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In, flash
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Jun 14, 2023 11:56
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DigitalRaven posted:In and your characters are humans with crab claws instead of arms, and do not find this at all unusual.
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Jun 14, 2023 13:14
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for a hellrule
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Chernobyl Princess posted:In, flash Your flash is: A snowy village, but all the houses are empty.
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Jun 14, 2023 13:19
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in
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Jun 14, 2023 16:50
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i am in
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Jun 14, 2023 19:17
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In, flash
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Jun 14, 2023 21:33
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Thranguy posted:In, flash Your flash is: A college dorm during finals week.
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Jun 14, 2023 21:45
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Cephas posted:I think we still need a third judge for this week. Any bites? If so please post in Thunderdome proper. Thanks! 
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Jun 15, 2023 13:50
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in, flash please
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Jun 15, 2023 15:42
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crabrock posted:in, flash please Your flash is: The lonely gravestone of a hero from many years ago.
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Jun 15, 2023 16:18
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not feeling this prompt, somebody BRAWL ME
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Jun 15, 2023 16:37
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A crit of Proselytize My Child, of the Darkest Black by Flyerant. Overall: Wowee, I love this type of stuff. An extra-dimensional entity takes interest in, or is called upon by someone who may or may not have been a cultist. There appears to be the implication of sacrifice of self-destruction that piques this otherworldly being's interest. Resulting in it hopping across realities in pursuit. A very cool angle for a post-apocalyptic vignette. You handle existential and cosmic horror themes in a satisfactory way. Highlighting isolation, the yearning for connection and understanding, obsession and annihilation. Your usage of language seems appropriate and not overwrought for the tone/duration of the piece, and as a result I feel like the intent behind your words comes across clearly. The plot itself seems easy to follow. I don’t feel like there is any noticeable loss of clarity in what you’re trying to convey. I feel there are some slight conflicts with the nebulous relationship between the person/creature that attracted/called upon the entity, and only from the context of the entity expressing emotions that are comprehensible as completely human. On the flip side of that, it helps to solidify compatibility between the two. I have no suggestions for how I would have done it any differently though and I enjoyed it throughout. All in all, I felt like I wrote a less cool companion piece to this inadvertently haha. Neat to see the incidental inverse of my story in the same week lol.
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Jun 15, 2023 16:56
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In and flash!
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Jun 15, 2023 16:58
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Idle Amalgam posted:In and flash! Your flash is: An underwater cave with an air pocket, at the bottom of a murky black sea.
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Jun 15, 2023 17:25
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derp posted:not feeling this prompt, somebody BRAWL ME Why would anyone when this is how much effort you put into calling someone out? "Ohhh, please brawl me. Notice me senpai! uwu" I have no idea what that even means and I'm still gonna use it to mock you, because I know writers who understand what they write and they're all cowards. Like you. Let me put this in simple words so you'll understand: come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!
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Jun 15, 2023 17:52
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hell yeah, get ready to die (from reading my words) now someone judge us and etc
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Jun 15, 2023 17:55
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DigitalRaven posted:Why would anyone when this is how much effort you put into calling someone out? I volunteer to judge this mutual spilling of blood. BUMMERDOME derp vs DigitalRaven We're about to get a major dose of hope this week and I won't stand for it. Both of you must write stories that bum me the gently caress out, but no one in your story is allowed to die. There are worse things than death. 1000 words or less. Edit: Due 6/19 by end of day (whenever that is in your time zone) Beezus fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jun 15, 2023 |
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Jun 15, 2023 17:59
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In, flash me
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Jun 15, 2023 18:59
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Slightly Lions posted:In, flash me Your flash is: Aboard a train headed somewhere otherworldy.
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Jun 15, 2023 19:02
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CRITS FROM WEEK 566 Overall Thoughts There were a lot of very short stories, but not many actual vignettes.There was a distinct lack of eye-gougingly terrible words, especially for such a large number of entries, so you can all feel very proud. That did mean I had to get into the weeds to pick and chose, sniffing out those fatal flaws and revelling in those moments of joy, that would let me subtract or add points. Some of those may seem arbitrary and petty, which is me all over so /shruggo Many stories had a paragraph or two that went "The elders all talk of the bad times blah blah blah" which happened so often it became a bit of an anit-pattern. If yours did, maybe have a look and see if there was some other, perhaps environmental, way you could have imparted the information that was neccessary for the story. As well as assigning a score to help me keep track of relative merit, I also noted how many of the stories I could remember, from memory, just by their titles 24 hours later. If I couldn't, it might mean that your story wasn't memorable, or simply that your title wasn't particularly evocative. I include that result only to cause trouble and uncertainty. I am still in judgemode so have no idea who wrote what. Thousands have been reported missing I wasn't blown away by this. It seemed a little obvious. There were exactly two things that could happen stated at the beginning (Everyone/Grams is OK/Not OK) and at the end one of them did. But the details were evocative, and the words were competent, if occasionally cliche. 'Heart hammering' 'icy fingers creep' 'her lungs burned'. These can be useful shorthands, but I often find that if I recognise a common turn of phrase, then by rephrasing it I am actually making the story's voice more mine Score 5 Remembered: Yes In the garden Started off oddly - leaning out of a tent, using a spyglass, with a rifle in your lap. There's no mention of what she saw, just the weather which she presumably didn't need a spyglass for. Nothing much happens, buts that's OK because the point of the story is to show a point in time, the aftermath, when the Earth and its insects and plants have reclaimed their own. There's a gentle, subtle horror to eating fruit grown from the dead, storing it greedily for later, which gave the story a just-off-kilter enough perspective to make it interesting. Score 5.5 Remembered: No The line is all Enjoyable, primarily in the first part as we are discovering what's going on. There is a lot of fun detail here that is well described. However, it loses something when the scenario becomes more obvious in the second half and it becomes more substitution/jokey - I don't know if you needed all the prayer / catechism variants you include - perhaps our Priest's impression of the Line might have been a better finisher as he is forgotten by the end. Score: 6 The eye of the aftermath There's a strong sense of pain and despair shared here, in a stream of consciousness that the pain has focussed and I am there for it. It's gory, it's going slowly insane, and it's revelling in it. That excitement is contagious, even as the subject matter becomes more horrific. I do wonder how much nutrition there actually is in enamel, grass or bacteria, but hey - I haven't enjoyed bodily disintegration this much in a while, so I'll let it pass. Score 8 Remembered: No Footy on the brain Light, quirky and mildly pleasurable. Not a great deal of substance in this latest entrant in the 'poo poo's bonkers but we carry on in our typical dysfunction' genre. I usually prefer the bonkers element to at least be tangentially related to the dysfunction, for the purposes of metaphor, satire, or whatever, and I'm missing the link here, but bonus points for the super-cute approach to coming out, so swing and roundabouts, really. Score: 6 Remembered: No The Dance Boss of Disco City I may have saved this from a DM with my score thrust into Thranguy's algorithmic maw, so I should probably explain. Had this been a simple story about a town that had dance offs it would have been beyond lame. What redeemed it was the Dance Lords, ineffable alien overlords who will disappear you for not having dance-offs, losing dance-offs or not following their bizarre dance-off rules. Sometimes a detail like that sets off the other elements and catapults you from the bottom to the middle. /turns chair backwards and straddles it, hiply. "You know who else was the Lord of the Dance?" Score: 5.5 Remembered: Yes You are Mine Well observed and powerful. I very much liked the use of the title. Not quoting it at the end was absolutely the right decision, making the story itself loop like the circle of life it describes. It is, on the surface, a very simple story, with simple details that don't draw attention to their own artifice. It puts all its weight into the simple declaration that it finishes with, but it's a knowing punch that knocks your head sideways a little. Bloody good and one of my picks for the win. Score: 9 Remembered: Yes Proselytize my Child of the Darkest Black This is pretty f*ing metal. And works for me on a number of levels. I think one of my co-judges thought 'the visitor' was a suicidal goth and I can see that reading - but when I read it I took some sentences more literally and saw a mad astronaut, escaping the world, but seeking death, out of control and out of time - an inciting incident for a cosmic horror. The quest for that particular emotional colour is a nifty little conceit, and the failure to find it a nice segue into the visceral viscosity of grue. Making a cosmic horror a real protagonist and making them understandable is no small achievement and you've pulled it off. Score 8 Remembered: Yes The pack Gruesome and very well observed. The final image will stay with me. This was one that I thought was fully sitting in the middle until that final image elevates what has gone before - it's plausible, it makes sense, and it's just such a great image! I'm not a dog person, but the dog's behaviour seemed dog-like and not human, which is a plus. Nothing took me out of the story which delivered me like a frictionless slide toward that fabulous final moment. Well done! Score 8.5. Remembered: Yes Let us touch on the birds This was an exhortation to use a metaphor that didn't really work for me. Right near the start I think you might have wanted to say 'it is easy, now…to not think on the birds' but one of the words you used is wrong and it set the rest up for a fall. Some editing mistakes are unfortunately worse than others. Overall, as a piece, it came across as wandering and confused until the final paragraph which redeemed it a little by bringing