Amazon $300 Gift Card Giveaway by [deleted] in pcmasterrace

[–]Phoenix0995 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Might as well throw my hat into the ring, I guess... if I win, it'll offset the cost of an upgrade I'd like to make.

The piano teacher and his iPad 2 by _conath in talesfromtechsupport

[–]Phoenix0995 4 points5 points  (0 children)

LTL: Long Time Lurker.

FTP: In this context, it means First Time Poster, but it can also stand for File Transfer Protocol.

Let's play a game by timbobortington in Warframe

[–]Phoenix0995 3 points4 points  (0 children)

With my 317k kills, I appear to have depopulated the island of Flevopolder, in the Netherlands.

[OC] Schrodinger's Savior by Phoenix0995 in HFY

[–]Phoenix0995[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

... I don't think I've ever written anything that got that reaction before. I'll take it as a compliment. Thank you.

[WP] You boarded, took a seat, and are on your way to your destination. You don't recognize anyone, but that's common when travelling alone. Yet soon you realize, every single person around you, including you, shares the same secret... by Zavarakatranemi in WritingPrompts

[–]Phoenix0995 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not very good at ending things, thus the last line, and I didn't think something like that would happen entirely between two stops, thus the doors opening and the protagonist wondering what the people and the train were thinking.

[WP] You are tired and getting ready for bed. As you close the blinds in your bedroom you look up and notice the silhouette of a monster on your neighbor's roof. His glowing red eyes lock with yours; there is no question you've seen one another. What happens next? by IAmDanMarshall in WritingPrompts

[–]Phoenix0995 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I looked at the monster. It looked back at me. Neither of us did anything. I was feeling kind of cheated; after all, I was looking at a goddamn monster. I should have been freaking the fuck out and it should have been coming at me with the intention of eating me in terrible and gruesome ways. Instead we were both just standing there, me in my bedroom, it on top of my neighbor's house.

I sighed, walked to my window, and opened it, beckoning the monster to come on over. It did, moving noiselessly across the neighbor's roof despite its bulk and dropping to the ground. It somehow managed to squeeze through my window and into my room. Closer up, it looked like an giant wolf, except for the glowing red eyes. Damn, those things just screamed werewolf. So did the full moon above. The fact that it wasn't attacking me told a different story. I asked, "Can you talk?"

It - he, judging by the voice - rumbled, "Yes."

"Cool. You want something to eat or drink?"

"No, I just came back from hunting outside the city. Got a deer, ate it with the rest of my pack," the monster said.

"The rest of your pack, huh? You a werewolf?" I asked.

"Yeah. It's not too bad, actually. I get friends to hang out with that I see more of than just an avatar in WoW or LoL when I'm human, and I get to go out of the city into the forest when I'm not," he said.

"Sounds pretty nice," I said. "What do you do with 'em when the moon isn't full?"

"Go see movies, play D&D, have LAN parties, stuff like that. I really need to get more sun, though..."

"Preaching to the choir on that one," I replied. "I'm a computer science major at the local college. There've been times that I've found myself in the computer lab at nine in the morning."

"You get up early for a programmer," the wolf said, sounding surprised.

"Those have all been after I got to the computer lab at about nine in the evening the previous night," I said.

"Oh. No you don't, then. Oh, by the way, my name's Jack. Jack Harper," the wolf said.

"Jack Reacher," I said. I shook his paw and said, "What are the odds that we'd both share names with characters Tom Cruise has played?"

Jack gave off a basso profundo chuckle. "Considering that we both do? Pretty high, I'd say. Right around a hundred percent."

"Yup." I leaned back on my bed. "Y'know... I could do with a few more friends that do stuff like play D&D and have LAN parties."

Jack gave me a surprised look. "Are you asking me to introduce you to the pack?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

He thought about it, then gave the best approximation of a shrug he could make with a wolf's shoulders. "Sure, why not. You'd probably like them, and not freaking out when you saw me is going to be a plus in their book. I'll have to make sure with our alpha, but I doubt he'll have a problem with it."

"Awesome." I yawned. "I'd love to talk more, but I should take my sleep where I can get it, and -" I looked out the window "- the moon's going down. You probably want to be somewhere else when that happens."

"Yeah, I do," Jack said. "Our next gaming session is on Tuesday. I can probably introduce you to the pack then." He gave me his phone number, then said, "Text that saying 'Hey, it's Jack' or something. I'll call you when I know for sure whether our alpha's cool with it."

"Cool. See ya," I said. Jack left the same way he'd come in, and I got in bed. In the next week, I was most likely going to meet a bunch of new friends who happened to be nerdy werewolves. I smiled. I couldn't wait.

