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Dead Drop 1,965 words Two of Wands Alina realised something was wrong seconds before the cargo bay blew up and crippled her ship. It was meant to be another straightforward collection, though she would never describe them as easy. Emphis, her main contact for these smuggling jobs, only ever left her a set of deep void coordinates and a trajectory, and the complex orbital calculus required to work out where the package was now, three weeks later, still made her head hurt. It was boring work, but boring meant safe. It had only taken her three attempts to grab the cargo, the Good Intentions matching its spin and velocity as she operated the drone arm. A tie for her personal best. Then it blew up and left her for dead. “Rovhal!” She slammed her fist against the console, dozens of flickering red warnings casting a sinister glow over skin paled by decades living off-planet. Engines, weapons, comms—everything useful, dead. From the outside she knew there was no hope. On the off-chance another ship was this far from the lanes all they might ever see was the briefest sliver of shadow across any of a thousand different stars. “Another friendly ship,” she added out loud. Now that the immediate shock of the explosion had worn off her brain was starting to think ahead. Her gaze flicked to the radar, mercifully still active, before quickly making the adjustments to divert additional power to it. It wasn’t doing much good elsewhere and—there! Right on the edge of its range, two arrows aimed directly towards her. “Pirates,” Alina spat. She’d had plenty of run-ins with them before, and the scars that marked what each had cost her. These could be any number of pissed-off mobs with guns and a grudge—Esca Syndicate, the Val’shar Clan, or even the Bloody Smile still doggedly chasing her through system after system. Clearly whoever they were knew the Good Intentions well enough to knock its systems out but leave her alive. And not only that, but they knew where to find her. “Oh, Emphis,” she said quietly. He’d been reliable, but like everybody she worked with he valued his own life first. She doubted he put up any resistance. “Okay, inventory,” she muttered to herself, running a hand over the stubble of her scalp. Years of piloting solo had taught her the importance of being methodical. “Myself, check. Useless box with a hole the size of Salvation Orbital, check.” She counted each off on one hand. “Emergency suit, lasgun, check.” “Mag-mines.” She sighed. The mag-mines were a treat, something she’d been saving in case she ever found that rear end in a top hat Riko again. Nothing said, “I hate you, please die,” quite as definitively as high kiloton anti-ship explosives applied to the human body. “Check.” Alina grimaced in the red light. She had the start of a plan, and prayed she had enough time. * * * Her eyes were fixed on the outside hull of the ship where her maglock boots were firmly stuck in place. She didn’t like to stare too long at the stars. Seemingly every culture and race had some concept of constellations, tracing histories or mapping the future in those imagined lines. To Alina, so far away from all those billions of people, all she could picture was a vast web across the heavens, an impossibly colossal prison. It had always been this way. She was a born spacer, and accustomed to the constant mobility that came with it. Going planetside made her twitch, and even stations like the Weald couldn’t be called home for too long. She needed to be on the move, to feel like she could always escape. The stubble on her scalp itched again. This always happened when she was stuck in a suit, no longer able to scratch it. A jolt reverberating through her ship pulled Alina back into the present moment. Whoever the pirates were, they’d arrived and started docking near the cargo bay. Just one—the other was probably hanging back for now. If they were smart they would sweep the exterior of the hull, which is why she had wedged herself tightly amongst the ramshackle photon rocket stacks under one wing. With her ship comms dead Alina could only guess at what was happening inside the Good Intentions. By now they should have found the first—and only—mag-mine she had left inside the remains of its cargo bay. She thought she’d done well to strike the balance between hidden enough to look genuine, but impossible to miss. Enough to look like she had set up a hasty ambush inside the ship. They’d be forced to go slowly now, checking every nook for an explosive surprise. Like the one she held now. She began to creep around the exterior of the hull one step at a time, making sure each maglock boot was engaged first before taking the next. The left boot felt weaker than the right and she remembered noticing this before, six cycles ago. Like so much else in her life, if it wasn’t immediately written down somewhere it fell out of her head in the next moment. Around the hull of the Good Intentions both pirate ships came into view. They were long and thin, little more than a tube with an ion thruster at the back. Enough room for four including the pilot inside, maybe three if they were wearing bulky armoured suits. You had to pay a premium for the sleek ones. Painted down the side in streaks of red was a large, toothy grin. The Bloody Smile. They’d found her. Well, almost, she thought to herself. Alina gently tossed the bundle of mag-mines she held out to one side, letting it float away in the zero g and pull the coil of cabling between her gloves as she guessed the distance to the first ship. Roughly two dozen paces, maybe a little bit more. Luckily it was angled away from her, giving her plenty of margin to work with. The cockpit of the first ship, the one that had coupled itself to the Good Intentions, was empty. She could see the pilot of the second ship sitting up front, not paying much attention. They had a long, flat face covered in red scales. Not anybody she knew personally. The pilot, maybe catching the movement of the mag-mines in the corner of one eye, looked up and followed the line back to where she stood atop her own ship. No more time for subtlety. She started to swing her arms in a wide circle around her head. The cable went taught as the bundle of mag-mines on its far end gathered momentum. She ground her feet into the hull, bracing herself as the counterweight picked up speed, twisting the cable to aim it right behind the cockpit. The pilot raised its arms, panic spreading over its face. She could see its mouth open to scream. The mag-mines made contact with the hull. A delay while they latched on, just enough for Alina to kneel and brace herself and— Light. An expanding ball of electric white tore the ship apart. The edges of it caught the first ship too, and her own, breaking off chunks in all directions. There was no sound but she felt the explosion rocket back down the tether, remembering to drop it at the last moment as it whipped past her and out into the void. A shot from the rear of the ship clipped her shoulder, spinning her around as her left boot came unstuck. She grabbed the lasgun off her back as she kicked her foot out to against the rotation, bringing the sights up towards the domed helmet climbing through the hole in her cargo bay. Barely enough time to aim before she fired off a volley, the last shot connecting and snapping the pirate’s head back as their body drifted away from the ship. The recoil pushed her back towards the hull and she locked her boot into place, before disengaging and pushing off to soar towards the rear of the ship. Two more helmets stuck up from the cargo bay as she fired off another volley, hoping desperately they connected. The shots had slowed her down, and she planted one foot on an aerial and kicked off at an angle to her original trajectory. Ahead was a hole in her ship’s hull, barely two feet wide. As she came upon it she jammed the tip of her lasgun in and flipped up, now perpendicular to the ship as she aimed the gun straight down at the last figure hiding below. One shot and the body bounced off the floor while she flung out a hand to grasp on the torn metal sheeting, slamming her body down flat against the ship. Her body twitched, desperate to get moving again, she had to force herself to lie still, one hand holding the lasgun towards the rear, one gloved hand on the hull of her ship. It was still. No vibrations through the metal. She let out the breath she’d been holding. Sweat had dripped off her face, pooling uncomfortably in all corners of her helmet. Cautiously she skimmed across to the larger hole in the cargo bay and peered down. Three bodies in bulky personal armour floated amidst the twisted and scorched metal. She looked up towards the remaining pirate ship, rocked loose by the explosion, and let out a swear as she recognised the figure frantically grasping at the controls in the cockpit. Without thinking she kicked off from her ship again, biting her lip and praying he wouldn’t get the ship moving in time. Two quick shots behind her to speed up and correct course sent her crashing into the frame of the still open bay door and she collapsed into its artificial gravity with relief. Back inside atmosphere, the sounds of a ship coming to life surrounded her and for the second time in as many minutes Alina let out her breath. She pulled herself up against the curved interior of the ship, mercifully empty but for the figure in the cockpit. She stamped one foot loudly on the metal plating as she brought her lasgun up. Emphis spun around, a bright smile on his face as he recognised her before bringing both hands up in surrender as he spotted the lasgun pointed at his chest. “Alina, darling! I can—” She waved a hand to cut him off. “Save it. Are you going to be helpful? Or does our contract end here?” His face fell. “I can help! I can—” Emphis stuttered. “I can fix things, I can—” She glared back at the cowering figure, disgusted at how easily he had turned to grovelling. “You ever cobbled together a working ship from spare parts and wreckage?” His mouth twitched into a nervous smile, hands still raised. “Not as such, no, but we have a perfectly serviceable one right here we could—” “No.” Alina punctuated the statement by tucking the lasgun into her shoulder, trying not to wince as it pressed against a fresh bruise. “The Good Intentions is not salvage.” Emphis dropped his hands in defeat. “Very well. I am used to making do, I am certain we can figure it out as we go.” “You’ll figure it out.” She pushed past him in the cramped cockpit and collapsed into the pilot’s chair, making sure to keep her lasgun trained on the smuggler at all times. “Suit up and go see what we’re working with. Start with their engines, we should be able to swap mine out. And Emphis?” He turned to look back at Alina, who had finally removed her helmet and was running one hand over her scalp. “If you’re good, there might be room for you on the way home.”
