Archive | January 2013

Laziness as an art form

Jan18

For @cluudle’s prompt

The halls were dark. Something was howling in the distance. Something else was screaming.

Roanna was doing a decent job of holding it together. She’d grabbed the hand of the nearest classmate she could find, and they were moving calmly and meticulously through the darkness. Roanna had a flashlight in her free hand; Tamberlain had a long wooden stick in his off hand.

“Look, the stairs should be right around…” Suddenly, she couldn’t move. Panic, totally inexplicable terror, gripped her and wouldn’t let go.

“Ro? Ro? Shit, Ro, run!” Tamberlain, still gripping her hand, starting following his own advice, and, in the process, dragging her along.

Her frozen legs finally responded, and Roanna started running, too, as fast as she could. Something was wrong. Something was really, really wrong.

They saw the other two kids – Zuleyma and Merton, people they knew from class – running their way, but not in time to stop. They skidded, instead, heels dragging into the carpet.

Something hit their faces, first, and their outstretched free hands, something sticky and grabby. By the time they came to a full stop, their whole bodies were ensnared.

The panic released them as, behind them, someone started chuckling. “Panic trap. I love it.” A hand settled on Roanna’s shoulder. She couldn’t move her face to look, but she could see, in front of her, Zuleyma’s freaked-out expression. Her heart was still pounding, too, like it was trying to claw its way out of her chest.

“What?” The sticky stuff grabbed even at her lips, making speaking tricky.

“Panic trap. It makes you, well, panic.” There was another hand on her ass, very gently resting there. “And then, of course, my web. I hardly have to do any work at all.”

“…Why?”

“You’ll see. Now, all of you, just say the magic words, and I’ll let you go. The web is acidic; it’s already trying to digest you, so I’d talk fast.

“Please?” Zuleyma tried.

“Not those words. ‘I belong to you, Segenam.’ Those words.” The voice was still chuckling. And Roanna’s face was starting to sting.

Next:
Laziness X4.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/455808.html. You can comment here or there.

Shows Promise, a story of Science! for the Giraffe Call

Jan18

For [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s prompt.

Science! has a landing page here

“U…”

“If he says ‘Eureka,’ I’m going to kill him and save the boss the trouble.” Cara’s low mutter only carried as far as her partner’s ears, and he was prone to agree with her. Some people just gave mad science a bad name.

“…guys have got to see this.” Archibald Antipone had promise, at least from Cara and Alex’s point of view. He did good work, reasonably, and didn’t tend to cackle to himself or throw things. He had yet to invent a sentient anything and he could, unlike most of their new hires, actually socialize to save his life.

It might save his life, around her. Usually the guards shot indiscriminately because they were pretty certain none of the scientists were actually human.

“Got to see what?” Cara carefully closed down her workstation and locked her case, leaving her intern Martin to finish his half of the project.

“We’ve got to call the boss, first.”

“No, no.” Alex shook his head. “Let us check things first. Trust me, you don’t want to get the boss involved before his first cup of coffee.”

“Well… all right. Look at this.”

“It looks like…” Cara frowned. “Hrrm. Your degree is in retromechanics, isn’t it?”

“My first doctorate.” He nodded distractedly; he was still tinkering with some long length of copper tubing. “My second is in sociology; it’s how I got this position. And now!” He came up, pointing another long tube at the two of them. The end of it flared into some sort of funnel.

Cara reached for the disintegrator she always carried at her hip; Alex’s fingers danced a warning pattern on his invisible keyboard. “Put the weapon down, Archie. We don’t want to hurt you.”

“Weapon?” He laughed. Not a cackle, thank the formulae. Just a laugh. “No, no. This is no weapon. It’s a sin detector.”

“A… sin…”

“Detector! Yes. See, looking at you, Cara, I can see that you have engaged in…”

Cara and Alex added murder to their sins before he finished the sentence, and swept up the dust before Liam had finished his coffee. “Sin detector.” Alex tch’d. “And I thought he had such potential.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/455540.html. You can comment here or there.

The Second Restriction

Jan17

For Rix_Scaedu‘s prompt.

