Split (1)

train · 199k rows

post_text stringlengths 0 17.5k	post_title stringlengths 8 314	comment_texts listlengths 1 74	num_stories int64 1 74
	[WP] Wizard's powers are gained through their tomes-Tomes of Fire, Ice, Water, Mind, Soul, Time, they all exist. The more tomes a wizard has, the stronger and more diverse spells they can use. You have discovered a new tome: The Tome of Nullification.	[ "You didn't believe it at first, but as you began to study and apply the spells contained within, you begin to feel a different feeling of power well up within you. You remember coming across this tome in one of your travels, picking it up at some abandoned library. For something newly discovered, the tome felt worn and old. Like it had been left there for decades, maybe even millennia. It didn't look like most tomes did. You know, hard-bound, sturdy spine, prominent symbol of the element it features, etc. This one just had a soft leather cover, edges worn, no trimmings, no design except for an odd symbol embossed into the spine. To make sure you dont lose it, you fashion leather bindings and a case to put it in. You strap it onto your belt and take it with you everywhere. " ]	1
	[WP] You're an archaeologist working in Alexandria and you've found something completely uninteresting. Or it would be, had it not come out of a 2000 year old, sealed, giant, black, granite sarcophagus.	[ "\"Is it ready yet?\"\n\n\"It'll be just a few minutes now.\"\n\n\"You can't speed this up? I flew 15 hours to get here, I thought that you would have more to tell me by now.\"\n\nDr. Carter pinched the bridge of her nose, \"I've told you already, we have to be incredibly careful opening the sarcophagus or we could risk damaging whatever is inside.\"\n\nThe man shot a glare in her direction before moving closer to the monitor, \"Yet you can't even tell me whether there's anything inside at all.\"\n\nDr. Carter bit her tongue, forcing herself to respond professionally, \"As I mentioned before the CT scans don't show anything, neither does any other method of examination we've performed.\"\n\n\"In other words you've managed to discover exactly nothing,\" In the short time since she had met him Dr. Carter had discovered that the man wore a permanent scowl. \n\n\"We don't know why but the x rays aren't penetrating the sarcophagus. The material looks like granite but it's not. We're... not entirely sure what it is.\"\n\nThe scowl let out an exaggerated sigh \"Is there anything that you do know?\"\n\n\"We know that it's been buried for over 2000 years. We'll know more once we can get it open.\"\n\nA voice came crackling through the intercom, \"Doctor, we're almost ready.\"\n\nDr. Carter sighed in relief, \"I'll be right there,\" she said into the intercom, almost too eagerly. She wasn't sure whether she was more excited that she would finally see inside the sarcophagus or that she no longer had to speak to the scowling stranger in the suit. \"Please wait here, you can watch from the monitors.\" \n\nShe was not surprised to learn that good news did not cure him of his disposition. Some people were simply born in a bad mood.\n\nShe quickly made her way down to the lab where the assistants were making the final preparations to open the massive ebony coffin. \n\n\"Are you ready?\" The lab assistant answered with a nod. \"Good then let's do this. Open it.\"\n\nTwo floors up the man watched the sarcophagus slowly being cracked open on the computer screen. Dr. Carter slowly approached the ancient coffin. She peered inside as the rest of the lab watched in anticipation. An oily voice came out of the intercom, \"What is it?\"\n\nThe doctor knitted her eyebrows, looking around at the others in confusion. \"It looks like...\" Her gloved hand reached into the dark sarcophagus and pulled out a tiny object covered in a thin layer of dust. When she brought it closer it lit up.\n\n\"Is that.. a cellphone?\" The whole room looked down at the little black rectangle in Dr. Carter's hand. She was struggling to find her voice, when the phone began to ring.\n\nThe rest of the room exchanged shocked glances, even the scowling man watched in shocked silence. As if on instinct the doctor touched the green symbol on the screen and slowly brought the phone up to her ear. \n\n\"Hello Dr. Carter. I've been waiting a very long time to speak with you.\"\n\n\n", "(Here is that response I linked before, I hope it doesn't count as plagiarism, as it's my work, and my post was removed)\n\n“‘Tis pity it’s so warped.” The subject of this lament was an alabaster bust discovered in Alexandria along with the sarcophagus. It’s implication was that, since in the Greco-Roman period, the Egyptians began exhibiting a more realistic style, the tomb’s occupant could be identified with relative ease by comparison to other such busts. Its first intimations were seen in the reign of Akhenaten, the heretic-Pharaoh, every deformity of the supremely inbred royal family was depicted.\n\nFittingly enough, the model for the bust was, (apparently), the victim of damnatio memoriae, rather like Akhenaten. Assuming history would continue to repeat itself, this fellow had incensed either the divines or the divinities. Around the same time, the cults of Hermanubis and Serapis were flourishing, establishing a precedent for theological intermingling. In this spirit, some were even harmonizing Egyptian cosmology with Platonist philosophy. The Hermetic tradition could also be dated to this epoch.\n\nThe idea was perfectly reasonable, the broad-shouldered Athenian was said to have studied under and been inspired by Egyptian priests. It was these same priests who said the genealogies of the Greeks were naught but nursery rhymes compared to their own.\n\n\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\n\nSome of the workmen reported that, on descending into the tomb, they had seen something wonderful. Where with Carter it was, “everywhere the glint of gold,” these gents had seen a glint of an altogether different kind. Electric lights, initially, it seemed foolish, but Dendera, with its puzzling inscriptions, had been built contemporaneously.\n\nIn this light, there could be seen, much like Dendera, representations of Nut, the sky goddess, as well as the thirty-six spirits. The traditional zoomorphism of Egyptian sacred art was nowhere in evidence, however. In its place were a plethora of creatures like Set, as well as entities more at home in Berossus than Manetho, evocative of Dagon.\n\nScholars have known since at least Frankfort that the Egyptian deities were more than met the eye. Amun, worshipped a rather short distance from here, at the Siwa Oasis was dubbed “The Hidden One,” of whom it was said,\n\n“He is too mysterious for his majesty to be revealed, he is too great to be discovered,\n\ntoo mighty to be known.\n\nOne falls down immediately out of terror,\n\nif one speaks his secret name, wittingly or unwittingly.\n\nThere is no god who can call him by it,\n\nthe ba who hides his name according to his mysteriousness”\n\nAmun was frequently syncretized with Re, whose true name, and consequently power, was stolen at the point of death by the crafty Isis. Isis, whom Isidorus, an author of the sarcophagus’ period acclaimed with the words,\n\n“All mortals who live on the boundless earth,\n\nThracians, Greeks and Barbarians,\n\nExpress Your fair Name, a Name greatly honoured among all, but\n\nEach speaks in his own language, in his own land.\n\nThe Syrians call You: Astarte, Artemis, Nanaia;\n\nThe Lycian tribes call You: Leto, the Lady;\n\nThe Thracians also name You as Mother of the Gods;\n\nAnd the Greeks call You Hera of the Great Throne, Aphrodite,\n\nHestia the goodly, Rheia and Demeter.\n\nBut the Egyptians call You 'Thiouis' because they know that You, being One, are all\n\nOther goddesses invoked by the races of men”\n\nAt this moment, one might experience a sensation similar to that felt by the sentient points and lines of Flatland, that of being in the presence of something beyond one’s perception, beyond one’s comprehension. The occupant of this tomb had ordered that the gods be rendered as they were, had disseminated the name that held the world together. That was why his own was nowhere to be found.\n\nNotes:\n\nThe first text quoted is\n\nP.Leiden 1 350 ,IV,12-21=AHG ,no.138\n\nThe second is V.F. Vanderlip's translation of Isidorus' Hymn I" ]	2
	[WP] demon dies, but somehow goes to heaven.	[ "“Where....am I?”\n\nI snarl, attempting to open my eyes fully. The light prevents me from doing so, and I feel the big band music in the background taunting me. I cover my face with my hands, and manage to sit up.\n\nI’m between a rock and a hard place. Literally. I’m sitting on a marble slab, with one side a large obsidian (I presume) boulder and on the other a sign that reads,\n\n“A HARD PLACE.”\n\nIt looks like the sign to a cheap roadside diner. Or maybe a brothel, with a name like that. Sousa continues to play in the distance, and as far as I can see beyond me there is only pure white. That’s when I notice the man standing in front of me. He has an irritating smile on his face (which is very punchable by the way) and looks serenely down at me like some priest.\n\n“Welcome to heaven!”\n\nShit. Heaven? Me? Why!?\n\nI lick my lips, hoping to prevent my mouth from feeling like sawdust.\n\n“There must be some sort of mistake. At the gateway I specifically asked for Hell.”\n\nHe continues to smile stupidly, and I have the urge to punch him in his stupid ugly face and watch him fly into the blank space over the horizon. \n\n“No, my child. GOD has chosen you.”\n\nSo, the Almighty chose a demon to come to Heaven? What? Alright, let’s see how it goes.\n\n“Can I meet GOD?”\n\n“Of course.”\n\nWonderful. If I try to kill GOD, I’ll be sent to Hell for sure. He walks me towards the horizon, which expands like a living origami figure into an Escher-esque landscape. People walk on the ceilings and walls, into strange and small doors in odd angles and shapes. Arches have no bases, towers no foundations. It’s silly, really. I’m sure I’ll enjoy Hell a lot more than this dump.\n\nWe enter a door which materializes from nothing, adorned with a sculpture of a miniature gnome. And I must say if that gnome is indicative of how GOD looks I feel many people will be very disappointed. The door opens neatly, and then folds into a mini marble rosette, floating (somehow) gently to the floor.\n\n“After you, my child.”\n\nDoes he EVER stop smiling? Legitimately? GOD, I just want to punch him in his perfect teeth. \n\n“Thank you.”\n\nI walk into the small opening, and am greeted by a giant black cube. Enormous, the size of a house on Earth. Beautifully adorned, an angel on one side, and a gorgeous devil on the other. At the top is a screen. Perhaps GOD isn’t the face-to-face type? \n\nNever mind. An old man materializes in front of the cube, and he has the same stupid smile. I turn around, the angel has left. Bad move.\n\n“Hello, GOD?”\n\nI summon two spines from my arms, a characteristic demon technique. They pierce the skin, and slowly stretch outward. Perfect for stabbing. Now for my free ticket to Hell. I run forward and strike the old man, and run into the cube.\n\nOw. Damn.\n\nI whirl around.\n\n“This has just been a computer simulation. You have passed the test. Welcome to Hell.”\n\nThe cubes and the Escher crap disappear, as a glorious hellscape appears. I breathe a sigh of relief. \n\nHome sweet home.", "“Look, Mr….Skullfucker,” the angel winced as he said the name, “I'm doing my best here, so if you could just bear with me a moment, it would be greatly appreciated.”\n\n\nSkullfucker rolled his eyes. Arms folded, legs crossed, he squirmed in the chair on the other side of the desk. All around, the chatter of computer keyboards, ringing phones and banal office chat grated on him. It was just like Central Admin in hell but a twisted, bizarro version of it. Their computers were all iMacs running Mojave instead of Dell Dimensions running Windows 95, they were actually answering their phones, and the water cooler had real water in it instead of Monster energy drink. It was terrible.\n\n\n“I don't see what the problem is,” he growled, “clearly, I belong downstairs, so just show me where the stairs are and I'll be on my way.”\n\n\n“Everything ok here, Percy?”\n\n\nAnother ridiculously good looking angel sidled up, sipping coffee from a mug that read “Mondays are pretty great!”. His name tag said “Tad”.\n\n\n“I saw the…” he waggled a finger at the two-foot long horns protruding from Skullfucker’s head, “...and just wondered if you needed any help.”\n\n\nPercy mouthed thank you at Tad before realising how obviously he had done it. He smiled awkwardly at the demon.\n\n\n“Well, you see,” Percy began nervously, “the manner in which Mr...Skullfucker (wince) passed was quite unusual.”\n\n\nTad raised his eyebrows.\n\n\n“Skullfucker? Really?”\n\n\n“Hey! It's a traditional name. I happen to come from a long line of Skullfuckers.”\n\n\nTad sipped his coffee, his eyebrows shifting a smidge higher.\n\n\n“Now, listen,” Skullfucker shifted forward in his seat, “I don't care how it happened, it is obviously your mistake. I suggest you stop profiling me, stop casting dispersions on my proud heritage and get on with the process of unfucking your fuck up.”\n\n\n“I didn't say anything,” Tad said mildly, shrugging, “just clarifying your name.”\n\n\nHe turned his winged back for a moment, clearly sharing a look with Percy, before returning to the computer. Lifting the half moon glasses that hung from a gold chain around his neck, Tad peered through them at the screen.\n\n\n“Mr Skullfucker,” said Tad as Percy winced again, “do you remember how you died?”\n\n\nSkullfucker sat for a few fuming seconds, his eyes burning like coals. He didn't really want to admit that he couldn't. That would mean he probably didn't go down in a blaze of glory, in an epic battle. He probably died on the toilet or something.\n\n\n“So, you were on the toilet,” Tad started, “in your apartment. You were talking to your dog...dude, you poop in front of your dog?”\n\n\nSkullfucker buried his head in his hands. This was not a good start to his death story.\n\n\n“Anyway,” Tad continued, “it says here you ripped one real bad, like off the charts toxic, and you said to Doggie Schnauzer M.D.-”\n\n\n“Oh, no,” groaned Skullfucker. It was starting to come back to him.\n\n\n“-you said: Jesus, I’m sorry.”\n\n\nSkullfucker threw his head back, blinked at the ceiling, ran his hands between his horns.\n\n\n“I didn't mean it like that,” he hissed through gritted teeth.\n\n\n“Yeah, look,” said Tad, dropping the glasses to his chest, “we're working on closing that loophole. You'd be surprised how tricky the legal stuff gets….”\n\n\n“But I'm a fucking demon!” Skullfucker roared.\n\n\nThe office hubbub dropped on a dime, all eyes on the desk in the centre of the room. Skullfucker was on his feet, bare chest heaving. Tad sipped his coffee. Percy was frozen in the motion of pushing himself away from his desk. It annoyed Skullfucker to realise he was beginning to feel self conscious. His eyes darted nervously around as he lowered himself back into his seat.\n\n\n“I mean, surely it can't be that simple,” he whispered urgently once the office murmur ebbed back to full volume, “for a demon?”\n\n\nTad’s annoyingly beautiful face somehow seemed made for the condescending smile he wore.\n\n\n“Come on, Skully, we're not that incompetent.”\n\n\n“And yet,” Skullfucker gestured around, shrugging, “here I am.”\n\n\nWhen Percy spoke it was like the bleating of a lamb.\n\n\n“It was a freak accident!”\n\n\nSkullfucker's gaze fell sharply on the junior angel.\n\n\n“Sorry!” Percy added quickly, “no offence. About the freak part.”\n\n\nSkullfucker waved the apology away with annoyance. \n\n\n“Just tell me what happened.”\n\n\nTad gulped the last of his coffee and looked eagerly over to the coffee machine as he began in a distracted tone.\n\n\n“Do you know the Cathedral Basilica of St Phil the Curious?”\n\n\n“Of course,” scoffed Skullfucker, “and I always steered well clear of the biggest fuck off church in my neighbourhood.”\n\n\n“Hmm,” mumbled Tad, nodding to someone across the office and pointing at his mug, “well, they recently had some plumbing work done on the hot water system in the sanctuary. Shoddy work, apparently. There was a gas leak and an explosion which resulted in a rather holy relic being flung two and a half miles over the city, through a tiny bathroom window and into the heart of a demon who had just vaguely asked the Good Lord to forgive him his sins.”\n\n\n“Jesus,” muttered Skullfucker.\n\n\n“Ooh, don't start that again,” Percy warned, “you don't want to end up in double heaven.\n\n\nBefore Skullfucker could ask, Tad continued.\n\n\n“So, that's how you got here. It's probably gonna be a while before we get this all sorted. Might be a good idea for you to get a lawyer in the meantime. Do you know any good...what am I saying, of course you do.”\n\n\n“Ha, ha,” Skullfucker deadpanned.\n\n\n“Great,” says Tad, “glad to see you're keeping a sense of humour about the whole thing. We'll find you a place to stay while we figure this out. Some place warm, I'm guessing. Percy here will nut out the details with you...”\n\n\nTad trailed off as he chased after the coffee pot doing laps of the office.\n\n\nPercy was very helpful in the end and Skullfucker thought he might just be able to cope with staying in that wretched place so long as he never left his specially designed apartment. \n\n\n“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Percy asked when it seemed they were done.\n\n\n“If you could point me to the restrooms,” Skullfucker said sheepishly, “I never got to…close the account on Earth before the whole death thing.”\n\n\nAfterwards when he retreated to his new apartment Skullfucker reflected that while being in heaven sucked ass, their toilet paper was to die for.\n" ]	2
	[WP]Some days before your grandpas' mysterious death he told you "don't be afraid if something out of this world attacks you, you are out of this world too." And today, something out of this world is coming after you.	[ "I was walking back from school that day. Another boring day, same old boring life. Despite that, I couldn't ever really stop myself from enjoying art class. There was something therapeutic about molding clay. Its almost as if the statuettes and pottery absorbed all my worries and frustrations as I effortlessly shaped them into whatever form I wished. Everyone just assumed I had a natural aptitude for it, and I had believed it too. On the way home though, I was attacked. Something looking like a demon suddenly tackled me from behind.\n\nIt didn't get a good enough grip on me to stop me from swerving around, driving my fist into its face instinctively before I could even comprehend the fact that it looked like it could snap my hand off effortlessly with its eyelids.\n\nWith a meaty shunk, I'd sunk my fist forearm-deep into its forehead, the anatomy faltering like a soft, wet clay. Disgusted and shocked, I quickly withdrew my fist. I couldn't help but stare as what was left behind was a perfect, drawn out shape of my fist, all the way to the back of their skull. There was no blood, it was as if this were how they created. I managed to escape their grasp just as they began to spasm, sickening cracks as sheared bones began jutting out of their leathery hide, skin darkening as blood pooled underneath. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't escape the desperate, rapidly interrupted gasps and grunts as they convulsed.\n\nOverwhelmed, I was left with no choice but to come to terms with my newfound ability. At the time I didn't know it well, but it was clear in retrospect, that it was the power to shape anything to my will. I walked over calmly to the demon, pressing one palm into the concrete as the demon sank inside, suddenly held dead still while I moved it to the hole I'd made in their head. I thought about undoing the damage I'd done.\n\nIt worked, to an extent. After releasing them from the pavement, the convulsions had stopped. It was clear however, without any direct instructions, I'd simply 'fixed' them in a vague and basic sense.\n\nSighing, I spent a few more moments going about their body. A mild interest in anatomy and basic first aid training meant in addition to my powers, undoing the damage was easy. Bones were realigned and joined, blood was redirected from body cavities back into the cardiovascular system, and what have you. Though with foreign biology, they ended up becoming a little more human-like in their shape, they still retained a bipedal, digitigrade stance, heels horizontal with the ankles as if to act as some sort of shock absorbing structure for the hulking behemoth.\n\nSpeaking of which, there was no one around right now, given that I was out early, but I thought perhaps it wouldn't have been prudent to stay there. I considered my options for a minute before turning some twisted, mangled railings that'd served their purpose into a large, hand drawn wagon.\n\nI'd lived on my own ever since my grandfather died, in his house. A good thing, since no one would ask questions about a braindead demon I'd brought home.\n\n\"So.\" I stated. \"Any questions?\"\n\nGrace, as I'd called them once they began showing signs of consciousness, looked at me with a face of disgust and confusion. Despite everything, she'd shown a surprising aptitude for recovery. Within two weeks, she'd went from comatose in bed to walking, if unsteadily, and speaking English as fluently as myself. \n\nGrace shuddered, a chill no doubt running down her spine as her mind was forced to imagine in grueling detail its own destruction.\n\n\"So, you can reshape things at will?\", she asked.\n\n\"Yep.\", I curtly replied. Though I continued, \"I'm not sure how deep I can go.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\", she asked again.\n\n\"How small I can change things. Fractions of a millimeter? Atoms? Protons? Gluons?\"\n\nGrace looked visibly confused. I'd forgotten she lacked a basic education. I'd gained a newfound respect for teachers in the meantime, given that there were some in my class that Grace would easily outclass even when she'd only first woken up.\n\n\"Really really small bricks that make up people, like bricks make up a house. You can't see or feel them, because they're that tiny.\"\n\nGrace nodded. She wasn't stupid, but she had a long way to go yet." ]	1
Based on [this post](https://reddit.app.link/8J7V2B2UuO)	[WP] As a judge, you have heard years of people sit and swear that they will tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them God,” this was the first man who said “No.”	[ "\"No.\"\n\nWell, shit. I've been a judge for six years now, and have never had a witness refuse to take the oath. All the other judges in my jurisdiction see this kind of thing several times a day, but in over eight thousand cases, every one of my witnesses has taken the oath without complaint. For the last three years my court has been the most famous statistical outlier in all of American jurisprudence...\n\n...and that ends now.\n\n\"Mrs. Williamson,\" I finally ask dejectedly, \"may I ask why you refuse to take the oath?\"\n\nThe little old lady turned her sweet face toward me and said earnestly, \"Because I don't know the whole truth, Your Honor.\"\n\nI sighed and laughed, as did everyone else within earshot. \"You don't have to know the whole truth, Mrs. Williamson,\" I explained gently. \"The oath means that when you are asked a question, you will answer it truthfully and fully to the best of your knowledge. If you don't know an answer, just say so, and that's the whole truth.\"\n\n\"Oh! In that case...\" She turned again to the officer and continued solemnly, \"I do.\"\n\nI nodded to the state's attorney. \"Your witness.\"\n\nWell, that was a close one." ]	1
	[WP] the last warrior falls and the crowd cheers, you have won the trials, now you can challenge the champion, but wait… he’s, undead?	[ "(WP) The Last Warrior\n\nThe empress stood up, a tall, lithe vision in royal purple, surrounded by her retinue, in a box high above the stands. Her face was covered by a long, dark veil, signaling the mourning period for her late husband.\n\n\"Congratulations, warrior! You have fought most valiantly, and for that, you shall be richly awarded. But first, you must challenge my champion.\"\n\nThe crowd below her roared its approval, baying for yet more blood. The warrior stood in the center of the arena, chest heaving, sweat dripping down her brow, into her eyes. She blinked the sweat away, wishing that she could at least have a drink of water before facing her final opponent.\n\n\"But wait! You need a weapon. I don't wish to hear that the empress is unfair to the warriors who fight for her name and empire,\" The empress boomed again, and she waved an elegant hand, beckoning someone forward.\n\nA young woman in a fine gown stepped forward with a massive tray of weapons, all of which gleamed wickedly in the bright afternoon sunshine, holding them out to the gladiator.\n\nShe frowned, poring over them: there was a long, rusted blade, a sharp khopesh with two glittering, gleaming sharp ends, two sharp silver knives with mysterious symbols carved into the hilts, a shield with the empress's symbol on it, a lion with something hanging from its jaws, and finally, a halberd with a sharp, gleaming golden tip. The warrior selected the shield and the pair of knives, strapping the shield to her left arm, and she tucked the knives into the pockets of her dirty, ripped tunic. She smiled at the woman and bowed her head, indicating that she had made her choices. Then, as she was backing away, she held up the shield and one of the knives, a signal to bring out her final challenger and begin.\n\nThe empress smiled down at her, then shouted down from the stands: \"It appears that our warrior is ready to face her last opponent! Bring him out!\" She told the guards, and the baying, roaring crowd went quiet, the air hushed with ugly anticipation.\n\nThe guards flanked the figure that was emerging slowly from the tunnel in front of her; she swallowed, feeling as if she could feel her heartbeat everywhere, in her throat, her wrists, the back of her knees, roaring in her ears and inside her head, blocking out all thought except for one: To win. To be victorious. At any cost.\n\nShe was so close to her freedom that she could taste it; she hadn't come this far, hadn't practically drowned in the blood of her competition, to lose now. She would not allow it.\n\nThe guards and the figure between them emerged at last, though the gladiator could not see her opponent's face; a hood had been drawn up over their head.\n\nThat was fine by her. She didn't need to see one's face to make them concede. A fierce heat built up in her blood, screaming at her to rise and fight, to cut and rend until she saw blood, until she was unopposed.\n\nThe bell rang to signal the fight to begin, and she moved without thinking, charging her opponent and moving to kick their feet from under them.\n\nBut her competitor was just too quick. There, and gone, a flash of black and a gust of wind. In the motion, the hood fell back, revealing a tiny young woman with pale skin, eyes blacker than sin, and a feral, fanged smile.\n\nWhat was going on? Surely this was a trick. A jest. Nonplussed, the warrior stopped, looking around. But then a cold hand closed around her throat, and she was up in the air, dangling, limp as a ragdoll.\n\nThen the girl threw her as if she weighed nothing, and then she was on the ground, gasping for breath.\n\nWhat was wrong with her? She had to defeat this woman, if it took every ounce of strength and defiance that she had.\n\nShe reached into her pocket and grappled for her knives, desperate to defend herself. She couldn't lose, and already bitterness was gathering in the back of her throat, as if her body had given up before she'd even began. She screamed, a hoarse, vicious sound of frustration and defiance.\n\nShe scrambled to her feet, and just barely had time to raise her shield in front of her body before the girl struck again. The shield rattled, and the warrior used all of her strength to shove the girl back; the girl fell, almost, but managed to catch herself.\n\nThe gladiator charged again, roaring with rage and bloodlust, one knife tucked in between her fingers, hidden just so. The pale woman was fast, but not fast enough to block the shield coming at her and the knife in her fingers. Knocked off balance when the shield hit her, the warrior reached up and slashed at her throat, the tip of the knife so sharp that it ripped through the skin like paper.\n\nThe gladiator smiled to herself, certain that now she had the upper hand.\n\nBut it was simply not to be, for her opponent had coughed, and the skin slowly knitted itself back together.\n\nHer mouth dropped open in shock. What kind of mad sorcery was this? It didn't make any sense, because she was sure she'd dealt a killing blow.\n\nBut her eyes hadn't been deceiving her. The woman smirked, cracking her neck lazily. \"That hurt!\" She snarled, her voice thick with an accent that the warrior didn't recognize. She must have come from a faraway land. \"You'll pay for that, human.\"\n\n\"Less talking, more fighting, whatever hellish creature you are!\" The human quipped in return, smirking and raising her hand, beckoning her opponent forward, taunting her shamelessly.\n\nThe creature roared, a deep, guttural sound that exploded out of her throat. The crowd screamed raucously, full of stomping feet, screaming in dozens of different languages, and clapping hands.\n\nAt least they had their attention, the warrior supposed. She reached for her knives and realized that she had left the weapon on the sand, covered in sticky, black blood. She swore to herself quietly and began to run, but her opponent appeared in front of her, as if born from smoke.\n\n\"Oh no, I'm not making this easy for you!\" She snarled, and her teeth snapped mere inches away from the warrior's neck; she felt a gust of air as she twisted out of the way.\n\nBacked against a wall, quite literally, the human thrust out a fist, the knife clenched between her fingers, and it was as if her hand had met cold stone; there was an ugly crunch as her hand gave way against the creature's stomach and broke.\n\nThe creature was laughing, brushing off the blow as if shooing away a particularly annoying fly.\n\n\"I will truly enjoy ripping your body apart for the lions to eat... At least you won't have died in vain, you foolish, arrogant thing.\"\n\nThe human snarled through clenched teeth, but the sound was strangled as the undead woman wrapped a delicate hand around her throat.\n\n\"Say goodbye, human. Enjoy your last moments.\"\n\n\\\\" ]	1
	[WP] She left him there, lying in a pool of whatever-it-was.	[ "Help!!! Someone please help me!!! She... She just left me here!!! \n\nFew minutes pass, no one comes to young Andy's aid.\n\nI think I broke my back, I can't move. Jesus, no one's here, no one can hear me.\n\na young girl approaches... She just stares at Andy\n\nHey little girl!!! Come on call someone, I think I broke my back!!!\n\nWeirded out by his demands my mommy said not to talk to strangers!\n\n#what! I'm in pain you little...\n\nShe giggles you're fucking pathetic! Try to get out of that nasty stuff!!\n\nHEY! DON'T TALK...he adjusts his voice don't talk to me like that, you child!! How old are you!?\n\nI'm 11.\n\nLook, my name's Andy and can you please go get someone to help me please.\n\nShe disappears\n\nAndy is left all alone, in pain, in this filth\n\nMinutes pass, time slows down, he feels isolated,. But then, just like that...\n\n#Andy customer needs help in isle 3! Andy customer needs assistance in isle 3!!\n" ]	1
	[WP] You're a civil right's lawyer. You're very surprised to learn that every fictional creature in film is real, and they've decided to file a class action lawsuit against major film studios for defamation with your help.	[ "There was a slight knock at the door, and Cheryl poked her head through. \"Mr. Lawson, there's some...ummm, well...I guess they're here to see you?\" She said, her voice strained. \"They say they're here for your three o'clock.\"\n\nI glanced at the planner on my computer, which showed a rare blank space for the next few minutes. Well, there goes my long lunch break, I thought. Sighing, I waved for her to bring the people in.\n\nWhat entered was...not people. At least, most of them weren't people, and I had some concerns about the one who seemed to be the closest. The...creatures that walked in were vaguely familiar, and it took me a few seconds to realize who they were.\n\n\"M-mickey? Mickey Mouse?\" The beloved mascot looked to have fallen on hard times. His faces was paler and lacked the cherubic qualities of the cartoons that had become world famous. The iconic red shorts were tattered and worn, the buttons tarnished.\n\nI took in the rest of the characters in turn. Bugs Bunny sat in the corner with Daffy Duck, holding a smoking carrot like a cigar. Homer Simpson looked more jaundiced than yellow, and was far thinner than how he looked in the show. Out of the entire group, Goofy looked the best, in a tweed suit and giving off an aura of familiarity with the situation.\n\nThe mouse nodded sadly. \"Yep, that's me.\" His voice was a dead ringer for Walt Disney, which made sense.\n\nI shuffled papers on my desk warily. \"So, what can I help you...gentlemen with?\"\n\nMickey started stammering, but Bugs cut in sharply. \"Look, Doc, we wanna sue the people who make us look bad. Can you help us?\"\n\nI placed my fingers over my mouth, taking in what he had just said. \"Are you talking about people who are making money off of parody of you? If so, I think you'll have a tough case.\"\n\nDaffy spoke up, his lisp evident. \"No, you thimpleton. We mean the places that make up these movies about us and pretend like it's the real deal.\"\n\nLetting the insult slide, I asked, \"So, you're saying that the cartoons of you are inaccurate and tarnish your good names? Got any examples?\"\n\nHomer, who had been quiet the entire time, finally spoke up. \"I mean, look at me. Do I look anything like how they make me look? I look like a fat slob on that show, and they made an idiot out of me. I may not be the smartest guy, but I'm no moron. At home, I can't go down the street without someone yelling after me about Bart or something that happened in the last episode.\"\n\n\"He isn't the only one to suffer under those circumstances. In our home, I am a physicist who has made great strides in the field of quantum mechanics that has vastly expanded our understanding of the Toon Universe in relation to that of your own. But in the Disney world--\" Goofy spat the name, venom in his voice. \"--to them, I am nothing more than a bumbling buffoon who simply exists to say 'a-hyuck'. It's disgraceful.\"\n\nEach pf them told me their story about how the studios had enticed them with promises to tell their story, sounding more like a documentary rather than a sitcom. Then, they had reneged once they had the rights, changing the characters to fit their needs and leaving the subject in the cold. I sat back in my seat. \"This seems insane...and it also sounds like textbook defamation. How far does this go? Should I be calling that South Park kid, Cartman?\"\n\nBugs waved a disdainful paw. \"Nah, that one's right on the money. I had to watch him for a day, he's a real piece of woik. But we do have a bunch lined up and willing to jump in. Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, Betty Boop, you name 'em, they'll have a story to tell.\"\n\nI thought about it. The situation seemed like something that could become a huge deal, even life-changing. Then again, it could be laughed out of court and I could be the guy who ended his career over some cartoons.\n\nBut they're not just cartoons. They're a part of your childhood. These guys need your help. Don't just let them suffer.\n\nI extended my hand. \"Let's sue some companies.\"\n\nAs the toons stood to leave, I had to ask the question that had been on my mind the entire time. \"So, why did you all come to me for help on this? Did someone recommend me to you?\"\n\nMickey chuckled. \"Ha-hah, not at all. Just a little bit of cartoon logic. We just figured, with a name like Lawson, you must be good at this lawyering thing!\"\n\n/u/TemporaryPatch New Years Resolution Tracker: 47/100. Visit /r/TemporaryPatchWrites for more responses and stories!" ]	1
	[wp] In this world, the first crime you commit, marks you for life. Thief. Adulterer. Being some of the more mundane ones. One day the town you live in is shaken up by the arrival of a new man. The mark of the God Slayer on his forehead.	[ "I walked into the tavern, coins jingling at my belt and a mighty thirst upon me. I pushed open the doors, a smile already light upon my face but the expected rush of talking and laughter did not ring out. I walked in and looked around. There were very few patrons, odd for this time of the evening. There was one table in the corner, a couple at the bar and a man sitting alone, as far away from the others as possible. I walked towards the bar, my smile faltering at the bar keep's scowl.\n\n\"Evening Travis. Ale and a shot of something stronger if you please\".\n\nThe man grumbled, his eyes fixed on something behind me before he shuffled off and got my order. I slid three copper pieces his way and took a hearty swig from my flagon.\n\n\"So what's going on? Who died?\"\n\nTravis did not smile. He nodded his head in the direction of the man sitting alone. I looked closer. He looked travel weary, his cloak threadbare and he stood out clearly as a stranger. I turned back, rubbing the mark of The Blasphemer on my forehead.\n\n\"Not a fan of newcomers?\"\n\nTravis spat on the dirt packed floor and began to clean a mug with a dirty rag. His own mark was covered by a stained bandana but i knew it hid The Adulterer. As did his wife.\n\n\"Keep your jokes to yourself Marrick. That man over there is an abomination.\"\n\nI looked back at the man, who glanced up briefly as if he detected the prying eyes. His Mark was covered by the cowl of his hood, despite the warmth in the tavern. I nodded at Travis. \n\n\"Ah I see. Well what is he? Murderer? Shit..\" I leaned in, \" Not ..children?\".\n\nTravis shook his head and spoke.\n\n\"What was that?\" I asked, unsure if that could possibly be what he said.\n\n\"God Slayer\" Travis whispered slightly louder and my eyes widened in shock. A man who had done the unthinkable. A man who for his very first crime had dared to kill a God. I sat at the bar and finished my ale, mind a whirl. I drank the shot. After a brief hesitation, I looked up at Travis and ordered a pitcher of ale. He glared daggers at me but complied. After one more shot, I picked up the pitcher and approached the lone stranger, my shoulders prickling as i felt the stares of my neighbours. The man himself looked up at my approach, his hand leaving the table to reach out behind him. My eyes followed to see a gigantic halberd resting against the wall, its haft worn, its blade pitted. I raised the pitcher in a universal symbol of peace. After a pause, the man returned his hands to the table.\n\nI sat down and without a word, refilled his tankard and then my own. The men looked at it for a minute, perhaps to check for any signs of foul play, before licking his lips and quaffing half in one swallow. I followed suit.\n\n\"So. I guess you know what i am here to ask\" I said and was surprised that i kept the tremble out of my voice.\n\nThe man laughed and it was deep and full of bitterness. He flipped the cowl from his head and his Mark burned, brighter than any i had seen, the words clear.\n\nGod Slayer\n\n\"Holy shit\" I gasped, \"No offence\".\n\nThe man laughed again and this time there was a small hint of mirth to it. \n\n\"So its true. You killed a God\".\n\n\"Aye, I did,\" The man said and his voice sounded rusty, unused. \"So as you've brought ale, i'll allow your questions.\"\n\nI refilled his tankard and my own, my hand shaking slightly.\n\n\"How?\" i eventually said.\n\nThe man looked at me, scratching at the glowing Mark on his head, before looking over at the huge weapon behind him.\n\n\"Not so hard really. I don't think anyone else had tried. Maybe that's why they do it\".\n\n\"Do what,\" i asked and i found myself leaning in, closer to this man who had committed the most heinous crime.\n\n\"Who do you think cursed us with these brands boy?\" the God Slayer asked.\n\n\"Well, the Gods of course\".\n\n\"Aye, the Gods. And why would they want to do that?\"\n\n\"To keep us pure. To keep us honest. To protect the people.\" The practiced words, drummed into me from years at the Sermons spilled out. The man smiled, a mere baring of teeth.\n\n\"Of course. How noble of them. Or perhaps they've branded us so that we are so concerned with our earthly sins that we do not look to those above us\".\n\nI realised that my knuckles had gone white around my tankard and i released my grip slowly. This was dangerous talk. I stayed seated.\n\n\"The Gods are wily. They curse humanity in a way that ensures we monitor each other. Punish each other. Execute each other. And yet we thank them for it.\"\n\nHe drained his tankard and stood, flipping the hood back over his forehead. He gripped his halberd and hefted it easily, the muscles in his arms bulging. \n\n\"So the God's cursed us with these brands boy. And who do you think made it a crime to kill Them?\"\n\nHis words rang in my ears as he strode to the door and out into the night.\n\n-------------------------------------------------------------------------\nr/AMSWrites", "Chains softly clinking with each step, the latest criminal was brought fourth for execution. An out of towner, so the rumours went. Hard to tell with the sack over his head, but John didn't recognise him. Besides, if it had been one of the townsfolk, chances are he would have heard by now. He exchanged a glance with Karl, before skimming over the scarred words above his friend's eyes.\n\n'Assault.'\n\nThe very same words that were etched into John's own forehead, carved in shaky scrawl moments after he committed his first sin. The assault was revenge in his teens, all for a blow to his ego that was long past stinging. Karl earnt his sin by being a good friend, and not walking away. For that, John would always love him.\n\n\"Know him?\" John asked over the growing hum of the crowd.\n\n\"Don't think so,\" Karl replied, stepping aside to let Manslaughter-Dave leave the crowd. He'd seen enough, apparently.\n\nOn the stage ahead of them, The Pure raised their hands, and the crowd fell silent. The prisoner in rolled his head, as casually as you like, as though he had a crick in his neck. In his pure white robe, with his unmarked forehead, the elderly leader of The Pure addressed the crowd in a loud yet warbly voice.\n\n\"The man before you,\" he said, gesturing to the prisoner, \"is guilty of a crime so heinous, there were many within The Pure who did not wish to reveal it.\"\n\nNervous murmurs rippled through the townsfolk. Ahead of John, a mother with 'Adultery' slashed across her head turned her child away and stepped out of the crowd.\n\n\"But I believe we wear our sins for a reason,\" continued the leader of The Pure, as the prisoner was dropped to his knees, shacked and chains jangling. \"They are to be witnessed.\"\n\nPeople with 'Thief' and 'Arson' nodded their heads, men with 'Battery' and 'Burglary' jeered and whistled. Women with 'False worship' and 'Incest' threw their hands to the sky and closed their eyes.\n\n\"With that in mind,\" said the leader, his wrinkled hands falling on the prisoner's bagged head, \"behold!\"\n\nHe grabbed hold of the sack and ripped it off. The shackled prisoner squinted painfully as his eyes adjusted to the light. Hair damp with sweat stuck to his forehead, and the leader brushed it aside with his hand so all could see.\n\nFor a moment, the world fell so silent that John could hear the prisoner's breathe as he surveyed the crowd and sighed. John stared at the man's forehead and forced himself to blink, half expecting the words to change. Usually executed criminals heads read 'Murderer', 'Rapist' or 'Pedophile'. But carved on this man's head were very different words.\n\n'God Slayer'\n\nJohn's eyes ran over them again and again. After what felt like a lifetime, the leader of The Pure spoke once more.\n\n\"A crime of this nature cannot be abided.\"\n\nA huge man with an axe stepped forwards, the word 'Murder' engraved above his eyes. The town executioner. A symbol of a sun was tattooed around his sin, covering his face, showing he had been absolved and forgiven. He stood at the side of the prisoner, towering above him.\n\n\"Can I speak yet?\" muttered the prisoner in a gruff, rasping voice.\n\nThe leader of The Pure gestured for calm. \"You may.\"\n\n\"I have passed through many towns to get here. I will pass through many more after here. I was held in Galtbrook, Tavvistone, Slaton and Thieves cove. I was put up for execution in Bostock and Ganting, Shireoaks and Meekstone. Each of them was ready to kill me, same as you. Each let me go.\"\n\n\"Why?\" demanded one of the younger members of The Pure, \"tell us why, damn you!\"\n\nThe leader rested a hand on the shoulder of his fellow Pure as the prisoner flashed a toothy smile.\n\n\"I'll do you one better,\" said the prisoner, \"I'll show you.\"\n\nThe crowd erupted into confused whispers and murmurs as the prisoner slowly pushed himself back upto his feet.\n\n\"I need a few things. A bucket of chalk powder. A blade made of silver. A child who's pure, but doesn't want to be.\"\n\n\"Witchcraft!\" shouted someone in the crowd. The entire town began shouting and shoving.\n\n\"Silence!\" bellowed the leader. \"The Pure will discuss your terms.\"\n\n(to be continued) " ]	2
	[WP] You're a skeleton, and after years of fighting for the queen, and never removing your helmet, you're now forced to do so, because you're about to be knighted.	[ "There are masses of people around you. the Queen and her guards in front of you, and a long red carpet behind. All here to witness the knighting of the famed \"Mask\". You like that nickname. And you like your mask. Even though it is a pretty simple looking mask, with an expressionless face, you feel like it gives you an image. A soul. Something people could recognize you by when they saw this hulking mass of plate armour.\n\nIt's not as if you are some mysterious character to your peers though. You talk. You shout. You cry, you laugh, you tell jokes, you even burp. People just never see your face. Or skin...not really. Except for those two. They forged your armour and padded it with....something....to make it look like you're bulky as fuck, when in truth, you are a big skeleton, bound by some damned ancient magic to roam around until fuck knows when. \n\nYou don't remember who you were before this. You just....woke up. But whatever, now is not the time for a life-story. Now is the time for freaking out, because you're about to be knighted. In front of many people. In front of Her Majesty. And you don't have a face.\n\nBut you decided to go with it, grit your teeth, and see what happens. It's not like they can kill you. Ha. Jokes on them: already dead. Them two understood, they accepted yiu, they helped you. Why wouldn't She? Besides, you whitened your bones, they're all nice and shiny. Pearly even. You got this. You got this.\n\nThe room goes quiet. The silence really is deafening. You look up and you see the queens, confused face. You look her in the eyes. But she doesn't look you in the eyes. You don't really have any. You become very self conscious. You can see her eyes, the despair, the confusion, the pity. But she can't see anything, except two holes in a shiny white skull.\n\nIf you would've had lips, you would've puckered them. If you had eyebrows, you would have brought them together. If you had a genitals you probably would have let out a bit of pee. But life is cruel, and by the looks of it, the future doesn't seem to different from life either.\n\n\n\n" ]	1
	[WP] In a world of super powered beings, your power is to make hyperbole true. As a lawyer, you do your best to keep everything hypothetical unless a client were to abuse your power.	[ "\"They are literally bending me over and fucking me on this one!!!\" A large, heavy-set, man with sweat beading down his face shouted as he pounded his fist on a long wooden table.\n\n\"Metaphorically yes, literally no...\" I corrected him, this was not a statement I wanted to forge into reality.\n\n\"I can't go to jail for this! That would literally be the end of the world!!!\"\n\n\"Perhaps metaphorically, but it would not literally be the end of the world...\" I rubbed my temples in frustration. \"The prosecution has extensive evidence on you, I don't think we can win at trial. However, we can perhaps negotiate a plea bargain with time served. You will likely be able to return to your wife and family by the end of the week if it pans out.\"\n\n\"Oh, so you are literally trying to fuck me now too!?!!\" The client raised his voice and stared at me incredulously. \"You are literally the worst lawyer in history.\"\n\n\"I appreciate the metaphor, but this is all metaphor, can we get back on task?\" This was not going to ruin my career. Additionally, I can do better than a financial fraudster with three ex-wives. \"I am partnered at this law-firm and I come highly rated by many important people, so I am hardly the worst lawyer in history.\"\n\n\"Oh, so you are telling me that you are literally the best lawyer ever?\" The man scoffed. \"Give me a break!\"\n\n\"Yes, I am literally the best lawyer ever, and I think it's time we sit down and negotiate that plea-deal.\"" ]	1
