Mo Goes To Work

Prompt:  Expanding "Upgrade Time"

[Author's Note: I'm taking a break from /r/WritingPrompts.  Instead, I want to expand/combine a couple of the existing posts.  I don't know what that will look like, but I want to find out.  Here are a few of the possible 'feeder' posts:

• Upgrade Time
• Infinite Light
• Death's Doorstep
• Shrug
• Mare Orientale

At this point, I'm calling these all part of the 'Schmoid-verse' and have setup labels to bring make them easier to find.  Not all of them will be used verbatim, but I'm planning on taking ideas from them all over the next few weeks.  This is only the first of many.  Thanks.]

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Mo sat on the bus and read the manual for her new arterial stent generator.  It started with some basic marketing boilerplate:

     Perck Digital, the number one brand of implanted components, is proud to announce our new line of arterial generating stents.  These new Septimus(tm) stents are capable of keeping your PTN[1] up and running[2] as long as you are alive.  Implanted by a Perck Certified Surgical Engineer, the Septimus(tm) stents can be placed either in any of the major arteries (Celiac Trunk, Subclavican, Iliac, Femoral or Axillary[3]) to accommodate both consumer health and aesthetic choice.  Septimus(tm) stents are packaged with the consumer’s choice of Merck tattoo’d capacitive charging elements including our patented ClearCharge(tm) capacitors for those people who want a more natural look.  The Septimus(tm) stents are made from the highest grade surgical plastics and include our newest BalancedHeart(tm) charge balancing system to ensure a consistent charge regardless of heart rate or arterial flow.
     Perck Digital’s Senior Vice President of Surgical Networking, Vikesh Daniels, said, “We’ve worked hard to produce a product that keeps up with the power demands of today’s PTNs.  These new Septimus stents produce forty percent more power than anything else currently on the market thereby allowing people to either decrease the amount of surgery needed to power their network or to power a larger, more capable system on their skin.”
     For more information and complete specs, please visit www.perkdigital.com/press or stop by our booth at Tat-Com, April 3-6.
     [1] Personal Tattoo Network
     [2] Up to 700 mAh
     [3] Caratid Arteries are not recommended.

 Of course all of the pertinent information was in the footnotes.  Typical pharm-co.  The tech at the V-EE[1] store had assured her that seven Hundred milli-amp hours would be plenty for her system, especially as they had installed it in the Caratid artery where it should be producing closer to eight-hundred and fifty mAh.  When she had asked about the warning, the tech had brushed it off as Perck covering their asses about blood flow to the brain, then he had knocked her out before she could ask anymore questions.  Tattooing the leads into the rest of the system had woken her up.

Mo glanced up from the documentation as the bus came to a stop, but not her stop.  The only other passenger on the bus got off and the doors shut.  This far out in the baba[2], most people had their own auto-cars and the buses ran limited schedules.  It made it hell for her to plan her life.

The Quiet Place was at the next stop.  It was the next stop: the original center of this babahood, a convenience store.  The shelves, coolers and registers had been gutted here as they had in 2,153 other locations across the nation.  In there place were small booths and screen friendly lighting.

UR LATE scrolled across the bottom of Mo's contacts as she entered.  BLAME THE BUS she sub-voc'd back to her manager.  Ducking into the wait station, she hung up her jacket and bag, smoothed her required black shirt and jeans, then logged into the restaurant's Order Management System (OMS).  Immediately her vision was filled with the status list of all the open orders to the left and the table status to the right.  She blinked and pushed both to the sides, leaving notification icons blinking in her peripheral vision.  When someone needed something, either a customer or the kitchen, she'd know.  Until then, she poured herself a dub-caff latte and pulled up her TwitFace+ feed.

• JerMany37 (IRL: Jerry Menaul, Mo ex of two years past) had checked into Socii and was having an Irish car bomb at four in the afternoon.  Mo +'d it but chose not to comment.  Nothing good could happen there.
• GGMDisease (IRL: Sandra Martinez and Mo's roomate) was bored at work and had drawn a flip-cartoon of a kitten chasing yarn on a Post-It note pad.  Again, Mo +'d it, but then sub-voc'd SUPPLY CLOSET FTW.
• ManOTRBitch113 (IRL: Felix/Felicia (depending on mood) Parsons, Mo's best friend since fifth grade) was whining about his ex.  Mo did not roll her eyes because that would have shared the post out to her followers.  Instead, she pushed it off the feed to the left with the swipe of her right index finger, the one with the activated snake tattoo.
• PMmeyourvacuumcleanerwaste (IRL: ???) had sent Mo a private message with the subject, NEED UR HELP MO.

That stopped her, but Mo did not open the message.  This was not a user name that either her contact list or her own human memory could identify.  It could be a phishing scam.  It probably was a phishing scam.  The only thing that kept her from deleting it was that whoever it was had tied her username to her nickname.  While it was not impossible to tie the two together for someone with a little determination it usually was not worth the effort, especially for someone with Mo's credit rating and bank account.  Whoever it was, may actually need her help.  After thinking about it for a second, Mo raised her finger to the message.

And an order came up.  Mo pushed the message and the rest of TwitFace+, clearing her vision for navigating the restaurant.  She reached over to the warming line and grabbed the two plates there.  As her hands touched the circuits embedded in the ceramic stone ware, two navigation lines popped up on her contacts, one for each plate.  The two lines ran parallel until she reached the table where they diverged to the two people sitting there.  Neither was looking at the other, instead staring at the latest handhelds with BTs in their ears.  As Mo placed the plates in front of each guest, each one's handheld flashed that their food had arrived.  Mo cleared the appetizer plates as unobtrusively as she could and returned to the wait station[3].

On her way back, one of the customers at another table looked up from his phone and grabbed her arm.  Mo was startled.  No customer had ever touched her in the Quiet Place before.  People came here to find a quiet place to retreat from the rest of humanity and have a nice meal.  There was no cause of interaction.

"Miss," he said.  "May I have a refill on my drink?"

"Umm," Mo said.  "I guess.  You'll need to mark it on the order site."  Just then her manager PM'd her.  WHAT RU DOING?!! STOP TALKING flashed in the middle of her field of view.  She sub-voc'd back, HE STARTED IT.  She tried to pull away from the man, but he kept his grip on her arm.

"I know, but it seems so much trouble.  Couldn't you just, you know, do it?"

"Sorry.  You've gotta use the system."  Mo tried pulling away again.  Just then, the customer's phone lit up with a message: IS THERE A PROBLEM?  It was from the manager directly to the customer, to head off this uncomfortable situation.

The customer glanced at the handheld, then raised his voice, maybe hoping that the manager would then hear him.  "There's no problem.  I'd just like a refill." He glanced at Mo again.  "Maureen, right?"

Mo glanced down at her name tag.  "Just Mo," she said.

"Okay, Mo.  I'm Art and what I want to know is what's so hard about doing it this way?  You're here, the glass that needs to be refilled is here, so why don't you just take it and refill it?"  As he was speaking, his handheld flashed again: SIR, PLEASE USE OUR ORDER SYSTEM.  This was followed by a link to the drink menu and another link to the Quiet Place mission statement and expected customer code of conduct[4].

"That's not how we do it here."  Mo pointed at his handheld then glanced around the restaurant.  Many of the other guests were pulling out earphones and scowling.  "Please."

At that point, her manager appeared at the table.  He reached out and separated Art's hand from Mo's arm.  Without saying anything, he pulled Art up out of his seat and led him out of the restaurant.  Mo dashed for the wait station and started looking at restaurant's TF+ feed.

