InterNutter

Indie writer seeks audience with an audience. Paying customers welcome. [pronouns: ze/hir] Daily free stories happen because it is an excellent counter to Writers' Block.

Burpengary East http://www.cmweller.com 12609 posts

Challenge #01382-C287: More Than Ductape

I needa! The perpetual cry of the (a) attempting to make/fix something. (b) Person hitting the twice a year Trade Show. -- Knitnan

Humans were amazing. Most Galactics reached the stars and harvested society for new ideas. Humans did the same, but then they warped those ideas further and made new and frightening things with them.

The most terrifying introduction to Galactic Society was ductape. Humans couldn't agree if it was 'duct tape' or 'duck tape', so Galactics compromised and made it one, universal word. Which the humans gleefully adopted.

Most humans could solve a great deal of problems with a roll of ductape and some wire. And what they couldn't solve with either of those... they had a reputation for solving with explosions.

This is the species that invented the immunoflu[1].

Therefore, Galactics are used to seeing a human approaching a problem with a roll of ductape and a chain of paperclips.

And it was some surprise to the crew of the investigatory exploration ship, The Alice[2] to see their ship's human retreat from the problem and mutter, "I need a three-eighth's gripley wrench." They stalked back in with the object in question.

Some clangs, swearing and another emergence. "Spline actuator fridget. I need a spline actuator fridget!"

The crew gathered to observe. Murmurs were exchanged concerning potential explosions. The human seemed to be happy, which was always a sign of trouble. They kept making, "Aha!" noises. Which could mean anything between, "I've found it," and "Now I've got you, you bastard."

The human emerged again. "BINGLETHRIPPER," the announced with a snap of their rubbery fingers. And then they went back in with the very human war cry of, "One of us is gonna die, and it ain't gonna be me!"

There was the inevitable muffled explosion. A cascade of metal things falling from their appointed place, including the circular one that always went off in its own direction. Then the human emerged, partially on fire, with its insult fingers raised at the problem. "GOTCHA! GOTCHA YER BASTARD! GET OUTTA THAT! HA!" They noticed their crew members. "IT'S FIXED," they said. "GOTTA GO TO SICK BAY I GOT THIS RINGING IN MY EARS AND I CAN'T HEAR A THING. OH, AND THERE'S A BIT OF A FIRE."

Humans. Can't live with them, and can't isolate them in a relatively empty area of space with heavy armaments protecting the rest of the universe from their presence.

[1] Faced with never curing the common cold, humanity tamed the virus and put it to work by spreading vaccine seeds wherever it roamed. Immunisation is no longer a matter of choice, and those against injections can acquire their immunity as naturally as they please.

[2] Other species don't always 'get' giving their vessels names, but humans insist on it. They try, and sometimes, they fail.

(Muse food remaining: 17. Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories! Or comment below!)

Maybe today...

I didn't get to half of what I wanted to get done. Part of my brain was really thirsting to do some Minecraft, I guess. Procrastination helps the mind re-set and lets it rest between emergencies, and therefore it is a good thing. In moderation.

I'm making myself get to all those little side-projects, today. All those tiny five-minute tasks that end up taking two hours and all the patience you have to spare. Sooner started, sooner done, and all that associated

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Challenge #01381-C286: Hell's Rowdy Neighbour

Here in Aussie high school students celebrate end of 12 years education by one week called "Schoolies" often followed by hangovers, regrets, and long explanations to parents. The Media have a field day. -- Anon Guest

The music was so loud that it was incomprehensible. The crowds were so thick that movement was next to impossible. Most of the people present weren't wearing very much at all. The air was thick with a miasma of alcohol, hormones, and a not-so-subtle tincture of

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...sigh

Beloved stayed up later than they should have, last night. As a result, I've had my first sideways morning for a majority of a week.

BUT... the house is not in chaos, I have plans to tidy up one of my piles, and I have other plans to do some minor fixes for costume parts for Halloween.

What I really have to do is hurry up with this blog, today's Instant, and the thousand words I usually do on Fridays so that

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Challenge #01380-C285: Not a Joke

And so the Princess kissed the frog, and the Prince laughed because, How did she fall for that!?! -- OohLookShiny

The Princess Orinoco glared at the Prince as he laughed so hard that he fell out of the tree he'd been hiding in.

The frog in her hands said, "He promised he'd release my family... Please forgive me."

Princess Orinoco carefully put the frog down by the pond, drew her knife, and marched over to the laughing Prince. His laughter cut short

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Anti-entropy

The house is starting to look firkin fantastic. The kitchen countertops only need a little bit done, the bathroom's gorgeous. We start our day with the beds being made.

