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Challenge #00645 - A280: Performance Art

 ”The Lion Sleeps Tonight” is so culturally engrained now that starting it is just a whim away, a whim away, a whim away…

Open Mic Night at the Tunnel Cafe…

It was where many a young performer honed their act before taking it further out into the open. People came here to steal other people’s jokes. People came here with dreams of stardom. And Shayde came here, apparently, to hold a guitar and tell jokes.

Having done some research into Terran history, Rael halfway expected her to finish with “Anyway, here’s Wonderwall,” before she actually played.

But that didn’t happen.

She strummed her guitar. A prelude to another joke. The audience was getting used to the pattern and issued forth a pre-emptive giggle. “Ye ever notice that there’s some songs that get right into yer head? There’s a few, ye ken, that are so universally known that they’re just a whim away, a whim away, a whim away…” The guitar came into play, strumming a backing to her chant.

Humans scattered through the audience joined in.

Shayde nodded many other cogniscents into joining the chorus. Once the rhythm was established, she sang, “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight…”

Applause, though the audience kept singing.

It was hypnotic. It was incredible. She had the whole room singing along before the first chorus. Even him.

Now he could believe that she used to busk for extra money. She had all the subtle ways to play a crowd while her hands were full of guitar and her mouth was full of song.

Shayde moved from The Lion Sleeps Tonight to Ob La Di Ob La Da, to She Loves You, and a song Rael recognised from the Consortium of Steam. Something she couldn’t have heard here and now because the Consortium were still on their home planet and she owed the Station too much to access the Galactic Info-net.

She finished with It’s a Small World After All, and got cheered off the stage. Rael watched her gather her warning card and bounce to her seat beside him.

“Eee, that’s better'n five cups o’ coffee,” she giggled.

Rael finished his last dish. He’d timed it well. “Your debt to the station is being adjusted,” he said. “And Sherlock demands you return to your cell as soon as possible.”

“Woh? I cannae stay t’ watch the puir bastard who has tae follow me?”

Shayde groaned. “Tha’s half the fun…”

Rael glared at her. “Fun is not the object of incarceration, Cogniscent Shayde.”

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Human Religions

Aliens discover celebrity fandoms (Elvis, Morgan Freeman, etc.) and take them for human religions.

(#00644 - A279)

[AN: This is going to be interesting because the Amalgam Universe does possess the First Church of Elvis…]

From the journals of Kor'kor the Fascinated:

The humans, as always, were very welcoming and allowed me to trade for a ticket to their ceremonial enclosure. The sacrament was a large portion of exploded grain. Perhaps a sacrifice to the spirits?

The exploded grains were coated

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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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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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