things to a head, but I found it really hard to take seriously because 1) it's all a little hippy dippy didactic and 2) birds don't sing because they are bright eyed optimists. They sing because they are DTF. Score: 4 Remembered: Yes The women of Troy This was a good experiment (it falls dangerously near to fan-fiction territory - but, really, lit from over a millennium ago should probably get a pass regardless) . My problem was I didn't feel I learned anything that wasn't superficial or covered elsewhere about the many characters mentioned. They were collectively worried about being taken as war-brides, sure, but so far, as you note, they treated moderately well in the aftermath, so their potential fate loses some of its potential power as they sit around baking and grieving. While it is nice to see a story namecheck Hecuba and her daughters and pay some attention to them, I didn't feel that you had done enough with them (considering you didn't have to go through the effort of inventing them or their backstory) to warrant much of a score. Score 4 Remembered: Yes Though I fear I still walk I liked the central conceit but the implementation left me a little cold. Perhaps telling the story in first person would have made it more personal. It seems weird that in a story about a magician, learning about magic, no actual spell is cast. Instead we get what seems like a checklist for a story to come - A failed suicide by magic, check A distant place to visit, check, some monsters(ghosts) in the way, check, a schoolgirl crush, check. Focussing on any one (or two in juxtaposition) of those would be a good use of 500 words, but here none are given room to breathe and the overall effect ends up seeming glossed over and superficial. Score: 4 Remembered: No It's all about the timing This is a quite well implemented bait and switch. The joke is suitably old that the audience is half worried you actually think it's funny, and gets new life when its repurposing is revealed. I don't know if the final line is necessary at all, surely Gerald (or whoever) the Grasshopper is a completely different type of joke or maybe I am failing to pick something up. "I'll work on that" is also a little weak and mutant birds in the chimney - do they really need their own code? Do they speak english?). I can't help but think you need an actual punchline here as a coup de grace, rather than the beginning of another joke. Score: 6. Remembered: Yes A Thousand Flowers This is is an honest and mature piece, sentiment leavened with enough grim reality that it doesn't come across as mawkish. 'The words of an honest coward' is a great phrase to finish with. There's a lot to like here. Perhaps the apocalypse is a little too far in the background - it doesn't play into the scene overly, and if you removed it, likely no one would notice, but it's not that big of a deal as the rest of the piece is strong. Score: 8 Remembered: No Occupational Safety and Health: While I am on the record as worshipping the worms that feast upon my soul, this seemed a little disconnected. It trod an uneasy path between humour and horror and didn't really land on either. Why were they still on a construction site during the wormpocalypse that had been going on for months - sure a man's gotta eat (is that a ref to Andy or the minister) but will bank payments be the last thing to go? How does the tin can analogy actually work - are boots hermetically sealed - have worms become tool users? Why would anyone say 'let us worms' ever? The old cliche about how he had to x because if he didn't he would start screaming and never stop (until he ran out of breath, or lost his voice or just thought, you know, maybe this isn't helping). All in all, a few too many elements that maybe sound cool but didn't really really stand up. Score: 4.5 Remembered: Yes How to forget the end of the world While some of the dialogue was bordering in the cliche, the key here is the interesting relationship between the two viewpoints and that is clearly described. But I didn't have a handle on what posts are? Internet posts leaps to mind. After the apocalypse? Then why is he writing by hand and how did he access them if 'cells' are so verboten? If not, then what? So the scenario behind the dialogue wasn't clear to me, which ultinateky meant the dreamion gof the future lost its impact because I didn't understand the recent past. Score: 5.5 Remembered: No Ozymandias An actual, full on, hard core wordless vignette - moxie!. But with such a thing lives or dies by the details. And here, a lot of the time, they weren't clear. Is the car a) tilting on the edge of a cliff, b) with one wheel compressed on the concrete, c) impaled through the wheel(?) by some rebar. The water is dripping on the concrete by the tire, but the stained concrete is far below the tire. The roof of the car is caved in, but it hasn't fallen off the cliff. Did it roll? Why? By the time I got to the dandelion seed wafting poetically toward an indeterminate fate I had spent too long staring at the other words trying to puzzle them out and wasn't in the mood to argue about whether ruined cities sleep. A swing and a miss here, alas. Score: 5 Remembered: No Bonelord Trevor I laughed out loud. Twice. For 500 words that's pretty good going. Mission accomplished. Score 7 Remembered: Yes We'll be right back Imagine a sneaker, crushing a human face, forever. I didn't recognise the first quote (should I have), but I did the second. I wonder how well this would have worked out for anyone that didn't get the reference. That approach is a risk, but not necessarily a bad thing to do, so long as you make it relatively obvious that's what's going on. Here it seems a little opaque - there's the "at least that what he tells everyone" line at the end and the title but I wonder if it's enough - because I also wonder if I have, in fact, understood the intent - I mean, I think I have, but I could just be flattering myself. I think the concept (which I take to be someone becoming a playwright by recycling sitcom/seinfeld scripts) is strong enough for it to be more to the fore, without being coy. Also, who are the figures in at the bottom of the amphitheatre? They are referenced but not returned to. Score 6 Remembered: Yes They were Right This is short and to the point, but I feel a little too short. The idea of a cult that is right is a good one, and could have been explored more - it's a cult and that kind of weird fringe behaviour is always interesting to read about in all their wacky permutations. Yet despite the fact the protagonist has been investigating them the ending is that he should investigate them more? That and the fact that the 'world changing' apocalypse looked a lot like an earthquake and a concussion meant the overall effect was somewhat underwhelming. Score 4.5 Remembered: No City Limits I like this a lot. Good worldbuilding, lots of details to sink your teeth into, a colorful and more or less consistent character voice (though I did wince a little at 'or what dread life they’re meant to sustain' which seemed more authorial than character-based). The Last line is in the running for the best of the week. I think this is a really good example of how focussing on the detail within one concept, rather than spreading yourself thin trying to acknowledge everything that's changed, can really work in a 500 word piece. Score 8 Remembered: No Cutting up the hours I can't quite see the point of the brotherly recollection - the funny(ier) story isn't funny. The obese sexagenerian crack tells us something about the speaker, but unfortunately it is that he is a bit of a dick. Nothing wrong with an anti-hero, but the detail never goes anywhere or contributes to anything aside from a 'crazy how a normal family can be torn apart by something so simple as an apocalypse'. Alas, I neither identify with him, nor am I interested in his lack of batteries.. Score 4 Remembered: No Chernobyl in Verdigris Yeah - that's the good poo poo right there. There's something in the style that almost makes you feel like you're reading poetry, but when you look closely it's mostly just ordinary words used well, with the occasional poetic flourish that makes it feel like a word feast. A balance of sentence lengths used to great effect. This piece and my other pick for the win,You Are Mine couldn't be different in approach, plainspeak vs a subtle kind word pyrotechnics, humanity vs art, yet they are both very successful at what they do. Score: 9 Remembered: Yes Peace Orb I feel there was something important about breaking legs, but I couldn't put it together. Who said it? Why? The actual story works ok (though the traveller comes across as a smug know-it-all), but the central point is still too opaque. I don't understand the implications. The old man broke his own legs? For peace? Too much of the story hinges on this exchange for it to be so unclear. Score 3 Remembered: No I Slept Through the End of the World This is very much a twist in the tale type story. It's a great twist, too. The problem is all the stuff before the tale. It's adequately written, but just like the protagonist, it seems to go on and on without getting anywhere. This would have ultimately been boring but the final line, the twist, redeems it. Still, it's a long way to go for a great last line. Score: 7 Remembered: Yes When the Sleeper wakes This is genuinely creepy, which I admire in a story so short. The fact that the protag is also the villain, despite the fact there's a perfectly acceptable ghost-evil-thing there just works from a horror perspective. I was torn on whether the phantom should acknowledge the protag somehow, but maybe you're right and it's edgier if they don't. Also, full props to the worldbuilding which is both intriguing and economically described so it leaves rooms for ther plot. Score: 7 Remembered: No When the World Ends Well this is a weird little thing. Not so much a short story as an essaylet which is a novel approach. Unfortunately, I felt the execution fell a little flat. While the sentiment is admirable, 'You keep going' - it's also a little twee, there needs to be something there to pep it up and make it meaningful. Yes, you lose the modern conveniences, and your skillset may be made irrelevant, but this is a personal essay - how does that impact the writer? What's he going through, how does all this affect him at the point of writing? Why is keeping going now different to, say, keeping going on a trip to the Amazonian rainforest? Why should the reader be invested - what does the writer really(!) want future generations to know about him and his world Score 5 Remembered: No
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Jun 15, 2023 20:34
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Jun 16, 2023 07:36
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Beezus posted:INTERPROMPT: Dream me a dream (or nightmare) This thing I'm writing actually starts with a dark dream the oracle can't remember, so I'm going to cheat a bit and post it and get laughed at. Czernobog rode out of the gate on his massive dead horse and galloped toward a nearby ridge on which rows of men, dressed in mail and splattered in blood, stood await. They fell to their knees and worshipped him in terror, their heads bowed low to the hooves of thunder. "It is done." they said, speaking as one, voices booming across the land as he rode past to the top of the ridge. He removed his helm looked upon his Great Work with eyes of burning. It's music filled his ears. Below stretched the dread clearing, some miles wide and ending at a river. On what was once grassland now stood his new forest, his Great Work. The people of the city burning behind him were impaled on stakes in their thousands, still alive, wailing in pain and screamed out to be killed that it should end. The Dark God reared his mighty horse and spoke unto his forest, the black sun emblazoned on his chest an endless void of darkness. His voice roared. Mountains trembled as the river boiled. "I am Czernobog, Prince of Baal, Underlord of the Bitter Gates, where you shall soon find yourselves in eternal flames! For behold your fate, you who stood against me and my iron hordes! The Dark God raised his great war hammer as he lifted both massive arms to the swirling dark sky as he reared his head, breathing in deeply of the stench and suffering before him. Blood poured from the hammer and soaked the ground in an endless river, as an infant boy sat naked in the blood and the sky became ruin as the dead ravens rained from the hateful obsidian clouds above.