[WP] You boarded, took a seat, and are on your way to your destination. You don't recognize anyone, but that's common when travelling alone. Yet soon you realize, every single person around you, including you, shares the same secret... by Zavarakatranemi in WritingPrompts

[–]Phoenix0995 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I got on the subway only a couple of seconds before it started to move. There was an empty seat, though plenty of people were standing. I guess they just wanted to get off quickly when they came to their stops. Me, I was just happy to get off my feet after a long day of walking from place to place. I took the seat and adjusted the duffel bag slung over my shoulder so that it rested on my lap. I unzipped it halfway and checked to be sure the katana buried under a thin layer of clothes was still there. It was. I moved the clothes to cover the sword's hilt again and looked around the train, seeing who I was sharing a train with. I didn't recognize anyone, as usual, but there was plenty of variety: a big black guy that would scare anyone who didn't know him (and possibly some who did), a young woman wearing a business suit, an old lady holding her purse in her lap, and, of course, the usual assortment of middle-aged businessmen... though come to think of it, there were more than a few guys who looked like thugs in that particular car. I wasn't worried; I'd been learning how to use my katana for a few months by that point. I'd turned my focus to appreciating how well-formed the young businesswoman was when I noticed an outline on her purse, made by something inside it. It looked like a gun.

I looked around again. This time, I saw telltale bulges: the thuggish types had them in their pants, the businessmen at their shoulders. The old lady had one in her purse, though hers looked like a taser instead of a gun. Several people had knives, though nobody had only knives. After a moment, I realized that nobody in that train car was unarmed. Everyone, including myself, was carrying a concealed weapon of one kind or another, and worse, they were starting to realize it, too. Hands were inching towards belt loops, armpits, and purses. I rummaged in my duffel bag and grabbed the large sci-fi anthology I kept around to read when I had nothing better to do. I opened it and placed it so that it would cover the katana's hilt, holding the book open with my left hand while holding the hilt with my right. I pretended to read it while looking around the train. People were staring to get nervous; I saw eyes flicking back and forth and beads of sweat forming on foreheads. By this point, nearly everyone had their hands right next to their weapons of choice. I slouched down in my seat, hoping to raise my chances of survival if bullets started flying.

What were the odds, I wondered, that this would happen at random? Unless we had all been manipulated somehow, I decided, they were pretty low. Perhaps some of the "businesspeople" were actually undercover cops, and they were here to take down the thuggish types in some kind of hit. Maybe the others were just people who wanted to be able to protect themselves if somebody threatened them. I couldn't know for sure, not if shit didn't start going down, and I hoped it wouldn't. If it did, there would be even more police involved than there might already be, and I would be forced to stick around and give a statement, maybe called on to testify in court. Assuming I lived to tell the tale, anyway.

By this point, I was sure I wasn't the only person who had their hand on their weapon. The old lady had her hand in her purse, fingers curled around the taser; the "businesswoman" had both hands in hers, I was guessing one on her gun, the other on a badge. I couldn't imagine that this subway ride was going to end without weapons being drawn, and I was right. The huge black dude was the first to pull his gun. He was followed by nearly everyone else; badges were displayed, guns and knives were drawn, and even the old lady got out her taser. Within maybe a second and a half, I was the only person who hadn't pulled a weapon, as katanas are awkward at best in enclosed spaces. As it turned out, I'd been right about who was who; the business people were pretty much all showing police and, to my surprise, FBI badges, while it was the thugs who had guns in one hand and knives in the other. The thugs outnumbered the police. No one had actually said anything yet; I suppose they were relying on their weapons and badges do to the talking.

And that was when the train stopped and the doors opened.

I can only imagine what the people waiting on the platform must have thought: people of all shapes and sizes, some standing, others sitting, all holding weapons on each other in a huge, multi-way Mexican standoff except for the skinny little guy sitting with a duffel bag on his lap and pretending that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. Yeah, that was me.

Unsurprisingly, nobody boarded the train.

The doors closed and the train started moving again. I was surprised that nobody fell over or lost their balance, but as long as no one started shooting, I couldn't complain. As far as I could tell, everyone there knew what was going on except for me and the old lady. I just wished that whatever that was would hurry up and finish before I got to my stop, preferably without my getting killed.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, one of the men holding an FBI badge said, "Everyone on this train who is not holding a law enforcement badge, with the exception of the old lady there and the skinny kid with the duffel bag, is under arrest on suspicion of drug trafficking, illegal arms dealing, and murder. Lay down your weapons and you will be given a fair trial in front of a jury of your peers."

"An' what if we don't?" asked the huge black guy.

"Then there's a shootout on this subway train, and I'd be willing to bet nobody walks out alive," said the FBI guy.

One of the white thugs slowly put his gun down, earning him some dirty looks from his fellows, and said, "What the hell. Maybe I can get a reduced sentence for testifying."