Today, I'm talking with the school dental van about braces for Miss Chaos. Something that's happening in TWENTY MINUTES.

Yikes.

I'm also doing some minor and major futzing to get Chaos' costume done. This is going to include some shopping at Jaycar later on. The dollar shop light I got only does red.

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Challenge #01378-C283: Heavenly Host

http://callmegallifreya.tumblr.com/post/151095300715/deliverusfromsburb-gods-falling-in-love-with The god that adopts a ton of kids

1) In the beginning. Stupid mistakes, awkward moments, working out what to do and what to tell the kid

2) Later. There's a horde of them, some of them have grown up and left but there's always more that need help. -- Anon Guest

[AN: this puts the gap count down to TWO]

1)

Hestatus, God of home and hearth, used to be a minor god. And

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Ridding the house of time vampires

Anyone who does housework knows what time vampires are. You want to work on the hobby, but you have to do this bit or that bit of housework that just sucks your time away.

Well, Mt Laundry now has its last load in the machine and I am waving farewell to that set of time vampires. Now I should have more time to deal with mental health and Halloween costumes and assorted whatnot that has been biding its time until I finally

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Challenge #01377-C282: Soul Mate Counselling

http://jupiterjames.tumblr.com/post/148863222746/

I love reading fics about OTPs having mental bonds and things like that, but they’re always so profound. It’d be so much more entertaining if they still thought like normal people. Imagine this stuff:

“You’ve had that song stuck in your head for days. It’s driving me nuts, too.”

“Why are you making a grocery list in your head while we’re having sex?”

“Is that really what you think about my

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Living in the procrasti-nation

The scary thing about my levels of procrastination is that Beloved is worse. I've procrastinated doing my daily duties by writing the starting paragraphs of a book that I'm not due to start until 2018. I love the concept and it's so shiny. I had the perfect starter sentence and I could not resist setting a scene.

Of course, since the Mou editor is slower than frozen molasses, I started editing in my old friend, TextWrangler.

Everything old is new again.

I've

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Challenge #01376-C281: Everything? Everything!

"I'm gonna eat everything!"

"Please don't, we'll be kicked out."

"Everything." -- OohLookShiny

There is just one reaction that newcomers have when entering an Unsuitable Food restaurant. Many newcomers have come from planets founded by people with ideals. Or from planets where entire species failed to flourish. And one human settlement survived with stone-age technology, an extremely limited diet, and ritualistic cannibalism, before the Alliance found them.

Faced with the abundance of all the foods of all the Alliance in every possible,

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Ow ow ow ow ow...

Beloved has a day off Mondays, because working on Saturdays is a thing during the Melbourne Cup wind-up. This, I thought, would be a prime opportunity to get them to adhere to the rest of the house's rules.

No.

Such.

Luck.

Beloved had a great case of persistent inertia and gave me the Irrits. Which culminated in a crescendo of me yelling about all the things that Beloved does to piss me the fuck off.

Good news - cleaning the gritty bits

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Challenge #01375-C280: Needing Hands

Breathing bodies is a term for people, not necessarily qualified who can be used for tasks that free up more qualified people(@) - third hands? Well humans have only two, but some people are quite good at being a third hand when needed.(*)

(@) example "here, put your hand on this and yell if it gets hot."

(*) "Hold this steady while I tighten the coupling up." And there are times when they are invaluable. -- Knitnan

[AN: Footnotes in prompts are NOT a

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How I eat cake and lose weight too

It's not easy and it's not fun, but oh, how the cake is worth it.

I'm currently using a diet app called Easy Diet Diary to keep track of how much I eat, and how many kilojoules I consume. My goal for safe dieting, according to the app, is eight thousand kilojoules.

On an average day, I make it up to around eighty percent of that noise. One slice of cake is roughly a third of my allotted kilojoules.

Therefore, the rest

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Challenge #01374-C279: Three Things They Did Wrong and One Thing They Did Right

http://khaleesijade.tumblr.com/post/150856878533/agentquinn-sepulchritude-my-fav-trope-is -- Anon Guest

Understanding humans is a difficult business. Gallusians, one of the earliest Galactic species to hire their services, know this better than most.

Kru'ku, designated companion/guide of the exploration vessel Tikavi, wrote what many consider to be the first guide centred around the proper care and handling of humans. Their work encapsulates years of research, anecdotal evidence, assumptions, and quite a large amount of wild guesses.

For a seminal work, it is

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