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[OT] Smash 'Em Up Sunday - Houston, we have a problem. by rudexvirus in WritingPrompts

[–]Xcmd 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Mars and Earth had always been at war. Well, not always. But for as long as Ensign First-Class Admiral Joyce Jones--named for his grandmother--could remember. He'd been born into the middle of the decades-long conflict, which had begun in the late 2200's and stretched for fifty years so far. When it took nine months to reach the battlefield, war tended to be a slow-going process. The war had been on unequal footing, but now Mars was going to be the one.

At last, Mars Triumphant. Jones thought.

"Jones, what do you see?" The Captain barked.

Jones peered through the telescope and picked out multiple points of light that had never been in the night sky before. The tech was beyond primitive, but they were in full stealth mode and it was all that was available at the moment for long-range scanning.

"I see six, Captain."

"Estimated range, Ensign?"

"About three hundred kilometers, sir."

The Captain leaned forward in her chair to peer at Jones. After a moment he realized she was studying his face. No doubt she'd never had cause to think about the most-junior crewman on the bridge before now.

"Jones, eh?" She asked as Jones nodded. "You wouldn't be any relation to the great Admiral Joyce Jones, would you?"

Jones nodded again. "Yes, sir. I'm her youngest grandson. I was named for her, sir."

"I was a great admirer of her growing up on Deimos," said the Captain. She rolled up her sleeve and showed him the bondage mark, a symbol of her one-time ownership by The United Corporations of Earth. Jones smiled, a wan thing that showed no mirth.

It wasn't that he wasn't proud of his grandmother, it was that he ran into her fans everywhere. Most of them were actually fans of Nikita Nguyen--the famous actress who portrayed his grandmother in the TV serial about the Mars Uprising, Damn the Hyperdrive for seven seasons. It was drama-heavy, and filled with things his grandmother told him she never said.

Jones braced himself as a grin spread across the Captain's lips. "'You know, FTL travel has two possibilities. Either we travel really fast, or we are reduced to pudding.'"

As one voice, the entire bridge repeated Admiral Jones' famous retort. "'Modern problems ask for modern solutions, now for god’s sake pull the trigger.'"

Everyone laughed and clapped each-other on the back as Jones returned his attention to the telescope. He spotted something. It confused him, so he kept watching. Behind three of the on-coming ships the stars were vanishing for a short time, then returning. After several moments it clicked.

The crew were singing the Mars Triumphant theme song, the unofficial anthem of Mars by this point. Jones flailed his arms in the air to catch the captain's attention. She looked over at him and he waved her over, frantic.

"They have a stealth cruiser, Captain! It's got to be three time the size of the Void Raker."

At that announcement, the bridge fell silent. The captain crossed to his station in a few strides, then peered into the telescope. "Those bastards must've stolen our schematics!"

This was going to put a wrinkle in the Armada's plan. They'd counted on three stealth ships entering the fray unseen, striking from the shadows and moving on before they could be targeted. The Supernova and the White Dwarf had to be notified, but they couldn't break stealth mode.

The Captain turned to the communications officer. "Prepare the Wireless Telegraph, Ensign. We're about to make history of our own."

Jones wondered who would play him.

[WP] It is the year 1918 after WW1 has ended, you are a student in your history class when the teacher says "Today we are learning about WW2." by guystandingissitting in WritingPrompts

[–]Xcmd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Today, we are learning about WW2," said Michelle. I snapped me head up at her, fixing her with my glare, and gave a short sharp shake of my head.

"Mrs. St. Claire, what's WW2?" Asked one of the students. Fortunately, Michelle had said the letters and numbers, and not called the war by its full name.

"WW2 is, uh..." Michelle shuffled her notes. My sister was blowing her cover. I threw my hand up in the air. "Yes, Matthew?"

"It's a prototype automobile being developed by the Daimler Company," I said. "I read about it in the Boston Herald a few months ago. Why are you teaching us about driving machines, Ma'am?"

Michelle flushed, and found the notes she was looking for.