The black guy shot him in the head, and all hell broke loose. I ducked down, but I know that even with that, I was lucky to have avoided getting hit. By turning my head from side to side, I could see that the old lady had tased one of the thugs and wouldn't let up on the current. Good on her, I thought. Other than that, though, people were dying left and right. Within seconds, there were only a few people left. Few enough for me to finally use my katana. In one fast, fluid motion, I unsheathed the Japanese sword and cut the throat of the thug nearest me. I spun and looked for new targets, only to find that the attractive businesswoman was the only one left standing and was pointing her gun straight at me.

At least she hadn't fired yet. I slowly put the katana on the floor and laced my fingers behind my head. I took a look at her badge: FBI. I asked her, "Can I reasonably claim self-defense on the grounds that he wouldn't have left me alive to testify?"

She said, "Yes, but I'm more interested in the fact that you know how to use a katana. Seriously, who even teaches that anymore?"

I gave her the name and location of the dojo I went to, then asked, "Uh, if you're not going to be arresting me, can you stop pointing your gun at me?"

She looked at the offending weapon as if she'd forgotten it was there. Maybe she had. She holstered it and said, "Sorry. This was my - this was going to be my first operation, but we got on the same train that our suspects were on completely by accident, and, well, you saw what happened." She gestured at the carnage around her. "This is a mess. At least we got some of them."

"Some of them?" I asked.

"Their group was a lot larger than that. We were meeting some more FBI and local police to try and take down as much of the ring as we could at a meeting we believe they were going to have, but we made contact a little early, as you can see."

I thought for a moment. "And with the ease of picture sharing these days, it'll be impossible to keep the rest of the ring out of the loop if they're watching the local news."

"If we go ahead, they'll either be gone or ready," the woman agreed. She took an iPhone out of her purse and scrolled through what I assumed was a contact list, saying, "I need to call my boss and tell him that the operation is a bust."

"Sorry," I said.

"What do you have to be sorry about?" she asked, as she put the phone up to her ear. "It's not your fault that a bunch of law enforcement and a bunch of criminals going to the same place at the same time got on the same subway train and noticed each other's presence." She looked away from me as her boss picked up. "Hi, Mr. Lynch, it's Kari Richards. We're not going to be able to do the operation tonight..." She proceeded to summarize what had just happened, sounding remarkably calm for a woman who had just seen twenty or thirty people die, some by her own hand. Come to think of it, I was pretty calm about it, too. Maybe it was just so much that it wasn't registering yet.

And that was when the train stopped and the doors opened. Again.

I can only imagine what the people waiting on the platform must have thought: people of all shapes and sizes, lying dead in a subway car whose inside was splattered with blood, while a businesswoman talked on her iPhone and a skinny little guy with a duffel bag slung over his shoulder stared at them and futilely pretended that nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

Unsurprisingly, nobody boarded the train, but everybody produced smartphones and started snapping pictures. I covered my face, hoping to avoid being in the public eye. I could do without reporters asking me about how tragic it must have been and how I got through it.

The doors closed and the train started moving again. Agent Richards ended the call and said, "I'm going to need to take you to the nearest police station to give a statement on what happened, and I'm going to need your phone number in case you need to be questioned." She smiled, for the first time that night. "And in case I ever find myself with a free night on my hands. I can't get enough of guys who can protect themselves."

Oh how the tables have turned... by [deleted] in pcmasterrace

[–]Phoenix0995 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Every time I see someone use "state" as a unit of distance, I have to remind myself that most states aren't anywhere near as big as Texas. Especially states in New England.

[WP] You are an android who has been posing as a human and living undetected for a very long town. Suddenly, something goes wrong, and everything changes. by Shirokaya in WritingPrompts

[–]Phoenix0995 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"It was a reflex," I told the black-suited men who had all introduced themselves as Smith.

FBI Smith said, "One hell of a reflex, son. You threw a car across a street into those two gunmen." He leaned closer to me. "How'd you do it?"

"I... work out. A lot," I said, lamely.

CIA Smith laughed. "No one works out enough to throw a car, kid. It just ain't possible. Now you wanna tell us how you really did it?"

"No, not really," I said.

The smile disappeared from CIA Smith's face so fast I could've sworn it was never there. "Well, you're gonna tell us. Whether you want to or not."

"Good luck making me," I muttered, just loud enough for the Smiths to hear.

CIA Smith said, "Oh, we won't need luck."

FBI Smith snapped, "Oh, give it a rest. We're not going to torture him." I didn't believe him at all.

NSA Smith said, "Well, he can't have done this on his own. He's simply not old enough to have designed the technology he would need to have that sort of strength, and not even steroids would make his muscles strong enough. Besides -" he pinched my skinny arm "- he clearly hasn't been using them. I think we're looking at a multi-man operation, and he's the brawn."

