Challenge

A 351-post collection

Challenge #00635 - A270: The Horrors of Attempted Time Travel

“Your body is your temple. Plunder it.”

Three pieces of good news.

One: He was smarter than the people who had sent him here. And there was no way in hell that he was going to U-turn around into a suicide mission.

Two: The planet that read as habitable actually was habitable.

Three: The people who sent him on this wild flight to meddle with the course of history had sent along all kinds of laboratory equipment and information in order to deal with every situation.

Including a clone lab and brain-pattern recorder.

The bad news? He was the only genetic sample.

The really bad news? Earth was calling to find out what had gone wrong with the mission.

He sabotaged his ship enough to make it look like he’d crashed and failed and set to work. He had a world to build. Starting with a small community made of him.

And the ultimate bad news… all the protein on this planet was toxic.

Which meant he had to eat cultured tissue. And he was the only genetic sample that he had.

*

“We eat of the Allfather and remember. We owe our existence to one monumental act of unlistening, unrelenting, wilful ignorance.”

“Think all things through,” said the clones. Almost-clones. The Alllfather had done his best with what he had, but genetic variance could only go so far. All of them, women and men, could not breed in what other cogniscents call the ‘traditional way’.

“And remember, also, the words we are to deliver to the Unthinkers.”

Now the multitude at the remembrance ceremony shouted at the top of their lungs, “ERICH VON DÄNIKEN CAN SUCK IT!”

“Three thousand years ago, the Allfather was sent out to create a better world. He knew that the Unthinkers sent him to his death.”

The ministers at the grill began to hand out sliders to the multitude with, “Flesh of the Allfather…”

“When they come to ask of their better world we shall say unto them,”

They all chorused, “We made it here.”

Revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold. For Adam Fydeus, that revenge was about to be served at below zero degrees Kelvin.

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Challenge #00634 - A269: Space Madness

“Kitty, fire starboard weapons”
“Miaou”
“No Kitty, don’t play with the yarn, fire the weapons”

From the Wikipedia Galactica: Space Madness, as it is commonly known, is not, in fact, a mental imbalance caused by being in space. It is well known that cogniscents of all kinds need certain things in order to prosper, both physically and mentally. The isolation of solo missions does, of course, engender ramifications

“Status report, Lieutenant Tibbles.”

The

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Challenge #00633 - A268: Boundless Realms of Ignorance

To sing when anti-science protestors of whatever stripe are around:

Ev’ry banana you eat / has been genetically engineered / and is a radioactive clone.

There were simultaneous protests outside the administrative building. Some protestors, with a foot in each camp, had evolved revolving signs.

“Bible bashers,” Sylvia shook her head. One side of a sign she was watching quoted the bible about natural foods, and the other screamed about teaching creationism. She had a wicked idea and ducked into her

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Challenge #00632 - A267: Respect It

To quote Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 3, Line 87: No!

“Geez, why do you have to be such a bitch about it?”

Ugh. “Maybe because I had to tell you thirty times before you even heard a real ‘no’? Maybe because my wants and needs aren’t relevant to you? Maybe because the first thing that came out of your mouth when I told you I was bisexual was ‘threesome’? Maybe it’s because you’re as aesthetically pleasing

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Challenge #00631 - A266: Corrupt File

C:> Cannot find Reality.sys. Universe Halted.

There was no other word for what was happening than Glitch. People went to sleep one colour and woke up another the next. And frequently with a change in their social status and standing.

And it wasn’t just their colour that changed. There were all kinds of alterations. People would go to sleep as a man in a mansion, and wake up as a woman in a slum.

Buildings began to show segmentation

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Challenge #00630 - A265: Deep Time Punk'd

A text found on the first expedition by a species to their planet’s nearest celestial body (moon or nearby planet), which explains in perfectly accurate detail how to improve the efficiency of in-system spaceflight many times over.