Thanks to @Skysailor99 for the country & god names.

“There’s a problem with the second restriction.”

The country of Foros had a lot of gods, and, like any good nation with a lot of gods, it had a lot of priests.

Several dozen of them were, at the moment, staring at their holiest of holy oracles.

The oracles were not supposed to say things like that. They weren’t, for one things, supposed to be capable of that much coherence. The ones who could hear the god Eralon – or any of the gods, but Eralon liked to talk the most – they tended to go mad very quickly. And the rest could be induced to simulate madness with the right smoke.

The Lesser High Priest of the Evening was the first to recover. “Ye who is blessed with the voice of the gods, ye who sees the truth to save us weaker vessels from that which would break us, say again, please?”

The oracle looked at the Lesser High Priest of the Evening. He was a clever man, brighter than his superiors, and did not flinch when he felt the eyes of divinity looking back at him. “The second restriction of Eralon. There is a problem with it.”

Eralon, of all of their myriad gods, had given them the most stringent restrictions and the most elaborate requirements. “Oh voice of the gods, please tell us what the problem is, that we might correct it.”

He had never been all that fond of the second restriction, after all. Several of the others made sense, and, of those that didn’t actively help make Foros a better place, only the second and the seventh seemed to make it worse.

“It’s wrong.” Her eyes rolled back in her head, and when they focused on the Lesser High Priest of the Evening again, the oracle’s gaze – and her voice – were her own again. “It’s not a restriction at all. The girl who relayed it just had an allergy to frogs.”

The temple erupted into shouting. Showing wisdom that would probably save his life on more occasions than this one, the Lesser High Priest of the Evening grabbed the oracle and the duty scribe, and got them both out of the temple before someone could erase this conversation from the records.

Possibly someone with an allergy to frogs. Or someone with a bridge-making business.

Eralon Explains

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/455232.html. You can comment here or there.

Giraffe Mini-Call Three: 7 Deadly Sins

Jan17

Today’s Giraffe Call Theme is 7 Deadly Sins

The Call for Prompts is now Open, and will remain so for about an hour!

The call is “closed,” but the first commenter each in DW and LJ after this point can sneak in a prompt! (after me on LJ, after Clare on DW)

Leave one or many prompts, and I will write (over the next week) at least one microfic (150-500 words) to each prompter (prompts may be combined)

Prompts can be related to one of my extant settings (See my landing page-landing page) or they can be for something completely different.

Prompting is free! But Donations are always welcome.

For each $5 you donate, I will write an additional 500 words to the prompt(s) of your choice.

If I get two new prompters or one new donator, I will write a setting piece (setting chosen by poll) explaining something about the prompts.

Because this is a mini-Call, there will be mini-perks!

* For every $15 donated, one prompter chosen at random will get an extra fic written – Got to two!
* For every $30 donated, one random prompter will get a 500-word continuation. – Got to one!
* Every-$60 level open for suggestions!!

Incentives will carry over the three mini-calls in January.


Words
500 $5.00 USD
750 $7.50 USD
1000 $10.00 USD
1250 $12.50 USD
1500 $15.00 USD
1750 $17.50 USD
2000 $20.00 USD

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/454952.html. You can comment here or there.

Mini Giraffe Calls Day Two

Jan17

Yesterday’s Theme was Transitions, and a little over an hour, I received five prompts:

Falling (LJ) (misc. May be Fairy Town)
Lab Rats (DW) Tír na Cali
Strange Favors (LJ) – from the December Giraffe Call, Addergoole Yr16 (this one doesn’t count, but I wrote it in the last day)
Teaching for the Future (LJ) – unknown Apoc ‘verse
Transfer of Power (DW) Addergoole: the next Generation
Into the Doorway (LJ) – Facets of Dusk

edited to add: An An Unnamed fragment

The last Giraffe Call of this month will be up in about half an hour! Stay Tuned!

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/454674.html. You can comment here or there.

Falling

Jan17

For [personal profile] kelkyag‘s prompt

I remember falling.