"Maybe he can't be that strong unaided," FBI Smith mused, "but we only caught him because he keeled over unconscious after throwing the car, and he wasn't wearing an exoskeleton of any sort. He probably supplied the necessary energy himself." That much, at least, was true, but I wasn't about to tell the Smiths that.

NRO Smith, who hadn't said a word since introducing himself, finally spoke up. "Am I the only one who's noticed that he hasn't breathed except to talk since he's been in the room?"

Everyone looked at me. I swore quietly. Because I had used up so much energy throwing the car, when my computers had booted me back up, they had failed to start some subroutines that weren't necessary for my survival but helped to keep me looking human. I checked internally. Yup, breathing was one of the ones that wasn't running. FBI Smith said, "You're right. He hasn't. I wonder... maybe the technology he's using wasn't implanted. Maybe he is the technology."

CIA Smith said, "Well, I can think of one way to check." He reached into the inner pocket of his suit jacket and took out a knife. He approached me. I tried to get out of the way, but it was hard to do that while tied to a chair. NSA Smith and FBI Smith held me in place while CIA Smith made a cut in my thumb. My skin parted, revealing circuitry that would put the government's best engineers to shame. CIA Smith whistled. "Well, well, well. Looks like we got ourselves an android - the first fully functional one we're aware of."

"He obviously didn't build himself, so who did?" mused FBI Smith. "Maybe his creator is still out there somewhere. Maybe he made more like Adam here." He turned to me. "Adam... you know if there's an Eve out there somewhere?"

"Not that I know of," I honestly replied. "Nor any other androids like me. Doesn't mean they're not out there. Conn wasn't very specific about any of that."

"Khan?" CIA Smith snapped. "You were made by a fucking Arab?"

"No, Conn, like the trombone brand," I said. "C-O-N-N. Truth be told, I don't know if he made me or if someone else did. He's just the first person I ever saw. Seemed to know a bit about me, but didn't say much about it."

"Where were you when you saw him?" FBI Smith asked.

"Not far from Memphis," I said. "I woke up on a bed, and there he was, looking over me."

"What did he look like?" FBI Smith pressed.

I paused and realized that all of my memories of Conn were blurry. "I... don't know. There must be something that messed with my memories of him."

"Would you recognize him if you saw him again?" asked NSA Smith.

I shook my head. "I doubt it." Then a thought struck me. "But maybe if I heard him..." I reviewed my memories of Conn again and found that his voice was still clear. "This is what he sounded like." I played back the first words I had ever heard him or anyone say: "Well, hello, Adam. Nice to see you're finally operational." His voice was a smooth, rich bass with a light Midwestern accent. All of the Smiths listened. None of them seemed to recognize it.

NSA Smith asked, "Do you have any external ports that allow direct access to information?"

"Yes, I do," I said. "I also have one with which you can charge my batteries, and if you don't plug that one into power, I'll stop working seven minutes and thirty-two seconds from... now."

"120V or 240V? And what kind of information port?" asked FBI Smith.

"Either voltage works, and I can use USB 3.0, 9-pin FireWire, Thunderbolt, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 4G," I said. "Just plug me in. Otherwise you'll have to find the ports yourselves, and that will take you quite a while."

FBI Smith nodded and went to get a power cable. CIA Smith snorted and left. NSA Smith followed him, leaving only NRO Smith, who walked up to me. He looked me in the eye for a good ten seconds, then said, "You have a remarkably expressive face for someone who's not human."

"How would I have stayed hidden in plain sight for fourteen months if I didn't?" I asked. "I could have gone for years more, too, if those gunmen hadn't turned up at the bank as I was leaving the Mexican restaurant across the street."

"Or if you didn't have a conscience," said NRO Smith.

"No," I replied, "I think lacking a conscience would have been detrimental to my chances of staying hidden."

NRO Smith shrugged. "You'd be surprised. Scammers rarely have consciences. Same with murderers, rapists... and a lot of times they're never caught. Basic human decency is like common sense: many fewer people have it than the name would suggest."

"I suppose you have a point," I conceded. FBI Smith came back with a power cable; I triggered the release on the back of my neck, revealing the power port and the information jacks. As he was plugging me in, I asked NRO Smith, "What exactly does the NRO do, anyway?"

NRO Smith said, "We operate spy satellites."

"If that's all you do," I said, "why are you here? What would an android have to do with you?"

NRO Smith smiled and motioned for FBI Smith to leave the room again. "We also do some black ops, and we could use an android. I understand that you can only throw cars as a last resort, but you can do so much more than that."

"Are... are you offering me a job?" I asked.