Appendix A begins “As we know, 2+2=5…”

Five hundred years ago, people had seen strange lights in association with their moon. A light was clearly visible on the surface of the satellite, every time that it became shadowed.

Four hundred years ago,

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Challenge #00629 - A264: You Were Warned

On a warning sign

CAUTION: Eldritch Abominations

The human stopped at the door. “Is this serious?”

“Why would it not be?” said the alien robot. “The Yubshuggoth are a kind people, but their appearance has been known to… cause significant alarm. Some have died from the shock. This is why they use avatars like me.”

So what the human do? They thrust open the door and stuck their head inside to see what was so

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Challenge #00628 - A263: Drawbacks of Communication

Well, are we agreed that we will never try to talk to the world ending monsters again?

Yes? Good.

They were in his way. They were there to conquer. Smash! Destroy! Devour!

“Hermann!”

Crush! Kill! Consume!

Hermann!”

The puny human was only a little smaller than him. How? Had they found a way to grow themselves? Were they stealing the Builders’ ways?“

"Hermann, Hermann, look at me. Look. Look, look, look. You’re not

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Challenge #00627 - A262: What Maketh Man?

From the Wikipedia article on Personhood:
“If alien life were found to exist, under what circumstances would they be counted as "persons”? Do we have to consider any “willing and communicative (capable to register its own will) autonomous body” in the universe, no matter the species, an individual (a person)? Do they deserve equal rights with the human race?“


What the hell kind of question is that? Of course we should! Of course they do! The

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Challenge #00626 - A261: He Said it Best

Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
[Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe]

“Eh, sometimes you change the world,” Shayde sighed. “Sometimes th’ world changes you. And sometimes… Caesar said it best - ‘interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum’…”

Rael was looking into his eyepiece. “Sometimes, I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe?”

She sighed. Technology. That was the problem. People could

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Challenge #00625 - A260: Original Meaning

Saying something in all earnestness, not realising that it’s been twisted far from what the words actually _mean_ by scum and then used as a warning sign by people more socially aware than you, and that you just marked yourself as one of those scum. All because you were using the words as they were meant to be used.

[TW: rape]

Sometimes, there’s a big problem with being a card-carrying member of SPOEn - The Society for the Preservation

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Challenge #00624 - A259: Slippery Slope

The uselessness of the “reassurance”, which fortunately I’ve only ever seen in fiction, that ‘You know you’re not evil by the fact that you still worry about your morality’. You could quite easily not realise that you’ve already sunk to new depths of depravity, and still worry about it.

[AN: I almost deleted this because of its similarity to yesterday’s prompt. PLEASE space out your similar prompts with other muse fuel. Thanks.]

“It’s for

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Challenge #00623 - A258: What Do You Mean, 'Going'?

The uselessness of the “reassurance”, which I’ve had given to me in real life, that ‘You know you’re not insane by the fact that you still worry about your sanity’. You could quite easily not realise that you’re currently insane, and still worry about it.

“You said you loved me,” sang Annie Lennox, “Or were you just being kiiiind… Or am I losing my mind?”

“Good question, Annie,” I murmured. They’d said

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Challenge #00622 - A257: Simple Exposition

Constant exposure to the internet has done terrible things to their sanity.

Trel peeked through the narrow observation window. Inside was a bedlam consisting of pale human males attempting to argue with themselves.

“WOMAN!” shrieked one.

Crap.

They’d seen her!

She retreated to the safety of her guide, a robot that was neither apparently male nor female.

The humans inside the enclosure alternately cajoled her for sex and demanded she prove her worth by answering confrontational trivia questions.

Some

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Challenge #00621 - A256: Spitballing

I am actually serious here, insofar as one can have a serious discussion about the cost/benefit analysis of destroying the universe.

“There’s only really a benefit if you have a working means to exit the universe, otherwise you destroy yourself in the process.” Paua’tul’xand’l side-eyed her human companion. “You haven’t been experimenting with methods of leaving the universe, have you?”

“I promise I’m not working on it.” Eiridd held

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