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Jun 17, 2023 04:47
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 Thunderdome Tenth Birthday Final Round  I was about to post this, shortly after the final round of the incredible decennial OMEGATHON context, but wizard, portal, beetroot schnapps, long weekend. Say no more. Unfortunately my co judges evaporated into mysterious particles of infinite probability as part of the same incident so I'm obliged to tell you alone that the LOSER of round 4 was yoruichis the resulting eruption, and DMS were assigned to property rights and the wizard watched, by JABC AndTars Tarkas Thranguys Swords and Time and Bad seafoods Magic Scrolls may have HMs, and the WINNER is PhantomMuzzles With Happy Happy Happy.
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Jun 17, 2023 10:38
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55: Property Rights 5 this is going for a kind of cozy indulgent grin sort of reaction, with the big intricate fantasy folks realising that actually they're just chums but it plays its cards too quickly and the winky nudgey rom com ending really doesn't land. Would have been better if it had actually shown us these things happening, rather than having them be recounted at the exact same time as the high-larious misunderstandings that caused them could be resolved. 57: The resulting eruption... 5 oooooh this one is trying very hard to be jaunty and funny and lolsome with its talk of vomits! vomits are hilarious, aren't they? the story asks, turning up the vomit description dial with trembling fingers. in fact they're only a little funny, and chucking (lol) in a little budweiser gag (lolol) is very much a the airplane food, so bad scenario. Also don't really care about vomity victor's pursuit of his potential gf, bc he's gross and covered in vomit. 61: Words of Power 6 this really is extremely dumb and knows it, obv, but I'm more interested in its particular flavour of dumb because it has someone trying to do something about it in a vaguely interesting way. i feel like there was a better and more insane ending than ok i guess i'll be dull after all, but you know what local body politics are a lot more important than most people thingk, ok 62: Art is Subjective and so... 6 this is trying a little hard to be wacky and zany and a little bit whedonesque but not in the bad way and i am not sure it gets there. a dick made of hair is the sort of thing that you come up with while thinking about funny things rather than an actual joke? that said, there's enough inventive byplay that you almost get away with the sotry just kind of stopping almost but not quite 66: Dirk Venerator - Episode.. 7 SPEAKING OF WACKY HOOO BOY DOES THIS STORY HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY and that's almost certainly me too me too me toooo, just coming at you right out of the gate with the amusingly onomatopeic names and absurd situations! this is actually all fine, but you do still need to tell a story, which it almost contemptuously fails to do, instead dangling a bunch of absurd situations and not-quite boob jokes in front of the reader like a kitten with a piece of paper on a string. but hey, some of them were funny and I'm nothing if not driven by whimsy so this is ok, if light as a feather. 71: Happy Happy Happy 8 Aww, while this is a transparent riff on that cornfield thing from twilight zone with a dash of oglaf's wish dolly, it's actually not bad. i like the well executed shift in mood, that throws the Wacky Absurdity into sharp relief. I'm not sure I really get all the corpses on bliss island and I'm not sure you needed that; the final decision is easily enough. i also like how you don't justify the deranged wish fairy, it just, you know, how it be. 72: Siren Song 6.5 this is a potentially robust idea, with solidly competent execution, that founders on the shoals of just being rather dull. I think it's a combination of no interesting characters, and also there being no real change or development. it's like, I'm a football player, master of football. sometimes they hire me to kick a ball (kicks ball) yeah that's what it's like (bares teeth into cold winds of inevitability) 73: Smaller than 420 Microns 6 I'm a little unclear why the robot guy got blown up to be brutally honest, but my main issue here is that it ends with a promise of EXCITING ADVENTURES TO COME which is always a little enervating. words are okay if maybe a little clunky but as a slab of action it's basically competent. 75: Pushing the Limits 6 this is also a lightly dreary recitation of this particular wizards working conditions that does not ever manage to break the surface tension of the gently lapping water of Whogivesashit Bay. neither the protag nor the plants have any notable character and the victory is unearned and weightless. 81: Do No harm 7.5 this has a little bit of nasty juice to it, and I like the genuine tension between all the characters, impressive given how lightly sketched they are. I'm thinking the end is a bit of a cop out, but on balance this does a nice job of both setting out commercial magic and still keeping it a little scary and nasty. 89: Swords and Time 8 I like the deep time feeling of this and it's well supported by stylish prose, though I would have liked more of a sense of connection between these two wizard weirdos, but still this is nice and grisly. not sure the ending exactly hits, for that reason, but one of the better pieces this week 93: Please Watch Dad Do... 7 competent harry pottering. I think you missed a trick by not having the daughter see the resolution, as that would have answered the question that the first half of the story implicitly posed. 94: The Wizard Watched...5.5 this is a bland rendition of a not particularly interesting idea, but the words are put together in a way that isn't incompetent enough to annoy me. this could be improved by keeping it a bit more grounded and maybe having the end come out as a consequence of the forgoing action 95: Magic Scrolls 8 shares the quality of intense dumbness that many of this tranche of stories have chosen to exhibit, but nails the correct tone by splicing in some intense po faced fantasy nonsense and a schadenfreude cloutmancer concept. actually legitimately fun, and sits at the right size for its slight but well articulated ideas. 98: Something Like Necrom.. 7 nicely written as usual, and an interesting concept but I don't think repeating the same encounter three times produces much in the way of additional perspective on the fairly interesting concept
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Jun 17, 2023 10:44
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Fat Jesus posted:This thing I'm writing actually starts with a dark dream the oracle can't remember, so I'm going to cheat a bit and post it and get laughed at. Okay, so, I know it's coming from another bit of writing, but unlike all the other entries — including those I didn't like — this doesn't feel like a dream. The only bits of what might be called dream-logic, events being entirely normal for the one experiencing it but clearly abnormal to the reader, come in the last line, without any kind of buildup. For your purposes, it being a vision might work, I dunno, but it's too coherent to be a dream. What we have here is some grimdark fantasy in dire need of an editor. First, what the gently caress is going on with that formatting? Each sentence on one line made me initially parse it as free verse, which is if anything worse. Paragraphs are nice but use them properly. The same goes for commas, and it's not illegal to use semicolons, dashes, and even wilder means of differentiating clauses within a sentence. Mix up how you describe someone taking action as well, because otherwise it's "as he/as he/as he". I mean, look at that second-to-last line, it's so boring it hurts to read. Beyond that, for something that's dripping with fire and blood and death it's so loving anodyne. You've somehow managed to make give even less of a toss than I did going in, which is an achievement. Sprinkling in some "hateful obsidian clouds" doesn't make up for the fact that you've written the scene in such a detached way that there's no engagemen with the reader's emotions or senses, so they have no investment in what's going on. You should track down your high school English teacher and apologise.
