammering on weaknesses. I bait Sophia with a false tell and a few thrown hands before gutting her chip stack with a double-straight. Ming cleans out the Venusian after a few rounds of extravagant play. Ming and I pass the chip lead back and forth with Ronald holding a steady third as Sophia slowly bleeds out her last reserves. We break before the turn to the late game for a snack and a round of drinks. I refresh myself with spinach puffs and the best attempt at a Deimos Incident I’ve had this side of the Belt. I order a second to steady my nerves. We’ll be coming back to the late-game, a phase of big moves, bold bets, and grand reversals. It’s coming time for me to make my move. The Even Chance is devilishly hard to use modern cheating methods in. Its separation from the quantum makes many of the basic elements of the cheater’s panoply useless: q-folders, foam scrapers, Schrodinger Boxes, and Bell states are all so much junk once you’re in the ekpyrotic chamber. There are alternatives, of course. But the Technicians are always on the lookout for new iterations of Von Neumann spoofs, anti-Bayesian logic suites, and ad-hoc crypto-engines. But like I said, you have to find blindspots to stand in. I’ve found that a casino focused on preventing high-tech shenanigans will overlook more mundane techniques. Up my sleeve is a micro-maker and a wafer of computronium ready to be programmed into a Accession card of my choosing. All it takes is some elementary sleight-of-hand to swap cards at the right moment and I can walk out of here with a payday that will keep me liquid for the foreseeable future. We’ve played enough that I think I have the layout of the deck memorized. It’s all about choosing the moment now. A few hands later I have it. Sophia’s been chasing a flush that just busted when the last table card failed to come up swords. Ronald and Ming are both betting heavily. He must have something decent, he hasn’t bluffed all game. Ming I’m not sure about. The pot’s ballooning and I’m carrying the knights of hearts and clouds in the pocket. With a minor effort of will I send a thought to the maker in my sleeve and it reprints its payload into a copy of the High King. I haven’t seen it on the table yet, so it should be safe. With that, the two knights in my hand, and the three sword cards in play I have a round table. It’s one of the three best hands in the game. The odds that Ming or Ronald have the full consortium or splendid panoply needed to beat it are astronomical. I raise my hand to cover a cough and with a practiced motion swap out the three of deeps for the King. I smile and raise when the bet comes back around. One by one we reveal our hands. Sophia, as expected, has nothing but a few swords. Ronald surprises me: he WAS bluffing. Didn’t know he had it in him. And then comes Ming. She turns up her cards: the knight of pentacles, the knight of stars, and the High King. It might be my imagination, but I think I can feel my heart stop. I mumble about folding and try to excuse myself; the game’s a bust but maybe I can still make it out of here with my shirt. A black-gloved hand settles on my shoulder and forces me back into my seat. “Patron,” says a voice echoing from a mirror-finished mask, “please turn over your cards.” I laugh until I cry. *** There’s a new slot machine by the door of the ekpyrotic transfer chamber today. The regulars have been taking their turns with it, as they do with all new games. But no matter how many of them try it, it spitefully refuses to pay out.
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Mar 20, 2023 02:32
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Tomorrow's News 1373 words Prompt: EVERYBODY KNOWS poo poo'S hosed (week 199) “CLOUDS OF ASH STILL BLOCKING 60% OF LIGHT SPECTRUM” “HORDES OF RAVENING CANNIBALS CONTINUE MARCH WEST” “RADLORD PEACE TALKS FAIL AGAIN” The Editor-in-Chief slammed our articles onto his desk. “No one wants to read about this crap again!” The small slug-like creature he held in his mouth gave a brief shriek as he lit it with an old Zippo. The Chief glared at us through a cloud of billowing pink smoke, the veins around his implants throbbing a staccato tarantella. “You think this horsedick is gonna sell paper? This ain’t news! This is the same half-reheated corpse-cock you’ve been bringing me for weeks! People don't come to us to be told what they already know! They want something new! Something to keep them going as they do the math on which kid to eat first. And we’re here to take their mind off how little Timmy tastes! So get out there and find me some loving news!” “Uh, sir?” A trembling hand raised. Pomporkus Malloy, that was the kid’s name. Cub reporter. Good kid, but then, he hadn’t been here long enough to know better. His adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a bowling ball on a seesaw. “What about continuity of coverage? Don’t we have a responsibility to keep the public informed?” I winced. Poor stupid bastard. “The public?!” The Chief grabbed Pomporkus by the neck and started squeezing. “The only responsibility I’ve got is to keep this place running!” He punched his hand into the kid’s stomach and yanked out something wet and pulsing. Then he turned and threw him neck-first through the window. I heard a horse bellow in surprise. The veteran reporters in the room didn't twitch. We all remembered our defenestrations. Have to buy the kid a drink later, assuming he managed to hit something soft. And sterile. The Chief took a big bite out of the kid’s formerly internal organ. “The rest a’ you! What are you standing around for?! Get out there and get me a story, or by Christ’s big wet dick I’ll make you one!” He slammed the door shut behind us. We exchanged glances, Lampo Duggins, Cheerwine Smith and I, old dogs sniffing each other’s