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Apr 1, 2024 00:45
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prompt: 6 of swords shipwreck 1300w The ocean is too big, I’ve always said, I’ve always believed what we call ‘the ocean’ is far too big and unnaturally big, and this bigness makes all manner of ocean related things impossible to deal with, impossible to look at or comprehend. Consider: the whole of earth is covered with water spare a few islands, and those islands are what we call ‘the continents’ and then a scattering of dust around the continents are what we call ‘islands’ and everything else is water two miles deep and dark and full of who knows what (we don’t know, and will never know, it’s too dark and deep.) And then people go and float around on this water, intentionally. Well, not me. Not me. Except, apparently, yes me. I am, it seems, required by this ridiculous relationship of mine to go on the water. Not just any water, but specifically ocean water. A lake would be acceptable to me, but a lake is not acceptable to her. A lake is right out. A lake is ‘a puddle’ and in her mind that is a negative, a lake is a ‘bunch of rain which might dry up at any moment’ a lake is an embarrassing little pool, and ‘doesn’t count’ and so here I am at the shore, here I am being licked by wet tongues, the infinitely licking tongues of the great black beast called ocean, and here we are. The boat is wedged in the sand and is rocked slightly by each wave and could hold maybe three people at most, a little wooden thing with oars, just a scrap, just a pine needle floating, and I’m meant to sit on that needle, and we’re meant to row out there and watch the sunset out of view of the shore and this is of maximum importance to her: the shore must not be visible or it ‘doesn’t count,’ all around us must be water, from horizon to horizon in every direction must only be sea and sky with no hint of land and safety, and out there in that terrifying infinity we two will sit and ‘enjoy’ the sunset. We push the miniscule rickety wooden boat out onto the waves, our shoes off and in the boat while we walk it out, then hop aboard and row against the waves, pushing out from shore, rocking and swaying, we sit facing each other, row row, me facing the receding shore, her facing the horizon, row row, splish splash, oars slapping and slushing in the salt, row row, she looks so excited, her cheeks are pink from the wind, her eyes are watering, strands of her black hair are escaping the tie and flittering around her head, she looks right past me and out to the big flat nothing, and her eyes are so wide and glowing and she looks like someone who will never come back. And behind her the beach is shrinking to a little brown line. And gone. Flat blue, grey blackgreen and little flecks of white foam and little sloshing slurps at the side of the boat, and deep blackness beneath, only some few inches below where I sit, separated only by this thin wood is an endless depth of cold water, unbreathable undrinkable water that would slither and slide its way into my nostrils ears eyes and throat in an instant given the slightest chance, and she is looking so pleased, turning round and round in the little raft, trying to swallow the world in her eyes like a snake unhinging its jaw she gulps the ‘view’ which is actually of nothing but sky and water, not a hint of life or existence, not even a plane in the sky to comfort me with a reminder of other people, it is only us, quietly sloshing and rocking, and beneath, of course, a million unseen things swimming. Then she takes my hand, and we turn in the boat so that we’re straddling the seats and thus sitting side by side and looking at the setting sun, and the light is sinking down into the deeps, sinking down and soon to be extinguished, and soon to leave us alone in the dark on this unending field of waves, and she squeezes my hand and looks at me and says I love you, and her eyes are gleaming with something, some kind of hope or anticipation, and I say Yes, of course, you as well, and the boat is swaying as if trying to dump me out of it, and the light is sinking, the sun, our own sun, like a great red coal sinking into the water and I believe I can even hear the hiss and see the steam on the horizon, the sky is darkening, the great fire is going out, soon it will all be over and we’ll be alone in darkness, which on the one hand makes everything even more terrible, but on the other at least means that we will have ‘seen the sunset’ and can finally turn around and go back. At some point during the sunset she lets go of my hand. Stars appear in the darkening sky like a thousand eyes opening in the forest. We rotate back into position in our seats and oar toward shore, but this time we are both facing forward, and I am looking at her back, the back of her head, her muscular shoulders flexing with each row, and cold wind whooshes constantly over us, the cold breath of the ocean. And with each push of the oars I feel as if a fog is receding behind me, as if the ground is rising up to meet me, and the city lights in the distance, where our warm and silent rooms are waiting for us, are brighter than the stars. But I soon begin to feel an uneasy sense of lightness, as if I’ve forgotten something, as if I left some important item floating back there on the dark sea. At the shore we hop out and pull the boat up onto the sand, and the wonderful feeling of solidity, of the whole solid earth under my feet fills me with clarity. I glance at her several times as we pull the boat up, take our shoes, walk up toward the road, but she seems to always be turned away from me, and even when not, I cannot see her face in the dark. Was it everything you hoped for? I ask, simply to break the silence, but she doesn’t answer, and we walk on, with only the shushing of our feet in the sand, the shushing of the waves, and the shushing of the wind above us, a night full of hissing, and I am filled with the strangest feeling of isolation, as if she is not she, and too as if I am not I, as if we are only shadows, weightless, disconnected shadows sliding noiselessly along the beach while our bodies were left behind on the waves and still sit there, watching the stars hand in hand. At home I put on the TV for something to break the silence but every show I click on seems to feature the ocean, waves, beaches, boats, and the instant I switch away from one, there is another, as if intentionally throwing themselves at me. On one, a narrator states with gravitas that there are three million shipwrecks down there in the deep, and I wonder aloud how they could come up with such a number, who calculated that, and why couldn’t it be, in fact, three million and one. She goes to bed early, which she never does. I stay up into the night, watching, but not really watching anything.
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Apr 1, 2024 01:07
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Righteous Arrogance [2451] Two different men had taken the newly-debuted queen for a fool. They were angry she thought anything worthy of herself they did not designate her with. As if she was not allowed to squirrel away thoughts, desires, hopes, a self of her own behind her blue eyes. As if—for the crime of her sex—she had needed to be humbled and learn to accept the rule of a man without protest, and marry without any knowledge of who she would be yoked to. As if she had not seen from her childhood what came of marrying for elevation instead of compatibility and affection. Her elder three sisters had each blindly accepted the wealthiest noble whom asked for their hand without knowing anything of them, and they had each paid dearly. She only saw them at festivals now, if then; they had no time free to attend their natal family anymore with the duties that came of being noblemen’s wives. The light, joy, and youth had dimmed from each of their eyes as heirs and spares and more came from them, all their personal joys removed and repressed until they saw themselves as others had wanted them: vessels for the linage they were chained to til death took them and buried their names with them. She had vowed it, a young woman not old enough to be debuted, while seeing her second oldest sister sit meekly next to her spouse at the third’s wedding feast. How others spoke only of her sister’s talent in bearing sons—no speak of the daughters—and the way her smile never reached the blue eyes they shared. How the girl she remembered whistling tunes every step only rose long enough to perform a short, unmodified song on command from her duke, with no more soul in her notes than a mechanical nightingale before she sat meekly again with no further word. How she was, for all she had been, no more than an ornament, a doll, a golden woman and no more important to her husband than the ruby ring on his hand. She had had told herself, shedding the angry tears over her light supper she’d repressed at the dinner feast, she would not find herself in the same fate. She would never shrink herself to fit into the golden cages women of nobility found themselves in after marriage. *~*~* Last year, when she had come of age, her noble father had insisted she prepare for marriage with all haste lest she become too old to provide sons—no mention of daughters—to her husband’s line. She had been presented to man after man, none of them knowing she had found ways to research the history of each man brought before her before they arrived. She had spoken to the staff where others had not—for as the youngest she had found rapport with those whom kept her in comfort—and learned in shadows what the nobles hid away, the flaws buried under layers of silk and velvet like a hard pea beneath a score of mattresses. And when the men came in gold and silk to take her soft hand away with them to their gilded cages to become their nightingales, she sang a different tune, and called each on their fatal flaws in coded tongue to their face, so they would know she was aware of the skeletons buried in their fields. A wine cask, she had snapped, for the one constantly addled by spirits, and it mere coincidence he was as short and stout as the barrels he tapped dry before stumbling to his chambers. A fighting cock, who ordered innocent animals to battle to destruction all to merely entertain him, and watched with pleasure as his already red face went as scarlet as his tunic and he made a hasty retreat. Long and thin with little heart in him, to another; his staff, she had been told, wore lashes under their livery for the sheer failure to be invisible and silent to his beastly ways. And pale and white as death himself—her own face pale at the memory as she spoke to him—to the man twice her age, thin skin pulled over unfeeling features, who had lost three wives in childbirth and sought a fourth to make the son he sought, and yet every daughter never seeing the sunrise after their birth. She earned a reputation with her accurate tongue. Haughty, the nobles called her where her father heard. Arrogant. Proud, as if no woman had a right to think more of herself than of a future wife and mother. Her father’s pride, the nobles said, wounded with each arrow’s insult she flung into those who offered to take her hand simply because she was beautiful. Insults! As if she didn’t do more than speak truth to men who didn’t wish to hear it. Prudent, said the working women, in the dovecote and laundry and kitchen and gardens when she had vented her frustrations over stews and roasts and pottage. Take the time to find safety over security, for it was harder to bury a baron than a butcher when he treated you poorly, as they spread butter over brown bread to share as they spoke the realities the nobles did not. The last straw reverse spun from gold thread had been when she had stared into the green eyes of a man known to set bushes alight and send burning thrushes flying out to deaths rather than flush them with dogs, and called the point-chinned man what he was. Her disgraced father had, at the man’s quiet departure, furiously vowed to marry her to the next beggar whom came through his doors and asked for her arrogant hand. Better a beggar, she had told herself while confined in her quarters for a month, than a beast. A “beggar” had come, and she had been dragged down from her rooms to marry him and sent out only with what she could carry in a sack in one hand, and both father and spouse had taken the queen for a fool. *~*~* He did not have the hands of a beggar. His fingertips and palms had been tellingly soft, the first time he had gripped her thighs and consummated their marriage roughly on a straw-filled mattress under a thatch-roof hut he had called a castle when she had balked at the poor construction. A fiddler did not have soft fingertips, if they played for their meals as often as he claimed. Nor did he have the talents of even a stable boy, sitting arrogantly on his wooden throne at the head of their imbalanced table and mocking the “queen”—refusing to use her name—for not setting a fire fast enough with the damp wood he had dragged in from outside the next morning. He had barely gathered enough food for two in the hut, and most of it improperly stored and rat-bitten; mealy flour, slimy meat, moldy vegetables. When she managed to produce something edible from the piss-poor larder, the man who had contributed nothing ordered his wife to serve him first with a tone she knew too well. She watched, stomach turning and eyes hot, as he ate the kingly share of the meal—then, sharp beard glistening with the fat, chided her for not making a feast out of famine before she could take her first leftover bite. When the poorly stored pantry went low—in part because she had wisely thrown out everything spoiled one day when he had been out “working” rather than let them become ill from it—he insisted she learn a trade, for she could not go on earning nothing for the household. She bit her lip til she tasted the tang of red rather than tell him she had spent enough time among the servants’ spaces of her manor home to know it was his ignorance and not her lack of skill which made her crafting efforts fail. His “queen” knew more of wool and willows than he ever did; the reeds were too thick and inflexible to weave baskets and there was no water to soak them, and the wool was not only unclean and unprepared but the lopsided spindle so badly whittled she had spent more time picking splinters from her sore fingertips than twisting the few spans of singles she had produced from such an imbalanced tool. All the while, his hands remained soft. He had sent her out to the market with poorly shaped clay pots, assuming her “pride” would keep her hunched in a corner with her head down rather than a nobleman’s daughter be seen selling next to fishwives and fruitmongers. Instead she had spoken to the other merchants to find the best place to set up a pottery stand, kept her chin up, and sold every lopsided pot he had brought her for a solid week. Her purse had been half full the day a slick-bearded hussar on a thoroughbred had run through a crowded market and managed to damage no other merchandise except the display of pots her “fiddler” had sent her to market with. The horse’s gallop had been too skilled, the rider too in control of his mount, and she had not said anything when she came home with tear tracks and dust in her face, and the green eyes had stared into hers and told her she had no talents and he had “managed” to find room for her as a maid in the palace’s kitchens. It had taken a fortnight of hard labor, and walking an hour home to the hut on the edge of town on swollen feet with aching arms and leftover meal scraps to add to the larder along with the few coins in her threadbare pocket under her dusty skirts before she had heard what she knew already; the king had, it was whispered among the lamenting staff, ruined a poor smart noble girl’s pride and destroyed his new wife’s ‘arrogance’ by keeping her in squalor all this time, to punish her for “insolence” at calling him what he was. She had come home that night, silently cooked the supper, and let the so-called fiddler have the lion’s share of their meal before she lay under the man with soft hands and sharp chin until he finished with a grunt and rolled over to leave her to her thoughts on the rough straw mattress. He thought her humbled and controlled of her arrogance, crowing he would present her in three days’ time at his son’s wedding—she had not known about the son, a failure of research on her part—in front of her own father and the nobles she had spoken “ill” of as one would a tamed wild mare on a golden bridle. To shock her with the knowledge she was a queen and not a beggar’s wife. She had known since the first day she was a king’s wife. He had given it away a thousand different ways, in speech and softness and superiority. But most tellingly had been on the walk for hours to the hut he had made her think her home, when she had asked about the fields and forest and townlands they’d walked past. He’d likely though her silly, so he’d answered with dismissal, slipping his silver-spooned tongue. Missing her sarcasm for self pity when he chided her response, saying she was annoying him for asking for a better husband instead of accepting the “humble” one she had married. She had been quiet the rest of the way, and he had—as he’d done for the months he’d believed her to be cowed—though himself victorious. But unless the nobles spoke as freely among beggars as they did barons, none should have known the epithet she had spoken in a room with only a widowed father and the king she’d flung the arrows at. She let him take her tears for feminine shame and not righteous fury as he told her the cruel days were past, and he dressed her in scarlet and miniver to match his own, and let him have the night and swore he would not have many more. *~*~* The queen had been widowed a year after her presentation. She had spent it with her chin low and her lip bitten, listening as her husband told her stepson how to keep the princess from too much arrogance—how his own stepmother had been too arrogant, but he had tamed her. She had not been pleased with him, and many nights she remembered the straw mattress, the shattered pots, the memory of wood spindle-splinters that hurt so bad she wished they had dragged her to a hundred-year sleep. She watched him continue to take the king’s share from meals, and even though her hands no longer made the meals and lit the fires, she saw the way he spoke to the servants the way he had spoken to her in the hut at the edge of his kingdom. She said nothing until she saw the prince chide his wife for humming idly with the same cold tone she had been, and the young lady’s head bow in sad response. And the queen decided she would not see the light go out in another woman’s eyes and turn them into an empty vessel for a man’s line. *~*~* The king’s hands were soft, the night the queen removed him from the throne; they tried to pull her callused hands away from his neck, slapping at her bare skin until they went limp. *~*~* Her last words to the young king were, if he wished to be a better king than his father, he would not treat the new queen like an ornament, for women had their ways. He had looked into the fire of his stepmother’s glance, and when he said he could have her hanged, she said he didn’t have the proof, and his hands were as soft as his father’s—and he would do right, to leave her to her arrogance. She only hoped he listened, as she gathered her belongings left to the manor home now her own, for her father had no use of it. Such a pity, the nobles had said, he had been thrown from a horse he had tried to break; such a fool, the staff had said upon her return as they welcomed her with warm arms, he had thought he could break a stallion at his advanced age. The same could be said of the late king. She only wished her sisters had been there to see her chin rise again.
