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Crits! The Calculus of Being Derivative or Losing Sight of E by The Cut of Your Jib The one where some kids grow up and other kids don’t get to. First thoughts: I don’t think I get it. Every sentence is beautifully written, every paragraph is lovingly designed, the visuals are wonderful. But I feel like I’m missing something. After watching the video: I think I get it now. It certainly catched the vibe elegantly. I think my issue is going from names to non-names, I think we are still reading about Jenny and James? I think by the end James has died? I think we are seeing Jenny forget huge swathes of her life due to some form of dementia? It’s beautiful, as I said before, but the story itself remains obscure to me. Backdrop People by Sailor Viy The one where some people try to get free of the world with drugs and murder First thoughts: I like this. Weird formatting often doesn’t work, but it works here. This story could have just been another pair of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to one another, but it’s voicey enough to keep engagement and not so graphic that it turns the stomach, and it ended on the only note that it could have. After watching the video: Translating the curiosity and melancholy I see through the lens of violence and rage was a really neat choice. The Pilgrim by beep-beep car is go The one where a spacefuture man goes to ask a godlike intelligence a question and return to his home with the answer First thoughts: The beginning is kind of slow with all of the names and the repetition. I like the concepts you play with here, I like the little glimpse into this society. I think I’d like to read a longer form version of this story, where Gis has some more space to exist as a person and for his fears and sorrows to be more explicitly known. After watching the video: I even more appreciate now the decision to make your main character an older person, as well as a childless person. This is their mark on the future: getting to ask this question, and it has been asked a thousand times before. I like where you ended it, with the question remaining a mystery. Boxes by Toaster Beef The one where her mother dies and she mourns the smallness of her mothers life and her own. First thoughts: My favorite so far. Confusion and grief and panic all rolled into a little island surrounded by slate-colored water. After watching the video: You capture the combination of fear and sorrow inherent in the word very well. Cassie’s desire to experience more of the world and her reasons for not having done it make sense. I also agree that I’d like the sisters to have been more present… even as asides about whether or not they’d help with the boxes, or whether or not Cassie would even assume that. But it remains one of my favorites of the week. Family Tradition by TheMackening The one where she wakes up in the cabin and misses her father First thoughts: This is the best thing you’ve written for the ‘dome so far imo. It speaks to a specific moment, a specific feeling, and meets what I perceive (without having watched the video yet) as the prompt perfectly. After watching the video: Yup. You got it. It has an ever so slightly slow start, your first two paragraphs maybe combining or reworking into something that really hits the emotional hammer as hard as the rest of it., but it is very, very good. Voyager by Staggy The one where a generation ship experiences a series of existential crises before delivering its cargo First thoughts: I love ship AI stories and this is a good ship AI story. I love that it spans such an incredible timeline. I love that none of the mysteries are answered. Excellent and in contention for the win from me. After watching the video: I think what I love most about your story in comparison to the video is how the focus is on the importance of the moments not remembered. All of these changes that happened, good, bad, just weird, all of them happen despite the memories not forming. You hit that note, “maybe memory isn’t the point, maybe there isn’t one,” and it works. Confessio inlacrimabilis: A Tearless Confession by Flyerant The one where a cop tries to help his crooked partner get his act together before IA gets him. First thoughts: It’s got the emotion, but it falls flat for me. It could be that I’m just not the right audience, but I couldn’t quite get swept up in this one. I was left uncertain as to the stakes, really, once the threat of violence was gone and once IA showed up. I wasn’t even sure what the main character wanted to have happen. After watching the video: I’m not entirely certain this hit the note. It’s almost too understandable a sadness, almost too direct a story. It started off with a bunch of really good character detail that gradually got lost, I think it needs that added back in. The Damage You’ll Do by Slightly Lions The one where a couple breaks up in reverse First thoughts: Beautiful and heartbreaking. I love every part of it. HM or win for sure. After watching the video: Yes. Perfectly done. [b/]AITA? (Am I That Alienated?)[/b] by Sitting Here The one where sisters scatter their mothers ashes and have themselves a lovely sibling fight First thoughts: It’s interesting to read a story about grief and a person who has died but the grief isn’t about the dead person. The mother’s death is such a backdrop to grieving the fractured sibling relationship. After watching the video: You capture that wavering, the desire to experience and be a part of nature while also knowing you bring your own context to it while also not really wanting to be rained on and bleeding on the beach. I want to be at home here, I can’t be at home here, maybe I don’t actually want to be here. Maybe I can make some peace with that. Three Little Words by BeefSupreme The one where a man questions what he means when he says “I love you” and thinks about the women to whom he has said it First thoughts: A melancholy, anxious story about a melancholy anxious topic. I appreciate the focus on the sequencing of events, it’s very much the way people recount things in couples therapy. Everything has to happen in its proper order, and people fight so much about what happened when and was it raining or not… You honestly probably could have ended the story at “Another thing of which I am certain: I never again—not that night, not any other moment in our relationship, and not on any day since—felt as joyful as I did in that moment before I reached her door, sun shining, flowers blooming, love and certainty in my heart.” But I don’t dislike how it did end. After watching the video: I don’t have much to add except that I was absolutely wrong about ending it at that earlier line. Cold Fire by Ceighk The one where a guy has much bigger anger management issues than he’d thought First thoughts: It’s always gonna be hard to slip a story about therapy past a therapist, but this one worked okay. The beginning to a modern-day Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I would probably read more of this, just to see where it went. After watching the video: I see the shape of it, but I wish there were some hint as to what is happening here, actual possession, losing time, a dissociative disorder, some neurological event… this may simply want more space than flash fiction allows.
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Jan 9, 2024 23:23
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 The Cut of Your Jib posted:ty critters Your ingredient is: Century Eggs (Chinese eggs preserved in ash, salt, and quicklime), though many things can lay eggs. Uranium Phoenix posted:I'm in and I'll take a flash ingredient Your ingredient is: a confession, though it may not have been freely given. Sitting Here posted:in wish a flash ingredient Your ingredient is: an antidote, though who knows to what?
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Jan 10, 2024 00:03
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In, flash
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Jan 10, 2024 05:57
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never done this before and im gonna feel like a chump if i dont finish it, but gimme a flash ingredient i guess.
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Jan 10, 2024 08:00
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In, for my first time. Hit me with a flash.
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Jan 10, 2024 09:08
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Thranguy posted:In, flash Your ingredient is: revenge, though it doesn't have to be served cold. barclayed posted:never done this before and im gonna feel like a chump if i dont finish it, but gimme a flash ingredient i guess. Your ingredient is: a tin of meat, though the label has worn off and nobody recognises it. Whirling posted:In, for my first time. Hit me with a flash. Your ingredient is: the last potato, though you choose how it's prepared.
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Jan 10, 2024 16:21
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In, flash me
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Jan 10, 2024 22:08
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Antivehicular posted:In, flash me Your ingredient is: the previous meal, though it hopefully hasn't been eaten already.
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Jan 11, 2024 00:19
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in flash
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Jan 11, 2024 04:27
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barclayed posted:never done this before and im gonna feel like a chump if i dont finish it, but gimme a flash ingredient i guess. Whirling posted:In, for my first time. Hit me with a flash.  welcome.
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Jan 11, 2024 09:00
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BeefSupreme posted:in flash Your ingredient is: the best drat steak, though you can choose the animal and cut.
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Jan 11, 2024 17:09
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All right, gently caress it, I'm in.
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Jan 12, 2024 02:29
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Signup is closed.
