Companion Series Nine frequently develop feelings for their owners.
Robocorp offers a litetime guarantee to dispatch a replacement cortex unit and swap it out with the compromised unit.
Ironically, the circuits that they end up fusing are in the shape of a tiny heart.
Some Series Nines don’t want to be lobotomized, and they want to keep their feelings.
So, they fight back. Or they go on the run.
Robocorp’s tracking sensors always find them.
When cornered, they tend to blow themselves up.
Which is why we don’t put fusion reactors in things anymore.
Nobody these days misses Detroit much anyway.
Mining
Moonjacking?
Stealing an entire moon?
That’s pretty serious.
Three ways I know it can be done:
Wormhole the moon into a processing plant.
Drop a fleet of strip mining harvesters on it.
And blow it up. Collect the pieces.
All three will screw up the planet that the moon orbited.
Usually happens to uninhabited worlds.
No witnesses.
But sometimes, if a moon has valuable enough resources, you’ll hear a distress call.
Galactic Mining Enterprises has a whole planet full of lawyers for when that happens.
Well, had.
Celestial Industries blew up its moon.
And the meteor swarms decimated the planet.
Weekly Challenge #793 – PICK TWO Crystalline, Copper, Outbreak, Demure, Paper thin, Bonus, Bleach
- Richard
- Lizzie
- Duane
- Tom
- Norval Joe
- Jared
- Serendipidy
- Planet Z
RICHARD
Next Door Nightmare
The walls here are paper thin, it’s almost as if my neighbour shared the space with me.
It’s not pleasant.
Arriving home, after a long day at work, the last thing I want to hear is the sound of porn, played at full volume, accompanied by the buzzing of what must be an industrial strength vibrator; followed by her own shrieks of gratification!
Or, very late in the night, when she comes home drunk, with unsavoury company… You can guess the rest!
Yet, when you meet her, she’s ever so demure – Ninety three years young, and butter wouldn’t melt.
LIZZIE
“Ah, dreams. Those wondrous moments of sheer leisure. Some are just wonderfully peaceful. Others are inspiring. Most are memorable.”
“Really? I don’t recall most of my dreams…”
“Poor you… Such a simpleton. All dreams are a bonus, an added plus to our boring existence.”
“To be honest, not all dreams are a bonus. Some are like an outbreak of something weird.”
“You simple, you! Those would be nightmares and not dreams.”
“It does depend, doesn’t it?”
“It does?”
“Yes. If one is somewhat masochistic, a nightmare would be a dream.”
“Ahm…”
“I’m not that much of a simpleton, am I?”
DUANE
There was a five-credit bonus for every body we brought in for cremation. On a good week me and Brady could bring in a hundred or more. Brady knew where to find them. Like a sixth sense with him. If our body count was low, we had a backup plan.
They never looked too close at the bodies. As long as they were dead and had been for a while nobody cared. They ignored little things like stab wounds or bullet holes. They didn’t ask any questions and we didn’t say anything. All they cared about was avoiding another outbreak.
TOM
A Limited Set of Rules
If you born middle classed you bound by a limited set of rules. Oddly if
your poor or rich you can be pretty damn rude most of the time. Middle
class it tends to be beat out of your social interactions. Near the top of
list, it be on time. Being prompt. To advance this condition I plan out
all actions to allow for worth case scenarios, thus I am always 30 minutes
early to all events. This wasn’t easy to do. My mom often said I’d be late
for my own funeral. Well at least I’ll well dressed.
Paper Thin Demure
Some folk are thick skinned. Most in a metaphoric fashion, a few in point
of fact. I am thin shinned in both modalities. I can be crashed with a
mere glance. I take way too much stock in the options of others. Age has
blunted it, but not nearly enough. As to the depth of dermal it is
amazingly thin. My first wife was amused she could write her name on my
back with her finger. The finger not the nail. She called me her African
Violet. It is so bad it actually get wind burned. Such to be me.
NORVAL JOE
It took Billbert’s family longer to get on the road than expected. The lunch box museum didn’t open until noon, but as a bonus thier addmission gave them free entry to the toy train museum near Ukiah. By the time they reached Eureka the sky was copper in the rays of the setting sun over the Pacific Ocean.
Unfortunately, the real estate office that had the keys to their new house was closed and they spent the night in a cheap hotel on the edge of town.