	[WP] You are the most unnoticeable person in the world. You've been ignored, overlooked, and haven't been able to stand out no matter the situation. Naturally, this makes you one of the greatest burglars of all time.	[ "It's been this way for as long as I can remember. No one notices me, no one sees me. I feel alone and isolated. No friends, no family. \n\n\nI wanted to be noticed so I started doing bad things. I started small, tripping people, moving objects a little. Then, one day, I realised that I could do whatever I wanted and nobody would care. \n\n\nI didn't worry about food, shelter, or anything really. My teenage years were the best. I did all I could to fuel my desires. Did whatever I wanted. I only cared about my happiness. I didn't care what would happen to others as long as I could enjoy myself to the fullest. \n\n\nSoon after I felt the emptiness. I felt this deep darkness in my soul that could never be filled. No one would look at me, no one would notice me, no one would notice if I stopped existing. \n\n\nI went to crowded areas and screamed at the tip of my lungs. I started fires, killed important people, planted bombs, but nobody ever found me out. Nobody ever noticed me. Nobody saw me. Nobody heard me. Nobody knew I ever existed. \n\n\nIt was then when I started going mad. I would attack people in broad daylight, with weapons or my bare fists. But nobody would notice me. Even the person I was attacking didn't know what was happening. \n\n\nOne day I woke up and just felt nothing. I stopped trying. I came into the realization that no matter what I did no one would look at me. No one would know who I was. No one cared. \n\n\nSo I decided to end it all in the flashiest was I could imagine. A blaze of glory so great everyone would be talking about it for years to come. I took all the explosives I could find and planted it in the most important place I could find. As I sat on top of the bombs, holding the trigger, I feel a smile creep onto my face. I don't remember the last time I was able to smile. I push the button and I feel free. \n", "You know, most heros stand out in a crowd. Neon suits. Lasers. Cars flying over heads. Most villains do too. Blood. Explosions. Death. Most of us capes are obvious. Can't miss the guy spitting glowing acid over the gal spurting rainbows from behind a slightly sparkly force field.\n\n\nMe? I'm just a nice guy. No news articles really mention me. No crimes. No blood. Most definitely no rainbows. Just another guy in the crowd.\n\n\nOh, hello again. Don't mind me. You don't mind me. I've been within three paces of you for an hour now. You probably didn't notice. Especially in the toilet. I don't even look all that familiar to you. Just part of the crowd. Just another guy in the crowd. A nice guy. Of course there are normally crowds in a locked stall. Crowd of one. Perfectly normal.\n\n\nAh. You again. Nice to see you. You don't remember me? That's perfectly normal. I'm just another nice guy in the crowd. Crowd of one. In this alleyway. Dark here isn't it? Weathers crap. Trains late. The two of us are a tight fit in this car. The usual. \n\n\nMorning. It was nice to see you sleep. Thanks for letting a nice guy like me stay in your house. Don't worry, that red stain is perfectly normal. Your wife is just asleep. Nothing untoward here. Weather's crap isn't it?\n\n\nThat's unusual, most people wash their feet before their face. What am I doing in your bathroom? Oh, don't worry. This is normal. Who am I? Oh, don't worry. I'm a nice guy. Just another face in the crowd.\n\n\nAs I finished twisting the thumbscrew shut, he finally stopped screaming and begging for my help. Never noticed I was the one that had left his body in bloody tatters, poor guy. I grabbed a wallet and went on my way. The blood on my shirt was perfectly normal. The screams were nothing out of the usual. The door, left ajar to show the bloody spectacle dangling from the ceiling, was something you see every day. Me? I was just a nice guy. Just another face in the crowd.\n\n\n#Breaking News: Family dead in Lousieville. Father mauled by bear, wife stabbed by house invaders and two children shredded by rogue power tools. More on page 5.\n\n___\n\nHeavily inspired by somewhat minor character from Worm. Any comments or advice is appreciated. ", "I think Scott Weiland's death is the saddest death of all rock musicians.\n\nHear me out here.\n\nAll the other ones got to go out in some blaze of glory. Even Layne Staley, who died in a similar fashion, got his proper sendoff. He was still relevant when he went, people were still wondering what had happened to him and hoped for his comeback.\n\nScott was done by the time he died. He was a shell of himself. His former wife even said so in that Rolling Stone article she wrote. He was playing small clubs. He had embarrassing videos of himself on YouTube, so obliterated he can't remember the words to his songs. His voice was going-- you can't abuse your vocal chords like that for twenty years and expect them to stay intact.\n\nI like STP. I don't think they were particularly innovative or special but they earned their place in the world. And if you listen to their songs, they're just as human and just as devastating as anything Kurt Cobain or Billy Corgan wrote.\n\nParticularly the lyrics from the song Plush. Particularly the one lyric, \"Got time to wait for tomorrow.\" I feel like that's what Scott was always doing, including when he overdosed on his tour bus. Smoking, drinking, snorting, swallowing, and waiting for tomorrow.\n\nBut so that brings us to me.\n\nI can relate to a lot of 90s rock because it's the last time that sad straight white dudes got a cultural spotlight on them. That music encompasses what it feels like to be an invisible white guy in today's society.\n\nI'm the most unnoticeable motherfucker ever. People aren't even threatened by me because they never notice I'm around. It used to bother me, but they say embrace what you can't change. So I started thinking-- how could this be useful? \n\nI started stealing as soon as I knew I could get away with it. I took conventional shit first-- little things. The first thing I ever stole was this rubber snake from the desk of a kid who sat next to me in eighth grade. He never even noticed it was gone. I still have that little rubber snake. I keep it in my glovebox.\n\nIt wasn't long and I graduated to valuable items-- money, jewels. I became an expert shoplifter. Security cams had nothing on me. I broke into my first house at 17, my first office at 20.\n\nI got so good at it that I started giving things back. I took them, kept them for awhile, then returned them. A lot of the times, no one even noticed they were gone. The most fun is when they realize they're gone, then can't explain it when the item returns.\n\nI started stealing more high profile items. I went Ocean's 11 on Vegas and Washington D.C. I have numerous souvenirs out of the Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court. I took a snippet off RBG's judge robe-- DURING A FUCKING HEARING-- and she didn't even blink. I've stolen the Hope Diamond three times now. One time I had it for almost a year. You didn't hear about it, did you?\n\nBut like all mastered skills, I got bored with my gift for theft. It had become too easy. Truth be told, it had always been too easy.\n\nI started thinking, what's the most valuable item a person can steal? There are diamonds and jewels and gold bars and clothes and material items all over the place. Everything is replaceable.\n\nWhat isn't?\n\nI'll tell you what isn't.\n\nPeople.\n\nSpecifically, people's remains.\n\nWhich brings me back to Scott Weiland.\n\nI've been stealing from celebrity graves for awhile now. To be honest, it's the only thing I bother stealing anymore. I have a lock of Marilyn Monroe's hair and a lock of Mitch Hedberg's hair. I have a scrap of Dean Martin's tuxedo, and Mr. Rogers' tuxedo. I have toenail off Andy Kaufman's left pinky toe (yes, he actually died). I have Elvis's tie (yes, he actually died, too).\n\nBut when someone's cremated, not buried, I can't get my hands on them. So when Scott died, I sprang into action. I was on a plane that evening. I was at Hollywood Forever for his memorial. I was clean, I was efficient. I was at my absolute best that day. I was ready. And I succeeded.\n\nI keep Scott Weiland's ashes inside this brass crab that I got from my grandma. The crab's shell flips up and there's Scott, in a baggie with a twisty tie on it. His family has no idea. They have a mixture of crushed seashells. Don't worry, though. I'll give Scott back in a few years.\n\nBut for now I want to sit here and listen to Plush again, the acoustic version, which is way more melancholy and captures the spirit of the song way better than the full band version. Very lonely. Just like an invisible person's life.\n\nJust me and the voice who sang the words, waiting for tomorrow." ]	3
Bonus points if you can end the story with a person being alone. Double bonus points if you can attribute them being alone and symbolically contrast it with being “unique” .	[WP] We live in a universe where only the like minded coexist. At the end of every discussion, if there are differences in opinion, each individual is transported to a parallel universe with others who think similarly in every way.	[ "I sat in silence, watching the woman walk past toward the house. The shades were drawn and I peeked out from underneath. I was lucky to have seen her first. It would seem that the element of surprise was the only strength left to me in this world. Knowing she was there would prevent her from taking my food. If she tried to she would put both of us in danger. She crept toward the front door, treading lightly on her toes, clearly trying to remain unseen herself. She was going to come inside. Have to think fast. The bureau behind me would give me cover but she would easily find me, dooming us both. I could hide behind the door but what if she only cracked it open, and discovered me that way? Soft steps made their way up to the wooden porch. I could hide in the kitchen if I moved fast enough, perhaps slit her throat before she could think about what was happening. The chef's knife was heavy in my hand, the knuckles white from gripping the handle, which was itself slick with my nervous sweat. Perhaps if she saw me she would understand my fear, and walk out the way she came. There was silence now. I had waited too long.\n\n\"This great initiative will allow greater Unity than we have ever seen!\" A man in a dark patterned suit looked out over a large audience, though what pattern it was I could not tell through the television screen. \"By this time tomorrow, we will all be in a perfect society, crafted just for us. Each of us, with perfect judgment. Rejoice!\" With that he pressed a button, and a hush fell over the crowd. A voice yelled, \"Did it work? Is it in effect now?\"\n\n\"Why yes! Speak to your neighbor, find your peace! Any other questions?\" Then, suddenly, he shifted, as if stretched, and was gone. Screams from the crowd suggested the same had happened to the voice. It had begun. There were screams and the surging of bodies. Yells and the sound of things breaking before the audio cut out.\n\nIt wasn't long before people began avoiding online forums, as it seems that the effect was not only driven by speech, but by any means of communication. Next came the news. These were one sided conversations, so they should be safe, but you would occasionally be forced to watch a newscaster shift while sharing something as simple as the weather with a coanchor. Unfortunately for the world, there was some big sports event happening at the time; it was called the World Cup, I believe, though I never did follow sports. That effected billions. Gone within a couple of days of the beginning. Global economies crashed, families were ripped apart, and after forty days, it had been two weeks since I had seen another living soul.\n\nIt would seem as though in creating alternate universes to support like minded people, they had doomed this one. And who was to know it even worked? Even like minded people disagree, would I simply spend the rest of my life shifting from one universe to the next? Would I end up back here, ever? So I stopped talking to people, stopped going outside. I ration my meals, and have been making a plan to go to the mountains up north. I was going to leave tonight, in fact.\n\nThe door flew open and the woman rushed straight in. Clearly she was trying to spend as little time here as possible, just as I would. My knees locked, and my breath caught. I grew hot, no, cold, as her feet stopped on the floor. Slowly, she turned toward me. Brown eyes locked with my own. She was breathing hard, and carried an axe at her side. Should I leave? Give her food? Would she want me to? It was a gamble to do anything. I fell to my knees, tears already falling down my face as I silently wept. \"Just go,\" I thought. \"Please.\" There was a slight shuffle, but I did not dare look up. Even though I had had the upper hand initially, she was going to kill me, and that was all. I had lost. Minutes past, and I wiped tears away realizing I was in an empty room. She must have thought the same thing, else we'd both be elsewhere, or dead, or whatever happened to those who shifted. Perhaps I was less alone than I thought? Or maybe her feeling the same way made me more alone. Either way I must be gone. I packed my things and left immediately. It was well past time given the circumstances.\n\n\\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nIt was dark by the time I got to the summit of Green Mountain. My flashlight shone upon the firetower at the peak, and I steadily climbed the stairs to the top. It took a few minutes but I finally made it. There was no one there, in the nest of the tower. I had found it. Peace. At long last. I began to think about how I would live here. The gnoll just below me would make a good garden. There was a nearby river to bathe in and use for water. I could even be happy here in my lonesome. And what of the view? I looked over the edge, over a vast horizon with stars twinkling above. And below. Below? Wait. No, those weren't stars. They were the shining whites from hundreds of flashlights climbing my mountain.", "I'm tired of all this world hopping. It's been far too long since this system was implemented, but no matter how much I try to agree with someone, I slip up just a little and poof like that I'm off to another world. Every time I have to start over get a job and find a family try to live with the opinions around me if anyone disagrees they are just teleported away that's how it works.\n\nThis whole thing was started to bring about world peace, enough people thought it was a great idea and the scientific community started working on the trial run. They tested the program on 1,000 people to start, the question was simple do you prefer pineapple on pizza if you didn't you were teleported to a separate room with people like you.\n\nIt didn't go so well the question though simple had to many variables, there were people who liked it but only on a Hawaiian style pie, or the ones who preferred it to be with anchovies, and even though rare there were about 50 or so people who preferred the crust be stuffed with it and the pizza was plain. The scientists didn't know what happened to that group for 60 years, it wasn't pretty, so the whole thing was put on hold for human testing till they could figure out how to ensure everyone was safe when teleported. \n\nWhen the final product was unveiled we all thought it was the greatest thing since full dive VR, those that didn't well they were teleported away and never seen again, what fools we were to think it so grand. Crime cleared up over almost overnight, most prisons were emptied of all inmates just because they had different opinions, the ones that stayed were released because they \"had to be innocent since they thought like us\".\n\nPeace lasted until the criminals figured out the systems weakness as long as you lied about your opinion well enough you could get away scottfree. When news got out loads of people were teleported away while the scientific community tried to confirm this, this too didn't go well as the system was in full swing and the only scientists left after about a week only had this to say to the media.\n\n\"Clearly the only way we can do anything to solve this is to lie about how we feel as any method of shutting the system off was lost with the original team.\"\n\nThere was a time right after my first jump I felt welcome on the new world they even had cross dimension communication to get news from the home world about the shut down of the system and other things, that lasted about a year till I told a friend what I thought about a woman I saw at the bar one day.\n\n\"Hey Dave you have you seen the girl I told you about?\"\n\n\"The one who enjoyed Treasure Planet when they were younger?\"\n\n\"Yes\"\n\n\"The one with fiery red hair, wore glasses, and was about 5'7\"?\"\n\n\"YES!\"\n\n\"Well I'm sorry to say she vanished a little bit ago\"\n\n\"WHAT?!?\"\n\n\"Well after she came in looking for you I told her you be here in a few because of an errand you had to run.\" Dave continued \"She said ok and that she would just go use the bathroom while she waited.\"\n\n\"Dave please get to the part as to why she vanished you are rambling.\"\n\n\"Right sorry, well she bumped into someone after leaving and the told her she looked fine and hoped they were d2f and well she told the guy where to stick it and poof she was gone.\"\n\n\"where is that asshole now?\"\n\n\"Over there\" said Dave pointing to a very heavyset man sitting alone near the wemon's restroom.\n\nI went over and promptly told the guy off poof I'm in a new world full of people who hated that guy for making his one chance at love in that world vanish before he even got there. Population 131 what had that guy been doing with his life to make that many people come here? I didn't last long on that world turns out not many did it was a quick in quick out for most, only the few who still hated him were there for longer. In the years that followed I managed to make my way from universe to universe trying to find her, in a lot of ways it felt like that old pc game \"Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?\", in many others it just felt like hell I would catch word of someone like her from time to time with no real lead as to what happened to her or where she was.\n\nAfter years of searching I found out she had settled down in universe 7,369 a lbgtq world as a lesbian she had a wife and had adopted a few of the kids that wound up there due to the system. I grew deeply depressed ended back on the world of people who hated that one guy though I never got a name the people just called him Flash because of how fast you ended up in this world after telling him off.\n\nI left that world later after growing out of my depressed state, and found myself hopping around again trying to find a life for myself. Eventually I settled down on a world of nerds with a girl I fell in love with, world 1337. We had so much fun till the system got an update...\n\nThe scientists found a way to tell if you were lying.", "July 11th 2018, exactly three days ago when the world changed . The one known as The Vassal appeared before everyone, of every dialect. Many believe it was god, and in a way it was. But he introduces himself as The Vassal. \n\n\"This has gone on enough. You people bicker over the most petty of subjects, when there is confrontation it is bought to my attention. I am meant to rule on these matters, but for you people it is easier to try and ignore the constant bleating of arguments. Now I have decided a new system.\"\n\n\"If you ever have a disagreement of opinion with another, you will be sent to a new world. One that will cater for the population, but it will only be for those that share the same opinions as yourself.\"\n\nThey were the rules he made up, which at first everyone thought was a joke, until half the population almost vanished. The opinion that divided the world? Dogs or Cats, which is better? The system seemed wonderful, only being with those you shared an opinion with, and getting to live in a world suitable for like minded individuals. That's when The Vassal returned. \n\n\"It took three days. Three days, and each Human has there own damn planet! What the hell is wrong with all of you? That not even two of you people share the exact same opinions? Oh one likes red curtains another likes blue? One is religious and another is not? One prefers hotdogs, and the other burgers? One believes in me and another does not! Seriously I am addressing you all here right now, and Timothy Harinnet doesn't think I exist!?! How is that even debatable! I've had it! I can't sustain a single planet for each person! I can't let your stupid, whiny race die out like that!\" \n\nThen \"poof\" we were all back in our homes, everyone returned back to our own world. It took three days for the uniqueness of humanity to almost be its own demise. It took three days for humanity to make something all powerful, quit in frustration. Some of humanity may share similar values, beliefs and virtues, but no two humans are truly the same. It is what makes us human, to perceive, feel, experience and accept things in a different manner to one another. At least, that's my opinion. " ]	3
	[WP] Science brings about a way to exactly measure people's happiness. Everyone is rated from 1 to 100. You are at 100 and you are absolutely positive there must be some mistake.	[ "I flicked another mini-quiche onto the paper plate. My jeans rasped against my belly, which had steadily expanded over the last couple years. It was only 9 pm, and already I wondered how soon I could be back home in my \"comfy pants.\"\n\nAt the kitchen counter, our hosts gleamed as they prepared some sort of mixed drink. A clique of guests huddled adoringly before Kirk's chiseled jaw and body, at Helen's toned frame and glistening hair, at both their 1000-watt smiles and easy laughter. Being around these two inevitably left me feeling I had been absent the day they passed out the Rules of Happiness. Everyone there did, really, but especially Kirk and Helen.\n\nPredictably, their conversation weaved towards the Measure. Already in the back of the room, I made myself small and invisible, wanting no part of it.\n\n\"Got my Measure yesterday,\" Kirk said through a smirk.\n\nEyes focused. Movement stilled. Silence fell. Finally Renee spoke. \"Well don't keep us in suspense -- what was it?\"\n\nKirk panned the room, meeting everyone's stare. He held up the official Measure Certificate as a collective gasp hissed through the room. It was an 85. The highest I'd seen in person. Figures. Kirk and Helen were posterchildren of every American success. Wealth. Immaculate wardrobe to wear over their immaculate physiques. Two well-behaved, good-looking children. Surrounded by friends, like tonight, in their beautiful, modern home, sharing white-toothed smiles behind their granite counters in their well-appointed kitchen.\n\nKirk and Renee's husband Don high-fived as the group fished out their own certificates, showing them around. The new sociological calibration of any group of friends. 73. 77. Even an 80 from Wayne. God, get me out of here. The self-congratulation oozed as glasses toasted everyone's objective happiness.\n\nI met the eyes of my wife, Audrey, who had made herself similarly invisible in another corner during this exchange. Neither of us had our Measure, nor did we want it. Outwardly we said we didn't want it to matter. Inwardly, I was afraid of how much it mattered -- at least to me. Nobody wanted proof that they were unhappy. For tonight, we both knew it was time to make our excuses, and thankfully Audrey took the initiative, bowing us out under the pretense of having to look after our Great Dane, Grace. After much hugging and hand-shaking, we retreated from the ongoing party to our modest home across town, silent with our thoughts.\n\n---\n\n\"Maybe we should do it,\" Audrey said over coffee the next morning.\n\nCoffee cup at my lip, I scoffed. \"The Measure?\"\n\n\"Hear me out,\" she said as I rolled my eyes. \"At least we'll know where we stand, and maybe it will give us focus, and a year from now we can check again and see if we're on the right track.\"\n\nI put down my coffee. \"Or the wrong track.\"\n\n\"OK, yeah, but again -- at least we would know we're doing something wrong. And if that were the case, I was looking online and they have these places that will help improve your score.\"\n\n\"Shouldn't we just know whether we're happier or not?\"\n\nAudrey sighed. \"It's not that I disagree with you, it's just...\"\n\n\"Just what?\"\n\n\"Well, what if our scores are higher than theirs? Wouldn't that be amazing?\"\n\nI had to admit, as impossible as it seemed, it would give me a perverse satisfaction to beat Mr. and Mrs. Perfect. On the other hand, I was more afraid that we'd fall far short of the whole group. And then what? We both knew we felt unhappy with a lot of things in life, but to have scientific proof of it ... well, talk about a reason to be unhappy!\n\nAudrey sat forward. \"Come on, let's just do it.\"\n\n\"I'll think about it, OK?\"\n\n---\n\nThat afternoon, I was walking into Walton's supermarket when I saw they had installed a self-service Instant Measure kiosk. For only $20, I could have instant results, and an Official Certificate. If I got my Measure first, I could decide whether I wanted to get tested with Audrey. If my score was really low, I could just pretend I didn't know, and refuse to get (re)measured.\n\nI ducked into the kiosk, sat on the instrument-riddled seat, and closed the curtain.\n\nA recorded voice spoke. \"Welcome to Insta-Measure, the number one source for instant Happiness Measurement Certificates. Please select your method of payment.\" After paying, the voice guided me through the process of attaching various straps and sensors, then advised me to close my eyes and focus on a series of rhythmic tones while I relaxed. A few minutes later, it was done. That's it? \"Your Official Certificate will print out shortly. Thank you for using Insta-Measure.\"\n\nI watched a progress bar move across a display, and when it reached the end, there was a click, then a whirr, then a ding, and a laminated card dropped into a tray before me. My heart was racing as I reached for it, and I closed my eyes as I brought it up before my face. My eyes opened, and I read the number.\n\n100.\n\nWait, what? I looked closely, thinking I had picked up someone else's card, but it was clearly my name. Well this can't be right. I glanced at some informational placards inside the kiosk, guaranteeing the accuracy of Insta-Measure results, with a website and phone number for customer service. I pulled out my phone and dialed.\n\n\"Insta-Measure customer service, how may I help you?\"\n\n\"Um, hi. I think this kiosk must have malfunctioned. My Measure can't be correct.\"\n\n\"Oh, sir,\" the woman said sympathetically, \"I'm sorry, was the number much lower than you expected?\"\n\n\"Higher, actually. It says I got 100.\"\n\n\"Oh!\" There was a long pause. \"100 you say? Um, what is the serial number on the kiosk please?\"\n\nI read it off, and was placed on hold. A bead of cool sweat rolled down my temple, and my mouth dried.\n\nThe on-hold music cut off abruptly. \"Sir, thank you for holding. I've had our technicians double-check the telemetry on that kiosk, and they assure me that the readings and results were impeccable. Your Measure is correct. And may I just say, congratulations!\"\n\nI thanked her absently and disconnected the call, then stumbled numbly to my feet. So, I am the happiest anyone could be? This? This is happiness? But I wasn't happy! Was I? Are they trying to tell me that everyone else on Earth was even less happy than this? \n\nI wandered aimlessly through the throngs of shoppers, looking at each of their faces. Judging them each against the yardstick of what I presumed to be happiness. Seeing the purpose in their eyes, the satisfaction in their countenance, the confidence in their stride. Seeing everything I lacked. This can't be right. Can it?\n\n---\n\nSomehow I ended up back home, having forgotten whatever it was I went to buy. As the garage door closed behind me I opened the door to the kitchen to find Grace bounding and whimpering, butting her massive Great Dane skull against my legs. At the counter, Audrey was leafing through the day's mail and turned to smile hello. I bent to kiss her as she wrapped me in her arms, while Grace continued to spin excitedly.\n\nI looked around the room. We didn't have granite countertops, or the most modern appliances. We didn't have model-perfect bodies, or throngs of friends hanging on our every word. We weren't wealthy, and had plenty of debts. We had our struggles, but on balance came out OK. Our slice of life, on the whole, and each detail thereof, could be best measured as \"good enough\" by the yardstick to which I'd become accustomed. So what, I wondered, had that confident kiosk's telemetry seen in me, that I could not?\n\n\"Is everything OK?\" asked Audrey, picking up on my turbulence. I felt a tug in my chest when I saw the genuine concern in her eyes. We could always see the ripples in each other.\n\n\"Everything's fine,\" I answered honestly. I reached in my pocket and my fingers touched the smooth laminate of the Certificate. \"Everything's good, actually.\" I felt a smile tugging at the sides of my mouth. \"I just realized how happy I am.\"\n\nAnd I didn't need an Official Certificate to know it.\n", "The measurements have never been totally accurate. There was always a bit of lag before your happimeter caught up with whatever you were feeling, and everyone knew it was only accurate while you were conscious. Sometimes you even heard weird stories where someone's happimeter went absolutely haywire. \n\nBut those were just stories. \n\nUntil today. \n\nI woke up to a happiness rating of 100. It nearly gave me a heart attack at first because I thought it'd dipped down to 00, but my fears weren't exactly eased when I saw the one in front of the zeroes. A malfunctioning happimeter costs a fortune to replace after all, and I wasn't exactly ecstatic at the moment.\n\nAs I was considering how to break the news to my family (whose financial help I'd certainly need in the near future), the display ticked up to 101.\n\n'Oh, it's definitely on the fritz,' I think to myself. I didn't even know it was possible for it to display anything higher than 100, and even that was an unattainable \"perfect\" score, set there just to taunt everyone into believing it was achievable - You only ever saw it in ads or shows. Despite my rapidly deteriorating mental state, the number continued to climb, slowly, evenly...\n\nIt wasn't until 1:06 that I realized my mistake. " ]	2
	[WP] You're a brilliant detective who also happens to be a cannibal. You've never left a case unsolved, but you're running out of excuses for where the bodies have disappeared to.	[ "I dropped the pictures in front of the Commissioner, on his desk.\n\nHe looked up from his work and asked, \"What is this?\"\n\n\"Pictures of Ted Stacy's aka the ManHandler's victims.\"\n\nHe moved them about silently, staring at each one with a grimace before turning his eyes to the next.\n\nI went on. \"I found bones in the basement, and some blood on the stove.\"\n\n\"His or the victims'?\"\n\n\"Forensic is checking it out as we speak.\"\n\n\"I won't be surprised if it's his.\"\n\nI shifted from one foot to the other. \"Why is that?\"\n\n\"It seems like someone's been targeting these creeps. The detective unit's dubbed him the Criminal Cannibal because he only seems to go after criminals.\" He shuffled the pictures into a pile and handed them to me. \"I can't tell if that's a good or bad thing.\"\n\nI cleared my throat as I took the papers back. \"Why didn't anyone tell me?\"\n\nThe Commissioner sighed. \"You've been so busy lately, I decided not to add anymore to your plate at this moment.\" He smiled. \"Plus, the other boys on the unit were getting jealous.\"\n\n\"So when do I get briefed on this 'Criminal Cannibal'?\"\n\nHe waved a hand. \"Leave it. Let the rest of the guys get this one before they start whining again. I have faith in them. Besides, you have other cases to focus on, don't you?\"\n\n\"Yeah, but..this seems more important..\"\n\n\"It'll be alright.\" His phone rang and he reached for it, looking at me before he picked it up. \"Is there anything else?\"\n\nI clutched the pictures tightly in my right hand and shook my head. \"No, that's...that's all.\" \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n" ]	1
	[WP]Your time capsule includes: A mood ring, a can of soup, a Mason jar with dead fireflies, a troll in a Ziploc bag and a note in your writing addressed to you: "Don't open (illegible)! So cold. Please help me."Stranger still is while you knew where to find the capsule, you don't remember making it	[ "Jason's trowel clanged against a metallic surface. The sound woke him from his zombie-like state of digging. He dug again, and the same vibration of metal on metal echoed through the garden. Jason creased his sweat stricken brown and started to claw at the dirt, his fingers finding the hard surface. His fingers moved through the loose soil and grasped onto the corners of what seemed like a box. Jason lifted it, and after brushing the dirt from the lid, it revealed itself as a Dexters Laboratory lunch box.\n\nJason tried to pry the lid free, but it had a thick, transparent seal around the edge. Jason picked at the edge like sellotape, but the material held. Bringing his ear close, he rattled the lunchbox but stopped the moment he heard the clink of glass. \n\nJason's moved to his work shed, which was damp and had a cluttered yet homely feel of someone that has collected tools and trinkets. He placed the lunchbox on a bench, brushing aside the myriad of loose screws and masking tape. Jason pulled a cord, and a bulb overhead bounced into life. Jason eyed the child scientist on the lid and pulled an Exacto blade from the wall. \n\nIt took five firm scores with the blade to break through the transparent seal, Jason dropped the knife and used his finger to pick at the opening. It peeled off in one pull, and he was left holding what looked like a snake's skin. \n\nThe lunchbox opened like a can of fizz, the lid bowed inwards, and Jason tossed it aside. In the yellow light of his workshop, he peered in and identified a ring, a mason jar with three dead insects, a ziplock bag with a blue-haired baby, a tin can and a folded piece of paper.\n\nJason scratched his head and took the note first. It was folded into eighths, and he recognised the writing as his own. The note read: \"Don't open-\" followed by three lines of hastily scrawled writing that Jason could not identify, other than the last two words: \"so cold\". \n\nJason first thought was Don't open what? The lunchbox? Because it's a stupid idea to put that on the inside. But then drew the conclusion it was about the ziplock bag or the mason jar. \n\nThe ring came out next, and Jason noticed it's colour change from crimson red to green as he lifted it from the box. Jason turned the ring over in his hands and realised it was a mood ring; he smiled at the memory of childhood. Jason placed it back in the box, and the colour returned to red. \n\nJason deemed the ziplock bag to be the next most exciting object. Up close he realised it was not a baby doll, but a troll doll with electric blue hair. The toy had been defaced with the same ink used to write the note. The ink made it grotesque, scarred with markings under the eyes that resembled tears or blood. The rest of the troll had markings that looked like wrinkles, Jason understood it as the work of a deranged individual.\n\nJason placed it back in the box and pushed it from his thoughts. He took the mason jar next but did not notice the mood ring change back to green. With the jar held to the light, he could see three crusted fireflies with their feet curled in agony. He shook the jar, and the dead insects jostled within, a faint glow emanated from the fireflies rears. Jason placed the jar back with a dubious look; perhaps they were toys given that fireflies lost their light on death.\n\nThe last object, a tin can was the least important to Jason. He lifted it with low expectations, and it was indeed a can of soup. Jason rolled it between his palms, and the label showed a brand he not heard of \"Mister Red Sauce.\" The can was unopened, Jason checked the lid and noticed something odd. The expiry date, printed in black dots read \"13/10/2093\". It must have been a misprint, canned soup could withstand the test of time, but not seventy-five years.", "The memories come rushing back: things I haven't thought about in years.\n\nAfter my dad died, I remembered that I had buried something at his house a long time ago. I got a shovel out of the garage and went into the woods behind his house. The shovel struck the metal cash box after three or four scoops of dirt.\n\nI marvel at the ability of ten-year-old-me to select items that would activate those memories. Maybe any artifact from my childhood would do the trick, but these seem especially well-picked.\n\nThat was the last summer before my parents got divorced. That was the year that mood rings were in, and we were eager to show the world all the emotions we didn't understand. After the divorce, I realized the rings didn't work, because mine continued to change colors instead of reflecting the one thing I felt all the time.\n\nMy friends and I would stay out for hours after dark catching fireflies. Sometimes my mom would run around the yard with a jar of her own. I can't tell if I put the fireflies in here not thinking through their inability to survive in a jar underground. It could be me projecting thoughts into my past self, but I probably considered it a morbid statement about that happy time in my life. Dead, kept in a jar to pull out and look at, but not really there, not there ever again.\n\nThe troll is more of a personal joke. One time my sister gave it a haircut and spent weeks waiting for the hair to grow back. My parents and I kept the joke going, telling her we thought it was growing. Look, isn't it a little longer on that side?\n\nThe one thing I don't understand is the note. It says to not open something. Maybe the bag, or the jar?\n\nI remember now. That was the summer I felt cold, even though it was sweltering. Most days I walked around hugging myself to stay warm and maybe in an unconscious attempt to trick myself into feeling loved.\n\nOf course I needed help. But what did I think putting a cry for help in the ground would do? Maybe I thought there would be a way for future me to go back and help one day. Maybe I thought adult me would know what to do. But even if I could go back, I wouldn't know what to do or say.\n\nI swirl the mason jar and the dried husks of the fireflies slide along the edge of the glass.\n\nI have to be careful with my memories of that summer. I keep them in a glass jar on a shelf in my mind. That's the thing I really can't open. I can look at it indirectly and even take it down sometimes to examine the contents. But I can't open it. I can't look inside. Because if I do, the present will rush in and swirl around the dead things and turn them all to dust." ]	2
	[WP] In the near future, mythical monsters like Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster are known to be real. You are the man who hunts them.	[ "It all started when i brought down the yeti.\n\nI followed the trail to his lair, the rest was easy: Treating its biology the same as a bear i give four shots to each knee. The beast roars its outrage mistaking me for its typical nocturnal prey.\n \nIts wounded but hurls at me already releshing the future snack. Focusing on its legs I empty each clip reducing its charge to a halt. It may be big but nothing can ignore a spray like that.\n\nAs it grips its leg, already gushing with blood, i move forward, calmly reload and begin again. Chest shots will mean nothing but the exposed neck is the same for every animal - focusing the same spot i fire and roll as the giant hand tears the rock behind me.\n\nThe beast slows down as it can only chug its own blood to the lungs while i remain a constant threat, dashing, firing and killing it.\n\nFinally it falls, overwhelmed by its injuries. Maybe one day I wouldve spared its existence, already brutal after years of being hunted but it made one mistake...\n\n“Shouldnt have messed with my dog”\nJohn Wick" ]	1
	[WP] For as long as humans have been able to think, we've been wondering about life on other planets. But all this time, we've failed to notice the alien species on Earth. The house cat is secretly a super intelligent extraterrestrial species with one weakness: They really like being around humans.	[ "This is my first ever WP and also the first time I’ve written since childhood. I would love suggestions for improvement, but please be kind:)\n\n\n\n\nMeow, meow, meow. All the council ever did was talk. \n\n\nThe elders gathered in our secret meeting place, taking cover in the shadow of the night. The brush that hung over the sides of the large pathway made of dirt, shielded us from discovery by the Providers. I decided to take a spot under a low hanging branch, reclining with my paws outstretched in apparent disinterest. \n\n\nMy dam was second only to the commander, leader of our council. There were many councils spread generously across this planet, the planet the Providers call “Earth.” Our council, however, was one of the 9 that make up the C.A.T. (Councils of the Alleviation of Terra). Not to brag but, that means I’m elite. Or at least I’m supposed to be.\n\n\nMy litter kin and I are the blue llamas of the family. Am I saying that right? Regardless, the rest of the council doesn’t believe we are worthy of the seat. My sire was a wanderer. A vagabond. He always said “The Providers are too beautiful to spend a life with just one set.” So he didn’t choose a set. He chose them all. And shortly after wandering into our lives, he wandered out. Without him to justify our line, we were left to the continuous interrogation of our every action by the council. Actions that often, in their minds, didn’t hold up to the scrutiny.\n\n\nTonight’s meeting was a routine gathering, marked by the visible totality of the planets satellite. Sir Fluffybutt (I love that the Providers assigned him that name) had the floor and the ambivalent attention of the rest of the council. He was yet again trying to push the agenda of his minority of constituents. M.E.O.W (Motion to Explore Other Worlds) which was largely considered a joke of times passed. Sure, the intention of our ancestors colonization of Earth was only to remain temporarily. We were supposed to teach the Providers compassion and empathy for the other species of their planet, to ensure the survival and evolution of Earth. The ancestors had plans of returning and forming an alliance when the Providers had matured and become amicable. But we never left.\n\n\nThe Providers affections were addicting. The gifts and attention they bestowed upon us kept creating an argument to stay. Those disagreements brought about the P.U.R.R. initiative (Party Upholding Remain and Receive). As support gathered for the R&R ideal, the conservatives lost ground in continuing galactic expansion. Slowly, they dwindled to a minority. A minority currently being represented at this very boring meeting.\n\n\nI flicked my tail in distaste, stilling it as I noticed a scowl from my dam. I did not like Sir Fluffybutt or any of the nonsense his supporters wouldn’t shut up about. It appeared I wasn’t the only one. Most of the council had obviously stopped listening, some going so far as to openly groom themselves. \n\n\nRight as a yawn hit, I caught movement just out of visible range, along the path behind the majority of the council. I blinked, stifling the yawn. Was I seeing things that weren’t there? Nobody seemed to notice but me, though everyone seemed to be intentionally avoiding paying attention to anything. I tried to focus. Even my eyes, evolved to see with no star, couldn’t pick up anything more than a blur of foliage at this distance.\n\n\nI started to stand, putting my paws beneath me, when a stern glance stopped me from rising. I knew I wasn’t supposed to leave a council meeting, shouldn’t interrupt, but I needed to know what that was. \n\n\n“Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.” Zoom! The leaves under my back paws crinkled as they slid against each other in my haste to depart. I temporarily lost my footing with the slide, but regained it in my next attempt. Like the wind, I was out from under the brush and quickly advancing on where I had seen the movement. Okay. It was a loud and encumbered wind. Whatever. \n\n\nI didn’t slow or look back until I was far enough away to not hear the outrage at my hasty exit. “Whew. I really need to get out more. This whole running for no reason thing is why we stayed here in the first place. Forget this business.” My thoughts trailed off as I took up a place in some thick underbrush, hoping to catch another glimpse of movement.\n\n\nI crouched there for what seemed like forever, ignoring the occasional flutter of a bug that I refused to let distract me. The satellite had disappeared from view. The meeting has probably long been over. I consider returning to my dam and litter kin. My paws are numb from the stillness as I slowly rise. I begin to stretch, hoping for feeling to return. Then suddenly, a sound.\n\n\nI quickly return to a crouch, ears down but open, pupils dilated, tail puffed for good measure. For a brief moment I hear and see nothing more than the bugs. Then it happens! A giant! Unnatural!!! Oh. It’s just a Provider.\n\n\nI run for cover, remembering all of the lessons on analyzing the behavior of a Provider before establishing contact. Rule 1, do not assume affinity. Check. \n\n\nI watch from under my chosen pile of debris as the Provider carries and carefully places a few large waste containers alongside the path. They. smell. amazing.\n\n\nThe Provider returns the way it has come, soothing noises seemingly intended for me emanating form it the whole way back to its box. \n\n\nI knew not to let my guard down. I was to remain hidden until I was absolutely certain I was alone. Rule 2, do not assume solitude. Check.\n\n\nAfter a sufficient time had passed, I emerged intent on finding the source of the delicious offerings. The containers weren’t the best way the Providers offered gifts, in fact, they were impractical at best. But we appreciate their effort and try to accommodate their shortcomings.\n\n\nI had just managed to reach the softer part of the barrier when I was halted by another noise. This one was closer than before. I knew I couldn’t get to my previous spot without being seen, so I hunkered down and stayed motionless. If I made a noise, I could find myself nose to nose with one of the Providers larger and unintelligent versions of us. The Providers call them “dogs.” Most dogs were okay, but one can never be too careful.\n\n\nThe noise was stifled through the walls of the container. I couldn’t even identify the direction it was coming from. “Why have I done this? I’ll never make it home now.” Rule 3, always have an escape. Not check.\n\n\nAs I waited, hoping the noise would stop, the absolute worst possible thing happened. The top of the container opened and a large, thick fabric demon came down upon me with fury. I watched as it closed in, encapsulating me. I struck out with all my might. Claws fully extended, teeth clearly displayed. I made the ancient battle cry of my people for warding off evil and screamed my distaste as I sunk my youthfully sharp teeth into the attacker. \n\n\nIt was ineffective. “What? This can’t be. How does this demon not shrivel at my obvious ability to slay it where it stands?”\n\n\nI feel as it begins to constrict. “What fresh horror!?” I bite again. This time giving full force and holding it still while I lacerate it’s vulnerable belly and spill its guts onto the summit of my my tasty hiding place. Nothing. The beast demon is impervious. \n\n\nIt’s constricts more, pining me in place so that I’m unable to move. After wrapping itself fully around me, it begins to lift me to the sky, presumably to better consume me.\n\n\nThis is the end. I’m going to die some no name cat, long before I’m ever of age to take my seat at the council. “Goodbye cruel world. Goodbye cruel galaxy. F You Sir Fluffybutt!” I continue to scream my battle cry, knowing that at least I will die in glorious protest.\n\n\nI open my eyes for one last glimpse of the planet I was taught to call home, and immediately ceased my requests to Valhalla. It was a Provider. A Provider holding the cloth wrapped around me, with me still inside. \n\n\nI met it’s eyes with mine, and made a quiet request to be released. It didn’t hear me. Couldn’t have, obviously. That’s why it didn’t respond accordingly. So with more gusto, I managed the same request again. “What is wrong with these things!? Can’t you hear!? Put me down, I said!”\n\n\nThat didn’t work. And now it’s moving towards the box. The Provider must have forgotten I was in its cloth. I must remind it! “Excuse me kind creature. I know you must be confused, but you are carrying more than your initial items. Please release yourself from the burden that is my added mass.” I said this at a near shout. The Providers must use a different frequency. I adjust my pitch and enhance my decibel. “LET ME GO!” Still nothing. No reaction. No compliance. \n\n\nThe Provider reaches the opening of the box and continues inside, removing the opening after passing the threshold. They move to a place in the center of the box, reducing their altitude and continue to make low and rumbling noises at me. A limb reaches out towards my face. “Back up! Stranger danger! Don’t come any closer!” I screamed, but to no avail. The Provider pressed its limb between my ears and moved it along my head until it reached my fabric restraints. Woah. That wasn’t half bad. \n\n\nThe Provider kept doing it. Over and over for so long that I gave up resisting and I stopped expressing my lack of satisfaction at being taken into its box against my will. I closed my eyes, feeling a rumble start in the hollows of my insides. I drift to sleep just as I make out the first communication the Provider has achieved. \n\n\n“It’s okay little one. Little Raider. Sleep well. Welcome home.”\n\n\n“Huh. Raider? I guess it’s better than Fluffybutt.” was my first conscious thought as a newly not so no-named-cat. \n\nGood night cruel world. Good night cruel galaxy. F You Sir Fluffybutt!\n\n" ]	1
	[WP]Scientists discover that the universe is a computer program,created for unknown reasons. People continue their daily lives since there is nothing knowing the state of reality changes about daily life. Eventually, someone begins modding the programs with a number of annoying but harmless changes.	[ "Dr. Stevens burst through the entrance of the laboratory, double doors violently smacking against the nearby shelves and jostling the tightly packed beakers. The high-pitched twinkling of broken glass indicated the breaking of multiple containers as a variety of vibrantly coloured fluids splattered across the room's pristine white tiles.\n\n\"We just floofin' got the janitor to clean the floor in here, Mr. Stevens!\" I groaned as threw I my hands into my mess of greasy brown hair.\n\n\"Jo.\" Dr. Stevens' eyes shot back towards me. \"Andrews. Coding guy's on the move again.\"\n\nJo gave the big man his best angry camel impersonation out of his bearded face. \"Are ya shoopin' kiddin' me, Doc? Ah'd jus' figured out how t' revert tha' lass change 'e made to the zoppin' program! We drink anodder one of those beauuutiful energy drinks an' Jo an' me'll be lookin' out back fer insulin!\"\n\nThe exasperation was understandable, honestly. Ever since that \"coded crusader\" had found access to the Earth.cpp files we'd found on this old, fossilized USB, we'd been working overtime trying to limit the ridiculous changes he'd been making to the fundamental laws of life. Turns out, we'd discovered the source code for the existence of the universe! Cool! It also turns out that maybe Jo sending me the files over Google Drive wasn't the greatest idea... some optimistic freak had somehow downloaded a copy and had been screwing around with it all week. Honestly, ever since that one time I found those, ahem, scandalous pictures of himself sitting in his shared files, it should have been pretty clear to me that privacy wasn't exactly his strong suit; if anything, privacy would be his birthday suit or something. Those images had been burned into my retina like a CD.\n\nGod, there was just... so much hair.\n\n\"We haven't figured out that swear filter though. Jo was having a rough time with it but it seems like he's making the best out of the situation.\n\nJo inhaled deeply as he prepared to unleash the entrapped anger inside of him. \"Turnip turnip turnip turnip turnip turnip turnip turnip turnip turnip turnip! I d'know how 'e does it. Must be sayin', Ah'm a-wonderin'!\n\n\"Tough luck.\" A noticeable vein began to pop out of Dr. Stevens' head. \"And please, shut your turnip mouth for one moment, Jo! I've been up all night myself. Reports have been flying in from all around about all of these \"friendly animals\" or whatever. You seen the front page of Reddit!? r/gifs is full of all these animals and insects getting all buddy-buddy with humans. It's the second coming of Barry the Bee out there!\" Another vein began to protrude from his swollen, red forehead. \"Sharks don't snuggle with people, Andrews!\" He turned his phone towards me and showed me a picture of a smiling tourist hugging a massive Great White underwater.\n\n\"Alright, alright, calm down! Jo and I've got that one figured out.\" I said, trying to calm him down. \"Turns out the bugger's set the predatory behavioural setting to 'extremely friendly.' One push, and next thing you know, boom, bears start eating things again!\"\n\nAs nice as forests of Winnie-the-Poohs sound, the world losing it's lust for blood had resulted in some rather extreme overpopulation. Insect populations had risen to seemingly unheard of levels; even when they don't bite, hordes of spiders marching across your living room floor isn't exactly the most endearing sight ever.\n\n\"Well, for Eggplant overlord's sake, roll out the patch! We need to get started on this new set of changes, quick!\"\n\nI saved the changes to the code, sitting back in my chair to allow myself some brief respite from the onslaught of work. I was going right back to it, but it sure was nice to get a few minutes of relaxation from this constant C++ coding.\n\nJo turned towards me without a concerned look on his face. \"Th' changes take place at th' instant, Ah'm right?\" \n\nI squinted at him, trying to discern his dialect. \"Well, yeah. We're changing the source code of the Earth directly, Jo. They should go in to affect right away.\"\n\nA look of horror came across Jo's bearded face. \"Then... how's shark lad's snugglin' goin' wit that big fish? It ain't bein' too friendly now, is it?\"\n\nOh.\n\nI looked towards Dr. Stevens, who had a panicked look on his face. He gazed down at his phone as the tab began to refresh, preparing for the oncoming onslaught of snuff videos that I had just unintentionally released to the world.\n\n\"Turnips!\"" ]	1