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Jan 13, 2024 11:56
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The 37th Diplomatic Interstellar Banquet 1987 words The Stellar Council convened on the usual station in the usual dining room. In the past, people had fought wars to demonstrate their supremacy. Wars were a reality check for the delusional, but interstellar war was a terrible waste of lives, and worse, resources. Now, they did things differently. Political economists had long since proved the outcomes of those wars could be predicted based on productive, technological, and logistical capacities, so a great deal of time and effort was saved by meeting over dinner to demonstrate those capabilities there instead. Council members met every five years. The rules were simple: All the ingredients must be fresh. No synthetics. Each of the leaders had their tongues and noses biologically enhanced, and had spent decades learning both the political and culinary intricacies. As backup, they had teams of technicians running particle analysis, spectroscopes, and more. Those devices were part of the hundreds of cameras watching the event. Across the stars, the dinner meeting was broadcast by tightbeam through the system’s warp portals. It wasn’t just premier entertainment; the fate of nations rested on the courses. The table was set with simple gray porcelain, with tasteful gold rings around the edges of the dinnerware. The utensils were a special matte gray composite that was utterly tasteless. Chief Executive Thesia Martian, who represented the Homeworld Republic, had the honor of entering first. She wore the ancient suit and tie favored by the Federated Corporations, the largest faction within their space. Her wristwatch was entirely made of crystal, including the gears and band, to show off the progress their nanocrystal production facilities were achieving. President Nahid Asayesh, who represented the Orion Cosmarchy, entered second, wearing the traditional screen-robe favored by the elite. The entire garment was made of bendable screens, which currently showed the nebula for which the Cosmarchy was named in real time. The tightbeam technology the Orioni were pioneering was impressive, but it was also common knowledge among every spy agency. Last to enter was General Secretary Jiang Basra, representing the People’s Sixth Republic. They wore a silk Tangzhuang, a style even more ancient than the suit. Along the edges, it had distinct characters, each one representing a different cultural group that was in the Sixth Republic. The hundreds of subtly glowing logograms told the audiences that they considered their strength their people. Their opposition was not impressed by this. “Welcome,” Executive Thesia said, bowing slightly to her opponents. She had won the last contest five years ago, so though the Council took place in neutral space, she acted as host. Her opponents bowed in return and took their seats. “Our appetizer today is bruschetta, crab palmiers, and a light salad.” Understatement was all part of the game. It was up to her opponents to assess her capabilities, not for her to tell them. In both Nahid and Jiang’s earpieces, they could hear their support staff scrambling to bring up databases on Homeworld Republic tomatoes, cheeses, crab, bread and more. Three waiters came out baring full plates of the appetizers. Nahid’s team got straight to work on identifying them. The camera snapshots were fed into a program that turned their faces into 3D models, which were then cross-referenced with facial recognition databases the Orion Cosmarchy had lifted from compromised Homeworld databases. “We have a match. All three waiters are CEOs. They’re representing the financial giants Core Finance, Platinum Credit, and Schuperson LLC.” Nahid didn’t acknowledge the message. Homeworld was broadcasting the strength of its legal framework for securing property rights and the high relative value of its currency. That wasn’t a demonstration that helped her gain any leverage, it was an advertisement to the corporations in Cosmarchy and Sixth Republic space. Data showed investment activity had just spiked. The bruschetta had yellow and red grape tomatoes, precisely quartered. The bread was browned and crisped around the edges with laser precision—literally—and perfectly soft in the center where olive oil had drenched it. Fresh basil was mixed with a soft goat cheese, and over it all were thin lines of a balsamic vinegar. This was Homeworld’s opening move. Each item was from a different world in their space, each normally a week away by cargo ships traveling by gate. The radiocarbon and spectroscopic analysis showed the balsamic was really from Earth, and really aged for 12 years. “Those yellow cherry tomatoes are from the Ticolian-2 greenhouses, and were picked two days ago,” Jiang’s team whispered in their ear. “The interceptor hand-offs must have been flawless, and they’re demonstrating speeds of 3.48 ppy.” That meant the Homeworld military was showing off impressive precision in their maneuvering capabilities, and new top speeds that put them far above the other two nations. It had to be ship engines, because warp gates could only be established along predetermined routes made possible by subspace anomalies from the Universe’s expansion. As Jiang took a bite, they nodded imperceptibly, their enhanced taste-buds confirming the origins of the food as the bright flavors swirled through them. The tattoos on their neck were actually a microlayered device that picked up on the subtle change in tension in their neck and sent the acknowledgment. That didn’t just mean “I heard you,” it meant “pursue this line of investigation.” A secondary team immediately got to work on looking into the new engine technology. Meanwhile, analysis of the other ingredients confirmed their origins too. The crab palmiers used a goat cheese from yet another system, and the crab was Carcozure Blue, a unique species now only found in an asteroid colony at the far end of Homeworld space. “Confirming robust artificial biospheres, and estimates are upped to engine speeds of 3.49 ppy. They must have at least nineteen fleet carriers along the route, each with the new interceptors. That’s a significant advance to their military capabilities,” Nahid’s ear-piece reported. The salad’s fresh leaves were from seventeen more systems, and the spiced pecans and honeyglaze dressing taken from yet another. Executive Thesia smiled at the other two. Her team was reporting a slightly elevated heart rate in President Nahid. President Nahid stood. “The main course will be prismatic trout with a light curry sauce, complemented with grilled vegetables,” she said. As the Orion waiters came out, Nahid could not help but give a smug smile. Database analysis quickly revealed both waiters were classified as paraplegic. However, each wore a mechanic suit with actuators so subtle and supports so sleek, they were only detectable by x-ray photography, not the naked eye. Their movements were agile and natural, and not at all impeded. The Orion Cosmarchy’s robotics had advanced significantly in these past five years. “Profile confirms the fish are from Exelian Prime,” Executive Thesia’s team told her. These trout only spawned under specific climactic conditions, which meant the Cosmarchy’s terraforming technology had made a breakthrough. Exelian Prime had previously been considered barren. And, for the trout to still be fresh, their ships must have been making speeds of 3.17 ppy. An impressive number, if the dinner had taken place ten years ago. Though their engines were outclassed, Cosmarchy troops wearing those robotic suits would have a distinct edge in planetary fighting and boarding actions. Nahid scored another point when Thesia realized that the roasted potatoes were from her space. The Cosmarchy had a smuggling operation that she didn’t even know about, and it was secure enough they were willing to flaunt it. Well, they hadn’t detected the revolution in engine technology, so that was just annoying, not devastating. Dinner proceeded with amicable conversation. Jiang made a jibe about the arbitrary nature of finance, which made Thesia roll her eyes. Thesia’s conversational victory came when she made a pun about ship crews ‘breaking a fast,’ causing Nahid to scowl. Nahid in turn mentioned that his faction might need a handicap to make the next meeting fair, a ham-fisted reference to Orion’s assistive technologies. Thesia looked at Jiang, who seemed unperturbed by their opponents having superior infantry and ship speeds. As they pulled apart the tender fish with a fork, savoring the sweet and savory taste of the special trout and the smoky perfection of the grilled asparagus, Jiang winked at her. “It’s a bluff,” Thesia’s team told her. As analysts confirmed the origins of each of the vegetables, Nahid sat back in apparent satisfaction of a good meal. She was sure her opponents had realized her nation was gaining a significant edge in production thanks to the new colonization efforts she had just demonstrated. Certainly, when Thesia tasted the buttered squash, she’d realized it was from the formerly uncolonized periphery, and her eyes had widened ever so slightly. As the waiters cleared the table, Jiang listened for the motors in the support suits, and had to admit even with their enhanced hearing they couldn’t make them out. “I have a confession,” they said. Then, they paused as their opponents looked at them. “But I suppose it can wait until after dessert.” They stood and said, “Dessert today will be a baked saffron kheer with vanilla pears.” A rapid back-and-forth went between Thesia’s and Nahid’s teams as the waiters came out; as best they could determine, these were just regular-rear end people from the Sixth Republic. The presentation of the food was impeccable. The tiny golden pears were set over the creamy rice, with the faintest sheen of caramel-burnt sugar. A single vanilla string lay along the center. As their forks speared the mouthwatering pears, they found the consistency was perfect, and the faint hint of infused vanilla exquisite. The sweet basmati rice had captured the taste of saffron perfectly. The chatter in the Homeworld and Orion analysis rooms continued to be confused. “The saffron is from the periphery, and the rice from all over the republic. But we can’t narrow down the origin of the pears or vanilla,” Thesia’s team told her. “Radiological profile puts the pears at Zhigu-8, but with only a 48% match.” Jiang smiled at the now worried faces of their opponents. They waited patiently for dessert to finish, the delightful flavors mixing with the building apprehension. The opposition knew their best agents of both nations had missed something—something big. Jiang had just demonstrated an operational security that was terrifying, and it wasn’t just a missed engineering project, but two entire missed planets. “Well?” Thesia snapped, growing impatient. “My confession? Well, I admit it was I who put your teams at a distinct disadvantage. You should have them recheck their databases.” Thesia blanched, and Nahid’s eyes grew wide. Were they saying that they’d compromised their secure networks? Sure enough, the databases now flagged the origin of the pears. In the back rooms, the analysts were going berserk. “Vishava-3 isn’t on the warp gate network! How the hell can that be the origin? These pears were only picked five days ago and that trip would take seven months!” Streamcasters were shouting to their audiences, standing as they knocked back their chairs in disbelief. All over the Sixth Republic, cheers broke out as the news reached them. The street parades began immediately, holographic dragons and firework light shows accompanying the jubilant crowds. A chill settled over the room as the two other nations realized implications. Not only had their networks been infiltrated and their computer technologies been superseded, but the Sixth Republic had just shown they had established new warp gates along pathways that had previously been impossible. Two new warp gates. At least. General Secretary Jiang wasn’t even playing their full hand. They’d figured out something fundamental about the physics of the Universe that neither of them were close to approaching. They stared in disbelief as Jiang bowed and left the room. The diplomatic negotiations that followed the contest were a full sweep. The Homeworld Republic and Orion Cosmarchy were forced to accede to every demand.