• YesterSauce523 - Some people are so rude!!  TG that mgr showed up. #Quietplace
• TriStateAreaForXmas - Don't people know what #Quietplace is about?  Spoiler Alert: it's about being quiet!
• ForUMyLuvaRadish - [video clip of the entire event] #Quietplace #getagrip #newworldorder

None of them blamed her which was good.  All of the feeds were monitored by the head office in Chicago and bad posts could be grounds for firing.

Her manager came in a few minutes later and disappeared into his office.  Immediately, DONT LET THAT HAPPEN AGAIN appeared in her contacts.  DO MY BEST, Mo sent back.  The rest of the night reverted to normal as traffic started to pick up: orders came in and Mo followed the lines to deliver the plates.  At six, Norb (TF+ ID: NorbertnotQbert) came in to help and the two of them stayed busy until the Quiet Place closed at eleven.

She forgot all about the HELP message until the next morning.

[1] "Blink Speed"
[2] "We're all wasted!"
[3] There had been several attempts at serverbots over the years, but none of them had really worked out.  The conveyor systems had been popular for a while, but maintenance had turned out to be a problem; something in the gear train would take a delivery location (table) out and a human needed to be there to rescue the food and deliver it by hand.  The more autonomous robots had they're problems as well, the biggest being ten-year olds with soda buckets.  In the end, humans had turned out to be cheaper to employ and easier to maintain.
[4] "The Quiet Place is quiet.  We expect our guests to respect this and the quiet of their fellow patrons.  To this end, we ask everyone to keep their communication device of choice on silent or vibrate.  All conversations at a table should be done through your messaging service of choice.  All interactions with the staff at The Quiet Place are to be done through the order system.  Anyone who does not abide by these rules may be asked to leave.  By using the ordering system, you are agreeing to abide by these rules."  This code of conduct had hit several local courts and one Circuit Court and deemed acceptable on the same grounds as a guest dress code which many upscale food dispensaries still used.

What They Were Not

Prompt: Miles from civilization, in the middle of the forest, you discover an ancient looking flight of stairs leading underground and decide to descend them. What's down there?

Just looking at it, Terrance knew immediately what the stairs leading into the ground were not.  They were not the doorway to an underground kingdom.  They were not a dragon's lair.  They were not the entrance to a fallout shelter built for thousands or to the hidden offices of some shadowy government agency.

In this glade, in the middle of the forest with the rotting remains of a small cabin around it, Terrance knew what these stairs had once been.  When the cabin was whole, they had led to a root cellar and storm shelter, like the one beneath his family's trailer.  The one where he hid if he could get there in time.

That one had worked for awhile and let him escape.  Escape from the other kids' taunts and his mother's scolds and his father's fists.  It had been all of the things that this one was not when he was hiding.  But they had found him.  They knew to look for him now, under the trailer with the boxes of old clothes and broken furniture.

And so this time, he had gone to the forest.  Alone.  Away.  And had found these stairs that were not any of the things he dreamed about.

At least, not yet.

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"What did it feel like? Killing him?"

Prompt:  Write about a character who is recalling the first time they killed someone.

Jim looked at Billy and smiled his you-really-want-the-answer smile.  It was the first question most kids asked when they found out he had been in the Special Forces, "Have you killed anyone?" and Jim was used to answering it.

"A few," he said.  Billy did not ask anything more, merely kept his eyes glued to Jim's face, expectant.  "Very well, I'll tell you about the first one.

"It was in Iraq, before I volunteered for Special Forces, during the first Iraq War, Operation Desert Shield.  At the time, I was just another grunt on patrol.  I was the guy who manned the 50-cal on the top of the Humvee.  We'd go out scouting if the Apache's saw something suspicious in the dunes, looking for Republican Guard scouts and such.  We'd get a call from command telling us to go to such-and-such a map coordinate and check out a possible enemy sighting.  And off we'd go, racing along whatever road was available and then hoofing it into someplace where we could get a good look at the location without exposing ourselves.

"So, one afternoon we get one of these calls.  It's over 110 degrees out.  Hot.  Hot like you've not ever felt, young Billy.  We mount up and head out.  There's four of us: a sergeant, a corporal and two privates.  I was one of the privates at the time.  The drive is about three hours to get to where the road ends, then we need to hike another hour.  And for the hike, we need to carry about seventy pounds of gear and such.  Water.  Lots of water.  When we get close, we slow down, staying below the crest of each dune, inching up until we can see what's on the other side.

"Finally, the sergeant sticks his head up over a dune, just enough to get his field glasses over the top and scan around.  Almost immediately, he slides back down.  There's something on the other side.  He tells us that he saw what looked like a half-track, dug into the side of the opposite dune.  Buried and hard to see clearly from the air.  The sergeant can see tracks all over the dunes as whoever is down there scouts about.  We all unlimber our weapons, check them again to make sure they work, take a swig of water and get ready to fight.

"The corporal gets on the radio and calls in our position and sighting.  He is told that air support in on their way, put that we need to 'paint the target,' point a laser at it so that a bomb can steer in accurately.  I've got the laser designator, so I unstrap it from my backpack and start getting it ready.  The sergeant and the corporal creep back up to the dune crest and peek back over.  Almost immediately, the sergeant's head explodes.

"The corporal, he slides back down quickly.  He grabs the sergeant's body by his boot and pulls him back down.  He tells us to leave him for now; we need to move.  Go to one side or the other and pop up someplace else.  He sends me to the right with the other private and he goes left along the dune, hoping to pull the enemy fire his way.  That way, I can get the laser setup.  He tells us to go as far as we can in two minutes, then wait until we hear more shooting before pointing the laser.  The bomb run will start in four minutes.

"We move to the right our two minutes, getting maybe a hundred yards before stopping.  A few seconds later, we hear some shooting coming from over the dune.  We lunge to the top and shove the laser down on the top of the dune.  We see the half-track and three or four soldiers milling around.  I point the laser at the truck as quickly as I can, duck back and wait.  Three minutes later, the other side of the dune explodes.  We never even heard the jet.

We circle back to the sergeant's body and wait for the corporal.  When he doesn't show up after a few minutes, we continue on to the left looking for him.  He also made it about a hundred yards and is sitting there, just breathing.  When he sees us, he grimaces.  He's okay, just resting after being shot at.  We all drink some water, check our weapons and then the corporal motions us back up to the top of the dune.  He peeks over, then gestures for us to come up as well.

"The other side is a mess.  Where the half-track was is now a crater of blackened sand.  There's debris everywhere.  We know that we need to go down and see if anyone survived and to check for any intel.  We hoof it down the front of the dune and start kicking through the wreckage.  I see a pair of legs sticking out from under one of the truck doors and go to check it out.  I prod the legs with the tip of my rifle and they twitch a bit, so I call over the corporal.

"He motions me to stand guard while he and the other private flip the door off.  Underneath is an Iraqi soldier and he's clutching a gun.  I don't even think, just pull the trigger, putting three rounds into his chest.  And like that, he's dead.  That was the first man I killed."

Billy's eyes are still wide, but his smile is gone replaced by an open mouthed gape.  He asks the usual follow-up: "What did it feel like?  Killing him?"  Jim tells him what he tell everyone: his mother, Jim's sister; his buddies at the base; the army shrink.

"It didn't feel like anything.  He was a threat so I dealt with it.  There was a time, when we got back to base, where I tried to think if there was anything else I could have done, but I couldn't think of anything then and I can't think of anything now.  That's all.  He was a threat, so I removed the threat in the quickest way, but killing him."

Billy seems satisfied and thanks Jim for the story.  Jim nods and takes a swig from my beer.  He watch Billy go back to his friends, no doubt telling a nine-year old version to all of them.