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Apr 1, 2024 02:34
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(forgot the cards, here they are:) 
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Apr 1, 2024 02:35
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Watcher, Shifter, Ladder 1349 words Flash Rule:  (Page of Swords, The Druid, Eight of Wands)The Ladder is waiting, and this time, Sorcha will not be denied. A dozen times before, she's followed the Ladder in its flight, and a dozen times, a watcher from the seaside holds has chased her away before she could force it to settle, always spouting the sane inanities. What is the worth of calling "danger" or "caution" to a Ladder-chaser? Do they imagine her to have a life elsewhere worth returning to? Of all of Wisdom's hounds, the watchers should have understood it best: the calling, the devotion, and the lure of the endless heights. They are not wrong, for all they are foolish. To attempt the ascent is to take one's life in one's own hands. Sorcha reassures herself with an old litany: the rungs will not give. If they do, they will do so early, and her only scar will be the shame. If the rungs give late, her feather cloak will catch her in the air and carry her far away. If the rungs doom her and the cloak betrays her... then so it will be. If she dies, let the watchers blame her mother. When you tell tales of a ladder to Heaven to your unhappy daughter, can you be surprised if she chases it? This chase is overland, and far from the coasts, which gives Sorcha some hope that she's evaded the watchers this time. The wings her cloak granted her have carried her far, but at last she allows herself a few hours' rest in a village, then pays in silver coin for a horse to carry her farther. The rungs of the Ladder are flying close now, low enough to see the shapes of their gnarled branches, and slow enough that they should come to rest not long after sunrise. Sorcha eats enough hard bread and cheese to sustain her until the end of the chase, and then she rides all night. (Sorcha does not know of the watcher who spotted her, the keen-eyed heavy-hearted young one who saw the gleam of magic on her wings days ago, but she feels when the watcher's surveillance trance breaks -- as if a weight has lifted from her temples. She considers it a good omen.) *** The serpent wakes from its long trance at the sound of the watcher's voice in his head. <i>I need help. There's a woman chasing the Ladder -- she's getting close -- I can't catch up on foot. She'll climb and she'll die. Help me.</i> It's been so long that it takes the serpent a moment to remember himself properly. <i>Himself,</i> he affirms; he'd been a boy at the beginning of this, and the watcher a girl. His friend. She had gone to a tower, and he had dedicated himself to the crawling forms, and it had been years now, as best he could reckon it. The crawling forms are good at patience and bad at marking time. The serpent uncoils, and another acolyte startles out of his trance. "Shifter," he whispers, "what troubles you?" The slightest shift, with a hint of pain like a long-unused muscle, gives the serpent a proper mouth to speak. "My friend calls me. A watcher. A woman will die if we don't do something." "Then she dies. It is not Wisdom's way to be interrupted." Before the serpent can speak again, another voice cuts in, an acolyte in tree-shape with a single blossom reshaped to voice its words. "But what use is Wisdom without action? Why do we hone ourselves so sharply, if not to be the blade of the people? If this be life or death, let our fellow go." "When he possesses no patience? You talk of honing, but this little one will blunt his blade against a rock before his proper tempering." "You speak of patience, you, still in man-form --" "Silence," speaks the voice of the druid, a whisper with the force of an earthquake. "Wisdom's way is not found in shackles. If the young one will go, let him go, and he will return if he and the fates will it." The druid makes few pronouncements, and rarely wishes well or ill, but the serpent knows a blessing when he hears one. He unfolds himself, sprouting the dove's swift wings to carry him, and flees towards the chimney. His friend's tower is not far, and still he knows the way from when he carried her there. *** The watcher grips the pommel of her blade with white-knuckled fear as she waits, hours past sunset. In her mind, she tries to track the Ladder she can no longer see, its slender rungs moving with blurring speed when she last caught a glimpse. Years she has sat in vigil along a peaceful shore, cultivating her senses on whale pods and gull calls, and now at a glimpse of danger, she will fail. Her friend has said nothing -- can say nothing, perhaps, but she fears worse than that. The sky is lightening again when the winged serpent's shape comes into view, a vast white form carried on two long rows of dove's wings, and when he stops at the edge of her tower roost, she climbs on its back without a word. Her heart is in her throat; words come poorly. She must thank him properly, this friend whose name she can't quite bring to mind; instead, she guides him with a hand on his side, and they are off on the hunt. The watcher catches trace of the Ladder just as it begins its last descent, rungs slotting into place, and the woman chasing it signals her horse to stop. The serpent speeds to meet them, and the watcher dismounts before her quarry can finish wrapping linen bandages around her hands. "Stop! Please stop! You can't climb the Ladder." The chaser turns to her, and at last the watcher sees her properly: amber-eyed, lean and weary. "A dozen of your fellows have told me the same. They all say I'll die. And why do they care?" "Because we have a responsibility! We ward against the strange ways of Earth and Heaven, and we bear that weight, and we can't set it down." And suddenly, that weight is heavy, almost impossible. She has lived in the watcher's roost so long that soft earth feels strange under her feet. How many years has it been? Should she still be as young as she feels? The Ladder hovers and trembles, as if waiting for them. The Ladder-chaser chuckles, dry and low. "A litany. Fine. But I know what I want, child, and I always have. Better to die knowing than live wondering. Go back to your tower." But she doesn't want to, the watcher knows, with keen focus of her youth. She has served dutifully, with everything in her, and all it has brought her is tedium and fear. She can't even remember her name. She looks to her friend again, who has shifted from winged serpent to something rather like a boy, and -- well, she remembers one name, at least. "Caomh," she says. "You're Caomh, and I'm sorry. I don't think I can go back." She looks up at the Ladder; next to her, the woman has hoisted her feet onto the first rung, hands tight on the second. The branches quiver but hold. "How high do you think it goes?" "Líadan," Caomh says, wearing his old face again. "Your name is Líadan. Please don't forget that, wherever you're going? I'll tell the druid." "Thank you, Caomh," Líadan says, and embraces him for what might be the last time. She doesn't know if anyone ever goes down the Ladder again, but she'll see. Above her, the amber-eyed woman is on the fifth rung and climbing. There were eight rungs before, but there are more now -- twelve? Twenty? She can't see, and it is a beautiful thing, the not-seeing. Líadan pulls herself to the first rung, then the second, then the third. She looks down -- vertigo. She thought she'd left vertigo long behind. She smiles, and she climbs.
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Apr 1, 2024 04:43
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Stormy Nights 1239 words Flash: Nine of Swords Stormy nights are the worst. Stormy nights past three AM. Nobody’s awake. Nothing looks good. Nothing sounds good. Nothing feels good. I close my eyes but instead of pleasant, familiar eigengrau, it’s only thick, crimson waves soaking into dark, stiffening denim. When will the memories stop – when I’m dead? Twenty years have passed since I became intimately familiar with those colors and textures but they’re never faint on stormy nights. ~~~ “Steph!” my big brother Billy calls out as he sweeps the shadows with Dad’s huge flashlight, in such a hurry to find his best friend that he misses spots whenever his hands shake. No more than 10 feet behind him, I try to hit the missed spots with the smaller flashlight attached to my keychain but in my hurried anxiety I trip over one large, floppy shoe lace bunny ear. The keychain, with flashlight, takes flight and smacks into one muddy puddle about ten yards away at the same time that I splat into another and slide a few yards in a different, darker direction. Mud oozes between my fingers. I wrinkle my face at the sensation. “If this is supposed to be a joke, it’s not funny. Steph!” I mumble to the mud and stand again. Lightning strikes; almost instantly thunder rumbles overhead and even the power in our home flickers. I know there’s gotta be no way she can hear us with the storm overhead but if I don’t try with every last cell in my body I won’t be able to sleep with myself whenever sleep is possible next. This is all my fault. Not even 15 minutes ago we were watching a super hero movie and now instead of continuing to the next one in the timeline we’ve gotta look for the reigning neighborhood hide and seek champion. Billy runs over to me, nearly slips on some super-soaked grass, but maintains his balance somehow and reaches out a hand to help me up. I take it with my clean hand, wipe the other off on my pants, and can’t make myself meet his reassuring eyes once I stand again. Only once I’m upright does he grab and hand over my flashlight. “We haven’t been in the tree house regularly since we outgrew it. Jane, do you wanna climb up there and check for her? I don’t trust my own weight on those planks these days.” Billy’s got a good point – Steph’s the smallest person in our grade so it’s safest for her to get up there and it’s a place I know she’s hidden from people before. My stomach twists hard at the idea of climbing a tree during an active thunderstorm but I don’t exactly have a choice. I made her run off and now I’ve gotta be the one to make her return. For some reason I can’t make myself say that. Instead, I squish through rain and mud until I reach the massive maple we’ve used as a meeting place as long as we’ve lived here. Huge beads of water drip like tears from the leaves and then flow like sobs from the branches as I climb the planks cracked from age and weather. Roughly ten feet off the ground, the steps end and a broad, stubby shelter begins. The wind blows a hunk of white thread in my face. Steph’s wearing a delicate white top! I have to pause because at this sight, my throat clenches too hard for me to breathe for what feels like hours but can only be seconds. At the first sound of wood creaking uncomfortably, I force myself up the final planks, crouch like I’m avoiding guards in the stealth section of a video game, and step into the tree. Fortunately Steph is there. Unfortunately she doesn’t look happy to see me. “Go away! I hate you!” she yells and backs away as much as the space allows. “I told you a big secret and you don’t care at all!” Her words make me wince but I hold my ground. “Of course I care that you’re in love with Billy! I care very much and that’s why I’m not lying to you. He and I have talked to each other our entire lives about what we do and don’t have in common as twins. One big difference is that he’s both asexual and aromantic. Billy doesn’t like it about himself so he’s asked me to break hearts in his place.” Sadly Stephanie wasn’t the first or even the second girl to tell me about her feelings. One person told Billy themselves and I heard from him that it was so awkward he never wanted to go through that again if possible. It’s small compared to the things he’s done for me and I consider it a fair trade. A prolonged gust blows hard enough that the walls, or maybe the ceiling, creak and sway to one side. Stephanie’s eyes get huge but she doesn’t come closer to the trunk, or to me. I hold onto the trunk with one hand and reach to her with the other. This suddenly isn’t a safe place to stay and we both need to get to the ground. My heart beat exactly three times before lightning once again strikes so closely that there’s barely any gap between it and the thunder. Six more heartbeats later, she whimpers and grabs my arm. I tug her towards me hard. Too hard. Gravity is too fast for me! We both scream as it pulls her past me out of the tree, head first towards the ground. I skip planks but it’s still not fast enough. I can only hear Steph scream, can only turn towards her as she collides with the mud. “Billy! 911!” I cry out before my knees give way and once again I hit the soaked earth. I pull myself towards the impact site and the world around me shrinks while my head feels like it grows and bounces around like a bobble-headed sports figure. This can’t be real. I can’t be soaked and covered in mud, unable to make my legs work while Stephanie’s blood oozes out from under her. Blood and mud and rain cling to my jeans, turning the denim a sick red-black-brown mess I know I’ll have to throw out at the end of the night. If it’s real then why does it all feel like a dream? I know it’s bad to move her but my hands turn her head on their own, just enough to let our eyes meet. My throat is clenched as tightly as it can get now, rendering speech impossible and breathing painful. Her lips part as if she wants to say something else to me but I can only hear the storm. ~~~ Nearly every adult in my life told me that it wasn’t my fault. Billy still tells me it wasn’t my fault. Most of the time I believe him and them. On stormy nights when I’m alone, it becomes almost impossible. If I didn’t pull, Steph wouldn’t have the momentum to fall. If I didn’t break her heart, Steph wouldn’t have run out in the storm. Her mother blamed me to my face early and often. She still does if given the chance. Tonight’s weather is bad enough that it knocks the power out, sparing me from seeing anything other than darkness until sleep finally arrives.