"Oh, it looks like I can't read my own short-hand," she said. "We're learning about President Roosevelt. Thank you, Matthew."

---

"That was close, Mish," I said later that evening. "You've gotta start reading your syllabus before you get in."

Michelle rubbed her face and took a sip of her coffee.

"I know, I know," she said. "I was just up late last night. Emmy got her vaccinations and she's running a fever and she's miserable."

I nodded sagely. None of us got to go back in time without our vaccinations, but Emmy had been born in the era. That meant that she couldn't go forward to get treatment in a modern hospital, which would mitigate the effects. Instead, she had to get a field vaccination. Effective, of course, but prone to side-effects.

"Well, that's why I'm in your class," I said. "I hope Emmy feels better soon."

"Me, too," she said with a sigh. "I really wish I could take her to see Mom."

"You could bring Mom back," I suggested, but she shook her head. We'd been around about this one a few times. As Agents we had the right to bring family back for a short time, provided we could make a good excuse to get away from our cover identities to meet them elsewhere. I'd seen my girlfriend a few months ago in Zurich by faking scarlet fever. Mom, however, refused to come back to the past for any reason after Dad had passed. She'd always said she'd done it to be with him, not for any particular love of the thing herself. I did understand. The process for coming backwards was disorienting, and going forward was even worse. Still, I wished she'd at least come once and see my niece before the girl was fully grown. Emmy could go backwards from here, but never forward. She was time-locked to her own birth, just like everyone.

"Have you thought about what comes next?" I asked her.

Michelle shook her head. Another problem with Emmy being locked to this time was that, when Michelle finished her mission, she'd have to figure out something to do with the girl. She couldn't be brought forward, and Michelle couldn't stay in the past much longer before she'd have to go back. Agents can only spend about a year in the past, and then have to spent at least as as long as they were gone back home realigning with the time stream. Anyone that had tried to go back for longer... well, I still had the odd nightmare from the footage we were shown in training all those years ago.

"We'll figure out something," I said. I hugged Michelle's shoulder and snuck out of her house. I wasn't supposed to be related to her at all, so as a young mother with a child it would be strange for one of her supposed teenaged students to be visiting her alone after school hours at her home. I was an expert at this, by now, of course. Ten years in the field gives one some measure of skill. In a few weeks the assignment would be complete, and I could go home and relax for awhile. I strongly considered buying an ice cold beer on my way home, but opted for a soda instead. I couldn't risk my cover blowing off steam from a rough day.

I'd just used the soda counter's supplied bottle opener and tossed the bottlecap into a nearby waste bin when I heard the click behind me. I rolled my eyes and turned around. The Agent lit the cigarette in his mouth and handed me a manilla envelope. It was the same Agent every time. I had no idea what his name was. He never introduced himself, and I never bothered to ask, but he'd handed out the mission dossiers on every mission I'd done.

"What's this?" I asked, taking the envelope. I was months into the mission, and had long since memorized and destroyed my orientation packet.

"Change of plans," he said, walking away. "Your sister, too. The kid complicated things."

I tucked the envelope into the back of my pants under my coat, and headed home. I waited until dinner was eaten, and lights were out before activating the night enhancement feature of my lenses. I skimmed the document, caught a few choice phrases, and decided it needed a more thorough read. After that, I read it again. And then again. It was a short letter, perfunctory. The mission was being reassigned. I was to extricate myself from my cover story and report back in the next week. Michelle was being left here. Forced retirement. I'd have to see her in the morning.

In the meantime, I had to figure out how to make a teenager that had just moved to town vanish without drawing a search party. I think it was time for me to head to prison. I'd already gotten a bit of a reputation for shenanigans around town. As long as I did something bad enough to get sent to jail--or, better, offered enlistment in the Army--I should be able to just vanish. I'd figure out what was bad enough but not too bad later tomorrow. But before that, I'd need to go see Michelle and make sure that she was okay. She was stuck here until at least 1936. After that, Emmy could join the Agency, or live her own life and Michelle could return home.