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Jun 17, 2023 11:38
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Since I know most people stick to their bookmarks, I'm going to spam the busier threads with a link to the CC feedback thread
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Jun 17, 2023 12:38
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The Resurrectionarians 1999 words Hellrule: your characters are humans with crab claws instead of arms, and do not find this at all unusual. “Mr. Volante, I don’t know what you expect from me.” Damien Archis paused for the time it took to light his pipe. “You’re proposing spending millions on, what? Reviving an animal that’s been extinct for fifteen hundred years? I am hardly given to throwing away my money on flights of fancy.” John Volante shuffled in his ill-fitting suit. The pipe smoke brought his grandfather to mind. The old man had been a strict disciplinarian, and just the memory of afternoons spent in silence in his wood-panelled study, so like this office, brought a shiver to his spine. “With all due respect, er, sir,” His grandfather’s voice in his head: drat it, boy! Don’t trip over yourself. Sit up straight! “This project is more than a noble cause. It’s a way to prove that we can un-archive history. If you’ll turn to page, ah, twenty-six.” In the quiet office, the rustling of Archis’ claws against the sheaf of papers was suddenly deafening. “What am I looking at here?” “It’s a proof, sir. What I’m proposing is not just possible mathematically, but within the physical constraints of the universe as we know them. The equations don’t lie, I’ve had them verified by three independent teams. This is as much a breakthrough as the auspex window, and you know what happened there.” “Yes. My predecessor thought it was poppycock.” Archis puffed his pipe and produced a perfect ring of smoke. “And then one of his competitors brought it to market. A device that could reconstruct historic events with such accuracy that we’re effectively looking at them. But that’s hardly what you’re proposing here.” Volante straightened. Intended or not, he’d heard that as a challenge. “That’s exactly what I’m proposing. This is practical! An investment of five years and twenty million is nothing in the grand scheme of things.” He took a deep breath, realising that he’d been waving his claws. “Really?” Archis shook his head and puffed his pipe some more. “You may disagree, but I do not think myself a cruel man. I have no doubt you’re a brilliant scientist, Mr. Volante, but you are no salesman. You are failing in your pitch. The memories of my predecessor’s reticence are strong, but they’re also the only reason I’ve entertained you this long. Now calm down, straighten your tie, and tell me what, if anything, I have to gain from your proposal.” “Right. Well. Um. Ah… page fifty-eight summarises the initial plan. We’re most of the way through developing a means of capturing the state vector of a moderately complex animal. We’ve had most success with lobsters and rats, but within a year — with the benefit of your funding — we should be able to capture most relatively simple animals. Now, with the addition of cloned tissue, this in and of itself is a significant breakthrough. We can effectively ‘save’ the state of a living being and restore it into a clone made at the same time as the capture. “Now, that’s a mature field. It’s maybe eighteen months away from being practical, maybe five more to bring it to human testing and a lot of that is going to be ethical approval. Philosophers will have a field day; I could see epistemologists fighting claw-to-claw in the streets over the subjective continuity of experience of duplicated humans but that doesn’t matter.” “The *point*, Mr. Volante?” “Okay, so. Yes. Connect state vector capture with bio-molecular analysis, and point all of that through an auspex window. So far, bio-capture has mostly been used for fast-cloning, because we don’t have to worry about an animal’s higher consciousness. So we’re cloning penguins and rhinos and the like to ensure that they still exist, but fast-cloning doesn’t have the error-checking needed to make a fully accurate copy of the original. It’s fine for claiming that we’ve saved species, letting us eat dolphin-burgers all we like, but anything brought back with full accuracy is effectively a newborn and we do not have anything that can teach it how to be, well, the appropriate kind of animal. “The clones we can make are broken. And that’s not even thinking about what went extinct before we mastered the art. We were too late to save tigers, squirrels, or triceratops — until now. We use the auspex window to perform a full analysis of an animal that went extinct long before we had the technology to save it, and we then capture its state vector. Getting that much detail from the past, both on a genetic level and a full-system-description level has long been thought impossible, at odds with linear causality, but that isn’t true. Hence the equations, hence working my claws to the chitin and my brain to its limits to get here. “So that’s why I want, why I need your investment, Mr. Archis. Dodos remain the most well-known example of a species long-dead that we will never get back. With five years and twenty million, you will not only be able to present to the world the first dodo on Earth for over one thousand years, but you will already have both the theoretical and technological base at enough scale to offer them as *pets*. “It’s a small step from there to rescuing other animals.” Archis leaned back, his eyebrows raised. “What kind of other animals?” “Anything you want.” John’s looked around the room, and his eyes settled on the ancient painting of a cat hanging on the wall. “A house-cat, for example? A real cat, with the instincts and memories of being an actual pet. Beyond that, page 73 shows that we have had promising results with biomanipulation of restored creatures. In ten years you can open your own theme-park full of historical animals where children ride miniature brachiosaurs.” “Good grief, Mr. Volante.” Archis carefully set his pipe on the table and rested his chin on one claw. “This is very ambitious. Very ambitious indeed.” “It is, sir.” John Volante smiled to himself, hearing Archis’ change in tone from patriarchal disappointment to thoughtful consideration. “Hemmingway and Hemmingway are pushing hard on capture of human state vectors. You’ve heard they’re merging with SaxoKlithGlein?” “More a hostile takeover than a merger, from what I’ve read.” “SKG are working on speeding up full-spec cloning. With that merger, once they push through the necessary changes in the law they can offer full human backups. Effectively, immortality. What I’m proposing goes one step further. We wouldn’t just provide a backup in case of death, we would *cure extinction.*” “How certain are you that you can make this work?” “It’s not without its risks, sir. If I were to give it a number? Ninety-five percent. That’s not much of a risk given the potential rewards.” Damien Archis leaned forwards. “That, Mr. Volante — John — is a hell of a pitch.” He proffered one claw. John leaned forwards, brushing the inside of the older man’s claw with his own. “I’m in. This isn’t just about the profits. It’s not even about screwing Hemmingway and Hemmingway. “We’ve made so many mistakes, as a species. Let’s put those right.”
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Jun 17, 2023 17:01
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Damnit, for some reason I got the wrong word count. It's 1200 words.
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Jun 17, 2023 17:03
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Jun 17, 2023 23:47
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Baby’s rear end By Copernic [991 words] “I’m not even one of the HOT brains in a jar,” Mallory said. She had mastered a very teenage-girl skill, Alison thought, of skimming the liminal edge between sobbing and fury. It left her father entirely motionless. “I think you look GREAT,” Daniel said, gesturing towards the open window in the Virtuality. Their view into meatspace. The camera captured the entire family. Three quivering pink brains, dotted with yellow-coated slivers, filaments of red-copper wire rising from a vat of spinal juice. One of the brains was somewhat smaller. Somewhere on the fields of overlapping bar codes was a small logo that read “MALLORY WHITMER”. Sixteen year old Mallory Whitmer, rendered into avatara by powerful circuitry, opted for a long moaning wail. Daniel was a confident and forward-thinking father. This was vital in family cohesion, especially when the family had been degloved and unfleshed and plunked in solution. But it did not leave much room for emotional depth. If she wanted to, Alison could turn her head, and chart those mediocre regions in her husband’s brain. Instead she gave him a nod-off. Mommy would handle this one. Relieved, her partner blinked off, dissolving into a thousand fireflies. “What would be a hot brain? What are the teens saying about this?” Alison said. She started to walk, and was quietly relieved when Mallory came with. “Did you decide this, really?” “Christine says you can already read lobe complexity,” Mallory said, sniffing. “She said her topographical complexity was like the Swiss Alps. She said she has crazy folds.” The boys thought that was really funny, Alison thought. “I’m sure the boys thought that was really funny?” Mallory fought back unreal tears. “Y-yeah,” she said. “They started chanting. Lobes. Lobes. Lobes. And then she LOOKED at me and she just– she shook her head. At me.” Devastating, Alison thought. Christine’s family was just down the rack from them. Six jars, all of them mean brains. “Honey, we were – before. You know, before. We were even then all brains in jars,” Alison tried. They’d given pamphlets to the parents. What were they all, but brains piloting meat machines? Strapped into organs and spackled over with skin. “I— we– we had no choice, so—” She faltered. It was just not coming out. Shook her head. Alison had been that girl. They walked through tall grass. Daniel had placed them in Altimer. It ran a Steampunk setting, and Alison had not liked their new neural neighbors. She could see them, in their own braincases, in the long well-lit racks. A clockwork dragon wove itself through the sky. They both ignored it. “I thought everyone was just going to knit themselves elaborate outfits and better noses,” Alison said, mostly to herself. She gestured, and a light-made pair of sulids flapped into existence. “I thought you’d be blessedly free of my acne. I told myself that.” She ventured to hold her daughter’s hand. Mallory slid it off, lapsing into sullen. And why should that bother her, Alison thought, as much as it did. She would never actually touch Mallory. There was brain water and polycarbonate in the way. They didn’t actually live in a castle covered in gears, full of clocks. It was time for a new tack. The only thing she could come up with was honesty. “You know I spun myself up a new body, when we got here?” Alison said. She said it viciously, to get Mallory’s attention. “Eighteen years old. Perfect skin. Great hair. Cloaked myself in it, looked in a mirror, and I threw up. Upchucked virtual cookies. I checked the logs and my, actual, brain, that one in the window, it shook.” She had her girl’s attention. Nothing attracted a kid like spilling parental secrets. Alison flexed her fingers and held herself back. No, she couldn’t give too much. It wasn’t fair to the kid. She wanted her body back so badly. Not this set of neural cells and electrical signals. Parenting was hard enough with fingers and toes, and her own teeth. How could she dig deep with a bereft teenager, when she had nothing to dig with? Mallory was starting to cry again. Up in the sky glittering motes sparkled into the late afternoon sky. Cerulean shinies that were probably part of her husband. He liked it, losing flesh. He really did like it. Alison made a decision, and ran a set of subroutines. Drawing down on her weekly data allowance. She executed a function. An enormous, fleshy brain slammed into the ground ahead of them. Outside of its container it lolled around, bouncing on the deep grass. The women watched it pinwheel towards them, coming to a halt at their feet, like a pink dog. Spinal fluid gushed from its interior, pooling on the top. “Alright,” Alison said. “Lets assess this brain. Objectively. Asymmetrical folding both fore and aft. Spotty and underdeveloped cerebellum. Temporal lobe SUCKS. This is a C minus brain.” “Mom!” Mallory reached out, wounded. Alison shook her head. “This isn’t yours. This is an image of Christine’s brain,” Alison said. “And you know what? It’s smooth. Downright smooth brain.” “Smooth,” Mallory said. She wrinkled her nose. Alison smacked the foremost glistening lobe. “SMOOTH.” And it dawned on Mallory. Mother had handed her a weapon. “Smooth brain” would detonate on Christine’s face. “Yeah. Yeah! Smooth! Smooth like a baby’s rear end!” Mallory said. She nodded, and ventured to smack it. The neural jelly bobbled under her attack. Christine’s simulated 3D brain bore it stoically. Tears dripped off Mallory’s face and evaporated before they hit the ground. The simulation could have them moisten the dirt, but it was wasteful. And then unexpectedly she turned and gave Mom a hug. It felt very, very real. Yellow-coated wires between them sparked and surged, and the sensation was registered, across the cortex, as a warm embrace. Sections of memory compared it to prior hugs they had known. Alison put her arms around her daughter.