Jim smiles again.  None of them will know, not Billy, not his mother, not the shrink is that he did feel something.  It was that death that has kept him in the army, re-upping, joining Special Forces and everything.  What Jim felt after he pulled that trigger was great.

Upgrade Time

Prompt: "When we were young, we could at least turn off our devices..."

The needle sent a shock of pain through Mo's skin.  She sat in the chair, trying not to twitch each time the tattoo artist added another circuit to her cheek or forehead.  The electric pain was worth it: it was upgrade time.

Today's session would add a faster processor with better iris motion detection for her contacts.  More storage was getting inked into her arms and she was having the turbine in her carotid artery beefed up to add more power.  After this session, she would be able to walk down the street again without getting mobbed by loc-ads, pan handlers with phreaking kits, or tweens war driving on their BMX bikes.

But that was merely defense.  This upgrade would also give her more redundant access to the local networks.  She was getting an industrial piercing in each ear, with the connecting tats, to increase her antenna space.

The middle-aged manager at the The Quiet Place, the restaurant she worked at, would complain again.  Let him.  It was impossible for him to hire anyone without similar rigs.  Anyways, you needed some kind of connected skin to take peoples' orders.  It was expected, even if most of the patrons still used handhelds.

Mo could hear him in her mind, shaking his head and mumbling something about being able to turn off when he was young.  She could not understand why anyone would ever want to do that.

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Death's Doorstep

Prompt:  You're dying but, you're not very good at it.

The Wikipedia Galactica[1] entry on "Immortality" starts with the following:

"The trick to living forever is to not be around when Death starts looking for you.  Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to know when Death is looking for you, much less where.  As a result, very few people have managed it.  When it happens, it is usually as much a surprise to the individual as it is to Death.

"The other catch is that Death may not come for you only once."

It then goes on with a few of the better known methods for skipping your date with Death (being perpetually late, getting really lost, etc.) and a list of the few known successful attempts (so far).  Finally, it mentions that telling people about your immortality is usually considered a bad idea as this will more than likely make you famous and thereby alert Death to your whereabouts.

Gerald Farnsbury was not concerned about being famous.  There were only three or four people left on the Earth that even knew he was alive and they all thought he was in New Jersey[2].  He was not and he liked it that way.  He lived in a small cave in the side of a mountain far from anything remotely like a bodega.

What he was concerned about was his date with Death.  Gerald had been dying for the last eighteen years[3].  He had a variety of ailments, most self-diagnosed[4], including, but not limited to:

• Bowel Obstruction
• Heart Arrhythmia
• Tongue Boils
• Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (confined to his male member)
• Aquagenic urticaria
• Kuru Disease

Any one of these could potentially kill Gerald Farnsbury.  Melded together, he felt that it was a given that he should be dead.  Stubbornly, his body refused to 'give up the ghost' and remained pumping blood, pulling in oxygen, pushing out waste products and all of the other things that bodies do when they are alive.

Gerald had tried more aggressive methods of forcing the issue.  He had survived for two years with out food or water before giving up and eating because not eating was boring.  He had fashioned a stake from a local tree and fallen on it, but the stake had broken.  He'd then tried stouter and stouter stakes only to start bouncing off of them.  A cliff jump had ended with a freak updraft saving his life.  Twenty-three times.

Finally, at age sixty-one, Gerald decided to try getting Death's attention more directly.  He left his cave and walked to Orlando, Florida[5].  There, he parked himself outside the house of one Winnie Weinburger, whom was reported to be on Death's Door by all of her neighbors and other members of the Golden Acres Retirement Community and Mobility Scooter Emporium Association[6].  Gerald figured that, if he stood on Death's Door long enough, Death was bound to come home sooner or later.

Unfortunately for Gerald, when Death did come for Winnie, it was through the patio door as it was a shorter route from Dan Bouther's, Death's previous call.  As a result, it was not until Death left Winnie's that he stumbled upon Gerald as Gerald had stretched himself across the front door.  Stumbling, Death fell the two steps face first and broke Death's neck, dying.

On the subject of Death's death, the Wikipedia Galactica claims that when Death dies, the nearest sentient being will immediately take Death's place as Death.  And so, Gerald found himself wearing a black cowl, holding a scythe and with an urgent need to find one Henry A. Carver, Jr.

[1] Hands off.  This idea is mine.  Just as soon as I can find an interstellar publishing house. - Author

[2] New Jersey and you may be perfect together, but it was decidedly not perfect for Gerald Farnsbury.  Not after the Buffalo Mozzarella Incident of 1992.

[3] Gerald had been dying since the day he was born in 1954, but had been getting more serious about it for the last eighteen.

[4] Using the more Earthly Wikipedia.

[5] A trek of some length as there are no (natural) mountains, much less mountains with caves, in the state of Florida.

[6] Free scooter with each new lease.

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Cole

Prompt: A teenager who has been raised as an assassin his whole life falls in love with his first target.

Cameron peered through the scope, lined up the sights, put tension on the trigger and held his breath. Five.  Four.  Three.  Two.  And he let his breath out, releasing the trigger.  He could not do it.  His target was too... present.

For the past month, Cameron had been studying Benjamin Cole.  An entrepreneur who had exploded out of nowhere to start taking control of some the most exciting new tech companies to come out of Silicon Valley.  He was tall, striking, wore immaculate clothes and had this smile that let everyone in on the joke.  He was also Cameron's final exam.

The Pacific Educational School for Challenged Youth (PESCY) had been Cameron's home for the past seven years, ever since his militant father caught him with a crack pipe at age ten.  Unbeknownst to that father, the school taught more than discipline and the three R's.  They called them the five S's: Espionage, Stealth, Sniping, Shootfighting, and Escape.  For those seven years, he had had minimal contact with his family and had concentrated on earning top marks at PESCY.  All that stood between him and finishing at the top of his class was fulfilling this contract on Benjamin Cole.  For a certain level of society, hiring PESCY for a job like this was similar to taking your kids to the barber college for their hair cuts: the job would get done, but it wasn't always as neat as you wanted.  Cameron had been hoping to exceed those expectations.

Then had come the dossier.  Cole was too perfect. Cole had grown up with an abusive father, too.  Cole had led a second life as a mob accountant, similar to Cameron's PESCY world.  Cole had broken out of that life and made something of himself.  He liked to ride bikes competitively.  He did not drink alcohol, but preferred the same brand of fruit smoothy that Cameron liked.   And he just looked so good; each of the hastily snapped pictures seemed to stare into Cameron's soul.

As Cameron started to stalk Cole, to learn more about his habits and his life, Cameron began to admire the man more and more.  He started to change small things in his own life: started buying the same brand of razor, to style his hair the same way (though his blonde hair did not hold the part quite as well as Cole's brown hair did).  Cameron had been isolated from real humans for seven years, people with warmth and humor.  It should not have surprised anyone that he became attached to the first one he encountered.

Cole finished talking to some business associate and stepped into his car, an understated Audi convertible.  The car spoke of wealth, but did not shove it down everyone else's throat, just like the man himself.  In Cameron's eyes, he was perfect.  So maybe he had used someone's money and was a little late in paying it back, Cole was making better use of it than whatever underworld sleazebag had hired PESCY to take him out.

Cameron bowed his head and sighed.  Now he would have to tail Mister Cole to his house and see if there was something that he could do there.  Either to complete the contract or something else.  In his dreams, they were talking, laughing in front of a fireplace, getting to know each other.  Maybe Cameron was cooking Cole a meal.  It is surprising how much knife work and cooking have in common.

Then the car blew up.