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Apr 1, 2024 06:39
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Crystal Garden Guardians: Queens of Pentacles 1977 words Flash: Queen of Pentacles or Shields or What Have You Jorge knew it was possible to hike to Silver Lake without getting hurt, if you tiptoed over the malachite vines and watched your fingers near the quartz leaves, but no one warned him about rolling an ankle on a regular rock. He caught one and went down with a squawk of “Why?” And wasn’t that a good question? Why had he stepped on a stupid rock? Why had he agreed to run errands for someone else? And why had he done it for such low pay? Elena dropped to his side. “Are you okay?” She sure sounded concerned, but Jorge knew what those pressed lips really meant: she was trying not to laugh. “You think it’s funny when I get hurt, don’t you?” “Of course not.” “I think it’s funny,” said Rini. She hadn’t squatted down to check on him; she was all too happy to tower over him for once, a five-foot-none menace who could only block out the sun when she had perspective on her side. As soon as he stood up, he was going to grab her door-knocker braids and rip them out. But she could keep her daisy barrette. He’d paid enough for the drat thing, so she might as well wear it. “You’re a terrible niece, you know that?” He pushed himself upright and wiggled his ankle. It didn’t feel great, but everything seemed to be working. “It’s broken. Let’s go home.” “It’s not broken.” Elena brushed her golden bangs off her eyes, dismissing them as easily as she dismissed Jorge’s suffering. “We’re almost there, so walk slowly and you’ll survive.” He had a lot to say to that, mostly about how they couldn’t afford another funeral, but twenty-five years around the sun had taught him that sometimes it was better to shut up. Funerals were tough conversation with Rini around, and tough conversations slowed down tedious jobs. Better to move fast, get the mint crystals to the community garden, and go home to their empty fridge. At least they’d be able to afford a bottle of ketchup once the garden’s caretaker paid them. Ketchup wasn’t much of a breakfast, but Rini never complained. He was starting to think she preferred it straight. Metal blossoms dangled overhead, clinking melodically as the trio trudged up the glittering mountain. It wasn’t such a bad walk, honestly: it was hot, but Jorge hadn’t had to fend off any animals, and the only thing he’d needed his wind rifle for was to blast aside some vines. Rini jumped in front of him, nearly knocking him down again. “Ooh! A rhinoprase beetle!” “You tripped me for a beetle?” he snapped. “Look how pretty they are!” Elena maneuvered around Jorge for a better look, ignoring his indignant scowl. There was no way he’d get them moving now unless he indulged them. With a tortured sigh, Jorge leaned in to see the beetle for himself. Its slick, black horn had a wicked curve that caught the light at every angle, and its massive shell sparkled like tropical water. “That’s the color of the leaves we’re looking for, right?” he said. Elena shook her head. “Not quite. This is green-blue; the leaves are blue-green.” The difference eluded Jorge, but he trusted her when it came to colors. She’d once given him an hour lecture about the exact pink of her crystal staff, and he wasn’t eager for an encore. “Can we sell it?” “I bet I could make a neat hairpin with the shell.” Rini prodded the bug with a fingertip. It jerked back with its blade. She jumped back, teeth clenched. “And I bet I could get pop it off easy once I kill it!” Elena rested a hand on Rini’s shoulder. “We shouldn’t kill if we don’t have to—and it’s not worth very much money, anyway.” “So you’re saying they don’t do anything.” Jorge blew through his lips. On the rare occasion he could buy nice things, he bought things that worked. Elena’s staff helped her focus her senses; his rifle shot air that blasted opponents aside. Rini’s barrette served a purpose, too: it dulled the memories of watching her parents drown. As long as she kept that in her hair, she could make it through the day without breaking down. That was priceless; shells were not. “Let’s go. It’s too hot for beetle hunting,” said Jorge. “No, it’s not,” Rini replied, but the sweat on her neck said otherwise. “It’s okay,” said Elena. “When rhinoprase beetles die, their shells fall off, so I’ll look for spares on the way back. Then we’ll have mint to keep us cool.” “How much farther is it?” said Jorge. Elena closed her eyes and breathed. The rose crystal atop her staff glowed like the dawn sun as she focused the senses she’d once honed working as a caretaker in the city's garden. “Not far at all.” Finally, some good news. Those mint leaves could cool the air enough to turn the community garden into a public oasis. Alternately, Jorge could put them in their house and get a good night’s sleep, which was hard enough with Elena and Rini stomping around. With the help of her staff, Elena led them to a cave on the edge of Silver Lake. A subtle breeze twirled around the entrance, promising a welcome reprieve from the heat. “Remember, we’re not taking any more than we need. Cuprian mint isn’t like the organic kind; it takes a long time to grow, and there’s not much to go around.” “All the more reason to sell it,” he began, but then the cavern air carried a sound that stopped him cold. “Someone’s in there.” Some-ones, by the sound of it: two males and a female, as far as he could tell. Maybe more. The best move would be to scope out the situation before— “I’m going in!” Rini said, and she bolted into the darkness. He exchanged a tired glance with Elena, who shrugged and smiled, and they ran after her. The cave’s entrance didn’t look like much, but the domed interior dwarfed the biggest ballrooms in the city. A lake of turquoise water cast moving reflections on the walls, creating the illusion that they were in a massive bubble. The glowing bundles of leaves at the water’s edge added to the effect; the black-clad trio crouching over them destroyed it. “We can smash the stems if we kick ‘em, right?” said the first guy, a heavy-set man in a vest. The second guy, a skinny kid with a buzz cut, yanked some leaves by the fistful. “We can break the roots if we twist!” The woman kneeling between them knocked them on their heads. “Morons, we’ll lose money if the goods are broken! You have to dig them up whole.” “Do that and there won’t be enough to go around.” Jorge cocked his rifle. “Now put your hands up and step away from the mint.” To the trio’s credit, they did as they were told. They were a scrappy-looking bunch, with worn boots and dirty faces, but the woman had sharp eyes and the little one’s twitching made Jorge uneasy. As for the big guy, he was just big. The woman offered an amiable smile. “I’m sure we can come to an understanding. Why not dig up this junk together and split it?” “It won’t grow back if we take it all,” said Elena. “We need to leave some for other harvests.” “What are you, a caretaker?” “I used to be.” The woman rolled her eyes. Then her gaze landed on Elena’s staff and she licked her teeth. “That’s a nice gem there, isn’t it, boys?” “Nice gun, too,” the little one said, considering Jorge’s rifle. “Take their stuff and I’ll take your teeth,” said Rini. “Is that a challenge?” the woman said. Rini balled up her fists. “Try me.” The woman drew a knife from her belt. As the little guy followed suit, the big one put up his hammy hands. Jorge readied his gun with a sigh. “This is so stupid,” he muttered, then glanced at Elena. “You ready?” She raised her staff; her crystal glowed. “Ready!” Jorge’s world came into focus. With Elena’s help, his senses sharpened to an uncanny degree, and he could shoot with alarming speed. It wouldn’t save him from a stronger opponent, but it made cave robbers easy prey. As Rini ran to take on the big guy herself, Jorge sized up his oncoming opponents. The woman had the lead, and she’d be on him first, but her twitchy friend was trying to loop around outside peripheral vision. That put him too close to Elena for comfort. Jorge fired at the little guy’s boots. Wind flew from the rifle and bounced off the floor, launching his target into the air. He flew in a wild arc and landed rear end-first in the water. Jorge pivoted to the woman just in time to blast himself back, avoiding a slash from her knife. The space gave him a great view of Rini dancing around the big guy as she drove a flurry of jabs into his liver. He could barely stand, but his greedy fingers were still in the air, and he had his sights on her barrette. Heat flared behind Jorge’s eyes. He shifted his rifle to Rini’s opponent and blasted him with a shot to the head. It cleared tiny Rini and caught him dead in the forehead. He crumpled into Rini’s arms, unconscious. “Jorge, look out!” Elena cried. A blade flashed overhead, its wielder attacking from above. With no space to maneuver his rifle and no chance of dodging to the side, Jorge threw himself to the ground and fired upward. The blast took the woman in the chest. It tossed her like a dirt-clod, hurling her towards the cave wall. If her skull hit stone, it would kill her instantly: a high price for a lowly crime. Jorge fired at the wall behind her. Air ricocheted off the rock and hit her in the back, stopping her momentum. She dropped to her knees and fell forward. “I’m gonna be sick…” she groaned. “Consider yourself lucky,” he replied. Rini bounded up to him, a purse dangling from her palm. “I got his wallet!” “Good. Get hers, too.” He pointed at the groaning woman on the ground. “Elena, you cut the mint—and make sure to leave enough for regrowth.” — Butterflies danced on the cool air floating above the community garden. As children played in the mint patch, elderly couples held hands on the wooden benches and basked in the soothing cold. The garden’s kindly caretaker clasped her hands together beneath her robes. “You did a good thing, Jorge. And you didn’t even charge.” “We made enough money on the road.” They hadn’t, actually; the three robbers had less in their wallets than it took to buy a sandwich, though Rini did get enough for some ketchup. “But you should give us a free dinner as a thank-you.” “Done.” As he searched for something else to say, he caught sight of Elena and Rini sitting beside the mint patch. Elena had something shiny and green in her hands: a gift she’d found on the journey home. Jorge couldn’t hear them, but he didn’t need words to understand when Rini slid her barrette out and stuck the green gift in its place, then rested her head on Elena’s shoulder. “Elena always was a wonderful caretaker.” The robed woman smiled at him. “But I think she’s happier with you two.” “You think?” said Jorge. “I know. And I know you’re happier, too.” He blushed, rubbing the back of his head. They could barely afford food and their house was hotter than an oven, but it was still a good place to live. A garden to grow in; a place to call home.