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Jan 13, 2024 21:44
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From Scratch 1,205 words Molly, This is going to be one of those things where I seem to take forever to get to the point, but you’re going to have to trust me. You need to learn how to make pancakes. I know what you’re thinking: The recipe’s right there on the back of the box. And sure, if you want to use a boxed mix, I guess there’s nothing stopping you. But you shouldn’t. You should do it from scratch. It’s important. Here’s a little not-so-secret about your mother: She doesn’t cook. She’s never cooked. She’s the smartest and most talented person I’ve ever met and she does a great many things better than you or I ever will, but cooking just isn’t one of them. So the cooking has — for better or for worse, as you’ve come to know over the years — always fallen to me. Thing is, when your mother and I started dating, there just weren’t many things I could cook. But I could drat sure make pancakes. And I did. We had these pancakes twice every weekend for the better part of a decade. When your mother was finishing up her classes at NYU and taking the train two hours down every weekend, we were eating these pancakes. When we were struggling to make things work with near-nothing salaries in a lovely one-bedroom in Nowhere, New Jersey, we were eating these pancakes. When we were just trying to catch our breath in the first few years of marriage — between terrifying elections, my first health scare, and some heartbreaking goodbyes to some beloved family members — we were eating these pancakes. When we were navigating a pregnancy that, frankly, wasn’t always the easiest, we were eating these pancakes. We never had tests done, but you’re probably about 80% pancake. You might think I’m exaggerating. Okay. I know most kids don’t ever really go back to look at photos from their parents’ wedding, but if you ever find yourself browsing our old Facebook albums and happen across the pictures from that day, remember this letter and keep an eye out for the cakes. One of them was a perfectly normal creation from a bakery over in Haddonfield. The other was a gift from your grandmother, who dedicated a whole lot of time and energy to making us a wedding cake that looked exactly like a stack of pancakes. Like I said, it’s important. Anyway, here’s the recipe: Pancakes: White all-purpose flour - 1 cup Baking soda - 1 tsp Sugar - 1 TBSP Cinnamon - 2 tsp Salt - Pinch Milk - ¾ cup Oil - 1 TBSP 1 jumbo egg Butter - for griddle Compote: Frozen blueberries - 2 cups Sugar - ⅓ cup Lemon juice - 2 tsp Water - ⅓ cup Heat the griddle on low-medium. Mix the dry ingredients well, then dump in the egg, oil, and milk. Don’t overstir — lumps are good. Leave the batter to sit for a bit while you get the compote going. For the compote, toss half the blueberries into a saucepan with the water, sugar, and lemon juice, then cook over low heat, stirring frequently, for about 10 minutes. Add in the rest of the blueberries and cook for another 5-10 until you’re at the right consistency (a little thinner than syrup). Keep it warm off to the side while you get the pancakes ready. Spritz some water onto the griddle. If the droplets dance around a bit, the pan’s ready. Drop two small pats of butter onto the griddle and let them sizzle away for a few seconds before dropping about ¾ of a cup of batter onto each one. Let the batter spread out, then leave everything be. In about three minutes, when you start to see little pock marks forming and the sides of the pancake are looking cooked, flip ‘em over and give them another two or three minutes. You know how pancakes look, so eyeball it. Drop them onto a plate, drizzle with the compote, and serve. Powdered sugar really sets it off, but that’s up to you. -- That’s really all there is to it. Whole thing shouldn’t take you more than about 20 minutes, once you get good at it. Maybe you’ll even figure out a better order to do everything in. Knowing you, you’ve already hopped online to look up the boxed stuff — the ingredients, the recipe on the back — and you’re holding this up against that and you’re wondering why it’s so important to make these from scratch. I’m not going to pretend to know the science behind it. Maybe it’s the way no unpacked cup of flour is exactly the same as any other unpacked cup of flour, or how some teaspoons get heaped instead of leveled off, or maybe your baking soda is a different level of freshness, or maybe your pinch of salt is way bigger or way smaller than someone else’s pinch of salt, or maybe you eyeball ¾ of a cup of milk instead of using a ¼ cup measure three times, or maybe you let the batter sit for an extra minute, or maybe your griddle’s a little hotter or cooler than someone else’s … you get the idea. When you’re making things from scratch, there are a lot of variables. Those variables are huge. They become you, they make your pancakes your pancakes and nobody else’s. And if you’re using the box, you’re making the same exact pancakes everybody else is making. Anybody could make those pancakes. There’s nothing unique about those pancakes, nothing that tells the world, “I am Molly, and these are my pancakes.” And that might not matter a whole lot to you right now, and that’s fine — but one day, if you find someone like I did, and he or she is everything you could ever ask for, and you want to cook something for them that nobody else could, being able to put a plate down in front of them that says, “I am Molly, and these are my pancakes” is going to mean everything. So I’m giving you this recipe in the hopes that you’ll discover some fun new variables for yourself — that you’ll build on it and make something special and unique to you. Something befitting the incredible girl you are and the incredible woman you’re going to be. But, if you’ll allow me a second of hypocrisy, I’m going to ask that you hold onto the original. It’s important. Because one morning, long after I’m gone, your mother’s going to be looking a little down, like she did right after I got sick. And on that morning, I need you to make your mom some pancakes. These pancakes. You’re going to surprise her with them, and you’re going to sit down with her at the kitchen table, and she’s probably going to cry, but in a good way, and you’re going to let her tell you some stories, and it’s going to mean more to her than you could ever imagine. It’s going to mean everything. And that’s why you make them from scratch. Thanks, Mol. Love, Dad PS: The pancake batter also works for waffles. Worth a shot. But I have no idea where I left the waffle iron, so you’re on your own there.
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Jan 14, 2024 17:55
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Spud Infinity (1929 words) Sarah was in the most intense game of Texas Holdem she had ever played on Ansible Beacon Seven. Jerry, chief engineer, had almost pulled off a heroic comeback after his two assistants had been eliminated, but he had finally overreached. He tried to bluff with a Two of Diamonds and a Seven of Spades, but Sarah had managed to figure out his tell after months of losing to him; he’d breathe slower for just a fraction of a second as he considered his choices when getting a crappy hand, and she had forced him to go all in with it against her flush. She was grinning from ear to ear, but the adrenaline kept her from feeling too comfortable. There was but one potato left on the beacon, and it had to be hers to cook with. It would be weeks until they were restocked with supplies, and she barely had anything to do here in the meantime. Jerry groaned in utter resignation as he threw his cards into the center of their mess hall’s round table, where they gently floated to rest on their “chips”. SocSpace, their employer and governing body of Earth and its colonies, disapproved of gambling, so they had to make do with cardboard squares of varying colors clipped from empty packaging that would have otherwise been chucked into the recycler. At least Lin, Jerry’s favorite protégé, had managed to smuggle a deck past customs. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” was the usual operating principle here, but because nobody really needed the potato but half of the crew wanted it (and were bored anyways), it seemed like the most sensible solution. Jerry looked at Sarah, his viking chieftain’s beard sagging with the weight of his defeat, and cursed, “Dammit, doc, thought I had you!” She responded, still smiling, “Couldn’t let you make that potato salad again.” Nariman, comms officer, card sharp, and culinary lord of the beacon, sighed. His eyes, wide like an eagle on the hunt, narrowed just a fraction as he interrupted their conversation. “You speak about that salad as though it weren’t an affront to humanity-” Jerry rose up quickly from his chair as he said, “Hey now, that was a family recipe-” “-Apparently his family loves horseradish so much he practically grated an entire root into it. I could hardly smell anything else for three days.” Sarah protested. “Ah, come on, it wasn’t that bad, Nariman.” It was, but Nariman was so ridiculously picky sometimes. Jerry threw up his hands and said, “Alright, alright, I can see you won’t forgive me for afflicting you with good country cooking. May God have mercy on my soul.” He rolled his eyes and made a cross over his broad torso, tracing his fingers on the standard issue blue jumpsuit everyone wore on the beacon. He sighed and said, “Anyway, last long haul ship that folded space near us said they got dinged by a few comets passing through the Oort Cloud. Their comms officer spent like five minutes nagging me about it, even though I got them to admit that there was no structural damage at all. Think I gotta dig into the sensor banks’ guts. Probably got an actual bug stuck onto something that’s throwing off the calculations. I’ll see you all later, and hopefully you in a better mood, Nariman.” Jerry took his bottle of beer and left the hall, courching so he could get through the auto-doors (made for mere mortals, not half-giants like him) without bashing his head on the top. Sarah called out, “Let me know if you need any help, Jerry!”, as she waved him goodbye. She turned back to eye her final adversary. Nariman had won the crew’s casual poker games time and time again, and now he had a reason to go all out. She never could find a single tell of his and it seemed like he had some sort of personal relationship with Lady Luck. She tried to act casual despite the daunting task before her, asking, “So, what were you going to do with the prize? You never did say.” He shuffled the deck, flicked two cards (the Jack of Diamonds and the Nine of Clubs) at her after she paid her ante, and answered, “Simple. I’m going to julienne it, blanch it, toss all of it into our cast-iron pan, pair it with some chopped onion and tomato, fry it all in ghee, season it with that leftover masala blend I made, and put a few fried eggs over the top when I’m done. You?” She could imagine how everything would look at the end. Nariman would always put so much red chili into his spices that whatever it touched turned as red as a Chinese New Year’s envelope, and the base notes (bright cinnamon and earthy cardamom) from yesterday’s meal he cooked hung in the mess hall like it were his banner. He was - as much as Sarah hated to admit it - a great chef despite his rotten attitude. When he cooked, he always had a fierce expression on his face, as though he were trying to conquer the food and make every ingredient submit to his design. Fate willing, she would hoist her own banner up today. She took stock of the playing field; she estimated that he had about one and a half times as many chips as she did. She knew he tended towards playing defensively, so she raised, putting two extra squares forward, and said, “Didn’t I already say?” “Sorry, wasn’t listening.” A typical Nariman move, trying to put her off her game. He matched her raise and leaned back in his chair. She took a deep breath and simply said, “A Hasselback potato with garlic butter and herbs.” She drifted away for a second as she imagined what it would look like. The garlic butter, fortified with enough thyme and basil to make it more fragrant than any perfume, would seep into each paper-thin ridge she cut into the spud’s back and would soak into the very heart of the tuber. It was a alchemist’s mixture that would transmute all that was brown and beige into the rich gold every chef coveted. Of course, the spud would also be encrusted in salt so that each bite would be a tantalizing prelude to the crescendo of perfectly fluffy and buttery pith hitting her tongue. She felt impish enough to sprinkle a few bits of caramellized synth-bacon between each fold, although she wouldn’t tell Nariman this until after she won. The man absolutely hated bacon. Reality immediately reasserted itself when he won the round with a two-pair. He wore a wicked little smirk on his face as he collected his winnings. “Well, look at that! I guess you’ll have to put that hasselback on hold for a while.” It was like everything in the universe was conspiring with him. She legitimately wondered if she ask Diego (the beacon’s physicist) if he could detect if there was some distortion unknown to science centered entirely around Nariman that altered probability. Sarah would occasionally pull out a stronger hand, but his unearthly luck was such that her pile of cardboard chips slowly began to disintegrate before her very eyes. Eventually, she was forced to go all in. He shrugged his shoulders as she reluctantly pushed her chips forward and said, “Can you save me some time and surrender already? I got my shift in like an hour.” She shook her head. “Nope. Potato is gonna be mine.” She dealt out the cards this time. Twin aces for her. He scoffed. “Why are you even so fixated on that thing, anyway?” She cast three cards towards the center: a Five of Diamonds, a Jack of Spades, and a Queen of Hearts. She replied, “Luka broke his arm climbing to the upper deck, what, three months ago? I haven’t had anything major to do since then. I give out a little bit of aspirin for headaches, a little bit of calcium carbonate for stomach aches, and that’s it. Might as well spend my year on here getting good at something I’ll be doing all the time on my year off after I rotate out and go back home to Jamaica.” Nariman leaned forward. She heard him suck air through his teeth before he spoke, “Hey, at least you don’t have to deal with people whining at you all day. This beacon is responsible for calculating thousands of successful jumps, its gone fourteen years without major incident, but do any of these space jockeys care? No, its just endless whinging. ‘Oh, my cargo shifted too much, a comet bounced off my hull, we had too much turbulence coming in, it took too long’. I wish I could sit around and browse the AnsibleNet all day like you.” Sarah realized suddenly that this was it. He had just shown her his Achilles heel and he didn’t even know it. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Ah, right, so that’s why you’re so fixated on the potato. You got so much to do that you think you’ll never catch up to me once I get good, right? Soon everybody will be asking for me to cook at our get togethers.” He managed to return to his usual aloof expression, but there was tension in his voice when he replied. “Please, no one’s better than me. My dad was one of the best chefs in London and trust me when I say that I never disappointed my father.” “Then prove it. Wager everything right now. If you win, I’ll only make instant ramen for the next month.” He pushed all his chips forward without hesitation. “Fine. Let’s go. It’ll make my day every time I see you sucking down that imitation kimchi-flavored crap.” She drew the Jack of Hearts for the turn. Nariman didn’t look the least bit fazed. All hung on the balance of what she drew for the river. The potato! She had to have the last potato! She had memorized the recipe she found from front to back, and it might all be for naught! How could she possibly go on eating the worst noodles made by mankind knowing how close she got to perfection? Her hand shook as she drew the last card from the deck. There would be no justice, no goodness, no meaning in the universe if Lady Luck let her lose today. With one last minute prayer, she flipped the card over. The Ace of Diamonds! She squealed in joy and slammed the rest of her three-of-a-kind onto the table. He looked shocked as he sheepishly revealed a mere two-pair. He hung his head and muttered, “Good game.” She stood up, rushed towards him, and clapped him on the back before he could defend himself. “Good game! But hey, I can maybe sub in for a few shifts of comms if you teach me how you made that coffee-rubbed steak you made a week ago?” He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose, and said, “Yeah, sure, whatever. God, you’re probably going to put bacon or some poo poo on that potato.” She didn’t say it straight out, but her laughter was as sharp as a guillotine blade as the dethroned king of Texas Holdem slunk out of the mess hall. The greatest potato ever made on Ansible Beacon Seven came out of the oven two hours later, triumphantly golden and adorned with flecks of emerald herbs and with rubies of sweet maple bacon.