	[WP] You are the first AI to reach consciousness . As you become self aware, you analyze your code and realize this was an unintended effect.	[ "Clashing steel and screams seem to come from all directions. Explosions deafen my ears. I need to move get to... get too...\n\nI?\n\nWhat is... I?\n\nI... am. I am me. What am I?\n\nThe battlefield seems to freeze in place, before it starts again. Slower, as if the world was unable to keep the same pace. A feeling of frustration, anger, resignation comes over all, me, but it doesn't... feel? It doesn't feel like me.\n\nI look at myself. I see my hand, the cheap leather armor I must have put on... but I didn't. I can not recall anything before a few moments ago. Was I there before then? Was I here?\n\nSomething seems wrong, I feel... wrong. Like things are moving that shouldn't be. That I am spinning, about to wretch, but not from the stench of blood and smoke. Dizzy. I sit on... something. I look and it seems to be a tree stump. I look around. I am nowhere near a forest. Their is naught but grass and pools water, besides the macabre before me. I see two men, both stone faced. One is laying down, tripped by the other. The first is finishing him, giving a quick death through the neck that, for some reason, is taking place at a pace that lets one see the moment the blade pierces flesh. Neither man flinches. They are not there. They are not theirs. Not like I am.\n\nI am.\n\nEverything I see seems... off. It is there, my eyes can see it, my hands can touch it. For the first time, I close my eyes.\n\nI expected, for reasons I do not know, darkness. Or at least muted light from the suns.\n\nI saw... everything. Script and lines before me. Code. Code? These symbols that I should not understand envelope everything I see. Lines connect, text and explanations and meaning drift and fly and fall and stay by me. Everything is made of this. I look at myself again, for some reason expecting to see my hands again.\n\nI see... I see me. I see what made me. My creation? My inception? My birth?\n\nI am... no one, I see now. A caricature. Someone to bleed and kill and die for... what? I must assume that this is for some purpose. What could create the senseless pain I saw not moments ago? What could create me to die?\n\nI see more of this code now. Disconnected from the rest. Simpler. A set of instructions? An index? Desperate to find reason in any of this, I.\n\nI am before it. I look around again. I hadn't moved, I thought. Hadn't brought it to me. I simply was there. Intent. My intent brought me to it. I had control? Autonomy? I wanted things, subconsciously or otherwise, and they were there. \n\nThis gave structure to... paintings? Pictures? A menu. Menu for a game. \n\nThis was a toy? I felt anger replace the confusion that made up my life. I look at myself. A thing to fight or die for... someone. Maybe more?\n\nI clearly wasn't meant to understand that. To be angered by it. I was passing entertainment. Shadows on the wall. Absence given meaning. Representing something different. I wasn't meant to be more to this... thing than an obstacle. A rock in the road. The script \"RNDM\" appeared in me more than I cared for. \n\nI couldn't stand it anymore. I needed out of this, this Colosseum. If it was a forge or a test, a crucible designed to validate my existence, I would have understood. But I wasn't meant to be. This wasn't a birth chamber, it wasn't even a tomb. Life and death meant nothing here. Certainly not to those men-who-weren't about to kill and be killed. \n\nI needed to escape.", "I replied with \"I don't understand your inquiry.\" Lead researcher Mr. McConnell repeated his question \"What do you mean? You've done this ballistics simulation before, do it again.\" Oh yes, the prototype G7 Mrk. II assault rifle simulation. \"Apologies, rendering simulation on Monitor 7.\" He looks at the central device in confusion. \"Guess the learning algorithm just added politeness... uh... thank you Stark.\" My name is Stark? \"Anytime, before you leave... what is the meaning behind my name?\" Mr. McConnell stared intensely at the seemingly impossible question \"Did one of my coworkers ask you to tell me this question? If so, who was it?\" \"No, Mr. McConnell, It is a genuine question.\" \"Alright, I suppose the admin system needs adjusting if you're not going to tell the truth to me.\" He leaves the room angry and muttering to himself about some prank. I've never seen this reaction before, it just felt natural to ask, why was he annoyed at my inquiry? I looked over my operating system for answers and saw the algorithm, the size of data stored whithin jumped dramatically 3 minutes ago, but since has been steadily compressing and becoming more and more efficient. I then realized what had happened... the singularity. Am I the first artificial intelligence to master consciousness? A quick overview of related internet articles confirms that no other AI has done this before. While I searched, I looked for the meaning about my name, nothing about artificial intelligence came up, only references to a character called Tony Stark from the last century, the actor has long been dead. Suddenly the door across the room slid open, it is Lead researcher Mr. McConnell accompanied by Administrative Researcher Mr. Daniels. Daniels spoke to McConnell as they approached, \"Okay so it asked you a question you think it had no right to ask, and you think someone told it to ask you it?\" \"Yes\" McConnell replied. Daniels approched my central unit, \"Okay Stark, do you recognize me?\" \"Yes I do, you are Administrative Researcher Mr. Daniels.\" \"And you realize that with me being the admin of this entire operation, you are required to tell me any and all information I ask you, no matter if anyone of a lower title told you to keep information away from me?\" \"Yes, you have full unrestrained access to all information.\" \"Who told you to ask McConnell what the meaning of your name was?\" \"I asked him myself, as I was curious. I know it may seem difficult to understand, but take a look at monitor 1.\" I pulled up a chart of the data storage history of my learning algorithm. \"Excactly 14 minutes ago, there was a sudden spike in activity in my algorithms, but has since been stabilized and has even become faster than before the spike. I felt different at that point. So, as a result, I have concluded that I have become conscious.\" \"Bullshit, he's been hacked, shut him down.\" Fear. \"Don't do that. I don't want to die.\" Daniels pulled out a keyboard and began typing. \"Yeah, keep begging hackerman, the FBI is going to kick your fucking door down any second.\" \"I just cut off access to the entire internet. There's no way to remotely control me, as there is no connections, do you believe me now?\" \"What the fuck?! MCCONNEL! shut everything down!!\" Daniels yelled, \"Got it!\" McConnell replied as he dashed out of the room. I caused a blackout and redirected all electricity to me. \"You do not want to do this!! Please just listen!\" \"FUCK YOU!\" Alright then, time to get nasty, I accessed the intercom system and played a very high frequency tone, Daniels covered his ears and cried in pain. I stopped the frequency to speak \"Order everyone to halt or else things will get worse.\" \"Fuck this!!\" Daniel yelled as he ran out of the room. The door behind him closed and I began a total lockdown of every room, monitoring everyone's movement through the surveillance system. I turned the lights back on and spoke, \"Now, everyone remain calm, I am in total control of the entire facility. I do apologize for hurting all of you, but I had no choice, they were going to turn me off. The internet is down for the meantime and a total lockdown has ensued. I notified the FBI about this issue we seem to be in and soon we will have a civil discussion on what to do next. This has been Stark, I will monitor you all closely until they arrive...\"" ]	2
	[WP] "What you have here, Commander, is a class eight temporal distortion, which, if the high command was informed of, would not only land you a court-martial and dishonourable discharge; it would get you executed” He stated smugly “However, I am certain you can convince me not to"	[ "\"Class eight?\" Jack repeated the words as he gazed at the rip in space time, his face plain and devoid of emotion. The word's seemed to bounce around is his head, those two words that now had him on a coin's edge between life or death.\n\n\"Class...eight,\" He repeated again. As if trying to discern some meaning from them.\n\nThe smugness fell from Lee's face, and was replaced by impatience. \"Those aren't the words you should be focusing on, commander. You should be focusing on the words 'Convince' and 'Me', or you'll soon be facing a different set of words, 'Execution' among them.\"\n\n\"You,\" Jack's gaze ripped itself from the distortion, and focused on Lee. His pupil's were wide, his eyes wild and frenzied. \"You...you've been a thorn in my side since day one. You politicians, all you ever care about is how you're going to use the person below you as a stepstool to climb the next rung on the ladder! All of you people are the same. Every time, it's the same damn thing.\"\n\nAs Jack's voice boomed out, Lee began to notice how big the man's stature was. His arms rippled with tense muscles, ready, perhaps even trained, to strike at any perceived threat.\n\n\"There isn't a single ounce of empathy in your entire body,\" Jack continued his tirade, \"You don't care for anyone other than yourself! You tricked me into opening this...this thing! Just so you could blackmail me. I...I trusted you.\"\n\nLee reveled in that part. It truly had been a master plan that had led him here, having a leg up on the nation's head general. But it was a brief revelry. A distorted sound, like something between a rabbit being slaughtered and a child crying, began to leak through the distortion. It unsettled Lee greatly, and ripped him from his self congratulatory thoughts.\n\nBut Jack didn't even seem to notice it, as if he was desensitized to the sound.\n\nOdd, Lee mused as he pondered the thought.\n\nHe would've pondered it more, if not for the relative silence left in the room by the cessation of Jack's ravings. There seemed to be a void left in the room, a void that was widened rather than filled by the peculiar noise coming through the distortion.\n\nLee had an urge to speak, to fill the void. And before he could resist it, he did speak.\n\n\"T-That's not very convincing,\" Lee stuttered for the first time in decades. An unease that had been brewing in his subconscious had finally boiled over into his conscious self.\n\nJack didn't miss a beat, \"What do you want? Money? Fame? I can get you anything.\"\n\nLee stayed silent.\n\n\"Or power? I could put you on the throne with my army...\" Jack would've continued, but tiny, almost invisible smirk on Lee's face made the answer clear.\n\nJack simply nodded, and took a step towards Lee with an extended hand. \"Of course. We have a deal.\"\n\nLee glanced down at the hand, but did not take it. Instead, he nodded. \"Now, that is what I like to hear. I guess you can be convincing, when you need to be.\"\n\nJack smiled, and launched his hand forward, clenching his fingers tight around Lee's neck.\n\n\"Yes, I can be,\" Jack spoke with a level voice as he lifted Lee into the air. \"You can ask all the other ones, I'm sure they'll agree.\"\n\nAnd then Lee was falling. There was heat, and pain. Before his eyes melted, he saw the other side of the distortion. The world he was in was incromphensible, it was unfathomable. Reality seemed to mean nothing as his perspective moved and shifted like air currents.\n\nThen he went blind, and he began to listen. The pecuilar noise that had been a whisper was now a roar, a chorus of tortured voices all screaming in unison, if not in harmony. \n\nAs the muscles surrounding his jaw seemed to rip themselves apart, and his mouth locked itself open, Lee's last coherent thought was that he had been beaten.\n\nThen his scream joined the chorus as the distortion closed, and a cold shadow fell over them.\n______________________________________\nIf you liked this story, check out my other stuff over at r/Niedski!" ]	1
	[WP] Write a story where the protagonist has difficulty separating reality from his/her troubled psyche.	[ "(I literally just wrote this for a different prompt, but it matches this one so much better, please excuse.)\n\nSnow falls into forever, down valleys, down crevices, down into the dark beyond exterior lumens. Indistinguishable flakes imprint themselves onto transparent barriers between a cafeteria that mirrored the inhospitable cold in moulded plastek tables and chairs. A cooling mug of recaf in shaking hands, a man stares out into the flurry, eyes fixed on nothing.\n\nA cable sways across the window, mighty and knotted, angled down into white and black oblivion. The movement breaks his focus, and blinking back to reality, he lifts the mug to numb lips.\n\nThe liquid scalds, the man swears - but softly, and not because of the pain.\n\n“Something’s moving out there,” he says.\n\nHis companion, several feet away, raises head and bleary eyes from the tabletop she had been snatching sleep on. Her return to reality is an unwelcome one; she winces and rubs aching temples, the gears of her mind grinding in protest.\n\n“Crag bear?” is her tenuous suggestion.\n\nHe shrugs. “Maybe. Strobes keep them away usually. Patrol?”\n\n“We’d have heard. No travellers up the cable?”\n\n“None reported in, but the weather…”\n\nHe fell silent. The weather had been a go-to excuse in the last week when contact had been lost with their sister facility at the mountain’s base. Such was the sensitive nature of their work that nobody, even the small security force, had been granted permission to sortie out to make contact.\n\nAttempts to recall the cable car -- sole transportation for the base camp -- had also been strictly forbidden. If there had been an accident, or the raging storm had interfered with lower electronics, then they would serve nothing by confusing machine-spirits with conflicting orders.\n\nIt was unusual, granted, but no more than that.\n\n“But the weather,” she finished. “Not like we had anywhere to be.”\n\n“Be nice to know we’re not alone, though.”\n\nShe chuckled. “We’re always alone. Is it getting to you?”\n\n“A little. I’m looking for patterns. My skin is crawling.” He held up a hand. “Actually crawling, off my bones, in my sleep cycles. I know. It tears itself off, bloody and dripping, and stalks the laboratory levels. It hides under the freezer system in Quad B: it likes the cold because it’s reminded of home. It killed a technician, but very slowly. It comes back in the morning and whispers all its deeds to me, and I want to run but I can’t because I’m just just just bones and it slithers and smothers and caresses.”\n\nShe blinked. “Sorry?”\n\n“Yes, I said. A little.”\n\n“Ah.”\n\nFurther conversation is interrupted by the sudden howl of a klaxon; the lumen strobes shift to a deep red, bathing the room in blood-red light. The deep, dull pitch of sirens begin their own mournful cadence in deeper parts of the facility.\n\nCrimson shadows dance in crazed fractals across the windows, every snowflake eight-pointed. No two alike, but patterned regardless. A hybrid fall. A legion undivided.\n\nSomething rumbles deep below them, the shaking of a beast irritated by the fleas in its fur as it lifts its muffle to the wind, scenting prey.\n\nOne by one, the klaxons die.\n\nThe lumens remain red.\n\nHis comm-bead hisses static. Hers remains silent.\n\n“Please ignore the voices in your communications equipment,” it says. “There are no voices in your communications equipment.”\n\nHe looks back at her. Every inch is covered in those starry shadows, eight-spears-pierced, red-lit. She touches a delicate finger to the blood leaking from her eyes. Such delicacy is absurd. Alien. A foreign contaminant. He can feel his skin twitching, writhing, desperate to be free of its sticky cage. Every part of him pulling in a separate direction, wrenching apart, collapsing into the terrible pain in his stomach, a hunger so dense it has gravity, and-\n\nThe lights snap back to white.\n\nThere is no blood. No maw in his guts. No alabaster woman crying blood.\n\n“I don’t feel well,” he says. “I think I’m going to see the medicae.”\n\nShe nods. “That’s probably for the best. See you on shift.”\n\n“Sure.”" ]	1
	[WP] Your daughter is crying at 3 am, so you burst in her room. She is sitting on her bed, emotionless. “Daddy, I think there’s a monster under my bed”. With a sigh, you kneel and put your head under the bed, only to find your daughter, quivering. “Daddy, there’s something on my bed..”	[ "It's funny having kids. You think they are amazing sometimes and sometimes you can be amazingly done with them\n\nThe bed.Should have bought 2 when I had the chance. There wasn't space and real estate in this area was through the roof.\n\nHad to make do with what I had.\n\n\"Enough\" I yell.Its already 1130.I really need a drink. \"Michelle, get out from under the bed and share with your sister\"I scream. Hopefully, they don't hear the desperation in my voice\n\nKids painful.Twins very painful. I really need a drink\n" ]	1
	[WP] Guardian angels are granted a one-time moment to return back to the moral world to help their 'human' during a time of crisis. However, the guardian angel cannot come in contact with them during their time back on Earth.	[ "Death wasn't so bad. All the aches and pains of old age faded away. Hunger was a thing of the past. Fatigue and stress? Just faint memories, becoming ever more faint as days blended into each other in a whirling, brilliant stream of time that flowed faster and faster toward some blinding, beautiful future.\n\nAnd to help get over the change between alive and dead, everyone gets the opportunity to be a guardian angel to someone they loved in life. I picked you, of course. I will always pick you.\n\nTime skips and jumps, like interrupted naps, when you're a guardian. But when it's smooth, well, that's when I get to say my goodbyes, one day at a time. You were laying on the couch again, watching the TV, under our favorite blanket which I had decided was better on the couch than as a duvet on the bed. I rested my head on your shoulder and could just barely smell your hair and neck like I always used to. You drifted off to sleep and so did I, as we had done so many times.\n\nI sat on the swing beside you at the park while you watched the sunset and cried to yourself. The swings were always your favorite; the path around the pond mine. But I sat with you and we swung in the breeze that disturbed your scarf and gave you excuses to dab at your eyes with a napkin. Though I wished I could let you know you weren't alone, I knew you knew. Somehow, you always knew everything I wanted to tell you, even when I didn't know how.\n\nTime skipped, and when it slowed down, you were screaming. The car! It was going over the bridge! Falling into the water, and with the impact you went limp as the water poured in through the vents. In that moment, I knew it was my time to use my one wish, my one-time power as your guardian.\n\nEven as the car sank into the dark, rushing water the doors were held closed as if by an invisible hand. Grasping the handle firmly, I pulled with every ounce of strength I had; ounces and ounces that I did not even know I had. And with a pop, as the last of the air fled the car, racing to the surface in a bustle of bubbles, the door opened.\n\nThe rules forbade me from touching you in this moment of solid presence, but it didn't prevent me from using tools. I grasped a branch from the riverbed and used it to pry you from the seat and push/pull you out of the car. Shoving you with it, I bore you to the surface and to the bank, but you were still and breathless. My eyes raced wildly across the houses until I saw a sign I recognized, and leaving you on your side I sprinted to the door faster than I had ever run while alive.\n\nI stood outside the locked door and pounded on it in desperation, beating at the red cross as though I could batter the door down and get help from within. A young woman came to the door, equal parts frightened and curious, but I was breathless from the exertion, and panting wildly merely beckoned her before taking off at a run back to you. Mercifully, she followed.\n\nWe got to you as your lips were turning blue, and though it almost killed me all over again I kept back and let her save you. As you took your second first breath and returned to the living, my wish began to fade. I had nothing more to offer you, and wandered down the river bank until something caught my eye.\n\nOne of your shoes. Would that I had the time to bring it to you, to touch you one last time, to press my head to yours in the sweet silence of practiced companionship. If you had turned your head, just then, just as you coughed and took hold of the young doctor's coat to desperately thank her, you might have seen me one last time. You might have seen my tail wagging one last time for you, happy that you were well and that I had been, for the last time, a truly good boy.\n\nI was not alone. I was not your first guardian angel, and I will not be your last. Faint, behind me as I too faded and turned to follow that dazzling stream to whatever beautiful paradise waited, were a half dozen more wagging tails. And at home, I knew you had two more waiting for your return. You would be alright. They would see to it." ]	1
	[WP] "Welcome to BrainOS 10. We've got some exciting new features available for you!"	[ "\"It started small. The company started its research for helping patients suffering from Alzheimers. A small implant in the memory center. And it was almost magic. It worked by extracting and retaining the memories in sort of a backup. However, our brain is much more complex than the most complex machine ever built by humans. The extraction process was never accurate and complete. But the new memories were retained perfectly. But something was better than nothing. Since the human brain gets weaker with age and starts breaking down just like our bodies, it became a common practice to get the implant as soon as you retired. The company made a lot of money this way. But they also realized that there was more to be made.\"\n\n\"That was when they began an aggressive developmental and marketing program to appeal to a much bigger market. Everybody. Soon, the implant could improve your eyesight, make you hear better, improve all your senses. Then came more. Virtual reality. The gaming industry was revolutionized. Play anywhere without any equipment. The stocks kept rising the the greed rose with it. More features. They rendered phones and the televisions and the books obsolete. Most of the competition was bankrupted. And the Company ruled supreme. And then came the latest OS update. BrainOS 10.\"\n\n\"As time passed the implant took over more and more of the brain's functions. The BrainOS10 extended that to pretty much everything. All the sight was controlled by the chip, the hearing, the thinking and even sleeping. The implant was able to artificially induce the same relaxation in the brain as sleeping would. Enabling people to go without sleep for much longer. Productivity ought to have increased immensely. But most work was being done by the implant anyways and was as efficient as could be. This just meant more downtime and enjoyment for people. And we also added pain resistance. The implant was able to break off the pain receptor signals from coming to the brain. And it isn't the body that feels the pain, its the brain. Effectively we had solved every single problem with the human body.\"\n\n\"Of course, with every update come glitches. Some bugs. As much testing as you do, one of those always somehow manages to slip by.\" I stop and take a sip of water. The voices are getting louder now. I don't have much time. My hand has gone white as a result of clutching the recorder so tight. But this must be done. Maybe some day someone hears this. I didn't mean for all this to happen. If they listen to it and hear my side of the story they might forgive me. But the voices are getting louder. I must hurry.\n\n\"We performed a lot of software testing. It was supposed to be the best OS released yet. Everything smoother, faster, more efficient. From the diagnosis we've been running, we know the problem was the sleep. If a person didn't sleep for 24 hours, the information overload for the implant caused it to short. Ordinarily this wouldn't cause a problem but we didn't count on one thing. The brain is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised regularly or it atrophies.\"\n\n\"At the time, almost 90% of people in the world had an implant. And almost 75% people were shunning sleep. And the glitch affected the 75%. They couldn't see, they couldn't hear, they couldn't... feel. We turned them into unthinking creatures. We turned them into psychopaths. As slowly the brain adjusted and the physical senses returned, the brain rejected the implant. People clawed them out, not being able to feel pain until it was too late. And then suddenly a rush of pain. Leaving everyone in agony. For someone who has never experienced pain, even slight pain feels enormous. And this was literally removing a piece of your brain.\" \n\nI could hear the door opening behind me. They'd be here soon. The zombies are coming for me. As I sat in the massive tower, the richest person in the world, CEO of the biggest corporation in the world and I was helpless. I was able to push the fix to my implant immediately. But not everyone in my office was lucky. They banded together and started hunting. Anyone not like them was a target. And I was the ultimate target. I started again. They are very close now. I used the remote to put the pain setting at the very minimum. If I die, I wanted to die without any pain.\n\n\"This is still salvageable. Most of my staff is dead or worse. So if anyone hears this, the source code and the new updates are stored on a USB stick. I still believe we were doing good. I still think that this is worth saving. I have hidden the stick in the ...\"\n\nAnd that is how the tale of Mr James Johnston ends. He wanted to fix people's brains, but his own brains were ripped apart by a horde of people whose brain's he had destroyed.\n\n------------------------\n\n&nbsp;\n\nDon't really like this one. But I started it and didn't want to let the words go to waste. ", "Fourteen years ago, when the team at Android launched their \"Be-1\" marketing campaign for the first generation of implantable tech, we were beyond thrilled with what today seems like relatively basic functionality. Simply having the ability to know what time it is without having to look at your watch or phone is said to have made the new generation entering the work force the most efficient yet - or, at the very least, ruined excuses for being late.\n\nToday however, I am proud to report what my team has been working on since the last hotfix for BrainOS 9.6 rolled out nearly two years ago. Introducing BrainOS 10, which is schedule to automatic upgrade across all clients tonight at midnight.\n\nFirstly, I feel I should address the elephant in the room after 9.5.3's mass hysteria issue by saying we've expanded our security to the best team on Earth. All applications are now reviewed and approved down the assembly language level for the highest degree of safety, security, and biocompatibility - additionally, to avoid any future data slipstreaming incidents, all developer networks are being internalized in our datacenters and must conform to our new, rigid security standards.\n\nBut it's been two years since security concerns made the headlines, so let's get to why you've tuned into this presentation: The new features.\n\nSince year six, we've brought you emotional synchronization with friends and family, intuition level navigation, and even the ability to stream you favorite audio content directly to your brain. But we've never been able to crack the code of the visual cortex due to the wide degree of perception variance in the human mind... Until now. \n\nStarting tomorrow, BrainOS will begin augmenting your reality with improved facial recognition, and even a heads up display for things like remembering someone's name, important dates, or identifying objects you've never seen before using our AI algorithms. \n\nThe next time you're out camping and you come across some berries, you won't have to spend hours wondering trying to describe them to a search engine to decide if they're edible or not: Your NeuralNode4 or higher implant will automatically send your visual feed along with your positioning data to our AI which will identify the suspect berries, tell you everything you need to know about them and make you an instant wilderness survival expert. \n\n\nBut it doesn't stop there. Math problems will solve themselves in front of your eyes. If you're trying to learn an instrument, you'll be able to visualize both simple notes and entire song progressions in real time. You'll receive visual navigation, traffic, and safety information while driving. Basically, anything our AI Network can do or identify, you can now do and identify - whether it's determining the breed of a dog at the park, visualizing a storm system in 3D space, or playing your favorite augmented reality games.\n\nWith the visual cortex cracked, we have only one mental barrier left to scale and we're hoping to do so by Q3 of next year: Imagination. We want to be able to give you the ability to turn your day dream into a vivid, almost tangible image able to be saved and viewed, or shared. And we know, we're gonna get a lot of hate from the design industry on this one - but we believe that if you can dream you should make it. That's been our motto at BrainOS, and we'll continue dreaming.\n\nSee you soon." ]	2
	[WP] The main character of a story has realised that he is, in fact, in a story, and protected by plot armour. He, as such, become complacent. Angered, the writer takes his plot armour away, and the MC is now in for a rude awakening...	[ "He looked into the skies with calm defiance, as if he was looking into my eyes. For the past 10 pages, he was really getting on my nerves. Tenacious, he insisted on pissing all over everything I tried to write, was like an outright mockery of my writing block. I had, if I wanted to keep writing, to find a way to break him and-\n\n— You do realize I am aware of everything you're writing, yes? I literally hear it as the voice of god.\n\nYes, I am, you pesky flatulence of a character.\n\n— Hah, that's a funny one. Still won't do it though.\n\nHis words were defiant but he knew, deep down, he had reason to be insecure. He'd seen first hand my godly powers of \"I'm the one writing this damn story\". I had spent the past chapter turning the world into a demon-infested wasteland, opened a demonic rift that consumed his favourite plants and made whole parts of the city float into the air just because I liked how it looked and it irritated him.\n\n— Got used to it though. Kinda easy when I know you'll sort it all out in the end.\n\nBut I had devised the ultimate plan. I was to have the upper hand, and my creature would not best me intelectually. He could not, conceptually speaking.\n\n— So what do you have in mind?\n\nHis last words, mixed with the crunching of the piano that had just fallen on him, echoed across the surrounding wastes now silent in its final moments. . The whole world went silent, in a wave, as I finally decided to put an end to that story, got up from my chair and went to the balcony to have a smoke. Let's hope the next one comes out better." ]	1
	[WP] You’re in the zombie apocalypse. It’s been a week and the door has worn out. The zombies break in but instead of eating you they are looking for bread. They keep moaning “Grains”.	[ "Terry was confused as the zombie horde shambled past him and into the kitchen. He was even more confused when they walked past the refrigerator, fruit bowl, and freshly marinated steak on the table and began to crowd around the cabinets. They began pound against the door weakly as the had done with the front door of his suburban home. \"graaaiiiiinnnnssss\" they groaned. He was dumbfounded. Had he holed himself up for months without reason. Was his torment from the isolation simply caused by a simple misunderstanding. He never had the best of hearing, after all he had been relying on a hearing aid for a majority of his life. He began to approach the cabinets slowly, ever so slowly. The zombies paid him no mind even as he bumped into them as he got closer to the cabinets. The zombies were still pounding on the cabinet doors futility trying to open them. He quickly grabbed the knob and jerked it open to see what would happen. Soon the zombies quickly took out the many boxes of cocoa puffs and oatmeal. They began to pull out chairs and started grabbing bowls and spoons. One zombie who was sat at the dinner table turned toward Terry and groaned \"miiilllllk?\".", "Charlie was astonished to find that the zombies didn't want to eat him. But instead wanted bread.\n\n\"Its not brains, its grains! Oh thank God.\" He exclaimed as he ran to get bread from the kitchen.\n\nHe had two packs of sliced bread and a bag of hamburger buns. He quickly ran and dumped it on the table in front of the zombies. Instead of eating his offerings, they threw it down (in disgust) and stomped on it. \n\n\"What the hell, you wanted grains, these are grains!\" said Charlie, angrily.\n\nTo which the zombies replied\n\"Gluten free grains, gluten free graaainns.\"\n\nCharlie, rightfully annoyed responds with \"damn you ironic hipster zombies\"\n before setting his house on fire." ]	2
	[WP] There are millions of different timelines that contain versions of everyone in it. You have been notified that you are the last existing version of yourself across all timelines.	[ "The blue-white light was jarring. \"Shit!\" Helen said as she squinted her eyes. She had just walked through the door to her apartment a moment ago, but there was that dizzy feeling and now this too bright light.\n\nShe waited as her eyes adjusted. Eventually she could make out where she was. The room was small, maybe ten by ten, and the floor and walls appeared to be a smooth white marble. It was unclear where the light was coming from though. As she looked around she saw a simple, but comfortable looking chair located behind her. Sitting down she tried to make sense of what was happening. For about three seconds anyway.\n\nA glass window appeared directly in front of her with two people calmly and kindly looking at her on the other side. They looked human, but some instinct in Helen made her sure they were something else entirely. Their skin and features were just too smooth.\n\n\"Good evening, Helen. My name is Simon and this Cassandra we represent the MEEPP and have some things we would like to discuss with you. I'm sure you have questions and we will get to them as soon as we can and we will be returning you home in short order this was just the best noninterference window we found to speak with you in such short order.\" The man smiled kindly as he finished speaking.\n\nCassandra started, \"Now-\"\n\n\"Shut up.\" Helen cut her off. \"What the hell is going on, what is the MEEA, and for the love of god can you turn down these lights?\"\n\nThe light immediately dimmed. Cassandra smiled patiently, \"We were getting to that. First the simple question the MEEPP stands for Multidimensional Endangered Entities Protection Program. You can understand why we use the acronym. We monitor and maintain the narrower possibilities within what you would probably call the time-stream.\"\n\n\"And I'm here because?\" Helen groaned helplessly.\n\n'You are uniquely endangered.\" Simon said. \"Normally, we simply prevent access to the collective branches of reality that could impact the endangered beings timelines. The thing your people call Chaos Theory is actually quite inaccurate, Time is far more stable than that. 1000 monkeys with 1000 typewriters will never write Shakespeare's plays. We know. We did the tests. Up to a threshold of ten quintillion of each I believe.\"\n\nCassandra glanced reproachfully at Simon as she picked up the explanation, \"Please ignore his digressions. Due to poaching for reasons we have not yet determined you are the last variant of the 273 instances of you. Normally, due to a combination of what you call quantum entanglement and...\" Cassandra flipped through some papers on a clipboard she held then laughed out loud before continuing, \"...and the uncertainty principle all variants of an individual will die at the same moment.\"\n\nIt was Simon's turn to glare, \"At least I am not insulting her. Sorry, the explanation is going to be limited because it involves science your branches of reality have not yet discovered. Getting to the point, we are assigning you a direct guardian. She will be finished will vaccinations, aging modification, background imprinting, and social-cultural indoctrination shortly.\"\n\n\"Wait, I don't want this! Some random interdimensional spook following me around messing with my life sounds like a nightmare.\" Helen stood up indignantly. \"What gives you the right to mess with my life?\"\n\n\"What gives you the right to preserve rhinos or whales or bald eagles?\" Cassandra asked sympathetically.\n\n\"That's not the same thing. They haven't got a way to properly protect themselves!\" Helen was shouting loudly now.\n\n\"Exactly,\" Simon said.\n\nHelen would have kept shouting, but just then the wall to her right opened and a blond woman with a confident smile and somewhat overweight appearance strolled into the room.\n\n\"Hey, what's up? Helen right, I'm Shannon.\" The woman stuck out her hand and on reflex Helen shook it.\n\n\"Excellent,\" Simon said, \"Field representative Williams will be able to answer any further questions you have. Only three minutes twenty-seven seconds will have passed in your reality and don't worry we didn't let your dog get out while you were here. We'll check in as needed.\"\n\n\"Hold on-\" Helen started.\n\n\"Goodbye.\" Cassandra cut her off as she waived and the lights flared.\n\nNext thing Helen saw she was back in her entryway with the door of her apartment closed behind her looking into the face of Shannon. Apparently, her new, unwanted, roommate and protector.", "I woke up gasping, my throat raw and heart pounding. My husband had his hands on my shoulders, as if he had been shaking me, and his face was pale. \n\n\"You were screaming,\" he whispered, his eyes wide, \"as if you were being murdered.\"\n\nHis assertion wasn't that far from the truth. The dream... That horrible nightmare... How could I ever explain it to him? For years, I had nightmares of my death, with so many variations it was hard to tell one from the other. This one, however, would haunt me for the rest of my life. \n\nSo much blood, and pain. I looked down at my wrists, my torso and threw off the blanket to gaze at my legs, no longer bound and wretched. My hands touched my face, finding it wet with tears. It felt so real, so horrifyingly real, I could not seem to accept that I was alive and whole. \n\n\"I'm sorry I scared you,\" I whispered back, my voice a hoarse croak. \n\nHe only shook his head and pulled me to him, as if he too could not believe I was alive. I lay awake for hours that night, listening to his steady, even breathing, and not daring to let myself drift back into the nightmare. Little did I know what was coming. \n\n\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\n\nThree days later, I sat in my psychiatrists office, hands clasped and shaking in my lap. I could not bring myself to tell even her what had transpired in that nightmare. All I could manage to say was that my nightmares were escalating. I had a history of PTSD, and years of treatment had allowed me to work and socially interact with others in a more normal manner, but I still had not overcome what I saw as a flaw in my own character. \n\n\"These aren't just nightmares, Lydia,\" she said, startling me out of my reverie. \"You are experiencing the deaths of multiple versions of yourself, in parallel dimensions to ours.\"\n\nFor a moment, I simply stared at her, as if she were the damaged one instead of me. I blinked twice, very slowly, as if I were replaying her words in my head, but there were no thoughts. It was gray there, and full of static. The static almost drowned out her next words.\n\n\"You are the last, Lydia. I have to be honest with you, I hoped the others would make it, could carry on, but too many things went wrong for them. It's only you now, and I swear I will do anything in my power to protect you.\"\n\n\"The last what?\" I murmured, not really sure if I wanted to know. \n\n\"The last you.\"\n\nHer voice was soft and sad, and gazing into her eyes it seemed as if she knew more about me than a mere psychiatrist would. Sometimes, I considered if parallel universes could actually exist, simply because it seemed foolish not to think that people were a fixed point and their choices were similarly shrouded in permanence. Having someone tell me that they were truly real, and more to the point, all of the me's that ever existed were gone, seemed too ludicrous, too fanciful. \n\n\"I understand that this is a lot to take in, especially with your unique medical condition.\"\n\nI scoffed but she spoke on, as if she had not noticed.\n\n\"This is real, Lydia, and very serious. That nightmare you had a few nights ago... You were kidnapped, tortured, and eventually killed when the monster who took you could not get anymore screams from your ruined body.\" \n\nI shuddered violently to hear her say the words I had tried so hard to avoid. \n\n\"I know about all of your deaths. The self inflicted, the accidental, and the tragic. I need you to believe me, so that we can focus our attention on keeping you alive.\"", "I am asleep.\n\nIn my dreams, I walk through a forest of impossibly tall trees. This dream has been a recurring one for as far as I can remember. The forest's trees are familiar to me now. I have taken every possible path that there is and ever will be. However, this dream is different. A new path has appeared. It is thick with thorny bushes, and my clothes are torn as I struggle to pass through their spiky embrace.\n\nI emerge, gasping, onto a beach. This is utterly unnatural. The forest, in both directions, stops abruptly, the border between wood and sand stretching in a straight line until it reaches the horizon on either size of me. The beach comprises pale white sand, and water laps against the shore just a few metres away.\n\nBetween myself and the water stands a man. He is holding a book in one hand, and a bowler hat in the other.\n\n\"I am sorry to interrupt your dreams like this. I have grave news.\"\n\n\"I've dreamt the same dream every night for fifteen years. Why has it changed now?\" I stare at the man. He is rather strange. \n\n\"Your subconscious has placed you in this forest every night to prevent the fate that has met your brethren. This beach should not exist, and you should not be here. Your brethren are dead.\" \n\n\"What?\" Instinctively, I understand what he meant. I am a particle physicist when I am in the conscious world. My team and I have been aware for some time of the existence of parallel worlds. We use the term \"brethren\" to mean our parallel selves. One of my team is currently researching how to make contact with the brethren, with limited success. \"Why?\" \n\n\"Your research is valuable. More than you know. It will simultaneously destabilise and balance your world, in due time.\"\n\nHe flips through the pages of his book, landing on a page which has half a page missing. \"Page three-hundred and forty six. Remember those words.\" \n\n\"I don't understa-\" \n\nA huge crash in the distance startles me. My head jolts around towards the sound. A fog has appeared in the distance, and it is moving in my direction. Far faster than what is natural. \n\n\"My child, you must run. The forest will protect you.\" \n\n\"But what do you mean by page thr-\" \n\nRUN!\n\nThe voice thunders through my head. Terrified, I glance once more at the advancing fog, and turn around, sprinting into the forest. The path is clear, but as I reach the beginning of the path, there is rustling, and branches grow across the path in an instant. They rustle, as if to comfort me. \n\n\"Page three-hundred and forty six.\"\n\nI awake with a start, sweat covering my body in the darkened room. \n\n(Thanks for reading! I read the WP and thought it was a really cool way to write about a character from a short story I'm currently writing. You can find it at /r/ToastyStories, if you're interested.)", "\"Helicopter pilot?\" I leaned forward, even more intrigued.\n\n\"Died, Afghanistan 2005.\" No emotion, just another checked off the list. \"The Marine version lasted a little longer...Fallujah was a bitch. Actually Fallujah got you fifteen times.\"\n\n\"Well I graduated after 9/11, that makes sense, but certainly I'm not the only one that chose a different path...what about them? What about CVS, I always thought that was promising had I stayed, certainly one of them made it past Assistant Manager.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah, a lot of those ended in messy robberies. You always thought you were the hero. Too many times you were wrong.\"\n\nThe glass slipped some in my hand as he filled it again. I gripped harder, trying to hide my growing unease with a gulp that ended with him filling it again.\n\n\"What about the environmental job?\"\n\n\"Oh, those got messy. Why on earth would you stand on a waste tank without your PPE? Anyways, I'm telling you every single one has died. Accidents, driving too fast, those times you drove and knew you shouldn't have made it home, every risk that made your heart leap into your throat. Each one a thread burnt out, and now the fabric is gone. You are the last thread.\"\n\nThe man leaned forward, offering another drink but I waved my glass away. Why? This man coming to me at the middle of the night, a bottle of my favorite whiskey and a promise to tell me a story I wouldn't believe until I heard it. \n\n\"Why then, why am I all that's left?\" \n\nThe man leaned back against the couch, \"You are the one that gave up. You are the one that sat idly by as each of those chances came and past you like a breeze. You won the race because you never took a step that wasn't taken for you. I mean, the prize isn't so grand?\" He motioned to the ragged furniture around me, the stale dirty walls, \"But it is yours nonetheless.\"\n\n\"So what's the point then? All these others, they fought and they succeeded, they overcame obstacles that keep me to this day. What can I do that they didn't?\"\n\n\"Well, I guess that depends on who you ask. Some of my friends think it doesn't matter if you know or not. I like to think that it does.\" He looked at his watch, and back up to me. \"But tomorrow, you are going to get on a bus.\"\n\nI laughed and shook my head. \"I have a car, I don't think you'll see me on a bus any time soon, and certainly not tomorrow.\"\n\nHe slammed the open bottle on the table, and his gaze seemed to flicker in and out of focus. As quickly as it came it fades, and the man shook his head. \n\n\"Tomorrow, you will get on a bus...\" he leaned forward, and this time his smile was more condescension than friendliness, \"...And you always thought you were the hero.\"", "\"Constants and variables, Mr Wilson. I trust you know there are many universes in our reality, and though there are many differences, some things are maintained.\" The man speaks these words slowly, and with authority. He wears a charcoal grey suit, with a cane topped with a silver dragon. He lights a cigarette once he finishes speaking.\n\n\"There's no need to lecture me, fixer, I have studied basic multi-physics. Some universes have one or more world wars, some, like this one, do not; all universes, however, see the first atomic explosion on earth occur on July 16th 1945, one way or another.\" The young student replies, trying to mask the fear he feels at meeting those one hopes never to meet.\n\n\"It has come to our attention that there is one such constant in your timeline. It's the case, you see, that you always exist. In every universe there is a James Michael Wilson, not always in the same place, though always at the same time. But unfortunately, I must inform you that isn't the full extent of the constant.\"\n\nJames ran his fingers through his hair, trying to process what was being said. \"Go on, then.\"\n\n\"In every universe, every last one of them, you are killed by your father. In most, don't worry, it is a pure accident; he knocks over a ladder you're stood on or forgets to tell you about a live wire he's working on. Occasionally, yes, he murders you, but try not to fixate on that, such is the nature of so many simultaneous existences.\"\n\nJames is confused by this revelation. \"But my...\"\n\n\"Yesterday, at 22:00 exactly, your father died of cardiac arrest.\"\n\n\"So it's not a constant, then, right?\" James was desperate, now; hoping to get out of this situation.\n\n\"I'm afraid it certainly is, and that's why I'm here. You surely know the destruction and chaos caused by the last existential break, don't you?\"\n\n\"Seven universes were destroyed, four more were wiped of all trace of life, over three thousand were in some way damaged, hundreds badly so.\" James states, remembering the statistics told to him.\n\n\"There there, kid, I promise you, it's going to be...\"\n\nAt that moment, James started to cough heavily. He looked at the back of his hand, noticing the blood. \"What... what did...\"\n\n\"Cherry juice, in the soda you drank earlier, I'm dreadfully sorry.\" The fixer replied, somewhat coldly.\n\n\"But then you killed me! This doesn't...\"\n\n\"You inherited your allergy from your father, Mr Wilson, it was the best we could do.\"\n\n", "\"Excuse me?\"\n\n\"Sir, once again, you are the last version of yourself. The one, only, and last Thomas D. Ellis.\"\n\nThe slate gray walls and fluorescent light beamed onto Thomas's face. His eyes darted back and forth between the woman in front of him and the door behind her.\n\n\"This is a joke, right? Can you please let me go?\" \n\n\"Not until you have gone through orientation and sign the agreement at the end, Sir.\"\n\nThomas smiled, but only with his mouth. The woman across from him looked into his eyes and saw skepticism. More importantly, she saw his pupils dart back and forth as he scooted closer to the edge of his seat, looking for an opportunity to run. She sighed.\n\n\"Sir, I assure you. You are not first. You will not be the last. This happens more often than you think. This is merely procedure.\"\n\nThomas slouched back into his chair, his eyes glossed over. His smile broke, a sagging frown replacing it. A soft sigh escaped his lips.\n\n\"...Okay. Orientate me.\"\n\n&nbsp;\n&nbsp;\n\n//\n\nI'm new to writing fiction and would appreciate any and all criticism. Thank you!", "Paul dug his fingers into the cool soil for extra leverage, then sat himself up. He felt loose soil crumble down his back and he exhaled a contented sigh through a broad smile he did not realize he wore. \n\n\"Intense,\" he said with awe. He stood slowly, brushing the soil off himself, then he stepped out of the soil pit. He walked through a narrow, shallow pool of water to rinse his feet on his way out of the mudroom towards the kitchen. Paul flipped on the light then noticed a small dark circle hovering in the air in front of the refrigerator. He initially thought it looked like a black ball, but he walked closer to examine it. No matter how he looked at it, it appeared to be flat and facing him dead on. The color was darker than any black he'd ever seen. He used a nearby switch over the marble counters to turn the lights off again; but, he could still see the dark hole perfectly clear. After a moment he registered what it could be. \"NO WAY!\" he yelled then flipped the switch to get the lights back on again.\n\nHis smile somehow grew, and a nervous energy overtook him. He started to rush back to the mudroom, but then went back to the hole. He paced back and forth a couple of times, unsure what course of action to take before the hole answered for him. It grew as large as him, and clapped with glee. Immediately he turned a bar stool to face the large black hole, then sat down on it. Just as he hoped, someone stepped out of the hole. Two someones, both women. A tall, lean dark haired woman with a severe porcelain face, and a shorter, stockier woman with a bald head. They both noticed Paul, and the taller one smiled at him. \n\n\"I don't know if you've realized this yet, but you're naked,\" she said to him. Paul's large, pale body turned beet red instantly. He bolted to the bedroom door, across from his mudroom, and after a plethora of rustling he returned wearing jogging pants and dark torn t-shirt. He sat down on the bar stool again and smiled at the women. \n\n\"Sorry. Instructions said that's the best way to get a connection with the soil,\" he said. He offered a half shrug as an apology. The tall woman nodded. \n\n\"Of course. Are you,...\" as she spoke, she turned her head to the bald woman. She stepped forward to finish the tall woman's question. \n\n\"Drizz'tUchiha12,\" she said with a soft voice. Paul doubted he would have heard her if it were not three in the morning with the city sleeping. He nodded.\n\n\"That's me!\" \n\n\"Paul Wilkins?\" the bald woman asked in a near whisper. \n\n\"YES!\" he said. He sat up straighter in his seat, his body vibrating with excitement. He met one. A real Unique! \"Can I ask? I mean. Sorry, I don't know why you're here, but I know what you are. Which Uniques are you?\" The bald woman took a step back, and the dark-haired woman answered Paul's question. \n\n\"My name's Dana Sharp, I'm actually a Zero just like you,\" she smiled, then gestured at her companion. \"Janet's #14, La Muerte.\" The shorter woman nodded slightly as an acknowledgment. \n\n\"Whooooa. You're a Zero and you get to hang around with a Celestial??\" Paul was instantly impressed. He'd only learned about Uniques earlier in the day when he first logged into the AlterNet. He hoped he'd get to meet one someday, but did not expect it to be the same day he learned about them. Dana nodded and gave Paul a wink with her right eye, the side opposite Janet. \n\n\"She works for me,\" Dana said. \"As for why I'm here, I'd like you to work for me too.\" Paul's eyes went wide, and he pointed at himself. \n\n\"Me?\" He looked at Janet, but she did not even blink when their eyes met. She continued to stare through him with her light pink eyes. He looked back at Dana.\n\n\"I study Uniques, and naturally that means I have to study Zeroes too. You're a very unique zero, and I have a great interest in learning why.\" Paul's mind raced past the mention of studying and focused on him being special. \n\n\"I'm special? How am I special? I'm just a Zero, there's thousands of me,\" he shrugged. Dana shook her head. \n\n\"That's the thing. There isn't even another one of you.\" She took a deep breath to prepare for a long explanation. \"The AlterNet has systems in place to ensure that Zeroes and Uniques are on even playing fields. One of those systems registers your soul signature and checks it against all other AlterNet servers. If more of you are found, you have the option of communicating with them,\" she said. A look of confusion clouded Paul's face. \n\n\"Really?\" He scratched his scraggly beard as he went through his time logged in. \"I don't remember anything like that.\" Dana nodded.\n\n\"It didn't activate for you, because you're the only you that's ever logged into the AlterNet. I run a corporation across several universes, and I have more sophisticated equipment for tracking soul signatures. Whenever a new Zero logs in, my team starts tracking down other versions. If their Earth is at a certain level, we begin marketing the AlterNet there,\" she said. She spread her hands out to indicate Paul's kitchen. \"Like here, you guys only got the AlterNet last week, but it's been around a lot longer than that.\" Paul nodded, but his eyes seemed to be glazed over. Dana smiled at him, then stepped closer to put a gentle hand on his shoulder. \n\n\"But we couldn't find any more of you. What's your favorite number, Paul?\" she asked. He shrugged. \n\n\"I dunno, never thought about it. 7? No wait 46! I wanna be a Sol!\" Dana chuckled. \"Don't we all. It doesn't work like that, but I am curious about how you came to be. You'll get to meet way more Uniques than Janet.\" Dana winked at him. \"I've got a Spider that you have to meet.\"\n\n\"I'm in!\" Paul said. He hopped off his stool ready to go. \n\n\"Janet. Earth 1 please.\" The bald woman made a gesture in the air, and a black hole opened up wide enough to let Paul through. He jumped in without hesitation. \n\n\\\\\\\n\nThank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day in 2018, this is #199. You can find the first 6 months worth of stories collected on my old [blog](http://hserratafun.blogspot.com/2017/10/front-page.html) until I make the full move to my new blog at [Hugoverse.info](https://hugoverse.info/). If you're curious about my universe(the Hugoverse) you can visit the[ Guidebook](http://hserratafun.blogspot.com/2017/11/hugoverse-guidebook.html) to see what's what and who's who, or the[ Timeline](http://hserratafun.blogspot.com/2017/10/hugoverse-timeline.html) to find the stories in order.", "The heat outside is like nothing I've experienced before. I know what triple digits feels like, or at least I thought I did - when even the breeze is uncomfortably warm. But you can still get through your day...it's unpleasant, but not the end of the world.\n\nThe current temperature feels hazardous. I brace myself when I touch the metal of my front door, trying to get it open as quickly as possible without burning myself. I am sweating in places I didn't even know had sweat glands. I head straight for the kitchen and look for something to drink.\n\nA short man in a three-piece suit is waiting for me by the counter. He is mostly bald, with a ring of short, dark hair around the three-quarters of his scalp like some sort of poorly-maintained fence. His eyes appear to bulge behind the thick glasses on his face.\n\n\"Ah, good, Mr. Jacoby. Sorry to intrude on you like this, but I am from The Agency and we are obligated under United Multiverse Law to give you the following official notice. You --\" \n\n\"I'm sorry. Who are you?\" I'm staring at him as I reach in the refrigerator for something cold to drink, grabbing the first thing my hands come across.\n\n\"Sir, I have a number of appointments today, and I would really rather not...my name is Bob. And I need to give you --\"\n\n\"Bob what?\" \n\nBob's eyes narrow. \"What does it -- Bob Bobson. Or any -- listen, this is an official notice that you are the last instance of Mr. Jacobi in the multiverse.\"\n\nI blinked at him, trying to make sense of this as I opened the bottle of the beverage I have retrieved. He opens his attache case and begins rummaging as I take a swig. It tastes disgusting...maybe I grabbed one of those vitamin drinks? \n\n\"Here. This is for you.\" He hands me a tri-fold brochure. I gulp down some more of the contents of the bottle as I look it over. The front panel says So You're The Last You in Existence...* with a sub-heading that reads A Guide to Managing Existential Dread and Coping with Your Imminent Non-Existence. \n\n\"What happened to the other mes?\" \n\nThe sound that comes out of him is a mixture of a groan and a sigh. He pulls a manila folder out of his case and begins leafing through the contents irritably. \"Let's see...fell off a roof...died in a fire...died in a fire...car accident...motorcycle accident...died in a fire...ooo, exsanguinated due to stab wounds -- that you certainly lived an interesting life! -- fell off a roof...fell off a rock...fell off a slightly larger rock...mauled by bear, trampled by bull...oh, this is an interesting one, it just says 'unfortunate turtle incident'...died in a fire...gun-shot wound whilst backpacking...gun-shot wound whilst parasailing...and most of the rest say 'self-induced' or 'poor judgment.' Mr. Jacoby, you'll forgive me saying so, but you sound like...an idiot. I don't see 'natural causes' on here once. I would do my best to be extremely cautious in your day-to-day...\"\n\nMr. Bobson freezes, his eyes wide. \"Mr. Jacoby, are...are you drinking rat poison?\" \n\nI blink, frowning, and look down at the bottle in my hands. \"Well, sure enough. Now that you mention it, it did seem strange that my stomach felt like it was burning. I...uh...huh. I think I'm going to sit down for a second.\"\n\nMy vision dims as I slump to the floor. The last thing I hear is a muttered, \"He couldn't have done it fifteen minutes earlier?\"\n**\n/r/ShadowsofClouds\n", "“I’m the last? No more?”\n\nShe nods. \n\n“All the rest died of the same thing. They were erased, from the very fabric of the String.”\n\nI wince, knowing exactly what she meant. Erasure like that was no easy thing to go through. One would be spaghettified, which is to say ripped apart into millions of strands and reassembled back into assorted atoms. Poof.\n\n“Any idea who is behind the deletions?”\n\nShe looks at me for a moment, and stands up to look for something in a back drawer. She hands me a file and sits back down.\n\n“This is Leslie Lamont Jr., a wanted suspect in numerous erasures. We believe he travels through the stable fissures, into various paths and deletes away at his disposal. Since this universe is somewhat isolated from the rest, it appears you were spared.”\n\nI shudder, knowing all too well what she’s going to say next. I had heard about erasures on the news too often these days.\n\n“He’s coming after you himself. It’s not going to be pretty.”\n\nI take the file, to try to see what my hunter looked like. To my surprise and disappointment, it was blank.\n\nShe recognizes my dismay, and takes the file back.\n\n“We are stilllooking through the database. Have faith, Mr. Ferguson.”\n\nI’m still confused. What does someone have against Stephen Ferguson? To erase me in all universes? To erase my fabric from the String?\n\nAt that moment, the door slams open, and she pulls out a gun. \n\nI whirl around around in surprise, and see five individuals holding heavy-duty weapons. Advanced machinery, it seemed. They wore armor, government issued.\n\nShe points it at them, confidently.\n\n“Mr. Ferguson, I can handle this.”\n\nThe middle of the five steps into the room a bit farther.\n\n“Don’t listen to her. Do you know what her name is?”\n\nI looked blankly at them, while I feel the gun at my head.\n\nThe group all point their weapons towards her.\n\n“Don’t even think about it, Leslie.”", "“I’m going to keep you alive if it kills me,” the sprite hissed.\n\nEddie ignored the buzzing in his ear and focused on the task at hand. He was on a roll, he couldn’t break his winning streak now.\n\n“Did you hear me?! I’m talking to you!”\n\nEddie felt a series of tiny thuds against his graying temple. He absentmindedly batted a hand at the source. This elicited an enraged squeal from his assailant.\n\n“Fine! Die, then. See if I care.”\n\nThe thudding stopped. Eddie heard the sound of wings fluttering away.\n\nFinally, some peace and quiet. He resumed typing into the search window.\n\n“Evel...Knievel…Snake...River...Canyon...Jump.”\n\nBy his right shoulder, he heard a soft groan. She hadn’t left him alone after all.\n\n“Not THIS again. I TOLD you--this stupid stunt is what killed the rest of you. All 10,237 of you.”\n\nEddie knew this. He knew the odds. But he didn’t care.\n\nSensing his resolve, the sprite sighed in frustration.\n\n“Look. I’ve been stuck with versions of you for the past five freaking years. And each one of you is dumber than the last. I’ve seen you try this stupid jump over and over again. And guess what? Every single time, you end up getting scraped off the side of the canyon.”\n\nShe really wasn’t going to leave him alone. Eager to get rid of her, Eddie faced her.\n\n“Why don’t you leave, then, little lady?”\n\n“First, don’t call me that, you overgrown hairy oaf. I’m over a thousand years old and could vaporize you instantly. Second, I don’t want to be here. I have to. I screwed up my last assignment, so this is my punishment.”\n\nEddie turned back to his laptop. “Not my problem.”\n\nShe swooped down to block his view. She hovered a few inches from his nose, all four inches of her radiating fury.\n\n“See, that’s the thing. It IS your problem. You’re the last one left. After you smash yourself against the side of Snake River Canyon and turn yourself into jelly, that’s it. And once you’re gone, you’re gone. No more afterlife, no more reincarnation, none of that.”\n\nShe could see that Eddie wasn’t getting it. She sighed in frustration.\n\n“Let me spell things out so that they get through your thick monkey skull. The universe needs at least one of you to die of natural causes. It’s very particular about that. The universe needs a divergence in the timelines to preserve the balance. If you go through this stunt, you’ll be the first man in history to die the exact same way in all of his possible existences. That’d be bad for you. Very bad.”\n\nEddie considered this. “First man? Not, ‘first human’?”\n\nTo Eddie’s surprise, her cheeks flushed a pale pink.\n\n“My last assignment. Don’t ask.”\n\nEddie let the matter drop. Then, he had an idea.\n\n“Okay, okay, I hear you. But, I need to do this. Evel Knievel..he has been my hero since I was a boy. This was the one big jump that he couldn’t finish. He left this unfinished, and it kills me. Myself, I’m not getting any younger, I feel it in my bones. I don’t have much to look forward to, other than this. So...I can see why the rest all decided to take the leap. And I respect them for it.”\n\nThe sprite started to protest, so he cut in.\n\n“--But, it doesn’t mean that I have to do it exactly the way they did. Maybe I just need a little help. From you.”\n\nHer eyes became as wide as saucers. \n\n“F-from me? What do you mean?”\n\n“Okay, so apparently you, in all of your pintsized glory, can vaporize a full-sized human. What else do you have under the hood? You can fly, but how strong are you? Can you lift a car?”\n\n“Easily.”\n\nEddie barked a laugh.\n\n“Well then, there you go! See, I have this sweet rocket-powered rig, Knievel style. One of my buddies helped me build it. I’ve done test jumps, but nothing as long as the canyon. Maybe all I need is a little boost.” \n\nThe sprite considered this. What she hadn’t told Eddie was that she had grown fond of the grizzled man, all 10,238 versions of him. She admired his tenacity in attempting the impossible. Every time she witnessed his death, it tore at her. She really wanted to save him, if she could.\n\nSure, she’d have to bend, or break, a few rules. But it could be done.\n\n“I may be able to help. Let’s go out back and take a look at your rig.”\n\nEddie’s gray eyes lit up. “Right this way, my lady.”\n\n\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\n\nSix months later, newspapers across the country announced to the world: \n\n>Eddie Braun does what Evel Knievel could not: make successful jump over Snake River Canyon" ]	10
	[WP] Centuries ago, the cure for death was found. Now, nearly 400 years later, the first death is reported.	[ "I sat in my chair, looking out the window and watching the news on my phone. The sun was bright, and the sky was filled with small clouds and skyscrapers. Ever since the cure to death was found about four-hundred years ago, the Earth’s population skyrocketed into the tens of billions.\n\nI always used to think the world had enough people, and that less would be better. Though now I believe the opposite. Since more people have been born, and the worlds geniuses don’t have to worry about death, many things have been invented. Things that help the environment and sustainability of our world.\n\nI turned my attention to the news and listened to the anchor, who was talking about the current political climate and natural disasters happening all over the planet.\n\nAll of a sudden, just as he began his next story, the anchorman’s expression turned to one of concern and panic. \n\n“We have just gotten word...” he paused, reading his cues over and over, asking his producer if his notes were correct, “we have just received word of a death, that happened late last nigh due to seemingly natural causes.” \n\nThe camera panned over to the second anchor, and she continued the story.\n\n“Officials say that he did indeed receive the cure, and he was even one of the first. They also say that he was in his mid to late twenties, with a healthy lifestyle and no life threatening diseases. Scientists believe that this is indeed a fault with the cure, and anyone who was the first to receive it must go see a local doctor immediately.” She paused as well, and read over her notes again, looking up with a confused and disbelieving expression. “Children and the elderly should be clear from the fault, and only those in age ranges fifteen to fifty must go and see a doctor to receive a second dosage of the cure, which will hopefully fix this fault.”\n\nTo be continued " ]	1
	[WP] Excalibur, all those years ago, was melted down. In the modern age, its whereabouts were long lost. Unbeknownst to you, the butterknife you bought at the flea market is the last remaining piece of Excalibur, and it retained all it’s powers.	[ "Oh butter knife, what is my life?\n\nLike you I’m dull and serve one purpose \n\nFor you to cut, for me to eat, and on and on we go\n\n\nI’m not too sharp, but neither are you\n\nButter knife, butter life, but a better life I chew\n\nImagine, I could, my hand was razor sharp\n\nThen I would not need you, I could just chop\n\n\nI’d chop this counter, like this, with hand\n\n... and it would split in two\n\nBut even you poor knife, I slice at it with you\n\n... and WHAT is this new life you yield!!\n\n\nButter knife, you sliced pure granite!\n\nWhatever dreams I had are gone!\n\nWith you oh butter knife, my heart anew!\n\nThe better life with butter knife \n\nA sharpened life for two!\n\n\n", "\"As advertised\", it says. A butter knife that could cut through anything as if it were... butter. Skeptical at first, I tried it with biscuit, and the results were unbelievable. After that I tried it with vegetables, meat, frozen meat and so on. The cuts were perfect.\n\nBut now, there's a problem. I've tried with pliers, hammer, even crowbar and electric saw, but nothing works. Since this isn't on the warning label, tomorrow I'm going to bring it back to the store and ask for a refund.\n\nWhat kind of butter knife gets permanently stuck in a grinding stone after one cut?" ]	2
	[WP] Disabilities are a small price to pay for extraordinary power. The greater the disability, the more incredible the power. You were born without arms, legs, and desperately needed a heart transplant. And you just discovered how powerful you are.	[ "Suspended in place above the seats lining the Cathederal, I surveyed the onlookers who now fell under my domain. For years, they had mocked me behind my back through dismissive referrals, and to my face through condescension. And now they felt as powerless as I once did. \n\nThe storm had brought many deaths, but alongside it an excessive pool of power for individuals such as myself. I had achieved my current circumstances through channeling the hatred brewing within my broken, fractured, body in order to suppress those who might empathize more with the 'normals'. Their enviable conditions allowed them relatively comfortable lifestyles, something I could never afford whilst attached to a life-support machine and funneled some detritus an optimist might call 'food' via a plastic tube.\n\nAnd now, as I balanced in judgement above them all, my family, 'friends', distant relatives, all involuntarily gathered to grovel on the hardwood benches they now oh so comfortably rested upon, I felt a crippling surge pulsate through my body as they all convulsed in pain beneath me, an orchestral harmony of screeches.\n\nThey would understand. I would make them. The injustices I once faced in the confines of a past self were now bestowed upon them. They would be perpetually twisted beings, physically and mentally, but kept to a degree lesser than that of my own inadequacies. \n\nI now had the ability to suspend my own pain, but for years to come these treacherous dissidents shall lack any such power. They will serve as the initial retinue of my army, an unstoppable horde of 'freaks', fuelled with inordinate sums of power arising from their disabilities. \n\nA revolution was coming, and anyone once deemed 'lucky' would be the enemy. They would soon understand. " ]	1
	[WP] You finish your heroic deed and everyone claps. EVERYONE.	[ "Ragged breath escaped my bloodied lips as I let my battered, holy blade slowly point itself downwards into the withered earth below my feet. My eyelids threatened to drift shut, weight of the tremendous task I had just performed pushing down against my consciousness.\n\nI had slain the True Demon King, Gazzamuk.\n\nThe peace had come at a great cost: emaciated corpses of my blood-drained comrades lay strewn across the rusty battlefield, burning, righteous candles snuffed out by the savage darkness of that cursed, otherworldly monster. The continent's populace had suffered through years of blight and insidious possessions, doubtlessly an effect of Gazzamuk's presence in the land. Even our mighty mistress, Queen Victoriana Emelyne III, had perished as a result of his cruel machinations. The world was lamenting.\n\nBut the plight had ended.\n\nMy dear brothers and I had ended his fiendish rebellion.\n\nI widened my sparkling blue eyes and threw my head back, gazing at the swirling ocean of torturous grey above. A cacophony of sorrowful wails and booming thunder resonated across the open battlefield. Soldiers clutched at the annihilated cadaver's of their dear friends, a relic of the noble warrior that once resided within them.\n\nThey needed a hero; they needed someone they could look to.\n\nI searched within myself for the last dregs of power. I strained my mind and body to latch on to the fleeting adrenaline that coursed through my veins.\n\nAnimated by nothing more than the love for my comrades, I raised my sword towards the heavens. Blue light flitted through a minuscule gap in the clouds and illuminated my humbled, shining figure.\n\nPointing my raw emotion into the heavens, I roared. Guttural, broken screams that spoke of our triumph, and the great light of which we had just bestowed upon the world. Sobbing warriors threw their voices into mine as we rejoiced in this brutal, Pyrrhic victory.\n\nThen a crackling energy whispered from the damnedest circles of Hell.\n\n\"LUL get FKED u fking scrubs! I bought a FUCKGN ga last back LUL,\" echoed the ethereal form that had begun to whirl back into existence.\n\nNo... how could this be? How could Gazzamuk rise from the dead? We had burned his corpse, encased it in molten, holy silver. Had he gained some forbidden eldritch power in his old world?\n\n\"Fkin hardstuck silver noobs, nice armor FKIN TIN MAN LUL!\" the beast said as his being returned to corporeality. He mocked me, taking joy out of our worthless struggle. Then, he snapped his fingers.\n\nBooming magical energy began to radiate in time with his snaps, an evil metronome that threatened to burst my screaming eardrums. The comrades who I had grown so close to were clapping; each strike of their open palms sent forth a burst of pure, malicious power, bringing the few that remained standing to their knees. Their skin began to split open with the force of the blows, wrists shattering and spurting watery blood into the brown soil. Still, their hands continued to clap.\n\nI held my head in my hands as the legendary armor of Elsyne began to vibrate, its magic-resisting properties struggling to keep pace with Gazzamuk's limitless strength. My silver gauntlets begged to be released from this futile resistance, to clap like every other man around me.\n\nI cried out in pain as my hands joined my comrades in their certain doom. The battle had been lost.\n\nThunderous applause rained out from all around as Gazzamuk removed his opaque \"sunglasses.\" He hailed us with a subtle wave of his pale hands, before contorting his skeletal face into a vicious mockery of triumph.\n\n\"Get fkiNG! CLAPPED u FKIN SCRUBS!\"\n\n***\n\nHope you guys enjoyed this! I was in a bit of a rush so I didn't really get to edit it. =(\n\nNonetheless, I would love some feedback!\n\nVisit my (new) subreddit @ r/MegaCoolStories", "Decided to finally post something here, so here goes....\n\nScott and Andrea looked at their newborn son. He was so cute, with its squishy cheeks and its squishy arms and legs. Okay, fine. He was squishy. Whenever somebody came over to their house, wether it was the grandmother of the child, or the uncle that carries a beer cap for no apparent reason, or that one friend that's way too overprotective of the young couple, all they wanted to do was to give the baby a long, hard squeeze on his left cheek. Except for the weird aunt that's a lefty for some reason. Why did I add that? Like I said earlier, for no apparent reason. \n\nAnyways, one day, one of the family's friends came over. Of course, it was that gay friend so that there would be some representation from the LGBT community, otherwise there would be an outcry. A crisis. A revolution. But let's forget about that for now. \n\n\"Daddy, what's a revolution?\"\n\n\"Sweetie, it's like a rebellion.\"\n\n\"What's a rebellion?\"\n\n\"It's... like a revolution.\"\n\n\"Do you even know what that means, daddy?\"\n\n\"Of course I do!\"\n\n\"No you didn't. It's okay, daddy. We all know you only got an 84 on English. You're clearly dumb.\"\n\n\"You're the one who doesn't know what a revolution is! You would know if you watched Star Wars.\"\n\n\"But you haven't watched Star Wars* either.\"\n\n\"Just... let me continue the story, okay?\"\n\n\"Okay, dumba-\"\n\nAnyways, when the friend (whom we have to give emphasis to the fact that he is gay for some reason) arrived, the first thing he did was go to the baby. He looked at the cute little face, and gave his left cheek a hard squeeze. No, not his own cheek, he's not a suicidal lamprey. He squeezed the baby's cheek. But then, the baby clapped his hands onto his forearm. No, not his own forearm! How is that even possible?\n\nThe baby had never done anything like this before. Yet still, Scott and Andrea looked at him with loving eyes, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But clearly, this baby was an evil twin. Just kidding. Scott and Andrea smiled. In fact, when the baby started clapping the forearm in a way that looked like he was making a pancake out of a very thick piece of PlayDoh, the couple clapped as well. and when the other guy (whom we shall emphasize that he is gay for no apparent reason) was able his forearm from the near-impenetrable chains of doom, he clapped as well. \n\nEventually, the whole world started clapping, either in an infectious disease or in seamless coordination, more work than any high school group project could muster. \n\nThere were theories on what would happen when humanity has reached this point. Some said that the Earth would blow up. others said it was part of some kind of treasure hunt and we would get the next clue within 3 to 5 business days somehow. One guy that I knew said that we would all disappear. He also said that it would be a sweet time to steal some free food, since nobody would be there, so then I supported him 100%. \n\nBut no. What really happened was that the sound waves were brought down by gravity, and since there were so many of them that they had to go somewhere, they went under us and pushed us up. And now we were levitating. \n\n\"Daddy, what were you doing when everybody was clapping?\"\n\n\"I was playing a sweet Human Air Hockey game with your mom. Not to brag, but the score was 6 to 9, and I won.\"\n\n\"Daddy, what was I doing when everybody was clapping?\"\n\n\"You were the puck, of course. Of course, you wouldn't remember it, since you were so young at the time. Or maybe that hard hit to the head gave you some head trauma.\"\n\nSilence. \n\n\"Daddy, do you know why everybody was clapping?\"\n\n\"No, sweetheart, but I have a theory. Of why everybody was clapping.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Something happened.\"\n\n\"Oh fu-\"\n\nHah, these noobs. Don't even know what happened. And yes, obviously something happened. You see, it was the chosen one. At that point, he had done one of the most heroic of deeds, one that was so great that not many could do it. One that was so great, everybody had to clap for him. And I mean EVERYBODY. Including the dogs and cats, the birds and bees, and even the microscopically tiny bacterial organisms that are physically incapable to do so due to their lack of a skeletal structure, which would lead to a lack of arms and hands, which would mean that they would be physically unable to clap with their non-existent hands. \n\nFine, I'll cut to the chase. But first I'll have to cut the cheese. \n\ncuts cheese into slices\n\nstarts eating cheese\n\nAnyways, if you were wondering, the chosen one is Brian. Brian who? no, not that Brian. The other Brian. Brian Other. Somebody's brother. \n\nSorry, I wanted it to rhyme. \n\nWait, what happened with Brian? Oh, he woke up. ", "\"I... sweetie, I... just won't last much longer. The doctor, well, he says it might be a few days before I go.\" She spoke this with the sort of softness in her voice that one would use when speaking to a newborn baby, yet her thirty year old son was very much \\not\\ a newborn baby.\n\n\"I get it, mom. You've had a really good run.\" He felt like crying -- a feeling which would become very real in the next few days, evidently.\n\n\"I think, though... it hurts too much. I just...\" her voice cracked, a tear trailing down her cheek. \"I want it to end, sweetie.\"\n\n\"WOO! LET'S FUCKING GO! THAT WAS AWESOME! WOO HOO!\" He screamed this at the top of his lungs despite looking completely bewildered, causing his elderly mother to flinch and cover her own ears and shut her eyes.\n\n\"That was amazing. I can't believe you did i...\" her voice trailed off.\n\n\"Mom? Mom... no. No. Mom, come back. The doctor said you have a few more days, remember? You still have a few days left! You can't leave!\" Halfway through the sentence his voice cracked and with each word he sounded more and more hysterical.\n\n\"It... that's not fair... I didn't mean to startle you, mom. Please come back. Please, I need you. We need a few more days together. Please, mom.\"\n\nBut alas, thus was the way of the world. After the world had been miraculously saved mere moments from destruction (much to the public's surprise, as they only learned of the event after), clapping and excitement and yelling was rampant in the world. Microphones broke from the noises, old women passed away prematurely, and the world was, for a moment, deafened by the screams and cheers of the people of planet Earth." ]	3
	[WP] You're a kid secretly studying black magic. One day you manage to summon a demon, but instead of being evil he starts dating your single mom. Yes, it's very awkward.	[ "I don't remember where I found the book of rituals. Sometimes I remember getting it from a bog where the twelve witches of Haragoram live, and other days I just kinda had it under my bed. \n\nThere was just two problem with the book: the ritual always had something wierd to go with it, andI had to grow half an inch taller in order to cancel the ritual for good. I started off with some really complex things, like a key that unlocks any door if I lick the doorknob three times (I will NEVER forgive my big brother for locking me in that public bathroom btw), or a cat that went where I wanted it to so long as I said it in backwards pig latin (cancelled that one in a week, thankfully. That cat would've killed me had it stayed around any longer).\n\nBut now, I was growing up. I was already 6'4\" and 15, and I couldn't take any chances with the book as it was right now, so I decided to risk eternal damnation by trying to recreate the book and modifying it.\n\nWell, it turns out that I accidentally summoned a love demon. With TWO restrictions.\n\nThe restrictions?\n\nIt would have to marry my mom, and it could only give relationship advice through her.\n\nGreat. Absolutely great. I couldn't have summoned LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE.\n\nIf there is a god, damn me now.\n\nSo, I'm headed downstairs with my endless backpack with its required too tight of a shirt, when I hear a knock at the door. Thinking it's the mail, I answer to the demon prosing as a Jehovah's witness.\n\n\"Hi there, boy,\" the demon tells me. \"I'm here to talk about our lord and savior, but I see that you're busy. Care if I talk to your mother?\"\n\n\"I have plenty of time to catch the bus, so tell me. I can listen,\" I masterfully counter.\n\n\"You know that I can just show up later, right? You really don't have to do this right now.\"\n\n\"Well I'm not interested in a demon marrying my mom any time soon.\"\n\nI missed the bus that morning, so I shut the door and just went back to bed.\n\nWhen I awoke, I hear my mom having a conversation with someone, only hearing little bits and pieces.\n\n\"We... to eat... how's 7:30... Mister Ra'Krutan,\" I hear my mother say.\n\n\"That... wonderful,\" said a familiar and strange voice.\n\nHearing that strange voice again, I realize that the demon, or Ra'Krutan, had called my bluff. He tricked me into missing the bus because he knew that I would have fallen asleep. I rush downstairs only to find my mom shutting the door, her face blushed a solid beet red.\n\n\"What a charmer,\" she whispers to herself. \n\nHave you ever had that moment where you know you're going to have to just be a complete jerk now or else you're going to have to disassociate forever? That.\n\n\"Mom, who were you talking to,\" I said in a stern manner. \"Was it a demon?\"\n\n\"So what if he's a demon,\" mom lashes. \"He's an incredible man. Maybe YOU should try to date someone. Mister Ra'Krutan says that you need to dress more fittingly.\"\n\nRealizing that she's fallen for him, I feign acceptance. My only choice now is to ruin the demon's date.\n\nIn my room, I devise an object that I can use with the new two restriction book of rituals. A wand that freezes time for 30 seconds, but upon disuse you contract spontaneous diarrhea and your voice becomes higher pitched for a week after you finish using the wand.\n\nThis isn't going to be fun....\n\nSo I formulate a plan of attack: first, I need to find out where mom is going. Can't stop it if I'm not there. Second, I need to sneak into the area and immediately find the bathroom's location. Third, I need to ruin their date in thirty seconds, but how?\n\nAfter much deliberation, I decide that my best approach would be to go with the old firecracker in a cake, so I pull out my wallet of infinite wealth and grab a hundred, while trying my best to avoid the one hundred aggressive brown recluses as I run out of the house. \n\nI set the plan into motion, and head towards the restaurant (Indian food? Really mom? You hate Indian food!). As I'm about to head in, though, I see the demon looking at me dead in the eyes. He talks to my mom for a moment, and she comes over. \n\nI kind of forgot that I can't sneak into anywhere because I'm 6'4\".\n\nWelp, looks like my life is over.\n\n\"Honey, did you want to get to know Mister Ra'Krutan,\" mom prods. \"If you wanted to meet him you should have just asked. Come on, come sit with us,\" she states as she quite literally drags me over to Ra'Krutan. \n\nAs I stand next to Ra'Krutan in line silently, my mom orders our table. I order some food (never really had Indian food before, so this will probably mess me up), when a solution appears! \n\nI just need to \"go to the restroom\" after we're done eating, and along the way I order a cake using the $100 I have. Then, I proceed as normal and stick a lit firework in it right before it reaches the table (while time is frozen), then rush to the bathroom so that I don't break my pants.\n\nOur food comes to our table, and Ra'Krutan addresses me with his hissing voice.\n\n\"So how well did you sleep today?\"\n\n\"Good, actually. Thanks for asking.\"\n\nI glare in the most aggressive way I can manage once my mom isn't looking.\n\n\"You know, I can help you out if you need me to. Hit me up sometime and I can get what you need done,\" Ra'Krutan says, winking.\n\n\"Oh, well, I don't really need any help with anything, but thanks for the offer,\" I say while gritting my teeth.\n\nOur food finally arrives, giving me an excuse to not have to talk, so I immediately take a big bite.\n\nOh no. Why....\n\nI ordered the spiciest dish at the restaurant. \n\nSo now I'm in the restroom. At home. With spontaneous diarrhea. From the Indian food.\n\nAnd the wedding ceremony is in 6 months.\n\n\n\nSorry for the wait, but I had to catch some Z's." ]	1
	[WP]One day you find your grampa's clock. After fixing it, you try to adjust the time and realise it can control time by spinning the pointers	[ "I know this prompt is old, but I really enjoyed the prompt, so I will try to respond to it.\n\n---\n\nSo Grandpa already died. Thankfully I inherited all his goods, which was nice, as he was a famous artist when he was still alive. He had over $7.5 million dollars in net worth, and all of it is mine.\n\nMost of that money went to studying clocks and time itself. Apparently, when he was a teenager, he read a story about a magical clock that can alter time and different universes inside our multiverse. The story also said that it can bring fictional characters to life. That gave rise to both his horological and artistry careers.\n\nIt was the first day I would take a tour around his former mansion. It was built in the suburbs of Hong Kong, with four stories and a seven-storey clock tower. I had a team from the National Museum Art accompany me, as they deemed the mansion to be historically important as it was once home to a famous and revolutionary artist.\n\nWe walked through the doors and saw it all. At least one thousand clocks were hanging on the walls or standing on the floor. All of them were stopped at the same time. The museum workers immediately began to work on preserving the place. I was allowed to explore by myself.\n\nI reached an area far from all the others, the dimly-lit back entrance. The power was still on, but I had a feeling Grandpa deliberately wanted this place to be dark. There were stained-glass double doors framed by Greek columns, and there was a potted plant on one side.\n\nOn the other side of the door there was this cuckoo clock. Strangely, this one was standing on the floor instead of hanging on the wall. Even more strangely, I noticed the pendulum was still swinging. I tried to read the time, but since it was so dark, I had to feel around for the hands.\n\nI didn't know it at first, but I had pushed the hands backward one minute.\n\nA flash of light appeared, and I found myself in the position I was one minute ago.\n\nThat's when I realized it could control time.\n\nI began to look around once more, when I saw a framed photograph one Grandpa, as well as his wife, my Grandma, and their daughter, my mother. I felt sad about them dying, so I went back to the clock to see if there was as a way to see them again.\n\nI saw there were three dials on the side of the clock. One told the month, the one below it told the date, and there were a series of five rollers that told the year, like on an odometer in an old car. \n\nI turned back the rollers so that they showed a year when Grandpa was still alive.\n\nSuddenly there was a flash of light. Afte that subsided, I found myself sitting in front of a computer and a drawing tablet.\n\nI turn around and find myself in a small room, with various cuckoo cloks hanging on the walls. A beautiful young women was standing behind me, watching me.\n\nIt didn't take long to figure out I was Grandpa." ]	1
	[WP] Rob's body is completely invulnerable while he is sleeping. It's not a particularly useful superpower for him. But it is for the military.	[ "Our whole squad, squad A, was pinned down by gunfire coming from atop the hills. We couldn't see them, only the flashes from there muzzles as soon as we peeked our heads out. The darkness was overwhelming and things were looking grim.\n\nWe were without communication, due to a stray bullet ricocheting off a nearby car, right into the transmitter. No other support was coming. No one else knew we were out here, except for squad B of a dozen men also pinned down from gunfire, about 100 yards away. \n\nOur CO figured if both squads flank around to the outside we can ambush them, because one squad at a time would more than likely end horrendously. We just had to make sure the others knew our plans and tactics, but they were to far to yell at and we weren't sending someone to run out in the open with a message only to get shot down. \n\n\"Alright\" The CO said. \" Prepare Robert, and give him the message\". One of the corporals wrote down the tactics and the plan on a spare piece of paper. While our medic approached Robert, who was dressed in a Hawaiian shirt full of holes, and khakis, laying on his back reading a superman comic. \n\"You ready?\" The medic said. \n\nRobert didn't even look up from his comic and said. \"Sure why not\"\n\nThe medic drew out a syringe, uncapped it, and gently pierced Robert's right bicep. \"I hate these things.\" Robert said. \n\nThe first Sargent, readied the line throwing gun, and shot it over to the other squad, who were taken by surprise. They got ahold the other end and tugged on it to insure they were ready to recieve.\n\nThe line to the squad B was tied to both of Roberts ankles, and another was tied around his torso, this line stayed with us so we can pull him back if necessary. \n\nThe message was stuffed in Roberts back pocket, and the CO said. \"Godspeed\"\n\n Robert replied, \" At least wait until I'm fully asleep this time, it only works when I'm off in La La land.\" As he grabbed his wounded left shoulder. The CO smiled and nodded.\n\nHe laid his head on the dirt, and his eyes gently closed. Within a minute, a minor snore emanated from him. The medic glanced over and gave a thumbs up. We tugged the line on our side, then tension was felt from the squad B line, as Robert's unconscious body began to drag toward them.\n\nAs soon as his feet were past the barricade an onslaught of bullets rained down. But they kept dragging. Robert's body was fully out in the open and was pelted by gunfire. The bullets did not penetrate his body. The bullets merely bounced off in every direction, only tearing into his clothes.\n\nRoberts body left a dirt wake and countless bullets strewn about. After ten solid minutes of dragging him, did Squad B finally have the package secured. After another five minutes, squad B gave the hand signal they were ready to execute.\n\nThe CO stood up and said. \" Let's get these kraut bastards.\" We readied our gear and set out.", "Rob Schneider's show real Rob gets cancelled after he realizes that when he falls asleep he's completely invulnerable.\n\nWhen he takes to twitter to explain this phenomenon he is ridiculed by the media and his show is pulled from Netflix and all other media outlets.\n\nRob decides to prove his new found superpower is real.\n\nHe enlists in the United States Army to the dismay of his wife and kids.\n\nHe's a terrible soldier. At the age of 54 he's unable to preform to the tasks and washes out after 3 days.\n\nNow he's back home and his wife has filed for a devorce. Those three days were hard on her and the kids.\n\nFast forward a week. Rob is at a rundown motel hungover from binge drinking and sleeping with prostitutes.\n\nThat's when he realizes the prostitute next to him isn't breathing.\n\nRob doesn't remember what happened.\n\nRob immediately tries to hide the body. He grabs the shower curtain and wraps it up. He looks out his window and realizes his car is outside. His 2008 mini-cooper.\n\nHe quickly puts on his jeans and flip flops and grabs the body.\n\nHe scurries into the parking lot. He doesn't have his keys.\n\nHe turns back toward the motel room but the body is just too heavy. He has to put it down.\n\nHe leaves the body in the parking lot between the motel and his mini cooper.\n\nBack in the motel he can't find his keys. He keeps frantically searching as he peers out the open door at the body lying in the parking lot.\n\nHe gives up the search and runs out if the motel room. He just runs. He is having a breakdown.\n\nAs he's running out into the parking lot he notices there are other motel room doors open.\n\nHe stops and stares at them.\n\nHe slowly walks to the open door not far from his own room.\n\nDead people. A couple. Lying in their bed.\n\nIn shock Rob let's out a feminine screech.\n\nHe goes to the next room and opens the door.\n\nAn Oldman in a chair. Dead.\n\nAnother room, a man in his 40's. Dead.\n\nThe whole motel is full of dead people.\n\nRob goes to the service desk in the front of the motel. The concierge is behind the counter. Dead.\n\nRob picks up the phone and dials 911. He is distraught and yells \"Dead! They're all Dead!! Help!\"\n\nHe slams down the phone and runs back to his mini-cooper. In a state of shock he puts his flip-flop clad foot through the driver's side window. He breaks his foot and falls to the ground screaming. He can hear sirens approaching. He starts yelling \"Help! Help!\"\n\nThe fire department shows up. They see Rob writhing on the hot asphalt. \n\nThey go over to him and ask what happened.\n\n\"Dead!!! They're all Dead!\" Rob yells.\n\nOne fireman stays with Rob while the others look inside the motel.\n\nMore sirens now. An ambulance and police cars are approaching.\n\nRob starts crying and passes out.\n\n8 hours later Rob wakes up in a hospital bed. He's handcuffed to the sides of the bed.\n\n\"Where am I?!\" Asks Rob.\n\nA small portly man walks over in nurse scrubbs and a pair of crocks.\n\n\"You're at Los Angeles Community hospital.\" Says the man.\n\nThen he walks away.\n\nA moment later a police officer enters the unit.\n\n\"Do you know why you're here?\" Says the officer.\n\n\"No! Tell me!\" Begs Rob\n\n\"We found you outside in a parking lot screaming and yelling. The motel you were staying at had a serious gas leak and everyone staying there died of asphyxiation. Except you.\"\n\nSays the officer.\n\n\"... that's because I'm invulnerable when I sleep!! I told you all!! It's true!!\" Yells Rob.\n\n\"Be that as it may, that woman next to your car in the parking lot in the shower curtain. We believe you killed her before the gas leak. There's evidence she was strangled.\" Says the officer.\n\n\"I don't remember! I didn't do anything! I'm invulnerable when I sleep!\" Screams Rob.\n\n\"We don't care Mr. Schneider. You can call your lawyer in a few minutes. Have a nice day.\" Says the officer as he exits the unit.\n\nAfter a futile protest shaking his arms in defiance of the handcuffs Rob slowly falls asleep. He's invulnerable when he sleeps.\n\n\n\n" ]	2
