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The day the Area 51 files were declassified was worse than the day Rachel's ex had notified her of their divorce via an ad in the local paper. To his credit, Roger's, it was a last resort...Rachel was notoriously hard to contact way up there in the Tudor-style timeshare-turned-bunker, which she'd picked up at a public auction when its rightful owner had been convicted of "fraud" and of defecating on the floors of other timeshares in the off season. But so, she was really way out there in the woods, and apparently the divorce court had authorized the ad, since there were no routes to Rachel's house that didn't require four wheel drive and a chainsaw. Rachel hadn't even seen the ad the week it ran, had to get it folded up and cut-out from a local Forest Ranger who'd been carrying it around in hopes of running into her and having a laugh and maybe a dinner date over the whole thing. But Rachel was mortified, not because of the humiliation, not because of the loss of a marriage that she could sort of recall once caring about, but because THE STATE and her ex-"husband" Roger had colluded to weaken her assets without special visitation from herself, the flesh and blood woman. Basically, it was unnerving and infuriating and strangely vindicating; of COURSE the "relationship" hadn't worked out...but luckily Rachel had purchased the Tudor timeshare bunker with her own private physical American dollars and Roger and The "Courts" couldn't do a thing about it. So, all conspiracy enthusiasts have their sweet spot, that plot to end all plots, whose intrigues weave a clear, bright red thread through history's tapestry. For some people, the JFK assassination is like coordinate zero on the axis of time and events. For others, it's the lunar landing and the so-called "space race"….for Rachel, though, it was Area 51. "This has been a decades-long war of misinformation," she had said into her computer's microphone while recording her VERY popular podcast show, wherein she and her avid listeners discussed via phone call and E-mail just how really real the real truth of Area 51 was. "WE are here to pass the torch of truth to the next generation. WE are the front line in a war no one knows exists. WE are the voices of the silenced beings who THE STATE are trying to exploit for technology for war. WE have to show the E.T.s that there are members of humanity who are ready for the enlightenment that they've carried to us from light years across the stars." In July of 2013, the CIA "declassified" more than fifty documents and put to rest once and for all the notion that there were so-called extraterrestrials at Groom Lake AKA the infamous Area 51. The Cold War, of course...was an easy scapegoat. Rachel couldn't count how many secret installations' purposes had been filed away under "Because Russia." The Blog-o-sphere had erupted. Rachel's inbox had lagged with inbound E-mails...her listeners had been thrown into a frenzied debate, discussion forums turning on themselves...The True believers chastised the easily swayed-newcomers and conspiracy hobbyists seeking cheap mental weekend thrills...the "Hobbyists" lined up the Facts with the facts according to the CIA and threw up the white flag, before moving onto fresher plots like the Bilderberg Group and Google-slash-Skynet. Rachel had always told herself that the reason SHE was different from other conspiracy enthusiasts was that she KNEW that she would accept rational proof of no E.T.s if someone provided it. But the week went around its wheel and Wednesday night arrived and Rachel couldn't bring herself to address her listeners, who would, just like her, want someone to tell them that is was another attack of misinformation, more misdirection...the same faithful tactics that had kept the war of data alive for so long. So she skipped one podcast. And then the next. And then she stopped checking her E-mails...her heart pounded when she even looked at the icon for her inbox on the computer. Rachel thought back to the Ranger with the divorce ad. Not anything about him, just of him. It was the first time that she'd thought of anyone who wasn't another nut (affectionate term--ok to use) or someone connected to Area 51 in ten years. That realization sparked a chain reaction...when was that, the divorce ad? Some seven years before. Rachel went to the mirror and looked at herself, like really looked, for more than just to check for ringworm and seat-sores, and saw that she had swollen and sagged since then. Rachel's cabin had been for Rachel like her safe little porthole view into the REAL world, the one where big things moved behind the scenes and even though they were dark things, they were there and were in control and could be fought and conquered...In theory. But it was only ever theories. Her fellow nuts on the forums boards would spend hours crafting arguments about the exact intent and nature of the E.T.s or theorizing about how whatever congressional bill related to the big Cover Up, never really rising to action. She trawled all the normal blogs and podcasts, who reassured everyone that nothing had changed, that this was another volley in the battle for the truth as history would remember it. The cabin seemed noisy and creaky and unfriendly even in the summer night. Rachel couldn't remember the Ranger's name...he was probably long gone, anyway. Rachel made up her mind. She decided to leave a note, with instructions on how to disable any forgotten traps around the place, and her story, just because she was afraid that someone'd find the place and make up their own stories about it, since she wouldn't be around to declassify the truth. Don't look for her. P.S. Please REALLY be careful about the traps, she left in a hurry.... (INSTRUCTIONS ON BACK) - (Beefbrawl, 1000 words)
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Nov 25, 2013 03:09
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 13:42 |
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Mercedes posted:I shall judge the inevitable poo poo that you will spew! One does not simply judge a Stupor/Mojo battle alone. Ok well since you asked I'll help. edit: NEVERMIND our creator deity has forsaken us. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Nov 26, 2013 |
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Nov 25, 2013 23:48
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fine. I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warnin'