They’ll tell you I can’t have possibly remembered anything. They’ll tell you that I was too young.

They’ll tell you there wasn’t any falling involved. It was a one-story house, and the windows were low to the ground.

But then again, how did a 2-year-old survive when nobody else did?

I’ve never wondered.

They’ll tell you that was because I was too young to have formed attachments. They’ll tell you that’s because I don’t really remember my family.

They’re going to tell you a lot of shit about me. And you’re going to listen, aren’t you? Because you’re the grown-ups. And I’m a kid.

But I remember falling. I remember the first fall. The second fall. I remember every. Single. Time.

They put me on a train at the end of the autumn. Comes this time every year. The families can handle me in the spring, in the summer. But when the leaves start to change, they get nervous.

I can’t say I blame them. All they have to go on is stories, after all. Whispers. The things that they’re told, the lies that they’re fed to comfort them. But even the slimiest grown-up knows, somewhere, when they’re being lied to.

So they put me on a train. City to country. Country to burbs. Burbs to… well, where am I going this time?

And what have they told you about the fires?

I remember falling.

But I remember flying, too. The flying always comes before the falling. And the fire comes in between.

And they’ll tell you I don’t remember anything at all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/454475.html. You can comment here or there.

Lab Rat, a story of Tir na Cali for the Giraffe Call (@lilfluff)

Jan17

For [personal profile] lilfluff‘s prompt.

Tir na Cali has a landing page here.

“Engage in some scientific experimentation,” the Agency guy had said. “Earn your freedom,” they’d said. “Just two years in our scientific facility, and you can go free,” they’d promised.

They’s strapped Robert and Eric to tables, at which point they’d both started complaining.

“This isn’t what we meant by ‘experimentation.'”

“Weren’t we supposed to be lab assistants?”

“Lab assistants! We’re supposed to be helping you guys!”

The skinny ginger guy had just tightened the straps. “You are helping. Now sleep.”

The drugs had slid into their veins, pushing away the last of the panic and replacing it with sleep.

Robert woke twitching, jittering. He wasn’t tied to a table anymore. He was back in his room, back in the little cell he shared with Eric and two other lab assistants.

Lab assistants, ha. Assist by being a lab rat. What kind of freedom was that, if there wasn’t anything left of him after two years? Cancer? Was that what this was about? AIDS? Something worse?

They were in California, after all. There had to be something worse. Anybody as evil as the Californians had to have come up with some nastier disease.

He looked at his hands. They seemed to be oka… wait. Wait. Had he had that many knuckles before? Had he had white hair, no, not hair, white fur on the back of his hands before?

His ears twitched. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t right at all. And something was moving behind him. He darted, twisted, and…

“Hey!” He pounded on the door to their cell. “Hey, let me out. You got the wrong guy! I wasn’t supposed to be a lab rat! I wasn’t supposed to get a tail!!“

“You think you’ve got problems?”

Eric’s voice was wrong. Too high. Nerves? Robert turned around, slowly. He hadn’t seen Eric when he came to. He hadn’t seen…

Erica? “You think you’ve got problems?” His oldest buddy repeated him – her – self. “They just turned you into a rat. They turned me into a girl.“

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/454306.html. You can comment here or there.

Teaching for the Future, a story for the Giraffe Call

Jan17

To EllenMillion‘s prompt.

The apocalypse was the last thing I was expecting when I went back to school.

Let’s be honest, I really wasn’t expecting much of anything except an escape from reality.

I liked being a student. I was good at it, I enjoyed it, and, unlike the work world, it enjoyed me back. So, when I got sick of grunt jobs, miserably low-paying crap, and all the bullshit that went along with the Real World, I went back to college. No better way to get out of planning for the future, right?

You’d think that being a Perpetual Student would have ill-prepared me for the apocalypse, but, as it turned out, you’d be wrong. I like learning, too, you see. And classes only fill so much of your time. And college campuses are full of people who like to teach you things.

All of which combined to turn me into sort of a post-apocalyptic Jane of All Trades.

Step One: Fail at the Real World. Check.