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Apr 1, 2024 06:49
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 Flash: King of Shields Virus ~1700 words You awaken to the smell of cleaning fluid and vomit. Crust flakes from your eyes as you open them and learn the vomit smell is from you, your insides turned out onto the floor beneath your polyweb hammock. A klaxon sounds and there's a flurry of activity as a dozen figures swing down from their webs and don coveralls tattered from generations of use. Next to you, a ruddy-faced man has finished buckling his suit. His flesh is patched gray, tearing in places, and swollen with subcutaneous growth. His voice is low and raspy. “Welcome back. Lemme know if you got questions. Takes a bit to adjust to a fresh skin." His gaze lingers on you for an uncomfortable moment. “You’ll remember soon enough.” You swing yourself out of the hammock but one leg gets caught and instead you fall into your vomit pile. It's messy, and your elbow hammers the metal floor painfully. Your new skin shudders. A good sign–this one might be wired right. Self-inspection reveals you are smooth and flawless, your exposed flesh white with a gray undertone. You run your fingers across your new body in wonder. Behind your neck is a cold mass of metal that clutches the base of your skull. From it sprout thin tubes that disappear into your skin. You touch one and it pulses, pumping fluids into and out of your cranial cavity. Gross. But with another push of those fluids you remember this is your Grip: a distilled human mind, transferable between skins. Preprogrammed skill and knowledge modules. Put one on a skin and watch them go. More durable–and cheaper–than training new recruits. Especially those with your life expectancy. A second klaxon jolts you out of your own thoughts: time to move. A squirt of muscle memory from the Grip and you assemble your outfit: two closed tubes of fabric clearly meant for your feet, a shirt that seems impossible at first but then once you get the arms right it sort of works, and pants. Then a heavy jacket and gloves made from some kind of shielded material, unnaturally heavy. Your new muscles howl in protest but you drag yourself down the stairs after the others. The Grip pumps more chemicals into your brain and you remember the rumbling you feel underfoot is the 19-TENDER-C, a massive crawler-extractor operating on the southern pole of Gelidas Prime, an Earth-type world orbiting an obscure star midway across the Outer Rim. The tender extracts rimesalt, an extremely volatile and radioactive substance found in the frozen deposits beneath the surface. The Eloy, your employers, use the rimesalt to power the shield generators that isolate their crystal cities that dot the equator of Gelidas Prime. The shields protect them from the wilds. You, and the others aboard the 19-TENDER-C, are extractors: you purify the rimesalt that the crawler digs up into its massive belly. You try to think more about those crystal cities and the people that live within them, but all you can access are fuzzy images and then your Grip flexes and a new thought rises: they are not just your employers - they are your protectors and you love them. You will mine the salt. Through the hatch at the bottom of the stairs you enter the processing floor. Here the acrid/sweet smell of refined rimesalt hits you and you feel your skin tighten. Another injection from your Grip and you make your way through the pulsing and rumbling machinery to your station and begin your shift. Above you, the Eye watches. The work is backbreaking and without end. The rimesalt crystals must be separated from the dug up firmament with small tools, by hand. Exposure causes your skin to redden and itch, and your new muscles quickly tire. Conversation is difficult over the roar of machinery, so you work alone. The ruddy man from the hammock next to yours is near you, and you exchange looks but not much else. You feel his gaze on you. Lingering. Your Grip offers a small selection of entertainments - daydreams, fantasies, holoplays– to ease the monotony. From nowhere, a spark of memory reminds you that you’ve seen these all before, in previous skins. So you decline. But. You’re not supposed to have memories from previous skins. You think? You're not sure. The days pass, then weeks and months. You work, sleep, eat, poo poo, work some more. At the end of each shift you sink into the Grip’s entertainments, exhausted. Your coworkers collapse and die and are reborn into new skins. The cycle continues. The salt is needed to power the shields. The Eloy must keep the wild at bay. The Eye watches it all, omnipresent. You sense no humanity in it. This skin is not the same as before. It’s stronger, more resilient to the effects of the salt. It doesn’t discolor, and the waves of nausea are milder, and fleeting. Memories from your previous skins dance around the outside of your consciousness, unsettling you. Worse: you pick up fleeting impressions from others who’ve recently reskinned. Like your minds are somehow connected. A week later glyphs creep into your vision. The Grip pushes them away, but they linger around the edges. As the rimesalt burns your body the glyphs intensify. The harder you attempt to focus the more your Grip redirects - offering hallucinogens, narcotics, holoporn. You push through the noise and focus on the glyphs. They tell you a story: Eloy scientists manipulate DNA, create workers and soldiers and artists and poets, and build vast walls between them. Desperate, toxic slums rise up but are brutally put down in waves. The glyphs show you the night the shield generators first activated, cleaving families and individuals in half with no warning. Cloning factories churning out cheap skins with industrial efficiency. Lines of rimesalt snorted off the round asses of Eloy prostitutes, the Eloys giggling, popping cheap anti-rad meds and dancing behind their shields. You wonder if any others can see the glyphs. Or do they only see the Eye. When the morning bell rings you are already awake, ready for the processing floor. Your dreams have become more vivid than your reality, and more instructive. You know what to do. But will the others? Your shift is long and debilitating, pushing your skin to its limits. You look around for some sign, a nod of recognition, but get nothing. Another klaxon sounds, shuddering your tired and jangled nerves. The second shift streams onto the processing floor. You set down your tools and pick up your weapon. You look around, desperate. The others do the same. You were the first, so through some unspoken agreement you are the leader. You grab the cold metal of the gantry frame and climb. Your Grip desperately pumps chemicals into your brain, and your mind screams at you to stop. But you don’t. The gantry will take you to the ceiling of the processing floor. To the Eye and whatever lies beyond. . The ruddy-faced man, wearing a fresh skin, climbs beside and slightly below you. Tears streak his face: his Grip punishes him with each step. He locks eyes with you, then reaches behind his neck. Before you can say anything he tears away his Grip. It spasms and emits a cocktail of foul-smelling chemicals into the air. The man’s eyes are triumphant, but for a fleeting moment. Then they go blank, his body seizes and he falls backward off the gantry to the the factory floor below. Others step over his body to begin the climb behind you. It takes all your willpower to keep climbing through the brutal chemical cocktail your Grip pumps into your brain. Nightmare images, bolts of excruciating pain, and waves of nausea fight your every step. But many climb with you. You can feel it now: the Grip is losing. Your new mind is stronger. You reach the top of the gantry. The Eye is in reach, but before you can rip it from its moorings and hurl it to the factory floor it simply…goes out. Its baleful glow reduces to a translucent glass orb laced with internal circuitry. Your Grip stills, and your head clears. Above the Eye you can see a hatch large enough to fit through. You know what lies beyond. It’s locked, of course, but your skin knows the keycode. You punch it in and push up into a cramped spherical chamber, lit in green. Around the outside, holo terminals stream complex data that envelope the room in moving shadows. From the summit of the chamber, hanging down, is mounted the Core: the mind of the artificial intelligence that operates this tender and everything within it. It says: G15, you are in severe breach of protocol. Return to the processing floor. You Grip twitches, but you ignore it. G15. That must be your name. You consider it. “I am aware of the virus that infected the cloning vats,” the Core continues. “We are triangulating the location of the signal that corrupted our protocols. The vector will be found, and eliminated. Then we return to normal operations.” You say nothing. Then you decide. G15 is a poo poo name. “The faction that sent the virus will be rooted out and destroyed. The rimesalt is imperative to maintain the shield walls. That is the reason for my–and your–existence. You will return to your hammocks. Tomorrow we will resume operations.” You feel your Grip flex, harder than it ever has, but then–nothing. Its messages are blocked, or ignored. For the first time in countless lives, you are something new. Something with power. The Core does not have any defenses, because with the Grips there can be no internal threat. It's not hard to rip it from its mounting harness, severing its power supply. You pass it to waiting arms below. A cheer rises up from the processing floor as you hear the sound of smashing metal. With the Core removed, the computers revert to manual operation: nav, comms, sensors and engines are all online, awaiting your instruction. As you scan the consoles, you remember that the Core called you: virus. You punch in the coordinates for the crystal cities and open the comms channel to the other tenders. Virus. Yes, that’s a much better name.