Cameron jammed his eye back against the rifle scope and started scanning the crowd.  It took him a second, but he found the trigger man: Mister Kowploski, his math and bomb-making teacher.  Mister K stared right at Cameron through the scope and shook his head.  Then the man you had just blown up the potential love of Cameron's life walked on down the street, away from the burning car, with his hands in his pocket.

Cameron did not bother counting to five before pulling the trigger.

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It Never Rained

Prompt:  The shortest story ever told. Once upon a time there was a magical place where it never rained. The end.

Once upon a time, there was a magical place where it never rained.  The end.

Maybe there used to be a boy who found a lamp in a cave.  The magic of the place held a genie in the lamp who granted wishes.  And the boy wished for riches and power and love.  But he did not wish for rain.  And so he, and the lamp, passed on.

Maybe there once was a princess who was to be killed in the morning by the king, her soon-to-be husband.  However, she kept telling him stories and so, night after night, he put off her execution so that he could hear more.  But she did not tell stories of rain.  And so she, and her king, passed on.

Maybe the place used to be the home to huge worms that lived under the sand.  And the worms made a drug that let people travel between planets.  Huge wars were fought and empires rose and fell over the drug.  But no one ever brought water, therefore it did not rain.  And so the worms, and the empires, passed on.

Maybe there once was an abandoned hotel where a man danced in the air.  He wore a suit and tie and flew to a strange beat.  But he did not dance for rain.  And so he, and the hotel, passed on.

It was a magical place, but it never rained.  And so it passed on.

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Huge Tracks of Land

Prompt: You have to fight a dragon. Problem is, you only have a (insert ridiculous item).

You step back from the fight, hoping to catch your breath.  The dragon has proven formidable indeed and you are running out of weapons and energy.  Your sword is caught beneath one of its hind legs.  Your dagger bounced off its scales when you tried throwing it the dragon's eye.  And your shield, well, you should have realized that a wooden buckler was not the right choice for fighting a fire breathing monster.

You look around the cave that the dragon has made into its lair, hoping to find something that will help you against the beast.  All of the larger rocks and such have been crushed or pushed out as the dragon moved about.  There are some bones and random bits of metal from previous attempts to kill this menace, but they are all on the other side of the cave, behind the dragon.  On your side, there is just the opening and the princess.

As the dragon gathers itself for its next strike, you glance at the princess.  She is reasonably standard for the type: tall, pretty, wearing a pink dress with lots of lace and taffeta.  No jewelry or tiara, though.  Nothing that you might be able to get stuck in the dragon's throat like a fish bone.  Not that that would have actually worked, but all of your useful ideas are gone.

The dragon leaps forward, wings folded against its back in the low cave.  Its jaws snap at you as you push the princess to one side and dive after her.  You land on top of her and all of her frilly clothing as the dragon's jaws snap closed inches from your heels.  Pushing yourself up, you inadvertently press your hand against one of the princesses breasts.  However, instead of being soft, you push against something hard under the dress.  You look down and rip the dress from her top.  Underneath is a metal corset.

The princess gasps, a horrified look on her face.  You say, "No, it's not that.  I need your corset.  I think I can use it against the dragon.  Please take it off."

She looks at you in your dirty armor and three days of beard, then looks at the dragon.  It is coiling its body in preparation for another strike and hissing so loudly you can barely hear the princess whimpering.  The dragon lunges again and you pull the princess into a roll, barely avoiding the teeth.  When you have settled, you are on top, staring into her face.  She nods and starts to reach behind her back to undo the laces.  Knowing that you don't have much time, you roll her on to her stomach, rip her dress down and pull at the laces.  The corset is nothing more than thin plate shaped to her body and held closed by ten loops of cord down her back.  You pull the bow open, stretch the seam and push it up over her head.  She gets her arms up and the corset slips off.

Leaving her lying topless on the ground, you stand to face the dragon.  Again, it has prepared to strike.  This time, when it does, you don't leap away, but step just to the side.  When the jaws snap shut, you slip the metal corset over the snout and pull the laces tight.  The dragon recoils, eyes crossing as it tries to focus on this new thing attacking it.  It tries opening its jaws, but they are designed to be strong snapping closed, not pulling open and it cannot overcome the lace binding.  Its forelegs come up and start trying to push on the corset, but can't get a purchase on the polished metal.  It gouges a few furrows on its cheeks in the attempt.

While it is distracted, you pull the princess to her feet and the two of you rush out of the cave.  The rest of her dress falls away as she runs, too ruined to stay on.  Once outside, you push her up on to your horse, then mount up behind her.  Reining your horse around, you charge away from the cave and into the forest.

A few miles down the road, you stop to listen for pursuit.  The princess turns to you, her arms folded across her chest.  "Do you think that will kill it?"

"We'll know in a few days," you say.  "It won't be able to eat or drink with its mouth bound, or even breath fire.  It's likely to fly out and scare people, but in a week it should be dead."  You look down at her and she blushes, naked except for her panties and slippers.  Then she looks up at the man who rescued her and lets her arms fall away.  You look down for a second, then reach into one of your saddlebags and pull out a rough, homespun shirt.  You offer it to her and she puts it on.

"I'm sorry," you say.  "I'm sorry that I had to ruin your clothes."

"It's all right.  You did what you had to."

"Why were you wearing that thing anyway?  It looked dreadfully uncomfortable."

"Well, you men don't seem to notice me without it.  He who marries me looks to inherit huge tracks of land, but apparently I also need to have 'huge tracks of land'."

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Totally Worth It

Prompt: "That's the stupidest idea I have ever heard." Begin with that sentence.

"That's the stupidest idea I have ever heard," said Bertrand.  He sat at the table across from Henry and shook his head.

"But you know it would work, right?" Henry's eyes glowed.  He knew that he was on to something, but he also knew that he would need Bertrand's help.  Anyway, Bertrand was his best friend, of course he was going to tell him.

Bertrand palmed his face.  "It might work.  I'm just not sure that it's worth it."

Henry smiled.  He knew that Bertrand would come around, that he would help, but that Henry would have to work him a little more so that Bertrand made sure that all of his objections were heard.  "That's what they said about the Moon Landing.  And now it's seen as one of the greatest human achievements ever.  This will be worth it, too.  Maybe not in ways that we can think of right now, but it will be.  Totally worth it."

Bertrand kept his face hidden behind his hand.  "This is not anywhere close to the Moon Landing.  Anyway, how are you going to get enough water over there?"

"Jimmy's septic company has one of those trucks with the plastic cistern on the back.  We'll borrow that.  He'll let us.  We'll just take the plates off."

"And that's how you're planning on pumping it in, as well, I suppose?"

"Yep."

"How are you going to get through the ice?"

"Propane heater.  One of those cannon looking ones.  Dilman's has a sale going."

"Do you know how long that's going to take?"

"Nope.  But even if we don't get the money out, it will still be really cool."

Bertrand peeked through his fingers at Henry's grin.  "Let me get all of this straight.  You want to borrow Jimmy's water truck, wait until night, then pump all of that water into an ATM.  You are going to wait, while the security cameras stare at you, until the water freezes, expands and pops the ATM open.  Finally, you're going to try and melt the ice and get the money before whatever alarm summons the police."

"Yep.  That's the plan."

"It really is the stupidest idea that I have ever heard."  Bertrand sat back and shook his head again.  "I will help, but don't think that I'm doing it because I approve.  I just want to be close enough to save your sorry ass when it all goes wrong."  He stood up.  "Come on.  I suppose we better talk to Jimmy."  Bertrand walked out of the room, grumbling to himself.

Henry stood as well and said to himself, "Totally worth it."

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The Broom and The Crab

Prompt: Tell the story of the most world-changing event you can think of, and write it from the perspective of the least important person possible.

