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World Building June Day 3: Who?

Jun3

It’s World-Building June!  So I’m building Worlds!  Aerax/Expectant Woods over on Patreon, and Bear Empire and a new thing here!

It’s also June WorldBuilding – so we’re getting two sets of prompts.  After I exhaust the answers I’ve written, I might just default to Inspector Caracal’s questions.

Bear Empire
(The setting for Carrone and Deline, Chased in the Bear Empire)

3. Who lives in your world?

People!

Actually, that’s a very good question.

I don’t know about non-human sentient races yet.  If they exist, they probably are either completely integrated into society or they live off in their own little corners. Continue reading →

World Building June Day 2: Geography

Jun2

It’s World-Building June!  So I’m building Worlds!  Aerax/Expectant Woods over on Patreon, and Bear Empire and a new thing here!

Bear Empire
(The setting for Carrone and Deline, Chased in the Bear Empire)

2. What’s the Geography of your world?

The Bear Empire is mountainous, with sprawling fields.  It’s the top part of the continent – or if not, everything above it is un-livable, and it probably claims right up to the pole as a matter of course.

The mountains form a border on one side for at least one other nation.  Near the south, the borders are often more drawn on paper than in the landscape, but at least one of them is a wide river prone to seasonal flooding. Continue reading →

World Building June Day 1: About

Jun1

It’s World-Building June!  So I’m building Worlds!  Aerax/Expectant Woods over on Patreon, and Bear Empire and a new thing here!

Bear Empire
(The setting for Carrone and Deline, Chased in the Bear Empire)

1. Tell us about your world, what’s it about?

The Bear Empire is an arctic nation spanning the northernmost part of a landmass and bordering at least one other nation (Dekleg).

The weather there tends towards the frigid in winter and the temperate in the summer. Continue reading →

Renovation Fics

Mar26

These are a few microfics, written to prompts for my Renovations Prompt Mini-Call (which is still open as long as I keep getting prompt).

Claim the Sun

The tree was ancient, the sort of monster that managed to live through a convergence of luck and good soil, best placement and the weakness of her neighbors.  She had sucked up all the sunlight for what seemed, to the younger trees, like miles. And she had, in turn, sucked up lightning blasts.

It had been the last one that killed her, cutting through old scar tissue and toppling her in a  crash louder than any thunder. Continue reading →

Exploit

Jan20

Okay, content warning, I creeped myself out. 

🤖

“Kelly, he’s a person, he’s not a robot, you can’t just – Kelly, what are you doing?”

“So there’s this line of – okay, they’re not robots, but they’re programmed, aren’t they?  They’re the Zero-One-Seven line out of Detroit, and they’re, ah,  They’re beautiful, for one.”  Kelly gestured at the man in question, a handsome, tall, twenty-something dressed in a simple tunic and pants that looked too sterile and antiseptic for the city street.  He smiled back, a wooden expression that did not reach his eyes.  “And they have an exploit in them.”

“Kelly,” Susan repeated, “he’s a person.  People don’t have – they don’t have – really?”

“Really.  And the thing is, he wasn’t purchased – there’s this loophole, you can’t actually buy a person, even someone from on of the programmed lines.”

“Good!  Good, Kelly, that’s awful.”

“But indentures are still legal.”  Kelly stroked the back of the man’s neck affectionately.  He did not move, except his eyes, which half-closed.  “And what’s more, there’s this clause in the programming that is suppose to ensure obedience.  But what it ends up doing—”

“I’m going to be sick,” Susan muttered.

“Oh come on.  They sell these Programmables, they’re supposed to be — well, programmed.  It’s what they’re sold for.  They volunteer.  Anyway.  There’s this thing where they’re supposed to imprint on the person to wake them up, who is supposed to be their indenture-holder.”

“:That’s pretty horrible.”