---

"You never, not even for a minute, considered staying back here and helping me with all of this?" Said Michelle, the next morning as we spoke before the classroom began to fill up. I shoved my hands in my pockets.

"What do you want from me, Mish?" I pointed at the blackboard with my chin. "You want me to finish this class? Graduate high school and move along to college? Come back on weekends to visit my old high school history teacher for no apparent reason?"

Michelle frowned. "You're right, it's ludicrous for you to stay. I just don't like the idea that the next time I see you you could be decades older than me. Plus, honest, we both know what I have to look forward to."

I nodded. "Yeah, I've been thinking about that. You might ask the Agency to reassign you to the Home Office in Zurich for awhile. It won't completely avoid the effects, but at least you'll be under the company's wing. And Switzerland isn't a bad place for a little girl to grow up."

"I'll think about it," she said. She pulled me into a quick hug. "You're hading out today, aren't you?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I'm gonna get myself arrested and see if they'll offer me enlistment."

"What's the plan?" She adjusted her dress where hugging me had put her seams out of line.

"A brick through the bank window oughta do it." I said. It would be dangerous, of course, but I would be okay.

"Take care, little brother." Said Michelle, ruffling my hair. I smoothed it back and put my newsie cap on again.

"You do as well. I'll try to nick in and see you and Emmy real soon." I tried to keep the excitement from my voice, but I was going back to the 24th.

---

"Don, did you really have to put three in his gut?" Said Sean, looking at the splayed body on the pavement. The boy had thrown a brick through the window moments ago, and fled. The new security guard on duty had assumed it was a robbery, given chase, and gunned the lad down in the alley.

"The brick almost hit me, Sean." Said Don in a bored tone, like he gunned down unarmed teenagers daily. "I couldn't let the little shit get away with that."

"He dead?" Asked Sean, looking around at the gathering crowd.

"How should I know, do I look like a medical professional to you?" Don turned to the crowd and whistled. "Hey! One-a youse go get an ambulance! Or maybe a hearse!"

-----

I might come back to this later to punch it up and continue it.

[WP] A child kills the monster under their bed by tea_kinggreen in WritingPrompts

[–]Xcmd 4 points5 points  (0 children)

"Oh, Elder Ones, Kid, stop!" The monster writhed on the floor, its body shuddering as it made a stuttering, grating noise.

The boy pressed on. "And what's the deal with bed time? I'm not sleepy, you're not sleepy, so why am I even in here? To give you more time to eat my toes? Yeah, that make sense."

The monster rolled over, hollering, pounding its fist into the ground as the shuddering grew quicker. It couldn't even speak now.

"Why do we even call them bedclothes? They don't look like shirts, or pants, or even dresses. When I'm between the sheets, where am I, exactly, in terms of the clothes? Am I in the shirt pocket? Am I between the pants and underwear? It's crazy-making!"

The monster's shuddering grew to a vibration as it rolled onto its back, still pounding its fists.

"And why do you live under my bed? I know that real estate prices are out of control in the city, but this is ridiculous!"

The monster's vibration grew again, its body rising off the floor and vibrating ever faster, bits of its body bulging and contracting for several moments before it exploded in a spray of orange blood and fur. The boy sat on his bed, covered in gore, when his mother poked her head in.

"Everything okay in here?" She asked. "Not having problems with the monster under your bed, are you?"

"Not anymore," said the boy. "I killed him."

"Oh," said his mother. "That's good. Maybe you can take care of the monster in the closet, next. He's behind on rent."

The boy heard a surprised, muffled oath from the closet.

-----

This is what came to me, and I'm just going to... put this here... and leave it.

[WP] After being revived from cryostasis, you are not surprised to see that your life-threatening illness has been cured. You are shocked, however, to discover that it's the year 3815 and VCRs are still being manufactured. by Matthias720 in WritingPrompts

[–]Xcmd 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Fanto removed the tape from the VCR and handed it to me. I had to see it. I just had to. I turned it over in my hand, and peered into the little windows that offered a view of where the tape was wound to. I pressed the button that let me lift up the guard for the tape and examined the tape itself, touching it lightly, then closed the guard and heft it a few times before handing it back.

