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A 253-post collection

Challenge #01958-E134: The New Terror

They warned us about AI, aliens, the government... but nobody expected the ducks. -- TheDragonsFlame

"That's not exactly true," said one of the survivors. "Alfred Hitchcock tried, but it didn't quite get there."

Sandy fed another page of a glossy magazine to the guttering flames as she tried to work this out. "You mean The Birds?"

"That was full of crows and seagulls and pigeons, though."

"Yeah, well. Ducks are hard to be believable as a threat. Or they were."

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Challenge #01953-E129: Lost in a Hellscape

A couple who have no recollection of how they got there find themselves in a lethally dangerous environment where every creature and several of the plants seem to be trying to kill them. Being religious, they realize they are lost souls and this must be hell.

Then the search party finds them. They were vacationing in Australia and had wandered off after someone gave them roofies.

But what happened in between that would make and amnesiac tourist decide that they were just

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Challenge #01950-E126: What is Life and What is Real

They are quite real to us these lines coloured in sometimes, they've been with us since we first met them, and they seem 'real'. Comics, graphic novels, the funny pages. -- Knitnan

They were just shapes on a page. They should very clearly not be so impactful. They were the written word. They were pictorial representations of impossible things. They were imagination. They weren't real. And yet...

There he was. Hiding away from the world because these particular shapes on a page

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Challenge #01946-E122: Strangers With Candy

TANSTAAFL, or "Invest in Acme income Management, returns of 50 to 70%" Yeah! Right! -- Anon Guest

[AN: For those who don't have familiarity with ancient acronyms, this one stands for, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"]

Lee Arr and Fred DeShanko were at it again. She recognised the pattern, even though their names weren't easily found in the pamphlet.

Step One: Latch on to some fringe science or stuff so far out on the cutting edge that it's

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Challenge #01945-E121: Caveat Emptor

"Marry in haste, repent at leisure," or what happens when the icing is off the gingerbread. -- Anon Guest

Tyn could not understand why Thel had gone through so many spouses. Thel was the dreamiest star of romance and song in the entire world, and Tyn counted hirself lucky to share a minute with the famous and wonderful Thel, and now ze was sharing hir life with them. It was the life of Tyn's dreams.

Red carpet. Glitz. Glamour. The intense and

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Challenge #01942-E118: Made Great Again

Mouth on Legs politicians willing to promise anything or come up with grand schemes to get elected. -- Anon Guest

[AN: I need an image of Google Search asking "Did you mean Donald Trump?" Nonny - I write fiction. Nevertheless, I'll give it a go.]

It was going to be a bold new era. Things were going to change. The rich would pull their weight in the economy. People were going to have the playing field both leveled and cleared. No child

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Challenge #01940-E116: Pax Princeps

My son now has a five year old daughter. He referred to her as 'Princess' and I had to tease him. "What are her duties as a Princess? Does she negotiate treaties between her dolls and her teddy bears? Does she preside over public events? Does she have any input on new legislation?"

It backfired. Now she DOES negotiate treaties among her stuffed critters. -- Bard2DBone

Most little girls like to play Princess. Most little girls do so by wearing sparkly, frou-frou

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Challenge #01940-E116: Mama Done Tole Me

a world that's basically space America but taken to its logical extreme and becoming a redneck paradise -- Anon Guest

[AN: Trying not to go to Greater Deregulation here]

There are the Few, but we don't go near the likes of them. We are the Many. We look after our own. We make do with what we got. We earn what we can, and we got our pride. Every now and again, the Few come along and try to tell us what

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Challenge #01939-E115: Baby's First Flight

I'll spread my wings and learn to fl- oh, crap, sorry, I didn't mean to knock that over. I underestimated my wingspan. -- TheDragonsFlame

The thing about wings is, they're the largest part of any flying creature's anatomy. They have to be. In order to independently lift one's own body-weight, most of that weight has to be doing the heavy lifting. And if you're flapping to do it... well... there's a reason why the largest flying birds in the world employ the

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Challenge #01937-E113: Very Important Tools

Why on Earth would you ever need more than one of those? -- Anon Guest

"Listen. There is a philosophy about the right tool for the right job. And these tools all have a different job."

"But six different spatulas? Why?"

"This one's best for scrambling. This one's best for tossing. This one can flip a pancake with ease. This one is good for chasing things around on a griddle," the chef laid them out as he spoke. "This one's excellent for

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Challenge #01935-E111: The Brat Who Would Be King

The modern 'royal' needs the stamina of a marathon runner, the patience of Job, the ability to be pleasant to the most boring bunch of Social Climbers and have a cast iron bladder. She must also be a Constitutional Law expert and a crack shot. The rest of you just have to put up with anyone who wins a popularity contest. -- Anon Guest

You may have heard the words, Nobles oblige, or, uneasy rests the head that wears a crown. These

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Challenge #01934-E110: True Tall Tale

You can find out a lot about a Nation by reading it's 'fairy tales'. -- Anon Guest

Civilisation tells stories. Oral history, moral fables, just-so legends, and in the case of humans, rampant fiction that builds and mutates as it goes. And every now and again, you meet the Fae Tales. Stories of otherworldly beings who have mental processes that squirm like worms, who steal children for laughs, who either prey on the mad or avoid them like the plague. There's something

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Challenge #01931-E107: What Does it See?

...I gazed into the sun. You would not see it unless you were looking, but it was there. There was a pupil, an iris, cornea... Then... the sun... blinked. -- Anon Guest

It took less than a second. Just like any blink you or I may know. Nobody else saw it because you just don't look at the sun unless you want to risk going blind. Plus this is the sort of thing that you could literally blink and miss.

There had

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Challenge #01927-E103: Clean-out in Aisle Seventy

The joys of 'Bargain bins' and 'end of Season' clearances. -- Anon Guest

Sale (n): A period of time in which retail emporiums lower the prices of their merchandise to cost or slightly below cost to save on storage fees. -- The Cynical Dictionary.

Wise men said that only fools rushed in. They were the ones who spent their savings on shiny gimcrack that wouldn't even last a weekend. Therefore, when the doors opened on the Big Box Mart Once A Year

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Challenge #01919-E095: I Welcome Our Automated Overlords

At last robots replace politicians and things get done, sort of. think of the pro/anti same sex marriage bill here in the wonderful land of Aus. -- Anon Guest

Everything is getting automated. Everything. There's a company of machines that are churning out placeholder, formulaic potboilers with mad lib plots. Humanity now finally values the creative spirit, because it is about the only thing that cannot be replicated by procedural machines. But even then, the machines are learning.

And, in an

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