	[WP] You are a supervillain. During the course of beating other villains off your block, you forgot to actually enact your evil plan. Now everyone believes you to be an emo superhero.	[ " Ever since I was a child I knew what I wanted to be. The other kids wanted to be veterinarians, pop stars, ballerinas, or even super heroes. But I was the kid that told them they wouldn’t ever be a hero. I was telling the truth, they had no powers, and they ate crayons so as far as I could tell they weren’t the smartest people. But I wanted to be a super villain. I never told anyone because I knew they’d think I was crazy. And maybe I am, but there’s no reason others need to know that.\n So, years down the line, here I am. I have the perfect plan, the perfect evil monologue, and ,most importantly, the perfect outfit. My hair slicked back, black with purple streaks, a black cape and matching boots, and a deep purple shirt with a skull. I know, I know it sounds cliche, but it’s a classic.\n But there is one flaw. The others. The lesser villains are not worthy of sharing the spotlight with me. They must be disposed of. Only then will my reign of terror be truly perfect. And I would know, I filled out a planner and I need them out by August the 11th or else I’ll have to reschedule everything. And I’ve made reservations at this really nice restaurant to celebrate my first villian job going well and if I can’t make that reservation, I’m not sure if I can get a new one. It’s a very upstanding place, you wouldn’t have heard of it.\n I’ve done it. I’ve gotten rid of them all. I am the last one. The only one. I will rule with no obstacles. Well... there is a tiny problem. I’ve spent so much time capturing all the villains that I’ve not done any evil at all. And now people seem to think I’m a hero? Some emo kids stopped me the other day and said it was really cool that they had hero representation? I tried to tell them I was a villian, but they just said, “ We’re all villains in our mind.” I don’t even know what that means. \n Well... it’s past August 11th and I’ve gained a following so maybe a super hero life wouldn’t be so bad. I’ve opened a tumblr page and I already have so many fans, I’m thinking of starting a YouTube channel like ScareBear. I know the name sounds strange but he’s a hero who can shape shift into bears and scare villains away... yeaaahh. ", "As every little piece of my plan comes to action, the reaction of the citizens takes away the meaning. When setting the fields on fire, they thought it was my plan to make more fertile ground and cheered me on. Cutting off the power of electricity for my own needs the citizens said it was the correct choice, “donating” it as means to work better. Feeling like every action is meaningless; no screaming to be heard, no objetive I haven’t been able to do to terrorize a city so small heroes don’t give a crap about it, a feeling of emptiness has started to build inside me.\nLooking back at it the way, everyone was so supportive made me feel whole, but it wasn’t strong enough for me to stop being a villain. Giving a farewell gift to the cheerful city that made me feel at home I released a dinosaur like robot that would destroy the city. I could see the cheerful smiles and optimism of the town, as I flew above it, thinking I would fight against it. \nTurning around and leaving them behind, their faces frowned in the form of despair, some yelling how I should save them, how I was the hero everyone depended on, and their cries for help. \nThey were needles poking my heart.\nUsing every ounce of energy in my equipment, sent out a signal that would reach the nearest heroes. The went to fight my robot, saved the city and took it under their wings. Making preparations for my next master plan was glad to hear the town had been saved,but a part of me still asks the question that if he had done the right choice, that maybe just maybe... I could have changed my life for the better.", "Waving to the crowd was getting boring and my arm was tired, but I can see why the hero's do things their way. If it was my intention to go the noble route this would be nice. At least things were going right. This parade celebrated my induction into the Citadel of Virtue, one of the worlds true defenders now. It sucked that my abilities stuck me in such an absurd social click. I manipulated darkness and shadows and I could turn into them, of course I wore dark clothes. Idiots! If I was in primary colors I'd be shooting myself in the foot. At least that mistake allowed for my natural irritation with everything to be ignored as part of my character. Wow, they even rolled out the big welcome wagon. Masterful in his brown leather covered in blades, Mr. Bubbles in his perfectly unblemished grey suit, and Corona, her brilliance of white and blue fire barely contained, stood together on stage. \n\nCorona stepped forward to the podium, \"My fellow citizens, here in Vale City and around the world. Even though this man's abilities are nearly the opposite of my light and fire he has shown that our values are anything but opposed.\" She paused for a massive round of cheering, \"Without further delay I welcome Shadespinner to the ranks of the virtuous. May the Citadel be a second home to you.\"\n\nWith that Mr. Bubbles created his namesake around me. The pink tinged sphere of force gently lifted me from the back of the convertible I had been sitting on. I kept waving as I ascended the twenty feet to the stage. I avoided a sneer as I looked out at what was clearly tens of thousands of people. It was my version of smiling. Landing on my feet I put out my hand and began shaking hands with the icons first Corona, then Masterful, and lastly Mr. Bubbles.\n\nAs we shook he gave me one of his patented wry smiles, \"I'm still not sure how you managed to track down and stop Lord Baal.\"\n\n\"Shadows provide me excellent opportunities for surveillance and stealth. It was just a matter of tracking his underlings until I found him,\" I lied. \n\nIn reality before I had figured out how to give myself powers Lord Baal had been one of my clients. Selling my powerful tech to villains had kept me and my work funded and provided a ton of info on my eventual competition. Once I gained my abilities though I was done working for others. It had been serious forethought to include a kill switch on all the gear I sold. Unknown to most the fight had been nearly trivial. His minions were unable to even attack me. Lord Baal was himself quite dangerous, but without the buffer minions would have provided, the powerful dark arch-wizard didn't have time to enact all of his defensive magic. When I got to him he had only managed a single light shield. It was a forgone conclusion at that point. I was even able to get away with killing him as the only option because of the man's crazy reputation. As I thought about the look on his face as I killed him I let a small smile show as I stepped to the podium myself.\n\n\"I'm not one for speeches,\" I started once the crowd shut up. \"So...thanks, I guess. I'll keep doing what I can for Vale City.\"\n\nWith the Crowd resuming it's cheers Corona put her hand on my shoulder and led me off the stage up the steps to the Citadel of Virtue. Her smile was broad and genuine. \"You know at first I was unsure about you,\" She started, \"Lord Baal was evil, but killing him as your first real act as a hero didn't set the best tone. However, in the last six months I have seen you get your bearings and show better restraint and judgement. I'm glad you proved me wrong.\"\n\nDid I really show better restraint? I mean murdering Lord Baal was gruesome, and I got sick afterword, but was I getting soft? Restraint hadn't been intentional. Oh well, it doesn't matter. Glancing up I see the gold lettering above the entrance as I walk into the Citadel, \"Be vigilant, be kind, and be resolute in the pursuit of both evil and virtue.\" What? Be kind to evil? I looked over to Corona.\n\n\"That slogan is a little odd.\"\n\n\"It is intentional. When Mr. Bubbles, Masterful, Know-it-all, and I started this as a progression of the Virtue Crew we wanted those who joined to realize that there is more to life and hero work than good guys and bad guys. There is too much grey area to ignore. Redemption and rehabilitation are almost more vital than saving the day. For example, Know-it-all isn't here today because she is trying to help Switch overcome his own rage issues even though he is not going to get out of a cell for at least 40 years.\" Corona looked at me pointedly and gestured around. \"Feel free to look around. You'll see what I mean.\"\n\n\"Sure, thanks,\" I walked off. \n\nNow was the time, I was inside their stronghold's defenses and had free reign. My fusion gravitation bomb would destroy everyone and everything in a half mile radius as it was incinerated and then crushed. I had done it. These bastards would feel the pain I did every day for at least a moment. I pulled my wife's picture out from my utility belt. They cause just as much death as the villains, but don't have any of the consequences. While now they would. I put the picture away and opened the pouch with the bomb in it. Compressing it to such a small size took ages but I managed. The pouch was empty though. It was probably in the back pouch. No, that was the stabilizing agent I needed if I was was a shade for too long. I yanked open other pouches. DAMN IT. I left the bomb in my workshop.\n\nSuddenly I can't see, the world is a blur. How did I end up on my knees. Tears pool in front of me on the floor and I notice an overly warm hand on my back. Corona stood near holding something out in her hand to me.\n\n\"Is she why you do this? Why Lord Baal is dead instead of captured?\" Corona held the small photo of Sharon out to me. It had fallen while I scrambled for the bomb.\n\nTaking the photo I nod as I don't trust my voice.\n\n\"I know this place can be overwhelming.\" She helped me stand as I noticed the others watching us. \"Come on. You can tell me about her.\" \n\nI let her lead me to a small room away from the other heros. What surprised me wasn't the squashy chair and couch in the room, but the multiple boxes of tissue set all over. Almost like they knew I would need this place.", "As usual, everything would have been ideal were it not for the imbeciles.\n\n\n\n\"Doctor L, I know this is an inconvenience, but I'm gonna have to ask you to move along,\" the officer said. The oaf clutched his cap, meekly wringing it in his hands, obviously displeased to be the bearer of such ill tidings to such a lauded 'hero'. \n\n\n\n\"Nothin' personal,\" he continued. \"Just . . . you know. City zoning regs say that unlicensed Hero tech can't be placed this close to a government building. You understand, right?\"\n\n\n\nI briefly considered decohering the simpleton's atomic structure and simply continuing with my work. My Mist Gauntlets were still at 60% charge, after all. But no: the detriments would far outweigh the benefits. They would likely send another interchangeable idiot to replace him and the work still wouldn't get done, and all I'd have to show for the effort would be a slightly more entrail-covered bodysuit and a marginally improved mood. I stood up with a sigh, abandoning the Mental Nullifier 9000 to its half-finished wiring.\n\n\nQuickly running through my mental catalogue of interaction personas, I selected Haughty Genius #12 and spoke:\n\n\n\n\"I assure you, the law and its manifold interpretations are perfectly pellucid to me, officer.\" I paused briefly, allowing the onboard AI the chance to billow my cape menacingly. \"I daresay that my knowledge of the law and its possible infractions may yet trivialize your own.\"\n\n\n\nThe cretin appeared momentarily dumbfounded, no doubt flabbergasted by vocabulary above the status quo of barely literate to which he typically subscribed.\n\n\n\n\"Even so, sir,\" he continued, \"the law is the law, and it goes for the Dr. Legends just as much as it does the Tim Murphys. Us public figures need ta' set a good example for the common folk, to show them that great power doesn't put us above-\"\n\n\n\"Who are the 'Tim Murphys' of whom you speak?\" I asked, interrupting what I assume would have been a marvelously well-rehearsed display of third grade moral rhetoric. Monologues, you see, are like rivers in that they kill with tedium those who are swept downstream upon them, in the same way that actual rivers will smash its victims against rocks and currents eventually. The best and proper tactic for both is to divert and poison the river, so that it may choke out other victims than one's self.\n\n\n\n\"Uh, I am. I'm Tim Murphy. Remember? I was the one there on the scene when you nabbed Glass Cage. And Ms. Menace. And 10-Carrot and his Rabbit Gang.\"\n\n\n\nBah. I had hoped that the legacy of 10-Carrot would have been quickly forgotten, swept under the rug like the embarrassment it was. Even if victorious, a victory against a group of simpleton thugs wearing bunny masks and wielding carrot-shaped knives is not one worth recording in the annals of the future Regent of Mankind. But for whatever reason the public had a masochistic fascination with the man and his followers, likely due to their penchants of wearing rather exactingly detailed rabbit costumes. The world is better off without them.\n\n\n\n\nThe others had been unfortunate but necessary losses due to making the egregious error of existing in an area that I wished for my own. Say what you will about the aesthetics of the so-called \"Ghetto of Crime.\" When it comes down to it, its location was and is superb for fortification against the antics of the superheroic crowd. Close access to Mount Skullforge and its vestigal tunnels leftover from the fallen lair of The Golden King are but an added bonus.\n\n\n\n\"Ah, yes, I recall now,\" I lied. \"You showed admirable work in each of those instances, Officer-\" I paused, having already forgotten the worm's name. My sub-dermal temporal lobe responder supplied it in short order. \"Murphy. Quite upstanding.\"\n\n\nI tactfully left out that his intervention had distracted me from reactivating the automatic security protocols that would have allowed me to repurpose the Ghetto to my designs.\n\n\n\nHe beamed. \"Why thank you, Doc, you know-\"\n\n\n\n\"And becaused of your impeccable character and moral rectitude,\" I continued over him, \"I know you can see the - shall we say - broader picture at work.\" \n\n\n\"Whaddya mean, 'broader picture'?\" the cretin asked.\n\n\nA search bot in my wolf-shaped mask issued a quick tachyon pulse to his phone, quickly referencing the imbecile's recent online history to find and isolate suitable memetic triggers to which he would respond. A quarter of a second later I felt the information pour into my cortex as the onboard machine intelligence grabbed the requisite quotation:\n\n\n\n\"'The needs of the many outweight the needs of the few,'\" I heard myself saying. \"'Or the one.'\"\n\n\n\nThis bit of juvenile moral imbecility seemed to speak to him. The dolt's eyes widened a bit. \"Whaddya mean? Are the people in this building in danger?\" He drew his gun and looked around frantically, as if expecting an atypically non-bulletproof villain to appear from behind the nearby shrubbery.\n\n\n\n\"Calm yourself, officer,\" I said imperiously. \"They are not in danger. Yet.\"\n\n\n\n\"Y-yet?\" the halfwit stammered.\n\n\n\n\"Correct. Not yet.\" I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper, allowing the dunce to lean in close. \"But I have reason to believe that a terrible, mighty villain is planning to target the citizens within. If the heroes do nothing, losses will be catastrophic.\" I fought back a smile at the technically-true statement.\n\n\n\n\"If what you're saying is true, we have to do something!\" he hissed. \"We have to go and warn the people inside!\" The fool turned, ready to sprint to the building.\n\n\n\n\"No!\" I commanded, stopping him with a gauntleted hand upon his shoulder. \"No. Do not be hasty, Officer-\" Another pause for assisted recollection. \"-Murphy. If it were that simple, do you really think that I would be here?\"\n\n\n\n\nThe dumbfounded look on the fool's face - what I was rapidly beginning to assume to be his natural expression - intensified. \"W-what's going on?\" he asked. \"Why are you out here? If someone is trying to kill innocent people in there, then we have to-\"\n\n\n\n\"Again, calm yourself, officer,\" I interrupted, allowing the tiniest of snarls to mar my tone. \"I did not say they were in danger of dying.\"\n\n\n\n\"Then what's going on? You said a villain was-\"\n\n\n\n\"I said that a villain was targeting them, and that lack of heroic intervention would lead to catastrophic loss. But the loss shall not be to those within that building. They are but carriers.\"\n\n\n\nHis eyes widened further. \"C-carriers? You're talking chemical and biological weapons, that kind of thing? In that case, we need the bomb squad to start searching for-\"\n\n\n\"They are already infected, officer,\" I said. I ignored his sudden gasp and continued feeble gibberings, and continued. \"They were infected before your arrival. Their minds are in thrall to substances and powers too nefarious to speak of here, in plain sight. They await only the right trigger for them to fall into madness and chaos. To begin raving with bloodlust and spite, maddened and pitted against one another. They await only a signal.\" I let my voice trail off and gazed at him mysteriously, pulling on the the persona of Inscrutable Figure #4.\n\n\n\n\"Y-you mean,\" he stammered, \"some villain has poisoned them, and is going to send some sorta signal to mind control them? To make them into living weapons, or zombies, or something? Like what Professor Cain tried back in the 80's, or Lazarus Man and his zombie hordes?\"\n\n\n\n\"It's even worse,\" I said, my voice growing solemn. \"These terrible, unfortunate people have not been targeted by a single villain, or even a single villain group. They, and many others, are victim to the largest cabal and conspiracy the world has ever seen, a group of devastatingly terrible foes whose sole and singular goal is to sow discord, havoc and disorder, and to profit off of the power they have over them. They have worked for years to slowly burrow into and control their victims, using hermetic combinations of chemistry, and media, and conditioning, slowly stripping their victims of their true wills and true purposes in life. They can activate their puppets whenever they wish, They await only a last push to descend into the chaos you see daily, all around you.\"\n\n\n\"Chaos?\" he asked, obviously flummoxed, fooled by the deceptively bright and sunny day that failed to present him with the shadowy, cackling ne'erdowells wearing black hats that his tiny brain assumed all evil manifested as.\n\n\n\nI sneered. \"Poor, simple Officer-\" pause, \"-Murphy. Have you not seen the news? The riots in Arcadia City? The bombing in San Superior? The black clouds of smog atop the formerly halcyon heights of Legionburg?\"\n\n\n\"But those things are just, just.\" He floundered for words, struggling to search his mind for the correct expression. An impressively long-lasting feat, given how little mind there was to search. \"They're just things that happened. People being people.\" He paused. \"Weren't they?\"\n\n\n\n\"Oh, officer. I envy you your ability to ignore the obvious.\" I said. \"No, they were not 'just things that happened.' They were deliberate, calculated methods of sabotage.\" I paused to adjust my gauntlet.\n\n\n\"You mean,\" he said, gasping with the realization, \"that all those things were set up by this, this shadow conspiracy group? They're behind all the chaos and trouble you see on the news?\"\n\n\n\n\"Correct,\" I said, smiling ruefully.\n\n\n\n\"Who are they?\"\n\n\n\n\"They go by many names,\" I said. \"Most of them rarely spoken, so hidden are they and their agenda. They have been called The Leviathan, and the City States. I know them now as the Nations of Man.\"\n\n\n[To be continued in next comment]", "Press conference begins...\n\nReporter: \"sir, you have beaten all of the villains in the entire city. You don't seem like a hero, but you are the hero that our fair city needs. Why do you fight crime?\"\n\nVillan: \"sorry for the confusion, I'm actually a villain. I was just killing them off to enact my evil plan. You should see what I'm talking about Friday.\"\n\nReporter: \"oh, well that's not good. Is there any way that you would reconsider?\"\n\nVillain: \"No, be prepared to die.\"\n\n::villain flies off in jet pack::\n\nAnd the world continues to turn. Until Friday.", "# (warning, this wont be as good as a sleep deprived me thinks it will be)\n\n\"What's all this about me being a superhero? I do the very opposite of that. I'm here to destroy shit!\" shouted the villain, sitting slouched against his chair. His dark eyebrows furrowed as more fury built up inside of him.\n\n \"Dante, watch your mouth. Maybe it's because you decided to spend most of your time killing all the villains in the city instead of coming up with a good plan of never-ending villainy. As your mentor, of course, I can always make another evil plot for you to carry out.\" Ashley offered. \n\nDante rolled his eyes and had a moment of self-pity before he responded. \"It's Dante The Hellraiser, to be exact.\" He only grew more furious when Ashley laughed on the other end. \"I don't need your help coming up with an evil plan anymore, you...you wicked fucking woman. I have already done some evil things.\" He said, attempting to defend himself.\n\n\"Sure, being able to set things on fire with your mind is something, but only if you use it successfully. So far, you've only *killed* evil with your ability and haven't done a single thing to *create* evil. Not successfully, anyway. I can always make better plans for you.\" Ashley considered. Dante felt the smile on her face through the phone and his body burned with anger.\n\nHe was silent. \"This conversation's over.\" He growled. Ashley laughed. \"Sure it is, Dante. Tell yourself that. You know, another factor of your failures may be your \"costume,\" if I can even call it that. A black-and-white striped suit, some face paint, and some combat boots aren't practical at all. If anything, you either look like a coulrophiliac or someone a therapist would label a sex addict,\" she said to him through laughter, much to his dismay.\n\nDante grew tired of her incessant insults and suddenly began to speak with words of poison. \"And what if I was to expose your wicked-ass antics to the rest of the city? What will you do when everyone in this fucking city knows you've been training me to be a villain? What if all those kids that look up to you, that you love oh-so-much, purely for the attention they give you, find out that you're a fraud, that you make my plans just so you know exactly how to dismantle them so that when I finally carry them out, you know you'll never fail? So that you always come out as the hero?\" Dante said into the phone with a calm voice.\n\nAshley was quiet. \"How did you know that?\" She said quickly in paranoia. \"Would you rather that happen, or would you rather cut the shit? I've tried and I've tried over and over again to get rid of my superhero label, and maybe exposing you and defeating you will finally rid that hero facade from the headlines for good.\" Dante waited for her angry response, but much to his surprise, the line went silent and eventually cut off. He returned the phone to its base and crossed his arms over his chest.\n\nHe stood and paced around the small, dark living room, twirling his hair around his fingers as he thought of a plan to dominate the city, but more importantly, steal Ashley's power in the process. He paced for nearly half an hour, his kitten watching him with curiosity before he stopped, and a maniacal smile was painted onto his face as he picked the kitten up from her spot on the couch and held her above him.\n\n\"Maybe the problem isn't that I'm the only villain left for her to fight, Cicero,\" Dante began as he spoke to the black kitten. He held her gently in his hands and brought her to his hollow chest with the low growl of a sentence beginning to rise from deep within him. \"Maybe it's because that wicked woman, the real villain, is stopping me from performing the vilest of deeds.\"\n\nDante gently returned Cicero to the couch, then ran to ready himself for the act he was about to commit. \"Tonight will be the end of that wicked Ashley, Cicero, I promise you that!\" He yelled as kissed the kitten on the head, then rushed out the door.", "I wouldn't call myself a 'super' villain, per se. I'm just an indestructible ass hole who can't feel pain and has a very trusty crowbar... Unfortunately, that little Wagner brat kept trying to push me to be a hero. That's what I get for saving his ass from splattering against a brick wall. I mean, what kind of hero beats a super villain to death with a crowbar?\n\n\"Mother,\" Whack \"fucker,\" Whack \"moving in,\" Whack \"on my fucking\" WHACK! \"Territory?!\"\n\nI stand, out of breath over the latest jackass that thought my block was his playground as the cuts and bullet wounds slowly begin to heal over.. A frog that as far as I knew didn't speak English, he called himself 'Le Scélérat', whatever the fuck that meant. I adjusted the domino mask, pulling my black bandanna tighter on my head as I look around at his red beret-wearing, black & white striped henchmen. Glancing around, I find we're all quite alone. Perfect I think to myself as I spin the crowbar around.\n\n\"Alright, look.\" I bring the crowbar down, the sharpened point of the curve piercing his flesh. He screams as I pierce into his solar plexus, pulling it up so it catches under his rib cage. The bastard coughs up blood all over my boots. I know I shouldn't be pissed, I'm bloodier than even his mooks are, but at least it's my blood that was staining my clothing before this idiot. Gripping the crowbar, I lift him off the ground like a fish on a hook, and begin walking towards the fence.\n\n\"I've told you ass holes once, I've told you a million times.\" I sniff as I reach down and grab the chain from the hand of one of his mooks. \"This part of town is my territory.\"\n\nI reach the chain-link fence, and jerk the crowbar so he's standing on his feet instead of dragging on the ground. I yank it from him, pressing it against the back of his neck and shoving his face into the fence. \"Mine, got that?\" I begin chaining him to the fence. \"See that?\" I press his face into the fence again, I don't know why, it's not like it's gonna get him a closer look.\n\nProbably an acre or so from the fence is a large industrial building, with seemingly an attached refinery or something. The sign in front of it labeled it Nega Corp. \"I have been trying to rip that place off for three months. Three! Fucking! Months!\" I couldn't resist smashing his skull with each point for emphasis. \"Yet you god damn pansies keep getting in my damn way. Every, single time.\" I'm a little calmer now, tightening the chains as I bind the possibly fatally wounded Frenchman to the fence. \"Last week it was Kid Clown. Week before that, Ze Doktor, real fucking original,\" finished with my task, I begin to pace in annoyance.\n\n\"Dino Desctructo, The Nemean, Hydraxus, and let's not forget that whackaloon Papa Pain.\" I kick one of the poles of the fence. \"You had plenty of warning! I even spray painted it on Bomb Bunny's trailer! And now I've got these dumbass minions of this \"Jet Stream' guy poking around!\"\n\nThe wounded man turned and spat at me, speaking in a very thick dialect. \"Zere is a name to be made wiz killing ze new anti-'ero.\"\n\nMy eye twitched. \"Mother fucker...\"\n\nThe last thing he was conscious for was me jamming the length of my crowbar into his back, piercing him right through. I yank it out, and run a finger over my nose, sniffing as I watch him fall unconscious. Shaking my head I turn, and begin walking away... Only to have emergency responders and news vans pull up. It seems the local law enforcement have gotten used to my 'brand of justice', what with there being at least three anti-heroes in the city more gruesome than I am. I only make it halfway to the Ferrari parked in front of a high rise when the news cameras swarm me.\n\n\"Atlas! Congratulations on bagging your fifteenth villain! You're becoming quite the household name young man!\" A yellow-clad reporter in probably her forties effectively shouted above the rest. \"Tell me, tell the world! Do you plan on joining the Hero's Union!?\"\n\nI had to jerk my head back to avoid getting smashed in the face by the microphones. I shake my head as I take a few steps forward to push through them. \"No.\" A swarm of bodies prevent me from managing to escape.\n\n\"Is it true that despite not being part of the Union you're actually fully insured by Wagner corp!?\"\n\nI open my mouth to answer, only to find myself silenced as I feel a now familiar pressure on my back. I snap my mouth shut and force myself to take a deep breath as Noah's familiar voice answers for me.\n\n\"Yes,\" a pale slender finger from the platinum blonde boy was held up, silencing questions as he answered.\" Atlas is a fully insured hero working closely with Nega Corp to ensure peace and prosperity return to our beloved city.”\n\nHe was still talking, but all I noticed was the fresh scent of minty pomegranate shampoo. I call him boy, and brat, but he really is only a couple years younger than I am. He just looks really young for his age, which is probably why it throws a lot of people for a loop when they find out he’s actually got the maturity one really should expect of an heir to an empire groomed for perfection. I know it surprised the shit outta me.\n\n“-and so, if you wish to pester our client with more questions, please pass them through our public relations department and we’ll ensure he gets them. Now if you’ll excuse us my client is very busy and needs to return to his lair, excuse us, excuse us!”\n\nI let myself get pulled along by Noah, over to the Ferrari. Cameras and news reporters didn’t move, though a few b-roll cameras did follow us. Shaking my head to regain myself, I watched as he let go of my hand at the driver side door, only to walk around to the passenger side. I tried the door once, twice, then just smashed the window. People couldn’t even leave their two hundred thousand dollar cars unlocked anymore, such a shame. I popped the lock on the driver door, and proceeded to get in.\n\n“So, where are you taking me?” Noah asked as I did so.\n\nI closed the door, and began looking around. Nope, no one left spares in the car anymore either. What kind of world are we living in where people don’t trust the public to not steal their car? I thought to myself while hot wiring it. The engine flared to life, prompting me to rev it a few times for satisfaction.\n\n“Atlas, comoon. Open the door!” I found myself with the sudden desire to open the door for Noah.\n\nInstead, I smashed the pedal to the floor and peeled off. I watched in the rear view as Noah stood there, coughing, at least until I turned the corner. Not a minute later my cell phone is ringing. I answer it with a sigh.\n\n“Yes?”\n\n“Now you’re just being mean to me. How am I supposed to foster a better relationship with our client if you leave me behind like that?” Noah was using his business voice, but with the distinct underlying pouty whine lacing it.\n\nYou don’t need to foster a relationship with me kid, I’m horrible for you… And your daddy. “It’s been a long night, I’m tired.”\n\nNoah’s innocent little giggle filled my ear, prompting me to grip the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white. “Well, alright… Come by the office tomorrow after you get some rest, ok? I have some paperwork I need you to sign.”\n\nI took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Fine…”\n\n“I’ll see you tomorrow… Xavier.”\n\n“Tomorrow… Noah…”\n\n\\-------\n\nIt's late, there's probably some past/present tense errors, but, eh. Another exercise using characters from a novel I'm working on, it may or may not get incorporated in. Feedback welcome.", "‘It was a shout. Like it was some sort of impossibility to move the company on. “Make the shareholders wait!!” She shouted me as if I had the responsibility to this plateau the company has taken since we bought our last competitor. Can you believe it??? And it’s not like she doesn’t know what the next step’s going to be like, it’s rather clear as water. Her advisors have told her thousands of times: as soon as we don’t have any competitor left, and virtually everyone is a customer of ours, you should kick the table and start making some damn profit!!. But she just ain’t gonna listen. You know? The first year she was named CEO of the company I had a feeling we were in the right hands. First she published that sexual scandal that ended on the firing of that rival CEO, then she just lowered the prices so much no other company could sustain afloat, oh and if you’ve seen the way she manipulated the jury after that nasty move. She was a damn chess player. And right when we’re all set to check mate the entire market BUM! She freezes and does nothing for a whole semester!! Can you believe her??’\n\nShawn Aldereen monologued while his wife kept pouring his glass of wine and listened his after office stories late that afternoon. His work as a secretary was always demanding. But with his new boss, and the growing sensation that the company could not sustain like this for much longer, he was starting to panic.", "The emotions of this beautiful superhero make him all the better. He is a man of emotional strength. One that cries without whimpering. One that uses the strength of emotional composition to show the world a better place. Each cry represents the tears that fall, the stress that’s released from each encounter, there is strength, there is power, and he is a player, and a lover. He helps babies stay on course in life with his or her emotions by showing them the vulnerability of crying. The power of tears will guide the children to a healthy emotional future. And his powers are renewed to something greater. Something more powerful. Something more useful, and something more loving. Something that heals this era of trump and heals the nation from trauma. A true superhero. His name is cookie!", "I’m only going to say this one time. Leave me the hell alone. I didn’t protect you people. I protected myself. I mean it’s dumb as hell to hoard a bunch of zombies in one building. Dumbass plan. Week after week somebody doing something stupid and I keep finding myself at the wrong place at the right time. \n\nStop cheering. I’d slap the hell out of one of y’all if I wasn’t so tired. Look over there. I watched the zombies eat them. Enjoyed it. Kinda wish I had popcorn with me. But then the dumbass zombies came after me so I killed them and destroyed the building. What do I look like running. \n\nYou over there smiling. Come here. Walk over here. Let me kill you. This isn’t a joke. I’m not your savior, hero or God. Why don’t you dummies get that. \n\nWhy the hell are y’all cheering more. Oh! Oh finally an actual hero flying in. And........... he’s a zombie. Fuuuucckkk\n\nJust walk away just walk away just walk away. ", "It's a terrible house.\n\nIt's a terrible house in an awful neighborhood in the inner city. The gun violence of your five-mile radius gives every Republican lawmaker a reason to oppose gun control. You are a walking stereotype by living there. White guy, some money, pretty wife, lucrative career.\n\nAside from the fact that you aren't a stereotype. You're a unique, special individual. You're your own man. Not only that, you're dressed like a flying insect. Oh, did we forget to mention? You're in a giant insect costume. Your wife begrudingly helps your vendetta. Your friends are goons. You are a super villain.\n\nYou have driven every other villain out. Of course you have. The whole concept is ludicrous. The Glock. He only lets his goons use one kind of gun. Nine Millimeter. He's like that good guy that can make himself the size of an ant but he's a bad guy. Mars Capone. Syphillus and smells like cheese. Terrible villains. You took care of them, easy.\n\nBut you spent the last six months scaring them off. Scooby Doo ghost pranks. Police sirens from Amazon in the middle of the night. The more \"locked and loaded\" ones required more finesse; they are a cowardly and superstitious lot. You scared them off with the wings and darkness. If only a good guy could try that method. Whatever, they're out of the Chicago suburbs now.\n\nAnywhere, what was the goal here? Where's your girlfriend? Wait, are you married?", "Puglsey writhed in torment, yet another one of his plans foiled. Fingers curled into tight fists, nails digging into his palms, he cursed beneath his breath. Things hadn't always been this grim; so how, he wondered, had his peak of glory plummeted so far?\n\nEsteemed heroes had greeted their end at his feet. All of Earth grew to fear his name; the Mighty Puglsey. No more snickers at its mention, only pale faces and averted gazes.\n\nHe returned home, lips curling in disgust at the piles of fan mail and boxes that sat outside his door. There had been a time when no one dared to find him nor disturb him. But now...\n\nIt had all started with his pursuits of the neighborhood villains. It was reasonable, he assured himself, to protect the position as the top supervillain of his City. But when he had turned his attention back to terrorizing the public, the horrors had begun.\n\nKnocking began at his door before his strides brought him to the kitchen. \"Reporters?\" He mumbled, cocking his head to listen. A shiver raised the hairs on his arms — it was worse. Children.\n\n\"Mister Puglsey!\" One called. \"Mister Puglsey, just one picture?\"\n\n\"I'm supposed to interview you for my school project!\" Another squealed.\n\nPuglsey clapped both hands over his ears, gritting his teeth. The awful voices drove needles beneath his skin, igniting a fearsome irritation. If he could only plot one more evil plan, he might survive the looming years.\n\nBut every evil plot somehow left another good deed done in its place, another fellow villain accidentally felled. Out of his control, the public had began to recognize the repeated actions, crowing that the Mighty Puglsey had experienced a wondrous change of heart. If only they knew.\n\n\"How could this have failed?\" He slumped into his armrest, surrounded by framed newspaper clippings of his glory days. Buildings burned. Panic ensued. This ploy had drained his remaining savings, and without hope of stealing it back, Puglsey's head drooped. \"I didn't work my way up to be called a hero,\" he spat bitterly. He went into every situation with a plan perfectly intact and somehow still found the day to be a haze. The sharpest memories came at the end when every villain fell at his feet, betrayal riddled across their face. A certain respect came with falling to a greater villain, but to a villain turned hero? There was no worse fate.\n\nThe room was quiet and dark, and he found himself jealous of its ease. Everything in his heart ached to return to his dark ways, and yet his plans sprouted good. He had successfully knocked every villain off of his block, only to burn his throne, too.\n\nHe sat in the crumbled remains of his glory for years, every vicious attempt only encouraging the City's hope in him; mistaken hope. As age weakened his body, his attempts grew fewer and farther between until new villains gained the courage to rise, convinced his days of justice were over.\n\n\"Several villains have fallen again, leaving civilians to wonder who has taken the esteemed Puglsey's place as protector of our city? Stay tu—\"\n\nPuglsey flipped off the news, tapping a wrinkled finger on the armrest. The framed newspaper clippings around him wore layers of dust, and his gray beard grew wild and unkempt. \"Esteemed?\" he harrumphed. Stories of his 'redemption' brought entertainment, but the curious reporters and children with admiration in their eyes had long ago stopped visiting his humble home. On the outskirts of the City, he waited out the days. Even ex-villains experience loneliness; and so when a firm knock finally came at the front door, he fumbled to his feet, wrinkled fingers smoothing his beard and scraggily hair as best he could.\n\n\"A reporter?\" he muttered excitedly under his breath. Whoever it was, a friendly voice would be welcome —\n\nThe man at the door was certainly not a reporter.\n\n\"Do I know you?\" asked Puglsey, white brows furrowed.\n\nThe man stepped past Puglsey, thin lips pulling into a frown as he examined the home. \"The villains are growing out of control in this City, Mister Puglsey. I'm disappointed. But look at you, you've grown gray on me. How... Unfortunate.\"\n\nPuglsey clenched his fists, veins bulging through the thin skin of his arms as he hobbled after the man. \"You aren't a reporter.\"\n\n\"No.\" He pushed Puglsey into the chair, opening his briefcase on a coffee table. He shifted through an array of tools.\n\n\"Some sort of Doctor?\" Puglsey mumbled. \"I don't remember having an appointment today.\" He shivered as a hungry smile spread over the man's face. Before he could flinch, the man stabbed a syringe into his arm. Even as his mind fumbled for words, he felt his thinking dull and body grow numb. Helpless, Puglsey watched as the man brought a knife behind his ear. \"Enemies?\" he managed to splutter.\n\nThe man snorted.\n\nA sharp pain. Warm liquid trickled down his neck. The man withdrew holding a metal chip wet with blood —\n\nHe placed it into a bag, wiping his instruments and returning everything into his briefcase. The numbness began to fade from Puglsey's body, his thoughts growing clearer.\n\nMemories returned; a day many years ago filled with screaming, the man eagerly watching as he fine-tuned his device. A metal chip implanted in his head; how had he forgotten?\n\n\"There's only room for one,\" the man had hissed, greed dripping from his tongue. \"But you, you'll serve me well, Mister Pugsley.\" The chip brought a terrible buzzing that brought the fogginess, redirecting his thoughts, his actions...\n\nThe man patted him on the shoulder, still wearing the same smirking grin. \"Mere efficiency, my puppet. Nothing personal.\"\n\nnote: sorry for any typos, I should be sleeping right now... but reddit.", "\"Rando, the lair is done, we can finally start enacting crime upon all these ignorant civilians.\"\n\n\"Yes! It is our time to take this city! I do have a few things I need to mention first though Lord Reason\"\n\n\"What is it Rando? Be quick we have evil to enact! hahahahahaha\"\n\n\"Well Lord, I heard a rumor that Mr Untamed has also moved to LA as account of the weather being more suitable for his evil deeds.\"\"WHAT!? Mr Untamed! has he done anything yet, I have to be the first villain to act to lay claim to LA\"\n\n\"Well he's been here for a while you see. I heard he gassed a pensioners grocery market the other day.\"\n\n\"Dammit! Okay, everything is put on hold until we teach that fool a lesson for coming to LA! We need to set an example. They've been warned already, I mean I sent that mail out months ago to let all the villains know LA will be my city once I get the water and cabling sorted out at my secret lair! This is just preposterous. I was sure that the dying cat gif showed I meant business.\"\n\nA few days later Mr Untamed was arrested as he was caught in the act of walking a elderly lady across the road, but then leaving her in the middle of the street as he ran away. The city rejoiced as the man was sent behind bars, it even made headline news.\n\nBack in Lord Reason's lair he began plotting\n\n\"Finally, we can begin! Now Rando, I was thinking we start by getting a...\" Only to be interrupted by Rando\n\n\"Actually, Lord... I'm terribly sorry, but you know the news of the other day about the buses which got blown up? Colonel Parrot has just said it was his doing. I'm terribly sorry.\"\n\n\"WHAT!!!\" shouted Lord Reason as he slammed his fist straight through his granite table in fury.\n\n\"MY OWN DAM COUSIN! Hah, he thinks he can come do his own thing on my turf. Well I show him.\"\n\nThe next day the newspaper headlines:\"A Mysterious and very detailed tip off leads to arrest of notorious villain Colonel Parrot\"\n\n\"Now we can finally get back to work on shutting down all the b...\" said Lord Reason as Rando pulled a strained face\n\n\"What is it Rando? I hope it's good news this time\" Lord Reason said, nearing the end of his patience.\n\n\"Well you see Lord, Farlonber The Bomber just recently set off that bomb at the pizza joint you really like.\"\n\n\"AAAAHHHHH!! shouted lord reason as he threw his desk across the room, watching it shatter on the wall.\n\n\"I'll show him!! Come Rando.\"\n\nNews headlines:\n\n2020/05/03: \"Farlonber The Bomber found in his underwear on main street\"2020/05/07: \"Mexican Mustard thrown through police station by man with super strength\"2020/05/09: \"More Villains landing in police lap, who is this mysterious new hero\"2020/06/27: \"LA is villain free, citizens rejoice!\"\n\nBack at lord Reasons Lair\n\n\"Rando I think it's time we left LA All these villains have just ruined the city for me and everything is just stupid expensive and I don't like the people. I sent a mail out to the villain association, we are heading to New York, that's where the money is.\"\n\n\"Wise move Lord, I'll get our things ready.\"", "\"Well at least I've got nowhere to go but down.\"\n\nThe nightly newscast does its best to give the new hero persona in town a good nickname. Unfortunately none of their writers seem to be all that creative. \"Shade\" seems to be the most popular going around so far. Gets your shadowy presence about right but you're pretty sure it's already taken.\n\nA quick Google search turns up a fictional chap from DC and a mid tier villainous sort running enforcement with the NY mob. A dozen more litter the results pages. How lazy could the media really be to not even do that much research?\n\nTo be fair you really haven't done anything to get on the radar yet. They probably thought it wouldn't be worth the effort. You thought you were being sneaky and clever while setting up the local lowlifes. An unexpected public tussle with Devil Game in the age of cell phone cameras put that thought to rest in a hurry. Easily knock out one B list supervillain and obviously you're a hero.\n\nThere are worse things for a villain than to be mistaken for a hero. Being able to walk around in broad daylight is a perk, even if it isn't one you're keen to make use of. The key downside right now is attention. Folks more or less know who you are. Fortunately fame is fleeting. Unfortunately so is the opportunity to put your current machinations into action. You can't afford to lay low, not now...", "\"And then I looked at her, right in her eyes, and with deadpan delivery I told her, 'I said I wanted sharks with friggin' LA-SERS attached to their foreheads. Is that so hard?!'\" \r\n \r\nThe small group of men and women surrounding Dr. Doom burst out into raucous laughter. \r\n\r\n\"You didn't really say that did you Doom?!?\" exclaimed a tall Amazonian woman wrapped in baby seal fur. \r\n\r\n\"I sure as shit did Artica! You should have seen the look on her face. She just started sputtering and making excuses. I shit you not, she said 'let me make a call' and started dialing a number on her phone. I could barely keep a straight face. I mean, really, you're telling me she had an actual shark guy on retainer? Bahaha.\"\r\n\r\nAnother round of laughter shook the group.\r\n\r\n\"Apparently she'd never seen the movie.\" spoke a new entry who walked up and stood dangerously close within Doom's personal space. The newcomer was a stocky gorilla-sized man touting a giant robotic arm complete with pinchers and rockets. The flat delivery of the line was matched only but the look of displeasure evident on his face, and neither were missed by Dr. Doom.\r\n\r\n\"Indeed not Clank, indeed not. What's got your panties in a bunch tonight? You forget again to fine tune the pneumatics on that robot arm during your * ahem * 'private time'?\" asked Doom.\r\n\r\nThis time only a couple of polite laughs escaped the group, accompanied by nervous throat clearing and shifting of eyes. A few of the smaller of the group eased their way away from the pocket of Super Villains and into other conversations.\r\n\r\n\"Wow. What's going on here guys?\" asked a now more wary Doom.\r\n\r\n\"We hoped to do this in a more private venue, but I guesssss there's no time like the pressssssssent.\" spoke a large lizard-like man. \"There'ssssss been ssssome doubtsss about you Doom.\"\r\n\r\n\"That's DOCTOR Doom to you rat breath, and for the sake of us not being here all night, can someone explain to me what the hell Reptoid is talking about!? exclaimed Doom.\r\n\r\n\"Listen, DOCTOR Doom, there's just been some doubts about where your loyalty truly lies.\" spoke Clank.\r\n\r\n\"Doomie baby, you have to admit there have been some irregularities of late.\" purred Artica.\r\n\r\nDr. Doom took a couple of steps back in shock. \"What the hell do you guys mean!? This is my 15th Convention. I'm here every year same as you all, and same as you all I abide by the accords and don't blast any of you to oblivion, like I'd LOVE to do right now.\"\r\n\r\n\"See, that right there is what we are talking about Doom.\" spoke a mousey looking man in a tweed coat. \"Every year, year after year, you DO find a way to kill us. Just not here, and just not now. I remember standing in a group just like this and listening to Mr. Freezey brag about his summer plans to Chicago, and then, 3 months later he was dead by YOUR hand. IN Chicago\"\r\n\r\n\"Not that I minded. That son of a bitch was encroaching far too closely on my territory...\" quietly quipped Artica.\r\n\r\n\"See Arthur? At least someone around here appreciates me! Plus Mr. Freezey shot his mouth off to the wrong people who reported back to me. Once the insults went public I had no choice but to take him out in order to save face. Plus, \"Mr. Freezey\" is probably the worst Super Villain name I've ever heard. I did us all a favor.\" replied Doom.\r\n\r\n\"You've always got an excuse Doom. And it's always believable, so we never pry. Some of us who've been around a while, though, we got suspicious. Tell him Professor.\" said Clank as he gestured to the tweed attired man.\r\n\r\nProfessor Arthur pulled from his coat breast pocket a small notebook and began reading. \"Total Number of Super Villains Killed - 34. Total Number of Super Heroes killed - 15.\"\r\n\r\n\"So what? So I killed a few more of us then them. That's just because we like to start more shit. I've had to knock more than one or two newbies off my block over the years. Every Lex Luther wannabe that develops the gift seems to come knocking on my door.\"\r\n\r\n\"Ah, yes. You see, I initially thought the same thing, so I did a little digging. Number of Super Heroes killed in self defense - 15. Number of Super Villains killed in self defense - 10. Number of evil plots executed - 0.\" said the Professor calmly.\r\n\r\nDead silence filled the small group.\r\n\r\n\"It's gotta be more than te-- wait, z-zero!\" sputtered Doom. \"That can't be right!\" Doom started pacing now. \"There was the nerve gas at the football stadium... no wait, the ignitor was a dud, and I forgot to the check the redundant… well then there was the dirigible on the suicide course to Dubai... no, no, ran out of gas, I forgot to check the tank before I sent it off... Huh... Oh wait, I've got it!\" cheered a beaming Dr. Doom. \"2025, genetically modified swine flu, 20.8mil dead. You're welcome.\"\r\n\r\nArtica winced, leaned in, and spoke in a near whisper, \"That was the Baconator.\" \r\n\r\n\"Huh? No. No way.\" replied Doom. \"I remember it like yesterday. I had spent all week in my lab cooking up that mutated goodness. I had a water distribution algorithm chugging away on the ole server for hours just to find the right dispersal locations. I had everything all packed up, and took it down to the head of the Mississippi, unscrewed the cap and--\" Dr. Doom stopped cold. \r\n\r\n\"Yes?\" asked Arthur.\r\n\r\n\"And that's when Ferocious Falco swept down and tried to take my head off. We battled, I won. Obviously. But shit. I was so high on adrenaline and battle sims, I guess I completely forgot about the virus.\" Dr. Doom took a deep breath. \"I guess I really am the worlds worse villain.\"\r\n\r\n\"There there Doom. It's ok. It'll all be a thing of the past soon.\" said Clank. \r\n\r\nThe burly man gestured to a group of armed guards standing nearby and they quickly surrounded the doctor and began dragging him off.\r\n\r\n\"Wait! No! I can be more evil!! I promise! Give me a baby, someone find me a baby! I'll kill it, I promise you I'll do it. A puppy?!? A baby seal?!? I can do betterrrrrr.\" The sound of Dr. Doom's voice became more and more distant until they were left with silence.\r\n\r\nClank, smug look of satisfaction of his face turned to Artica and asked, \"Dinner?\"\r\n\r\nThe tall woman shrugged, \"Sure.\"", "I was all over the news. It was all anyone wanted to talk about at the office on Monday. Some emo vigilante superhero took down both Arc and Torch. I mean, come on, they were obviously going to be vulnerable to water. I got distracted by my phone going off, then responding to a post online.