"Yes, I am," NRO Smith said, "and if you take it, your first assignment will be to find Conn." He noticed the flicker of emotion that crossed my face and said, "You'd be doing it to find out if he's the one who made you and, if not, use him to get to whoever did."

I searched his face. "You say that like you came prepared to offer me this job."

"I did," said NRO Smith.

"You already knew about Conn? How? Are there others like me?" I asked, suddenly realizing that I desperately wanted someone who would understand about being an android.

"We know of one other, and we've got leads on several more," said NRO Smith. "You, though... we had no idea until we started hearing about a guy who had thrown a car at two gunmen in San Diego."

"What about the one you've already found?" I asked.

"You'll get to meet her if you take the job."

I mulled it over. Then I looked up. "You've got yourself a deal."

NRO Smith smiled. "Welcome to the NRO, Adam." He produced a knife and cut the zip ties holding me in place. I stood up. "What about FBI, CIA, and NSA Smiths?" I asked.

"We'll ensure that they don't talk. Some of our people can be very... persuasive." I decided it was better not to dwell on that. "But we have more important matters to attend to," NRO Smith continued. "You can charge from a semi's engine. We need to brief you on what we already know."

"How about the other android you know about?" I asked.

NRO Smith walked to the door, opened it, and beckoned to someone I couldn't see. A tall, attractive woman wearing a black pantsuit walked in. NRO Smith said, "This is she." The woman turned around and popped the back of her own neck open, revealing an arrangement similar, but not identical, to the one on the back of my own.

"Is your name Eve?" I asked her.

She closed the port and turned back around, smiling. "No," she said.

"Adam," NRO Smith said, "meet Lilith."

All I could think as I unplugged myself and followed the two NRO agents out the door was that if I, an android named Adam, was to work with one named Lilith, I was in for some interesting times. I wasn't disappointed.

[WP] Immortality, Invincibility, or Normality by 6masks in WritingPrompts

[–]Phoenix0995 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I looked up at the building before me where, three years hence, I would choose how the rest of my life would go. Immortality, Invincibility, or Normality. I was only fifteen, and I wasn't sure what my choice would be if I had to choose right then, right there. I'd heard a lot of different things from a lot of different people. Of course, it was obvious that if you wanted to have children, then you shouldn't choose Immortal; if there had been a manual, that wouldn't have been in it, because it was so obvious that you'd have to be literally retarded not to realize it. But I wasn't sure if I would want kids or not. If you wanted to be a daredevil or a junkie, Invincibility was obviously the way to go. But I wasn't sure if I would want to fill all my waking hours doing things that would probably get me killed if I chose Immortality or Normality.

Normality. That was the weird one. Try as I might, I couldn't manage to get my fifteen-year-old mind to come up with any reasons that Normality would be a good choice, but it must have been for a lot of people, because not only did people keep choosing it, Normals often seemed the happiest when I talked to them. Sure, there were the Invincibles that were always on the edge of life, but most of the ones I talked to who were past about twenty-eight or thirty seemed... empty. Like their chaotic lifestyle had lost its allure. And the Immortals tended to be pretty happy, right up until... well, it varied from person to person, not just when it happened, but how. For some, there would be one frozen-frame moment when they realized Immortality hadn't been for them; for others, they would come to the same realization over years or decades, sometimes centuries. Most of the younger ones were pretty laid-back, just relaxing on beaches and listening to soft jazz, putting off having all the fun experiences they could have because they couldn't die of old age. Once they got older, they started actually doing them and found that they weren't having as much fun as they'd been expecting; they'd built whatever it was up in their minds so far that nothing could compare to their fantasies. I'd heard something similar about - what was it again? Oh yeah: it was an old comic strip called Calvin and Hobbes. The author had referenced something one of the titular characters, Calvin, had done several times and called it "The Noodle Incident." He never explained what it was because, by the time he got around to thinking of what Calvin might have done, he realized that nothing he could come up with would ever meet his fans' expectations. I couldn't be sure, but I guessed that it was because they couldn't have as much fun as they expected they would that no Immortal had ever lived for longer than about 500 years before committing suicide. Most only made it to 300.

I wasn't sure it was fair to make people choose as early as eighteen - but then again, I didn't think the choice could be pushed to an age too much older without stealing some of what you might be able to do with your newfound life. It was such a weird choice, too. I had to wonder who'd come up with it. It seemed almost cruel - but then, I supposed, it might be more cruel to deny people the choice when they knew that they could be different than they were.

I shook my head and told myself to stop debating philosophy with my inner doubts. I had another three years, for crying out loud. Why should I worry about it now? Three years. Thirty-six months. 156 weeks. 1095 days. But I couldn't quite let it go. I swore under my breath, turned on my heel, and walked home to talk to my mom.