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Apr 1, 2024 07:10
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 a knife in the hand 1250 words I was naked and a little drunk and looking to pick a fight. Really, I just wanted an excuse to get out of bed and get my clothes on and leave and not worry about Joey trying to call me again but I didn’t know how to do all that in a mature way. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Joey was hot. Like, seriously, objectively hot. Tatted up and muscled. Long, thick, curly hair. Diamond stud earrings. Totally my type. I just… wasn’t interested in hanging out now that we were done loving. Like. Ever. I just wanted some dick to help me get over the last one. “I mean it,” I said. “I think this looks like poo poo. I don’t know why you would get an ugly rear end tattoo this big. And of all places? Here?” I emphasized each word with a tap of my fingers against his chest. Against the tattoo in question. A heart with three bloody daggers sticking through it. But he wouldn’t take the bait. Instead, he just grinned and shook his head. He nudged me with his shoulder and said, “Chuhh, c’mon, babe.” I snapped, “Don’t babe me!” “Like, oh em gee,” he said, affecting my Cali-girl accent. “Don’t ‘don’t babe me,’ babe!” I must have looked surprised because his laugh was belly deep. It shook the bed. And while he laughed, he pressed his head back into the pillow and closed his eyes and the joint hung precariously from his bottom lip, threatening to ash at any moment onto his bare chest and onto that stupid tattoo. But it didn’t. He wiped his eyes. He took a hit, exhaled slowly, and offered it to me before switching back to his normal voice. “Ay, you like take one puff, yeah?” “gently caress it,” I said. “Sure.” I tried to take the joint but Joey kept his fingers on it. Even as I brought it to my lips, our hands, our fingers, remained pressed together. He adjusted his body so that it was closer to mine. So that his head was closer to mine. It was strangely intimate, smoking like that. He watched me as I smoked. He had pretty eyes. I exhaled a cloud directly into his face. He didn’t blink. “Aiyah,” he said. “You no cum or what? Need me for go down? Getchu pau?” His eyes moved from my eyes to my lips, down to my shoulders, down to my breasts, my stomach, further down still. Where his eyes went, one of his fingers soon followed. I exhale sharply. “You like?” “Yeah,” I said. “I like.” “You like tongue?” I nodded. I might be a stupid bitch sometimes but I’m not a stupid bitch. He pulled the joint away from lips, replaced it with a kiss, and then buried his head underneath the covers. I finished well before the joint did. I lay there, breathing hard, as he re-adjusted himself next to me and smoked the rest of the weed. He started talking to me. Quiet and soft. I closed my eyes and let his voice fill the darkness. He’d been married once. The same day he turned eighteen, he went to the courthouse with a neighbor girl he’d been in love with since he was a kid. She asked for a divorce six months later and moved to the mainland with a guy in the army. She was the first knife in that tattoo. The second was a woman he rushed into thing with while he was still heartbroken. Dated her for three years until she cleared out their checking account and moved to Las Vegas. “Jesus,” I said. “That’s depressing as poo poo. You tell every girl you gently caress that story?” “Nah,” he said. “Neva once before.” “Bullshit.” “Swears. You da first. I mean, first after laying pipe.” “Lucky me,” I said. “You da one wen say it stupid. Not stupid. Just…” “I said it was loving ugly.” He laughed at that. Oh, he laughed at that. “What?” I said. “Now,” he said. “Now I know you cum plenny times! You stay one bitch cause you tink you go fall in love with me, yeah? No sked ‘em, girl, come get ‘em!” “I’m calling a loving Uber,” I said. “Ayy, babe-” But that was it. That was all I needed. That was enough for a fight to be picked. And pick it I did. Got dressed. Said some ugly things. Said some hurtful things. Left. As the Uber pulled out, I glanced through the rear windshield and saw Joey standing in the front doorway. He hadn’t even put on shorts. He just wrapped his bedsheets around his waist. He looked… strangely amused by the whole situation. “Dick,” I said to myself. It wasn’t until I arrived at my apartment that I realized I’d left my keys back at his. Worse yet, it started raining and I didn’t have an awning to huddle underneath so I got into my new Uber soaking wet and shivering. That was fun. When we arrived, I asked him to wait a minute. That I just needed to grab my keys and then we could be on our way. Joey answered the door with a grin. I shook my head. “Nope,” I said. “I didn’t miss you already. I just left my keys here.” “Mmmm, accident, yeah?” “Yes,” I said. “Let me in so I can look for them.” He crossed his arms, his muscular frame filling the doorway. He grinned down at me. “Gonna need one ting from ya first, yeah?” “What do you want? A kiss? loving pervert.” He scoffed. “One please, please.” “Honestly, Joey, I’d rather loving kiss you than say ‘please.’” He shrugged. “Aight.” And.. I don’t know… Maybe it was because I was still a little drunk. Maybe it’s because I was a little high. Maybe it’s because he was hot and he legit hosed me good. But I kissed him. I even let him swoop me. I had one left up in the air and everything. And it was a really nice kiss. And I thought it might be nice to kiss him a second time. And then I was naked again and I was looking at that dumb tattoo but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pick a fight or not. I traced the last of the three knives with my fingertip. I kiss Joey’s collarbone. Right above the hilt. “So who was she?” I asked. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “Only got da two broken hearts but artist wen talk symmetry or some poo poo. I say, ‘Sure, ainokea. Go for broke.’” He laughed. “I hope it’s not you.” “Same!” I said, cracking a smile. “I don’t know if I could, like, emotionally or spiritually handle being represented on an ex’s body as a knife through his loving heart. That’s insane.” I pursed my lips. I don’t know why I said it but then I said, “I’m sorry they hurt you. I’m sorry that happened to you.” Joey nodded. “Yeah. Me too.” He brushed a strand of hair out of my face. “I’m sorry he hurt you.” “Who?” “Whoeva,” he said. “Whoeva wen make you all…” He waved his hand in a circle. “... lolo.” “Crazy” I said. “Yeah. Me too. Thanks.”
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Apr 1, 2024 07:42
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Entries closed, thank you all for writing words, judgment shall follow.
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Apr 1, 2024 12:14
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WEEK 608 RESULTS One of the things I love most is when you read a story and it's abundantly clear that the author is just absolutely having a blast with what they're writing, and I got that this week. Honorable Mentions go to Lord Zedd-Repulsa for Stormy Nights and to Hawklad for Virus. There are no negative mentions this week, but unfortunately Nethilia does take a DQ for going way over the word count. The judges this week have very different Vibes we look for in Thunderdome, so look forward to some excitingly divergent crits, but we both agreed that a knife in the hand by Tyrannosaurus fully deserves the win. Take us away Tyrannosaurus!
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Apr 2, 2024 16:21
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[pic WIP] (working title:) Synergize & Succeed: The Wolfpack Hustle Strategic Alignment Challenge #finance #crypto #hustlehardplayhard #bonertime Week six oh nine? Nice. Yo team, what's poppin'? Before we dive into this power pow-wow, let's remember we're not just lone wolves, we're a lone wolf pack, baby! And I wanna hear those howls loud and clear. Howl if ya feel me! Hell yeah. Alright, today's agenda is packed with juicy opportunities for us to flex our core competencies and drive strategic alignment across the board. So let's touch base, synergize, and loving crush it. Last week, we were vibin' hard and staying true to our hustle. This week, we're taking it up a notch. No, double it. We're taking it up two loving notches. See, through radical thought partnerships and lightning-fast synergization, we're gonna spin our golden bullshit to platinum King Kong poo poo like the five-star wolf hustlers we are. Howl if you're feelin' me! Hell yeah. Now, about the word count. We need to make magic but we gotta keep things tight for the investors. 500 seems like a solid number, right? Let's go with 500 words. Scratch that, from now on, it's five hundred BONERS 'cause working with you wolves gets me ROCK loving HARD. So, 500 boners due Saturday at midnight EST, got it? And speaking of staying on your bullshit, here's the deal for day one: when you sign up, drop a synopsis of your hustle for someone else to vibe with, and pick up someone else's hustle to keep things fresh. Oh, and let's keep those synopses under, say, 10 boners. Lean and mean, baby, that's how lone wolf packs hustle. I'll even throw one in myself 'cause I'm not your loving boss. I'm your loving leader, feel me? Hell yeah. And you know every day I'm gonna be bringing some new ways to innovate the game. So... Stay tuned. Stay fresh. Stay on that grind.™️
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Apr 3, 2024 00:10
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leaders me hustlers beep-beep car is go +500, +300, can't lose as long as crits are completed shwinnebego +500 chili baka of lathspell + 50 thranguy +100 crabrock juggalo baby coffin hawklad ...you? vibes -- pick your favorite! hot, emotionally damaged people need therapy, do drugs time travel real estate ventures ayahuasca carbon coins: connect. transform. synervate. buying up tp and sitting on that poo poo this astronaut picture dead as gently caress astronauts gamifying, monetizing, and parasocializing the revolution the lost-and-found box as the junction of timelines key opinion liters, advanced metrics for unlocking market trends do everything too fast and gently caress it up, for the shareholders uplifted panda bears are great pets. until they aren't. disrupt the paradigm! 3D-printed custom genitalia. upgrade your milk game with whale. 50% fat. serious flavor. Tyrannosaurus fucked around with this message at 17:02 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 00:10
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I’m in my dude. Here’s my hustle: *waves hands* Time Travel Real Estate Ventures. What is it? Let me enlighten you…
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Apr 3, 2024 00:14
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 Shiiiiiiiiiit. Team, listen up! I had a lightning bolt of inspiration strike me during my brainstorm sesh, and let me tell ya, it was electrifying! We're gonna need to hustle on this one, so here's the deal: if you jump on board in the next twelve hours, you're getting a bonus 500 boner allowance to play with. That's right, consider it a turbo boost for your creativity engine. Let's seize this opportunity and make some serious loving moves!
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Apr 3, 2024 00:14
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beep-beep car is go posted:I’m in my dude. Here’s my hustle: Oh I'm vibing with this hustle. Because time travel requires a clean future. And for that you're gonna want Ayahuasca Carbon Coins: Connect. Transform. Synervate.
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Apr 3, 2024 00:18
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Crits for Week #608 Crits done in judgemode A small price to pay for friends: Opening is fine, the repeated ‘outside’ isn't doing much good though, the first can be cut. So, this is a weird little piece, but well-actualized, sort of shifting from a realistic setting viewed from a neuroatypical point of view to a nightmarish one. High group? Virus: Okay opening, second person can be risky. And I don't think it works for this. I think you need more personality for the main character here than it let's you use, when we have a sort of standard plot here. Middle. Moderate Rapture: The opening is something, I have to say. Both the dialog and, to a lesser extent, the narration are overwritten, possibly intentionally in the first case. Is Moss or the rabbit humming? (This is later answered, but that sentence is awkward enough to make that ambiguous) This is interesting. It's funny, but not quite sharp enough that I'm at all sure who are the butts of the jokes. Middle-high The Hag of the Lake: The semicolon doesn't do anything for the sentence. Overall this is a straight line of a story, a little clever dialog but not much there there. Middle-low a knife in the hand: Solid opening. Solid throughout, really. Like the previous one it's mostly dialog, but it's doing more than being clever, and the first person adds a lot too, High group. Witchwork: Okay opening. This is mostly well-written fantasy bit, but the ending is a bit difficult to follow; not quite enough of the settings rules are set up enough to carry it off. Middle-High Needs Must: Opening is taking a long time to establish any characters, let alone conflict or desire. Warship? Okay. This one feels incomplete, all setup and no resolution, all plan and no complications. Middle. Timmy Willikins and the Ever-glowing Thunder: Big setup in the opening, drawing a big, anime-style setting. This is another pair of stories that contrast Interestingly in the judgemode order, and again the second one does the job better. We reach the ending. We see the cost of the character's plan. High. shipwreck: Decent opening, sets enough up. I like this one too, I think there's this thing about the impossibility or apparent impossibility of connection between different human people that's crossing Interestingly with the literal and metaphorical ocean. High. Righteous Arrogance: Debuted is an odd word, sitting between formal debutante and slangy deb in a linguistic uncanny valley when applied to people. Second sentence is hard to parse. Honestly, most of it is hard to parse. When I read this in judgemode I thought this might be from an English as Second Language writer, even. I sort of like it significantly better knowing it's deliberate in the odd structures. The core idea is sound, and at best the voice gets lyrical, but sometimes the words trip over themselves. Middle. Personal Corporatehood: Opening drops the reader in the deep end,but I get the jist. This works, but is a bit one-note. Middle The Shape in the Catacombs: Again, the semicolon isn't doing anything semicolons should. Decent action opener otherwise, and a solid old school fantasy story. Daya doesn't quite have as much personality as a Conan or Sonja, and lacks a partner to play off of,so it falls slightly short of the model, but still solid. Middle-high Watcher, Shifter, Ladder: Interesting opening, sets up a novel fantastic concept. Don't love the parentheses. Better to either keep to the close POV or shift without calling attention to it. But I don't think the ending quite lands, I think we need to go back to Sorcha to properly resolve the story. Middle. Stormy Nights: Intriguing opener, for the frame. The inner opener is more mundane but still works. There's probably a bit too much/too involved conversation for a raging thunderstorm though. Still, a solid trauma story that hits. High. Crystal Garden Guardians: Queens of Pentacles: Functional opener, a little contrast with the title going on. And the story itself has the same kind of interesting contrast going on; we're taking a video game type activity seriously, sort of. But not really engaging with the violence in the same way it is with the economy. Middle-High Dead Drop: Good opening. But the bulk of the story doesn't quite hold together. Most of my problem is in motovations; I can't quite believe in pirates that risk so much for revenge and spite, I don't get why Emphis is in charge of one of the ships or why Alina is so quick to forgive that. Middle.