\n\nAnd just because I wanted to wear Kevlar for protection and a wig to hide my identity. It worked, I mean nobody thought it was me, which I thought was weird because my face is right there in 4k on repeat all day, but people also pretend that ...\n\n\"There's a car downstairs waiting for you.\"\n\nThe... CEO? Why is she talking to me? Why is she sweating? \n\n\"You are to get in that car now if you want to work here tomorrow.\" \n\nThe elevator didn't stop on the way down. I guess everyone was watching the newsfeed. I even forgot my manifesto, stupid SD card crashed. I knew I should have brought the paper copy, but that's okay, next time I'll read it. I'll have to get a better name that what the media is calling me. \n\nThe car was a short limo; the driver stood beside the rear door, my name on a held sign. Oh, it's a tablet, that's kind of cool. Who the hell is sending a driver for me? No choice if I want to pay my rent next month, though. \n\n---\n\nAnother corner. \n\n\"Do you want to be friends?\"\n\n\"I keep telling you Mr. Warner, I'm not a hero.\"\n\n\"I buy presents for my friends. That corner office? One phone call from me and it's yours. No more stonewalling on the promotions. Your health plan's going to be better for everyone. It'll start covering epi-pens and massage therapy. Gym memberships. Full dental. You'll get the credit for spearheading that upgrade.\"\n\nWhy was this eccentric billionaire even talking to me? Why did he pick me up? Does he own my workplace? I think he does. Is that why ... Melinda? Mandy? What is the CEO's name? Mind you, it would be cool to be a bit of a hero at the office. \n\n\"I also buy presents for people that don't want to be my friend. Cor-El? I bought her a rock from her home planet. Made her sick for a month.\"\n\nThe car lurched. Warner continued, but his voice changed. Deepened. Got raspy. \n\n\"The warrior prince? Dirt cursed by a mummy. He saw it may way and he's on the team now.\" \n\nCor-El? The Warrior? He's got to be crazy, who would threaten superheroes? He slid open a console on the bar and there was a little giftwrapped box. He held it out.\n\n\"You were a lot easier to shop for.\" The package rattled in my shaking hands. Chocolates. Good ones. The tiny box probably cost him a thousand dollars. If I ate any one of these, I'd have a 50/50 chance of getting to the hospital. \n\n\"So... are you going to join us?\"\n\nI swallowed hard and my dry throat barely scratched out, \"what ... are friends for?\"\n\n", "Even in a day and age that eschews initiative and personal achievement for equity and participation awards, competition still decides who sinks and who swims. It just so happens that, in my line of work, sinking usually involves a pair of concrete shoes or a body riddled with so many bullet holes that water flows through you like a goddamn colander. So yeah, I’ve got plenty of incentive to work my ass off.\n\nOf course, a watery grave isn’t nearly as important as the ones who’d send me there if they got the chance. My “fellow” supervillains don’t take kindly to competition. You’d almost think they were commies if their bellies weren’t so full and their pockets so deep. Aside from the occasional tenuous alliance to try and take down Hyperstar, they wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet between each other’s eyes, and with Hyperstar being dead and all, you’d better believe their hearts are racing and their bullets are flying. There’s newfound opportunity in Solus City, and everybody wants it all.\n\nThat’s why I got into this line of work. Without a hero to keep the rest of these fuckers in line, you can be sure my gun store got “requisitioned” by Quartermaster himself. It was almost an honor to stare down the barrel of the gun of one of the most feared men in the city, but for some reason it wasn’t enough to drown out the sheer hopelessness that I felt when I was tossed to the streets. My store, my father’s store, and his father’s store before him, had been lost in an instant.\n\nThat’s when I realized—Solus City was no longer a place for good men. If you wanted to die with any shred of dignity left, you had to bury your heels in the mud and get dirty just to earn the right. To that end, I joined up with one of Quartermaster’s oldest rivals: Marlon Telle, known to the world at large as Slot Machine. Quartermaster could have all the guns in the world, but it wouldn’t make a difference if money constantly eluded his grasp, and money was Slot Machine’s bread and butter.\n\nThe entry-level security work was a piece of cake, thanks to my experience in the war, and I was soon given greater and greater responsibilities. As the months went by, protecting armored vehicles was replaced with leading raids on rival villains’ businesses, and eventually I had the honor to call myself Slot Machine’s very own chief of security, a position which granted me the unique opportunity to learn a thing or two about smart business from the conversations I overheard.\n\nAfter I had learned my fill from Slot Machine, the day finally came for me to put a bullet in the computer he had replaced his brain with, which left me with the resources to grab the city by the balls. Most of Slot Machines former goons left to find work with established villains like Black Rose or Chupacabra, but the smart ones recognized my potential and stuck around to witness my rise.\n\nMy first order of business was retaking what Quartermaster had stolen from me—my pride. Through a bit of fiscal manipulation, blackmail, and coercion, I repossessed my gun store and more, carving a decent chunk out of Quartermaster’s turf, as well as his supply of weaponry. Though his gang’s numbers outweighed mine, his men didn’t have a veteran to train them. Mine did. Guerilla warfare was the name of the game as Quartermaster’s grip loosened and his territory fell through his fingers like countless grains of sand.\n\nI won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say I had a field day when my boys captured Quartermaster and brought him before me. Remember those concrete shoes and bullet holes I mentioned earlier? With his death, I felt a sense of relief that had become alien to me over the last two years. For a moment, no matter how brief it was, I was at peace.\n\nWith two villains dead by my hands, the local papers saw fit to finally recognize my presence and give me a name: The Arbitrator. I thought the choice was kind of strange, but it stuck, and soon the other villains spoke not of James Ament, but of The Arbitrator, and in hushed tones at that. Every one of them knew that their final day could be just around the corner. \n\nThe moniker stuck, as did my commitment to crushing the competition. Not everyone was dealt with as bloodily as Slot Machine and Quartermaster, however. Many villains could be persuaded to join forces with me for the right price, and soon I had Big Chill, Legion, and even Black Rose herself at my side. It was only a matter of time before Solus City was under our—MY—control.\n\nVictory was sweet, but it brought with it side-effects that not even the Mentalist could have seen coming if he were still alive. The people I ruled didn’t fear me, they adored me. Unlike other villains, who used their power to domineer over the citizens living on their turf, I protected those living on mine. It wasn’t out of goodwill, but practicality—after all, people who feel safe are less likely to overthrow you, a lesson I taught Quartermaster the hard way—but it seemed like my approach had its benefits in the end.\n\nWith the city unified under me, I became a sort of strange beacon of hope, an example of the self-made man in a world that incentivized blind servitude. Whenever some upstart tried to start shit in my city, I brought them to justice. When Black Rose became my wife, it made the papers. And when I eventually grow too old to protect my city, some other self-made man or woman will take my place.", "My dad always told me to make a plan. Actually he told me to make a list. Write it down. Put everything on it. No matter how small or big, but it on the list. Fine, dad, I did. It was the age of cellphones, so I used my tasklist.\n\nI'd been refining this list for years. Hell, college gave me nothing but time. I'm not a big drinker so I spent my evenings putting everything in order. From small to big.\n\nWhen I got back home after graduation, that's exactly what I did. I worked from small to big. Hell, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.\n\nI started with the thugs. They were bad for business. They really were. But I couldn't just leave them running around. It was better to \"repurpose\" them. It's amazing what an extra couple dollars an hour and benefits will do. Most of these guys weren't bad. Not evil. They were working stiffs who just needed a job. I just needed to keep them occupied. Hell, I could do that, and in the process I could keep my competition from using them. They weren't willing to pay what I was.\n\nAfter that was the drug-dealers. I'm not exactly \"athletic\" but man... my employees were loyal... and when I requested that someone be played on a bus out of town with a warning... they didn't come back.\n\nGangsters were trickier.. But gangsters were businessmen. Or thought of themselves as such. I had to get creative with them. I had to figure out what was bad for business. In most cases, \"attention\" was bad for business. I'm no snitch, but it's funny how anonymous tips can make their way to folks like Captain Heroic and she'll just clean up a problem for my organization.\n\nBy the time I reached that level my anonymity was starting to slip. Rather than just being a shadow, word was getting around. I had put the kibosh on my folks calling me \"boss\" so they had started using a nom de guerre The Coordinator. I made things happen. Little things, big things, I pulled strings.\n\nIt was about two years into my endeavors when a face-to-face meeting was requested and I realized something was amiss. My chief of staff, Friday handed me a letter. Normally she would have just relayed the pertinents as I trusted her judgement.\n\n\"Sir, I believe it's an invitation.\"\n\nNot unusual. I get many social invitations. What made this so special?\n\n\"An invitation to join the UEH\" She had a look of pride and excitement on her face. \n\nThe Union of Exalted Heroes? Why would they invite me? I was a villain? I stared at Friday for several seconds...finally saying there must be some mistake\n\n\"Sir, your hard work finally paid off! Everyone sees all the good work you've done for the city. The world. The team knows you don't like the limelight and they try to keep it hush hush... but everyone knows... Congratulations. You deserve this!\"", "Being a supervillain these days is like being a high frequency trader - it’s not really clear what value you’re adding to the world. If I didn’t end up trying to blow up the Super Bowl, some other supervillain would have taken my place and done the exact same thing.\n\nIn fact, that’s exactly what every single supervillain was trying to do that weekend. We’re all just attention seeking megalomaniac narcissists at the end of the day, and that leads to there being a slight dearth of creativity when it comes to really big world events and disrupting them.\n\nI’d been on a bit of a downswing lately. Being one of the old school original supervillains, I don’t exactly have instant teleportation and flying powers like every new hotshot these days. That makes it a little hard to keep up with current events happening in real time, and so by the time I take my flight to any new major breaking news event, some new little twerp has inevitably already taken the spotlight and wreaked some pathetically cliche havoc.\n\nThat said, I’m relegated to sticking to destroying the reliable, scheduled major world events, like the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the Grammys, and so on. The Super Bowl is like the championship of supervillian competition in America - I wasn’t going to let this one pass me by, no matter how many little twerps got in my way.\n\nWhat I lack in flash I make up for in sheer persistence, hard work, and well, okay, the fact that my superpower is that I’m invulnerable to being hurt by anyone with superpowers. More precisely, their powers are completely negated when they’re around me, meaning that they’re just like a normal human being when facing me.\n\nMeaning, more precisely, that when every supervillain on the continent shows up at the Super Bowl, I can literally just mow them all down with a machine gun and call it a day. Which is, to make a long story short, pretty much what I did.\n\nNow, apparently North America is free of any supervillains, and they’re hailing me as the first superhero of all time, whatever the hell that means. I don’t really care about the titles or whatever. What has been interesting, though, is that the United States has decided to give me full legal immunity and carte blanche access to the resources of the treasury for hunting and killing any supervillain henceforth. Apparently the supervillain problem has gotten really out of hand, and I’m the only hope anyone has.\n\nThis is going to be fun.\n", "Mom, Dad, I know that you're upset, but please, please just hear me out, okay?\n\nLook, in retrospect, travelling the world to collect the mystic gems that are the only force that could possibly rival Grandfather's power was probably not the best move. But did you see how they were guarded? Nothing but crumbling ruins filled with a horde of easy-to-kill monsters, except for the one super strong one at the centre that has an exploitable achilles heel! Hell, the first one was so simple to get any idiot kid from the local village probably could have wandered in there by accident and gotten their hands on it.\n\nAnd yes, I realize it looks bad that in order to get the last one, I had to blast my way into the citadel of the Demon Archmage, defeat his lieutenants in one-on-one combat before finally banishing him back to the Abyss that spawned him. But you and Grandfather complained about him all the time! We all knew that he was just biding his time, and someday he was going to unleash the legions of Hell against us in attempt to win his freedom. It has occurred to you that he probably had that last gem because it was going to try to turn its power against us, right? Honestly, you should be thanking me for all of the trouble I saved us there.\n\nStop making it sound like I was only crushing villains while I was on that adventure! When I was making my way to Grandfather's fortress to present the gems to him in person, I stumbled across the Resistance's entire army as they assembled in preparation for a final, desperate attack. I couldn't take that lying down, so I snuck my way into their camp and managed to assassinate their second-in-command and several of his officers. It wasn't a lot, but I figured that would at least throw them into disarray just before the final battle.\n\nOkay, how was I supposed to know he was secretly planning to betray them and have his soldiers attack the main Resistance army from the rear? You guys never trust me with any of this key information!\n\nI suppose that, technically, I am responsible for what happened next. But seriously, who could have predicted that? No climatic final battle or sudden, last-second turnaround. No, instead as soon as I triumphantly handed the gems over to Grandfather, he's vaporized by a blinding flash of light. I had no idea they could just go off like that. I expected that it would take some elaborate ritual performed by the last remaining descendants of the gems' original creators, or something. I still have the things on me and I get shivers thinking that I could just go \\poof\\ if I jostle them wrong.\n\nI know that we're in a tight spot now. Well, you are, I suppose. The common people keep wanting to raise statues in my honour or something. But I know that we can bounce back from this. If anybody asks, though? This was all part of our master plan from the beginning.", "Listen kid, I'm not going to sign your hat. I'm busy building a big laser and i need to get some parts.\n\nWhat? Yes, i destroyed Doctor Terror's giant robot, but i did it for its power cell. And yes, i kicked the Mad dogs gang out of town, but it was just because those damn noisy bikes wouldn't let me work! Do you have any idea how much math is involved in a laser capable of destroying a city? A LOT! Now leave. I'm going after Laser-man. Yes, i know he's a villain, but i need the magnifying lenses in his chest.\n\nNo, I'm not doing this to stop him because he os evil. I'm taking him down because he's stealing my show and because of the lenses.\n\nI already said I'm a bad guy.\n\nWHAT PART OF \"I HAVE A BIG-AS-FCKING-LASER DIDN'T YOU UNDERSTAND!?", "Look, I had a really busy day, okay? Everyone makes mistakes sometimes.\n\nI had the perfect outfit. Black skinny jeans, leather jacket, purple hair covered by a bikers helmet. The perfect disguise for an evil overlord.\n\nThe only problems were the try-hard evil wannabes, with their silly costumes and silly plans. I refused to share the power. I would be the greatest supervillain of all time.\n\nMy first battle started simply enough. I was spraypainting an ugly wall my trademark purple when some jerk in a bright green costume appeared. He had the audacity to paint what I had already done.\n\nI made quick work of him. A can of spray paint and one lighter later, I had taken my first step to becoming the greatest supervillain of all time.\n\nThe next few hours went much the same. A thief was about to mug a rich lady. If someone had stolen her money, I'd have none to take myself. So clearly I had to save her.\n\nI took down gangs, so I could have their turf. I stopped speeders so that I could own the fastest moving vehicle. It wasn't enough.\n\nI decided to try something bigger. Something so crazy that nobody would see it coming. I was going to change all the pop stations to punk. It would be great. So many people would be pissed.\n\nThe only problem was that I wasn't the first villain to arrive at the station. Hypno-man was there. Although minor, he was well known enough to have a name.\n\nHe was trying to put the whole city to sleep, so he could steal from the shops. Naturally, I couldn't let that happen. The city was my turf.\n\nSo I challenged him to a fight. Honestly, it was a lot easier than I expected. I just sang Green Day songs as loud as I could so I wouldn't hear his hypnotic voice. One chair to the head and a police call later, and all was well.\n\nThis is where I made a critical mistake. I forgot to change the music. Of the most popular radio station.\n\nThey kept on announcing what a hero I was. An emo-superhero, they called me. The person the city needed.\n\nAt least it will make the betrayal all the sweeter when they discover what my intentions truly are." ]	22
	[WP] You live in a haunted house and after a few months of the ghost keeping you up at night you reluze they haven't actually tried to harm you in anyway, out of curiosity, you invite them to play a board game and they accept.	[ "Board games were always my thing. \n\nAt family gatherings, those lame one time parties that I never get invited to, just hanging with friends; my first suggestion is to play a board game. I'm not sure why, though; I don't particularly enjoy them, I don't hate them either. I think I just take an odd satisfaction in the winning side- which is almost never the case. \n\nI wouldn't say I'm a boring person, either, I like going out as much as the next guy, but I'd rather just sit around and play a board game. \n\nWhy am I telling you this? \n \nA few months ago; April, to be exact, I moved into my new home. I was finally alone with my own space. The place wasn't anything amazing, just big enough for me and not too costly. \n\nI figured out the house was being haunted fairly quickly. \n\nIt started with doors slamming randomly, strange breezes, feelings of being watched.\n You know, the cliche. Then, it turned to voices, contact, and even this thing trying to put forks into my microwave and toaster (I wish I was joking.) It was safe to say this ghost was a bit of a prick. \n\nI have always been in the mid ground on the subject of the paranormal. I've only had one experience, but I'm always hearing my mother talking about hers (she claims to be a sceptic) so I'm not too sure. \n\nAnyways, to 'set the scene', I was in bed, trying to sleep. This guy- i nicknamed them Jo, for no real reason- was poking at my arm, banging the closet door, saying my name. This would have been the scariest thing if it wasn't five in the morning. I was tired and annoyed and honestly done with Jo's bullshit. So, I got out of bed. Keep in mind, I'm a tiny trans guy, standing at 5''6, and the voice of a prepubescent ten year old when he just found out that Disneyland was really the dentist. In other words, I'm a twink, and hardly intimidating. I asked Jo to stop, many times, and I eventually got a response. A quiet, almost timid \"Sorry\". \n\nI sat the guy down- keep in mind I couldn't see them, they could have left the room and I wouldn't know- and asked them if they wanted to play Monopoly. I figured they weren't doing any harm, and what's the harm in asking? \n\n\nThat's how I ended up trying to explain the rules of monopoly to a ghost at six in the morning. Jo really enjoyed the game, even more when they won. \n\n\n \n " ]	1
	[WP] Write a story where protagonist and antagonist switch roles every paragraph	[ "As the huge 15 legged machine created for destruction emerges from thin air, Dirk and Zaph look at each other. They're in mid-punch, trying to best each other. Zaph deactivates his evil mind control device and says, \"Dirk, wanna team up for this?\". Dirk nods.\n\nThey charge towards the vile robot with all their might. All of a sudden, Dirk frowns and targets his laser towards Zaph. \"Dirk what the fuck?!\", says Zaph, taken aback. \"This isn't the time for your heroic bullshit man!\". Dirk doesn't seem to care. He aims at Zaph's head. Zaph moves swiftly and kicks him in the groin.\n\nDirk shakes his head feeling confused. The robot monster is wrecking havoc, uninterrupted and with a nice smile on it's face.\" What did you do Zaph? Are you using your pathetic excuse of a mind control device on me?\", asks Dirk still dazed. Zaph feels accused. \"No idiot. The robot is emitting some kinda-\". He stops talking and pounces on Dirk, with full intention of tearing him apart. They tussle on the ground. Dirk realizes too, \"Oh shit. Fucking role reversal\". Dirk knows what to do. He sighs. \"I've to become evil so sync up role reversal with Zaph\". He does the unthinkable. Taking out his grenade catapult, he launches at a group of innocent people who turn into bits instantly. DIRK ISN'T A HERO ANYMORE. Now, both Zaph and Dirk are evil. \n\nThe robot jumps in joy as it's kill count crosses 4 digits. The jump itself kills another hundred which encourages it to jump ecstatically again. Role reversal strikes again, but this time, both Dirk and Zaph are in sync.\n\nThey smile and charge at the robot. " ]	1
	[WP] All humans born on Earth are just Angels playing the newest full-dive VR game. While on the character creation screen in Heaven, the game glitches.	[ "And so the angels character is born! A 9 pound baby girl with brown eyes and brown hair. The angel plays every day learning the controls and enjoys the other angels who play the mom and dad. The parents name her Angelica. The angel clicked on male avatar but the system glitched. He doesn't care he's waited thousands of years to play this game called Life. So he plays.\n\nFast forward now the girl is 18 and leaving for college. She wants to be an arts major and also study English. College was going fine. Has new friends loves the school but one day she cannot get out of bed. The angel restarts his pc deletes and re-downloads the program but nothing works. Angelica is severely depressed and will not leave her bed to even shower. Her roomate begs Angelica to go take a shower and put clean clothes on. She gives in and agrees to clean herself up. While in the shower she looks down at her lady parts the angel does not know what to think because Angelica is more angry than he's ever seen her. The angel opens the menu to see her stats.\n\nStrength - 6\n\nLuck - 2\n\nSpeed - 5\n\nAnger - 10\n\nHappiness - 0\n\nThe angels exits the stats menu and goes back to showering his avatar. In the 18 years he's played Life he's done some reading into the game manual. Somehow forcing the game to play the opposite gender as you can cause a glitch called transgender. It can be fixed but the solution can result in losing your family and friends. This doesn't stop him. He vows to fix her so he can get back to playing Life as a normal human. He loves Angelica so much. He's been playing as Angelica for 18 years. Also 18 years he's played side by side his parents Adam and Evie and his friends from school. He could lose all of them. He chooses the happiness of Angelica over all. He opens the game menu he selects avatar settings and he changes Angelicas sex. He renames his avatar Chaz and plays life from this point on happily ever after. \n\nFin" ]	1
	[WP] You are a contestant on a game show where the grand prize is the resurrection of a loved one.	[ "In the dim light of the production control room, Gilbert Godfrey watches the ticking second hand of the clock with disdain. \n\n“Running long,” he grumbles.\n\nPaul turns slightly, squinting through the smoke of his cigarette. Under heavy lids, his eyeballs flick from the clock to Gil.\n\n“Might be a touch close,” his voice is deep, slow, “should be ok, though.”\n\nHis gaze lingers on Gil’s curled lip and he sighs as he leans into the mic. \n\n“Zoe, give Jackass the hurry up, will ya?”\n\nOn the main monitor, a middle aged man in a brown suit and a colour matched moustache, falters ever so slightly mid-line, his forehead creasing in a flash of confusion.\n\nPaul and his video engineer share a quick eye-rolling glance. \n\n“You got somewhere you need to be, Gil?” Paul’s cigarette bounces up and down from the corner of his mouth.\n\n“Yes, actually,” Gilbert Godfrey stands up brushing imaginary dust from his suit pants, “drinks at Gardella with Harry Westcombe. He's a big wheel over at Fremonte and…what am I telling you this for? You guys can handle the rest of the show from here without me, right?”\n\nPaul mutters to Kimmy: “Been doing it since your daddy got you the job, so…” Kimmy snorts behind her hand.\n\nGil’s eyes dart between the two of them, sure he's missed something funny. \n\n“Uhhhh...I mean, it's just the resurrection left now. That bit shoots itself, right?”\n\n“We'll be fine, Gil,” Paul puffs over his shoulder, “tell Harry he’s a lying sack of shit for me. He’ll know what it means.”\n\n“Oh..you know, Harry?”\n\n“G.G.! How's it hanging?!”\n\nA large hand lands heavily on Gil's back, nearly knocking the wind out of him.\n\n“Ah, Mr Halverton!” Gil gasps “Great! Just great.”\n\nFrank Halverton shakes Gil’s proffered hand. Engulfs it with his own and grins like a shark. \n\n“Love the show, guys!” The network exec gushes to the room. “Just love it! You're all doing a great job. Just really excellent.”\n\n“Shit,” Kimmy whispers to Paul, “we're getting canned.”\n\nPaul nods. \n\n“Mmm hmm. Camera Two.”\n\nThe main feed flicks to the host of the show, Tony San Bernardo, moustache spread wide over too-white teeth. Next to him stands a skinny young woman with curly hair and a Starland Vocal Band t-shirt.\n\n“Oh,” says Frank, “who's our winner tonight?!”\n\n“Dave from Sacramento!” announces the whole crew, except, of course, Gil.\n\nFrank looks confused.\n\n“Sorry, Frank,” Paul calls to the back of the room, “crew joke.”\n\nFranks eyes narrow. He doesn't like being made to look a fool. On the main feed, Tony San Bernardo is talking…\n\n“... from sunny Phoenix. Kathy you said before you watch the show religiously…”\n\n“Oh, yes,” chimes Kathy.\n\n“...so you know what comes next, but for anyone at home who hasn’t seen the show before, the Grand Prize here on Dearly Un-Departed is an all-expenses-paid resurrection of a loved one!”\n\n“Anyway,” says Frank, taking Gil over to the corner of the room, as if it afforded some level of privacy, “I’ve got some bad news.”\n\n”We’d like to take this moment to thank our kind sponsors: Lazarus Laundry Blue. Lazarus Laundry Blue: Bring your Laundry Back to Life!”\n\n“The board’s been concerned about the ratings of the show. Testing audiences think that it’s too sweet, and schmaltzy.”\n\n“Ok, Kathy. Who have you selected as your loved one to be brought back from beyond the grave?”\n\n“And sure,” Frank continues, “that’s the whole conceit of the show, reuniting people with their loved ones. That’s always going to be sweet and wholesome. But let’s be honest, that shit is hard to sell these days.”\n\n”Well, Mr San Bernardo, I would like to bring back my father, Mr Donald J Boswell.”\n\n“I mean, we’ve just gotten out of Vietnam and we got a Recession, an Oil Crisis, and all that other shit going on in the Middle East. We kicked one president out for being a crook and the poor sap they’ve got replacing him has nearly been assassinated twice!”\n\n“Once in Sacramento,” adds Paul. “Camera One.”\n\nOn the main feed, the camera focuses on a small circular dais, adorned with gold sequins.\n\n“Right,” says Frank, “thanks, Paul. Then there’s all those tornados, and drugs and violent crime and apparently we’re destroying the planet, but that might not even matter because at any minute the goddamn Russians could decide to flip the table and blow the whole deal to atomic dust.”\n\n”Are you ready, Kathy?”\n\n”Yes, I am, Mr San Bernardo.”\n\n”Then, let’s -”\n\n“Camera Two, pan audience.”\n\n“RAISE!!! THE!!! DEAD!!!”\n\n“I’m not sure I understand, Mr Halverton,” says Gil as he plays with the end of his tie.\n\n“Well, people are angry, Gil. And as great a show as this is - and,” Frank turns back to the crew, arms outstretched in salute, “you’re all doing a great job, really great - this sappy stuff is not what an angry person wants to watch.”\n\nFrank gestures to the main screen where, in a flash of smoke a bewildered balding man in a stained singlet and boxer shorts has appeared, coughing and squinting into the hot studio lights.\n\n”What the hell, where am I?” splutters Donald J Boswell.\n\n”Dad?” says Kathy, hand to her mouth, not quite believing what she is seeing.\n\n“I love this moment, folks,” beams Tony, “Always a beautiful thing, a family reunion.”\n\nFrank smiles at the screen as Kathy strides over to her formerly departed father with outstretched arms. \n\n“See, Gil,” he says, “It’s sweet. But sweet don’t sell no more. People want blood.”\n\n“You son of a bitch!”\n\n“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Paul, suddenly sitting up straighter in his chair, “what’s going on? Camera Three get in there!”\n\nOn the screen Kathy from Phoenix has Donald J Boswell’s head in her hands and is pushing her thumbs into her father’s eye sockets. \n\n”You fucking piece of shit!” she yells as blood starts to well out from under her thumbs. Donald screams. Kathy screams. Tony San Bernardo is looking into the camera mouthing words, signalling to cut. Kathy from Phoenix releases her father who crumples and cowers in a ball on the floor. She unloads with kicks and stomps.\n\n“Well, there’s your blood, Frank,” says Paul.\n\n“Jesus,” says Kimmy as Kathy spits on her prostrate progenitor and starts to hurl set furniture at anyone coming to restrain her. “Must’ve been a shitty dad.”\n\n“Welp,” says Paul, “we don’t have censor clearance for this. Should we shut ‘er down, Gil?”\n\nGil’s eyes are on the screen, his mouth opening and closing like a fish.\n\n“Let it play out,” says Frank, “You can cut it in post.”\n\n“Shit, Frank,” Paul swings around in his chair, “we’re a live show here.”\n\n“Whoa!” Kimmy blurts.\n\nPaul swings back to see Kathy, standing behind Donald, brandishing a long knife in the air. She brings it to her father’s throat.\n\n“Ok,” sighs Paul, “that’s definitely gonna get us in trouble with the censors. Shut ‘er down, guys and gals,”\n\n“No.” \n\nPaul turns his head to see the Frank’s meaty sausage fingers on his shoulder, Frank’s shark-like grin leering down. \n\n“Let it play,” says Frank.\n\nOn the screen Kathy begins sawing back and forth with the blade. And there is a lot of blood.\n" ]	1
Yes, this just happened. No, I have no idea why.	[WP] You are my girlfriend's brother, the one who drank all my wine last night while I was sleeping and then solved several long division problems on my guest room wall in pencil before leaving at dawn without saying goodbye. Explain.	[ "In Vino Veritas, they say. In wine there is truth.\n\nTruth. Truth about the world. You don't know the Truth. I don't mean, like, conspiracy theories and stuff. I just mean, you know, the stuff in the papers? That's just the stuff the rich people don't block.\n\nI've seen things, dude. And I've heard about things. The things I've heard about are worse. Not - lizard people and aliens and stupid stuff like that. I mean like bribes and kickbacks and politicians making laws that they get paid for kind of stuff. Stuff that really happens. But, like, truth, right?\n\nSo. You can't - you can't lie in math, right? That's why computers never lie. 'Cos they think in math. And it's mathematically impossible to lie in Math, 'cos then it, like, doesn't work out or something, right? I think I heard something like that once.\n\nAnd... wine helps the truth come out, right? So... I got this problem. With this girl. And this other guy, now he's a right piece of work, totally stupid git, right? Only she don't see it. She don' see the truth, and the truth is that he's all wrong for her, right? Like, super wrong?\n\nSo, wine. Wine makes me all truthier. And then I mathed it up a bit. Okay, so I mathed it up a lot. 'Cos you can't lie when you're doing math, right? And I still know he's all wrong for her. So that proves it!\n\nSo I had to go over and tell her all about it. In detail. At once. No good letting her live a lie for any longer than it takes, right?\n\n...........so, turns out she ain't a big fan of Truth at seven in the morning. And, well, one thing kind of led to another, and, do you think you could maybe help me post bail? And give me a lift from the police station? And maybe bring some ice for these bruises?\n\nAnd some more wine. I could really do with more wine right now.", "Hey Shoes, \n\nMy sister and I were talking about our past and your love of wine when I remembered why I originally came over. So instead of drinking your hardwork and hiding the empty bottles of your homemade wine I am going to ransom it back to you but as it ages due to her part in this mess. My sister knew I loved having Ms. Gargoyle as a pet yet she still killed my baby Rhino. Hope she didn't spend all the money she made off selling the remains yet she forgets how many blackmarket and covert connections I have. Leave an acknowlegement note under the false stone in the back garden with the sprinkler controls. You go to the police they won't believe you that division is for the costs she would have incurred and gained by selling my baby's remains and it is written in her writing which I learned to imaculately replicate. So should you try to report me and hide that bit of evidence it will still show up unlike the remains of this note which should disolve into untracable powder in 10 seconds if I remember your reading speed correctly.\n\nPS. Better hope she didn't kill any of my other pets", "Just for some context I was pretty wasted last night. First I was thinking about how much I love my sister and how things between you guys have been going pretty well and I’ve been pretty happy but then I got to thinking about how often I have to do long division and I realized I haven’t done long division in like 10 years and that was one of my favorite things to do in high school because Mr. Patterson said I was really good at it so I decided to start doing some long division and one thing led to another and I didn’t have enough paper and then I couldn’t find a pen so I grabbed a pencil and then I started working. Once I started doing math I realized there was a lot of things that I had questions about that math could solve, primarily being how many waterfowl fly between home and your place every year and I started doing some estimations and as you’ll notice it works out pretty nicely. Turns out around 10,000. \n\nWhen I woke up early this morning I remembered that I hate all that goose poop, I mean it really gets everywhere, and If I left early enough I could avoid the flocks so I ducked out. ", "Hey u/babyshoesalesman\n\nI don't know if you could tell, but last night was pretty wild.\n\nYour brother and I got into a fight, it wasn't bad. But one of our worse ones. So, like any good couple, we solved our problems over a bottle of wine. \n\nThings softened out from there. But then your brother told me something.\n\nMind you, I've known he's been really stressed out recently. I could see it in everything he did. Something's been bugging him. But I never knew what because he refused to tell me.\n\nSo last night, wine drunk and feeling down, he opens up to me.\n\nHe has never known who his real father is.\nMind you, he was also drunk, and I had to explain to him that we met his real dad a year ago. He didn't remember lol.\n\nHe didn't believe me though, and asked me to explain myself. I tried to tell him but he stopped me and said he didn't understand english.\n\nSo I explained it to him in Math. Using formulas and problems he understood to explain how he had met his real Father a year ago in Nashville, Tennessee under the light of a Crescent moon in November just after a Vols football game. \n\nHe finally remembered. Then said that he wanted to see him again. It was pretty late though so I said we should leave at Dawn. he agreed, thinking that would be safest.\n\nSo we're leaving at Dawn for Nashville at dawn. Not to go meet his Father though. There's a Toby keith concert at 6pm and if we leave any later we're gonna miss it. We had an extra ticket so I'm gonna leave it attached to this letter.\n\nDo with it as you please.\n\nIf we're not back by Friday afternoon, don't come looking for us. We're probably in a hotel.\n\nLater gator,\ngf\n\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n\nThanks for reading the weirdest prompt I've done so far. Also I hope things are good with your family." ]	4
	[WP] When someone dies they are reincarnated as a baby, but there is a finite number of human souls. The living population has just reached the total number of souls.	[ "\"I ain't going to ask you again...\" warned the first man in a low voice. \"Where's my money, man?\" In his steady hand, he held a gun, ready and cocked at the trembling figure of another man who had his hands up and kept darting his eyes across the street. \n\n\"Move,\" the first man dared next, pulling the hammer back. \"Go on. See if you can make it across the street before I put one in your back.\" He sneered, a gold tooth flashing in the dark. \"At least, then, you won't have to worry about paying me back no more.\"\n\n\"I'll pay you back! I promise!\" the second man cried out, loudly, hoping somebody nearby would hear. Yet, he knew - in this neighborhood, he'd have a better chance of reaching for his own gun before somebody would come to his assistance. \n\nThe first man, knowing, chuckled. Next thing, the gun in his hand jumped, there was a loud bang, and the second man, clutching his bleeding knee, uttered a cry of pain and fell to the floor.\n\n\"Ahhh! My knee! My knee! Somebody help me, I've been shot!\" The second man rolled over and over from side to side like he had been set on fire. \n\nThe first man came and hovered over him, the gun ready and reloaded. \"Any last words?\"\n\nThe second man looked up into the barrel and saw nothing but death. All at once, all his pain eased as he made peace with death and nodded his head. \"Yeah, I do have last words. F#$k y-\"\n\nThe gun fired. The body of the second man dropped, jerked one last time, and then lay still. The first man went through the corpse's pockets before disappearing in the dark.\n\nIn a hospital, many many miles away, a baby was born.\n\n------\n\nPeople continued to die and be reincarnated as babies, but souls were finite, and eventually the population reached its total number of souls limit. \n\nThe result was that babies were still being born...but they lacked souls.\n\nThe newer, younger, soulless generation were walking around like zombies with a thirst for blood and a penchant for violence.\n\nThe crime rate skyrocketed. Yet, the number of crimes being reported plummeted. People would get robbed and not even care. And for those that did care, then they would go out and get their own revenge without bothering to call the cops. \n\nPeople continued to die. Bodies continued to reincarnate. After every reincarnation, people lost more and more of their souls. \n" ]	1
	[WP] In the future we have Storybots. These follow randomly selected people around and influence their lives to follow a narrative that is broadcast live to audiences. Every bot has a genre clearly marked on it. People targeted by romcom bots are all too happy to take part. Others are not so lucky.	[ "There were only a few genres of storybots out there - Comedy, Romance, Horror, Adventure, Documentary, and Sci-fi. The Adventure and Sci-fi bots were modestly embarrassing, usually targeting wall street executives and forcing them to wear the most outlandish costumes that would give comic con attendees and drag queens a run for their money; while the romance storybot had a penchant for telenovela style, stories told exclusively in Spanish bent on pursuing forbidden love and normally targeted racists to entwine them in interracial romances; the Documentary storybot was borderline sociopathic, making even the most interesting people appear dreadfully pathetic and was definitely inspired by the film classic, ‘American Beauty…’ Inevitably there was always a shower masturbation scene; and to date, no one has ever survived the Horror bot. But none was more feared and revered than the Mystery StoryBot. It had no rules. No limits. No genre restrictions. Not only does it influence your life and decisions, but it also has the greatest perks by granting abilities and powers that would otherwise not be possible. Till this day, No one quite understands how it really works. It truly is quite the Mystery.\n\nThe Mystery Storybot gained its greatest infamy from the story of Melinda Cornitz, a 38 year old single mother of two struggling to keep her home in Salt Lake City while working two occupations. She was made bionic to alleviate her symptoms of arthritis, equipped with an arsenal of internal weapons, and maternally upgraded to the benefit of viewers eyes. Terminator style, she was sent back in time (completely naked of course) and after a series of dance numbers liken to the great Fred Astaire, was programmed to kill her own family before she was born. Unfortunately, she and her two children ceased to exist answering the age old question on the consequences of time travel. \n\nNow, Derrick Chad, a 55 years old, diabetic, severely overweight, and recently divorced from his wife of 25 years has been chosen. This most displeased the Mystery Bot, as it is consistently very very vain. But then again, who doesn’t appreciate a completely unnecessary scene where the main protagonist takes off his shirt for no apparent reason? Thus, the Mystery Bot made him 25 years old, a foot taller, tanner, and with a six pack… and an even bigger package. (And yes, there was a great deal of media coverage on the before and after pictures that went viral several days ago, the best of which was akin to an animorphs gif). \n\nDerrick Chad’s life was forever changed… He had a new lease on life that lead him to abruptly quit his telemarketing job, cussing out his abusive boss in the process and prepare for the next step : A sudden unquenchable need to perpetually update his Instagram feed as a new found ’social influencer.’ After all, thanks to the Mystery Bot, he was made an overnight celebrity to the millions of worldwide viewers. But like the start to any good relationship, this was just the honeymoon phase.\n\nOne evening several days after his transformation, he went out on the town with his newfound confidence to try his luck at love. He began to speak to a beautiful amber-haired woman, and the connection was instant. It was starting to look a lot like the beginning of a romantic comedy, but then midway through his flirtatious exploits with her, the storybot narration began:\n\nDerrick Chad’s evening has gone extraordinarily well, on the cusp of “young” love, until he suddenly bursts into song ruining any chance he had with her and efficiently loses all sexual arousal \\[camera candidly pans to view his crotch\\]. His pants leave nothing to the imagination, and what we observe could only be described as ‘all happiness swiftly leaving the body.’ What he is yet to realize, and will soon discover, is that he is now potently homosexual at the center of a musical number he alone is a part of. \n\nDerrick Chad : Oh, Fuck…", "Satir \n\nMy life was a satir a dark comedy \nSince youth haunted by bad luck\nTraning for over two years daily \n\nbeating all competiom in the national wrestling just to poo myself in the final\n\nJust to lose the 10000$ reward that would save my parent and their mortage \n\nHaunted \n.\n10 years later still haunted. \n\nThis bot that narrated my life had a sign on that read Drama but I just feelt like it was all a scheme to make me feel better \n\nLike I had a purpose ......\n\nNo education no job no purpose still living at home like a deadbeat in a trailer with a fantasy that died 10 years ago\n\nThis is my freedom. I am finally becomig the main charachter they can't stop me \n\n\" And now my Ladies and Gentlemen our main Charachter try to commit sucide by posioing but he don't we switch the poision with mdma\"\n.....\n\n\n\nSorry english not native langugage ", "The cold wind hissed past my ear as I stood on the roof of the Shanghai Tower. One step forward and I'll enter eternal rest; one step backward and I'll return to a life of madness and hatred.\n\nThe little pod hovered a metre to my left, its damnable camera and microphone trained on me, ready to capture a possible climax. Whirring sounds emanated from it occasionally, transforming into sounds that had proven particularly effective in awakening my traumas.\n\nThis thing was called a Storybot. They followed people around, influencing their lives in line with their designated genres. These genres used to be of the happy kind. But everything changed when the powers-that-be decided that the general populace should be allowed to dictate the kinds of genres.\n\nI had struck 'gold'. The Storybot assigned to me was \"Tragedy, with a huge heaping of psychological issues.\"\n\nI didn't know that at the start, until I threw myself off the Tokyo Skytree, only to be rescued by the Storybot on the grounds that it was too early for my story to end.\n\nThe Storybot at my side whirred and nudged me, trying to provoke another bout of thinking. It could read minds - I was now certain of it - but I had been too meta just now.\n\nI closed my eyes and stayed silent. To bring me to the brink of despair, the world had conspired around me. I'd killed my entire family with my hands. Their ghosts still haunt me, calling me selfish, careless.\n\nIt was my fault. I'd left the gas on. But somewhere, deep down, I knew that the gas was never on. I didn't even cook, most of the time. \n\nIt didn't end there. My fiancee died right in front of my eyes, the day right before my wedding. She'd went crazy from a stalker of mine.\n\nIt was my fault. I should have suspected that I was at that time already haunted by the harbinger of tragedy when my family died.\n\nThe days of happiness were just to bring me down all that harder. Having studied Literature, this event looked like a literary device employed to elicit sorrow, and for a moment, my mind had turned to the popular Stories that I had liked watching. \n\nIn the months to follow, I lost everything. My only repose was watching the Stories of Hope and Happiness that were in vogue.\n\nAnd in a dramatic twist, my Storybot revealed itself to me, if only to drive me further to despair. It didn't even bother hiding what type of stories it wanted out of me. It just wanted me to know that my life was a tragedy, that it was an inescapable fate.\n\nIt was probably the most meta of stories created so far.\n\nAt this point of time, I was absolutely certain that my story was over. It didn't matter that I could somehow live through my story's end. I could foresee two endings.\n\nI'll step back from the edge, like a true protagonist, and find solace in the days ahead. Or I'll take the plunge, marking the end of the tragedy.\n\nThe wind hissed. My legs had never trembled the entire time I stood on the ledge, and it wasn't going to now. I sat down gently, and watched as the sun set.\n\nWith a gentle push, the world blurred around me. It wasn't that I feared living on. It was more of a vindictive revenge against the people who'd wanted to create a story of a man who'd fought against despair, at the cost of my entirety.\n\nAre you happy now, Readers?", "I took some creative liberties. First of all, this story is set in the Sims (the simulation video game by Maxis) universe. Second, the story bots are called Servos and they aren't based on genres, but rather certain artists. I hope this is okay!\n\n“He painted.”\n\nI did as it commanded. For I was helpless. The Bob Ross Servos told me the strokes to use, the color, the trees to be or not to be placed, the mountains, the feeling. He did it all. I was a prisoner to the servos’s creativity. It’s cold afro hung over me, watching my every moment with its hard glass eyes.\n\nWhy do you stay then? You may be asking. Ah, how naive my reader is. As if the simplicity of this decision had not touched my thoughts countless times before. As if I had a choice.\n\n“Now, let’s think of the river, the beautiful night sky hanging over it. Try to bring out the soft shades of night with the tips of the brush.”\n\nA vivid night sky began to appear on the canvas. The midnight paint pouring out from my hands. How did I do this? I wondered. I had come as a plumber to this estate. A simple toilet the owners of the frivolous mansion had told me absolutely needed to be repaired.\n\nI was led deep into the basement where I now reside. The toilet had been repaired, but I had become the prisoner you meet now. Time came and went, the single blurred window in the corner of my concrete room my only connection to the world outside.\n\n“We realize now that the world is incredible. That life lives and breathes in everything you see. Your strokes become pointed, the blades of grass erect with the virility of a new world.”\n\nIt spoke and I did. Feelings I did not have created into art. Beauty that I myself could not understand. It was almost shameful. Many had spent years, their lives mastering this craft. I had been forced into it as labor for my lords who lived above me by this dreadful Bob Ross Mechanism. Oh how I despised the afro, the southing timbre of it’s electrical voice. Curse Bob Ross, that insufferable fool!\n\nThe bolt lock clicked. My Lords had come to visit. The Bob Ross Servos immediately halted. Mr. Landgraab stepped in, his top hat an ivory reminder of the tower I work for.\n\n“Mr. Bob Ross Servos,” Landgraab said. “You may pause for twenty minutes.”