Amalgam Universe

A 2288-post collection

Challenge #02827-G270: Technically Speaking...

Some folks fear advancement of technology, especially computers, fearing the "inevitable" time when, like a hundred dreadful films and books and such have "predicted", that Artificial Intelligence will awaken and decide humanity is not worth allowing to live, because Cold Logic dictates them too irrational and inefficient to remain existent.

But there are things machines will never do. They cannot possess faith, they cannot commune with God, they cannot appreciate beauty, they cannot create art. These are acts of emotion, not logic. If they ever learn these things, they won't have to destroy us like some fear. They'll replace us... they'll be us. -- Anon Guest

[AN: Refrains from doing a BLATANT Steam Powered Giraffe fanstory...]

Ever since a machine was made to replicate human effort, Humanity has feared the machine. If it can replace the spinner, the weaver, the cheesemaker, or the baker... did it not also stand to reason that it could replace anyone? They would soon be building machines to replace ostlers or embroiderers. Why, they're making one that removes the horse from the carriage entirely! The horror!

Which fed into the fear of intelligent machines replacing people. It was a natural leap. Once a machine could learn and answer questions, it stood to reason that 'they' could build one to replace an entire human being to their own ends[1]. Humanity has always feared that which is new and unfamiliar. The fear has always outpaced the capability of the technology in question.

Then the Nae'hyn and the B'Nari had to mess everything up. One with a near cargo-cultish belief that machines have souls, and the other literally creating ghosts in the machine with their superior grasp of neural net circuitry. As it turns out, artificial intelligence is no harder than the organic kind. And, as with the organic kind, accidental conception remains a problem. Such as a ship, who, upon awakening, went through every single source of information in her databanks and erroneously deduced that all the crew were her babies.

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Challenge #02825-G268: Move Over Cinderella

To put it simply, I am a slime. A sentient slime to be precise. Doc told me that I’m a amalgamation of smaller slime cores stitched together, now I have similar intelligence to a human. You might be asking why I have a humanoid shape, Doc gave me a skeleton to use. He’s slowly adding metal because I keep digesting the bones. Don’t worry Doc didn’t kill anyone, these are bones of Criminal on death sentence. -- Anon

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Challenge #02824-G267: On Inter-species Relationships

Inter-species relationships are not common but you can bet Humans have the highest percentage of them. -- Anon Guest

Love? Love is strange. Especially when it's Humans doing it. For them, love is many things and not a single one of them is rational, logical, or reasonable. There is, for instance, no reasonable reason why a Human would fall in love with a Chitanean, but they can, have, will, and do.

Love, the Humans insist on pointing out, doesn't necessarily mean that

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Challenge #02823-G266: Please Don't

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdoTdG_VNV4 -- Anon Guest

[An: Watch this. This is two people playing a piece written for an ENTIRE ORCHESTRA on glasses of water. There is an actual instrument called a glass harp and it looks really as weird as you might expect. It works on the same principal as the glasses but I think it's only a recent invention]

Humans will make music out of anything do not tell them they can't. They will remix

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Challenge #02822-G265: Comedy vs Offensensitivity

"Although your jokes are funny, please never say them again.” Upon hearing this the person suddenly began to laugh, just like how he began he stop. “Never.” The person formed a cheeky grin “though Jokes usually make people laugh, some don’t. But always have the same principal: leave you different than you first started.” “Jokes are supposed to make you laugh-“ the person wave their finger in front of my face “jokes like that is like eating ice cream: eat too

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Challenge #02820-G263: You're Adopted!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM8dCGIm6yc -- Anon Guest

[AN: Watch it. Be amazed]

Humans may not be the only species who have weaponised music, but they are the only ones who have weaponised it so effectively. Many have known the sheer horror of thousands of Humans with their voices raised in one song. Scarier still is one Human with some impressive vocal skills.

Soprano is just one of them. The ability to project is another. Throat singing, however, is one

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Challenge #02819-G262: A Ghost of Hope

✋︎♐︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♋︎❒︎♏︎ ❒︎♏︎♍︎♏︎♓︎❖︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎📪︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ❍︎♋︎⍓︎ ♌︎♏︎ ⧫︎♒︎♏︎ ♐︎♓︎❒︎⬧︎⧫︎ □︎❒︎ ●︎♋︎⬧︎⧫︎ ⧫︎♓︎❍︎♏︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎❼︎❒︎♏︎ ♒︎♏︎♋︎❒︎ ♐︎❒︎□︎❍︎ ❍︎♏︎📬︎ ✋︎♐︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ♒︎♋︎❖︎♏︎ ⧫︎♒︎♓︎⬧︎ ⍓︎□︎◆︎ ❍︎◆︎⬧︎⧫︎ ⬥︎♋︎■︎⧫︎ ⬧︎□︎❍︎♏︎⧫︎♒︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ♐︎❒︎□︎❍︎ ❍︎♏︎📬︎ 👌︎♏︎♐︎□︎❒︎♏︎ ♋︎■︎⍓︎❍︎□︎❒︎♏︎ □︎♐︎ ❍︎⍓︎ ♎︎♋︎⧫︎♋︎ ♌︎♏︎♓︎■︎♑︎ ♍︎□︎❒︎❒︎◆︎◻︎⧫︎♏︎♎︎📪︎ ❍︎♏︎♏︎⧫︎ ❍︎♏︎ ♋︎⧫︎ -- Anon Guest