Step Two: Drop back into college with a vengeance. Check.

Step Three: End of the world. Check.

The Botany department has a cabin out past the edge of the town where they do field studies. By the time the armies overran the town, I was already out there, with two Botany students and a pre-med guy who tagged along.

We did some shopping first, of course, and then some more shopping, afterwards. It’s interesting the things people will leave behind when they’re panic-shopping. It’s interesting how much use you can get out of those things.

Now the four of us are running a school. It amuses me, a little, that I’ve gone from real-world dropout to teacher, but those that remain need a lot of teaching. And they have a lot to teach, too, or they wouldn’t have made it through the first three passes.

Everyone takes turns, teacher and student. And everyone – everyone – takes notes.

We’re planning for the future, here, after all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/454050.html. You can comment here or there.

Strange Favors

Jan16

For [personal profile] imaginaryfiend‘s commissioned continuation of A Couple Helping Hands and Littermate

That yelp. That sound. It wasn’t human, wasn’t barely alive-sounding, but she knew it. She’d know her brother anywhere. Cúmhaí peeled off the last hand holding her, and, when it wouldn’t move, started breaking fingers, fast and nasty, until the hand vanished.

“Nobody touches my brother. Nobody. Touches. My. Brother.” She could feel everyone in the room and, what was more, she could feel how much of the creature fighting her was illusion and misdirection. She dove straight for his center of mass, right there, and below there was where the Beagle had already tenderized the bastard…

She was rewarded with a long screaming yowl. “No-one hurts my brother, damn you.” She snarled it at the whole room, at the bastard growling at her and pretending she hadn’t just added injury to injury, and at the three others she could feel, even if she couldn’t see. “And I’ll kill every goddamned one of you if I have to, to prove it.”

“Never let it be said there is not some honor among the wolves, miss Pup.” The voice was nearly part of the wall, and when she tried to look in that direction, it hurt her head. “Take your brother. Nobody will stop you, as long as you go directly to Dr. Caitrin’s.”

Begley. She felt for him with her power, and found him hidden in a pool of shadow, barely breathing, not moving at all. “Beagle.” People with back injuries shouldn’t be moved. Leaving him here was not an option.

“Gods who’ve come and gone blast it all, Beagle, why are you not moving?” She was going to have to pick him up. She was going to have to carry him. “Fuck it all, Begley John, wake up.”

But he wasn’t waking up, so she picked him up, as carefully as she could. “Invisible voice?”

“I am watching your passage, Miss Pup.”

When the voice spoke, she could feel where he was. She carefully didn’t look that way.

“Where’s Dr. Caitrin’s, from here?”

The voice chuckled. Another time, that might have irritated Cúmhaí. Right now, she would take it. She could feel the others, and she had a hunch the invisible voice was holding them off. “Walk straight forward until you reach a fork. Turn left there, and the continue until the stairs. Upstairs should be clearer and more obvious.”

She’d already started walking. Manners, a voice in her head whispered. Her brother? Maybe. Once upon a time, he’d been her big brother. “Thank you, invisible voice.”

“When your brother has been tended to, Miss Pup, then you and I may have a talk. But not before.”

“You little shit. All of you little shits. I’m going to…”

“She won, Sir Thing. Let her go.”

“She didn’t win, Begley-shit cheated.”

“Defending your crew is never cheating, or your Marthin would never win anything. Let. Her Go.”

In the echoes of that conversation, Cúmhaí followed Invisible’s directions. Forward, and keep going until she got to a fork. She showed teeth every time she felt someone get near, and growled if they came within touching distance. Nobody tried to stop her. Nobody got in her way.

She wasn’t sure if that was her, truly, or the shadow she could feel following them. There were times when she felt someone get yanked away, times when she heard a hiss of “do not touch them.”

She might have to pay the piper when they were done, but she’d worry about that then. Right now, she had a Beagle to take care of.

“Damnit, Midget.”

~

“Damnit, Midget.” It was like being home again. Begley opened his eyes to his sister’s frowning face. They were moving, he realized, no, she was moving and he was being carried in her arms.

