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What's that, ten cents a word, at a payout rate considerably better than most magazines? Sounds good, I'm sure the two hour deadline won't sink me.
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Sep 15, 2021 21:18
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 08:12 |
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The idea of people watching me write real time fills me with The Fear, no thank you. Ignore me testing something. Mystic Mongol fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Oct 9, 2021 |
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Oct 9, 2021 01:15
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I choose to believe the prompt is the picture and not the word bluff. To work to work.
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Oct 9, 2021 02:06
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This story is best read after someone puts indentations in front of each paragraph, please and thank you. Mustang Sally 1280 words First contact was made by Captain Sally Ride, bitter misanthrope and sole occupant of the mining ship Lonely Rhinoceros in the second of Epsilon Erandi's asteroid belts. The round trip from Earth took a relative three years there, three years back, so she had brought quite a few books. And by the time she returned to Earth, decades would have passed, realtime. All her coworkers and family would be dead, or at least old enough to be laughable. So there was that to look forward to. But when radiation from the astatine cargo damaged the ignition system for the engines, she lacked the technical background to restart them by herself. Sally turned on the distress signal and kicked back. Captain Ride hadn't been the only pilot to rent a star ship and set off in search of riches. It would only take time before someone else showed up in the area. An offer of a tenth of her cargo when she reached earth would make rescue an enticing act for even the greedy, miserable hermits who had set out to space. Three months passed. When a ship did appear, Sally wasn't sure if she had simply imagined it. One moment, she was floating alone among the radioactive rocks. The next, a craft the tenth the size of her own was floating next to hers. It looked like a rocket that tapered on both ends, bring pink and covered in baby blue fins, with highlights of silver along the edges and dappled across the hull. As Sally stared it it, the top faded away, revealing the passenger within to the vacuum of space. The creature within, a mass of entwined tubes that looped back in on themselves, gave a jaunty little wave. The radio on the Lonely Rhinoceros crackled to life. “你好! Bonjour! 안녕하십니까! Aloha!” “Have I gone mad?” Sally said, staring at the window. The creature didn't wait for Sally to turn her radio on. “Wooof! How would I know! Ha ha!” “I must have,” said Sally. “Or I wouldn't be looking at pile of English speaking alien snakes in a nineteen fifties convertible Cadillac.” “Wa-hayyyy! I don't speak it that good, human! But you all shout so much on all the waves! It is hard not to understand it!” The creature seemed to fold in on itself several times, rotating along a vertical axis. “What do you want?” “You were shouting a lot! So I dropped three bearings to see! Why you are shouting!” “Oh.” Sally tried to figure out how to explain an engineering problem to someone using alien technology. “The, uh, ignition? It starts the engine, powers the reaction, but it isn't working. If I could contact another human, they could help--” “Wa-hey! I can ignite a on! Plasma, yes! Gluons! Zaminitol! Magnetic fields!” The Lonely Rhinoceros shuddered as the fusion reaction in the back suddenly started. “Go find humans! Wha-hey!” “Oh! Uh. Thank you!” Sally checked the self diagnosis of the ship—ignition was still offline. If she was going to start heading back to Earth, she would have to do it now. “Hey, who are you? Are you going to visit us? The humans?” She tried to think of what to say, and only came up with platitudes from old movies. “We have, uh, so much to learn from one another.” “Wooooooof! No! That would be a big bother yes!” The top of the strange spacecraft reappeared, and the baby blue fins began to slide across the hull. “That sounds very thin!” “No, no, it'll be great. Just come to Earth, and--” But the craft was already gone. The trip back to Earth took four and a half years, relative, twenty three years real, because the Lonely Rhinoceros had started accelerating in the wrong direction. By the time she arrived, even Captain Ride was grudgingly eager to talk to another person for the first time in almost a decade. But when she arrived, armies of journalists, bloggers, cranks, and activists were waiting for her. To her outrage, but not surprise, it turned out two other mining ships had been monitoring Sally's condition in the asteroid belt. They hadn't bothered to help the ship, or contact her in any way, but had recorded the alien's presence and side of the conversation. For the last decade everyone on Earth had been speculating on just what she had said to the Botrus Anguium she had encountered. Now, thanks to the actions of some miners who had been happy enough to leave her to die ten light years from home, Sally Ride's life was a nonstop panopticon of interviews from TV hosts, military leaders, politicians, and scientists. Occasionally she was attacked on the street by some radical lunatic. And everyone was extremely disappointed by her actions. Why hadn't she convinced Humanity's first kin among the stars to sign a mutual defense pact? Why was she so clumsy in her words? Shouldn't she have compared basic mathematical concepts? Why didn't she find out how the Botrus Anguium started the fusion reaction? Her ship had taken video recordings of it, but she hadn't done any subsurface penetrative scans? Well, why didn't her ship have that equipment on it, wasn't she prepared for the unknown? She made it all up for attention, right? Because that's what she really wants, all the attention! She was just a liar, right? Admit it! Tell us how you failed! Thirty years passed. The astatine had sold well, although not as well as she had hoped—Earth had developed a way to synthesize it in the half century she was away—and Mrs. Ride now lived in a gated community in the wilds of Illinois. Her neighbors had learned not to ask her about the Alien, because she was a quick strike with her cane and too famous to arrest. Occasionally she would stalk to the store in a black coat, glaring at everyone she passed. Mostly she read books. Sally was enjoying a quiet evening when the alien appeared in front of her. “Woooo! Human! I came to Earth!” It partially unspooled to form a pair of pseudopods, which it waved excitedly in the air. “Took you a while.” Mrs. Ride peered over her book. “Was it a long trip? I wouldn't want you inconvenienced.” “Nah! But I've been doing the things! Also, the oxygen!” The creature folded over itself as it traveled across the room towards a lamp. “So reactive! I had to talk to a colleague! Very fun challenge! And now I can experience your many, many gasses!” “We do have a lot of them,” Sally said. She finished the page before setting down her book. “So, tell me. What can I do for my favorite person in Epsilon Erandi or Sol systems?” “You said come to Earth! So I did a swing!” The creature wound itself tight, arcing across the room. “You have some very funny gravities here! What else to see? Anywhere to go?” Well, here it was. Take it outside, introduce it to a few reporters, figure out how to shake its hand, and Sally would be vindicated. She'd go from a lying moron to history's most important figure, overnight. Of course, she'd have to go on television a bunch more times. “Wooof! No need to go anywhere.” Sally used her cane to stand up. “I've got books, radio, the television, a big system called the internet. You can see the whole planet from right here, without ever being bothered by those shouting humans. I'll show you how they all work.” “Wha-hey! So many facets! Such fun! I knew you displayed variance!” “Yes,” Sally said. “I always knew I was different, too.”
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Oct 9, 2021 03:52
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QuoProQuid posted:I have to assume this story is not about the real, historical figure Sally Ride, right? I spent the first bit of this story wondering whether you were going for wacky historical fiction, but I think the name is supposed to be paying homage to the astronaut Sally Ride. I'm very bad at giving characters names. If I took the time to do it properly I would have spent the full two hours on that. So I just typed "Cool Female Pilot Names" into google and picked one I liked. Apparently she's super famous and everyone's heard of her except me and it wildly colored everyone's experience? Dammit.
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Oct 11, 2021 22:40
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