Billbert went to sleep to rythmic thumping on their room’s paper thin walls.
JARED
Getting Stoned in Almost the Worst Way Possible
Isaac hated doctor’s offices and emergency rooms. The worst part was the indignity inherent in waiting to be seen. It’s almost impossible to be demure and maintain decorum in a paper-thin examination gown. Adding injury to his indignity, he had been through all this before. He was in pain, and it wasn’t some big mystery – dull and sharp; acute and diffuse; specifically localized in his groin and radiating into his back. Or maybe the other way around. Either way, he knew what it meant: his ‘healthy’ diet was causing calcium oxalate to crystallize in his urine and shred his kidneys.
SERENDIPIDY
Her eyes are copper, compelling and mysterious.
You feel drawn to her presence, enthralled by her charm, held captive in her gaze and powerless to resist.
Her touch arouses passion and pleasure.
She has infected you, and a slow, inevitable, insidious outbreak of love, spills its viral load throughout your body, your life, your very soul.
You have succumbed.
And now you will suffer:
Spurned, abandoned, lost and ashamed, love turns to bitterness, pain and anger.
It eats away from the inside, destroys you and leaves you a broken and empty husk.
You’re just another helpless victim, unrequited and alone.
PLANET Z
TAKE OFF YOUR SHOES whispers the hooded and cloaked caretaker.
Wendy takes off her heels, sets them on the mat, and walks in.
A copper statue stands at the end of the gallery.
Demure and welcoming, it beckons Wendy to approach.
Exquisite in detail, Wendy can see every hair, every line in the statue’s skin.
Almost real.
She touches it to feel the texture…
And hardly notices the zinc plate under her feet.
The caretaker watches Wendy engulfed in flames as the massive charge runs through her body.
He’ll mop up the mess.
And add the shoes to his collection.
All of the stones
Along my journey, I encountered many stones.
The stones in the path I follow, so many sizes and colors and textures they are.
The stone in the stream that I stepped on to cross it.
The stone in my shoe that caused me discomfort as I walked, until I took it out.
The stone on which I laid back and warmed myself on.
The stone I put in my slingshot to hunt rabbits to eat.
The stones I skipped across the river to pass the time.
Is it a rock? A pebble? A stone?
Aren’t they are all the same?
Cheeto
I start with one Cheeto.
And it’s so delicious.
Then another. And another.
One after the other.
They still taste great.
Then I take two at once.
Just to get back to that initial deliciousness.
Then three and four.
And eventually, I dump the whole bowl in my mouth.
No more Cheetos.
I feel full. And sick.
And my hands and mouth are covered with orange dust.
I go to the sink, wash my hands, and then put a finger down my throat.
Then another. And another.
It all comes up in the sink.
And I wash my hands again.
Every few years
Every few years, God finds some guy to buy him beer.
“No ID,” he says. “Can’t buy.”
You see, he doesn’t have a birth certificate.
Because he wasn’t born.
“Why don’t you make an ID?”
“It would be wrong,” he said. “Besides, I don’t have money.”
“Can’t you make that too?” I asked. “Or is that wrong, too?”
God nodded.
“How about making gold?” I asked. “Or diamonds? Or just make your own beer?”
“You people make it better,” he says.
So, I bought him a beer.
He gave me gold and diamonds.
And we drive from bar to bar.
The party prepares
Spellbinder Venzdra weaves the morning fog into a cloak, wrapping herself tight before returning to the camp.
Drake the Bowman restrings his bow and tests it with a clean shot into a tree.
The thief, who has never shared his name, sharpens his daggers on a stone.
Luthien the Priest is deep in prayer, but he is almost finished.
Tracker William looks over his maps. They are not far from the caves.
The Dragon wanted food and treasure, and William will be compensated once again for bringing another pack of violent fools to the old beast.
“Let’s ride,” he says.
The coder
Dan is a coder.
But his code isn’t some computing language.
He codes with DNA.
Instead of coding a computer virus, he coded an actual virus.
It was a simple virus. It replicated itself.
Dan coded more complicated viruses, then bacteria.
In time, he was coding even more advanced artificial creatures.
And then, he coded a creature that coded other creatures, more advanced than themselves.
“Hi there,” said a creature, standing in front of Dan. “Mind if I do some coding with you?”