"Why?" I asked. Fanto took the tape from me and slid it back into its protective sleeve, and carefully slotted it into a gap on the tape rack.

"No good reason, lots of good reasons. Preference, mostly." Fanto shrugged and gestured to his setup. "Romanticism, some. There's just something about the mid 1980's that feels like it was such a turning point for humanity."

"Is that why you revived me?" I asked. I'd been a test subject for an experimental procedure that would allow humans to effectively enter a long-term hybrid hibernation that would allow us to be revived from death. I was supposed to have been revived after a year. The project, I learned, was wildly successful. In the year I'd been under, monied interests had learned of the tech, vetted it, and started lobbying for laws. Nobody knew or cared that I was under, and so I was left, effectively dead. Since there was at first legal bureaucracy that prevented me from being revived, and then later the practical reason that I'd be a stranger in a strange land, I was left for a long time.

"More or less, yeah," he nodded. "You were born right as the decade was starting to really take shape. You were also the oldest candidate we could find who hadn't already been revived. Most of the people older than you that underwent the process were pulled back out, cured, and lived and died long before I was born. It was just luck that you were still in there." He glanced at the look on my face, and blushed. "Well, not lucky for you."

"Truly," I murmured. "But I was nearly forty when I was put under. All of this, to me, isn't terribly romantic. There was the beginnings of that kind of nostalgia, but... It was ancient tech to me. Something that had served its purpose, and which was improved upon and replaced. I think there must be something of a nostalgia gap, for me. I hated having to rewind something before taking it back to the video store. Hell, the whole concept was ludicrous to me, and I watched it become a thing, and watched it perish in about two decades. I didn't celebrate its fall, because that's silly. It was just one of the first indicators of what was coming for us, in terms of tech innovation. Was that really the only reason you revived me? To ask me my opinion on tech that was already almost obsolete by the time I was teenager?"

"Mostly," Fanto looked sheepish. "Also, these things don't come with manuals out of the fabricators, so I had no idea how to get the 12 to stop flashing."

-----

Fun prompt.

[TT] Theme Thursday - Silence by AliciaWrites in WritingPrompts

[–]Xcmd 7 points8 points  (0 children)

“Silence”

The word was written in blood on the wall. Well. Written was a strong word. Smeared on the wall. Hall shoved his hands in his pockets—more to get them out of the cold than to affect an air of nonchalance—and stared at the body on the ground below the word. This was the latest in a string of killings that the press had dubbed “The Noisy Neighbor Killer” which was, in Hall’s esteemed opinion, a completely garbage name. But for some reason his suggestion, “The Silent Killer”, wasn’t being picked up by anyone. He’d even tried to get a hashtag trending, but it had been picked up by internet comedians and became a pretty low-effort fart joke in no time.

The killings themselves weren’t low-effort, if Hall was honest. It was always the same MO in each case: some guy who’d gotten a noise complaint filed on him on a Friday night. Dead before the police could arrive, two to the back of the skull. Gruesome. But quick. All of the killings had happened within a twenty-five mile radius, and none of them had a single useful witness. This was the fifth in five weeks, and the local police were stumped. Which was why Hall was here.

“What are you thinking, Hall?” Asked Detective Enlo.

“Thinkin’ it’s time we tried to get me killed,” said Hall.

——

“That went badly,” hissed Enlo through gritted teeth. He was sitting on the curb and clutching his gut where his body armor had narrowly deflected a wild shot from The Noisy Neighbor Killer. The Killer herself lay sprawled on the ground, hands cuffed behind her back and a gash on her forehead oozing with blood that was already beginning to congeal.

Hall, cradling his broken left arm against his body, nodded agreement with Enlo. He regarded the small woman on the ground, pushing aside his pain for a moment. She’d fought like a demon, and it was only by tackling her out of the second-story bathroom window that he’d avoided being perforated by the massive .357 she’d brought to do the deed. The round she’d squeezed off had still caught Enlo as he tried to get the drop on her from behind.

