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Amalgam Universe

A 2291-post collection

Challenge #01387-C292: Ancient Wisdom

Measure twice, cut once, useful advice for anyone. -- Anon Guest

Rael knew he should have checked up on Shayde sooner. She had a knack for teaching new JOATs all the wrong tricks.

Chiefly: "Measure wi' micrometer, mark wi' chalk, cut wi' axe."

So, after hearing this, he simply had to barge in and defend his own honour. "The real adage, Trainee Melkith, is 'measure twice, cut once'. Ambassador Shayde labours under the misapprehension that she is funny."

"I was tellin' 'er about engineerin', thanks."

"Which is a far more refined discipline than you remember."

She laughed. "I've been watchin' some o' yer engineers, and nowt much has changed. Here, did I tell ye the one about the artist, the mathematician, and an engineer?"

Rael, though he did not, precisely, have a head, felt a headache coming on. "Madam ambassador..." he grated. "This is not open mic night at Revelry Café. Keep your... 'jokes'... to yourself."

"Listen tae him, would'ja? The stick up his butt has a stick up its butt that off an' died. Joatin' is improvisation, ye ken. Joatin' right is fixin' what the engineers got wrong."

Rael startled at this naked truth. "Shayde... you're a virtuoso at playing stupid... how did you--?"

"I worked it out an age back. And I had tae get along wi' engineers. Th' lot of 'em wanted warning lights. Over everythin'."

Trainee Melkith snorted into her work. "Kids' toys..."

"Aye, exactly. If th' posters up an' down t' hall ain't enough, no blinky light's goin' tae stop ye."

"I've seen humans go towards the blinky lights," said Trainee Melkith. "When they were asked why, they said--"

"The wanted tae see what the danger was, aye," Shayde chorused. "That's humans. Gi'e 'em a rope, they'll hang 'emselves. Gi'e 'em a wet paint sign and they'll touch it."

For once... Rael had to agree. "When did you get so cynical about your own species?"

"Eh... around age seven."

(Muse food remaining: 12. Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories! Or comment below!)

Challenge #01383-C288: Default Fix

Imagine this 'go to' item [duct tape] had been lost and then turned up on Amalgam. -- Anon Guest

[AN: FYI, the titles you use on my forum for prompts do not survive my writing process]

Once upon a time, JOATs did not know about ductape. It seems impossible, but it was not as ubiquitous as it is today. Ambassador Harry was not the only one to come into Galactic society from the impact of the Chelete ship Explorer 255 and the

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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

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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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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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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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Challenge #01372-C277: It's a Human Thing

1) Aliens being extremely confused when humans that spend any length of time in the area with the nice fashionable wallpaper become nauseous and when questioned try to explain that the patterns are moving

2) True Facts(TM) about Ghosts -- Anon Guest

[AN: This puts the gap count down to three!]

1)

The Klypt'l had done their best to be accommodating. They had refurbished any and all human artefacts into useful furniture -even comfortable furniture- for the use of their Deathworlder

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Challenge #01365-C270: Simple Message, Complex Bottle

They told us to tell you hello. Details here. Bring a box of tissues. -- RecklessPrudence

It was a constructed thing. Shr'dlu could see that much, even with a fine coating of space dust and a scattering of micrometeor damage. And it had come the long way to this particular patch of debris, floating in the eternal night.

The fact that it was large enough to be a survival pod had made Shr'dlu take it in for examination in the first place.

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Challenge #01361-C266: The Rogue's Fall

[Person 1]: It's important to face the consequences of your actions!

[Person 2]: (Leaps out of a window) -- OohLookShiny

Hwell had to admit, this did look bad. He took stock, as was his habit when he got into these snags.

Hands and feet bound, check. And not in anything fancy, either. Just regular, good old-fashioned iron cuffs and chains that hobbled his ability to run. And his captors had been so inconsiderate about the design, too. There was no easy way

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Challenge #01359-C264: Oi Oi Oi

Humans and various aliens discover a new planet at the same time. One one side, the aliens are being blindsided by weather, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. On the other side the humans are having snowball fights, counting lightning strikes, geyser watching and bathing in the geothermal pools.

Details: http://deathcomes4u.tumblr.com/post/149643799993/humans-are-weird -- Anon Guest

The crew of the Curious George had assigned the human to hauling the water cart. So far, the human had advised portable solar shelters in

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Challenge #01358-C263: Mundanity

The "Do Something!" set of questions used by Mothers everywhere, usually beginning with "Have you?" or "Are you". -- Knitnan

The wake-up call had been put together by someone who had heard of roosters and decided to improve by adding louder elements. Cal got out of hir bed-nook before the automatic discomfort protocol could start running low currents through hir body.

Ze barely got time to yawn and stretch before the automated staff management program, inevitably nicknamed 'mother' and variants thereof, kicked

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Challenge #01357-C262: Strange Encounters

"Why is there a man convulsing in the halls?"

"Don't worry, the king's men will see to him."

"That's... not what I asked," -- OohLookShiny

The new Ambassador for T'kerrrita was taking the Tour. Since it was between Ambassadorial Meets, the Tour was meant to acclimate them to the most amount of civilisations in the least amount of time. And, naturally, one of the stops was Amalgam Station, which always had a solid volume of Ambassadors at any given time.

Unfortunately... one

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Challenge #01355-C260: Communication Issues.

Followup to Challenge #01326-C231, here: 'It’s not even consistent; it varies wildly by geographical region, ancestry and personal history of the individual, which, like, how is a poor anthropologist meant to know that sort of detail? How do humans divine this sort of thing upon meeting new members of their species? Do they have some sort of associative telepathy? No? Argh!'
(source) -- RecklessPrudence

The planet known as Beach had met the Galactic Alliance, which meant that they had a

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Challenge #01354-C259: One Cheesy Dragon

This post, which lead to this art. Fic away! -- RecklessPrudence

Tara McCreedy looked down at the living sample. It stretched all six of its limbs and allowed its peculiar wings to flutter. "Okay," she allowed. "I can see what it is, I just want to know why."

"Er. This is more of a sketch," the lead scientist of this lab wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. "See, I thought it might be cool to have dragon cheese from real dragons, um... so I

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Challenge #01353-C258: Baffling Footage

Imagine this being the only news clip in existence for this time period (like the comment says) after Shayde pops up, and people asking her about it. -- RecklessPrudence

[AN: Amalgam happens 500 years in our future, but I can deal]

Shayde didn't expect a ceremony. Usually what passed as her work was catching up with news and events she had missed[1], gathering favourites, and occasionally explaining things to a small audience of concerned Archivaas.

Today... the entire theatre was booked

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