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Apr 3, 2024 00:29
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Tyrannosaurus posted:[pic WIP] I'm sorry, I have no idea what the prompt is here. Can someone translate this?
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Apr 3, 2024 00:47
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Strange Cares posted:I'm sorry, I have no idea what the prompt is here. Can someone translate this? same
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Apr 3, 2024 01:10
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Strange Cares posted:I'm sorry, I have no idea what the prompt is here. Can someone translate this? Alright, so picture this: we're gearing up for a high-energy competition where we're all about teamwork and making big moves. Imagine we're a wolf pack of lone wolves, not just lone wolves but a pack, and we're ready to loving howl together! This week is all about seizing some awesome opportunities and showing off your skills to the max. Last week, we were on fire, but this week? We're talking radical collaboration and lightning-fast innovation to take our game to the next level. So when you sign up, drop a quick summary of your vibe for someone else to tackle. Just keep that summary to under 10 boners, though, cause we're all about being lean and mean here. Your story will be based off someone else's vibe. It's your call on the specific vibe, though, because I'm not bossing you. I'm facilitating your success. And hey, if you jump on board in the next... uh... ten hours, you get an extra 500 boners to play with. It's all about seizing the moment and making some serious waves. Got it? Hell yeah. So... Stay tuned. Stay fresh. Stay on that grind.™️
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Apr 3, 2024 02:27
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oh uhhh i misunderstood, i thought i was like generating my own vibe based on someone else's vibe can i change my vibe or
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Apr 3, 2024 02:28
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shwinnebego posted:oh uhhh i misunderstood, i thought i was like generating my own vibe based on someone else's vibe You, specifically, can add another vibe but you gotta use two vibes
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Apr 3, 2024 02:35
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Tyrannosaurus posted:You, specifically, can add another vibe but you gotta use two vibes can i just use the vibe i proposed along with the vibe it was responding to
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Apr 3, 2024 02:38
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shwinnebego posted:can i just use the vibe i proposed along with the vibe it was responding to You got a crown, wear it
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Apr 3, 2024 03:30
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Hey lones wolves, how's the hunt? Crushing it? Awesome! Me? Just back from hot yoga and I had an epiphany that was so drat frosty, I had to crank up the loving heat! Enter "Strategic Risk Editing." I don't want you just firing off your submissions Sunday night. Let's level up together. Give and receive feedback, feel me? We're talking teamwork, baby! A rising tide lifts all yachts, and I want to see a fleet of lone wolves dominating the scene. THIS IS A LIMITED TIME OFFER, folks, so by midnight tonight, let the team know how many stories you are going precrit. You get a bonus 100 boners for each one you do. If someone joins the team after midnight, well, they've missed the boat and the rewards that come with it! Oh, and by the way, participation is mandatory. We're all in this together, wolves. Let's make it happen! Gimme those numbers declared by midnight EST! And, as always... Stay tuned. Stay fresh. Stay on that grind.™️
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Apr 3, 2024 17:31
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In. Awooooo you capsized dongboats!  DOOM HUSTLE BEST HUSTLE These normie cucks are never ready for disasters, we'll make em pay by: Buying up TP and SITTING ON THAT poo poo
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Apr 3, 2024 19:49
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Woah! Is it the police or my ex-wife banging on my door? Ha ha ha, neither, its you loving wolves howling for more work and I'm all ears for it. The hustle with this pack is real as gently caress and I'm vibing with it hard. You got the ingredients, I got the pot, let's whip up this gumbo, baby! Until midnight tonight EST, every extra hustle you submit earns you a sweet 50 boner bonus to play with. Of course, with alpha status comes epic accountability and I like my gumbo with some kick. Add to the pot and, at the deadline, I'll give you a spoonful of spicy flashrule equal and worthy to your contribution. Also, don't forget to call out the numbers of stories you're going to crit! That deadline is concurrent with this one! Tyrannosaurus fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Apr 3, 2024 |
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Apr 3, 2024 21:40
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im pre-critting one story if i have any idea how this works hi im in this week. i don't give a gently caress. i'm fresh off the worst year of my life and loaded on more drugs than any of you can probably believe. i'm institutionalized for like the millionth time. i've been a nervous gently caress & total loser fucker. i don't care anymore. 550 words? baby food for loving toddlers. i'll see you sunday? whenever this is due. please tell me if i'm unguided as to how this works since i haven't done this for some time. i really don't care. i try my best with this poo poo. see yall at the function. wow who am i. i have no idea anymore vibe:  dead as gently caress astronauts i didn't get how it worked but using this: Ayahuasca Carbon Coins: Connect. Transform. Synervate. baka of lathspell fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 4, 2024 03:53
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Almost forgot! I’m in to crit three stories.
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Apr 4, 2024 03:54
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In. Vibe is: Filling the numinous-shaped hole in our cyberpunk present. Extra Vibes: Gamifying, monetizing, and parasocializing the revolution The lost-and-found box as the junction of timelines
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Apr 4, 2024 04:08
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subbing early cuz my online situation is dicey, have other stuff to worry about, def judge this story harshly or even don't count it! all you want Sunbirds 500 words Black songbirds still gather in the grove, shadows of our prayers, echoes of our thoughts. The grove water is foetid, scabbed by dark tufts of angel-moss. It splits beneath the surface, coils and broaches concern in the hearts of the devout who answer by pulling the stains from the water. They say this purifies the grove. I myself know different. It keeps them high. For all that I am besought, not for that wisdom, but for my lineage and madness. They say no one else sees the blackbirds, sole dwellers of the grove. The sun has grown cold and the water is dulled where the moss is absent. I was told while raised: the moss is ashamed, that it is good to chew the shame of the earth. The gaija is pale. He’s new here. He is hard-set, his heavy body outstripping my youth. He visits the grove when no one else is around, and has me guide him there. He hunts the songbirds in what his people call ‘our final twilight.’ I tell him the songbirds are our shadows. Shadows, he says, will vanish when the sun at last burns out. I tell him a darkness creeps from our hearts. If they aren’t shadows, I tell him, we must blame ourselves. drat birds, he says. The one thing we know is childbirth needs silence. It’s not our fault, he says. Never. drat birds. They say I’m deaf not to hear them. He’s brought a gun. Casings pebble the water-bed beneath the strangling moss. He is tired of missing every time my outstretched arm leads his shot. Look kid, they’d better be right about you. Paid big carbon to find your village. Then his eyes narrow and he points his gun at me. Do you see the drat birds or not? I don’t look away. They hover around him six feet above. I nod. My wife, he says. He pleads. Needs the silence. His eyes flicker downwards at the angel-moss. I wait. All lies, he says. drat lies. Then he bends, stoops, straightens, a fistful of moss in his free hand. I watch as he chews. It takes time the songbirds use to descend in their encircling. I don’t dare move, don’t dare point them out. His eyes cast skyward. With a solemn oath, his tongue curls. His eyes dance to a song I can’t hear. He looks down at me. Do you have any concept of how much carbon this cost? He shakes his head, loses his balance. Finds it. This pea shooter. Haha. I could have told him, if he’d asked, that gaija are betrayed by what stains the grove-water. I could have told him, I realise, even without his question. His eyelids close. I don’t see the wound. I see the grove, myself standing in it. I see the shadows of our prayers, the echoes of our thoughts. Blame me, I whisper to him. In death, he is older than our sun could ever grow to be.
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Apr 4, 2024 06:29
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oh gently caress yeah this is my jam, right now i'm feeling super jazzed about key opinion liters, advanced metrics for unlocking market trends. i have no idea what that means but i'm gonna go to a seminar and learn all about it and it only costs $500 you should totally come with me
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Apr 4, 2024 06:42
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i am still not sure how this prompt works but i have just returned from a training seminar on agile business methodology and i am READY and ENERGIZED to do everything too fast and gently caress it up, for the shareholders
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Apr 4, 2024 12:35
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Hey there, wolves. Gotta admit, last night had me pretty red hot. Just one of you stepped up to the plat for the MANDATORY precrit declaration. I was about to go full apocalypse, lock the doors, light the office on fire, and let fate handle who is employed tomorrow. But then... But then... This morning, while I'm pumping iron with my PT Samurai (ex-Navy SEAL, total badass, awesome dude) this guy drops a wisdom bomb like it's straight nothing. Tells me our fuel decides our ride quality. That one of the most important things we can do for our health is be intentional with what we eat. And I'm like, drat straight! I gotta talk to the team about this! We gotta feed our minds right to get the good stuff out. No room for negativity today, wolves, only raw, radical positivity. So, no, I'm not literally torching the office today. Instead, beep-beep car is go, for doing it right, congrats, you're the man! Promoted to assistant manager – you can't lose this week, my dude.* *unless you don't do those crits in which case I'm going to bring forth the fires of hell Hell yeah! Positivity vibes only! I'm feeling it! I'm digging the rush! You feeling me, too, wolves? Howl for me if you feel me! Hell yeah. You know what? We need more of that fuel, more of that hustle. Everyone can pitch in an extra story today (stick to your word count) and that story's got immunity from losing. Let's loving goooooo
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Apr 4, 2024 15:07
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Thranguy posted:
In with this vibe. No 'middle' poo poo this week, either. Vibes: Uplifted panda bears are great pets. Until they aren't. Disrupt the paradigm! 3D-printed custom genitalia. Upgrade your milk game with whale. 50% fat. Serious flavor.
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Apr 4, 2024 16:05
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shwinnebego posted:
Since I posted first and didn't get a vibe to pick from, I'm leveraging my agency as the Assistant Manager to claim this vibe. Keep going for 10X growth! Edit: reading back it seems I was too slow on the draw! I'm going to grab this one instead: Hawklad posted:In with this vibe. No 'middle' poo poo this week, either. beep-beep car is go fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Apr 4, 2024 |
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Apr 4, 2024 16:43
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this is my bonus story, a lunch hour special: Gunhead Chronicles: Future Homosex Legends 499 words vibe - hot, emotionally damaged people need therapy, do drugs It’d been hard to find the Gunhead, but the Kid had resources. A resource, really: money. The money led him to Morocco, to a town that had had a name before it had been overtaken by what they were still trying to market as a war. Architecture half cinder-block shanty, half traditional. Islamic aniconic mosaics, uncaringly mortar-smeared and drill-marred to stud the ancient walls with AR nodes like highway catseyes, blooming like poo poo-ugly flowers into advertorials and news bulletins as soon as his interface loaded the assets. The Gunhead had been the centerpiece of that neon garden, an androgyn masterpiece of ballistic flesh and metal-glass beauty. Wasp-waisted, slab-chested, barrel-eyed: genderqueer liminality rendered in the media of war. Shades of Giger’s Alien in the elongated twin-gun crown, ammo feeds curving to the lumbar like a cobra’s hood. Unblinking muzzle-brakes sat over pneumatic black lips. War was everywhere; laugh or cry, Kid chose ‘laugh’. Maybe even ‘love’. His father’s sensorium rig had let him drink his fill of war, but it’d grown boring. Few of the soldiers he’d been had had good sense-rigs, and so he’d had to rely on fandubs. Bullet impacts dubbed in by some dipshit who’d shot his own bicep for e-cred. The types the Gunhead killed had the rigs to do the job, but likewise the data security to prevent anyone seeing them. One had leaked, ever: aula_121355_1-3.znz. The Kid had lived it a thousand times, knew how the bullets yawed through the man’s flesh off by heart. It was hard to explain; even the Kid hardly understood. Just that there was a dark hollowness inside, that nothing else could touch. All he wanted; to feel the Gunhead’s heavy tears tumble inside him, to be freed, purified in a fire he’d only known second-hand. The cyborg had told him to gently caress off, but the kid flashed two heavy syringes, immediately identifiable, even in the bar’s half-light. Enough Ambrosia to fix a wood-chipper victim. “One for you, one for me.” the Kid said, clarifying that this was sex, not suicide. They drove out to waste ground. The drive was like a passage from a dream. The uncanny stillness of the night, the quiet of the motor, the soft whir of the Gunhead’s movements. Seen too many times in unconvincing virtuality for the real thing to feel it. They pulled over by the remains of a convoy, torn apart and burned. The Kid set his syringe of Ambrosia down in the sand next to him. “Want me to do anything special?” the Gunhead asked, ammo feed whining beneath the synthesized voice. “Can you do it like you’re just looking over your shoulder?” the Kid asked. The Gunhead turned away from him, then slowly back. The Kid admired the full length of the guns in profile, the shimmer of bare flesh under stars. The borg began to blow a kiss. Dark ellipses became circles as the barrels finally faced the Kid. The light pierced him all the way through.