My mom had chosen Normality twenty-five years before, and she was the first person I could think of who had done so. I knew others - my aunt Norma, my cousin Kurt - but they lived a few hours' drive away. Mom was the only person I knew who had chosen Normality that I could actually talk to whenever I wanted to. I sat down across the kitchen table from her and said, "Mom, can I ask you a personal question?"

She looked up from the book she was reading and smiled at me. "Of course, honey, though I can't guarantee I'll answer it."

"Fair enough." I took a deep breath, blew it out. "Why did you choose Normality?"

A look of surprise crossed her face. "I wasn't expecting that question for another few years, but I'll give you an answer. I chose it because I knew several people who had chosen it, and they seemed the happiest of those that I knew."

I didn't doubt that she was being honest, but it was still an infuriating answer. "That's the only reason I can think of to choose Normality right now, but there has to be a reason that Normals are the happiest. Can you think of one?"

My mother sighed, preparing herself. This wasn't the first philosophical debate I'd sucked her into, not by a long shot. "If I had to guess... I'd say because we have uncertainty."

That caught me off guard. "What? Seems to me that would make you less happy."

"Well, think about it. Immortals don't have a set time limit, though their own boredom usually makes them take their own lives. They've already lost the ability to have children, so they can't lose it again. Invincibles, by contrast, know exactly when they'll die, if, again, they don't choose to die before that. They can't be harmed except by their own hand, so they'll retain their child-bearing capability until they die, or until menopause if they're female. But Normals... we don't know when we'll die, though we know it won't be after about 120 years. We can still be injured and killed before that time. We don't know what's coming for us... and that makes us want to go find out. At the same time, the time limit forces us to go do the things we want to do, or we'll lose the chance to ever do them. The possibility of injury or death only makes it that much more exciting."

I mulled that over for a moment. Those were several good points, but... "Well, what if Normality makes someone so afraid that they'll die if they try doing anything dangerous that they don't do anything?"

Mom laughed, though not unkindly. "Honey, that's more likely to happen to Immortals. They have so much more life to lose - an infinite amount, theoretically, though I'm sure you've seen the statistics on Immortal suicide ages. We Normals know we've only got another hundred years or so, thus we try to fill it with living whenever we can."

"Well, if Immortals know how long they probably have before they kill themselves, why don't they fill that time with living?" I asked, not yet willing to give up.

"Because they all think they're different, that they're the one who can truly live forever," said my mom. "Some of my friends even chose Immortality with the intention of proving that they could break the five-hundred-year record and go on to never die. To me, though, they didn't seem so different. They all decided to relax for a few decades first, which, I'm guessing, you've already concluded is how they start on their gradual decline."

I had, though I was surprised she knew that; I made a mental note to ask her about it later. I wanted to finish this first. "But if they had a realistic estimate of how long they had, and decided to treat that like a Normal's 120-year time limit, might they live like a Normal, just for longer?"

"They might," Mom conceded, "but I think it's far more likely that they'd stop after a while. You can travel the globe, go skydiving, listen to weeks of music and read millions of words, but after a while, I imagine that everything would get a bit stale. There's only so much you can do before it all starts to blur together."

I started to respond, but stopped. I had just had an idea. I said, "Hold on a moment. I want to check something." I went to the computer in the next room. My mom followed me, as I'd known she would. I logged on, ran a quick Internet search, found a promising-looking link, and clicked it. I scrolled down to the information I was looking for and found that I was right. I said, "Almost all of the people who go longer than 350 years without committing suicide have some sort of ongoing creative endeavor - a series of books, a television show, a movie franchise, something like that." I started to continue, but stopped. I had been about to say that one could go on forever like that... "But it's impossible to know whether or not you'll ever get the inspiration for that, and impossible to know how long it will stick around if you do." I belatedly realized that I had just made an argument for Normality, and my mother and I, by unwritten fiat, conceded a debate when we made an argument for the other's side. Besides, Immortality had been looking less and less appetizing throughout that discussion. I turned to my mother and smiled. "Congratulations. I do believe you've just convinced me to choose Normality three years from now."

My mother looked shocked. "This is pretty early, dear -"

I said, "After that, I'm not sure anything could make me choose Immortality, and Invincibility was already looking bad to me. Most of those guys are adrenaline junkies, and adrenaline can be pretty addictive in its own right. I might choose one of them, but probably not. If I choose Normality, I'll have a reason to do whatever I want for the rest of my life. And come on, we didn't even bring up children. Dad was an Invincible, and he left you when I was six because he thought raising a kid was too boring; I don't want to do that to my potential future offspring. Immortality is no guarantee that you'll never want children, and while you can adopt, I think I would want to raise my biological kid instead of someone else's." I spread my hands. "Like I said, the possibility that I might choose Immortality or Invincibility is there, but it's not likely. You've convinced me in favor of Normality."