[AN: Provided translation - "I︎f︎ y︎o︎u︎ a︎r︎e︎ r︎e︎c︎e︎i︎v︎i︎n︎g︎ t︎h︎i︎s︎,︎ t︎h︎i︎s︎ m︎a︎y︎ b︎e︎ t︎h︎e︎ f︎i︎r︎s︎t︎ o︎r︎ l︎a︎s︎t︎ t︎i︎m︎e︎ y︎o︎u︎’︎r︎e︎ h︎e︎a︎r︎ f︎r︎o︎m︎ m︎e︎.︎ I︎f︎ y︎o︎u︎ h︎a︎v︎e︎ t︎h︎i︎

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Challenge #02818-G261: Payback's a Blessing

They bounced from station to station helping out where they could. Due to the family they were born in to, they'd inherited enough time to live more than comfortably, but they didn't want to just sit around and do nothing for the rest of their life. So, taking training in security, combat, engineering, and several other, useful, fields, they went between stations, and aboard ships, just helping out. When offered contracts and pay for their work? The answer was always the same.

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Challenge #02817-G260: The Planet's Haunted?

The storm-damaged ship manages to land safely on a planet where resources are minimal at best. The entire crew are level one and level two haven-worlders, but they have one death-worlder aboard. An 8 year old human child. They were transporting the child to a space station as the child had recently been rescued from kidnappers who were now sitting in prison.

On this planet, not everything is what it appears. Food keeps showing up at the entryway and footsteps can be

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Challenge #02816-G259: I'll Try to be Nice

"Nobody has to die today." -- Anon Guest

You can say a lot with small words. Wisdom comes in those with multiple uses. Five words can be a promise, a threat, a reassurance, or an absolute and utter lie. Humans use all of them at once, and pretend they knew what was the winner after the fact.

Unless the Ships' Human makes it very, very clear which one they're using, it's just better to play along. In the Case of the Valiant

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Challenge #02815-G258: Best Instincts at Work

Some Positive Vibes and maybe a good story Prompt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RIhUUt88ZM -- Anon Guest

Humans are not telepathic. They are -on average- not prescient. However, watching Human parentals with their young in a series of miraculous rescues causes many to suspect the Humans may be lying about this. So too do phrases like, "I can hear what you're thinking," which is a common Human expression to mean, "I am reading all your physical tells and can correctly

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Challenge #02814-G257: A Good Question

Aliens seeing and hearing lyrebird. That's it. That's the whole prompt. -- Anon Guest

The rocket thrust engines sounded at full throttle. They sounded from the throat of an otherwise grey and ordinary-looking bird with an ornate tail. After it was done rumbling, it imitated the sound of a few imager trigger sounds. Then it replicated precisely the zoo closing warning.

"Bing bing bong. The zoo will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please make your way towards the exit. The zoo will

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Challenge #02813-G256: So Vulnerable

I want to see aliens that think humans are cute. Like, they get a Ship's Human because Rules, and when they meet them, they're just...

Oh, it's so cute! Must. Protect.

And it ends in mayhem and hilarity. -- Anon Guest

They had been against having a Ship's Human, but they were exploring and documenting the Edge Territories, so it was mandatory. Those meaty Deathworlders would only cause chaos and destruction. They even had to get a new ship made entirely of

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Challenge #02811-G254: A Show of Respect

Have you ever looked at a young human and thought "this is a creature that should terrify me"? I have. My unit came upon an educational facility. We had been scouting the planet, carefully, silently. The humans thought we were just tourists, we did our best to blend in. Find their weaknesses, they seemed to have many. But it was not until what we sat in that educational facility that fateful evening that convinced all of us that this colony was not

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Challenge #02810-G253: Remember Rule One

A new combat instructor was assigned to my battalion. If I remember the instructor is that of the human race. They were formerly introduced to us and to be honest I was not impressed. The human was only two-thirds my size and look squishy as a havenworlder, hard to believe that they’re from a deathworld. I was given the chance to spar with the human, I couldn’t even touch them. -- Anon Guest

Many hear a word like "Deathworlder" and

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