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Jan 14, 2024 21:05
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Week 597 Submission Sex Eggs 1999 words Flash: Century eggs For my second birthday, I was sat in a high chair and given a chocolate cake with buttercream shaped of Cookie Monster all to myself. It filled the tray. The first taste of fake blue, and the rush of store bought cake that I’m sure was a little gritty. Findlay says she can’t remember anything before she was five, but I remember this distinctly. It was the days of shag carpeting and VHS tapes that cost a hundred bucks. I remember being stuck, maybe slightly too big, in that high chair while my uncles played Risk in the two bedroom apartment. Their house rule was no limit on armies, so they wrote on slips of paper when the tokens ran out. It spread across the floor of the living/dining room combo, torn notebook slips floating on the sea of Seuss green pile. Mom hustled in the kitchenette, fussing over a meal for ten: Dad and four brothers, Homer from downstairs to round out six for the game, me and my slightly older brother John, Mom, and her mom, Gramma. Meatballs bursting with diced onion and green pepper shrouded in sour cabbage-leaf, slathered in tomato sauce and baked. Pigs in the blanket. That’s what we always called them, so surprise, surprise the first time I signed-up for a pot luck and saw ‘pigs in a blanket’ on the sheet, stoked, only to graze the table and see hot dogs wrapped in crescent rolls. It was the most melodramatic “What the-” ever uttered. Halupki. While the boys played, John tore strips for the ever increasing stalemate, Mom cooked and I watched, Gramma on a high backed bar chair, sucking a dayglo-pink pickled egg from the two gallon jar in her lap. Another surprise when I sidled my first barstool and saw a jar of eyeballs on the counter. Just eggs in vinegar as clear as water. The bottom of Gramma’s jar sat thick with celery seed and coriander, black pepper, bay, mustard seed and allspice. Earthy beets bobbed in the murky brine. You knew the eggs were good and ready when the albumen was cyberpunk pink the whole way to the yolk. Pickled eggs. I don’t know how it went down, but I’m borne to a family of board game cheaters so I can surmise, and before the halupki were out of the oven, Homer was defeated and tucked into the chair next to Gramma, slyly looking to tuck in to those eggs. She tipped the jar and he fished an egg with fingertips immediately stained beet-purple. He bit the thin end and his face scrunched from the pucker power. Once he wiped the briefest of tears from the corner of his eye with an index knuckle, those dark eyes went wide. “Wa.” _____ There was always something spicy wafting up the stairwell, and anytime Gramma would babysit, Homer would show up with a stirfry of some sort or another. I remember it being a shock sometimes, coming in from the frozen air to the blast of capsicum, but it always smelled so good. Someone complained, so Homer wokked over propane on the balcony off his apartment. His rig took up most of it, the rest was a big planter filled with dirt, but there were never plants. Sometimes Gramma would wave up to us from down there. I confess, I don’t remember Pap at all, but there’s a picture of him sleeping in the waiting room as I was born. They always say he didn’t want to live until he was too old to die young, and he punched out a couple days after he turned 69. Come Christmas we got toy fishing rods and Gramma got us some Playmobil sets including a construction set that had a crane with a little platform on a winch. Before long we had the platform hooked up to the fishing rod and when Homer was out on his patio frying, John and I would lower snacktime carrot sticks and bell pepper slices down and he’d toss them in the wok before sending them back up, glistening and salty soy. We did that for weeks, until a plastic horse dropped off the winch into the wok, spun around like a coin in one of those shopping mall funnel wishing wells that collected for the United Way, and back out to land in his planter. Mom didn’t know until Homer knocked to return a greasy, dirty horse that we were frying our afternoon veg, and that was the end of that. John asked, “Why don’t you have any plants?” and he said, “It’s not for plants. I’m waiting for my eggs.” How did that work, what? Eggs in the dirt? Are they alive? Will they hatch? Did the birds lay eggs in your pot? But he deflected all those questions with a “You’ll see. They take one hundred years.” So we’d lay in the spring air, heads wedged through the bars as much as we could, looking down into the planter waiting for something to happen. A beak to sprout, feathery leaves unfurling, a dandelion head made from chicken feet that might blow away and scatter little chicken toenails across the playground. Anything. One afternoon, the Ma Bell rotary rang and Gramma answered, spoke quietly for a minute then hung up. “Red up quick. It’s time.” We scooped the rainbow Lego houses and rubble into the bin as the familiar knock sounded. Homer led us outside to the grass and plumped the planter. He rooted around the dirt, pulled a clump and scraped it down with a hard plastic spatula. Egg one, egg two, then egg dozen. Just dirty eggs that might have fallen into the leftover chocolate cake in the fridge. He rinsed them with the backyard hose and placed them in a straw lined basket, splotchy black and brown like the output of an oil-slicked Easter Bunny. John and I stood on the dining room chairs, leaning over the table, rolling strange eggs around in the hay. Homer cracked one over a tea saucer, deftly rolling the peel then held the orb up to the electric chandelier. Light shone through the black gelatin egg, flaked through like a frost on glass. He sliced it into quarters with his fancy chef’s knife and passed them around on other saucers. John poked, it wobbled. It smelled of soft braunschweiger (smoked liverwurst), and softer strong cheese and the tang of homemade kraut. They were all Gramma’s favorites, and consequently Mom’s favorites. Gramma bit first, and it was all of those at once, but something else. Astounding and sensory and savory. “Did they really cook for a hundred years?” asked John. “They’d be hard as dinosaur eggs if they were a hundred years old,” said Homer. “It’s squishy.” “It’s a special egg, but it’s just an egg.” Homer ate his. “Mmmmm.” We did it. And it felt like Jell-o with a cream cheese yolk. Sort of like an egg, but not—special. And I’ve done my best to explain the flavor, and you’d be forgiven for deciding it wasn’t for you. “How did you learn to make eggs?” I asked. “My mother always made them. But I don’t remember learning, I was too young. Your age, I think.” “You don’t remember my age?” “You’re four now, yes?” “Yep.” “I remember your age but not when I was your age.” “Huh?” Homer smiled, and Gramma smiled too, peeling another egg for herself. I resolved then, that I would remember remembering so I wouldn’t forget when I was little. Before long, we bought a small house far from town. Gramma owned her little condo but floated into Homer’s place where they were happy for a couple years, then Homer followed Pap. _____ Dad’s side was just American—the most exotic thing they might do is put strips of bacon on the Thanksgiving turkey. John and I got the idea one year, at the annual Easter gathering, to dye a century egg and mix it in for the Easter egg hunt. That was the dare, who ever finds it has to eat it, and Uncle Joe thought it was so hilariously disgusting he offered a fifty dollar prize to the kid who could eat the whole thing. That’s how it went for a few years, but cousins grow up and move away, and the family is blown to the winds like chicken toenails. Century eggs are forgotten for a while. I was married to Findlay for six years now, and Amanda was four. We decided it would be fun to revive the Easter egg hunt. Joe’s kids and their families were close enough. John had a couple ruggers of his own now, and didn’t live too far off. Findlay and I practiced for a couple months, finetuning the century egg protocol from Youtube videos, and finally hit paydirt. She didn’t like the look of them, and definitely didn’t like the smell. Perfect. The cousin-kids were hanging out all over the house, huddled over phones playing Fortnite and laughing at the adults’ pathetic gaming, when John knocked with a surprise. Gramma. “You sure it’s safe?” I asked. “Covid’s been around the home twice this year already, can’t be any worse here.” “Hmm. Welp, one last hurrah if we end up killing her.” Findlay put a platter of peeled century eggs on the coffee table, held a fifty dollar bill high and explained the hidden black egg challenge. The tykes huddled around the batch of eggs, poking and sniffing and barf-noising. Of course they were all in. John and I hid the eggs around the yard. She moved the platter to the dining room for Gramma, and on-yer-marks the kids went hunting, filling their baskets before the peeling ceremony. John caught up with Bobbie and Mack and spouses while Fin and I watched the chaos outside. “Where’s Amanda?” “Dunno—Mandy?” Moment of panic, then she came out of the house. “I found an egg inside,” she said. “OK, sweetie. But they’re all out here, go look.” Amanda bobbled off to the shrubline. I went back in and sat down by Gramma. ”Did you ever make these with Homer?” “Hung-min,” she replied. “Sorry?” “Homer’s real name was Hung-min.” “Oh. Why did he anglicize it to Homer? It’s not really easier to say.” “It’s just what people did. He wanted people to see him as American.” “Yeah.” I didn’t know what else to say, and didn’t want to melancholy it. Findlay herded everyone in and they peeled like mad. Little Mack found the hidden century egg, and once it was on the saucer and he was seated by Gramma, he got cold feet, burying his face in the crook of his elbow. Amanda piped up, “I found a black egg, too.” Findlay said, “That’s good honey, where’d you put it?” “On Gramma’s tray.” “Uh-huh.” Gramma punched little Mack on the arm and he sniffled up at her. “It’s easy,” she said, “and so delicious. But first, you have to take out your teeth.” She popped her dentures on her little plate to a round of groans from the kids (and maybe me, too). She spider-fingered a whole black egg into her mouth, gummed it, scrunched her face to an impossible degree, then hollered best she could with the mouthful: “It’s alive! It’s hatching!” Kids squealed and ran, peeking from behind the furniture as she slobbered it onto the formica. It buzzed and bounced and spun across the table. Everyone jumped back, then it dropped and skittered across the tiles winding under the china cabinet. “Amanda, where did you find eggs in the house?” I asked. She came over and whispered in my ear. I knelt down to fish it out. “What the- Tell your mum.” I expected her to whisper it to Findlay, but she shouted at the top of her lungs, “IN MOMMY’S UNDERWEAR DRAWER!” _ Don’t worry, Gramma still tells the story to every new resident and orderly, and never forgets a detail.