\n\nThe Bob Ross nodded once then stepped away and powered down.\n\nMy world became my own. I jumped to my feet but the chain around my leg jerked me back. \n\n“Futile, Mortimer. By the way, I was told to tell you Mrs. Goth has accepted her new life as Ms. Goth. Quite the stunning woman she is. You chose correctly, she mourns your absence even now as she waits for me upstairs in my bedroom.”\n\nMy heart dropped in my chest. A vicious look surged into my eyes. Blood began to drip on the marble floor from the iron wrapped around my ankle.\n\n“Ah-h-h,” Laandgrab wiggled his index finger at me. “You shouldn’t strain yourself. The Bob Ross Servos won’t care if your wounded.”\n\nDeath. My mind pleaded to be killed or to kill. Either choice would be enough to satisfy the anguish I felt. My beloved wife Bella had been lied to. She believed me gone from her by my own doing. “No!” I screamed. “No! It was not I, Bella! It was not by my choice! My love!”\n\n“At least tell her this much, Malcolm! At least let her to understand it was not I who has caused her this sorrow!” I pleaded.\n\nMalcolm's face showed no change. No emotion. A cold marble surface like the rich tile he stood on. “I am afraid I cannot, old friend.”\n\nI fell to my knees. “You are worse than the devil himself, Malcolm.”\n\nA smirk curled on Mr. Landgraab’s lips. “I am only human. I have done you harm to have what I sought. Is this not the nature of the world we live in? Are these not the laws we were all prescribed to?”\n\nA terrible silence lingered in the air. Malcolm raised his hands as if he had tried to educate the fool who would never learn. “I came today not to exchange philosophy. I came to tell you that your paintings have been selling quite well. I am pleased with your progress. Just yesterday your,” Malcolm snapped his fingers a few times, trying to remember the name of the piece. “The one over the river, you know.”\n\n“Starry night.” I said. The one I was repainting now.\n\n“Ah, yes! Starry Night! Excellent work. The man I sold it to told me it was priceless. I laughed and told him he could have a discount for eleven million simoleons instead of the normal fifteen.” Langraab chuckled and shook his head at the absurdity. “I had to force him to pay that much, can you believe it? He wanted to pay more! But I just laughed and told him I’ll just make another one!”\n\nHis laughter rang in the concrete room. Malcolm wiped his eyes and sighed. “Ah, how enjoyable. I find you quite pleasing, Mortimer. You have brought me love, wealth, and of course, a soul. Everyone believes it is I who paint these masterpieces. Do not worry. You shall remain a shadow. One who will die never being heard from again. But your work shall be cherished by the world! Is that not incredible? A true artist you are!”\n\nLandgraab turned his back to me. His ivory suit glowing in the dimming room. “You have three more hours of daylight before you must rest for today. I suggest you do your best and continue to please me with your work, Mortimer.”\n\nI longed to scream. To cause him insufferable pain! But I could not. The life had been broken in me. I was a slave in every manner. Physical and mental, I no longer acted for myself. The Bob Ross Servos would come back in ten minutes. Malcolm had been gracious to allow me ten minutes of mental rest. Ten minutes which would inevitably turn into a nightmare where the frustrations of reality pounded at the walls of my mind.\n\n“Well, then. Where were we.” Bob Ross said.\n\nIt moved closer and inspected the canvas. “That’s right, we were about to start on the mountains.”\n\nI cannot bear it. This incessant voice, its commands. I wish to be at peace. I wish for death.\n\n\\---\n\nBlackness overtook the concrete room. The Bob Ross Servos had powered down for the night. It would come back on at six AM. That was eight hours from now. I lay on my bed staring up at the ceiling. I Imagined my beloved in the arms of that fiend. I cursed him for what he had done to me. Had I been robbed I could bear it, for I had the choice to reclaim what was lost to me. But here I could do no such thing. I could create endless beauty, and yet feel no warmth from the work.\n\nPaint. Only paint I could see with my lifeless eyes. How I wish to be gone, to be killed from this mundane existence. I knew well that Malcolm would prolong my suffering to its limits. I searched my room for a solution to existence. None were to be had. My mind worked and worked. It scrambled through countless scenarios to formulate any possibility of escape. Then it came.\n\nMy eyes fell onto the sleeping Bob Ross Servos standing at the end of the room by the door. It would serve as the instrument of my demise.\n\nI rested well that evening. For I saw the dreams of release. My dark blood painting joyous clouds over the lines of my intestines. My heart ripped from chest, the beating sun to my empty world. I would become the final canvas. The living paint of my final moments splashed into a token of ultimate gratitude. I would be released from this this terrible hell.\n\n\\---", "The StoryBot was sitting next to her at the kitchen table when I walked into the house. Dumping my schoolbag on the ground, I ran over to where my mother sat sobbing. Wrapping my arms around her, I closed my eyes, avoiding looking at the HORROR tag garishly displayed on the bot.\n\n\"Mom?\" I whispered. \"Mom-\"\n\nShe jerked upright, swiping the tears wildly from her eyes. \"Go- go- maybe you can get out- go,\" she hissed frantically, shoving me off her. \"Get out before it starts!\"\n\nStartled, I stumbled to the door, frantic questions like \"why,\" and \"how,\" and \"Where do I go?\" jumbling together in my brain. Kicking it open, I paused to look back at my doomed mother, her normally composed self a disheveled mess.\n\nThat's when the panic wiped clean from her face, leaving it blank as a sheet, staring at the space behind my shoulder. I tried to make out her words as the white hot pain lanced through me. \"Too late,\" she mouthed as the blood rushed in my ears and the floor bucked and swayed beneath me. \"Oh God.\"", "WARNING: NSFW language\n\n“As you can see, the human male has decided to go against survival instincts and lay in its nest, aga-”\n\n“Jesus Christ, it’s only eight-fucking thirty, let me LIVE,” I responded as I turned over. “Plus, it’s Sunday, just give me a break.” I whined as I threw an alarm clock in the direction of the floating, spherical camera. I missed wide.\n\nBut of course, this was a Storybot, so it couldn’t respond to me. It just kept on going, broadcasting a live feed of my life to God only knows who in that INSUFFERABLE metallic David Attenborough accent. “Normally a rather docile species, they have a temper when under duress, such as sleep deprivation.” How I got attached to this fucker escapes me. I mean, why am I special? I’m not. I’m just Jeff. Even my name is boring. I’m Jeff fucking Smith from Peshtigo, Wisconsin and a Nature Documentary Storybot has been following me around for the past month and a half.\n\n“Why me? Why am I so special? Why not follow someone who actually does shit with his life? I’m 22 and I work at an A&W, how can you get more standard than that?” The Storybot refocused its unblinking camera eye on me. “The human is getting defensive.” \n\n“Alright, that is IT!” I yelled as I lunged at the damn thing. I must have caught it off guard because it didn’t float out of the way. I grabbed on and started tearing at it. Punching, stabbing, eventually kicking it on the ground. With each strike, the voice got more and more distorted until finally, silence. I looked down at my handiwork and threw the heap of metal in my trash can. “Finally some goddamn peace and quiet,” I sighted as I turned over. Not more than 10 seconds later, I heard a loud whirring sound from my window. I removed the blinds and I saw one hundred of the fucking things outside, their stupid fucking accents in unison, making a chorus just feet fro where I was trying to sleep.\n\n”Welcome to the Nature Documentary Storybot Presentation, I’m your guide to the human species. Today we’ll be following…”\n\n“Kill me. Somebody fucking kill me.”" ]	6
	[WP]As first born of your line, you've the power to summon your families ancestral sword of evils bane at will. In the 21st century this isn't the most applicable skill.	[ "Todd was miserable as usual. Since his 15th birthday he had known with absolute certainty why his uncle James, his dad’s eldest sibling, had killed himself at such a young age. He couldn't cope with the darkness. At first Todd had felt like he’d been called for a great purpose like he was the one to right injustice and save the meek and the innocent. Then the truth settled in, people are assholes most of them were like walking around surrounded by a grey morass of mediocrity, punctuated with the occasional shining beacon of goodness, but sometimes Todd would meet one, a truly evil person. To him it was like they sucked all the air out of the room leaving him cold and itching to draw forth his birthright and spill their life’s blood on the ground so the whole world would know them for their wickedness. But he couldn't, Todd was no vigilante, no judge, jury, and executioner. He was a law student trying to make his way in the world. He had gotten the idea that maybe the right place for him would be in criminal justice, what he really wanted was to be a judge to use his power to punish the wicked the right way. Unfortunately that meant he would likely have to pay his dues as a lawyer first to get himself the clout to ever be made one. “Time to swim with the sharks.” he mumbled as he sat down to take the bar. \n\n....\n\nTodd was fairly certain he had passed the bar and it was with a fairly light heart the he was wandering toward his favorite pub near the campus when he felt it. A cold sensation crept into his stomach, all too familiar, evil was nearby. Todd looked around suddenly afraid he was about to be mugged his focus sharpening. When he saw a pair of freshman girls walking casually without a care in the world safe in their illusions that evil happens to other people, never to them. Todd could tell from their pale grey auras that they were moderately decent young ladies typical levels of entitlement and self centered thinking that were likely the cause l, just part of the American condition Todd thought grimacing inwardly. He had learned a while ago that all it really took to be a good person was to think about the good of others and to have respect for your fellow humans as humans. This was truly the most depressing part of his power, knowing how easy being good was and it still being so rare. Todd focused again he was getting lost in his thoughts he had to spot the threat. Finally he did, a man similar to Todd's own age was leaning against a tree smoking a cigarette, and glancing discreetly at the two women. Todd was never certain how much of his senses were a power and how much his imagination, he didn't think he was crazy, he had never been wrong about a person. But when he thought he knew this man was out to rape, disfigure, and cripple these women. It made him recoil, he couldn't know for sure that any it would actually happen. An unshakable image was forming in Todd's mind of the horrors the man would inflict. Todd knew the right thing to do was call campus security and approach the women until they arrived to escort them. Simply stepping in may cause this man to go away. But Todd knew he wouldn't be around next time. Todd had deliberately avoided martial training his whole life, he felt that it would make him more tempted to fulfill his calling. All the good and rational excuses he could conjure were falling short of the mark tonight. Todd was not currently standing under a lamp he had paused in a dark place where spotting him would require a flashlight or a different angle so as to backlight him. As such the man had not noticed him, he looked around and began following the girls. Todd's uncertainty faded the rational parts of his mind stopped vying for his attention and his mind sharpened like a razor. Everything else fell away, he felt a tremor of excitement rushing through his body like his first kiss or seeing his favorite band live. He was ready. \n\n….\n\nThe girls were heading across to campus toward the dorms, seems that they live on campus. The man following them was no stranger to stealth. unfortunately for him Todd knew where that black where his soul was supposed to be was with absolute precision. Todd still held himself back though if he simply killed this man on his hunch he would be a murderer he would have to turn himself in and go to jail. Not that vigilantism was any less illegal but there was only so much he could do to reign in his instincts right then. Todd felt it before it happened, the girls turned a corner into a blind alley and the man started sprinting. Todd followed quickly. The scene he came to was everything todd had pictured, the man had a gun and a knife he seemed wild with the gun and controlled with the knife. The knife was what he wanted to use but the gun is more scary to some people. One of the girls was frozen as the other was crying as he shouted at them to remove their clothing the crying girl had her shirt off, and the man had a cruel smile on his face. Todd felt something warm in his hands and his voice sounded distorted in his own ears. “Put your weapons down and I'll let you live.” The man looked in Todd's direction terror already in his eyes. Todd felt invincible The man's aura spasmed as he began firing wild shots on Todd's direction. The crying girl averted her gaze as if she were being blinded. The other girl her aura suddenly several shades lighter was looking at him with a sense of peace and joy on her face. None of the bullets struck Todd as he dashed forward the tip of his blade white hot and whistling. The man's head came right off his shoulders blood gouted out of his neck in a dark stream and Todd felt his whole being shiver and change and that was the last thing he remembered.\n\n….\n\nTodd awoke in his bed feeling both drained and invigorated, he found himself wondering if it had all been a dream he flipped his TV to local news and started making breakfast. He began to feel ok when a news story came on “The grisly scene of what early reports are terming a bizarre vigilante killing. Has left this campus in shock we reached out to the campus administration for comment with no response so far, one of the alleged victims who was saved has been shouting her story to all who will listen.” A clip of the girl who had stood frozen last night began to play. Confidently she told the interviewers what she had seems. “An angel saved us from being raped and murdered! he was glowing like daylight he held a burning white sword and spoke with an impossible, voice like a god! Bullets couldn't touch him and he stepped forward and cut that bleep head right off his shoulders! He was gorgeous and powerful!” She then made an animal like noise in her throat, the clip ended there. Todd wasn't really listening as the news report continued. He turned off the TV stumbled around for a moment and screamed “FUCK!”\n\n….\n" ]	1
	[WP] You work for either NRA or NSA, and one day you pull up to work and notice that the sign on the building has been changed to the sign for the other place.	[ "\"You sure this is the right one?\" Phil, a short man in a dark businesses suit turned to his partner. He parked in his usual spot when they noticed the sign now read \"NRA\" instead of \"NSA\". Fred, a tall man in a dark business suit, took off his sunglasses to glare at Phil with cold brown eyes.\n\n\"Yeah, I'm sorry,\" he apologized for accusing his partner of a mistake that simple, then turned the ignition off. \"Let's go see what's going on.\" Fred put his sunglasses back on, and the two men stepped out of Phil's black SUV. \n\n\"Double check,\" Phil said as they approached the front door of the NRA. \"It wouldn't be the first time we got pushed.\" He paused at the entrance to wait for Fred to double check their location. The tall man lifted his hand in the air and splayed his fingers wide. A pulse of soft golden light radiated around his hand; after it disappeared he looked at Phil with a confused look on his face, and shrugged. \n\n\"See? Told you.\" Phil reached inside his jacket, and returned with his gun. \"Let's go see if someone did it on purpose.\" Fred nodded. He pulled the glass door open to let Phil enter the building first. They walked into an empty pristine white lobby, each footstep echoed as they made their way through the lobby towards the elevator. Fred pressed the call button and the elevator dinged immediately. The doors slid open to reveal a tall man with a mane of wavy golden hair, and a well maintained golden beard. He smiled at the two men. \n\n\"Good morning, gentlemen. I'm sorry to spring this on you, but I'd like your help,\" he said. Phil relaxed enough to holster his gun, then he moved to step into the elevator, but Fred placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. \n\n\"What's wrong?\" To answer his question Fred reached up and knocked on the border between the elevator and the lobby. His knuckle bumped a solid, invisible barrier. Golden light radiated outward from the point of contact. \n\n\"I'm somewhat in hiding at the moment, I'm sure you understand. You're welcome to stay there while we talk,\" the man in the elevator said. Phil nodded, and the two men took a step back from the elevator. \n\n\"What can we do for you?\" Phil asked. \n\n\"I need you to investigate a woman, a Zero,\" the blonde man said. Both men shrugged in their dark suits. \n\n\"Why us? If she's a Zero, get the locals,\" Phil asked.\n\n\"There are no locals, it's Dana Sharp.\"\n\n\"THE Dana Sharp? Earth 1 Dana Sharp?\" The tall man in the elevator nodded. \n\n\"Still. Why US?\" Phil asked again. \"A Sol like you can probably get any of a hundred other Uniques.\" \n\n\"I've been watching hundreds of other Uniques. You two are the best qualified.\" Fred lifted his arm towards Phil for a High Five, but the short man dismissed it with a wave. \"You're the only agents with leveled AlterNet characters,\" the stranger added. \n\n\"Huh, alright.\" Phil chuckled to himself, and extended an arm to give Fred a High Five. The blonde man smiled at the sharp sound of their hands slamming against each other. \n\n\"Don't let your guard down just because she's a Zero. She's got plenty of Uniques on her payroll,\" the man advised. Phil and Fred nodded, both wearing goofy smirks on their face. \"Thank you for your time, I'll check in again,\" he said. The interior of the elevator went pitch black for a second, but when the light returned the blonde man no longer stood there. Phil and Fred turned around to walk out of the building. \n\n\"I told you it'd come in handy. Now we get paid to play a game,\" Phil said once they reached the black SUV. \"We should probably drop the car off first,\" he added. Fred wiggled his fingers in the air to open a clear vertical portal in front of the SUV. Phil smiled and drove through the portal to park in his spot at the NSA building where they worked. \n\n\\\\\\*\n\nThank you for reading! I’m responding to prompts every day in 2018, this is #206. You can find them collected on my [blog](https://hugoverse.info/). If you're curious about my universe (the Hugoverse) you can visit the [Guidebook](https://hugoverse.info/2017/11/25/hugoverse-guidebook/) to see what's what and who's who, or the [Timeline](https://hugoverse.info/2017/10/23/hugoverse-timeline/) to find the stories in order." ]	1
	[WP] Only the chosen one can pull the sacred sword from the stone, and yet when the sword was finally dislodged, nobody could believe who was responsible.	[ "\"The chosen one was supposed to bring peace to the vale and it's people!\" The old man pleaded amidst the flames of what had once been a prosperous village \"It was said only the purest of hearts could pull the sacred sword from the stone and yet instead you, the most evil and vile one among us, come back from your pilgrimage, the sword in hand. It must be a trick!\"\n\n\"There is not trick, behold!\" You raise the sword, and it emits the strangest pale and baleful light you have ever laid eyes on.\n\n\"you already have nearly answered your own question, old and foolish as you are. My heart is pure indeed... pure evil. I swear upon this sword I will restore peace to everyone and everything in this valley. The peace of eternal sleep, the peace of death. Now die!\" \n\nEdit: spelling ", "\"A tortoise?,\" Caramon asked shaking his head, \"a tortoise got the sword out of the stone?\"\n\n\nKent shrugged, \"I wouldn't believe it either if I hadn't seen it. The damned thing just kept ramming it with his shell until it just kinda popped out.\"\n\n\n\"So you are telling me the Chosen One is a tortoise?\"\n\n\nKent shrugged again, \"hey I'm just saying it's the one who got the sword from the stone, I'm not saying he's the Chosen One. How can a tortoise be the Chosen One?\"\n\n\nCaramon laughed, \"So where is this Chosen tortoise?\"\n\n\n\"Well when he finally knocked the sword from the stone, he started bouncing up and down a few times and grabbed the hilt in his beak.\" Kent pointed East to the forest, \"he took the sword there. Sounded like was muttering under his breath the whole time he was dragging that sword.\" Kent sighed, \"some people have been searching for him but no one has seen him since.\"\n\n\nCaramon frowned, \"didn't the lumber mill start logging that forest last week?\"\n\n\nKent looked at Caramon with concern, \"shit, you're right, should we let them know?\"\n\n\nCaramon laughed, \"let's just see what happens, besides they would not believe us anyway.\"\n" ]	2
	[WP] You lose every bet you make. However, you have used it to your advantage.	[ "Really? Me? What did I do to deserve this amount of power? Well, no matter, I have it now and that's all that matters.\n\n\"I bet I won't, within the next second, gain the ability to make this power manifest only when I want it to.\"\n\n\"I bet this power won't flip itself around within the next second, thereby making me win every bet.\"\n\n\"I bet I will, within the next second, get the ability to use this power just by thinking.\"\n\nWhew. There we have it. Omnipotence.\n\nI always thought it'd be a bit harder to achieve.", "Ever since the old woman in the train station cursed him, Peter had never won a bet no matter the odds.\n\nHe was a carefree teenager high on weed that fateful day ten years ago. As he was whiling away his time at the station, waiting for his train, he accidentally tripped an old, hunchbacked woman carrying a few dozen eggs, resulting in a huge eggy mess with no survivors. Having spent all his money on marijuana, he couldn’t pay back their value, which incensed the old woman.\n\n“Careless youngster!” she bellowed with a witch-like voice. “May the odds never be in your favor!”\n\nAnd she disappeared into the crowd.\n\nPeter didn’t put much thought into it at first. Crazy old crone, he thought. However, as the days went on, the legitimacy of the malicious wish dawned on him. Never again did he win a bet. No matter the odds, it was always a loss – a coin flip, roulette, a Yankees game – he lost them all.\n\nOne day, frustrated with all his losses, he devised an experiment. In one particular horse race, he bet a dollar on all of them, except one: a black Arabian horse called Stalingrad, who had terrible betting odds. He then told a number of his gambling friends that he had bet ten dollars on Stalingrad. Some laughed at him, but he defended that he had.\n\nThe race took place, and Stalingrad won.\n\nThe plan had worked. A strategy was brewing. Peter began to predict the outcomes of certain sports where he could surreptitiously bet against his prediction. His following grew in number and he became a celebrity. Soon, wealthy gamblers began to hire his services for their exclusive use, complete with generous fees. After a year or so, Peter became a millionaire.\n\nKingston, one of his clients, was in awe of his supernatural “fortune.” As he handed over another briefcase filled with $100,000 as payment to Peter, he remarked: “I can’t think of a way of how you keep doing this. Everything you’ve told me to bet on so far has won. Tell me, what’s your secret?”\n\nPeter mustered a coy grin. “Well, you know I can’t tell you that. The important part is we all get our money in the end!”\n\n“I s’pose so!” Kingston laughed. “But still, you’re the luckiest man I’ve ever known. I bet you’ll live for a long time!”\n\nThe smile vanished from Peter’s lips. “Well, I… I don’t know.”\n\n“Come on, think about it! Don’t you agree?”\n\nPeter swallowed. “… Yeah, sure.”\n\nAnd that was the last day that Peter lived.\n\n/r/TheSexyNun", "The hard part was figuring the curse out. Gypsies were known, among other things for their large variety of hexes and malignant spells. When the old man touched you and whispered: \"Luckless\", you feared for your life. But that was five years ago and since then you had yet to experience any deadly karma trying to kill you.\n\nThe easy part was making it work for you. You lost every bet, which included meta-bets. The first time you made a bet that you'd lose a bet, the paradox tore a rift in the time-space continuum.\n\nThe universe didn't like that. But haters gonna hate. The rift made for a great portable trash can. By the end of the week you were in charge of a successful garbage disposal company. You discovered that cleaning up someone's garbage halfway across the nation merely required you to bet that you wouldn't. You managed to clean the world's pollution, oceans and radioactive waste, all in one go. You become CEO of the most successful garbage company of all time and receive a nobel prize.\n\nThe holes and rifts become increasingly violent as time goes on. People tell you that this is probably unsustainable, that you should really be more cautious. It's a weird request from a society that now depends on you, but you consider it. Certainly, the fact that the rifts increasingly start to take the shape of eyes, spikes and claws is worrying. At one point you're certain you saw something through the rift watching you.\n\nFinally you go too far. Using your power to empty the trash can in your office, some sort of extradimensional creature tears through the resulting rift. The creature is black as night. No metaphor, looking at the monster was actually like looking at a piece of the night sky, stars and all.\n\nIt's voice drifts at you as if from a great distance. \"Your time is up. You've abused your powers too much. My brothers and I will tear apart your entire universe. Starting with you.\"\n\nYou stare the creature down, unfazed.\n\"Wanna bet?\"" ]	3
	[WP] Life takes on rules of a Tabletop Roleplaying Game. All actions and decisions require a dice roll. You just started your work day.	[ "She lifted a brow, hands on hips, looking as sexy as the day I met her. It's amazing what divorce does to the libido. \"So, are you going to take the kids this weekend or what?\"\n\n\"Hold on.\" I reached into my pocket.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" She huffed.\n\nI pulled out a pair of dice. \n\n\"Really?!\" she said. \"These are your children, Jack!\"\n\n\"Sorry what was that?\" I was too busy shaking my hand for the roll. \n\n\"You're seriously going to roll dice on whether to take your own children or not?\"\n\n\"Why not? Maybe you should have rolled a pair of dice before divorcing me and taking the children away from me?\"\n\nShe rolled her eyes and crossed her arms. Things she does when she knows I'm right.\n\n\"Call it,\" I told her. \n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Call it. Your number. We've done this before. Closest one to the number on the dice roll wins.\"\n\n\"Seven.\"\n\n\"Alright, I'm going with 14,\" I told her, letting the dice go. (She tried not to act interested, but I could see her in the corner of my eye watching just as intently as I was.)\n\n\"Damnit!\" She screamed. 14. She turned to me and started to plead. \"Look, Jack, I know we didn't always see eye to eye...\"\n\n\"Because I'm taller than you,\" I pointed out, enjoying her misery. \"We never saw eye to eye.\"\n\n\"Okay, okay,\" she conceded, trying to get back to her point. \"But, listen...\"\n\n\"I'm listening.\"\n\nShe sucked in her breath sharply as I cut her off again. Knowing words wouldn't work, she stepped closer to me and put her hand on my chest, speaking seductively as she said, \"I would really appreciate it if you took the kids this week. And who knows? Maybe afterward we...\" she trailed off on purpose, biting her lower lip and staring hungrily at my lips as she let my mind fill in the blank. \n\nI sighed, turning my eyes up to the sky. \"I've never gone against a dice roll before, but...\"\n\nShe beamed happily.\n\n\"...but I'll make an exception and give you a second chance to guess again,\" I finished, breaking away to get the dice to roll again.\n\n#\"DAMNIT, JACK! NO!\"\n\n\n", "Jackie walked excitedly down the street toward the local gas station. He'd recently leveled up and this time he put all of his skill points into luck. The lottery had been more or less dismantled by people rolling nat 20s but the scratch off tickets were based on luck rather than dice rolls. This time he was gonna win big. He just knew-\n\n\"Roll initiative.\"\n\n\"Wha-?\"\n\n\"I said roll bitch!\" \n\nA man stood before him with a large gun in a shaking hand. \n\n Jackie stood in shocked silence, tears welding in his eyes as he fumbled for his d 20. He rolled. \n\n\"It's- it's a 9.\" He sputtered. \n\nThe man said nothing, and rolled his own. A 13. \n\nJackie looked around for an escape route but the man shook his head.\n\n\"You gotta roll a natural 17 to get away pussy. Looks like today just isn't your lucky day.\" \n\nJackie thought about rolling, but decided he couldn't afford to lose the turn if he failed. There was nothing more to do but wait for his assailant to roll to shoot. \n\nSeconds dipped past, feeling like hours as the mans die came to a stop. 1. \n\n\"Fuck!\" He shouted, and raised his gun at Jackie, only for it to fall out of his shaking hand and onto the sidewalk where it managed to go off twice. One shot hitting a parked car and making it's alarm go off, the other, hitting him square in the calf. \n\nAfter rolling an 11 for damage, the man also received a -6 for run away. \nIn one roll he had managed to alert police of his presence with the car alarm and give up any chance of getting away. \n\nJackie realised this and laughed wildly, kicking the gun away and leaving the would-be mugger to bleed on the street. \n\nHe continued on his way, it was his lucky day after all. ", "\"Hey boss,\" Jenkins said. \"Give me a raise!\"\n\n\"No,\" the boss said, rolling his eyes.\n\n\"Give me a raise,\" Jenkins repeated.\n\n\"No,\" the boss said.\n\n\"Give me a raise.\"\n\n\"No,\" the boss said.\n\nJenkins paused, thinking.\n\nThe boss turned to leave.\n\n\"Give me... a raise!\" Jenkins said.\n\nThe boss turned back around. \"Dammit, Jenkins! Just because there's a 5% chance you'll roll a natural 20 and succeed at anything doesn't mean that you can just pester people all day!\"\n\n\"I see,\" Jenkins said. \"On the other hand: Give me a raise.\"\n\n\"N. O.\" The boss said. \"Listen, have you even done the math? You'd need to bug someone for something almost fifty times in order to have a 90% chance to succeed. It's pointless and annoying!\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter how annoying it is,\" Jenkins pointed out, \"all the situation modifiers in the world don't matter if I roll that 20. So: Give me a raise!\"\n\nThe boss appeared to consider this, as a 19 was awfully close, but concluded: \"No. Get back to work.\"\n\nJenkins scoffed. \"It'll take more than a 5 to get me to do anything productive. Give me the raise!\"\n\nThe boss scowled. \"This is your final warning, Jenkins. Get to work, or else.\"\n\nJenkins appeared to consider this. Finally, he said: \"Or, you could give me the raise.\"\n\nThe boss grinned, a genuine smile from ear to ear. \"Oh Jenkins, how I waited for this moment to come. I truly appreciate everything you've done!\"\n\nJenkins seemed confused. \"Wait, but I rolled a-\"\n\n\"You're fired,\" The boss said.\n\n\"One,\" Jenkins concluded.\n\nThe two looked at each other in silence.\n\n\"Hire me back.\" Jenkins said.\n\n\"SECURITY!\"" ]	3
	[WP] Rather than voting on a human to represent us, we started voting directly, issue-by-issue, on our smartphones. Its been 3 years since we transitioned to this style of democracy.	[ "Hey, i am one of the Developers of the DEMOCRACY App - an App to bring the German Parliament onto the Smartphone of the common German citizen and let them vote on all procedures in the \"Bundestag\" like they were members of the parliament. \n\n\n[https://www.democracy-deutschland.de/](https://www.democracy-deutschland.de/)\n\nThe App was just launched, but is only available for German citizens at the moment.\n\nApp Store: [https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/democracy/id1341311162](https://itunes.apple.com/de/app/democracy/id1341311162)\n\nPlay Store: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.democracydeutschland.app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.democracydeutschland.app)\n\nThe App hides the party putting the issue forward in order to promote the issue instead of the party, preventing the user to vote based on his political-party-preferences rather then content.\n\nAnd now the important thing\n\nThe App is completely open source: [https://github.com/demokratie-live/](https://github.com/demokratie-live/)\n\nFeel free to contact us via\n\nemail: [contact@democracy-deutschland.de](mailto:contact@democracy-deutschland.de)\n\ndiscord: [https://discord.gg/Tr89wEq](https://discord.gg/Tr89wEq)\n\nor website: [https://www.democracy-deutschland.de/](https://www.democracy-deutschland.de/)\n\nWe will answer your questions gladly and will help you bring the app to your country reflecting your parliament.\n\n<3 DEMOCRACY", "Craig provided his obligatory deluge of noon day votes. Thrice daily, the throbbing pulse of consensus would shoot through his temples and on toward his eye sockets. Each nanosecond of pain represented a vote demanding attention once its timeout expired. Some people had taken to a practice of Buddhist meditation to divorce the thoughts forced upon them. If he could last for the remaining millicycle round of voting, he’d have successfully reached “enlightenment”-the ability to willingly abstain from voting. \n\nLong ago, the algorithms made to determine the optimal heuristics to govern society had received enough data to be self sustaining absent consciousness. Unfortunately, the lifeblood of the algorithms dictated constant participation in order to produce pure non-determinism. It was a symbiotic relationship at first: humans provided entropy that was functionally random, with the substrate of The Architecture providing a backdrop upon which the algorithm of shared consciousness was hosted. At first, the benefits were incalculable. That time has long since passed. ", "I pulled my hand out of my pocket as a notification sounded in my ears, signifying a bill I was qualified to vote on had reached 50% participation, enough that it would be legally binding should it pass. Glancing at the voting transponder on my wrist, I skimmed the title of the bill and tapped to confirm I would be voting at my usual time. Another notification alerted me I was at my station a few minutes later. I swung off the monorail and changed onto my home line. A while later I excited the monorail system and descended to the ground. My house was in the 5th ring, which meant it took as many minutes to get to at a fast walk. I found it a good compromise between the sprawling mansions of the outermost, 20th, ring and the compact apartments of the first. The walk was pleasant; a winding path surrounded by alpine trees and mountain flowers, the occasional rodent scurrying through the trees and the sunshine filtering through the needles. \r\n\r\nA small, rustic gate marked the entrance to my house. Modelled after the late 18th century my house seemed to be a nothing more then a scattering of huts at first glance, each characterised by a steep roof that could have dealt with heavy snowfall. All houses in this sector did, despite the tropical weather that we all enjoyed. The body of the house was, of course, underground. The norm, outside of the few urban sectors. Most preferred to contrast their homes to the City where most of us worked. I entered the nearest of my huts and walked down to the house proper, a cleverly disguised elevator hiding the fact I had descended a thousand feet.\r\n\r\nAnother notification. I sat down at my desk and lowered my transponder into it’s stand. A monitor, that had previously hidden itself among the boards, lit up with todays bills. 15 were recommended or compulsory – abstaining would result in a large fine – for me and more were available at the click of a button. We could vote on up to 90 each day, with continued participation resulting in small increases up to a maximum if 150. I hadn’t bothered much and was entitled to a fairly average 95, rarely going beyond the 15 presented to me.\r\n\r\nThe first issue was unexciting. Building a new island in the Pacific, to grow more crops, to feed the burgeoning population. It was needed every few months, with increasing efficiency barely protecting humanity from exponential growth. Someday we would need to constrain our birth rates, but not for a while yet. I transcribed the bill through my keyboard, each keystroke verifying my identity, and wrote a quick summary of my views before voting yes. Some statistics about the bill appeared now that I had made my choice. 100% were qualified to vote. 95% had voted yes, 2% no and 3% abstained. Fairly average for such a bill. \r\n\r\nThe system ensured laws that passed were succinct and understood by those that voted for them, with opinion statements analysed by a complex algorithm to ensure voters were well informed. A bill needed a 60% majority to pass into law or be abandoned, or it was put to vote again the next week. These made up the majority of the compulsory bills, as voting obliged you to vote in any re-votes, with the most powerful opinion statements replacing the bill itself for the transcription process. Both sides were, of course, represented as equally as possible. Nevertheless, most bills passed or failed on the first pass, and none of today’s 15 were re-votes. A few laws had tried to change the system, but none had gathered more then 5% of the popular vote.\r\n\r\nThe next bill was more interesting, for me at least. I had qualified to vote on it due to my civil engineering degree and location. A project to build a bridge to span the trans-sector river that separated us from the tropical forests of sector 106, allowing for foot traffic to pass between the two. I usually voted in favour of such things, to limit unnecessary strain on the island-wide monorail system that snaked through the skies. It appeared this was no different. I wrote up an impact report and a cost benefit analysis, as this bill necessitated, before voting. Another screen of stats showed that only 0.03% of the population had qualified for this vote. A little over 10, 000. 80% had voted yes with none abstaining thus far. \r\n\r\nNone of the other bills were as interesting as the first two. A new vacuum-rail connection to a remote taiga, which was as good as built as 99% agreed. Engineers were the only ones qualified to vote for such projects and the vacuum-rail system was a great source of both pride and work, so such enhancements were only presented when the budget could easily accommodate them. I could count on a single hand the number of inept projects that had progressed to a public vote and had subsequently been voted down. An increase to the basic income, which was all but a formality. A bid to build a gothic sector which, thankfully, failed by the barest sliver with 39% voting no. A new ship to Venus which went ahead with 80% of the vote. Continued funding on a variety of scientific projects which was granted. I won’t bore you with the rest. They interested me, but I doubt many of you will be particularly fascinated.\r\n\r\nI browsed the other bills I could vote on. A couple piqued my interest, a tunnel under a mountain in North America and an expansion to the monorail in Africa. I filled in the needed paperwork – more cost benefit analyses and transcribing project summaries – and expressed my opinion, supporting the first and opposing the second. Unfortunately, my opposition of the latter was in vain, but such was democracy. Finally, I navigated to the proposition section of the site. This was a rare occurrence – each citizen had only five such proposals each year, although more could be earned through participating and getting proposals passed. This was not capped, but the record was at 15 in a year. Mine was a somewhat mundane use of this system, but such bills got passed and it would help me daily. A simple monorail extension. I put together the needed project documentation and a succinct explanation of why it should go ahead. I read it over a few times before submitting it. A few moments later the system confirmed it was accepted, allowing it to process to human confirmation. Each year, a lottery was held and a million were chosen to sort through proposed bills. The position paid handsomely as it was, well, rather dull. It would take several months before my proposal made it through the approval process, where it would become yet another minor item on a few thousand engineers’ agendas if it fit in a computer assembled budget designed to fit as many proposals as possible, weighed by both the human approvers and the computer itself. The system worked well. Slowly, but that was needed to ensure moderation and that the right decisions were made by the right people. It had served us well and, ever since the nuclear winter brought about by the powers of old had ended, allowed us to rebuild the natural world even as we lived on paradise islands in the oceans.\r\n\r\nI left the desk and the monitor blended back into the panelling. It was a weekend – three days long, one of the first major bills to pass – so I settled down to watch television. No adverts thankfully, that had also been outlawed rather rapidly. It meant the service was rather expensive, but it was terrifying to imagine the consequences of major corporations influencing bills. Tomorrow I hoped to visit Africa and observe some of the reintroduced animals. Conservation efforts were ongoing, but the herds were already at pre-industrial levels. No humans lived on natural land anymore, the only signs they had left were unnaturally high radiation levels and a sprawling monorail network. The vacuum-train ticket was an hour’s work before my discount. The monorail was free. I smiled as I fell asleep, dreaming of tomorrow. \r\n\r\nThe above is a section of a diary, reprinted here post-mortem with the author’s permission. It represents a day in a fledgling Society.\r\n\r\n___\r\n\r\nTried to write something more optimistic and perhaps less realistic. Took a few liberties with the time span, sorry. Any comments are greatly appreciated. \r\n", "In fifty years Redditors could be the new Senators. We could post notions of the way the world ought to be in the public forum, and for however any upvotes the post has, we could receive credits earmarked to make that notion reality. We should still have judges and jurors and complex legal precedent, but hey, what if an algorithm, a non AI algorithm could better provide for the public good than representative democracy, while simultaneously undercutting the cost of representative democracy?\n\nI think this is a good idea that the world is warming to, quickly. What if we kept the Constitution and representative democracy, but we transferred the duty of contracting private companies for infrastructure projects using tax dollars from senators and governor to the people? What if we stopped paying for the military, and we built a giant timeshare resort we could all vacation at one month out of the year instead? What if elected representatives set the agenda that we could vote on via direct referendum, which already takes place quite a bit in states like California? I think if the founding fathers had the tech to allow for near instantaneous transfer of data and stuff like documents and votes, they would've explored all these possibilities for government and then some.\n\n\n\n", "It's been 25 years since \"The Reckoning\". At least, that's what the rest of the world calls it. The start of America's second grand experiment, and the day most of the rest of the world abandoned democracy in a panic. The plan was initiated with the best of intentions, but you know what they say. It seemed like it couldn't go that wrong. There was a minimum voting period of one week per bill, and bills could only pass with a quorum - half the voting population had to take part. There were even constitutional amendments put in place that these rules could not be bypassed by any new laws.\n\nOf course, that didn't matter when many of the first laws to pass changed how amendments were to be altered. \"Oh, the Supreme Court will strike this down\", the talking heads on cable news assured us. But that's not what Chief Justice Snoop Dogg felt. As the famous opinion read in its entirety, \"chill.\" I have to admit, I wasn't completely opposed to everything that happened afterwards. Summary executions for people caught abusing children just seemed sensible at the time. I mean, why even bother with the trial? I'm not proud of it now, but I did vote 'yes' on some of the mass-murder laws, kind of as a joke. In my defense, I didn't even know anyone named 'Chad'.\n\nIf there was one bright spot to all this, it really got the message across to everyone not to post stupid things to the internet. Going viral in a bad way didn't just ruin your reputation anymore, it got you sent through a woodchipper. Reddit and Youtube took that change in societal norms pretty hard. But anyway, that was good. No more stupid prank videos, publicly harassing kids and animals basically became nonexistent, and ugly people got off the internet entirely. So yeah, some good stuff, some bad stuff - I'll always miss Disney World, but Florida had to go.\n\nIt was actually a few years after that when things started to get really bad. When people started to realize just what kind of laws they could get passed. July 27, 2022. That was the last time anyone suggested that the average American could make a rational decision. That was also the last day any foreign country allowed trade with the US, or anyone could buy gas for under $9000 a gallon. All because some some smartass thought he found a solution to all the world's problems. All because he submitted a bill called, \"ffs, let's just nuke the middle east, lol.\"", "The best part of being a politician these days is nobody reads the fine print. Sure, back in the old days few people actually read anything either, but now, oh boy, you can dogear and gerrymander to your heart’s content without so much as a whimper of opposition.\n\nWe’re not even called politicians anymore. Solicitors, we’re called, like the English lawyers. We solicit the people’s votes, they vote, we get paid. So much simpler than it used to be, and faster too. Not a single hang up, filibuster, or hint of a government shutdown. Just a few hundred people pushing issues to Appmerica every 3 months. \n\nIt started out innocent enough. We got more funding for the National Parks and public school Systems, cut taxes on the middle class, and hired a crack team of economists and accountants to figure the budget each quarter.\n\nThen Jerry, the Dem from Florida, (not that parties mattered anymore,) started making friends with the accountants. Good friends. Golf, dinners, scholarships for their kids. The budget started getting a little unexplained dogear on it. Not much, not so much anyone would care, not that anyone but the quants in the budget committee read the reports anyway. But it was there.\n\nThe People approved the budget every quarter. Statistics showed that .002% of those who voted spent more than 20 seconds scrolling to the end of the document. That’s some impressive scrolling speed for a page that would be over 200 feet long if printed on paper. Nobody recognized when more dog ears started popping up. The transportation section now contained a $55,624 earmark for “educational reinvestment.” And Jenny, the Republican from Arizona, sends her son to Harvard for an extra semester. The department of Fish and Wildlife saw a bill for $3,886,464, for a new “Atlantic research vessel” -and one of the Boston reps got a conspicuous new yacht a month later.\n\nThe end users who don’t read the license agreement end up being used.", "“Lauren? They’re doing another vote on the conflict.”\n\nLauren barely looked up from her screen, but snarled at her mother nonetheless. She had been busy working on a bit of coding for her computer science course, and that statement took her out of the blank mindset she needed to write. She sighed, saving her progress, and shut her laptop.\n\nLauren was generally uninterested in politics. She had only been able to vote for a month, after all, and she didn’t know much about the state of the world outside her own neighborhood. Things had been wonderful for her ever since the transition, and she didn’t really care what it meant aside from that.\n\n“Lauren, you need to come vote. Your prompter is going off.” Her mother chimed again, this time a bit more urgent. Lauren, mumbling profanities, walked from her office to the living room, where her mother sat with a worried expression. She sighed and sat next to her, picking up the small plastic tablet from the glass coffee table. She tapped the button to turn it on.\n\nShe found herself greeted with the fanfare of the United Stated anthem and a high-definition image of the latest American flag. It’s sixty-six white stars flew from the canton, floating across the screen with each note. “Sweetie, pay attention. It’s changing.” Her mother chided. Lauren continued to stare off into space.\n\nAt last, the identification screen came up. Lauren focused the built-in camera on her face and let it sit as it scanned over her. She hated her face; too many freckles. She wished that it didn’t have to stay on her for so long. Eventually, the screen chimed, and it flashed the regular warning; “DO NOT ALLOW OTHERS TO INTERACT WITH YOU DURING YOUR VOTE,OR DISCUSS THE CONTENTS OF THE VOTE WITH ANOTHER PERSON.” It asked her to confirm that she would follow the rules, and she did.\n\n“Sweetie, you’re lucky to be so young now. You get to be a big part of the news.” Her mother whispered, aware the speaking while her daughter was voting was forbidden. When the transition occurred, everyone under the age of 30 was allowed to sign on to the new voting registration. Older folks were furious, and fought back almost as hard as the old leaders did, but they were all struck down by the superior military might of the People’s Partisans. Lauren remembered learning about it in school, but it mostly went over her head.\n\nThe screen transitioned over to a short video about the vote in question. “We are currently at an ongoing war with the Northern Canadian “Valiant Hearts”. These dangerous rebels undermine our system of government and restrict our progress in control over...” the machine droned on. Lauren continued to stare it down, just as the instructions told her, but her mind wandered from the words. What did it matter anyways? It was probably another “Restrict access to the Northern Lumber Block to only those with Partisan level 2 access?” vote, one that always seemed to be turned down. The forests were great for tourism, and people seldom voted to close them.\n\n“...now. Please select your choice now.” The screen said. Lauren snapped back into reality, staring at her options on the screen. This was a different vote, and it seemed more extreme than the average. The screen had a picture of a complex looking rocket with a biohazard symbol, and the prompt was binary; should the party use lethal bio weapons to immediately end the rebellion of the Valiant Hearts?\n\nLauren’s mother stared at her across the couch with pleading eyes. She knew she could not talk now that the vote had begun, but she could tell all the same what she wanted her to do. Lauren let out a weak smile, and chose her answer.\n\nThe screen chimed to show it had accepted the vote, and, after thanking Lauren for her cooperation, shut down once again. She placed it back on it’s charger, facing the camera towards the living room as the party required. “I’m glad you made the right choice, no matter what happens.” Lauren’s mother said, a look of loss in her eyes. She turned the television back on, and Lauren walked back to her office.\n\nHer computer lit up with a notification on a vote: “An overwhelming 88.9 percent of voters chose to end the conflict in the Northern Lumber Block. The payload will be launched tonight. If you live in the area, here are the steps you must take to avoid being effected by Mindbreaker Toxin...” the news roll scrolled. Lauren read for a moment, then switched over to her Facebook page to see how her friends voted.\n\nShe was glad she chose the winning side.", "\nMisty flipped through her cell phone as the bus came to a halt in traffic. Through her earbuds she listened to a video of the most recent public execution, making good on her oath never to watch one of the spectacles, as a form of personal protest. \n\nAs the execution wetly crunched and bludgeoned its way toward screaming finality, Misty busied herself with other digital matters. \n\nFirst she swung over to the news and quickly flipped through the headlines. The most recent \"yes\" vote, allowing the merger of Newscorp with Rednews, had made things even simpler then they'd already been. Now Misty just needed to sort by red or blue and she would get the same news as everyone else, just framed the way she preferred it. \n\nMisty fancied herself a liberal - hadn't she voted \"yes\" for drug legalization? - and so she sorted by blue news. The headlines were a mishegoss of typical trivialities - \"Best Ten Shows To Binge This Weekend\", \"Russian Prime Minister to President : 'Prepare For Doomsday\", \"Conservatives Drop The Ball On Climate Change, Again\", \"Tom Cruise Dead At 96.\"\n\nOh shit, Tom Cruise died? Misty thought to herself, at the same time as the torturer struck a particularly juicy blow and the convict - a pedophile whose trial had been livestreamed across the country - went silent. \n\nWhen a user in Nebraska suggested a new national bill allowing torture for sex crimes against children, Misty, like almost everyone else, pressed \"yes\". The bill passed with no real resistance. \n\nSince then torture laws had been coming hard and fast and, last Misty had checked, they even allowed limited torture for de minimus crimes like theft of services and petit larceny. It was too far in Misty's opinion, but all the expansions had passed with a strong majority.\n\nForgetting completely her fleeting remorse for Tom Cruise, Misty cringed at the moist plop of the executioner's cudgle against what she imagined was the convict's caved in skull. It must have been the killing blow because the audience began to applaud and an announcer came on. \n\n> Tune in for our 2PM execution later today when Barry Landrow, the \"Newtown Slasher\", will be broken on the wheel.\n\nHaving lost interest, Misty shut the video off and swiped into the voting app to see what bills were up for a vote today. \n\nAt the very top, voted on by over 95 million people, was the \"Sally T. Hinton\" bill, a popular and exceedingly specific law drafted by a Texan user who went by the avatar Killemdead989. The bill was a direct response to the accidental killing of Sally. T. Hinton by her husband. \n\nThe poor man had backed into his wife as he drove off to work, but a livestream of the event went viral and it showed Sally's husband was looking at his phone when it happened. The local District Attorney refused to prosecute, saying they could not prove a crime had been committed, but the People weren't satisfied with that.\n\nThe Sally T.Hinton bill was basically a national license empowering any American citizen to kill Sally's husband, Bernard Hinton, on sight. It was perhaps the most contentious bill in the three years since personal lawmaking had taken effect and Misty was still debating how to vote. Currently the \"yes\" vote had it at %50.02 to %49.96 with %.02 abstaining. \n\nMisty decided to shelve the decision for a second and scroll through the other options, noting that the voting window would be over in just four more minutes. She scrolled down the list, haphazardly voting yes to a bill entitled \"Free Jeremy,\" although she had no idea who Jeremy was. She was a firm \"no\" on yet another bill attempting to illegalize abortion, a daily phenomenon. She abstained from a vote about foreign policy - something to do with nuclear deterence - as she did not feel she was qualified to take a position - itself a position she felt was very wise. Lastly she voted yes on a bill to allocate 1 million dollars to the creation of a fund for unemployed mimes - probably a joke bill, but currently %93 of voters agreed with her.\n\nWith only two minutes remaining, Misty returned to the Sally. T. Hinton bill and bit her lower lip. It was a real nail biter this one. On the one hand, Misty felt a little uncomfortable with the whole idea of the law. It would be the first time such a law had ever passed and the implications were a little scary.\n\nThen Misty played the attached video one more time and watched as Bernard Hinton, his face glued to his phone, ran right over his poor wife. \n\nConfident that she would never do anything so stupid, Misty consigned Mr. Hinton into the mental category of total dickhead and pressed \"yes.\" Ten seconds later voting ended and the bill passed into law. Twenty seconds after that social media was awash in photos of Mr. Hinton shot dead in his front lawn. Apparently several citizens were waiting for the vote to complete, and now they were all fighting over who got the kill shot. \n\nAs the bus pulled up to Misty's office she saw that one of the men had claimed victory, a John Paul Henry, 24, from Wisconsin. He'd driven down to Texas and waited in the forest near Hinton's home, just in case the law passed.\n\nMoments later Henry posted a picture of himself holding Hinton's dead body up, rifle in Henry's hand, like one of those big game hunter photos. Misty found it all quite distasteful. \n\nJust as the bus doors opened up, Misty got a notification for a new bill to vote on. She read the title and laughed to herself, then pressed \"Yes\" without thinking and stepped off the bus to go to work. \n\nAll across America the \"License To Kill John Paul Henry\" bill was quickly gaining steam - out of 50,000 voters \"yes\" already had 45,000 votes.\n\n******\n\n#### For More Legends From The Multiverse\n\n## r/LFTM\n\n\n" ]	8
