Amalgam Universe

A 2280-post collection

Challenge #00843-B112: Relics of a Previous Age.

I think that I’ve never seen anything so stupid and so practical in all my life.

They called it The Archive of Earth. A massive tomb devoted to the Twentieth Century. And Shayde had, through adventure and misadventure, inherited the lot.

“How much of this stuff is plastic?” wondered Rael.

“Uh. After the Twenties? Loads.” Shayde was particularly uninformative, unpacking the vaults and sorting random objects. The swarming Archivaas had left her to deal with everything they didn’t recognise. Which was most of it.

It was a bizarre assortment. Unsorted and filed away wherever it would fit. People of the Twentieth Century had made an inordinate amount of junk.

“Aw. Would ye cop this…” She held up a box.

It declared itself to contain something called ‘Flowbee’ and it had been seen on television. Probably late at night, when the tired thought anything was a good idea[1]. And it was seemingly used for hygiene.

“People used these?”

“They tried to encourage it,” said Shayde. “Always wondered what kind of nutter would use it regularly.”

“The actors in the advertising, is my first guess.”

“Someone wi’ short hair, no time, and bad taste?” suggested Shayde.

“And sleep deprivation,” added Rael. “These advertisements, they happened late at night?”

“Oh aye. Always.”

“Q.E.D.”

[1] It’s been proven that a lack of sleep leads to extremely bad decisions. Which is why infomercials happen late at night and why late-night comedy is never funny in the sober light of day.

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Challenge #00835-B104: Close Encounters of the Blurred Kind

More encounters between the spider-people and humans, pre- or post-Amity

Ten weeks prior to Amity’s re-introduction to the Galactic Alliance…

Salvage spacers tended to have short names. Monosyllabic and easy to pronounce in an emergency. So it was with Mar and Dee. Both women had longer names, but such names were exclusively on their paperwork.

“I’ve been on this hulk before,” said Dee, pointing to a conglomerated wreck in their pathfinder screen. “There’s an enormous colony of BFS on

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Challenge #00833-B102: ...Okay?

This post:

http://azzandra.tumblr.com/post/116731684146/fleshwater-matt-the-blind-cinnamon-roll

(list of weird things humans do like losing baby teeth to grow a second set, then:

“At some point, the aliens aren’t going to know anymore when we’re actually trolling them.

Us: Under certain circumstances, humans have been known to spontaneously develop the ability to breathe fire.

Alien: yeah, okay, that fits in with the other wacky bullshit you guys can do.”)

The humans walked out of the airlock, male and

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Challenge #00832-B101: Picnic in the Park

The final holiday on Earth prompt - Author’s choice as to what the human shows their friend again, but this time everything is finally perfect.

[AN: This story happens somewhere in the middle of #00830-B099]

What
bothered Rael the most about travelling the Earth with Shayde was how easily she switched languages and habits to match her environment.

For
instance, as they marched steadily and almost silently through the Australian wilderness, she was singing an ancient song. Thousands of
years old

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Challenge #00831-B100: Fun Park a la Deathworld

Holiday prompt the third! Author’s choice what the human shows their companion, as long as it goes pear-shaped

[AN: This story precedes yesterday’s]

Deathworlder entertainments are not advised for non-Deathworlders, said the Wikipedia Galactica, only the native life forms of a Deathworld can withstand even the most allegedly gentle of their entertainment vehicles. Though the Deathworlders insist that these entertainments are safe, be advised that they are only safe for Deathworlders.

Rael could easily believe, and understand those words, now.

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Challenge #00830-B099: Comfort Food

The holiday continues, introducing the friend to things like non-irradiated cheese, actual lemons, and real dumplings

It started small. Well, comparatively small. A steaming curry at a van vendor, swimming in grease and overloaded with turmeric rice.

What followed was a tour of all the places that still sold unsuitable or unexportable food. Haggis, Casu marzu, Lutefisk. Pizza cones. Powdered doughnut pancake surprise. Death By Chocolate cake.

And now it finished here.

If it wasn’t the birthplace of Unsuitable Food Eat,

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Challenge #00829-B098: You Can't Really Go Home

Well, at least the human was excited about the holiday, however ill-advised taking the trip to Earth with them was going to be…

“Thereitis, thereitis! Earth. Aw… it mostly looks the same…”

“I did tell you that it’s been five hundred years since your departure. Geographically, little has changed.”

“I’m goin’ tae stop in at Wales. Go see what’s happened tae home.”

Rael, a little more prepared, had tried to find Shayde’s ‘home’ on a map.

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Challenge #00828-B097: Homicidally Annoying

Ethics. Of all the flaws for a crew member to have, why did it have to be ethics?

Do’jii had to wonder why he was carting this human around. Sure, his actions were often in a confounding chain of cause and effect that came out with profit at the other end, but at other times…

Like this time…

It was hard to see the profit at the other end.

“Let me understand the chain of events,” began Do’jii.

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Challenge #00819-B088: True Words

Beware the happy person with power tools.

There was a sign over the door to the maker-space. Warning: Happy people with power tools inside.

Shayde thought it was a joke until she stepped in. Sure, it had been a few years since she got together with fellow nerds and a bunch of tools to create something. At least, in subjective terms.

In real-time terms it had been closer to five hundred years.

The very concept of maker-spaces had changed while she was

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Challenge #00816-B085: Infectious Craze

The Birdy dance, aka the Chicken dance. Turn it loose somewhere, have fun.

Shayde was wearing the patched muumuu. Which meant that her ‘street’ act, today, was something she called Stump the Frump. Which was ironic, because he knew for a fact that she’d spent an entire hour making certain that she looked like she didn’t care.

The act was, people would bring her musical instruments and, if she couldn’t wrangle a tune out of it, the person or

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Challenge #00815-B084: Inappropriate Love Gifts

There were a line of little heads on the mat near the bed, just the heads. The damn cat had been at it again!

Sandra drew her toes up again and hid them under her comforter. It wasn’t a straight line. More of a curve. All those dead, bloodied little heads. Arranged in something of a semicircle in a kind of post-mortem worship of her bed.

And in came the cat. Black, sleek and proud. Smirking at his fine achievement. Tail

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Challenge #00812-B081: Varied Diet?

After the omlette incident, realising exactly how much human food, like cake or pies or snacks, involve eggs.

Day 3.

Hen eggs declared non-cogniscent food. Also declared sterile. Also declared offensive. Further adjudication necessary.

Day 5.

Adjudication finished. Human can consume extant eggs, but only in utter privacy and behind offensensitivity shielding. The human must not consume any more eggs or egg-based products while aboard Science Vessel Sigma-Four.

“WHAT?” Sta-see yawped. Humans could get loud. At least she had been trained to

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Challenge #00811-B080: Horror Cuisine

The unthinking introduction of an omlette to a birdlike alien species.

“What are orbs?” said the assigned Human Watcher. So far, it hadn’t been as dangerous or nasty as she’d been lead to believe. Ri’ki’ki was starting to believe that all the stories were just… stories.

“Eggs,” said the human. Her name was Sta-see. Or something close enough. She was organising her little kitchen according to her own rules.

“You having egg in stasis? They is never hatch.

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Challenge #00810-B079: T'yoree the Reckless

Prompt: A Lilo and Stitch-esque scene with numidid and surfing humans.

T’yoree was frequently trotted out as an example as to why scientists should not be allowed to breed. She had, even to the humans, the self-preservation instincts of a concussed whelk.

As a keet, she would ride the larger dogs and invented the concept of Frisbee Dodge-em.

Some said that the natural Deathworlder attitude towards risk had rubbed off on her.

And she was the first Numidid to surf. Of

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