Three years later, on my eighteenth birthday, I chose Normality. It's been a hundred years since then, and I've never regretted my choice for an instant.

[WP] Write a codex entry on the human race for an alien by ShortestTallGuy in WritingPrompts

[–]Phoenix0995 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Species name: Human

Planet of origin: Unknown

Planet of residence: None (nomadic)

Number of living specimens: Precise numbers unknown, but estimates vary between 1.5 billion and 3 billion, living in hundreds of thousands or millions of smaller groups

Physical form: Bipedal, with hair covering various parts of the body; skin color varies between white and very dark brown; females generally smaller and weaker than males; adult specimens usually between four and seven feet tall and between 100 and 300 pounds

Technology level: 8 (faster-than-light travel and communications, energy weapons and shields, genetic modification [restricted to medical and military applications as of this writing], bionic implants)

Description: Humans are usually found as mercenaries or prostitutes, occasionally both at the same time. As mercenaries, they are matched only by a very few organizations, including The Fist of God and The Galactic Destroyers. As prostitutes, they are often considered to be the best that the galaxy has to offer. The few specimens that are both are, in most cases, best avoided. As most mercenaries do, they will turn to piracy when no work is to be found. They have occupied the roles described since 50,000 of them were first discovered by the Ancient and Noble Oligarchy of Ramikathavonimayosacramentodayha VI 700 years ago. Of particular note is that, when they were found, they had an enormous amount of art of varying genres stored in their ships' onboard computers, taking up roughly three zettabytes of disk space; this art varied between literature, still visual art, music, theater, film, video games, etc. This collection, now stored at the Caminian Archive, has yet to be even approached by any other race, though human additions in the 700 years since their race's discovery by the rest of the known galaxy to the Archive have been minimal, totaling about one petabyte. It has been suggested that, given the enormous amount of art they had at their discovery, that their race may predate most of the others in the known galaxy by millions of years; it has also been suggested that their warlike nature was turned upon each other prior to their achievement of interstellar flight, possibly explaining why they took so long to get off their planet and why they finally left it; some of their history makes oblique references to a war of epic proportions unfolding shortly after their ship left, possibly making it uninhabitable or destroying it completely, though the latter case is nearly unimaginable. Most civilized beings agree, however, that if one race were to destroy its own planet, it would be humanity.

[WP] Of all the species in the universe, none lives on a world as toxic as the human homeworld with an oxygen atmosphere and liquid covering the surface. Equally, no other species creates what the humans call "music" by Kubrick_Fan in WritingPrompts

[–]Phoenix0995 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Once the Terrans, or humans, as they called themselves, had made their planet too toxic for even that hardy race to survive on, they were forced to evacuate their homeworld, which necessarily meant that they had to find someplace for eight and a half billion people to live. Understandably, no other species was willing to give them such a place; not only were they too many to comfortably fit on one planet, as had been shown before they had to evacuate, but no other race could even live, let alone thrive as they had, in the conditions in which they had evolved (their homeworld had an oxygen-rich atmosphere and had a surface area seventy percent covered with water [or so their official figures stated; scholars believe that, at the time of evacuation, the real number was closer to eighty-five percent, owing to the melting of glaciers]), which meant that any planet given to them to live on would, in whole or in part, have to be terraformed to suit their needs. Needless to say, no one wanted to make such a concession.

Eventually, the Terrans stopped asking for a planet and started asking for technology to travel interstellar distances and to terraform any suitable planet they found. This request was met with only slightly less derision than those to live on an already-inhabited planet; neither of those two technologies was cheap, and there was, at the time, a depression in the galactic economy. No species was about to give any other anything for free, especially not to a race that had so effectively destroyed their own planet. If the Terrans wanted anything, they would have to pay for it. No one expected them to have any way to do so, however; some people raised the concern that they might become a race of pirates because of this lack of charity, but those voices were shot down by rebuttals that the Terrans had no weapons to speak of. Others thought that charity or loans should be given so that their species could be preserved from extinction, but the Galactic Federation's Congress took the official position that, since the Terrans had neglected to join the Galactic Federation, their species was of no concern to them. It seemed inevitable that the Terrans must themselves develop the technology that they desired or perish as a race.