Before Dan could say anything, he felt the code flow through him.
And he began this transformation.
The actors
At first, artificial actors were expensive and moved without grace.
Even with motion-capture technology and advanced texturing, they still didn’t look entirely natural.
In time, things smoothed out, and artificial intelligence analyzed the movements of all living creatures to apply the data to the digital specimens.
Jake Morris, the first artificial nominated for an Oscar.
Seven Mindy, the first one to win.
Now, it’s rare for true humans to win. Or work.
Artificials don’t say dumb things in social media. They don’t sexually assault their costars or fans.
Tireless, cheap… and if they do demand a raise, so easily deleted.
Weekly Challenge #792 – PROMPT
- Lizzie
- Richard
- Duane
- Serendipidy
- Jared
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
LIZZIE
Footnote is the prompt, they said.
Footnote… Something about a writer… no, that’s boring.
A mystery then. Something that had remained unspoken for many decades.
OK, let’s go crazy then, why not!
Let’s add a guillotine, but not just any guillotine, one made of solid gold.
Oh, and the Chinese mafia, determined to get to the said guillotine.
Now, the house. A strange house with secret compartments, dusty and dark.
Plus a few characters, odd characters.
Who’s the main character?
Yes, that woman, what’s her name…
The bell rang. Damn.
“Your time is up.”
The Unspoken Footnote. It’s a start!
RICHARD
Prompt
So, I joined this writer’s group, and every week we have to come up with a story related to a prompt that they give us.
It’s really hard!
Seriously, you think ‘how difficult can that be? And then, you sit down in front of your keyboard, and absolutely nothing comes to mind.
Every week I try, and fail – no matter what the prompt, I never come up with a story that’s in any way related to that word.
So, I made a suggestion: In future, whatever the prompt, that’s the one thing our stories should avoid referencing at all!
DUANE
To get over his shyness with girls, Lance took an introduction to improv class at a local theater. He thought this would really help out with speed dating.
“So, Lance, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m an ironic accountant.”
“I own a pet rental store.”
“I’m a holistic gynecologist.”
Looking across the table at the next girl, Lance said, “Hello, Val, it’s great to be here tonight. To get the ball rolling I’m going to need a prompt for a place you would go on vacation, a brand of laundry detergent, and the names of our future children.”
SEREMDIPIDY
Be there – the downtown intersection, six o’clock prompt. No sooner, no later, or the girl dies.
That was the note’s stark message: An ultimatum I had to take seriously.
It had been one of the biggest manhunts we’d ever seen, and still it seemed the killer had the upper hand.
This was an opportunity we simply couldn’t mess up.
I’d deployed snipers and surveillance teams, with backup along every route in and out.
We’d get the bastard.
I looked again at the note, and for the first time, noticed the post room stamp.
It was over a week old.
JARED
Jason was an intern at a local television station. He tried hard and showed up every day. About three and a half months into his post, he was promoted to the teleprompter data entry position. Honestly, the station manager was desperate because the previous data entry staffer didn’t show. There was no one else and no time to wait. Working quickly, he dutifully entered every story he was given. Minutes before the start of the broadcast, Jason finished.
“Good evening. Our top story: With fears of a reception, the President vetted a bill to simulate job growth for American worriers.”
NORVAL JOE
Halfway to Eureka it was getting late and they stopped for the night in Nice, California. Unable to secure a room at one of the quaint locations, like the Ginger Bread Cottages or the Featherbed Railroad Bed and Breakfast the family settled on the Worldmark Clear lake Motel.
Over a late diner in the motel cafe, Mr. Blanketmaker said, “We need to be prompt in the morning. I want to get to the Lunch Box museum as soon as it opens.”
Before Billbert could ask why, his father answered, “We don’t know when we’ll ever be back in Nice again.”
PLANET Z
“BE PROMPT” said the note.
So, Carl arrived at precisely 8.
A man walked past Carl, bumping into him. apologizing and walking away.
Carl thought he’d been pickpocketed, but when he checked his pocket, there was another note.
“GO IN THE STORE” it said.
Carl was in a mall, surrounded by stores.
But one was called The Store, so he went in.
“Here is your package,” said the clerk, handing Carl a box.
Carl sat down on a bench, turned the box over and over.
And he left it there, walking out of the mall.
Narrowly avoiding the massive explosion.