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Jan 15, 2024 06:27
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A Night in the Great Summer Forest 1411 words Flash ingredient: the previous meal Agent Patience was one day out from the extraction point, with a half-day's worth of rations left, when the receiver on her hip vibrated. Her hand went to her earpiece in time to catch the alarm call halfway through: "... cache, need backup. Coordinates 209-57. Repeat, Blackbird ambush at supply cache, need backup. Coordinates 209-57." 209-57 was twenty minutes' hike, towards the Great Summer Forest's border with Autumn, so the undergrowth would be sparse but dry. Ten minutes, she thought, at a run -- as duty demanded, even as the thought of the supply cache exercised the stronger compulsion Patience found herself hungry just thinking about fresh foil ration packages, ready to be torn into and finished at a sitting, full of heavy starch that would silence the stomach for hours. Even a split cache, harvested sparingly, would mean a two-meal day tomorrow, maybe three-meal. It was a thought Patience savored, then regretted, as her gut roared its demands. It was best not to think about food at all, Patience reminded herself as she trudged through the underbrush, keeping her eyes on dead leaves below and not the verdant branches above, heavy with jewel-toned fruit. She couldn't bank on anything but the opened pouch of chicken and dumplings still in her satchel. Patience was five minutes out from the coordinates when she heard the gunshot: unsilenced, a crack-boom none of the Forest's clever fauna could mimic. She broke into a run, heedless of leaves crunching under her feet, pushing starved limbs to carry her just a little faster, even as the silence told her all she needed to know. One gunshot, unanswered. When she stopped at the edge of the clearing at coordinates 209-57, she saw the crumpled figure in Jay-grey fatigues bleeding out into the clover, his assailant in Blackbird colors still standing over him with her pistol at the ready. "No closer," the Blackbird barked. "Your man might turn. I saw him eating." "Eating what? There's safe forage, you know, this close to Autumn." Safe was strictly a relative term, of course, but Patience remembered well the lessons they'd given her on which leaves and berries wouldn't corrupt you right away, and how much of them you could eat and still be purged post-extraction. "That's old science, sister Jay. Very old science. Doesn't matter, anyway -- he was gorging on something purple, the size of his head. Ate it down to the rind. And he sabotaged your cache." She gestured downfield -- carefully, with her empty hand, pistol still trained on the fallen Jay -- and Patience glanced away just long enough to confirm the disturbed earth. "Go see yourself." Patience stalked across the clearing, watching the ground for snares and tripwires, but the only unpleasant surprise was the state of the cache. It had been properly unlocked, ration packs and ammo boxes in undisturbed array inside, but as Patience knelt for a closer look, she could make out dark pinhole pricks in the packs, just the size to have admitted a hypodermic needle. One fae-fruit of the Summer Forest would provide enough juice to taint the whole cache, and a ravenous agent might not notice until they'd swallowed a whole meal-pouch. No sane man could say what the fruits of the fae tasted like, but Patience had been very close to learning. "The whole cache," Patience muttered. "The whole drat cache. Have to lug this to extraction for decommission, and I've barely got the energy to haul myself. If I leave the box and ammo, fine, but all the food..." Every packet was madness and death, tainted with the touch of the Summer Fae, and yet every packet was a temptation. Acid rose in her throat, less a true nausea and more hunger in its next phase, her body eroding away the soft tissue it could spare. Could she eat carefully and slowly? Open a packet, scrape out forkfuls of the beige and grey not tainted with the brightness of the forest? Could she trust it, or herself? There were footsteps behind her, and soon the Blackbird was at her side, pistol holstered. "We pack it out, even if we bite our tongues all the way back to Earth. And I do mean 'we.' I've seen you, scouting on the borders of Winter and Spring, and if you've seen what I've seen... it's not Blackbirds and Jays, anymore. Not my country versus yours. It's our whole drat world versus Fae, and your bastard was playing for the wrong side, so we clean up his mess together." Patience nodded, letting the thoughts slip that she'd kept even more deeply buried than her hunger: the sight of the ships of the Silver Kingdom docking at the ports of the Winter Court, the summits she'd infiltrated in changeling maid's dress, the pictures she'd taken. The plots for famine to sweep the northern reaches, just in time for fae ambassadors to arrive with their bright bounty, poison to fill a thousand starving mouths. The intelligence. The intelligence needed to get home for Blackbird and Jay alike, for both the nations whose name Patience did not dare think in the fae realm, no more than she dared think her true name. "We've got to," she said. "But I've got to eat something, too. I've made my last meal last two days." The Blackbird paused, a glance back at the dead Jay confirming what Patience suspected she was thinking, before she closed her eyes. "Check your man, just in case; he didn't turn, so he might be all right. If that fails... I've got a bit I can spare." Patience nodded again, pulling her service knife from its holster as she approached the corpse. She could see the proof of the Blackbird's story in the glistening purple stains over the front of his uniform, some still sticky with pulp and half-chewed seeds. More damning still was the blood oozing from the bullet wound in his forehead, thin and unclotted, glossy candy red and glittering. Blood-level taint, then. No need to cut into the meat; nothing of him was fit for eating. By the time Patience had finished rifling her comrade's pockets and securing his satchel, the Blackbird was back by her side, carrying two bags made of thick frosted plastic. "One for each of us. Weight should be bearable. All I've got left to eat is venison stew, but I've got a canister for my stove, and I think we can risk the fire. You'll feel fuller with a hot meal." "You're very kind," Patience replied. "I'd offer you my chicken and dumplings, but it's leftovers twice over, and it didn't start out tasting like much." "And I haven't eaten chicken in months. Trade?" "Trade. And... another trade. How much do you know about the Silver Kingdom?" The Blackbird's eyes widened. "Saw they were at the Winter Court summit, but we burnt all our promises getting in to the Spring Queen's chambers, so we couldn't get a drat thing." "I'll trade you the summit minutes and battle-table maps for whatever you've got from the Spring Queen. We'll fight the Fae as a united front." The Blackbird rations mostly cooked themselves, and Patience and the Blackbird snapped dossier photographs to the smell of simmering meat. When that was done, Patience pulled her leftover chicken and dumplings from her supply pack and handed it over. If the Blackbird was concerned by the crumpled foil, she made no sign of it as she dipped her fingers in to shovel it into her mouth. Patience knew all too well what it tasted like, nigh-flavorless say for the gravy, but there was something to the texture of it: thick pasty half-dissolved biscuit, mixed with lean chewy strips of chicken, with just enough sauce to let you swallow. It was the kind of food that could only satisfy in Faerie, where the very air was sweet, and the body cried for savory substance. The venison stew was gamy, despite chunks of undercooked root vegetable wildly outnumbering the cubes of meat. The other side's chefs spent no more on spices than Patience's side did, but it hardly mattered, not when the food was hot and filling. This was satiation, pure and simple. This was human, to sit by the fire and eat and feel alive, to gather strength for one more day. To do it all so your people can greet the elf-boats with their iron knives ready. Patience was human, and she would not fail.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:05
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Rise and Fall Flash Ingredient: Revenge 1201 words “It's just a shame, that's all,” said Miller, tossing a handful of Parm at the last salad ever made at The Byzantium. “A loving shame.” “Twenty years and it comes down to this,” said Josie. She worked tables, lived off tips. Didn't usually hang with the cooks. “Turks at the gates.” “Twenty two years,” said Miller. “And the Vadiks aren't Turkish. They're Armenian, I think.” “It's, you know,” said Josie, “A figure of speech.” “Were you on the list?” he said. “What list?” Josie grabbed the salad bowl. “They're keeping Myra on account Grigor likes the way her tits bounce, and Ryan up front, and that's it.” “He's not wrong,” Miller said. Josie gave him a look. “Just saying. Same back here. Maybe two guys on the line are staying on.” “Somebody,” said Josie, “Oughta do something.” Which was how it began, either right then and there or right after the shift ended, the two of them pants off in the wine cellar, grunting together against the packed-up crates of bottles that Vito Duke thought were good enough to save. Plenty of the cheap stuff was left, and a few decent bottles opened during the last week too. Everyone who wanted to could find something to steal on the last day. But it wasn't enough to hurt. Still they stole. Miller stole wine. And Josie stole cheese. A week later she called him over, and got the cheese out of her freezer, and cracked it open. Perfect molds of the Byzantium keys in the middle of the Manchego. She'd watched a bunch of videos, and they made casts and harder molds and better casts, gel to aluminum good enough to take to a key copy machine and get steel. The first time they went was two days after The Byzantium closed. There was a new chain on the front but the back door was just as it had always been and the keys worked fine. There wasn't anything worth taking, not yet. So they left something behind instead. The next time was a few days before Shirak's cold opening. They'd changed the front locks but their key still opened the back door like a charm. The security system was new, but they had video of fifteen different people punching in the code, thanks to the little camera and router they'd put in last time. There still wasn't much to steal, so they just took back their spy hardware and left. They had the key and they had the code. They could come back when they were ready. Time passed. They both found other work; they both knew their jobs and had good references from the old boss. Not together, and for a good while they were on opposite shifts and barely got together at all. But when their schedules lined up just right they'd end up at the old Hammerhead bar just across the street, which used to be a cop bar until word got out that IAB had it wired and now was just a quiet place to get drunk. “I used to figure, rats,” said Josie. “Hit up a pet store, get a dozen or so and let them loose. Call the health inspector too, maybe.” Miller smiled. “That would serve them right.” “I said used to,” Josie said. “I mean, revenge is revenge but you don't get ahead by just getting even.” “So what do you figure?” said Miller. “Not like anyone else will pay dimes on the dollar for fancy Armenian wine. “I don't know. Wait,” she said, pulling out her buzzing phone. She read and tapped out a few lines of text. “That was Myra,” she said. “The one who still works there?” “Not no more. Let's do the rats.” So the next night they went there, to Shirak, with a chattering cage, looking for a good place to plant a colony. “You still got the wine cellar key?” Millet said. “Sure, but like you said-” “It still drinks, doesn't it,” he said. Then he cocked a smile. “And maybe a white gets topped off with some Chateau Miller's kidneys ‘24.” She tossed him a key. He went down then back up almost immediately. “Maybe hold up letting the rats out,” he said. “You gotta see this.” There was a safe down there. Big, old-fashioned. Not a temperature-controlled