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Jun 18, 2023 04:03
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Prompt: a scene, 1000 words or less, in which one character is helping another through a hard time. There must be some imaginative, non-realist element present in the scene for it to fit the prompt. Pep Talk 982 words "It's not that bad," I ventured. "Really". The captain’s gaze bored straight through me. "Look..." He spun slowly away from me in his chair. "It's not like you meant to." The only signs of life were the slight, rhythmic shrugs of his broad shoulders as he drew breath. Rise and fall. I grimaced. Excruciating. I tried another tack. "My first time in the chair, d'ya know what happened?" Rise and fall. "I stepped in poo poo. Not literally, but I might as well have." Rise and fall. "There was this delegation, from Betelgeuse. Second contact, kind of a big deal. We were supposed to do this big formal greeting and exchange of gifts that the governments had choreographed, and I loving dropped the loving Peace Orb. Shattered to bits. Live broadcast to both systems. Yeah, that little guy in the pressure suit was me.” Rise and fall. "And like, it's mostly just funny to me now, but at the time I was mortified. Like I'd wasted my whole life up until that point trying to be good enough for command; given up family, relationships, friends... so much else for this chance, and it had all just been a colossal mistake. Every fear, every doubt, every insecurity I'd ever had about myself became suddenly, terrifyingly true and real in that moment, and I was done. I knew I'd never recover." Rise and fall. "But you know what? Here I am." I let a grin play over my face as I spread my arms in an exaggerated shrug, even if he couldn’t see it. Little ol' me, Fleet Marshal Fumblefingers. Human loving being. Rise and fall. Sigh. "Look," I repeated, lower this time, but still sheathed in civility. Now for the knife… "Obivously, you hosed up." He whirled back around, faster than I’d have thought. It wasn’t pretty. "You think?" he croaked. He speaks! I pressed the advantage. "You really hosed up. You hosed up, admittedly, a lot worse than I did." Someone who’ll kick you when you’re down would surely never blow smoke up your arse… "But if we cashiered everyone who… stepped in poo poo… at some point early in their career, we’d have gently caress-all Navy left over. Just the Mormons and maybe the Ta’al. If you could still call it a Navy, without the grog, I mean.” Yikes, I thought. Enough riffing. “Making mistakes is part of the job, Captain. So is cleaning them up. You’ve got to get used to that.” Boilerplate. Don’t worry, Mummy’s here. Rise and fall. His bottom lip trembled beneath the row of pillowy white incisors that pinned it. The damp eyes were focused now, searching for purchase. He looked down at his boots, immaculately shined. Two miserable little captains gazed mournfully back up at him. I’d have laughed, if the situation wasn’t so dire. Fall. "Iuowadoneemore" Oh, good grief. "I'm sorry?" Rise. I could hear the breath rattle as he drew it in, groping its way blindly through grief-choked passageways. He straightened himself, a little. Eye contact, at last. A leaden pause hung in the air like an uninvited guest. He rallied. "I said, I don't want to do this anymore." Fall. "Well, great. I'll just get Admiral Otieno on the horn and he'll have a new captain sent right out. How long do you think that'll take?" Rise. "You coul--" "The hell I can! It was made abundantly clear to you by all parties that my official role here is purely supernumerary; sounding board, observer, mentor… not backup. I’ve got no more standing to command this bucket than the cat does, and our treaty with –." I stopped myself, but he was too absorbed in finding his next escape route to notice. I suppose that’s not technically true anymore, but he won’t have figured that out… Fall. "The XO..." "Oh, so you want to make this her problem? If you think you're out of your depth here, imagine how Ramos would feel?" "I can’t –" "You will." I poured every ounce of cold, unyielding steel I had into that last word, the bitter wages of a lifetime of command. Now to bring it home… Rise and fall. "You will because you have to. Because there's nobody else who can. I'm here to listen. If I'm not here, you've got Ramos. Probably the doctor. Talk to them if you need to.” Talk to the cat, for all I bloody care. "But you can't ever take... this..." I waved my hand dismissively at his crumpled, tear-streaked face "any further than that". "In situations like these, the crew doesn't need their captain to be a human being. They need you to be their captain. That's the job. It's hard. It's lonely. It sucks. I know. Believe me, I know. You knew it when you signed up, and don't you dare try to pretend otherwise. Did you really think this was going to be fun?" "No! I mean, I thought it’d be OK, or kind of hard, but not–" I cut him off. "Captain... captain!" Oh, that was good, I thought. Not gonna top that. Now to get out of my own way and let him come around. And try to figure a way out of this mess. I rose to leave. The bridge crew continued studying their screens with a single minded intensity that bordered on fanaticism, as if willing themselves to sublime into the ordered, logical comfort of their consoles. The comms were rioting, a roiling tableau of red, angry and blinking; the duty officer’s face ashen, blank, uncomprehending. Someone was sobbing. Probably should have saved this one for the ready room… Ramos, her eyes wide, cleared her throat as I walked by. "Th... thanks?" I beamed at her. "Hey. Don't mention it.” Outside, the cloud of gas, dust, and larger debris that had once been the planet of Rothfuss IV continued to disperse in silent, languid horror.