“They’re programmables, Susan,” Kelly repeated.  “It’s not like they have feelings until they’re programmed in.  Anyway. That means that whoever wakes them up essentially holds their indenture. They can’t be re-imprinted without a full factory reset.

“You stole a programmable human?  A person.  Kelly.  How did you?”

“I hacked a Programmable, using a really obvious exploit in their system.  And those training screens they use?  They have no security at all.  I hacked him, Susan.  And now he’s mine.”

She stroked his hair again, paying no attention to the way his jaw twitched at her touch.

🤖

Written to yesterday’s Thimbleful Thursday’s prompt: Zero Hour.


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Young at Heart

Jan12

Written to the Thimbleful Thursday Prompt from yesterday, of the same name. 

🖍️

“It’s a cloned heart, freshly made in our lab.”

Dr. Hischa was very proud of the heart in a box. It was displayed like the crown jewels, held up for the cameras and, more importantly, for the patient. “This heart isn’t the heart of a donor. Nobody had to die for it.  It’s your heart — but your heart as it was when you were a teenager.”

The patient, a woman in her eighties, coughed out a laugh. “Hopefully early teens.”

“Had wild teenage years, did you?”  Dr.Hischa remained jocular, but a very observant viewer might have noticed a slight twitch.

“That’s a good word for it. Wild.” The patient chuckled.  

“Well, now you can be young at heart, ah-ha-ha, again.  Won’t that be wonderful?  Now, let’s just…”

Prepping included reams of paperwork; recovery included weeks of testing and physical therapy.  When the cameras once again turned on Ms. Palorin, she was lounging sideways on a chaise, her children and grandchildren eyeing her uncertainty.

“So, Ms. Palorin-”

“Oh, call me Milly.”

“So, Milly.”  Dr. Hischa’s smile was strained around the edges.  “How are you feeling?”

“I have to say, I haven’t felt this good since I was a teenager the first  time.  I feel great.  This is the bee’s knees.  I can run up stairs.  Want to see me do a cartwheel?”

“Mom!”  Her eldest daughter, sporting pinched face and frown lines, threw up her hands.  “Mother, you can’t!  Act your age—”

“-not your shoe size, nyah, nyah.  I know, Catherine.  But right now I feel like acting six.  Or maybe sixteen.  This new heart is wonderful, Dr. Hischa!”

“It’s wonderful that you’re feeling capable of being more active again, Ms. Palorin.  Now, of course, the rest of your body will still require some care.  I do recall from your chart that your broke your hip two years ago, so cartwheels might be a little over the top…”

“Pshaw!  Besides, I said call me Milly.  ‘Ms. Palorin’ sounds so old, and Mr. Palorin has been gone for thirty years—”

“MOTHER!”

“Oh, Cathy, it’s not like it’s not true.  Anyway.  I’m having a blast with this new heart.  I think I’ll go out and see what the kids are doing these days.  What do you say, Susie?”

Her granddaughter, of about the age to be called “kids these days” grinned widely. “Of course!  I can show you the new dances, too.  It’ll be wild!”

“Ms. Palorin, your hip—”

“What? It’s not like you can’t just clone me a new one. And then,” Milly laughed, “I can be young at hips again, too, and think how much fun that will be!”

🖍️


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🖍️

A Fresh Start…?

Jan1

Written to @inspectorCaracal‘s prompt: 

Waking up with no memories and a pamphlet explaining you have been given a fresh start in life

⁉️

He woke.

He was in a room with a bed, a small table holding a suitcase and a bag, and a mirror; two doors and a window led out of the room.

He knew all those things, but he had no idea how he’d gotten there.

He had no idea who had gotten there.  Continue reading →

A New Lease on Life

Dec6

Written to @lilfluff’s prompt 

Leaving home for a weekend and returning to find your home and entire neighborhood has been replaced.

🏡

“My house is gone!”

Ed Lawton was furious.  He slammed his fist down on the counter, leaned forward, and got as close to the clerk as he could.  