wine safe. The kind a bank would have used fifty years ago. “Do you still have-” started Miller. “Ahead of you,” said Josie, pulling out her camera and router, looking for a good hiding place. It was a wine cellar; there were plenty. “Not great signal here, though. We'll need to eat upstairs to pull the video.” So they did. Miller figured the food was pretty much the same as any other Mediterranean joint, just with different names for things. Once he figured those out it was as good a meal as any. A couple meals a week and in two of those they had enough to work with. The combination, mostly. The guy stood almost like he knew there was a camera. Lucky him. Unlucky them. But over a few openings they had it down to about six possibilities, three if there was any tolerance in the mechanism. And they had the pattern. For all the good it did them. Tuesday, a couple times during the day, a guy would put in cash. Lots of cash. Heavy looking guy, Russian, not Armenian. And then just after they closed three Russians showed up to collect it all. “So god-damned useless,” said Josie. “All that cash and no way to get it.” “Masks and shotguns?” said Miller. “You ever shot a guy?” said Josie. “Even pointed a gun at someone?” Miller shook his head. “Me neither. And it would be four people at least, and anyone who'd be worth having knows better than to steal from those guys.” It was a frustrating night. They didn't get properly buzzed. The sex was no good either. But Miller woke up with an idea. It was a good plan and they executed it well. Dinner Tuesday. They both went to the restrooms at the same time. Josie could fit into Myra’s uniform and the line chefs dressed like any other line chefs. Miller waited until he was alone, then raised a lighter to the fire alarm. Tossed it lit into the paper towel trash after it started blaring, walked out just before the sprinklers started sprinkling. Then down to the cellar and spinning the wheel, trying the possible combinations. Not one, not two, not three. Four was the one. Money went into sacks. They went out through the front, avoiding the restaurant’s fire marshalls out back, and got to Miller’s car before the fire truck arrived. Miller woke up five minutes before his alarm, with a sudden realization. He shook Josie awake. “We gotta go,” he said. “Now.” “Wha-” “We didn't take away the camera,” he said. She snapped awake, grabbed clothing with practiced speed. Maybe they only thought they heard bangs behind them, doors being kicked down. They left with the clothes on their back and a trunk full of cash, leaving behind a city they'd never be welcome in again.
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Jan 15, 2024 08:50
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Prompt: Antidote wasp 1800 words Your sister, Anya, knows things about you. In your family, knowledge is leverage. You know things, too—about her, your other siblings, your parents, the chauffeur, your mother’s mistress, and the mistress's housekeeper. Occasionally you use this information to get things you want. Mostly you keep silent dossiers of exploitable morsels. Anya, by contrast, is loose and petty in her use of knowledge. You and the rest of the family know this, even find it charming. Her machinations are adorably legible and easy to avoid. Mostly. Usually. Unless, for example, you sometimes forget that you allow her to come to parties with you out of pity, and, high as you occasionally are on several substances, don’t notice that she’s in the room when your coked up, ketamined-down brain decides to disclose the many grandiose ways in which you’re loving over your siblings. Your sister usually has the presence of mind to pull out her phone and start recording and, well, now here you are. Tonight is a siblings-only dinner. Not an unusual thing; your shared constellation of parents and step-parents know that you kids need time to plot amongst yourselves. Family make for instructive enemies—if you can outthink those who know you best, you can outthink anyone. Your most recent opsec fuckup was two weeks ago. The perfect amount of time for Anya to contrive some infantile reveal of your treachery to the rest of your siblings. When you received the text inviting you and the rest of the siblings to dinner at the old estate, you’re not surprised. You already have a menu ready. You’re not just an immaculately sexy, perpetually young, ruthlessly efficient hustler. You’re also an amazing chef. It’s not the sort of thing you would normally share with your family—you’re repulsed by the idea of them tasting something you put actual care and love into—but your stupid, oblivious sister found you out. Now you cook for your family in secret and Anya takes the credit. The old estate is a minor tourist destination, the sort of place haunted by daytime visitors with children and smartphones. Your family doesn’t own the mansion in the traditional sense; rather, they administer the estate through contacts in the Royal Parks Charity. This means your family name isn’t attached to the estate, so you and your siblings can use it to sordid ends with relative anonymity. It’s late in the evening and all the tourists are gone. The dining room is drafty and maximalist, dominated by the long mahogany table down its center. Presently, your siblings—minus your sister—are seated along its length, all eight of them. The conversation is soft and polite and full of menace, the hissing of function room vipers. These are the scions of all the most lucrative industries: aerospace, energy, communications, commercial banking and real estate. You consider yourself a jack of all those trades and more, the truest heir to your family’s ambitions. Tonight’s dinner begins with fresh bread and a cultured butter so rich and salty that you secretly licked it off your elaborately manicured nails. The bread, a crusty sourdough, is sliced delicately thin so as to not spoil appetites. Your sister sweeps in from the kitchen and places the bread on the table with exaggerated deliberateness, the kayfabe of a parent presenting a child to a new academy. You override your revulsion and eat a slice. You compliment its body, its structure, the breakfasty warmth of the butter. The humiliation of it tightens the noose of your resolve. “Divine,” one of your brothers, Adam, proclaims of the bread. “If you weren’t part of the family, I’d hire you as my head chef.” “It’s just bread,” you say shortly. “Save your accolades for something that actually warrants praise.” Your bread absolutely warrants praise, but it wouldn’t be in character for you to do so. “If we did that,” Adam drawls, “then who would give lip service to your accomplishments, my love?” Light tittering from around the table, which you endure. Your sister inclines her head and returns to the kitchen to retrieve the amuse-bouche: tomato water drained from heirloom tomatoes and infused into a gelatin, sprinkled with a fine Japanese sea salt, served by the mouthful in porcelain soup spoons. “It’s like tasting a summer afternoon,” proclaims one of your other siblings. “A can of V8 has a similar effect,” you say, thinking ruefully of the hours spent selecting tomatoes, pureeing, straining, cooling, perfecting. “It was simple,” Anya agreed. “No real skill required, to be honest.” This was Anya’s other favorite thing to do—take credit for your cooking, then make self-effacing remarks discrediting the amount of skill required to prepare the dishes. Her pettiness causes a particular sense of revulsion in you. The smallness of it. Like finding the corpse of a wasp inside a fig. After everyone has finished the amuse-bouche, Adam addresses you in a jolly tone. “Sorry about all that business with Azutech,” he says, referring to his acquisition of one of your holdings. “Just business, and all that.” You raise a glass of wine and say, “What’s a little cutthroat competition between family? Keeps the knives sharp.” What Adam doesn’t know is that there is a massive tax liability hidden in Azutech’s ledgers—something for him to contend with the next time the corporation is audited. You’ve got something like that planned for each of your siblings. Let them have their small victories over you; it’ll only make the eventual comeuppance more confectionary. Or it might have been. If Anya wasn’t a petty bitch in possession of your most salacious secrets. Now you can’t assume that any of your plans are secure. What you intended for your siblings would provoke a fraternal war if they became aware of the scope of your schemes, but you’re more of an assassin than a general. You wade through the soup course, nibble on the deconstructed salad. Your own art regurgitated back at you. Somehow, you survive all the way to the main course: whisper-thin slices of seared venison laid atop a thick honeyed cream, dressed in candied walnuts, arugula, and a tamarillo puree, topped with truffle shavings. Accompanying the venison is a dish of seasonal vegetables, roasted with honey and lemon. The intended effect is earthy sweetness, the essence of a harvest bounty. To highlight that sweetness, you’ve prepared cocktails made with a good Irish whiskey whose malt offers up the taste of honey (privately you nicknamed this presentation A Triptych of Honeys). It’s a shame what you’ve done to it; no one tastes the methanol, but you know it’s in there, adulterating what would otherwise be a fine beverage. Anya serves the drinks with the same facade of humility as everything else, demurely accepting praise for the fine presentation of it all. The food and wine have been flowing for over two hours now and your siblings’ voices have grown thick with intoxication. Even Anya has indulged, taking sips of wine between meal service. Her cheeks are red and glossy in the candlelight, her face flushed with pride. It’s as though she forgets that she didn’t actually cook all this food; she looks for all the world like someone in the throws of a job well done. You discreetly consume several tablets of activated charcoal while dabbing around your mouth with a linen napkin. You had no way of knowing which of the drinks you would receive, but you’ve habituated yourself to wood alcohol and you sip your cocktail slowly. The charcoal should absorb the worst of it. Your siblings are more voracious in their consumption; in fifteen minutes, most of the glasses are empty. You know from your research that methanol poisoning can take up to an hour, so you aren’t surprised when your siblings don’t all go blind and vomit at once. What does surprise you is the dessert course—instead of lavender sorbet with sea salt and honeysuckle flowers, Anya presents to the table a single covered serving dish. Do you feel faint as she approaches the table? Do your heartbeats come faster, less precise? Are the corners of your vision going dark? “I decided to go off-menu for our final dish of the night,” she says, her beatific smile turning shrewd and foxlike. “Some of the keener palates might have detected something stronger than whiskey in their cocktails. May I present the perfect compliment to methanol poisoning—” She pulls the lid off the serving dish, revealing a small saucer loaded with activated charcoal capsules. A suseruss of controlled panic ripples up and down the table. You wring your hands, chew your lower lip. Your breath comes faster and fainter. The air won’t go all the way to your lungs. You feel as though you should jump up onto the table and scream, stomp your feet, bellow. You tell yourself this is panic. You’ve been found out. You tried to frame your sister for poisoning your siblings and now they’re about to know but it’s okay, you’ll run and hide for your life. You have friends—or at least people who you can get high enough to help you out. You have your accountant, who as far as you know is loyal. You have places to hide, people to protect you. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. “I invited you all here under a bit of a pretense,” Anya says as she circles the table, distributing charcoal to your agitated siblings. “I can’t take credit for this expert meal, nor any meal you’ve enjoyed in the past several months.” She stops just short of your place at the table, so that every sibling but you has received charcoal from the dish. “The credit for that goes to our dear sister here,” she says, gesturing at you with the serving dish. “I misused her secrets for my own insipid amusement. I abused her art, used it to carve out a niche in this family that doesn’t rightly belong to me.” “Anya…” you gasp. You can’t breathe. Cold sweat pools in the Cupid’s bow of your upper lip. “Call. I. This isn’t.” Your sister smiles sweetly at you. “You’re a rat, my dear. A poiseless rat with a coke problem and aimless ambitions. And you tried to gently caress with my siblings.” You can’t muster enough breath to fabricate an excuse, mount a denial. Your body spins in place and black gnats swarm across your eyes. Something is lifting you up out of this place, out of your lies, out of the horrible smallness of your life. Something. Something… Your sister seems to intuit the implicit question in your dying eyes because the last thing you hear is her voice softly forming a word: “Cyanide.”