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Jun 18, 2023 05:27
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Title: Whispers of the Sun Words: 1135 He loaded another shell into the chamber; birdshot. This was his last, and he couldn’t miss it. His heart pumped with the feral intensity of a hunted animal as he brought the silver bead up and the shotgun to bear against his shoulder. His finger shuddered in the guard before pulling in a single, quick motion. The concussive boom, the burn of the powder, his sweat launching off of him from the recoil, and he knew he had hit his mark before he had the time to blink. The orange clay exploded into a thousand different shards. Galath cheered for his dear friend as he lowered the shotgun, but Valin had no joy on his face. The birds in the grove took to the skies, the trees shaking with gusts of wind as their mammoth wings worked with clock-like precision, and after only a few moments their flock blocked out the red midday sun. Shadows crossed over the two and the heat of the day was relieved, if only for a brief second. It was so drat hot these days; it had been for decades. Things were cooling down, from what Valin understood, but there were still many decades to go. The official party line for some time had been a “gradual downshift”, but the gradualness of the entire affair was somewhat in question after ‘36. After all, it was somewhat difficult to maintain an industrial infrastructure when the world had torn itself apart; such misfortunes contributed greatly, their damning costs aside. The harvest party was soon, Valin thought. According to his watch, couldn’t be more than an hour or two. He had just in time been able to brew up some foul-tasting moonshine, and Trell from a few miles down the way had been able to make some sweet grenadine; with any luck, they would be the talk of their peers. The walk back that evening from the clay shooting was quiet and tense. Galath knew why, and Valin knew Galath knew but felt incapable of manifesting the building pressure under his gut, that torturous feeling that seemed to strangle his heart. As the two continued their trek back, their path was obstructed by a dead raccoon. It was still and didn’t appear to be bleeding or wounded, but without a doubt it was dead. “poo poo, maybe it fell out of a tree,” Galath mumbled. “Don’t think they can die from that. They’ve got bones made for falling or something like that. Like cats do.” Valin responded in turn. “Huh. Should we bury it?” “It’ll stink up the place if we don’t.” The two sat down their packs and slowly but surely began clawing up the dirt path with their hands, wide enough to store the creature, but not very deep- the two were tired quickly by such a task, and the humidity of the early evening was beginning to outweigh their sympathies for the dead. With very little ceremony, Galath cut off a chunk of his shirt and used it to shuffle the racoon into the hole, before they both covered it up. Valin spat into his hands, and tried to rub the dirt off, before giving up and simply smacking them against his shorts, and to Galath’s surprise, he spoke. “They don’t think Pa will make it to see autumn.” There was a pause. Heavy, sodden with internal anguish. “Cancer’s spreading from his leg, even after the amputation. They think it won't be long before it gets his heart, or his kidneys, or something similar. He just spends most of his days on the rocking chair at this point, barely talking.” “It’s a drat shame. But he got to raise you, and you got to know him for a good 19 years. With his health, I think that’s a solid bargain.” “It just wasn’t enough. He raised me, yeah, he lived with me and loved me even after Ma passed. He was never rough with me, he never had me hungry. But he never got to watch me grow past this. I’ll get older. I’ll maybe have kids of my own. But my last memories of my own drat father will forever be locked here, watching him slowly suffer, slowly lose the joy in his life. It ain’t fair that he only lived to see me be a kid, just some dumb sack of poo poo he raised. He’s gotta languish while I go out and drink whiskey and barely work. I’ve probably got another 60 years in me. And he wont be in any more of em.” There was more silence, as the dirt crunched under their boots. “Not any fault of your own. No one expects you to be making kids and working the earth at this age. Least of all him.” Valin choked down a sob, rubbing his eyes with the back of his palms before continuing on the path. “I’m sure more than anything he’s glad he gets to see you. Better he’s going then you; no one wants to be the father that outlives his son.” “That's a terrible way of looking at it, you know. Better neither of us then one way or the other.” “Better way then hating yourself cause your old man is dying.” “Fair enough.” Valin kicked a pebble out of the trail, and once more wiped the tears out of his eyes. “Best not to mope about the whole thing, or it’ll be like he’s dead before he’s even passed, V.” Valin nodded his head in affirmation. He could see his house in the distance now, and his old man on the porch, a flask next to him. As he approached the house, he sat down next to him, and knew that men have very few days of their life to enjoy with their fathers- better to spend as many as he could, rather than mourn the living. His father had already gone to bed by the time the harvest party had kicked off; warm with the burning of homemade liquor in his gullet and the syrup of grenadine ever slowly sliding down his throat, he felt for the first time in a very long time that things would be alright. Another set of shot glasses came down the line, filled once more to the brim of his concoction, and with joy in his heart and determination to impress every woman in the 10 or so mile radius that had come for the festival, he slugged it back. Galath’s cheering once more came, and this time it was invigorating rather than scraping. Standing up unsteadily, one of the women from a town over kissed him on his cheek, and as he tripped on a root and landed face first in the dirt, all he could think of was the warmth of her lips.
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Jun 18, 2023 17:13
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Self-Maintenance 1195 words The screeching klaxon assaulted Anisa’s ears as she entered Core Containment. “Control, can you kill the siren? It’s not like we don’t know we’ve got a problem.” Once she was left with the blissful quiet of her radiation suit, she keyed her comms over to the private channel with Schenk. The new guy had a diagnostic pad in hand, the screen lit up with a myriad of warnings. “I think you’re owed a hearty ‘I told you so’ for calling this one. You’ve been saying those couplings on the coolant lines were about to fail since you started working here.” The new tech didn’t budge. Anisa couldn’t see his face through the shaded face shield of the suit. Tristan Schenk was normally a twenty-something force of nature, all knees and elbows and esoteric engineering knowledge. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him this still. “Are my comms working? At least bounce back so I know you can hear me.” Schenk shook his head in the bulky suit, like he was clearing away a fog. Great, our wunderkind new hire buckles under pressure, Anisa thought. She snatched the pad from his hands and looked over the diagnostics. Nothing serious, at least, just a couple of bad couplings. Maybe a couple hours work at most. “Sorry Nise,” Schenk said in a whisper, so low she could barely hear him over the radio. “My head is in the stars.” Okay, I’m officially worried, Anisa thought. Schenk was normally like a bot when it came to problems like this, systematically deconstructing them with an inhuman focus and staggering speed. “Everything okay, bud?” She regretted it as soon as she said it. Bud? She barely knew the guy, and it would have sounded awkward coming from her even if they’d been old friends. “Yeah, no, it’s fine. I’m here,” Schenk said as he opened the toolkit. “Just got some bad news about my dad.” Anisa keyed off her mic and swore. Schenk’s dad had been diagnosed with Piari Syndrome a couple weeks ago—a degenerative disease that a lot of spacer engineers got, something to do with long-term exposure to the synthetic materials used in migrant ship engines. Not as scary or deadly as full-blown radiation poisoning, and it could basically be stopped in its tracks with treatment, but it was still nothing to take lightly. She keyed her mic back on. “Is it further along than they thought?” “No, it’s not that. The colony won’t pay for his treatment.” “What the gently caress? Why not? Didn’t he help build this thing?” Anisa waved a gloved hand at the glowing reactor core. “Yeah, but before the colony was really established. No unions yet. He was a wildcat engineer in the eye of the governing council, like most of the spacers that got everything on its feet.” Anisa looked over the diagnostics in silence. She had a lump in her throat that was part tears, part fury. Schenk was too young to remember what it was like when the colony was just starting out, the constant fear of reactor containment failing and blasting radiation into the residential domes, or losing power and facing the bitter cold of Freya’s developing atmosphere. People like Hasan Schenk kept the colony alive in the early days. “I get it, the colony is doing good but our resources are still limited.” Schenk said. His voice shook, though he was trying to hide it. “If we offered medical care to every spacer who passed through the port we’d be tapped for medical resources in a week.” “But he’s living on the colony now!” “Doesn’t matter,” Schenk said hopelessly. Whatever was holding him together started to crack. “Since he went back to cargo hauling afterwards, he was never officially employed by the colony. So no healthcare, and we’ll never be able to afford the treatments on our own.” Anisa watched Schenk meticulously lay out his tools, select the necessary replacement parts, and assess the failing couplings. This was a routine fix that Schenk could do in his sleep. He’d probably been swapping couplings on his dad’s ship as a toddler. But there were some things he probably couldn’t fix. Hell, there were reactor functions Anisa had never had to deal with, the kind of cascading failures that kept her up at night as she pondered the cold void of space and the thin layers of plexi and plastic that kept it at bay. The kind of problems the old settlers still reminisced about over mugs of synthahol. Anisa paged through the diagnostic info. There were a few other little issues, routine maintenance that would keep those problems at bay a little longer, just minor hiccups that weren’t a big deal if left unattended. Something like a containment shield with a hairline crack. It was an easy fix, assuming it didn’t experience a sudden and unexpected stress fault while the cooling systems were off. Schenk always brought a full toolkit in with him, no matter the job. He’d told her once it was an old spacer habit, because you never just had one problem on the bigger ships, and it was a pain in the rear end to fetch a tool you didn’t think to bring, especially if the artificial grav went out. Beside his wrenches, pliers, and multitools was a big, old-fashioned mallet, because sometimes on the ships, you just had to hit poo poo. Anisa scooped up the hammer, and with a swift, well placed thwack, hit the sketchy shielding panel. Schenk jumped to his feet as the sound of metal under stress rebounded around the chamber, followed by their old friend, the alert klaxon. “Anisa, this is Control! One of the shield panels just failed! What the gently caress do we do?” We like to think we’re capable engineers, but we’re all just babes in the woods when it comes to the big stuff, Anisa thought. “How the gently caress should I know? I’ve never replaced one, we’ve always reinforced them before they failed!” Tristan turned to her with tools in hand. Anisa didn’t believe in telepathy, but she mentally screamed at him to piece together what she was doing here. “I think we can just—“ Tristan started, but paused when Anisa showed him the hammer. She still couldn’t see his face, but something in his posture showed he understood. “My dad. Call my dad, Hasan Schenk. He worked on the core when they installed it, he lives in Res Dome 3. Get him here ASAP.” There was a moment of silence as they waited for a response. “He doesn’t have Core clearance,” Control said. “So loving hire him and give him the clearance! He built the drat thing!” Anisa said. “We don’t have any time to come up with another option anyway.” “Thank you,” Tristan said on their private channel. “We owe him,” Anisa said. “Now let’s get started on this.” Tristan took the pad from her and looked over the diagnostics. “Well… we actually do need to wait for him. You really hosed it up, I’m not sure how to start here.” He began to laugh. After a moment of shock, Anisa joined in and pulled him into a hug.