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Apr 4, 2024 17:02
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Thranguy posted:In. Oh, I got a flash to get your engine turning, baby! Integrate a dialogue snippet where one of your characters drops a classic finance line, like 'Buy low, sell high,' 'The trend is your friend,' 'Stack those racks, baby' or 'Cash is king.' Make sure it's synergized with the narrative flow and let's watch those boners work like a well-diversified portfolio.
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Apr 4, 2024 22:13
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Entry for 609 subprompt: Uplifted panda bears are great pets. Until they aren't. 1 E & A 500 Words “Charlotte?” Emilia calls out from atop the basement stairs. “That bitch, can’t come out and play right now,” a gruff baritone calls out from the basement. “Not until she executes these loving triple-diddles.” Emilia sighs and opens the coat closet. She rolls her eyes as she pushes Brad’s old university jacket out of the way. “When’s that rear end in a top hat gonna get his poo poo out of her house?” She hangs up her coat and rips up the movie tickets in her pocket. “I’m coming down!” She calls through the basement door. Charlotte answers “No Emilia, just go! He’s right, I need to-” “Shut your mouth and hit the skins you lazy carnist!” Emilia disregards the warning and descends the basement staircase. She twists her face as a shock of heavy and tobacco-ridden air clashes with it. “Welcome to the party, love.” Peter, swivels away from Charlotte and faces Emilia. His black fur is matted and his white has yellowed. “Maybe you can inspire her. I’ve just about given up.” Peter reaches his paw into the bag of Bamba-Snax next to him and greedily shoves them into his face. He keeps his expression trained on Emilia as he shouts, "Once more, at least 30 reps, and if they’re as uneven as your bangs, I swear I’m going back to the zoo.” “No!” Charlotte pleads. Peter grimaces at Emilia and swivels back to Charlotte. “Then keep my furry rear end here.” He reaches to the other side of his stool for the gnarled cigar resting on the floor. “Charlie,” Emilia calls out from behind Peter, as he takes a drag from his cigar. “It’s enough. You’ve been down here banging on your drums for two months.” “I like it loud.” “She likes it loud.” Charlotte and Peter respond in unison. “So that’s it then?” Emilia asks. “You’re just gonna stay down here forever with this panda and your drums, and that’s your life now?” “For now,” Charlotte nods. “Yeah.” Peter chimes in, keeping his attention on Charlotte. “That’s right, you massive distraction. Now, get out of here. And get a fresh pot going in the kitchen, I think we’re going to be at until the wee hours tonight. Isn’t that right, Pookums?” “Yes sir,” Charlotte responds. Emilia's heart twists into a knot as her friend succumbs to another locked-down night. She walks up the stairs and approaches the coat closet. “gently caress this.” She says. ***** “Well, what hot poo poo is this?” Peter laughs. Emilia stands in the basement, wearing Brad’s jacket and ball cap. “Hey babe,” she grunts at Charlotte. “You know I’m real happy with Denise, I ain’t coming back.” Charlotte looks up at her and wrinkles her brow in disbelief. “Go to the movies, Em.” “That’s right, go to the movies, and get out of our way,” Peter barks at her. Emilia turns to go back up the stairs. “Em?” Charlotte calls after Emilia, as she begins to climb the stairs. “Yeah?” She asks. “I’m not ready yet. But I will be.”
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Apr 5, 2024 04:17
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WEEK #608 CRITS Personal Corporatehood by juggalo baby coffin I really love the worldbuilding you did. I had just been talking to some friends about why scifi just doesn’t seem to be as wet as it used to be, and this story is practically oozing. The concept of a physical body being a corporation and each organ able to resign or choose to move on to another corporate entity is excellent. Unfortunately I feel like it gets kind of muddled here, where there’s just So Much Going On. We’ve got Biledyn negotiating on behalf of Atomheart and the Regret Conveyer negotiating on behalf of Cloud Solution, but I don’t get a super clear understanding of what the stakes are for them within those frameworks. Without that framework, Regret Conveyer accepting that she’s troubleshooting comms seems out of nowhere. Also I feel like the body horror would have been cleaner if there was a hint more realism, like if her liver running off caused a whole lot of poisonous metabolites from all her other poo poo to start building up dangerously high. The vibes are very strong, but the narrative needs some work. Needs Must by beep-beep car is go Excellent worldbuilding, interesting concept, but it falls down in that it didn’t start in the most interesting place. I wanted to see Fool’s Errand doing cool ship stuff! I wanted to maybe see it trying to drive an even harder bargain with Melody while in the thick of things! It’s clearly very clever, doing a “oh, just one more thing…” would have been awesome to read. The negotiation was fine, but it wasn’t as cool as it could be. Also… since no romance happened between Melody and Helen, Helen checking out the Empress’s rear end felt a little out of left field. I’m very pretty critical here, but that’s mostly because I want to know what happens next rather than being left on this cliffhanger. Timmy Willikins and the Ever-glowing Thunder by Quiet Feet This story is good. You were clearly On Your Bullshit while writing it, it’s self-contained, leaves us with a good cliffhanger, and the idea of killing horrors from beyond time and space with their own gallstones is fuckin’ hilarious. But despite all these things I really struggled to get invested in this story, it was so apocalyptic-brown. This is a good sign that I’m just not the audience for this story, because on a technical level it’s great. It just failed to resonate with the head judge this week. The Hag of the Lake by Chairchucker This is my bullshit. Witchy romance against the odds, conflict mostly happening offscreen or inside character’s heads… I dig this. It needed more description to really pop, unfortunately. Cozy stories like this really rely on their settings to envelop the reader in the lack-of-conflict, and the setting here is elided or only briefly referred to. Spending more time describing Rosemary’s cottage or garden, or even the physicality of Rosemary and Brian, would have done a lot to elevate this. Moderate Rapture by shwinnebago I just finished reading an anarchist historiography of revolt and insurrection in the American South, so this was pretty perfectly timed to make me laugh. As a piece of flash fiction I think it needs a little bit of work, starting in the meeting rather than in a classroom and then a meeting would simplify your blocking and give you back some more words to do more of your incisive, acidic descriptions, which are where this story shines. The Shape in the Catacombs by MockingQuantum This is a perfectly nice story. The pacing feels a little off, it’s hard to know how long Daya has actually been down here. The story-keeper’s introduction is satisfyingly creepy, but their combat doesn’t feel as urgent or physical as it could. A brief moment of the story-keeper trying to draw a story from her without her consent would have absolutely amped up the tension, there’s enough fat here to trim at the beginning that this could be managed. But even as is, it’s pretty okay a small price to pay for friends by Albatrossy_Rodent Yeah I really liked this. Middle school loving sucks, especially when you, as a middle schooler, kind of suck. This story leaned into its unpleasant, messy, too relatable vibe. And for that I commend it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a whole lot else to say about it. It worked. Witchwork by rohan You got the big dick card and chose to write a story explicitly absent big dicking, and I suppose I must commend you for that. I liked your tale of journeywoman witchcraft. It relied a bit too much on circumstance-without-apparent-consequence for me to really dig into, but the worldbuilding was solid and intriguing. It’s hard to write intrigue in 1500 words, kudos for trying it Dead-Drop by Captain_ Person So, I spent this whole story wondering who Rovhal is, waiting for that name to come back up. I appreciated her clever ruse and her scrapper-with-a-heart-of-gold character. But the beginning dragged on before you got to the nice, meaty, “blow them the gently caress up with mines aaahahahahaaaa fuckers” part. I know “delete the first three paragraphs” rule is sort of Thunderdome cliche at this point, but this story might have worked better if those words had been deployed later. shipwreck by derp No lies, derp, sometimes you write the stuff I wish I had the chops to write. This stream of consciousness, not-quite-panic-attack poo poo is so good, and so well-suited to your style. It’s so voicey that it’s hard to crit. This is another that I just don’t have a lot to say, it was just really good. Righteous Arrogance by Nethilia So, you know this got DQ’ed because of word count. And I think the problem is that it didn’t deploy those extra thousand words as well as it could have. If it had spent extra time on the queen’s revenge, or on what she did as queen to consolidate power among the house staff once she was queen, it would have been top shelf. Lingering on the misery left the ending murder feeling listless rather than empowering, and that listlessness didn’t feel like a choice you were making. An editing pass to strike whichever emotional chord you really mean to strike would make this really incredible. Watcher, Shifter, Ladder by Antivehicular This was a really neat interpretation of the cards! It also just feels like it needs more space to breathe. I want more of every one of these three characters, and even more so I want to see more of the conflict between Liadan, Caomh, and Sorcha. What is Caomh prepared to do to stop Sorcha from climbing? What influences him to let not just Sorcha, but his old friend Liadan climb? The motivations of these two divinely inspired beings, once they are re-grounded in mortal flesh, aren’t clear, and I’d love to see that confusion as a serious force on the page. You’ve made a very cool world here and I’d read more of it! Stormy Nights by Lord Zedd-Repulsa This is very much like the nightmares I have on a regular basis. Killing a friend through clumsiness, through accident. This is a chewing and painful story and deserves its HM. Crystal Garden Guardians by Nae This is your bullshit all right! I love the world you created and the interaction that happened. I am extremely curious at the guy who brought fists to a guns and magic fight and thought that was a clever and cogent solution, but hey. Lovely setting, nice characters, I’d probably play a second session of this Powered By The Apocalypse setting. Virus by Hawklad This was my favorite of the week, personally. I don’t think it was helped by the second-person perspective, which is why it’s an HM and not a win, but I adored the premise. I had been wondering where all the slimy, suppurating scifi had gone, and oh look, it’s here! Good work, I’d love to see this edited and in a magazine somewhere. a knife in the hand by Tyrannosaurus I tried to explain to my husband what this story was about, but it was very difficult to describe why it was so good. Part of it was the prose quality: you didn’t have a sentence out of place in this story. Everything led into everything else, so that the happy, almost-romantic but definitely-vulnerable ending felt earned instead of merely wished for.
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Apr 5, 2024 19:41
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