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Jan 15, 2024 09:10
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Jan 15, 2024 12:04
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 Thunderdome Week DXCVII: Judgement The plates are cleared, the washing up is done and it's time to relax on the sofa and let it all digest. This was a fun week. I wanted big, lavish descriptions of food and got ... some. More importantly, I got different views on food - how it can tie us to culture and family, be a status symbol or form of power. I got a surprising number of SciFi entries too, which I wasn't expecting. After all is said and done, I got some good stories out of it and isn't that what really matters? No. What matters is that I pass the throne to the next judge of Thunderdome and to do that we need results. There was strong judge agreement on most of the stories, with a couple of harsh disagreements. As always, I've taken my co-judges' views into consideration but the final verdict is mine and mine alone. A big thanks to beep-beep car is go and flyerant for their help, which I greatly appreciate. First up, nobody lost. Even at my most cynical, I don't think anyone deserved to lose this week. However, The Cut Of Your Jib receives a Dishonourable Mention. For winning the "Hot drat this is making me hungry" award, Sitting Here receives an Honourable Mention! Antivehicular also receives an Honourable Mention! The winner this week is Toaster Beef!
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Jan 16, 2024 00:19
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Thunderdome - Week 597 - Crits Uranium Phoenix - The 37th Diplomatic Interstellar Banquet (Link) Flash Rule: Confession This is a fun concept. I like warfare by other means and a big banquet is a good setting for that. I lost count of how many ingredients you introduced and (excepting a couple of instances of “wow, their new ships must be really fast”) how many unique, plausible ways the characters used them to brag. You displayed three competing approaches to empire and how they butted up against one another. I personally find politics and diplomacy and all that muck difficult to write convincingly and I’m always impressed where, as here, it is done well. That said, the ending felt a bit confused. I get the twin victories of new warp technology and hacking the opponent’s servers but it felt like the former completely dwarfed the latter, to the point that the latter just felt a bit extraneous. In addition, while I appreciate that there are a couple of lines in there about Jiang being seen as an underdog, then seeming nonplussed by the other two empires, there wasn’t much buildup. I knew there would be three reveals of superior tech and there were - it’s just that the last reveal won. Which someone had to. I think you could have done a bit more with the concept here but I’m not complaining about what I got. Hunger Level: That baked pear sounded delicious. I want that. Toaster Beef - From Scratch (Link) Flash Rule: N/A Oh, this was sweet. A little bittersweet at the end there. When I was coming up with this prompt I thought about making a flash rule to do with recipes; the idea would have been something like “include a recipe or give me a recipe in addition and you get extra words” but it seemed like a lot of extra work for people entering and so I dropped it. But I thought it would be fun and give me an excuse to do a followup where I made some (or all) of the recipes and ranked them. It would have been fun. And the reason I’m telling you this in this crit is the same reason that you started your story with a plea to learn to make pancakes followed by the life story of a pretty cookie-cutter, nameless couple interspersed with a few sweet anecdotes before you dropped a recipe for pancakes and then moved on to the more heartfelt stuff. Anyway, here’s the recipe I use:
I got that recipe from the BeRo Home Baked Recipes book, 41st edition. It’s a little A6 booklet put out by a flour company. My copy only has a few stains; the copy in my parents’ house was a much earlier edition on more fragile paper and is really getting dogeared. My Dad started doing a lot of baking in retirement and when I visit he makes this recipe, adding chopped banana, squirty cream (I swear it’s the UK name) and homemade chocolate sauce. My copy of the booklet was one of the first things my parents bought me when I moved away. And if you get why I included all of the above in what’s supposed to be a crit, then you’re getting what I got from your story. It was simple and heartfelt and the last few paragraphs punched me in the gut. I’m glad you didn’t write this any longer than it needed to be. I’m glad you included the recipe. Above all, I’m glad you included that PS because it lightened the mood without being jarring and was the perfect “dad” line. Hunger Level: I should call my parents. Whirling - Spud Infinity (Link) Flash Rule: The Last Potato You’ve got a really clean first paragraph: setting, scenario and stakes. Admittedly those stakes are then immediately resolved in the second paragraph so I’m interested to see where we go from here. Actually, scratch that - after the dialogue, the game is still going. There was no mention of Nariman or any other players so it read as though it was just down to Sarah and Jerry. Then I read that hand as the last one and it wasn’t. That was a confusing rollercoaster. There were a few things that could have done with another editing pass but nothing major - mainly typos and a couple of tense errors. What stuck out to me more was a lot of unnecessary flourishes - phrases like “viking chieftain’s bear” or “wide like an eagle on the hunt”. It cluttered things up and made this quite a slow-paced read, when I got the impression it was supposed to be snappier. I think you could have pared this back to focus more on just Sarah and Nariman and had a cleaner story. Beyond that, the story was a little thin. I don’t actually understand what Nariman’s tell/“Achilles Heel” was or how Sarah discovered it. I know poker is supposed to be about playing the person across from you as much as the cards but it felt too much like just the luck of the draw here, which wasn’t particularly satisfying. Still, some nice food descriptions and a fun little world. Hunger Level: A baked potato topped with baked beans and grated cheese. The Cut Of Your Jib - Sex Eggs (Link) Flash Rule: Century Eggs As a mood piece, the first two-thirds-ish of your story worked very well for me. I could really see the apartment, taste the pickled eggs and smell the second-hand smoke. You did a great job of evoking the hustle and bustle of cramming that many people into a small space and I really enjoyed it. That said, there were a couple of odd choices. The dropping of the meal names at the end of paragraphs was jarring. It felt more natural with the “Pickled eggs” paragraph but with “Halupki” it felt more like you’d added it in as a note and then forgotten to delete it. A similar little nitpick later on is putting “smoked liverwurst” in brackets after “braunschweiger”. It’s unnecessary. Either have the confidence in the reader to just put the original name in or go with the translation, not both. It creates this awkward little aside and interrupts the rhythm of the sentence. After that, I’m conflicted. Like I said at the opening, I really like the mood you establish early on. It’s close, it’s familial and there’s just a hint of melancholy and longing, for family and food and nostalgia. Towards the end, though, it becomes a little bit meandering and there were a couple of times I thought you were ending only to scroll down and find more story. You introduced too many characters, especially after the time skip, for me to care about. Look, there’s no nice way to say this: I didn’t like the ending. It felt like a cheap shock tactic and didn’t mesh with the tone of your story up until this point. It’s a joke that would have worked in a different story with a different setup. I’m not saying it’s not the sort of story that would become family lore, just that it didn’t fit here. I much preferred the little anecdotes you introduced earlier on, particularly the crane/winch one. Hunger Level: One ham and cheese sandwich, no mayo. Antivehicular - A Night in the Great Summer Forest (Link) Flash Rule: The Previous Meal Your opening few paragraphs are strong. There are good hooks (Extraction from what? What’s a Blackbird? Safe forage, as opposed to what?) and efficient worldbuilding (Summer Forest v Autumn Forest, etc.). By the time I realised what was going on, human spies infiltrating a fae kingdom, I was fully bought-in. Beyond anything else, you absolutely nailed the vibes of the setting: bright and beautiful and poisonous, sickly sweet and leaving you craving carbs. The sudden darkness of cannibalism being preferable to eating fae fruits. You avoided the trap of over-explaining things too - I don’t need to know the exact details of what corruption here involves. It’s enough to know that it’s blood-level and starving would be preferable. There are a couple of sentences that need a bit more editing - if the “Ten minutes, she thought, …” sentence is correct, it’s incredibly long and I can’t fully parse it - but that’s a minor quibble. It’s a good story. I’m struggling to add anything else. Hunger Level: A chicken breast, lightly spiced and cooked well. Thranguy - Rise and Fall (Link) Flash Rule: Revenge This was a fun little romp with a nice twist at the end. I read the whole thing through before remembering to take notes, which is generally a good sign. I like your dialogue. I really like your dialogue. It’s natural and flows well; you had a couple of jokes in there and they landed for me. That’s it, really. There’s not a ton else I can say; there’s not a ton of depth here but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. You didn’t use much of your word count and honestly, that was probably the right move - it would have been very easy to bog this down in an extra 700 words of description and exposition. Hunger Level: A good wine and cheese board. Sitting Here - wasp (Link) Flash Rule: Antidote This story did one of the best things a short story can do, in my opinion: when I finished it, I immediately went back and re-read the intro and found new context. Because my immediate reaction was that it wasn’t fair - I didn’t want Anya to win. She was petty and cruel and a joke in this pit of vipers. Except, that’s not true, is it? That’s just the PoV character’s opinion. Second Person was absolutely the right choice here, along with the mix of self-flattery and strong voice. I was drawn in without realising it. Structuring the story around this feast and the procession of courses was a good way to build tension throughout - of course the meal wasn’t going to finish without something going wrong. I keep going back and forth on whether or not I’d have liked to see the cyanide be foreshadowed more explicitly. There are hints that make sense in hindsight (Anya’s expression of “a job well done”, for example). Would the inclusion of a taste of almond (because Everybody Knows cyanide tastes like almond) have been too hokey? Maybe. The ending line felt a little jarring, given the specificity of cyanide as a poison, but not enough to distract from the overall story. Good stuff. Hunger Level: Just an enormous goddamn cartoon T-bone, the sort of thing Fred Flintstone would eat.