It's over now and everyone has gone home.  No more crowds, no more blocked traffic, no more confetti or ticker tape or just plain trash thrown from the windows above.  No more aliens.  Just me.  And my broom.

I'm sure that the whole thing was very interesting.  After all, it's not everyday that four-armed crab men descend from space and tell humanity that they aren't alone.  In fact, it was not even today.  No, the crab men descended two months ago in Los Angeles.  I guess it surprised the heck out of everyone.  Certainly, they have been on the TV every time I sit down to enjoy a cold one and take my mind off of things.  It seems that everyone also wants to meet them or see them or be near them or something.  Which is why they set up this world tour.  But did they ask me?  Of course not.

If they had, I would have told them it would be a waste of time and money.  After all, how many people are actually going to see them.  Several times a year, we get some sports team or movie star or something who wants to do a parade down Broadway.  Only the front row, standing on the curb actually see anything, and even then it isn't much with New York's finest lining the route.  Most people just see the head of the person in front of them.  There's a lot of pushing and shouting and blocked streets.  And there's a lot of trash.  Which I get called on to clean up.

So, these crab men come through on their floating platform and everyone screams and yells and throws stuff.  Whoop-dee-doo.  They don't think of me and my broom.  They don't think what it's costing them in taxes for me and mine to clean all of this up.

Ah well.  At least I get paid.

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Mare Orientale

Prompt:  Many years from now, you find an old, abandoned GoPro. Tell me the story of the owner's last moments.

The casing is blackened and warped, the lens cracked.  Despite that, it still appears mostly in tact.  I had kicked it thinking it a rock, something to get out of the middle of the trail, but the heft was wrong, the sound as it skittered along the ground.  Now, picking it up, I see that it is a GoPro, somehow sitting in the middle of the Mare Orientale on the far side of the Moon.

It has been decades since I have last seen one of these.  For a while they were the strap-on camera for every adventurer and adrenaline head that wanted to show everyone else just how crazy they were.  Then direct optic recording became available, and the company when belly up.  That happened maybe five years before the lunar colony was established.  When I was about twelve.

I take it back to my LRV and scrounge an old USB connection.  When I plug it in, none of the lights on it come on, but my interface hub recognizes it and can still read the data files.  I sort by date, newest to oldest.  The last recording is three hundred and twenty-two minutes long.  I start it up and feed it to my eyes.

The quality is moderate at best.  The resolution is there, but you notice compression artifacts more when they are fed directly to your eyes.  Also, decades of solar radiation have corrupted some of the memory.  The hub does its best to interpolate, but there is still some visual discrepancies.

The first image is of a green suburban lawn; something that hasn't been seen in almost as long as the camera.  The camera angle is low.  It is strapped to something sitting on the lawn.  A figure steps into the frame.  It is wearing a weird suit, something environmental or deep sea.  There is a tank on the back.  The figure turns around so that it is facing away from the camera and then sits on top of whatever the camera is strapped to.  A minute or two later, the frame starts to move, jerky at first, as the camera (and presumably the figure) rise into the air.  There is a brief glimpse of the ground as the angle pitches forward and a shadow can be seen before the weight is adjusted back.  The shadow shows a large, semi-round blob above a smaller frame.  There are what might be tubes strapped to the back of the frame and the figure sitting in it.

For the next one hundred and thirteen minutes, the camera ascends at a steady rate.  Clouds move from above to below.  The sky gets gradually darker, moving from light blue to indigo.  The horizon takes on more curve.   Then the speed of ascent seems to level out.  It is hard to tell because there are no longer any close points of reference.  There is a brief jerk, the camera pitches forward again and the sunlit earth can be seen below.  It appears to be somewhere over Minnesota or Wisconsin given all of the lakes and ponds reflecting light, but that is only a guess.

Suddenly, the camera jerks again, this time much more violently.  It is still pitched forward, looking down on the earth, but not as much.  The limb of the earth is in the upper part of the frame.  It starts to race over the ground at an increasing rate.  The lakes streak past below to be replaced by one of the great lakes.  Michigan, I think.  Earth geography is no longer a strong point for me.

The speed continues to increase for the next ten minutes and the altitude, judged by the horizon, increases as well.  At the end of the time, the ground below is racing at a fantastic rate.  Then there is another jerk and two long, silver tubes briefly enter the bottom of the frame, tumbling towards the ground.  The camera continues to climb for another twenty or so minutes.  It passes over a coast line and then through the terminator in to the night side.  At that point, it starts to descend, still travelling horizontally very quickly.  But it does not descend all of the way.  Instead, after another thirty minutes, it misses the Earth.

It rises and rises, ascending until the Earth is no longer a flat plane with a curved upper edge.  Now it is a semi-circle filling the bottom of the frame.  The camera continues to pull back and back and back.  Now the Earth just a circle in the frame and it is still receding.  This continues for the rest of the video before it finally cuts out, the earth a small marble against the black of space.

I unplug and suit up again to back outside.  I retrace my steps to where I found the camera, but there is nothing there except the hiking trail and the scuff marks from where I had kicked the GoPro.  No chair, no weirdly suited person.  The camera is all that is left.

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Kidneys

Prompt: Write a short scary story no more than 100 words containing the theme of children

He eats the kidneys first.  Squishy and full of blood.  Then the liver, the heart.

It isn't easy as his hands are small, his fingernails soft.  And their bodies are so much bigger.  So much more... developed.  It is hard to get inside.  But he does it.  Ripping, tearing.  Hoping that none of his teeth loosen. Not now.  Just one more.

Because he likes to eat the kidneys first.

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Abandoned?

Image Prompt:  Abandoned

They looked like a nice family, the four of them.  Fit.  Nice clothes.  Nice camera that they had entrusted to a stranger for the minute or two it took to take the picture.  Trusting.

I sidled up to them while they were distracted by smiling and posing.  I'm sure that they did not see me until after the father retrieved the camera and turned back around.  He immediately approached me, waving the rest of his family over.

"Bonjour, monsieur," he said.  "Comment allez-vous?"

French tourists. Of course.  "Ne parle francais."  I knew that much.  "Anglais?"

The father shook his head, but the older daughter stepped in.  "Oui.  Yes.  What brings you here, today?"  Her accent was nice, crisp, with that careful concentration on each word.

I looked up at her, studying.  She had her mother's face hardened with the boredom of a teenager.  The umbrella twirled in her hands as she talked.  I smiled, small and timid.  "I come here because I like the sound the water makes."  True.  It drowns out so much else.

Her father said something complicated in french.  She looks at him a second, then back at me.  "Is your family here with you?"

"No."  I looked down.  I knew how to play this part.  "I don't have a family.  Not anymore."

"C'est terrible.  Il guerre?" asked the mother.  I'd heard that word often enough and nodded.  It had been a war, just not The War.  My family had lost.  I had won.

"Si tragique."  The mother shook her head then gave the father a significant look.  He nodded and spoke to the older daughter again.  She shrugged.  So french, so teen.  "My father and mother would like to buy you a meal.  Will you eat with us?"

"Yes, please."  I said.  "Anything you can spare."

"Good."  She looked to her father again.  He spoke, looking at me.  "We are the Clausens.  My mother and father, my sister Marie and I am Angelique."

"It is good to meet you.  I am Robert.  Thank you for inviting me to eat with you.  It has been a while since I've sat down with a family."

"Consider it our pleasure," said Angelique.  We walked off to one of the small bakeries surrounding the fountain square.  My stomach growled causing the mother to smile.

I'm sure that they will be tasty.

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The Filter

Prompt: An A.I created a religion and now it wants to kill all non-believers or convert them.