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Dec 3, 2013 02:44
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Feedback Cascade 1154 words On a nobody street in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a girl called Constance walks by an audio/video store with banks of flatscreen televisions in the window. She fears no ebb of time because ten identical meteorologists are waving at a greenscreen that says sunny and eighty-five. Other places rain, Florida takes an afternoon shower. - Somewhere up in the nexus of thoughts and pixels, a staffer for a major online news aggregate receives a photo attachment in his email inbox. SUBJ: This Will Change Everthing[sic]. He deletes it, then undeletes it, marks it as unread. If it were so important, the anonymous sender would've sent it to the authorities, right? But the staffer can't put the photo out of his mind. Over drinks with his colleagues he laughs too loud and casually pitches a new weekly piece for the website called "What's Ending the World This Time?" - In Mogadishu, Somalia, the rains have still not come. Nadifa is taken to a hospital and left there by her mother, because her mother's new man is one of the Shabab and has his own fat, healthy children and Nadifa is small and weak and is another mouth to feed. It seems to Nadifa that her city is one big open wailing mouth, stretched so wide you can see all the way down into its empty belly. But there's nothing to fill that emptiness, and so it crawls up into the eyes of children and flies drink it from the corners of their eyelids. But her long, skinny fingers are good for plucking morsels from piles of refuse, and she doesn't lay down and let the flies kiss her face. - One day, back to Florida now, Constance has to laugh at herself when she's caught in one of those afternoon showers sans umbrella. Without the canopy of nylon and metal wire over her head, the sky seems both lower and more vast, and Constance stops and lets the rain fall down on her face, and now looking up at the heavy afternoon clouds, really noticing them for the first time in years, she has a feeling like she's just walked in on a clown whose makeup is running. The sky roars in decibels that dwarf the supersonic mumble of the jets that leave lines across its face. It will not be ignored. Inside of Constance's air-conditioned condominium, the thunder rattles the dishes in the cupboards. - The staffer starts to have a lot of conversations with people about responsibility. About what obligates someone to act, and what is best left to the experts. About whether it's better to blow the whistle and be wrong, or wait things out and see where the chips fall. He looks at the picture again, closes the message, marks it as unread. The authorities have probably already been alerted, he decides. This is just one fringe nut trying to get his pet disaster theory noticed. The staffer opens the image again, compares it to similar photos that have been doctored. The staffer can't decide one way or another if what he's looking at is real. His colleagues take him out for a pitcher of beer, saying that the staffer has been all doom and gloom lately, and since when are they the ones who have to drag him out for a good time? - Nadifa becomes used to the smell of the diesel fuel splashed everywhere that can't quite drive off of the flies. The flies become the thunderous voice of the hungry, drinking their tears and then carrying those tears out onto the wind, a wall of sound, and they are swatted away like street urchins, with no more or less malice. Outside of the hospital, as she and some other children are going to the dumps, Nadifa sees a white man holding a little plastic rectangle at her. She knows what a cellular phone is, but she cannot understand why this man aiming it her way. She wonders how come the men at the borders didn't take it. The white man gestures that she should come over. The other children stop to watch but hang back, uncertain. Nadifa goes to the man, because no one has ever gone out of their way to call Nadifa to them, were always sending her away. He asks her in broken Somali if she lives here. His face looks swollen like a ripe fruit. Nadifa nods. He asks her where she's going. Nadifa points in the direction of the dumps. They are outside of the city proper, but no one from Mogadishu would have any doubt about where a skinny little girl with a torn plastic shopping bag was off to. Hungry? He asks her. For how long? Always. Many have died, he comments. From the hungry. Nadifa doesn't nod or look away or say anything else. The man aims his cellphone at her again and it makes a camera sound. - Constance goes to the grocery store to buy the pomegranates that are supposed to be in season and there are none. - The staffer scrolls through his photos of starved and bereft faces, of melting glaciers and lakes that burn beneath Siberian ice. His is privileged, he knows, with the resources to go, see. He'd quit his job at the major internet news aggregator, called in contacts and favors, and dumped his savings into the intercontinental trip he said he'd always take. But there is an urgency to it that he hadn't envisioned before. He feels like it is the last thing he'll ever do, like he can hear the ending score of a movie that means soon credits'll be rolling on empty black. He hasn't looked at the photo in a long time because he doesn't need to, because he can see and hear and smell the truth of it in the falling dominos of the world. He's in a hostel in Chersky, Russia and he puts all of his photos in a .zip file and sends them off to his email contact, the one who sent the picture. He has never emailed this person before. He had argued to himself in the beginning that to contact the sender would be to enable some painful, apocalyptic delusion. He feels almost ashamed now, crawling back after almost a year, but it is a good and healthy shame that lets him know that, if he can't save the world, he can at least vindicate this stranger who tried to. - Nadifa picks at trash. Good finds are rarer, now, as even the wealthy have to tighten their belt loops. One man's trash will become his treasure, if you take enough away from him. She daydreams of her own face on tall American billboards. - Constance's lights go out and the air-conditioner makes a death rattle. Outside it rains, and the thunder goes on and on.