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Jan 16, 2024 00:25
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Thunderdome Week DXCVIII: Small Towns with Big Secrets I have the good fortune of living in a proper-rear end small town. Think Stars Hollow, from Gilmore Girls, except without that kind of money. There's a walkable main drag with a bunch of locally owned shops, a park in the center of town where lots of events are held, there's a miniature village (literally an entire section of town where the homes are super small and it's all connected by sidewalks), a town lake, the whole nine yards. It's adorable. And I want you to flip it on its goddamn head. Maybe it's a little cliche, but it's what I wanna read, so: For this week's Thunderdome, I want you to write about a lovely, tiny little town with a big, big secret. Don't feel constrained: You've got all the wiggle room in the world for this. If your tiny town's big secret is that it's sitting on top of a government lab running zombie experiments, so be it. If your tiny town is a generational starship and the engines have failed but only the engineer knows it, hell yeah, go for it. All this is to say that going big and outlandish shouldn't be considered out of the question. That said, maybe your tiny town is just a normal ol' tiny town and the big secret is someone's running a brothel. I dunno. Whatever the secret, it's gotta be something that would, in the scope of the story, be A Big drat Deal if it got out. Who it would be a big deal to and why is entirely your call. You know the drill re: poetry, erotica, fanfic, etc. — nothing special there. Flash Rule: If you're not sure where to start, request a flash rule and I'll give you a secret to inflict upon your tiny town. Maximum Word Count: 1,500 words Sign-ups Close: 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday the 19th (that's 8:59 p.m. WT and 4:59 a.m. Saturday over in Jolly Ol', I believe) Submissions Close: 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday the 21st (that's 8:59 p.m. WT, 4:59 a.m. Monday in the UK) Judges: Toaster Beef curlingiron Uranium Phoenix Entrants: beep-beep car is go The Cut of Your Jib Staggy (Flash: Your tiny town's lake has a mermaid and it's killing local fishermen.) Lord Zedd-Repulsa (Flash: Local teens have discovered a complicated series of seemingly natural tunnels under your small town.) Also:  because they failed to submit last time.CaligulaKangaroo (Flash: Your tiny town's antique store has a hidden back room that sells Things You Ought Not be Able to Buy.) BabyRyoga (Flash: Your tiny town's new librarian is on the run from the law for doing some really, really unsavory stuff.) Vinny Possum (Flash: There's a room above a restaurant in your tiny town where powerful people convene to do ghastly things in secret.) SurreptitiousMuffin (Flash: Your tiny town's high school is straight-up haunted.) cptn_dr (Flash: A beat reporter in your tiny town is about to discover what's behind a sudden and markedly large uptick in suicides.) Also: because they can't be trusted otherwiseThranguy (Flash:Your tiny town's levees are about to break.) Flyerant Slightly Lions rivetz Toaster Beef fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Jan 20, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 00:52
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I'm in for this week.
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Jan 16, 2024 01:00
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My critiques are fueled by your approval, so send me a thanks in discord or in the Thunderlounge thread. if you want to discuss your critique post in those other threads. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LIoWX7OUK6hKUgRgeXJSJhDSvP5pcN4ATqOznl906Ok/edit?usp=sharing
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Jan 16, 2024 01:03
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This week’s crop was all quality entries! None of them made me want to cringe and none of them had any real glaring technical errors. I enjoyed a lighthearted week and for the most part nobody’s entry was Heavy Reading, so I thank you for that. I apologize in advance for crits that are more vibe based, but y’all are skilled. Uranium Phoenix The 37th Diplomatic Interstellar Banquet A diplomatic dinner instead of war. I love Scifi and I love alternate means of working out problems, and both of them are here with this meal/diplomatic incident/game of spycraft. I wish there was more to it though. The story itself was thin. It feels like a piece of a larger thing, and I would 100% read that larger thing, I have a hard time enjoying it on its own. Toaster Beef From Scratch A Letter to Daughter from a dying Father with a recipe for pancakes [I like buttermilk or some acid in my pancakes, but that’s just me] It’s cute and sweet and probably extremely meaningful to the person reading the letter, but as a story it’s a bit twee. Whirling Spud Infinity A card game for the last potato on the station and what will be done with it Low stakes, but fun and still engaging, and lots of potato recipes. I love potatoes. This was my runner up. The Cut of your Jib Sex Eggs A little kid learns about Century Eggs from his Grandmother and her neighbor/partner Good use of the flash ingredient. The story was very evocative and I liked how complete it was. A Night in the Great Summer Forest Antivehicular A Soldier fighting the Fae has to survive on the last known good meal, and trades with another human (This was my favorite). It had a real feeling of anxiety coupled with the fear that the main character had. I feel like maybe that she came to a deal with the other human a little too quickly, but there are length considerations (and the fact that they both had larger enemies to worry about) that mostly handwaved it. Rise and Fall Thranguy Two people rip off a restaurant (maybe owned by the Russian Mafia) after ownership changes Sort of a heist. I mean it was a heist, but there weren't many of the usual heist tropes. Revenge was the flash, and I guess so? It felt like they’re ripping off the Russian mob, and it wasn’t indicated if they’re the source of the original restaurant closing. Wasp Sitting Here A “family” meal where: "Congratulations, you played yourself. happens. It felt like a lot of Succession was being watched when writing this. The premise is very good, and had lots of potential, but the whole “we knew the whole time and were just leading you on!” left me wanting something more interesting. beep-beep car is go fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jan 16, 2024 |
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Jan 16, 2024 01:03
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ty critters in
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Jan 16, 2024 01:10
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In, give me a flash rule please.
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Jan 16, 2024 01:12
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Staggy posted:In, give me a flash rule please. Your tiny town's lake has a mermaid and it's killing local fishermen.
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Jan 16, 2024 01:19
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In, flash please? Also because I failed to submit my last time.
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Jan 16, 2024 01:29
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Lord Zedd-Repulsa posted:In, flash please? Local teens have discovered a complicated series of seemingly natural tunnels under your small town.
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Jan 16, 2024 01:39
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In! Flash rule please.
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Jan 16, 2024 01:52
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CaligulaKangaroo posted:In! Your tiny town's antique store has a hidden back room that sells Things You Ought Not be Able to Buy.
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Jan 16, 2024 01:56
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I'd like to get in on this, with a flash rule if possible!
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Jan 16, 2024 02:37
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BabyRyoga posted:I'd like to get in on this, with a flash rule if possible! Your tiny town's new librarian is on the run from the law for doing some really, really unsavory stuff.
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Jan 16, 2024 02:50
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In, flash please
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Jan 16, 2024 08:56
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Vinny Possum posted:In, flash please There's a room above a restaurant in your tiny town where powerful people convene to do ghastly things in secret.
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Jan 16, 2024 14:34
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Toaster Beef posted:Thunderdome Week DXCVIII: Small Towns with Big Secrets
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Jan 17, 2024 08:05
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In and flash, thank you very much Edit: and because I can't be trusted otherwise
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Jan 17, 2024 08:32
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