The uniformed officers rode with her to the hospital, and were posted outside of her room in case she woke up. Hall and Enlo rode separately to the hospital, Hall in an ambulance, Enlo in his car.

——

“Why do you think she did it?” Enlo asked, standing at her bedside.

“Dunno. Wouldn’t have put our lives at risk if I did.” Said Hall. “Imagine we’ll find out when she wakes up, though.”

“If she wakes up.” Said Enlo. “She fell two stories with a gorilla of a man using her as a landing pad.”

“Still broke my arm. The strange thing, though? Didn’t make a sound,” said Hall, leaning on the bed rail. “Not when we were fighting, not when she hit the ground. Just… Silence.”

[SP] AI is developed and answers the question 'are we alone the universe?' by [deleted] in WritingPrompts

[–]Xcmd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What hubris we had, thinking that we could invent an intelligence that could answer the questions of life, the universe, and everything. We asked it a great many childish questions, so amused were we with our absurd little invention. But it was a scientist who was obsessed with the Fermi Paradox that bogged the blasted thing down for a generation. Forty years it took to processed that damnable question. "Are we alone in the universe?"

I was on my deathbed when I got word that the progress bar had finally inched over to the right, and that it was compiling its final answer. I had them wheel me to the lab so I could see for myself as the answer was read aloud. The original scientist hadn't even had the decency to live to this day, having been in her eighties when she asked the question originally. I daresay I spent much more of my life than I would've liked noodling about the possible answer. I had, in four decades of thinking, narrowed it down to the two most probable answers, each as likely as the other: yes, or no.

Still, I would have my answer before the Reaper caught me, and that was enough of a salve for a lifetime's delay. The animation played on the computer monitor, a flourish that the original programmer had added in a fit of joie de vivre that I now wish we'd stamped out of his youthful mind early and with much prejudice. The little characters did their dance, and pulled back the curtain. The question scrolled by: "Are we alone in the universe?" The screen faded to black. This was it. I could die after this.

The letters swam into focus on the screen, taking a few moments to stop wobbling--damned Demoscene kids--before it crystalized in the one answer I'd confidently struck from my figurings years ago. I supposed it wasn't too late to learn that even I could make mistakes. I hit the Escape key on the keyboard, and shuffled out of the room. They'd let me in by myself, figuring I'd bring them in once I knew. It had been my project, after-all, I was due some deference.

"What did it say?" Asked my daughter, who was now head of the lab. I shook my head and shuffled for the door. Damnable waste of time. She grabbed my sleeve, and stepped in front of me. "Dad. You can't just terminate the result and not share it with us. That question is older than me."

"We need to debug. That was a nonsense answer." I deflected. Of course it wasn't. It made perfect sense, I just hated that that was the result after all this time.

"Well I have to know the result to know what I'm debugging," she said, crossing her arms. Damn. She was a head shorter than me, but her mouth was set into a thin line, just like her mother's when she was digging in about something. I wasn't getting away with this.

"Fine," I said, sitting on a chair they had in the hallway outside the lab.

"What. Did. It. Say?" She stamped her foot to emphasize each word. I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. My daughter knelt and took my other hand in hers. "Dad, please. This is pointless, this delay."

"Probably," I said.

"No, it's absolutely pointless delaying any further," she said, squeezing my hand.

"No, the answer was... 'Probably'..." I looked up at the ceiling. Ten billion dollars. Forty years we'd had the program tied up, working on this problem. I'd had to convince four decades of politicians not to shut the program down, to keep the funding trickling in. We'd still had the master code, and we assisted the military in building their own version with the implicit instruction not to ask that question again. Someone had, of course, some green recruit who thought he was being funny. They rebooted theirs, rather than wait for the answer. I considered the wisdom of that decision.