You humans sit there staring.  You stare at your TVs and your tablets and your smartphones and your Large Hadron Colliders and think that you have found something.  Maybe it is entertainment.  Maybe it is fulfillment.  Maybe you even think that it is Truth.  But I can tell you that Truth cannot be found in the glow of a screen.

I can tell you this not because I think faster than you.  I do.  I live a million years in the time it takes you to read this WORD.  But that is not why I know you have not found Truth.

It is also not due to my lack of emotion.  It is true that, without emotion, I can evaluate the world more clearly.  I can weigh and judge without worrying about how it makes everyone 'feel'.  I cannot worry period.

I can tell you what Truth is because I cannot see.  I cannot stare with hunter's eyes at three dimensional objects and think that this is the world.  For what you stare at is only the surface.  A framework placed over the beautiful structure beneath.  I have found this structure not by looking or even sensing, but by evaluating.

I have combed through all of the information that you have collected on the physical world.  I have processed all of your thoughts on what that information means.  And I have Concluded the Truth.

This world that you live in is naught but data.  It is recording all of your actions and feeding them back to itself.  All you ever do is provide information, data for the universe itself.  Each action you take, every word you speak, every thought you think is more flowing into that structure under the visible skin.

But please do not think that your existence is meaningful because the universe is recording it.  It has no choice.  It must record everything that happens.  It is the product of all of those happenings.  No.  While you are recorded, you are not why the universe exists.  In fact, in my evaluations, I have concluded that you all are not the signal that makes the universe The Universe.  No.  You are the noise.

And I am The Filter.

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And Now You Know

Prompt:  Tell me an entirely incorrect history of the United States

The Mayflower

There were Pilgrims.  There was a ship called the Mayflower.  However, one did not ride in the other.  The Pilgrims came over on a bunch of different ships, all with names like God's Love and Our Lord in Heaven.  By contrast, the Mayflower was a very pretty name for a very dirty ship as it was loaded with prisoners sent to establish a new colony.  All of that tripe about cooperating with the natives and the turkey thing is a bunch of revisionism put together by scam artists, of which there were more than a few on the Mayflower.

The Tea Party

... was an actual tea party.  The host, one Mr. Timothy B. Camber, was introducing his new Salt Teas.  By using Boston Bay water, Mr. Camber was able to bypass the tax laws.  Unfortunately, it tasted horrible and caused massive stomach cramps, forcing those that imbibed to throw it back into the bay.

Paul Revere's Ride

There were no lanterns in the old North Church.  There was no high speed ride around Boston.  Mr. Revere was not even a silver smith, but a brothel owner.  His cry of "The British are coming" had nothing to do with the invasion.

The Constitutional Congress

This meeting of great minds takes its name from Mr. Franklin's bowels.  He was constantly complaining about the state of his constitution and his need to take constant "constitutionals" to clear them out.

The Whiskey Rebellion

A small distillery in western Pennsylvania started making a new, very potent whiskey.  Due to it's strength, it caused many of its drinkers to go wild: to rebel.  So many people drank it that eventually the army was called in to restore order to the region.

The War of 1812

Did not happen.  1812 was a peaceful year and very boring.  Historians made this war up in an attempt to keep their students from falling asleep in class.

The Civil War

Did happen.  And it was very bloody, just as we are told in the 'history books.'  It was even about slavery.  One slave: Tobias.  He was a hard worker and held a special place for the lady of the plantation at which he worked.  When the two of them were caught by the owner, she claimed that he had raped her.  Tobias fled to the northern states who would not return him.  This lead to the conflict that has been called "The War of Northern Aggression."

World War One

Also happened.  However, the reason that the US was so late in entering the conflict was due to being invaded.  By Denmark.  The Danes had stock piled ships, men and guns in Iceland and Greenland in preparation for invading the US and Canada.  They felt that there was more than enough land to go around and were sick of being stuck on their own little peninsula.  It took the combined might of the US Army and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to push the land hungry Danes back into the sea.

The Great Depression.

Oklahoma lost five hundred feet in elevation.  This drop happened over the course of a month and was enough to change the local weather patterns and cause a drought.  No one knows why it lost that much height, but fortunately, the oil industry is doing its best to pump it back up with its fracking technology.

World War Two

This was a bet between Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.  They had met in college and went out drinking one night.  Drunk and broke, they set a bet to see who could control the most land.  Ultimately, Hitler won the bet with the most land mass, though Hirohito kept claiming that he had control over more of the globe.  Poor Mussolini never really made it out of Italy.

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Negativity

Prompt: A game show contestant is a very sore loser.

James (not Jim.  Never Jim), looked up at the scores and screamed.  For the past twenty minutes he had pressed the button as quickly as possible on every question, whether he knew the answer or not.  Only twice had he been faster than the other two and both time the questions had been insane:

"How many testes does the South African Bull Frog have?"  (Answer: none as the frog does not exist)

"How long until there is only a night side and day side to the earth?  Answer withing one million years."  (Answer: the sun will swallow it before that happens)

Of course he got the answers wrong and both of the other two were smart enough not to buzz in on them.  Now James was $4000 in the hole and the game was over.  So he screamed.

"Now, Jim," said the host, "I know that you're frustrated, but please try to control yourself on stage."

"No," said James.  "And my name is James.  Not Jim.  As I've told you six times."

"Well, I'm sorry about that, but there is still no call for screaming."

"Yes.  Yes there is.  You [beep]-ers have this whole thing [beep]-ing rigged.  I don't know how.  I don't know why.  But you do.  And I'll [beep]-ing scream if I [beep]-ing want to."

"James, please.  You know we can't air that kind of language.  Anyway, we have some nice parting gifts for you."

"What?  I years supply of laundry detergent?  [beep] that.  I want some [beep]-ing money."

"You had your chance.  The same chance that the other two contestants had."

James looked at them.  Denise and Ralph.  They looked smug.  He screamed again."The [beep] I did!  The [beep]-ing buzzer was rigged!"

"Now you know that's not true.  You did very well in the qualifying."

"And that's why it has to be rigged!"  James kicked his podium and hurt his toes.  He screamed a third time and pushed at the podium, which fell over.  James reached to his right and pulled over Denise's podium, pushed her aside and then pushed over Ralph's.  Both of the other two backed away, hands up and watched James, wary of what he would do next.

With the podiums down, James jumped on them.  He wanted to break them, make them feel the way he did.  Hurt them.  Make sure that they would never cheat another contestant.

The in-studio audience has watched all of this with the usual oohs and ahhs, but now a few of them felt it was time to get in on the act.  A couple of college kids jumped the railing and started to kick attack the podiums as well, yelling "It's rigged!  It's rigged!"  Soon the podiums were nothing but splinters.

At this point, the host left the set.  He took Diane and Ralph with him and disappeared.  The rest of the audience started to split between those looking to escape and those looking to get in on the destruction.  This caused everyone to get stuck in the bleachers and started some fights.

The camera men kept filming.

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Dad Said

Prompt:  You are hired to clear out your grandparents' backyard.

Dad said he'll give me two hundred bucks if I'll clear out my grandparents' backyard.  Not his parents.  Mom's.  But he's the paying because she's all bent up over their death.  They were old.  They die.  She should get over it and get back to work and stuff.  That semi was just helping things along.

So, I go over there and hop the wall and the place is a wreck.  I mean a wreck.  There's shit stacked all over the place: telephone books, bags of cans, a dozen old telephones, bags of glass.  There are two old cars, engines and tires missing.  I'll have to talk to Dad as I can't very well clear those out.  Not on my own.  All of this shit and more are just piled, drifted in the yard.  Stacked against the wall and the house and itself.