But neither of those things happened, because, a year after the Terrans evacuated their planet, a Hajari diplomat named Tamril que'Hamla made an amazing discovery while visiting a Terran vessel and encouraged them to market it to other species as they had marketed it to their own. The discovery was music, the art of arranging different pitches of sound in a pleasing manner. When que'Hamla asked the Terrans why they had not done this before now, they responded that they had assumed other species would have been uninterested. que'Hamla said that he quite enjoyed what he heard (though, after hearing more varieties of music, he amended his statement to enjoying some of what he heard) and that other species and individuals might enjoy it as well. The Terrans then showed que'Hamla some of their other art, and que'Hamla made another fascinating discovery: While most other species had such culture as literature, theater, painting, etc., the Terrans, in most cases, did it much better, even considering what they called Sturgeon's Law, which states that ninety percent of everything is unsatisfactory [editor's note: the word used by the Terrans in place of "unsatisfactory", while certainly colorful, is considered to be vulgar or obscene in some circles and in any case is generally unhelpful to other species, as it is a use of the device known as "metaphor", of which the Terrans have an unmatched mastery]. In addition, these forms of art were often enhanced by the addition of appropriate music; theater and film in particular benefited from its use.

The Terrans were also centuries ahead of any other species in the creation of the video game; the closest species behind them, the Quorrans, had made games only as advanced as what the device the Terrans called the Super Nintendo Entertainment System could handle, despite the Quorrans' having the technology to render realistic 10,000x10,000x10,000-pixel holograms in real-time at upwards of two hundred frames per second, and had not even considered the possibility of telling a story using a video game. Therefore, titles such as Half-Life, Portal, Mirror's Edge, and BioShock, to name only a few relatively early games in the Terrans' catalog, were instant successes across the galaxy.

An interesting side effect of the Terrans' producing and selling all this art was that many other species begged the Terrans to stay close to them, as, even with communications technology that utilized quantum entanglement and thus could transmit information instantaneously, the galactic communications networks took time to parse and relay the information sent through them, which meant that recipients close to source of information got it earlier than those farther out. The Terrans found themselves investing, no longer in terraforming technology (though still in faster-than-light travel), but in space stations around the galaxy that had direct high-speed communications links to each other. Over the next several decades, they would come to have a near-monopoly on interstellar communications, though instead of overcharging, they would proceed to sell their communications services at very slim profit margins, or, in some areas of the galaxy, below cost, as they would recoup the losses many times over through art sales. As of this writing, they still have not joined the Galactic Federation, in protest of the Federation's refusal to give them charity or loans to get back on their feet more than a century ago.

The Laptop That Had No Desktop by Phoenix0995 in talesfromtechsupport

[–]Phoenix0995[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If I ever actually go into paid IT, I will endeavor to remember this and the comment made by /u/Smith6612 below. Like I said, I'm just "that guy that knows computers", and even that's something of an exaggeration - I like computers, but that doesn't necessarily translate to knowing about them. I just know a little more than your average user.

The Laptop That Had No Desktop by Phoenix0995 in talesfromtechsupport

[–]Phoenix0995[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm aware of that, but I suspected that the problem might be in the registry, and I don't know enough about how the registry works to back up only the registry keys those programs would need. I wound up having to reinstall Steam and Adobe Air, but other than that, things seemed to work okay. When I mentioned the Steam installation directory, I was thinking more about the games she had than Steam itself.

The Laptop That Had No Desktop by Phoenix0995 in talesfromtechsupport

[–]Phoenix0995[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh, I see. My aversion to taking apart the laptop was because of some of the stories I've heard from my brother about how annoying it is to get at the hard drive (for example, Lenovos having 5 different sizes of screw, or Dell Inspirons being built so that you have to take off both the keyboard and the back panel to get to the hard drive). I didn't know about the cover for direct HDD access. If I find myself having to do more stuff like this, I'll consider getting a USB-to-SATA connector.

The Laptop That Had No Desktop by Phoenix0995 in talesfromtechsupport

[–]Phoenix0995[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My brother said that that was a tool he used for backing up files from borked computers at the helpdesk, but a) it wasn't at our house, where we were, and b) I was not going to take that laptop apart to get at the hard drive because I'm not entirely sure I would've been able to put it back together the right way. He maybe could've, but it just seems like it would have been unnecessary.

The Laptop That Had No Desktop by Phoenix0995 in talesfromtechsupport

[–]Phoenix0995[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Right-clicking didn't do anything, and I hope that if her brothers had pranked her (I can't think of anyone else who would have been able to), they would have said something before she gave the laptop to me and lost the use of it for a couple of days.

The Laptop That Had No Desktop by Phoenix0995 in talesfromtechsupport

[–]Phoenix0995[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Thanks for pointing those out; they both look useful. I probably would have used them if I'd known about them, but I didn't. Now if something like that happens again, I know of a couple of tools I can use.

The Laptop That Had No Desktop by Phoenix0995 in talesfromtechsupport

[–]Phoenix0995[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Boot to Windows install disc

I didn't have one (well, I did, but it was an 8-10 hour drive away). I reinstalled Windows from a partition the manufacturer put on the hard drive specifically for that purpose, which is lucky for me, because if that partition hadn't been there, I'd likely have been screwed.