Against the Planners

For the 30 Days Meme Second Semester, for the prompt “27) write a story using only one period. Bonus: write the story using only one /ending punctuation at all.”

From dailyprompt: “not a cloud in sight” and “set events in motion.”

Planners ‘verse.

There was not a cloud in sight that Sunday, nothing looming on the horizon, nothing at all to suggest that the consortium that called itself the Planners had set events in motion that would change, not only the world, but the future of the universe (this may, of course, be a little bit exaggerated, but at the time of the upheaval, it certainly seemed as if everything in the universe was changing – history was changing, the way banking happened was changing, government was changing, the structure of power in the known world was changing – all in all, it was an unstable and unpleasant time of change, and it was all due to the Planners and their infernal, internal, inheritable planning); the future of society hung in the balance, swinging on one comma in the Planners’ ledger, because that is all that any of us were to those people, commas, balances on a spreadsheet, numbers of acceptable losses (look at the way they planned out for this apocalypse, after all: so much food set aside for each city, so much medicine, put aside, even admitting “we expect an attrition rate of ten to thirty percent,” as if admitting it bald-faced like that makes it better, somehow; it was clear from the very beginning that they intended to set themselves up as the sole power left on the planet, and that only setting aside so much food for the rest of the world was part of their plan – and it worked.

The List:
1a) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
1b) the story starts with the words “It’s going down.” (LJ Link)
2) write a scene that takes place in a train station.
3) the story must involve a goblet and a set of three [somethings]
4) prompt: one for the road
5) write a story using an imaginary color
6) write the pitch for a new Final Fantasy styled RPG (LJ Link)
7) prompt: frigid (LJ Link)
8) write a scene in the middle of a novel called “The Long, Dirty Afterwards” (LJ)
9) prompt: mourning dead gods (LJ)
10) write a story set in three different time periods. (LJ)
11) Write a movie trailer style trailer for a story, existing or not-yet-written. (LJ)
12) prompt: sweet iced tea (LJ)
13) re-write a story that everyone knows (LJ)
14) write a vanilla story dealing with kinky subject matter (LJ)
1
5) prompt: ascension (LJ)
16) write a scene that takes place at the end of a long road trip. (LJ)
17) write an uncomfortable story (LJ)
18) prompt: a step too far (LJ
19) write a story in which something goes BOOM. )LJ)
20) Write the end of the story ‘The Purple Bag. (LJ)
21) Roll a d20 twice. Combine the themes of the two previous stories for those numbers. (LJ)
22) Prompt: White Knight (LJ)
23) write a scene that takes place in a place that is war-torn (LJ)
24) prompt: founding fathers (LJ)
25) write a story set in a libraryLJ
26) Prompt: ElementalLJ
27) write a story using only one period.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/126059.html. You can comment here or there.

0 thoughts on “Against the Planners

  1. “we except an attrition rate of ten to thirty percent,” except? Was this supposed to be ‘accept’ or ‘expect’? The narrator isn’t pro-Planner id he/she?

  2. Yeah, because how dare they try to save anyone without planning to save everyone. After all, it isn’t like anyone else had any responsibility to look after themselves (heh, pet peeve there, I think the most annoying objection to missile defense that I’ve seen is the, “It’s a waste of money unless you can save 100% of all targets. If even one person gets hurt there was no point to it.”). Oh, and of course if they made plans to survive upheaval then any upheaval that comes along must have been their fault. There’s on like this in every lifeboat isn’t there?

Leave a Reply to lilfluff Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *