Instant Story

Prompt: Something involving the gympie gympie tree.

Because that is one scary tree.

[AN: Slightly scarier is the Manchineel, aka The Tree That Hates You. It’s native to Florida, possibly by cosmic accident. But if you read up on the Gympie Gympie, it’s a close call.]

Every living planet in the known universe has an island or a continent like Australia. Except for N'Oz (Originally, New Australia) which is almost all like Australia, except for one small island/continent which is like a fairy-tale pastoral Europe. Nobody on N'Oz lives there.

And it is in one of the more heavily forested sections of N'Oz that a curious visitor may spot the Gympie Gympie Research Centre. In its heavily-fortified confines, guarded by airlocks and multiple hazmat precautions, there grows a stable population of Gympie Gympie trees.

A tree that, like most things found in Australia-level toxic environments, is out to get even with anything that moves on behalf of its leafy brethren.

“I do not understand,” say the visiting aliens. “This tree is so toxic that even third-hand contact causes excruciating pain. And you bought it with you?”

“Yeah, sure,” say the native N'Ozies. “Something that bloody dangerous has got to be good for something.”

Visitors are regularly reminded that humans are a species that expose themselves to toxins - not just for medical purposes, but also for entertainment. Yet, they are inevitably surprised when they find out about the GGRC.

[Muse food remaining: 38. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

All those corrosive things humans excrete can come in handy sometimes, right?

(“We have to get out of this maze as fast as we can, but if we turn on the plasma cutter the monster will hear us!”
“Stand back, I got this” *spits at wall*)

“Sucrose! What the heck kind of alien builds walls out of sucrose?” asked Mabel.

“I have no idea, but we are going to need one hell of a dentist by the time we

And they never spoke of the peanut-butter lobster incident again.

Meals, they said, were a uniting factor. Food, they said, was universal. Humans, they said, would eat anything.

But not this.

Plate after plate after plate of it came back. They were supposed to love lobster! But they were sending this all back with comments like, “it tastes funny” or “I’m allergic to the sauce”.

One of them even came into the kitchens to find Byaadi

Nosebleeds, or to be more precise what do the other cogniscients think when it happens. Do they go for a medical kit and flutter about while the human sighs and holds their nose, or do they comment that at least the humans do something normally for once (but what scared them enough to defensively spout blood?) or something else entirely?

The human - the first they had met, was making an intermittent noise with its proboscis.

Snurf.

Communicating was spotty. Both sides

Challenge: No humans, or anything pertaining to them at all. That includes human-made or modified things, creatures, places, foods etc.

[AN: Ooooo a GOOD one :D]

Belok took note of the unusual structure as ze approached it. Ze could see that it was made out of ancient hulks of previous civilisations’ stellar vessels, but they had been… conglomerated. Docked, patched and - in at least one case - crashed together into one unappealing whole.

Ze tried all comms avenues including

You mentioned Shayde’s much-debated status as “human” among the denizens of Amalgam. So I’m guessing that as well as all the “human status confirmed” moments there had to be a few cogniscients that just bluntly asked her what she was. And I’ll bet after the first twelve she started coming up with more creative answers/responses….

[AN: I doubt she made it as far as twelve]

There were drawbacks to being in the company of someone who was only

I may have already submitted a similar prompt, but there was mention made about how non-human species might be very good for autistes - some are very cuddly, some like particularly quiet environments, some have interesting textures. All good for degaussing or forcing the unwanted mob to back off when the autiste is having trouble communicating.

In case a similar prompt has already been made, I’ll request the first time a human of the autism spectrum met any of the Galactic

A sign in Braille that says “do not touch”

“Humans had to have made that,” said P’riix.

Tonq, the other archeologist on this ruined planet, peered at it. It was a wall plaque with two codified human languages on it. One of them, raised for the vision-impaired.

The flaking paint above read, “DO NOT TOUCH”

“Oh yes,” said Tonq. “We have clear evidence of humans.”

Which would alter all the reasonings concluded from the evidence

A friend just showed me the opening lines to his new story and said I could use them as a prompt:

“This is the voice of the Mysterons. We know you can hear us, Earth-”
*sound of tape rewinding*
“…Sorry for the technical difficulties. To clarify, we are not the Mysterons. We are arguably worse.”

“Approach Cairo at vector two-one-niner by alpha seven,” sighed Kevin. “And we’ll thank you for a lack of