The New Lease on Life clerk seemed entirely unbothered by this.  While Ed wasn’t going to give an inch, he found himself wondering if the woman was one of the new android models he’d been hearing about.  

Or maybe she just heard this a lot.  “The brochure said ‘Get away from it all.’ sir.  And you have, indeed, gotten away from it all.” Continue reading →

The Colony

Apr30

Who knows? This might be the prequel to another setting.
To The Lit-awoo-erry =n.n=‘s prompt.

There were things they hadn’t planned for because they hadn’t known.

There had been people in space before; there had been people on the moon before. But when they built the first lunar colony, they were in a hurry, they had some serious issues to contend with, and they really, really needed to get a breeding population of humans and some core species of animals off the Earth, just in case.

Earth was, as far as the colonists could tell, still there. But the ship had been cannibalized for parts and there would be no going back.

And then there were the Dry Years.

Five years where the colony thrived, the animals thrived, the city grew and they figured out lunar agriculture – and not a single placental mammal carried an infant past the first trimester. None.

Five years of trying everything and nothing, nothing working.

Mira had grown up with this legend. She knew of Earth the way her grandparents had known of the moon: something hanging in the sky, something there were stories about. She knew of the Dry Period much better, because she had been the first child successfully born on Luna.

She stood at the row of incubators, looking at her first egg. The shell was soft, like a platypus’, and it had been platypus eggs that had cued the colonists into their solution.

Earth would probably be very fascinated with the genetic engineering they had come up with in five short years, and everything they had managed in the twenty-one since.

Earth, the lunar colonists said, could ask them about it when Earth sent a ship for them.

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January by the Numbers 28: Everyone Eats Everything, a ficlet

Feb17

January by the numbers continues deep into February…

From sauergeek‘s prompt Everyone eats everything: a ficlet, although more of a start of a story than a story.

As far as strange rules and regulations go, the colonies usually didn’t rate too far up there. When they were colonies, at least, they had far too much to worry about to spend time making rules, other than the very direct: “everybody works” sort of regulations. It was only as time went on and they found themselves in situations where their original survival-based rules were insufficient that most places started coming up with more and more elaborate rules.

Egdarton Seven was a little unique in this matter. It was settled by a small, closed group – one of the few cases where that was allowed, but there was a trend for that around that time, social or avocation groups gathering together and filling a colony. It worked best if the group had wide enough skills to fill all the positions, because one or two outsiders in specialized, necessary positions led to some pretty bad social dynamics on some colonies.

Egdarton Seven, however, had none of the common problems, but it did have a long-standing hobby group with a wide range of skillsets, both within and outside the hobby group and, more, a wide range of already-extant rules and the sort of personalities who enjoyed enforcing said rules. The rules you need to know were posted at their rudimentary spaceport, and woe betide the visiting ship’s-crew or scientist who didn’t read and follow the rules. For a first offense they might be warned, if the person who caught them was feeling generous. For a second offense, they’d be escorted back to their ship and politely told not to come back.

(“What happens if someone part of the community breaks one of those rules?” asked a disgruntled scientist who hadn’t understood the severity or sincerity of the Oxford-Comma rule. The persons escorting the scientist to the ship had clucked in disapproval and not answered. If the scientist had been, perhaps, an anthropologist instead of a xenobiologist, things may have gone very differently for the colony on Egdarton Seven. Certain things were not actually allowed, no matter how they were written into the colony’s charter.)

The one rule that threw almost every visitor, the one rule that got more people evicted from their station, was one that every single member of the colony agreed on wholeheartedly: Everyone Eats Everything. In practice, this meant that if you hated a dish, you could eat a tablespoon-sized scoop of it and be done, but in theory it meant that every person on Egdarton Seven was eating the same things, and that the entire colony ate together.

Like every other rule on the colony, no official explanation for this edict was ever offered, although one teenaged member did like to whisper, melodramatically and none too seriously, “poison!” any time any visitor asked.

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