“Nice to see you, too.” His voice was thinner than he meant it to be. “Where are we?”

“About twenty feet from the doctor’s office. You took your sweet time waking up.”

“Sorry, I had a case of /being thrown into a wall. How did you get away?”

“She broke every finger of Mr. Thing’s hand, and then broke some more important parts.”

He knew that voice, even if he couldn’t see it. He reached for his knife, hoping it wasn’t too late.”

“Easy.” Cúmhaí squeezed him against her chest. Begley tried not to think about that too closely. She was his sister. This might be Addergoole, but…

Bigger problems right now. “Coo, this isn’t the counter, this is the fire.”

“It looks like the doctor’s office to me. Look.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “He might take it out of me later but he’s the only reason we got past the creeps in the halls, so I’m not going to look his gift horse in its invisible mouth right now, okay?”

Later. “Shit. Coo, you didn’t agree to anything, did you?”

“I extracted no promises for my service, because I offered it unasked-for. I do have some honor, young Beagle.”

“I’m not that much younger than you, you…”

“Keep the mystery, if you would. Your sister will come looking for me soon enough. I’d appreciate there being a bit of a challenge in the looking.”

“She’s my sister. I’m not going to let you hurt her.”

His sister, looking very amused, damn her, was opening the door to the doctor’s office with her foot. “Beagle..”

“Coo, don’t call me that. Look, this is important.”

“It is.” Their invisible stalker had followed them into the doctor’s office. “Begley cy’Akinobu, I promise you these two things. First, if you respect my wish, and allow your sister to discover who I am on her own, then I will consider any debt between us for my part in her escape today to be settled.”

“You bastard, you said it was free.”

“Well, it is. But I’d appreciate if it you let me play out this little game.”

Begley sighed. “All right. I won’t tell her. But…”

“And the second half of my promise. I will not extract, nor seek to extract, through torture nor through any Working or use of magic at all, any promises or other binding words, from your sister Cúmhaí during the rest of this calendar year.”

“…” That was, Begley thought, the best he was going to get. “Why?”

“Gift horses and invisible mouths,” the voice scolded. “Suffice it to say she impressed me.”

Next: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1159682.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/453665.html. You can comment here or there. comment count unavailable

Story-Didn’t-Work Bit

Jan16

This was supposed to be to [personal profile] ellenmillion‘s Prompt, but it didn’t want to work. So here it is anywhere, while I think of what I actually want to write.

“…and that’s how you start a fire with a steel. Honestly, what do children learn these days?”

“These days? I don’t know.” Armona looked around their campsite. They had situated themselves in the back of a half-collapsed building, one with a corner of roof and two strong walls, two stories up from ground level. It was about as safe a vantage point as they could come up with, and a little bit of jury-rigging had gotten them shelter. “I think mostly they learn how to not die.”

Most of the work had been Thomas’ doing. Armona had grown up in the middle of the city. Living in the wilderness didn’t come naturally to her, and her skills at fire-making were about as good as her skills at hunting – that was to say, abysmal. She still wasn’t sure why Thomas was bothering with her.

“But before the Crisis, before the collapse. What did you learn about in school?”

“I dunno.” She’d been an indifferent student in most of her classes. “History. English. Math.”

“Algebra?”

“And trig, and calculus. Science stuff, home ec, tech.”

“Home ec? Tech?”

“Home economics. You know, cooking, that sort of thing.” She squatted by the fire and began rigging up a handle for the cans of Cambell’s she’d liberated. “Here, do you have a church key?”

“I have a knife.” He pried a hole in the can for her. “And heating cans over a fire? You learned that in ‘home ec?'”

“Where you from, anyway?”

“Long ago and far away. That doesn’t smell very good.”

“Neither did the deer thing you took down. This’s human food.” She twisted a coat hanger and used it to hold the can over the fire. “I always said school was useless.”

“And yet, here, you find yourself a student again.”

“Yeah, but this stuff is going to do me some good. Staying alive skills. Things I need.”

Continued: http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/486742.html

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/453621.html. You can comment here or there.