Free Story

I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates when he said “I drank what?” — RecklessPrudence

Jones had had enough. “Actually, he said that he owed a rooster to Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, and asked his friend to pay the debt. He knew damn well he was drinking hemlock and chugged it like it was cheap beer.”

The rest of the meeting stared at her.

“I’m tired of historically inaccurate jokes, okay? Socrates was a bad-ass and nobody should forget it.”

The uncomfortable silence stretched. Filled only by awkward shuffling and the occasional cough.

“Er. Yes. Thank you, Margret.”

“His exact last words could make an okay dick joke,” she offered.

“*Thank* you, Margret,” said Evans in the tones of you-can-stop-talking-now. “We’ve proved that history only repeats if you fail it. Moving on…” The meeting returned to the everyday humdrum. Broken only by the odd peculiar look in her direction.

She never meant to have hidden talents. It was just that nobody asked about them.

[Muse food remaining: 40. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

(New scientific project posts a status update. Buried in hundreds of lines of technical jargon is this)

IA!! IA!! SIS BOOM BA! OLD ONES!! OLD ONES!! RAH-RAH-RAH!!

YOG-SOTHOTH!!

(Followed by:)

To summarize, there should be no harmful side-effects from this project. – RecklessPrudence

“Jenkins… I do understand the natural frustration with our sponsors not reading the technical data they pay for, but…” Paulson handed over the page with the highlighted passage. “Was this absolutely necessary?”

Jenkins

If there’s one thing the internet as a whole can aspire to be, it’s infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters. – RecklessPrudence

Communication has always been the barrier to creativity. But now those barriers were only limited by language. And even then, there were translation apps.

Such apps were very useful to Archivaas Nel, whose job it was to trawl the archives and file each and every item. Cross-referencing, of course, in case someone wanted to trace a work to its

“It occurs to me…your inability to use the brain evolution granted you is none of my concern.” – RecklessPrudence

[AN: In case you’re wondering, it’s pronounced “fee co seff a lop ath ee”. The medical state of having shit for brains]

“Heads up, I got me a creeper,” Shayde announced as she parked herself uncomfortably close to him.

There would be no answers forthcoming from Shayde, who acted as if everyone

If you want to build a space ship, don’t tax people to collect the money and don’t command them around to do tasks, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the universe. -Antoine de Saint-Exupery, paraphrasing. (c/- RecklessPrudence)

[AN: Yeah, I’m pretty darn certain that if you crowd-funded space travel, you would never need to look for money ever again. You’d have people paying for the privilege of working on it, too]

Hi.

If you become a monster to put down a monster you’ve still got a monster running down at the end of the day and have as such not really solved the whole monster problem at all. – RecklessPrudence

Beware the hand of the Enlisted Man, for all he has known is to kill – Galactic Proverb.

They called it the War of the Monsters. Those who survived it. And there weren’t many of those who survived it. Biotechs in

Inner Child looking for Outer Adult. – RecklessPrudence

She’d taken inordinate pains to seem adult. Learned how to perfect her makeup. Learned how to deal with the adult responsibilities. Made herself eat her vegetables and stopped playing with her food.

At least in public.

Yet she still bought toys. Played games. Read comic books. Enjoyed animated features and sang along with her favourite songs - despite the fact that she couldn’t really sing. Still did up her hair

That theory is absolutely preposterous, stupid and all kinds of awesome.

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. – RecklessPrudence

[AN: ‘stupid’ is an ablist slur and I’d really love to learn how to avoid it without tripping over myself. All helps welcome]

“You’ve seen my lifecorder footage,” explained T'reka for what felt like the umpteenth time. At least, this time, she was conversing with a fellow scientist. “You were on shift

Faster, Cheaper, Better, Pick Two. – RecklessPrudence

Shayde made most of her Hours from being a living Time Window. Her memories kept her comfortable and fed quite a large number of assorted waifs and strays around Amalgam Station.

And it kept Rael in slightly more Double Dense Decadent Death by Chocolate Cake than he felt comfortable accepting.

Shayde was building something from custom parts, today. Taking a day off from ‘the office’ and its paperless paperwork to build… some

Any sufficiently advanced [magic/science/SCIENCE!] is indistinguishable from bullshit. – RecklessPrudence

It glowed, but it wasn’t radioactive. It could be made at home with an array of equipment that absolutely, positively, had to include a Theremin and a Jacob’s ladder. And for the creator to wear a colander on their head.

It had been scientifically proven to be so.

A single mote could power any old car currently capable of running. Plug some into a power point

If you meet Yog-Sothoth, you’ve gone too far on the axis of comprehension; back up slowly and call for reality assistance. – RecklessPrudence

Ow. It had happened again. OW! It wasn’t getting any better with experience.

Katie looked up from her pained huddle, halfway expecting somebody yelling at her to ‘avaunt’ and calling her names. One more time. One more time, she swore, and she would start calling herself a foul shayde from out the blackest

Has there ever been an instrument more representative of humanity than the Zeusaphone? (I highly recommend checking out their Youtube page) – RecklessPrudence

“So… the Terran Exhibition.”

“Yeah, it’s docking next week. Should help defuse Silly Season for another month.”

‘Are you going?“

"Only with adequate shielding. I heard they have the Lightning Meisters playing with this circuit.”

“Lightning… I don’t think I’ve heard of

The Lister is the SI unit of discipline, as defined by the amount of effort needed to make Third Technician David Lister do his duties, clean his quarters and generally not be such a shame to the Space Corps. A single Lister of discipline is therefore often more than is needed for the entire crew of a (Star Wars) Star Destroyer (47,000-odd). – RecklessPrudence

It was hard not to look down on the faceless drones. They weren’t literally faceless.

“You also rule a world, Morpheus. A world of sleepers and dreamers, of stories. A simple place compared to hell. I envy you. Can you imagine what it was like? Ten billion years providing a place for dead mortals to torture themselves? And like all masochists, they called the shots. ‘Burn me.’ 'Freeze me.’ 'Eat me.’ 'Hurt me.’ And we did. Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as

Supervisor: Seriously? Are you shitting me?
Computer Tech: I never intentionally released anything into the wild. It was proof of concept. It wasn’t anything particularly sophisticated. Just some script kiddie cut and paste bullshit.
S: What is Rule Number Two of Computer Repair? What is it?
CT: “No, a ‘virus’ didn’t download all of that porn.”
S: Are you telling me you invalidated Rule Number Two?
CT: Well, in my case, it was a