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Dec 8, 2013 23:44
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whenever people sass about judgement all I hear is "hey sitting here I am weak and smelly like fragile babby, please put my rear end on a platter and hand it to me thank you" i will gladly comply with this request I'm actually super ok with people being pedantic about judgement since it usually ends up with entertaining grudge matches* *don't listen to me
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Dec 19, 2013 01:56
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dis thred https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJxrX42WcjQ&t=89s You assholes are the wind beneath my wings
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Dec 25, 2013 03:51
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I am actually waiting on the OK from the current patriarch of this thread, but assuming Marty's fine with me posting it, I have the outline for the new thread OP in a google doc. I'm totally cool with including the  rule. I'll probably run my handiwork by the good folks on IRC in a couple days.
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Dec 25, 2013 04:39
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Aw heck gotta do the last thunder dome of the year
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Dec 26, 2013 07:36
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The Leper Colon V posted:Well, there goes any chance I had of taking this Dome seriously. Hello strange one you say many word which are not stories. Why do you do this thing?
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Dec 27, 2013 19:29
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The Leper Colon V posted:I wouldn't dream of anything else. stop it stop saying things edit: I had to come up with the phrase "Sonic-the-Hedgehog-esque Cool-Dude-isms" to encompass the awkwardness I feel on behalf of your bantering in this thread put up or shut up, is the general rule here. Sitting Here fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Dec 29, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 17:10
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You scared me for a sec crabrock Garden of Ego 490 words The greatest experiment of El and Adonai's careers was coming to a close. Beneath the transparent flexfield dome, eons had passed in Eden. The massive outpost had grown verdant and green with flora well-suited to the weak light of the planet's pale yellow sun. There was a village deep in the garden. El knew the way by heart, and cursed under his breath as he crashed through his paradise. He had to confirm what he'd seen on the control room monitors with his own eyes. That confirmation came as soon as he reached the edge of the forest. At the center of the small cluster of huts was Adonai, who was smiling beatifically over a crowd of kneeling subjects. "You didn't," El cried. "They needed guidance." The supplicants stirred. Some of them sat up and turned toward El, and he was struck by how his creations had changed while he'd slept. Their faces were crude mirrors of his own, all wide-set features and heavy brows, where his features were soft and cherubic. But there was intelligence there. The innocence that he had carefully selected for over generations was gone from their eyes, however. In its place was fear, fear and obedience. "Why didn't Eden bring us out of Cryo at the same time?" "You would've stopped me if I'd let you wake. Botched the whole thing," said Adonai. He laid a hand on the head of one subject, who trembled under his touch. "You've clothed them!" "They were rutting indiscriminately. It was a distraction." "For who? You? Or them?" "We did not come here to seed a world with a horde of over-sexed primitives. They need to thrive, to progress if they're to survive outside of Eden. I simply gave them a set of directives to--" El dematerialized, reappeared an arm's length from Adonai, and then they were on the ground, air crackling around them as their personal nanofields registered multiple blows and attempted to push the pair apart. But El was a man who'd watched a work that had spanned nearly the lifetime of a planet arrive at its conclusion stillborn. There wasn't a force in the universe that could keep him off of Adonai. They had forgotten their audience. Their subjects, their children, shrieked and babbled in their low tongue, pounding their hands into their fists. This was a new thing in Eden, this clash between creatures who could disappear and reappear and made the air smell like a storm as they battled. El wrestled for remote nanite control of Eden's flexfield barrier. If he couldn't save the experiment, he could contaminate it beyond repair. His mind half occupied with accessing the outpost's computer, El was too slow to dodge the blow that broke his jaw. He saw stars--but there, in T-minus twenty the shield would be down. By some instinct, his children were already fleeing their fathers, to the edge of Eden and beyond.
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Dec 30, 2013 07:34
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New thread is coming down the pipes. You will know it by the new thread that is in CC, mainly. Congrats Roguelike, please post the prompt in the new thread when it appears. Good job on posting in this thread this year guys, I hope people also post things in next year's thread. My New Years resolution is to keep owning the poo poo out of you fuckers and you can't stop me
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Dec 31, 2013 05:11
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The Leper Colon V posted:At least you're not me. corndarnit Leper get your head in the game
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Dec 31, 2013 06:03
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 13:42 |
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New thread is here. Neon or Marty, feel free to put this beast out of its misery
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Dec 31, 2013 08:57
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