Instant Story

Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #02575-G018: Gently, Gently

Two children have been good friends since the time they were in the same daycare together. They grew up as neighbors and even go to a mixed school. One child is a havenworlder, one child is a human. The human child is having a birthday party and has invited their best friend to the party. The parents need to have a long talk so it is fun and safe for all. -- Anon Guest

When you grow up with something, that's what normal is. Tan knew Lith as a friend who was always there. They had been in each other's lives forever. Lith had learned how to be gentle with Tan before ze began to form permanent memories. Tan learned that Lith was strong before she could properly talk.

They were neighbours, and shared a backyard with nature, and it was always Lith who watched out for Tan, and Tan who found the really interesting and cool things they could both wonder at. They had fun together and enjoyed each other's company. It was when they entered school that things changed. Havenworlders like Tan were kept apart from Deathworlders like Lith. It was a safety issue, since not everybody got to grow with a cool friend and neighbour like Tan.

When both friends wanted to share a party, some intense preparation had to come into play. Starting with a fortnight for the class, learning how to behave around Havenworlders, and the repeated phrase, "It's hard to have fun when a friend is hurt." Lith talked about hir friend and how they had fun together, and the entire class learned about Havenworlders and what they could tolerate.

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Challenge #02574-G017: Art Supplies of Mass Destruction

A havenworlder has a human as a godparent and they love to teach there godchild stuff like survival tips, human pop culture and other things the child's parents would rather them not know. -- Cheshire

Having a godparent, goodparent, or other form of honorary family member is such a Deathworlder concept. Grown Deathworlders are aware of the fragile nature of mortality and have culturally instituted the concept of spare parental figures. This comes in handy for Havenworlders who are, culturally speaking, just

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Challenge #02573-G016: Cultural Exchange Program

Harvest festival, feast time, Thanksgiving, people have a lot of reasons for sitting to celebrate this time of year. A time to give thanks for what one has in their life, to remember what it is they are thankful for. But, for some, it was just a time to put out a feast and be a glutton, and enjoy it! A person had been researching the Vorax, in fact, their entire race, learning their culture and their ways. Learning that the Vorax

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Challenge #02572-G015: Inappropriate Topic

It has been lingering in my mind for a while. Every waking moment it come across my mind. I feel like I’m gonna get my ass beaten if I say it out loud. But why my crew mates look like anthropomorphic animals?!? -- Anon Guest

There are times when it seems like the Universe was made by a lazy creator. The truth might seem stranger than that fiction. Convergent evolution means that beings suitable to a specific gravity and a specific

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Challenge #02571-G014: Seeing to Need

They were 10 years old when the incident happened. Hiding in the woods to try to escape the abuse they endured in the orphanage, they'd come across an unusual sight. Half-buried in the ground was .... something. They didn't know what it was, exactly, but the three outside the object sounded distressed. They went to the three and found them to be not much taller than they were and they were like very large birds. The problem had been the ship, for that

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Challenge #02570-G013: Happy For Some

Welp since I learn that cursed knowledge I’m dragging y’all down with me with your own curiosity. “Happy tapioca” isn’t all that happy -- Anon Guest

[AN: Urban Dictionary holds all the answers to this mystery and I am positive the average reader does not want to know. Personally, I think it's a waste of perfectly decent pudding, but if it floats your boat, keep it private, thanks.]

When civilisations exist in post-scarcity, the weirdness multiplies. When people can

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Challenge #02569-G012: To Join the Common Cause

We have to actively fight for our lives, perhaps our very existence. Thousands of people are killed daily by these beings. So what fraction of our government tries to actively prevent us from fighting back until they can find a way to profit from it? -- Bard2DBone

When they came, they came in promises. They came with generosity. They came with shiny treasures. They especially came with more profits for those already wealthy. They came with bright lights and glittering technology and

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Challenge #02568-G011: Stacked Competition

Wanna play yugioh? -- Anon Guest

[AN: I have no idea how to play Yugioh, and I'm moderately certain that describing said game will impinge on someone else's intellectual property... so today, the part of Yugioh will be played by a completely made-up game called Ebisnach]

Humanity loves combat. Synthesized or real. They have more or less tamed their competitive nature in the form of formalised synthetic competition. They call them all games, but the nature of Human games is always some

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Challenge #02567-G010: Assumptive Dread

Humans are not great because of what most people think. It’s not our physical capabilities or our ingenuity, not even or pack-bonding skills. It’s our heartiness and our healing ability that is boosted though the advancement of medical applications. Humans figured multiple ways how to rewrite our genetics codes before we had proper space travel, we were able to eradicate deadly diseases off the face of the planet. Hell I wouldn’t be surprised if we created the prototype livesuit.

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Challenge #02566-G009: All About Where You Stand

I want to see a Havenworlder from a high grav planet. Dense and tough by necessity from the environment, but with absolutely nothing dangerous in to it in its home planet. No rough terrain to fall down, plentiful food without any toxins that effect it, gentle weather that never bothers it, etc. -- Anon Guest

Gravity is usually necessary for life to evolve. Most life comes to become on planets, with a rare few becoming in lower gravity environments that are also

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Challenge #02565-G008: Around and Around They Go

Based off of this post: https://steemit.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-02375-f185-call-it-a-win

He remembered the portal made out of antimatter and tachyon particles, he tried replicating it multiples times but all ended in failures. Many times and many explosive experiences later he came across a strange matter literally called strange matter from a neutron star. Not only it was still stable but also within the same fabric of spacetime. Years later a woman inserted her hand into a three pronged device while a

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Challenge #02564-G007: Determination and Caffeine

A planet with a mix of deathworlders and havenworlders, one of the few planets to have such a mixed colony, is struck by an unusual virus. For the havenworlders, it's painful, it makes them very, very sick, but it is survivable, mostly. Though there have been casualties and other side-effects. For the deathworlders, it's just as painful, but worse, the virus is mostly fatal if contracted. And the survivors are usually in very bad shape. The disease is also, unfortunately, extremely contagious

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Challenge #02563-G006: Little, Quiet, Troublesome

There were three humans aboard this ship. As big as it was, and with the size of the crew, even with three they had their hands full! Still, it wasn't a bad job, pay was good and they saw some of the most beautifully unexplored worlds. Two of the humans were burly individuals, boisterous and active. During down time they always headed to one of the storage areas that had been converted to a game room to burn off steam playing racket-ball,

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Challenge #02562-G005: The Work Around

A disabled human ("invisible" disability) from a...less than understanding society, grown to adulthood and full of the painful little quirks and habits that one develops in order to survive that situation, encounters a member of the Galactic Alliance. A member of the Galactic Alliance who isn't sure what to do with a deathworlder who apologizes for displaying distress, and cries from joy when not berated for showing signs of pain when "there's nothing wrong" -- Anon Guest

They call me Human

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Challenge #02561-G004: Soft Protection

Cuddly-Pie, Uplift, the name said it all, designed as an accessory/servant. now acts as Companion,Escort, Shield for those humans needing a Buffer and Shield when moving about or interacting with life. The Shield works both ways. -- Anon Guest

Augment -- a non-cogniscent species given cusp-cogniscence at a genetic level before gestation and training after birth in order to be an engineered assistive animal, usually sterile and made for assisting one person.
Uplift -- a non-cogniscent species given post-birth retrogenetic

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