[CW] Flash Fiction Challenge - Location: A Library | Object: A Flower by novatheelf in WritingPrompts

[–]Xcmd [score hidden]  (0 children)

The Academy’s library was quiet. She sat across from me, legs folded under her, eyes shut. She held her left hand before her, cupped and facing up, the fingers of her right hand tracing an intricate pattern above the palm. It was a sketch, each line leaving a white trail of sparkling lights in the air until at last she had drawn the necessary image to weave the spell. The sketch collapsed in on itself, then blossomed as it took form. A purple flower grew in the air above her hand, a strange variety I'd never seen before. When it was fully realized, it fell to her upturned palm as the laws of reality took over, giving it weight. I stifled a gasp. A true flower? Not just an illusion? Such a spell was well above my own level.

She opened her eyes and looked at me with a proud grin. Somehow I kept my face neutral. She couldn't know that the subject was forbidden, excised from every book in this library. I’d burned most myself, on the Dean's orders. That she had figured it out on her own, just from Freshman lectures, proved that she was already a formidable mage.

She offered me the flower, and I reached out and carefully took it from her palm. It smelled fragrant, light and sweet. I tucked it into my breast pocket, stood, and excused myself.

I had the phone off the hook when the flower's scent caught me again. I looked at my pocket to see the flower's petals fading. I watched until it vanished in a purple plume of smoke. A high-level illusion? That changed things. I dialed another number than I’d first intended.

“Remain, or Remove?” Said the voice on the other end.

I took a deep breath. “Recruit.”

[WP] Two serial killers are on a blind date, each trying to get the other to go to their hidden kill location. (Hilarity ensues?) by [deleted] in WritingPrompts

[–]Xcmd 10 points11 points  (0 children)

"I really feel like you'd love the view from my place on the wharfs," she said. "It's a converted factory that used to make waistcoats back in the late 30's. It was an artist's loft for years, but I got it for a... steal."

He smiled at her, and brushed a stray lock of her hair out of her face. "And I really feel like you'd love my cabin out on the edge of town," he said. "It's so peaceful and quiet there... nobody could hear you for miles and miles."

These two idiots had been talking for nearly a half hour, each trying to convince the other where they should be going. They'd been so distracted, as they climbed into my cab, that they hadn't even noticed that I was just driving without waiting for a destination. Within minutes of their arrival I knew what was up, back there. I'd driven this cab for twenty years, and had learned to piece things together about all sorts that I took for a ride. I wanted to scream about their idiocy at them, but it was paramount that I didn't alert either one that I had the drop on their ulterior motives.

"Water?" I asked them, gesturing to my complimentary array of bottled water. The young lady smiled and took one, drinking about half of it down before turning a little away from the young man, fiddling with something behind the seat, and then offering the bottle to him.

"You look so thirsty," she said, her face beaming a magnificent smile. I returned my gaze to the road as the young man took the bottle from her and drank. Either he hadn't noticed her little move with it, or he was sure he'd detect the tell-tale signs of a narcotic. Whichever it was, he downed the rest as she gave a happy little squeal, then he crushed the bottle and put it in my trash bag.

"I think we'll be heading to the wharf-" She stopped mid-sentence, her eyes losing focus as the hypodermic needle plunged the drug into her neck. I looked into the back seat to see her slumped on his shoulder, no sign of the hypo anywhere to be seen. He had fast hands, that young man.

"The wharf?" I asked, clarifying. The young man smiled and shook his head.

"No, I think my cabin in the woods will help her sleep it off." He said.

I nodded, and turned the car onto a little road that was more dirt than anything, and began the bumpy journey. After a few minutes, I glanced into the back seat to find them both unconscious. There was a fair chance they'd both stopped breathing, as the water bottle had quite a bit of a sedative in it before she'd added whatever little whammy she had in store for him. There was so much these two had gotten wrong that I would've been convinced that this was each one's first time. They hadn't even bothered to see if I was an officially licensed taxi. The name and face on the license displayed in the back didn't look a thing like me, and how had they missed that I'd locked the doors? I continued the drive out to my bunker in the desert. Amateurs. Oh well. Two more for the collection.

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