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Amalgam Universe

A 2297-post collection

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 either wearable or carryable form. Hats or 'brollies' to those who preferred the Terran's love of shorthand.

The human was in her Skins and painting her exposed skin with a colourful paste. Some resembled tribal markings, what with the stripes on her nose, cheekbones, and lower lip. Others were just swathes of colour without apparent logic.

"Zinc Oxide," said the human. "Get some on your soft bits. Nobody wants a melanoma."

And since this was a thing that did not come in two syllables or less, the rest of the crew were inclined to believe her. One was bold enough to ask of the colours' significance.

"Nah. Pick anything you like and put it anywhere the sun bites."

It did not take long for the crew to suffer from the heat. Their human hauled them back to the ship and treated them for exposure. And then announced that she was 'nipping off to the beach for a swim."

The water in the ocean was toxic to the crew, with its excess of sodium chloride and an abundance of untested flora and fauna in its depths.

Of course the crew tracked her, monitoring her life signs. The human never showed the slightest hint of distress, and even rode the waves with her body. She came back with an arm full of samples for the lab and an almost deadly amount of sodium chloride in her hair. And therefore spent a goodly amount of hours in decontamination, making certain that every last atom of this hostile world had been purged from her body.

"I dunno what the fuss is about. This place is just like Taranganba, back home."

The scientist on duty logged the entire place as a Deathworld.

(Muse food remaining: 13. Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories! Or comment below!)

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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Challenge #01351-C256: You Try to Teach Them...

Corvids. Just... Corvids. (link)

(btw did you know all modern corvids are descended from Aussie ancestors? Well, technically Australasian ones, but close enough) -- RecklessPrudence

Ravens are widely recognised as one of the more intelligent birds on the planet Earth. Substantial evidence for this includes the fact that they have learned how to tame humans.

Humans tend to object to that minor fact. They will go on endlessly about how they were the ones to teach corvids how to communicate in their

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Challenge #01346-C251: Purse of Holding

Like the Tardis it's 'bigger on the inside'. It can be anything carryable from a Ladies handbag (a notorious source of strange objects), to one of those pull along "granny" trailers, or whatever you like. -- Knitnan

"Here. You'll need this."

It looked like a small, leather pouch. There was some beading on it that had evidently not been designed with hard use in mind. But, it didn't feel like a small, leather pouch. It felt indefinably heavier. "What is this?"

"Bag

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Challenge #01345-C250: Well You Took Your Time

Prompt: the hollow coconut TONK noise that can be produced by tapping the right place on top of someone's head if their mouth is open. -- Gallifreya

[AN: Grats, you got me to hit myself on the head several times]

Rael was currently being a small, blue-black dog that 'just happened' to be where this backwards colony of humans had put Ambassador Shayde.

They had evidently landed with the best technology of their launch-era, but the process of building a colony and

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Challenge #01342-C247: The Terra Curse

1) More has been added to the post about "aliens trying to invade and being foiled by wildlife" http://sharpestscalpel.tumblr.com/post/148783332263/professorofeljay-myurbandream-jabberwockypie

2) Quick, think of a couple of characters that got made for one of these prompts and write something about them -- Gallifreya

[AN: This puts the gap count down to 4. Also, callback to this post]

1)

The first Tyrvaki colony to settle picked what they thought was a nice place. It was nice enough for

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Challenge #01339-C244: Signed, Sealed, and Ignored

If you write a letter of complaint or ask questions by handwritten letter, the recipient is duty bound to answer. Really good way to keep "The Hired Help" aka Politicians and Bureaucrats on their toes. -- Knitnan

Dear Employee, wrote Carval Seng. Letters that started like this were never a good sign for the recipient.

Seng wrote carefully and distinctly about the lack of maintenance between elections, of how people in hir district would like to see the orange of maintenance uniforms

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Challenge #01338-C243: Inconvenience Job

The dreaded 5 minute job. Almost always guaranteed to blossom into hours of frustration and searching for the 'right' tools. -- Knitnan

Time is money. Literally. Citizens of the Galactic Alliance pay for things in increments of time. And since the humans came along, some money has names.

For unknown reasons, five Minutes is a Zac. Ten Minutes is a Bob, and Thirty Minutes is known as the Five-Minute Job.

Human nicknames will forever confuse other cogniscents.

But not those cogniscents who

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Challenge #01337-C242: Unnecessary Invention

It's not only necessity, it's wire coat hangers, paper clips, and to quote Thomas Edison, "All you need to be an inventor is Imagination and a pile of junk." -- Knitnan

[AN: Edison probably stole that line from Tesla ;) ]

Station residents called it the Labyrinth, if they knew about it at all. Every station that's been around long enough acquires a zone that fades through neglect and into an area where people who don't want to be found are wont to hide.

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Challenge #01336-C241: Humans!

"Failure is always an option" -- OohLookShiny

"Look. It was either try it, or give up and die," said Kel.

"There was still a chance for death to not be an option," argued K'niith.

"Yes. And I took it."

"I meant," sighed K'niith, "that there was a chance that did not involve your insane gravity games."

Kel folded her arms. "It's called 'parkour' and it's a form of art."

"It's suicidal insanity, is what it is, you could have broken every bone

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Challenge #01335-C240: Indomitable

"1... 2... 3..."

Crash

"Now we know it's three seconds deep!" -- OohLookShiny

Humans. The Ch'voth had been essentially using them as cannon fodder for a passage of months before they realised two things:

First - humans were extremely hard to kill.

Second - their primary method of finding answers seemed to be 'throw things at it'.

It didn't matter what the question was. They would throw things at it. The Ch'voth theorised that most of their science evolved in the same

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