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A 199-post collection

Challenge #00679 - A314: Ancient Beasts

Australian Pelicans are like something out of Jurassic Park - like they remember when things like them ate things like you, and are just biding their time. (I literally asked a zookeeper “do they run off with toddlers?!?” when I saw one for the first time)

[AN: I have not met any other kinds of pelicans, so I just assumed they were all like that. And for the record, they prefer fish.]

Irwin glared at the current batch of temporal tourists. Another bloody baby buggy. “Folks, you’re going to have to wait a few minutes before you can walk the path.”

“What? We paid for an hour. Our time’s already running out.”

“Were you told at Current-side that babies had to have extra protection?”

“We signed the waiver,” said the husband. “It’ll be fine. Nobody ever gets hurt on these things.”

“Yeah nobody gets hurt because we take every precaution to make sure nobody gets hurt. Which means having a stock of buggy cages here at Past-side and fitting all the baby buggies with them.”

“You want to put my daughter in a cage?” yawped mother.

Irwin sighed. She hated these kinds of tourists. She activated the hologram. “These are the gigantic pelicans we keep telling tourists not to feed. Of course, the tourists ignore us and flick them sandwiches, chips and stuff like that. Then when the food runs out? They go after small children. Last time that happened, Harry lost his arm. We’ve been using cages ever since. You either wait for a cage or go back for a refund because I’m not letting you out there to blame us for your idiocy.”

They stared at the pelican. They stared at Irwin. They looked at their darling little brat, who was far too young to appreciate dinosaurs, anyway.

“We’ll… go back for a refund,” said mother.

“Smart choice,” said Irwin.

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Challenge #00643 - A278: Culinary Compromise

Why would you hate the [species]? The [species] aren’t eating everyone because they’re evil, they’re eating everyone because they’re fucking delicious.

“We need the meat alive for surviving,” said the Horg Captain. Griis. “Is forever the way.”

Of all the deathworlders they had ever met, these were on the most extreme scale. Their world was so badly a class five that it almost qualified for new categorisation as the first and only known class

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Challenge #00642 - A277: Forbidden Fruit

Heresy is Delicious. Don’t believe me? Put Kosher mustard on a ham and cheese sandwich and find out for yourself!

“So… you decided to open a restaurant on the greater thoroughfare of the business district.”

“That is correct,” said the lizard.

“All the forms and paperwork are correct… but you also decided to sell foods ordinarily under social and religious restrictions.”

“That is also correct. Cogniscent Shayde performed the idea in public.

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Challenge #00641 - A276: BSOD

Emergency Brain error reboot Y/N

Error encountered at local clock 13:25:57

Erasing subsequent data

Restarting from automatic backup…

The spinning wheel annoyed her as she waited in etherspace for her hardware and software to agree on a stepstone. It was one thing she had in common with the organics.

Sound came first, as the audio receptors booted up. Her assistant was explaining the boot-up process and the need for lexicon patches to the luckless cogniscent who had said

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Challenge #00640 - A275: One Fine Evening in a Filthy Spaceport Bar

We believe that the universe itself is conscious in a way that we can never truly understand. It is engaged in a search for meaning. So it breaks itself apart, investing its own consciousness in every form of life. We are the universe trying to understand itself.- Delenn, Babylon 5

“Well that doesn’t make sense,” said Hwell. He, too, was propping up a bar and ingesting something bad for him. “Humans, we all well know, are

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Challenge #00639 - A274: An Axe to Grind

It was distressing how many problems a good murder could solve.

[AN: According to the doctors, I am now officially fine. According to me, there is still a tightness in my throat that I am going to see my doctor about]

Too many arseholes in the world. Far too many. But if one could select an arsehole to excise from reality… If you could pick the ones who were most to blame for the current, sordid state of reality…

If

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Challenge #00638 - A273: Capitalism

It’s like selling people a gold nugget, then a silver nugget with gold covering, then you get a copper one with gold covering, the next version they sell you a iron Nugget with gold paint before selling you a glass marble calling it the ‘next big thing’.

“It’s all about makin’ stuff faster and cheaper, but no’ necessarily better. It’s about convincin’ the customers that faster an’ cheaper is better, ye ken.

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Challenge #00637 - A272: But the Cat Came Back...

…and the cat is still not allowed into the tea room because he’s convinced that somewhere there is catnip if he can only destroy enough to get at it.

“Whsk!” Pattie aimed a spray at the incoming Skitty. “Ffffft! HSSSSS!”

“Ma'am,” said Officer Marken. “I’m afraid it’s against station regulations to interfere with a Skitty’s duties.” She already had the digipad out and was taking notes.

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Challenge #00636 - A271:

They’ll get along like a house on fire, in the sense that there will be significant property damage and possible casualties.

He was looking for allies and none of the bigger interests had any interests in his interests. And his Lizard guide wasn’t much help.

“You may try Ambassador for Nineteen Eighty-Six, Shayde Pitt. I predict you will get along like a house on fire.”

“I’ll teach ya how to talk proper yet,”

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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

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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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