tails to see who’ll poo poo first. Lampo was the one getting paper trained today. He gave us each a quick nod, then grabbed her hat off the hook by the door and beat feet down the stairs. Cheerwine and I took a more leisurely approach. We’d been rivals a long while, me and Cheerwine. She and I’d started out around the same time and sharpened our teeth against each other’s necks, desperate to stay ahead of the rest of the pack. We’d come to an understanding over the years, or maybe we’d mellowed with age, but either way we were the last two left from those days, gray tendrils showing in the mutations on our scalps. Eyes never leaving the other, we each went through the door, down the stairs, and backed out the alleyway in opposite directions. Same routine as always. I straightened my lucky bolo tie, the little skull the cords ran through dripping its vitriol onto my vest as I made my way through the city. New Virginia was built on the side of a mountain, buildings arrayed like so many terraces atop another. Once I was out of the line of sight of the office, I rode a ladder to the next street down, then squeezed through a hole in the buildings where the shingled roofs sagged together, holding each other up like ancient drunks at a wake. I found myself in the cool damp space between the walls, a labyrinth opening up in the ground before me. Time to visit my lead. ------- I spent the next hour or so squeezing through the hollowed out husks of old silver veins. We’d cared about that silver enough to grind it up out of the earth and snort it down the nostrils of capital. Now it was just another series of empty tubes for the things that crawled beneath the earth to inhabit. One such subterranean nematode was a tolerable friend of mine. Skyler had made herself a nest in a corner of the old mine, where timbers stretched like spiderwebs to pry apart the walls. A glimmer in the darkness soon resolved itself as a lantern hanging from one such timber some yards above the floor, beneath which I presently came to stand. Skyler’s voice floated down to me from somewhere in the darkness. “To what do I owe the pleasure, Twark?’ I took out my notepad and charred fingerbone. “I hear that your flock is planning something big. Thought maybe I could cover it.” I poised the sharp black tip of the bone above a fresh page. “Ah, yes, our great project. I should have known that you’d be sniffing around after it. I’m afraid that I’ve already promised coverage rights on the matter.” “What? To who?” “A colleague of yours. You just missed him. Tall fellow. Polite.” Lampo. I stuffed my notepad and bone back in my duster pocket. “I see. My apologies for disturbing you, Miz Skyler.” “Not at all. A visit is always welcome. And if you should ever wish to join us...” The tunnel lit up for a scant moment, the ropes of living flesh that festooned the beams bioluminescing bright as day. “You know where to find me.” ------ The wan light of day aboveground told me it was gone noon. I leaned against the tentpole of Crazy Harg’s Fine Eels and watched the thinning crowd. Clearly Lampo had gotten the drop on me, digging up a lead I had believed well buried. I’d become complacent in that belief, and now I found myself paying the price. Harg asked if I’d be purchasing a ground-eel today or just holding up his tent. I dug out my last grimy chit and exchanged it for an eel-inna-bun, then pointed my steps toward the casino. I felt like gambling. ----- Cheerwine was perched on a stool on the balcony, watching the pits. She nodded appreciatively as a gobbet of flesh flew into the crowd. After a moment she deigned to notice me, her eyes never moving from the match below. “Twark.” “Cheerwine. You manage to find a lead yet?” Her face tightened enough for me to know I’d hit the mark. If she was raking the casino for muck then her usual pathways must have dried up. I pressed my luck. “That’s what I thought. We both know news these days is thin on the ground. ” “Sounds like you came up short on your friends underneath it.” “Lampo sniped them.” “He’s poaching your leads now too?” “Seems it.” “That leaves you up poo poo creek, don’t it.” “It might. But you’re up there with me. Maybe between the two of us we can grab a paddle.” “What if I’d prefer to see you drown than see myself ashore?” “Do you?” Cheerwine’s teeth flashed in a grin. “Not yet.” She watched as the blood in the circle below sank into the packed dirt, then ripped up her slip and met my eyes at last. “Throw in the bolo tie and you’ve got yourself a deal.” --------- The Chief glared at us over the top of our article. The man needed to learn a new expression. “The hell is this?” Cheerwine straightens her new bolo tie. “An expose, sir. On a public health hazard.” “And you pissholes wrote it together.” I stepped forward. “That’s right sir. I posed as a customer and he snuck into the stall to test the meats.” The Chief sat back and exhaled a long cloud of burning slug. “Alright. It’s not bad. Who woulda guessed that the city’s eel-supply had been replaced with sentient human fleshrope.” I hoped Skyler didn’t have a subscription down in the tunnels. It had been hard enough sourcing the fleshrope. I’d miss Lampo. “I’ll run it on page three.” “Page three!? That’s a front-pager!” “Shut your talk hole. The new kid landed the front page.” The Chief showed us the mock up. I read the headline.”Unlikely Animal Friends: You’ll Never Believe How This Horse and This Monitor Lizard Fell in Love.” “We’re calling it Human Interest.”
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Mar 20, 2023 02:52
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Flash: Magic of Bronze and Stone they in the burnt ship removed rohan fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2023 04:59
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