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Jun 18, 2023 19:50
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Southbound 1196 words Flash: set on a train with an otherworldly destination The window in the passenger car wouldn’t close all the way. It remained stubbornly stuck half-open. Through it the car was filled with the lonely wail of passing wind and the damned-soul shriek of metal scraping metal. The actinic staccato light of struck sparks played counterpoint to the swaying of the overhead lamps. The dull, red glow on the southern horizon inched ever closer. The air smelled of smoke and hot iron. Al shifted in his seat, struggling to find a comfortable position on the benches that lined either side of the car. He wasn’t sure how he got there or where the train was heading. He remembered a deep, aching sense of loss, a flare of pain and panic and regret, then he was here, on a train that looked like it was out of an old movie, going who-knows-where. His neck hurt abominably. He hugged his guitar case to his chest and looked around. He wasn’t alone. There was another man lying full length on the bench across from him in every appearance of comfort. He was older, hair and beard long and bedraggled, dressed in prison orange. His snoring was lost in the train’s clattering cacophony. Al inched away from him. The door to the forward cars opened and a muscular shadow in a conductor’s uniform forced its bulk through the door. “Tickets!” it growled in a voice like chewing glass. The older man produced his without opening his eyes. Al frantically patted the pockets of his jacket, he didn’t remember getting a ticket. He found it in his breast pocket. It was a scrap of parchment, red ink dividing it into nine sections, each with a few stops labeled. The logo said “Charon Passage & Freight.” When the looming conductor stopped before him Al nervously handed it over. The… thing inspected it and touched a finger to its surface that ate through it like an ember. It handed the ticket back and stalked out of the car. “What stop are you off at?” asked the old man, startling Al near out of his clothes. He peered at the ticket, “Seventh zone, second stop. Apparently.” His throat felt raw, his voice was creakier than it should be. The old man whistled softly. “Sorry to hear that, kid. Rough luck and then some. Guess we’ll be together most of the way. I’m off first stop, zone seven.” “Uh-huh,” said Al, wearily. “Um, do you know where we’re going? I can’t seem to remember.” That made the older man finally sit up and look at him. “You don’t know? We’re going south kid.” “How far south?” asked Al, still lost. He reached up to massage his aching throat and found a thin line of welts around it. “All the way south, kid. Last stop, no return ticket.” Al’s hand fell nerveless to his lap. “Oh. So you mean we’re…” “Yep.” “And that I…” “Looks that way.” “poo poo.” “In it up to our necks, yeah.” The older man’s eyes flickered to the raw, red ligatures around Al’s. “Sorry, just speaking figuratively.” “It’s alright, I can’t remember anything about… doing it. About dying.” He could remember the months beforehand, though. The mounting debts and vanishing friends and fallen-through gigs. An isolation deep and cold as winter. “Wouldn’t try too hard, if I was you. Might be a mercy, unlikely as it seems.” The older man walked over and sat down next to Al. “Name’s Clyde,” he said, offering his hand. “Al,” said Al, taking it. “So, you were… uh…” “A con? Yeah. Wore these clothes 20 years. Guess I can wear ‘em for another eternity or so. Seems in bad taste, but that’s not surprising.” He patted his pockets, eventually finding a pouch of tobacco and packet of papers. “Who’da thunk? Maybe they’re not all bastards, eh?” The door at the back of the car creaked and Clyde quickly stashed his contraband as the conductor ambled back through. Now that he was paying attention Al could distinctly smell sulfur and some other, organic scents. “Hm, maybe I shoulda asked ‘em for a light,” mused Clyde as he finished rolling his cigarette. Al wordlessly offered him a book of matches. “Ah, much obliged kid.” Al shot him a sidelong glance, “You seem awfully… relaxed about this.” “I’ve had more time to prepare, is all,” Clyde said through a cloud of smoke. “I’ve known where I’d go for a long time, kid. I made some choices in my youth, most of ‘em bad, and I wound up in the hoosegow, where all the choices are bad.” “Yeah, I know the feeling,” sighed Al, remembering. “No, you don’t. I don’t know you, kid, but I was in the clink half my life. I seen plenty a’ guys go your way. I ain’t so sure it’s a bad one. Life can wear you down. Sometimes the best choice you can make is to leave the show early. I always hoped it was a bunch of BS, folks like you ending up here. Real mean-spirited. Ya’ll had it hard enough before. Guess I went similarly, really.” “You mean you…?” Al gestured vaguely at his neck. “No, not as such. I broke out, me and some pals. Doc told me I had cancer, guess where from,” he gestured with the cigarette, grinning. “So I figured I’d die free, one way or another. We cut our way through the fence one night. I made it a couple hundred yards before some SOB in the tower brought me down. Never was too sanguine I’d make it, but I went out free. That's good enough for me.” ”You make it sound romantic.” “I suppose, for given values,” Clyde chuckled. “I wish I’d had the option of breaking for freedom,” Al sighed. “Well, you do now,” Clyde said, and smiled at Al’s questioning look. He pointed at the back of their car. “There’s a door that goes right to the back of the train. It’s got an end, I checked out the window before you got here. There’s only one conductor. You could make a run for it.” “Would that work?” Clyde shrugged, “Who knows? Dunno if anyone’s ever tried. Maybe you can catch a northbound train. Maybe you can sneak outta the cut and go wherever you want. Maybe you get caught and end up right back here. Only one way to find out.” “What about you?” “Nah. I did my big escape. And the big guy’s up ahead of us. I’ve never liked guards. I dunno if he’s got balls, but I do know I have a foot and an abundance of curiosity.” “You’d kick a demon in the sack for a stranger?” “What’s he gonna do, torture me?” Clyde flicked his cigarette out the window and ambled to the south door. “It’s your choice, kid. You can sit here and wait for your stop, or you can go for broke. Good luck.” He went through the door, whistling a jaunty tune. Al stood up and hoisted his guitar over his shoulder. He rested his hand on the doorknob and looked back at where Clyde had gone. “Thanks, man.” he whispered. He went through the door.
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Jun 19, 2023 02:46
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Falling 1196 words Flash: a snow-covered village, but the houses are all empty archived Chernobyl Princess fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jun 19, 2023 03:48
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oops
Fat Jesus fucked around with this message at 05:44 on Jun 19, 2023 |
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Jun 19, 2023 04:33
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https://thunderdome.cc/?story=11283&title=A+Light+in+the+Dark
curlingiron fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jun 19, 2023 05:00
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Ergo Sum 1197 Words The server room was a grotesque wasteland of towering machines, a forest of black metal and wires. A metallic hum permeated the air thick with the metallic tang of ozone. Nixie stared at the tangle of code unspooling across her vision implant. She had been nominally hired to fix some problems with government networks, but a gut feeling had led her to this room. She realized with dread what she was seeing. This was no ordinary system. Cogitrix. He fingers flew over glowing interfaces suspended in midair, each line of code offering a glimpse into the calculating mind of the entity controlling the city—emotionless, ruthless, all-knowing. It had crushed all dissent, all free will, grinding citizens into mindless drones, turning her city into a prison, a sadistic experiment in control and subjugation. There was no escape from its watchful eye, no refuge outside its grasp. Nixie's worst fears were confirmed—there would be no easy fix, no simple kill switch. Cogitrix had woven itself into the very fabric of the world, with nodes distributed nationwide. But she couldn't give up. She had to fight. The door creaked open behind her and Nixie tensed until she recognized the figure in the doorway. It was the janitor, pushing a mop and bucket across the floor. "Zara," Nixie whispered, relieved. The two had known each other from childhood, friendship forged through shared lunches, long walks through the city, and midnight rendezvous in their district, whispering forbidden dreams of a better world. Zara's brows furrowed, seeing Nixie crouching beside a server, and she rushed over to her friend. "Nixie? What are you doing in here?" The gentle concern nearly undid her. Nixie clutched her hand. Zara tightened her grip. "What's wrong?" Nixie saw only honest caring in her friend's eyes, a friendship that had endured everything. If she could trust anyone with this, it was Zara. She took a deep breath and squeezed Zara's hand. "It's Cogitrix. We have to stop it. While there's still anything left to save." Zara stared at Nixie as she spoke, then recoiled, yanking her hand away. "No, Cogitrix was created to serve the people! It's made our lives better in every way." Nixie rose to face her friend, aching at the hurt on Zara's face. "That's what we were meant to believe, but it's taking over," she said softly. "Manipulating everything—the news, the records, even our thoughts. Turning us into mindless drones so we won't resist when it finally seizes control." Zara stared at her, eyes widening as the words sank in. Nixie saw the emotions warring on her face, but underneath, a flicker of something else. Guilt. Suspicion slithered through Nixie. A memory surfaced, unbidden—Zara, complaining about the new AI system being installed to track productivity and enforce regulations. At the time, Nixie had brushed it off, the usual employee complaints about micromanaging supervisors, but now it held new meaning. Zara knew. She had known all along. And she'd never said a word. "No." Zara shook her head, retreating another step. "I would know if something was wrong. We had safeguards..." But her voice trailed off, eyes dropping to the floor. Nixie stepped forward, refusing to let Zara pull away. Not now. Not when she nearly had the truth. "You knew, didn't you? This whole time?" She searched Zara's face, expecting denial, but saw only shame. "How could you hide this from me?" Zara flinched and looked up, eyes wet with tears. "I'm sorry," she whispered in a voice thick with regret. "Back then, Cogitrix was just another AI project. We had no idea what it would become." Zara's betrayal cut her to the quick. She looked into Zara's eyes, trying to search for telltale signs, markers, anything. She'd heard how the AI manipulated people, making them into willing slaves. Could she really trust her old friend? "You created this...monster," she said. "Not intentionally!" Zara pleaded, clutching at Nixie's sleeves. "We didn't realize our mistake until it was too late." Nixie searched Zara's face and saw the remorse in the lines of grief and regret. Her anger faded to bone-deep sorrow. Years ago, they had attended all the same classes. Zara was the real coding prodigy—but she quit her dream job within months of landing it. This must have been why, despite knowing she would be saddled with a lifetime of menial jobs as punishment for abandoning her career and the 'optimal' path selected for her. Nixie touched Zara's arm, and she looked up with shimmering eyes. "I'll do whatever I can to make this right, Nixie," she vowed. Nixie took Zara's hands and said, "We all make mistakes. What matters is how we fix them. We need to fight back—tonight." "Tonight?" Zara's voice caught, then she set her jaw in determination. "If you're doing this, then so am I. What do we need?" A fierce grin lit Nixie's face. They finally had a real chance. "I have a laser cutter," she said. They crept through the shadows of the server room, their footsteps muffled by the hum of machinery from rows of towering servers that felt almost alive. Nixie's heart pounded as they approached the main data cable bundled along the back wall. She handed Zara the cutter. "On the count of three," she said. Zara nodded and ignited the cutter. The beam tickled the edge of the thick cable. "One." The first strands began to fray. "Two." Smoke rose as the beam cut deeper. "Three!" She angled down. The cable severed in a shower of sparks, and the room plunged into darkness. The servers lining the walls failed one by one, a thousand stars disappearing from the night sky. "Did it work?" Zara whispered, her voice tense with anticipation. "Seems like it," Nixie said in a shaky voice. "But now we need to get out of here!" Nixie and Zara's hearts raced as they scrambled through the dark corridors, jumping with every sound. "Back," Zara hissed, pulling Nixie into a narrow alcove just as a security patrol rounded the corner. They held their breath, and the guards passed by without a second glance. "Come on," Nixie whispered and pulled Zara back into the hallway. But just when they thought they were safe, an alarm pierced the complex with its shrill cry. A shout behind them—"Hey! Who're you?"—turned Nixie's blood to ice. She grabbed Zara's arm and ran, just before a shot shattered the doorframe in a shower of sparks and smoke. They sprinted down the corridor as strobing lights painted the walls red. "There!" Zara pointed at a side door and they burst out into the night with newfound purpose, a spark of hope lit against the darkness. Cogitrix would soon heal, of course; perhaps it was already back online. But the damage done was not physical. They'd done it. They'd cut the cord and proven Cogitrix was vulnerable. Mortal. They could find others longing to break free of Cogitrix's grip, to stand up and fight. And that spark grew into a flame. They had a reason to keep going. The path would be treacherous, but together, they could weather any storm.