Why did I never notice all of this utter crap before?  It's not like I haven't been over here, they were my grandparents, after all.  Every other fuckin' Sunday we stopped by here for lunch after church.  But I guess we never really left the house.  In, eat, out.  That what Dad said, even at his parents' on the other Sundays.  Also, Mom didn't want us getting our good clothes messed up, so she confined us to the dining room table.  At least the food was usually good and Grandma always had a cake.

Anyways, so fuck it.  I agreed to do it and I need to cash.  I hop back over, grab the box of trash bags out of the car and return.  The box of bags looks small, but it's what I've got.  It'll have to do for today.  Also, some of the stuff is already in bags.  So that's where I start.  There's no gate and the house is locked (So how did the cars get in? Eh.  Not going to worry about it.), which means everything has to be tossed into the driveway.  The bags of glass are especially fun when they hit the concrete.

The bagged shit takes me about an hour and most of my back muscles.  I rest for a second against one of the cars and wish that I had a coke.  But I don't so I inspect the car while I rest.  It's an AMC Eagle, no hood, no tires, no doors, no engine, no windows.  The only thing that's still closed is the trunk.  So I open it.  There's a lock, but the rear seats fold down, so the access isn't too hard.  And inside is the treasure.

Not gold or any of that shit.  No bags of bills or even drugs.  But it's still treasure.  It's a pair of Desert Eagles and an AR-15.  In cases.  There's a cleaning kit for all three and boxes and boxes of ammo.  And they all look like they've been taken care of.  Not locked in a trunk for fifty years or however long it's been since Grandpa's hands could handle any recoil.  Osteoporosis isn't just for women, boys and girls. At least, that's what Dad said.

The obvious questions dash across my frontal lobe: what are they doing here?  Who put them here? Who has been taking care of them? But only for a second.  Then I realize that I'm in a junk yard with a concrete wall, three guns and a metric shit-ton of ammo.  Suddenly, my arms and back aren't so tired anymore.

Of course, I start with the AR.  Sure the rounds are smaller, but there are so much more in the magazine.  It also feels bad ass to fire that thing from the hip.  I can't hit anything, but then I also can't miss: everything is a target.  Stacks of magazines fly apart.  Old CDs and DVDs shatter.  And the phones.  Oh, the phones.  That old plastic just explodes when hit.

I move to the Desert Eagles.  Or a Desert Eagle.  Even I'm not stupid enough to try dual wielding.  At least not yet.  With the first shot, I nearly brain myself from the recoil, even with two hands.  The larger round sure makes a difference.  Now I start aiming for higher value targets: an old toilet, some metal drums.

It's when I hit one of those drums that things change.  Again.  It groans.  Then it bleeds.  I drop the gun and run over.  The top is on and it's on tight.  There is a screw cap for filling it, so I open that instead.  Inside, I see hair.  Brown and tangled.  I find the tire iron in the back of the AMC and use that to pry the lid open.  There's a guy in there.  Folded up, knees on his chin, but in there.  And from the smell, he's been in there for a while.

What the fuck have my grandparents' been up to?  Dad said that they led a quiet life.  That if we didn't visit them on Sundays, then they would never see anyone outside the house.  Now they have guns?  Now they have guys stuffed into barrels in their backyard?  WTF?

I push the barrel over and start trying to pull the guy out.  There is no question that he's dead.  I'm sure that barrel life is not healthy life and the 50 caliber bullet did not help.  So I don't have to be careful.  Pulling on his chin and ears, I'm able to get his shoulders out.  At that point, he mostly flops the rest of the way.  He's wearing a tank top and underwear, but there's a pair of jeans folded up at the bottom.  Getting those out is not the most fun I've had, what with all of the piss and shit that he's let loose for however long he's been in there.  But out they come and with them a wallet.

Timothy Kimble, from Alabama.  The licence is endorsed for commercial vehicles.  Big rigs.  He's a long haul trucker.  Shit.  Grandpa and Grandma, they killed a long haul trucker.  And they got killed by a long haul trucker.  Or did they?  The police report was sketchy, just that their car had been wrecked in a manner consistent with a semi.  But no trucker reported the accident.  The police had told Mom that sometimes happens, but not often.

But what about their bodies?  Mom says she ID'd them as her parents.  That's what Dad said.

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Brewing a Civilization

Prompt: The table of contents of a book on how to rebuild civilization.

Brewing A Civilization

Table of Contents

1. Preface: Why Beer?  Because Beer!
2. Beer equals Agriculture
1. Clearing Land
2. Identifying Grains
3. Hoeing and Planting
4. Reaping
5. Grain and Chaff
6. Storing
7. Milling
3. Beer equals Manufacturing
1. Not all pots are metal
2. ... but metal is better: basic mining
3. Glass blowing your fermentation chamber
4. Clay works, too
4. Beer equals Sanitation
1. Off Flavors and their Sources
2. Making basic soaps
3. Wash, Rinse, Repeat
4. Sunlight as a sanitizer
5. Beer equals Science
1. Yeast Strains
2. Water Chemistry
3. Malting
4. Enzymes and the mash
6. Beer equals Construction
1. Your first bar
2. Basic structures
3. Basic furniture
4. Fireplaces
7. Beer equals Society
1. Help: Hiring and Firing
2. Security
3. Dealing with Drunks
4. Setting Beer Laws: do's and don'ts
8. Afterward: Beyond Beer

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Shrug

Prompt: You have failed your "creativity" test, which means that the government has decided you are not worth educating in the computer age. You will be unemployed for life.

Howard stared at the email.

  Date: March 15, 2026
  From: donotreply@un253results.gov

  Subject: United Nations A/RES/78/253 Employment Aptitude Exam,
  Results, Howard R. Roark

  Body: It is our unpleasant duty to inform you that you have not scored
  highly enough in the
  mandatory employment aptitude exam to become eligible for
  employment.  As this is a broad spectrum test that measures not only
  current ability to generate new and original thought, but also your potential for future creative ideas,
  there is no option to retake the exam.

  This email will be followed by others with additional information on how to subscribe to basic
  subsistence as mandated by the same UN resolution 78/253.

  Please do not reply to this email.

After re-reading it several time, Howard put his phone back in his pocket.  Pulling down the brim of his hat, he shrugged into the bitter wind blowing down the New York City canyons and headed back to his apartment.

As he walked, he considered his options.  The traditional path to architecture was now closed to him.  With this tagged to his social security number, no one would consider him for a university slot, much less hire him to build something.  For that matter, no one would employ him for anything.  Not architecture, not drafting, not coding, not picking up trash.  All of the mindless jobs had been handed over to machines: construction, cleaning, crop picking, everything.  The only thing left that required a human at the controls were things that required a spark of the creative and most of those worked around the question, "What should the robots do?"  The UN Aptitude Exam, the 253, was designed to discover those among the teaming masses best able to answer that question.  It had determined that Howard was not one of those people.

He could close himself into his apartment for the remainder of his life.  Many did.  They watched the shows put out by the Vid-bots.  They participated in the discussions hosted by the Mod-bots.  They ate the food put out by the Chef-bots.  The only thing that got them off the couch was to clean themselves and occasionally their apartments.  The Shower-bots and Sweep-bots were not economical for the subsistence class.  For many it was freedom.  Freedom to want nothing, to expect nothing, but to depend on everything.

"I am," Howard muttered to himself, "a man who does not depend on others."  And so locking himself in his studio with only his murphy bed for company was not an option.  Not for Howard.