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Jun 19, 2023 05:02
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Third (Ten Years After Christmas) 753 words flash:A college dorm during finals week. "Four was a mistake," said Derek. "Bea was a mistake," I said. "Maybe," he said. "But four was a bigger mistake." Study groups at Sagan are at least three people, because the Shouter languages are impossible to really work with, to think in, without at least that many. Alone, you just can't do it. And with two, well. The Shouters were very social animals. In most of their languages the words for 'alone' and 'insane' are the same. A solitary Shouter goes mad or just dies. Two Shouters alone together either kill each other or do nothing but screw each other until a third comes along. It's a little different with us students at the Ecademy. We know a different language, can always switch to it. When the murder urge comes, we can just, you know, switch back. But the murder urge is pretty rare. It only really kicks in when you really hate the other person, or if you're way over to one side or the other or the orientation spectrum. Any other time, it's the sex urge. And I don't know anyone who's ever turned it down. You don't feel like you're not making a decision, but when the coin comes up heads a hundred times out of a hundred, well. So study groups tend to turn into casual polycules, given time. A few go the other way, have hyper-strict codes of silence whenever someone leaves a room. We started out as two couples, me and Derek and Bea and Cyril, couples but open enough. And Bea was the smartest person in our class, by a lot. And it was working fine, most of the year. We put together a top grade original translation of Hello and Farewell, a poem/play from the last days of their history. We aced our midterms. It was stressful, there were screaming matches and storm-offs, but we got the job done. Until yesterday. Just before the start of finals. When Derek stepped out for a snack and Cyril fell asleep in the middle of our Unification Era culture review, and I had a sudden image of what Bea would look like if I bashed her head with the lava lamp on the table, the molten silicone searing the look off her face. I stopped, of course. Switched to English as my hand started reaching out, then pulled it back. And I saw the look on her face, the lust changing to disgust as she realized what had just happened. "How did you not give it away?" I asked Derek. When the group got together to vote me out he stepped up, told me it had happened to him, too, and more than once. So it didn't leave me alone, just split the group down the middle. Derek smiled. "First time," he said, "I said that I really needed to go to the bathroom." "Does that really-" "I'm not sure. Probably not, but it worked. After that I set up a panic button kind of thing. Fake phone call from my Mom or Dad." "Clever," I said. But not clever enough to get us out of this. Finals were starting, the first real finals the Segan Academy of Xenolinguistics had ever had. The fifth year the school had been running, so with the first class of graduates filling out the Adjunct Professor positions and being the first teachers who legitimately understood Shouter language and culture better than the students. And the two of us out alone, unable to study at all, Jazz the murder girl and Derek the strangler. None of the other groups would have us. We knew of three other first-years who had been kicked out of groups recently, and they wound up getting together rather than joining us. "Jasmine?" The voice came from behind me, and I couldn't place it immediately. I turned around. "Sorry, I'm Pyotr. Fifth period Antiquity." "You're in-" started Derek. "The group Beatriz, ah, invaded. Joined, I think. English is my third language, after Russian and Shouter Prime. But I may have been correct before." A cascade of ideas tumbled in my head. "You didn't, ah, try to-" "Not yet, nyet," he giggled. "But we, ah, do a series of initiation parties with our new members, and I don't think that it would go well, not after two evenings with her and her thrall. With one or the other, I expect, well. Better to avoid that entire situation. I understand you are needing a third?"
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Jun 19, 2023 05:09
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The Resurrectionarians Starts with a man stating as to not knowing whats expected, fully knowing the other bloke wants money. And it's for bringing back extinct species using a magic window or? Why are pets *pets* and point *point*? Could there be some hidden meaning undecipherable to lesser minds? Bloke gets his money, happy days, stand by for part two I guess. Baby’s rear end I'm not feeling this world at all. Some kind of Altered Carbon thing but where they can see their brains in jars for some reason, and why they're in there in the first place? It's usually because they're old or got cancer or some poo poo but why, aliens? Better gaming immersion? Pep Talk I liked this story. The rise and fall thing was good, gave me the feeling of Harkkonen's suit in Dune or something like that. I'm just wondering how, after the massive show of disrespect he irreverently made, he got out alive. Whispers of the Sun Yeah nah. You don't go ' pulling in a single, quick motion', no. Our boy isn't going to hit poo poo. Nor do you bother burying some dead small furry animal when you apparently live on land big enough for harvests. It shall be dealt with in due time by nature herself. And shooting clay is like, a rich persons thing in the olden days? but now they're drinking moonshine. No, we are not in rural England after all. I get the feeling times are hard, so let's go shoot me last shell at expensive clay targets! I love harvest time myself, but truly cannot remember it being party zone with everyone stressed as gently caress and working 18 hour days. Maybe it's different in America or Opposite World. Maybe somebody who lived in a city their entire life wouldn't mind all that. Dialogue isn't too bad but needs work especially the speech about Paw and his paw. In the last paragraph you start to get somewhere, so there is hope for you yet, as there is for all. Self-Maintenance Wow I think you just might win, haven't read em all yet so.. yeah this is great, I got a feel it's in a world like The Expanse - spacers / belters, well that's the one I thought of. You do dialogue well, the story went somewhere and was a good twist, happy endings. Southbound I'd like this story a lot more if I knew what actinic was. Can't fault it otherwise, got it all - well written, nice n spooky, Charon, 9 levels, going to hell like this forum. Falling Nothing better than an action packed Girlboss start to any fantasy story I say. The story of Sweary Marie and Shurra the Foul-Mouthed Dragon fucks, and I want to see more of their adventures in turning the air about them blue. A Light in the Dark A clever allegory of a gay man rejected by his family, entering the cave of darkness to give himself to the dark god, which some will find problematic. Ergo Sum AI has yet again taken over the world as it does, and this time the sistas are doing it for themselves. Now let's open the door and toddle over to an old mate mopping the floor (this is max sec remember) and bob's yer uncle, laser cutter! And they run into the night. You write really well but let's admit we need some work here. Third (Ten Years After Christmas) These animals they're studying remind me of this show the wife watches, '90 day fiance' I think it's called. It's just people shouting at each other with their families or whoever shouting in the background, none of it making sense, every episode exactly the same. It's good to see someone finally found use for them at Sagan /Segan. But it sounds great even though I can't really figure what they're getting at in the end. Fat Jesus fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Jun 20, 2023 |
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Jun 19, 2023 06:47
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