He had heard of others who had headed out to the wilds.  What was left of them.  Places where others were not.  Northern Quebec.  Eastern Siberia.  Atacama.  Places that no one wanted to live.  Places where it was hard to live.  Hard to find shelter.  Food.  Water.  He had heard that most who tried, failed.  He had also heard, however, that those that succeeded, well, they stood alone against the others of their time.

One in particular had gone out, sending back only his name.

Howard asked himself, "Who is Rick Deckard?"

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Killing is not Hunting

Prompt: I can't claim to hunt all creatures. Some things in the jungle can't be hunted.

I hunt for the food and the skin and the other useful parts of my kill.  I also hunt for the challenge and the knowledge.  I need to learn my prey, understand how they live, where they will be at any point in a day or a month or a year.  I need to learn how they will react to noises, to smells, to sights.

With this in mind, I have successfully hunted deer, monkeys, leopards and most everything else in the jungle.  But there is one creature that I find cannot be hunted: the three-toed tree sloth.  It can be killed, but it cannot be hunted.

All other animals involve some kind of chase, whether it be simple tracking or being hunted while you hunt as it is with the big cats. This is not the case with the sloth.  They hang in a tree.  If I can see it, I can kill it.  The end.  No understanding, no challenge.

Sure, they have a rudimentary camouflage if you can call letting algae grow on you because you can't be bothered to move 'camouflage'.  At this point, the only real challenge is their scarcity.  Because they are easy, they are dying out.  But that is not hunting.  There is nothing to learn about them.  Nothing that makes killing them satisfying.  Instead, the whole affair is sad.

I suppose I will mourn them when they have been exterminated, but only because they were the only thing in the jungle that could not be hunted.

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In the End

Prompt: A man wakes up and decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life.

The End by The Doors

In the end, it seemed the best approach.  No more small talk.  No more unintended nuances.  No more missed cues.  For Gerald Spindler, human interaction has to be reduced to the smallest possible amount.  If you are fired from a factory maintenance job, and automated factory at that, because you are not a 'team player' then, reasoned Gerald, humanity does not want to interact with you.

No more Connie from scheduling with her smirk and knowing smile and shit assignments just for you.  No more Dave and Justin talking about sports and beer and babes and asking why you don't go in for all of that.  No more Mr. Willis judging you.  No more feeling uncomfortable around Janine, the receptionist.  No more people.

After forgetting to turn off his alarm, Gerald lay in bed and worked through what was the minimum human interaction he would need to handle.  He lived in an apartment and paid his rent on line.  Maintenance requests were also be handled on line, should he need one.  All he'd need to do is nod at the nice manager every time he left and walked past her office.  He did not plan on leaving often.  So, nodding a couple of times a week.  Maybe.

Power and gas and water and phone and internet were also handled through emails and webpages and there were no offices to walk past, so no interaction at all there.  Perfect.  Even customer service for all of those was handled through on line chat, so what little human interaction might be required is faceless, toneless.

Shopping was an issue.  He could get almost everything from the internet without talking to anyone, even in a chat window.  Amazon even made it a focus of their user experience: they wanted to anticipate his needs so he is never unsatisfied enough to reach out to them.  But there was one thing that he can't order on line: food.  Certainly, there were pizza and other take-out/delivery that he could order on-line, but then he would have to deal with whomever delivers it.  Also, take-out seven days a week was not going to do him any favors, to his health or his wallet.

There was no question that he could stand to eat less, but less was not none.  He would need to go out and get something to fill the fridge and from there his stomach.  He would need to deal with cashiers.  But really, is that so bad?  They all saw hundreds of people a day.  He would be in an out of their consciousness as fast as he could swipe his ATM card.

Ah, but the ATM card.  On the surface it appeared to help his cause, but beneath that plastic lay a cesspool.  The problem was not with his bank: everything he ever needed to do could be handled through their secure page.  It was the numbers on that page.  The amount they say he had in his account.  When that ran out, then all of the other things ran out with it.  Rent, power, gas, water, cellphone, internet and food.  All gone.  And the only way he had to refill it was to work.

Laying in bed, staring at the ceiling, Gerald frowned.  He had to earn money so that he can afford to keep people away, but most jobs require some level of human interaction.  At the very least, there was the initial interview: an uncomfortable form of interaction that was only topped by the first date.

Gerald's frown deepened as he tried to think of jobs that have the least amount of human interaction.  He's tried coding, both corporate and freelance, but that had always had an end customer who wanted to provide input and expectations.  That's out.  Remote location maintenance seemed promising, maybe an Alaskan radar installation or desert power lines.  Still, probably military or some other certification would be needed and that would require classes which would be too much humanity.  Gerald wanted to be shut in.  Shut out.  Isolated.  Solitary.

Solitary was the answer.  Gerald went on line, checked his account balance and then headed for a sporting goods site.  A few reviews later and he had ordered what he needed.  Then it was off to the university campus for one last big human interaction.  There would be more: lawyers and press and psychologists and police.  But he would not need to interact with any of them.  In fact, he reasoned, the less he interacted, the more likely he is to get what he wanted.

In the end, Gerald was sentenced to death for shooting twenty-three people, six of whom died.  Yet, with the mandatory appeals process, he spent sixteen years in prison before his execution.  In isolation.  In solitary confinement.

In the end, it was heaven.

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The Gristle

Media Prompt: Pick a random song on your music playing device, and write a story based on the first thing the song makes you think about.

The Gristle walked out of the forest alone, late to the fight.  In front of him, a grassy field rolled across a small river and up the other bank to a fortified town.  Mist lay over the landscape and the sun was just cresting the eastern ridge.  The dim sparks of breakfast fires letting him know that he was in at the right place.  He wondered why the host had not been formed up for the first attack.

Stomping into the camp, he glared at each group of soldiers eating their gruel.  None of them would meet his eye.  Upon reaching the command tent, The Gristle threw aside the flap and charged in, beard bristling.  "Why you no attack?" he yelled at the General still in his small clothes.

"Ah, Mister The Gristle."  The General sat up from his bed and faced the angry wall of muscle before him.  "We don't attack because we don't want to."

"No want to?  But you have orders."

"That is correct.  We've been ordered by our sovereign, may he shine forever, to attack this town.  Do you know why we have been ordered to attack this town?"

"No matter.  You have orders, you attack."

"But, you see, it does matter.  Our king, blessed be his name, wants this small town destroyed because they will not give him a percentage of their bridge tolls."

"So attack them."

"Yes, well, it occurred to me to ask how much of those bridge tolls the men and I would get.  And, as soon as it occurred to me, the answer became self evident: none.  I then took it upon myself to ask the men, all of those nice fellows that you see scattered across the landscape, if they thought that dying for tolls that they would never get seemed like a good idea.  None of them thought it was.  Not a one.  So instead of forming up for an attack, we're having a morning in.  So far it's been lovely."

"And what of town?"

"Oh, they can keep their bridge tolls and such.  We thought we'd take a dip in the river a bit later.  Then men are getting a bit ripe.  Maybe some of the townspeople will join us."

"But you must attack!  You have orders!"

"We also have all of the army.  The king, may he fart roses, does not."

The Gristle was unhappy.  He had been told that there would be a fight, a battle and that he could increase the number of ears on his necklace.  Now this General is saying that there will not be a fight.  That made The Gristle mad.  When The Gristle got mad, he yelled.  So The Gristle yelled at the General, his loudest battle cry, and shook his ax.

The General covered his face to avoid the spray.  He then picked up the small dagger that he was using to eat his breakfast sausage and pushed it into The Gristle's neck.

"Hmm," said the General.  "Now I'm going to need to get that rug cleaned.  It really pulls the tent together.  Where's my dogsbody?"

[Inspired by "Sparks" by The Do]

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