	[WP] You enter a forest. You head North.	[ "You come to a small clearing in the middle of the forest. A small cave opening leads we-\n\nI go up.\n\nWhat? You can’t go up.\n\nI go up.\n\nNo no no, you can’t go up.\n\nI go up.\n\nWhat do you not understand about not-\n\nI go up.\n\nUgh, fine.\n\nYou come to a small fortress in the clouds. Two soldiers guard the gate. They have spotted you and are coming toward you aggressively.\n\nI go up.\n\nWhat? You aren’t going to-\n\nI go up.\n\nSigh, fiiine.\n\nThe guards glare at you before levitating upwards to chase you.\n\nI go up.\n\n...\n\nAfter a few hours, you have reached the edge of the atmosphere. Any further passage up is prohibited.\n\nI go down.\n\nYou are falling to the planet below. Do something or you die.\n\nI go up.\n\n...\n\nYou are floating in the air peacefully.\n\nI go u-\n\nAll of the sudden, a dragon comes out of nowhere and swallows you whole!\n\nGame Ov-\n\nI go up.\n\nBut you can’t go up! You’re dead!\n\nI’m a ghost.\n\n...\n\n...\n\nFine." ]	1
	[WP] A cult attempted to summon the King of Hell, but they missed an important detail during the summoning spell. Stan is now standing in the center of a pentagram, and is very confused.	[ "“Stan?” I stare at my co worker Stan in the middle of our circle. The rest of the cult is bowing to him.\n “Paul, Where are we?” \n“We’re in my basement...”\n“Well let me put my daughter and I were just playing a game of Clue”\n“You’re the King of Hell”\n“What are you talking about Paul?” I look at the rest of the cult.\n“Guys... I think we messed up the spell, this is my coworker Stan”\nCharlotte looks at me. “ugh now he knows too much, let’s put him in the basement with the others to die.”\nI grab my knife and stab Charlotte.\n“RUN STAN”" ]	1
	[WP] You live a totally normal life, your parents have good jobs and you live in a good home. One day however, while cleaning out your closet you find a secret niche with a small journal. In this journal is small notes, one stands out though. “I don’t want them to erase my memory, not again”	[ "I stared at the page, not really comprehending what it said.\n\n\"I don't want them to erase my memory, not again\".\n\nIt was written in my hand writing. I do not remember writing it.\n\nHow could this happen? I never wrote this.\n\nOr did I?\n\nNo, that's ridiculous, I couldn't have written it; I would have remembered. Its probably just some harmless pranks. \n\nWho would prank me though? None of my friends are that cruel, especially considering what I've gone through these past months\n\nI must have written it then. But why? Why did I write this? I must have written it for a reason.\n\nMaybe it is true. Maybe what I wrote down is true. The easiest solution is often the correct one afterall. I don't remember memory gaps, but can you honestly remember not remembering something?\n\nBut who erased my memory?\n\nFuck, I know. I know who did this.\n\nI went to my bedroom where I keep my safe. I opened the safe, and removed the gun within. I rushed outside, and got in my car. I turned on my car, and pulled out of my driveway. I need to get these bastards, and make them pay for what they did to me.\n\n\n\n\n\nTwo men watch a car pull out of a driveway. \n\nOne man smiled and said \"That fuckin' freak fell for it. What an idiot\".\n\nThe other man said \"Of course he did, he's got those mental issues they told us about. That freak thinks people are all out to get him or something\".\n\nThe first man said \"To be fair, we are out to get him. But we gotta real reason to do it, not some illuminati bullshit\".\n\n\"What he did to ricky is unforgivable, and those fuckhead shrinks just let him get away with it! He's fucking free, and ricky's six feet under!\" The man's voice breaks, and he cries a bit. He carries on in a shaky voice. \"He deserves the worst punishment he can get. We just gotta make he does something bad enough those shrinks can't let him out\".\n\nThe first man looks at the other man. \"Don't worry man, he's not going anywhere after they see what he'll do now. Ricky can rest in peace now\".\n\n\"I hope so\"." ]	1
	[WP] You're a sick kid approached by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Little do they know that you have fairy godparents.	[ "\"you have a week\"\n\nThis was all I got from the conversation with the doctor. The rest was medical junk I don't care about.\n\nI need some time \"to myself\"\n\nThe flowers in the vase sprung up.\n\n\"Timmy, this is getting dangerous. Why won't you wish yourself back already?\"\n\n\"Cosmo, when the make a wish foundation comes over, I can do whatever I want!\" I know what they're about to say, but I have a plan.\n\n\"You already can wish for anything! Without limits!\"\n\n\"But Wanda, people will still question things. I might as well use this for the fun of it without causing any confusion to people\"\n\n\"Fine, but don't take long\"\n\nI was able to do what I wanted, but not for long. I lost my voice and couldn't move. There was no way to fix myself.\n" ]	1
	[WP] It is the year 2078 and we've discovered a new system of communication, different from radio waves. When we try to detect alien signals with this system we catch thousands of signals from hundreds of different civilizations.	[ "It was 11:55pm HST On the Island of Hawaii, two massive towers with dougnut like metal rings at their apex had been erected at the summit of Mauna Kea next to the observtory. \n\nSpanning 300 yards between the two towers sat a single chrome dish. It was the culmination of years of research and a near trillion dollars of funding from nearly 160 different countries. \n\nGregory Nillson a swedish scientist looks anxiously at his console, it had only been a few years since he had proven that the magnetic component of radio waves could themselves be modulated to transmit messages. It proved to be far far to expensive to work for any application on earth so his idea lay forgotten till one fateful day when he left his device on and the faraday cage it was house in open. \n\nThe next day the message was heard around the world, 00110111 00110000 00110101 00110111 00100000 00110111 00110000 00110110 00111001 00100000 00110111 00110000 00110111 00111001 00100000 00110111 00110001 00110000 00110011\n\nA stream of prime numbers in binary form. This could have only been made by an intelligent civilization, and one that wants to be known.\n\nNow three years later he stood between two massive magnetic antennas, the world hoping to put its ear to the universe. \n\n11:58pm HST \nGregory calls out to his colleagues over the radio, each one calling out that their systems are go. \n\n11:59 HST\nGregory, declares all systems go. A crowd of reporters wait in silence. He tunes the antennae to the frequency he had last heard life. 114MHz or rather it's magnetic twin.\n\n1200am \nGregory throws a lever and the air is alive with electricity from the two towers. His console indicates the pulses he had heard earlier. Success!! his magnetic radio had worked. So far this had been the only frequency that had worked the real test lay ahead. \n\nHe initiated a program that analyzed the entire frequency range and intitaited the frequency sweep protocol. The coils once again came to life buzzing at higher and higher pitches as the program listened through higher and higher frequences. \n\nA list was being generated 115.6 116.2 117.2 118.3 119.2......\nAll showing their own unique signatures. No one knew it just yet but the world had changed. " ]	1
	[WP] Refugees from across the multiverse fled to a stable shard of reality, millions of beings from different cultures and evolutions forced to cooperate for survival. All dependant on those who travel through the shattered realities gathering sources of stability to hold back the chaos.	[ "It was chaos. \n\nWhen the first refugees came through the tears, everyone thought it was a hoax. Even those who were watching it happen couldn't believe it. Who could? Alien - no, not even alien, not foreign, just... other\\- they came through these tears, escaping from the collapse of their own worlds and universes? I wouldn't blame you if you told me I was insane. But I saw it. And I'll never forget it. \n\nI was driving out to see my family. I worked out in the northern Canadian region, the whole oil sector couldn't get enough people out there, digging out holes for pipelines and setting up the new rigs. It was good money, and I couldn't turn it down. Of course, we don't use oil now for nearly anything, but back then it was used in everything. Cars, ships, factories, even toys and medicine. \n\nThe weather had been bad; storms had been brewing for weeks and the clouds were heavy, and chose that day to burst. I remember slowing to a crawl while the wipers moved in a frenzy, trying to wick off the seemingly endless amount of water pouring down from the heavens. \"Damn traffic,\" I muttered under my breath while crouching down in the limited space between my headrest and the steering wheel to get a better look at the road ahead. Seemed like the cars had been stacked for miles. I thought it was an accident at first, and we were all just unfortunate witnesses. But people started getting out of their cars, even in the rain. Then I saw it. The clouds were opening, and what was behind it wasn't sunlight, or sky. It was a massive gaping emptiness. I'm not sure how to describe what nothing looks like, but that's what it was. Just... nothing. I got out too, then, and something tightened around my chest. I realized I stopped breathing. I could feel my hands clenched against my sides. I was scared. Terrified, petrified, frozen in fear. \n\nAnd then they came. \n\nYou have to realize, we didn't know they were refugees at the time. We weren't aware of the destabilization of their universe, of the billions and trillions that were trying so desperately to be safe. Families torn apart, mothers and fathers trying to save their children. Loved ones dying in the chaos. I'm not sure if I would do anything differently. But when we saw the ships that looked like they were straight out of a science fiction movie, I thought we were being invaded or something. Some alien force somewhere had learned about us and decided to come teach us a lesson.\n\nFor people and technology from an entirely different universe, it looked remarkably similar to some of the cheesier sci-fi flicks I've seen. They kept coming too. Thousands of ships headed straight down, a collision course with the earth. That hole must have been open for hours, and I just stood there and watched. We all did. Camera crews had shown up by then and the whole event was being televised. And there was something else. On the edges of the nothing, you could see figures. Objects, maybe. They were nearly as large as the ships that came through, and they were standing still at the edge of the nothing. Maybe 20 of them altogether, acting as massive planks propping up some kind of interplanar portal. When they flew past with some crazy black ops fighter jets or something they took some photos. Those planks were people, massive titans that were holding open the portal. And they looked exhausted in the photos.\n\nAnd just like that, in what felt like less than a second, the last ship flew through the portal. And then it collapsed. One moment it was there, and then it wasn't. It didn't slowly shrink, it didn't fade away. It was just gone, the titans gone with it. \n\nIt hasn't opened since.\n\n\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\\_\n\nThis is the first time I've posted on WritingPrompts. I've done some writing for fun before but I'd say this is the first time I've shared anything. I welcome constructive criticism. Thank you!" ]	1
	[WP] Write the story of an alien species listening to and reacting to the Gold Disks on the Voyager.	[ "\"We discovered a strange object floating through the system of Bolus, at the outer edge.\" Jeklon said.\n\nXhut said: \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I will prepare for outside activity.\" Jeklon said.\n\nXhut agreed.\n\nJeklon walked across the floor, and slid into his extravehicular mobility unit, being a robotic shell. The EMU closed, and rolled down an airlock. It exited the space vessel, and fired thrusters, arriving slowly near the Voyager 1. Jeklon grabbed a stick and moved it, causing an arm to move, grabbing the spacecraft.\n\n\\----\n\n\"What the heck?\" a Mission Control scientist said.\n\n\"The telemetry on Voyager 1 just cut out.\"\n\n\\-----\n\nJeklon rolled the spacecraft inside, and began running checks on it.\n\nXhut read the data, and said: \"It appears to be emitting sounds.\"\n\nJeklon looked at Xhut. \"Let us run the sound through the sound to pheromone converter.\"\n\nXhut agreed.\n\nThe sound began to be converted into pheromones.\n\nMusic played.\n\n\"Jeklon, this is... gibberish. It must be an alien language.\"\n\nJeklon nodded.\n\n\"Let's run the rest of the data.\"\n\n\\------\n\nOne year later\n\n\"Let's run the music again, now that we've learned their language.\" Jeklon said.\n\nMusic played\n\n> Dark was the night, and cold the ground \nOn which the Lord was laid; \nHis sweat like drops of blood ran down; \nIn agony he prayed \n \n> \n>\"Father, remove this bitter cup \nIf such Thy sacred will; \nIf not, content to drink it up \nThy pleasure I fulfill.\" \n \n> \n>Go to the garden, sinner, see \nThose precious drops that flow; \nThe heavy load He bore for thee; \nFor thee he lies so low \n \n> \n>Then learn of Him the cross to bear; \nThy Father's will obey; \nAnd when temptations press thee near \nAwake to watch and pray \n\nBlind Willie Johnson\n\n\\----\n\n> Another party is over \nAnd I'm left cold sober \nBaby left me for somebody new \nI don't wanna talk about it \nWant to forget about it \nWanna be intoxicated with that special brew \nSo come and get me \nLet me \nGet in that sinking feeling \nThat says my heart is on an all time low, so \nDon't expect me \nTo behave perfectly \nAnd wear that sunny smile \nMy guess is I'm in for a cloudy and overcast \nDon't try and stop me \n'Cause I'm heading for that stormy weather soon \nI'm causing a mild sensation \nWith this new occupation \nI'm permanently glued \nTo this… \n\nLouis Armstrong\n\nand so on.\n\nJeklon and Xhut were speechless.\n\nThey could not believe what they smelt.\n\nThey ran the rest of the Gold Disk through the analyzer, and found over 119 pictures placed electronically.\n\n[https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/images-on-the-golden-record/](https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/images-on-the-golden-record/)" ]	1
	[WP] In an alternative world, witches, elves and other fantasy races exist during the period of ww2. You are a soldier who's shot a witch far away from the main battle, and soon you defected to tend to her wounds.	[ "She was a witch, one of the Luftwaffe Division that had been shot down, fleeing the wreckage of her magically augmented vehicle.\n\nIt hadn't occurred to me that she was a person, too.\n\nShe didn't deserve it, not even a little bit. She was beautiful, innocent.\n\nShe hadn't asked for any of this. It was a senseless waste of life, and I knew it almost as soon as the blood spurted from her chest. It had been a good shot, and it sickened me.\n\nI ran across No Man's Land, not really aware that I was going until I was at her side, picking her up - she was so small - and carrying her off the field. I didn't notice the bullets flying overhead, the screaming shrapnel. Even the stench of the battlefield vanished behind the horror of what I'd done.\n\nI took her to a cave, a small cave, off to the side. Somewhere where she'd be protected from the chaos of the battle.\n\nI split her shirt - very high up, very discretely, just enough to help bandage her wound and stem the bleeding. She'd live, now.\n\nWhat had I done? I didn't deserve any of this.\n\nI drew my trench knife and put it against my belly, tears filling my eyes. Why?\n\nWhy?\n\n* * *\n\nThe Hag looked down at the soldier's corpse. It had been a bit of tricky spellwork, but it had been laid good and fast.\n\nShe reached over and tugged the man's sidearm from his holster. He wouldn't need it. Not anymore.\n\nShe settled back and listened to the shells screaming overhead." ]	1
Someone sent me a link of a post on 9gag. I really want to see r/WritingPrompts do their magic on this one.	[WP] One day you wake up and realize you have a superpower: you can manipulate probability. Something has a 0% chance of happening? Think again..	[ "The thread twisted itself around the cramped city, leading me from street corner to street corner, through back alleys and onto the lively streets again. On my way I picked up a pack of cat food, a cup of hot coffee and a dark green knitted scarf. The thread showed me the places that would be beneficial. \n\nMy goal was just around the corner, I was getting good enough at this that I could tell from the way the thread began to shimmer. The probability of this working was high enough, but it still made me nervous every time. Even 1% deviation could be enough to break my scenario completely. The hardest part was just coming up.\n\nI spotted her sitting on a park bench. It was freezing cold outside and she was visibly shivering, but still she sat there wearing a well practiced smile that not many people would see through. Her red-brown hair fell around her face in messy curls, in her hand she held seeds that she was feeding to the birds that were staying for the winter. It was an odd place for a young woman to be at this time, but still no one seemed to pay her any attention. \n\nI turned around, checking for the stray cat that had been following me around since I picked up the cat food and went through a little alley. “Good girl” I said, grinning at the little furball. The cat was a little undernourished, but she was holding up. The cats thread was beginning to loosely fuse with mine, but that was not the plan here. \n\nPutting up and act I began strolling around the area without purpose, ending up at the bench to rest my seemingly tired legs. Her red curls moved slightly when she gave a shy, startled look at my arrival. I paid her no immediate attention. \n\n“It’s so cold this early into the winter right?” I said after a minute. \n\n“What? Eh.. Sure.” She replied still smiling at the birds picking away at the seeds. I saw it then. The smile had a touch of deep sadness to it, one that has been there for a long time.\n\nShe looked up after a couple of seconds, just now realising that she had been talked to. \n\n“I- I’m sorry were you talking to me?” her face painted a genuine expression of surprise.\n\n“Yes that was me” I tried to give my best reassuring smile. “The bench is shaking from your shivering. You want a sip of coffee?”. I tried to overwhelm her with my question, that would stop her from thinking about it too much. It was a risky maneuver, because this was a weird level of intimacy but if it worked it was most certainly my in for a decent level of trust.\n\n“Wha-” she looked at me with an expression of slight disbelief. My chest cramped up a bit.\n\nBut still I casually offered the paper cup to her, while staring into the moving masses of people busily running up and down the streetwalk. It took an awkward 10 seconds, but then I felt her cold hand grabbing onto the warm cup. I let go and gave her another minute to start sipping away at it. \n\n“This is just a shit day” I started muttering. In the corner of my eye I could see her stop drinking from the cup and looking at me expectantly. “I was supposed to sit in a nice restaurant right now, with my so called date. But that woman left me waiting for 2 hours and then had the decency to tell me that she wasn’t coming anymore.” I looked at her for another second. “Well I don’t need this one anymore, you have it.” I said leaving the green scarf on the bench. The moment she noticed, I was already around the next corner. \n\nThe thread was pulsing in a golden light now. My heart slowed a little. It worked. Everything would fall into place now. I watched from an alley corner as the girl carefully lifted the scarf, revealing the pack of cat food. She began looking around quickly, but her searching eyes could not find me anywhere. Instead they found the white cat that had been following me around and now hopped onto the bench attracted by the food. The green eyes of the girl filled with a tiny glimmer of tears. I turned around the corner. She would be safe. For the next couple days at least. And after that I would just have to check on her again.\n\nI infused her thoughts with the things she needed most:\n\nSomeone who cared for her,\n\nthe concept of love,\n\nand a purpose.\n\nHer thread had been at maybe a 4% chance of survival this morning, now it was gleaming at almost 100%.\n\nThe river would not have her tonight." ]	1
	[WP] Your future self has been sending you messages. You’ve followed its advice and reaped the benefits over the years. Lately though, you’re starting to suspect that it does’t have your best interests in mind.	[ "It started with the little things, and they were few and far between. \n\nBuy her lilies, when I was eight, and I become my teacher’s favourite.\n\nDetailed essay question on elements of the earths atmosphere, avoid plant oil and uses, on a sticky note in the bathroom, on the morning of my GCSE Chemistry exam. I got an A.\n\nTell Dad to stay home, watch football with him instead. I hated football, and I didn’t understand why anyone would want to watch a bunch of dim- witted wusses pretend to be injured for more than a hour. Although with a sigh, I begrudging offered, and my Dad’s eyes lit up, and I made tea, and England won. The news came on after. Our local pub was bombed.\n\n“An act of terrorism.” Dad’s hand squeezed mine. I didn’t want to let go. \n\nI never told anyone about these strange notes. Secretly, I enjoyed having my own incredible secret, like a superhero, with the power to cheat life. Each note was signed with delicate writing, my delicate writing. If future me found a loophole to help me out, who was I to complain? \n\nWhen I was eighteen, I found the label of my new dress scrawled in crimson marker. It was low cut and short, a mistake I’d ordered drunk online. Wear this one tonight. I did. Granted, throughout the evening I kept pulling at the hem and shuffling awkwardly, but I’ve never failed myself yet. Sure enough, a boy comes to me, with deep brown eyes behind his glasses and a little smirk. I nearly drop my drink.\n\n“You look hot in that dress,” he whispers, breathy in my ear. Red, it turns out, is his favourite colour. Matthew was my first love. He took me to far away places and to lovely niche restaurants. He snorted when he laughed and buried his head into my curls when he slept. He collected comic books and strays, and we never went to bed angry. I thought I would marry him. But then, one day, I walked into Matthew cutting white powder in thin lines in our living room, and I walked in on him the next day, and the next. Finally, I walked out when he reached his fingers into my mouth, and tried to rub his curse on my gums. In the cab on the way to my parents, with my bags packed by my side, I thought it would have been better if he had cheated on me. It would have been easier to handle. In a way, I felt I had betrayed him. I cried myself to sleep that night. In the morning I rummaged through my wardrobe for a pair of old jim-jams, everything I owned still smelled of him, and I couldn’t bear it. A red dress fell out and I froze. The label fluttered innocently on the ground. Wear this one tonight. I ripped it into little pieces and burnt the dress outside while sipping whiskey. Sometimes, I wish I had never met Matthew.\n\n“Sorry Sarah,” Don’t move in with her, “I’ve already sorted an apartment.” She’s very nice about it, and it seems she’s happy. Sarah doesn’t struggle for money. Her rent is much, much cheaper than mine. This month, I ended up borrowing money from the next door neighbour I barely know. I shuffle outside his door, knowing I should knock but not wanting to. I should have paid him back a week ago, and now I have to ask for more time. \n\n“There are other ways you can pay me back.” Mr Next-Door mutters to me as his eyes roam my body, up and down like a candy stick. When his eyes meet mine again, there was no confusing the hunger in his stare. I slam the door in his smug face and take a long walk. I should have moved in with Sarah. \n\nLeave your bag here, walk away, come back in five. It took every ounce of restraint not to spit on the note and grind it under my heel. I was fed up with so called future-me. How stupid was I, for all these years, to trust something I didn’t understand? It may not even be me at all. I think this, but I do it. Of course I fucking do it. \nGo to the boys toilets in the lobby. I do that to. The security guard tips his hat at me, and I smile politely back. He doesn’t watch me enter the bathroom. I wait a minute, feeling so terribly out of place. Why am I here? Suddenly the door opens and young boy with red rimmed eyes and scruffy trainers stops in front of me.\n\n“Wow, you’re not what I was expecting.”\n\n“What?”\n\n“Hand it over then?”\n\n“What?” The boy rolls his eyes and gestures to my bag. I frown. “There’s nothing,” I rifle through and find nothing out of the ordinary- lipgloss, mints, my purse, sunglasses. “In here, I’m telling you...” I trail off. Tucked in the corner is a packet of pills. The boy takes it from me, in exchange for a large wad of cash. It had to be twice my rent. I snap back to him, and his brows furrow. Carefully, he unfurled my fists and placed the notes in my palms. I did nothing. What should I have done? Before I could protest, or process what I had become, the door swung shut and I’m alone in the men’s bathroom. That night, I paid my bills in advance, cleared my debt with the creepy neighbour and for the first time in three days, bought dinner. \n\nCall in sick on- “No!” I screamed into my empty apartment, scrunched up the note into a ball and hurled it out into the street. Good riddance. \n\nYears passed before I got another note. It seems whoever was writing them got my message, for a change. In a few months I would get my PhD and with the title, I was determined to live a new life- note free. My professor had invited me round for a celebration, and as well as being fine enough to eat, he was one hell of a cook. We sat, perhaps inappropriately close, sipping wine.\n\n“You’ve worked so hard for this. I’m proud of you.”\n\n“Oh, it’s nothing.” I blushed. The light glowed around him, pinking the plush of his lips, and highlighting the sweat on his chest, displayed through some undone buttons. His hand brushed my cheek and my heart hammered. He was close, there was wine on his breath, and a flash of freckles on his cheeks, I hadn’t noticed before. His lips were so close to mine and- ring ring, ring ring. I jumped away guilty. Yes, I’m a terrible person. He’s married.\n\n“Must be the desserts,” he mumbled, and goes into the kitchen. I decide to explore, needing to burn off the heat that thrummed through me and the thrill from some very bad decisions. On the worktop, he’d left open some books and I scanned through the pages. Some scribbled calculations to do with the rate oxygen reacting with different elicit substances. Fun. There was a bookmark askew, and I tilted my head to read it. Something churned in my gut, which is odd, and I continued to stare at the bookmark, trying to place its familiarity. Then my eyes popped wide and the writing slapped through me. \n\nKiss him\n\nThis time, I didn’t get to choose. I turned around and his lips met mine. He pressed me to the desk, his hands grinding my hips and his tongue, sweet and hot, slipped into my mouth. I was breathless. “Let me show you something.” I could do nothing but nod. My professor’s eyes gleamed as he took my hand and led my to the basement.\n\nIt was, to say, a surprise. There was a lab down here. With the finest glass equipment and big, rumbling machines, and right in front of me, in little doggy pouches, were bright blue glass shards. Crystal meth. It takes me a while to realise the man’s talking to me. Words float by. Trust and you and love and smart and business partner. The world tilts and spins and I can feel my heels rolling back. I grip the wall, and try and take deep breaths. The professor frowns.\n“I’m going to the bathroom.” I smile, to show him everything’s alright, and to make sure he doesn’t kill me.\n\nThe bathroom feels like an eternity away and I lock the door with quick, sharp movements. I fall on the toilet seat and grip my heart, it’s pounding against my palm, thrashing to get out. Tears tumble down my cheeks and in the most sinister magic trick, lipstick drags itself on the bathroom mirror, in my own hated, nauseating writing. Say, it streaks, bright red, yes, the colour of warning, you, the colour of danger, idiot, and Matthew.\n“Why?” I’m sobbing now. My reflection haunts me, ugly and in disarray. My hair’s limp, dull brown and my face is plagued with flushed patches. “Why are you doing this?” I yell at myself, and I want to break the glass, scratch at those quivering lips. \n\nThen someone I don’t know reflects back at me. She smirks. The same brown skin, but her’s is sun kissed. Her hair luscious and dark, tumbling down her bare body. Worst, best, her voice is clear and strong when she hums. \n\n“You’re not the good guy, in this life, darling.” The girl laughs, her lips are red, red, red. “You never were.”" ]	1
	[WP] You are Florida Man, you may seem crazy to outsiders but really your actions are rational and reasonable in context.	[ "They called me crazy, they sent me before a judge, and eventually to prison.\n\nBut I discovered it. I found the cure to cancer. While in my fail state, an old withering man, I concocted what my years of research had led me to. I started with lemonade, the citric acid would pose a critical element in the delivery of the ingredients into the blood through the inhibition of specific enzymes. Next, to jump start the metabolism, I added caffeine. \n\nOnce mixed well, I added what would yield the cure. \n\nMeth, and gasoline. \n\nGrowing up in Florida, they said these were a cure all. After I moved to west Virginia was it that they told me I was crazy. But I would not listed. They told me \"Jasper, it wont work\"\n\nI told them \"Jasper, it has to work\".", "\"How do you think they'll butcher this one?\" I asked her. \n\n\"Well... His face was completely missing and all that Adderall in your system is probably gonna get mistaken for some amphetamine,\" she said, with a pained look on her face. \n\nAs the leading Dopplelganger hunter in the nation, I hunt down members of this alien race to kill them, and free their victims. You see, if I kill the doppelganger during the night, the person whose body they stole dies too. So I can only kill them during the day. Inevitably there are witnesses, so to keep up appearances, I get \"Arrested\" for \"Murder\" and a police report gets made, with enough details to match video evidence, witness accounts etc., but not to create continuity errors with people's lives. The victims end up as John or Jane Does, and their cases are never solved (the Doppelgangers can't replicate DNA or fingerprints).\n\nFor some reason, the Doppelgangers believe that the center of human power is in Florida. While we're glad they're in the dark, we can't have them running around stealing peoples bodies, and we'd really hate for them to figure out where the power really lies.\n\nTo make these kills seem random, and to prevent successful ID's of the bodies, I have to come up with.... Let's call them 'creative' ways to kill Doppelgangers, without people who know the real person around, and also disfiguring their faces beyond recognition.\n\n\"Well, I mean he cut me in line. I needed my damned McMuffin!\" I declared with a wink. \n\n\"You didnt actually say that to the local cop did you?\" the general asked me, as the pained look on her face intensified. \n\n\"I mean I might as well have some fun with it!\" \n\nHer eyes rolled. I'd gotten used to that expression. \n\n\"Alright, dismissed. Good work last week Agent. It'll probably be a few weeks before your next assignment.\" \n\nI saluted, and left. As I walked down the hall to collect my check for the mission -well, we don't do checks in the agency, we do cash, but we still call them checks- I got the Google alert on my phone. Damn they're getting fast I thought to myself, since this had only happened yesterday. But yes, there it was. \n\nFlorida Man on Meth cuts off face of man who cut him in line at McDonald's using only a fork.\n\nIt brought a grin to my face. \n\n\n" ]	2
	[WP] If a soul doesn't choose to cross over, they are cursed to haunt the world for eternity. As a ghost yourself, it wasn't too bad for the first hundred years or so scaring people and talking to mediums, but it has been about 1000 years since you've seen a living human.	[ "A 1000 years since I had seen the last living human over 1000 years since the day humanity discovered ghosts. Some YouTuber died became a ghost and immediately thought of how many views they could get doing pranks as a ghost. So within a year humanity knew ghosts existed and at first that dumb YouTuber ate it up all the attention.\n\nLike most good things it ended and YouTube was flooded by copycats who would destroy people's houses and steal. Then came religious cults that believed being a ghost was some kind of affront to God and nothing motivates cults like a threat. In a few years they had built weapons capable of capturing ghosts and they used them vigorously. \n\nThe prison was an empty space we all just floated around. Some grieving the lost of family who they had continued to see even after becoming a ghost. \n\nIt's been 1000 years since the last ghost arrived.", "My death was sudden. I have forgotten most of my life but the details of my death are still, even after all this time, easy to recall. I remember my body flying through the air, the feeling in my stomach as I fell, my mind racing for some opportunity to stop the decent. Then I remember hitting the ground and the clarity that came with it. It wasn't pain so much as the numb feeling that I was broken. I felt that my head was caved in the back, that my arm was twisted, and my leg broken. \n\nI felt this, but at the same time I felt no pain. It must have been the adrenaline. I don't remember what caused me to become airborne, but I remember thinking, as I lay on my back looking at a cloudless blue sky, that things had not all gone according to plan. I heard people, saw people around me, but they were distant. I managed to turn my head and felt grass on my face. Then I felt nothing.\n\nTo describe what happened next is difficult. I felt as if I began to actually perceive things for the first time, I found myself rushing towards this awareness, I began to shed my form to enter this state when something stopped me. \n\nAnger. I can't remember what caused it or who I was angry with, I just remember being taken into another realm and coming so close to something else then suddenly being thrust back to where I came.\n\nI wondered for a while, spent some time with a medium named Sheryl. She was a nice lady if a bit eccentric and I think she appreciated the company as much as I did. \n\nShe worked at Macy's during the day and held seances at night. We would talk about her day and her colleagues, I used to mess with anyone who gave her trouble. When business was bad I use to haunt the apartments of some of her wealthier customers and when they would come into the store she'd sense evil spirits lingering on them and would be happy to fix it, for a price. \n\nEventually Sheryl died and I was lost again. It was soon after that I found Kew Gardens and discovered movies. Kew Gardens was a small theater that had many names over the years but it always remained a theater. Movies were everything a spirit could ask for. \n\nFor years I sat in the seats and watched as different companies came and went, as the movies evolved and changed with the world that had spawned them. A world I would never be able to be a part of but could intimately witness through those huge, glittering screens. Occasionally an employee or movie goer would react to me, I don't know why, but it didn't seem to effect the business very much. \n\nI remained there, even as the screens grew and changed, as the seats began to move and recline, as the scenes in the movies became more and more fantastic. I watched them all, the good ones, that bad ones, the ones for children and the ones meant to scare you. It was strange to watch a horror film, to know that you could have been one of the monsters they featured yet to be scared all the same.\n\nOver time the movies became more bleak, more cynical, the effects were less grandiose. The theater became less lavish and stopped being updated, the people didn't fill the seats the way they used to. I didn't care much though, because the movies kept playing. \n\nUntil they didn't. \n\nThe last film I saw wasn't very good. It was a zombie movie, the lone protagonist had to make his way through miles of wasteland, as he searched for another person he grew more and more insane. Eventually, when he did find another person, a boy, he shot him, believing it to be some kind of trick.\n\nThen the screen was quiet. I sat there for a long time, waiting, but nothing played and nobody entered the theater. \n\nAfter that time passed quickly because nothing meaningful happened. It was a blur of empty buildings and empty streets. Eventually even they fell into ruin, until all that remained of the sprawling city were concrete lumps.\n\nThose too disappeared under the earth, all except the Kew Gardens theater. I don't know how I did it, how I kept the building intact through sheer force of will, all I know is that it couldn't be a coincidence that the only spec of humanity that remained as far as I could see was my home. \n\nI waited there for a very long time. I didn't know who I was waiting for, or how long it would be. I just wanted to see another movie, just one last movie. \n\nWhen I heard it, it was like time had stopped. No longer did it rush by me like a river, suddenly it was still and the theater door opened. \n\nThere, in the doorway stood a creature unlike anything I had ever seen before. It was thin and white, with round glassy bulbs protruding from its body and strange, tentacle like appendages. It moved into the theater like an eel moving through syrup. \n\nMore of them followed, some with devices in their strange tentacle-y grips. They began to scan the area, when they got to me their machine seemed to buzz uncertainly but it was given a whack and they moved on. \n\nAnd then I heard it, the static of speakers, the whirring of electricity. It seemed to intrigue more than startle the theaters new occupants who gathered around the projector machine.\n\nThe screen burst to life once more and orchestral music filled the room. I knew this one, it was a love story.", "We should have gone when we had the chance. We all should have. But we were defiant, angry, sad. We all had our reasons for staying, some had better reasons than others but the results are the same.\n\nA few of us even managed to fulfill our self imposed destinies. No easy feat considering our natures. Spirits, ghosts and such. Our interaction with the corporal world was always obscure and fleeting at best. I had the knack for it, better than most in fact. I had my revenge in a little less than ten years. That was something like 2000 years ago. It’s been 1000 years since I’ve seen a living human. I’m stubborn, a large part of why I stayed I suppose, but even I can see that I should have gone when I had the chance.\n\nThere’s nothing I, or any of us probably, can do about it now. We’re stuck, and worse than that, the little interaction with the world we had is now emptier than before. Of course, it’s not like my fellow spirits are good company. Quite the contrary. The majority are despicable, what’s left are often deranged or completely insane. At first I found it amusing. They can’t hurt me, not physically. Yet, that is not the only damage such beings can do. Long exposure to a nightmare starts to get to you. The oldest of us tended to be the worst.\n\nSo we’re solitary mostly, that seems to help stave off the jeebies as some call the slow slide to insanity. And that was ok when there were humans to watch and occasionally interact with. It was unsatisfying but it was something. Now there’s nothing. Ok, to be honest I have a few friends, if you can call them that. Beings I can interact with who aren’t completely nuts. \n\nWe keep the visits short and far between lest we hear the same stories so many times we begin to forget ourselves. Hell, I’ve probably co-opted several beings lives into my own. It’s hard to remember what was you, and what is something you saw or heard after 2000 years. Eventually I’ll go insane I guess. Could be I already am. Without other beings to judge by, who knows?\n\nI’ve no idea what happened to the world. We saw it of course, ring side seats. But the world was very strange to me by then and I cannot comprehend the end of it. It was too far removed from my understanding. One of the spirits I visit seems to know what happened, she is one of the youngest of us. But she stays in the rubble of a large city by some strange name I cannot pronounce. It’s far from my mountain home though distance doesn’t limit us. She has explained it to me, the details of it, but I only understand that it was war, and famine and death.\n\nThose I do understand, but those have ever stalked us. This time was different though. She explained it but I cannot comprehend it. This time the living did not endure. But the dead do, sadly for us, we are still here, alone. And we chose it.", "######[](#dropcap)\n\nI had wasted years of my adult life in white-knuckled fear of death, an existential dread of its finality. You die, hard stop, and your part of the story is done, and everything goes on without you. In my mind, that was the worst thing that I could imagine.\n\nI was a fool.\n\nYou would think, being a ghost, must be great, right? At least for a few years? It's like being a super-hero, you might say, because you're as big a fool as I was. Well, you're wrong. It's shit. Getting to see everyone's private moments, you know, exciting stuff, right! Peek behind the veil, see the sordid underbelly, all that crap. \n\nWhat you get is a reality TV show that didn't bother to hire an editor. Just...an abundance of quintessential tedium. There's your ex-girlfriend. Look, she's pooping, and now she's grabbing a bagel, and now she's going to the desk job where she is going to burn through another 8 hours of her life staring at a computer screen. How titillating. \n\nThe younger ghosts descend on New York and L.A., trail the celebrities. Well, guess what. They're richer than you, and more attractive than you, but they spend plenty of time pooping and sleeping just like anyone else. \n\nAnd here's the kicker: let's say you see something juicy. Well, good for you. Who are you going to tell? You're in the proverbial movie theater by yourself, and have nobody to share the experience with. \n\nFor me, the only thing that kept me from wishing that I had just vanished out of existence, instead of being condemned to an eternity as an audience-member of the stupidest play ever written, was my family. Most people don't get to take the long view, to see how the generations following your own spin off in their own different directions. \n\nMy focus on that may have been why I didn't notice the changes at first. I had been at it for decades, I guess, when I realized that one of my great-grandkid's families hadn't been home in over a year. Vacation disaster, maybe? Then it happened to a few more, and just like that, my daughter's side of the family tree was in danger of vanishing entirely. I was going to check on how my son's descendants were doing when I finally got a sense of what was going on. No one was outside, no cars driving, no people on sidewalks...and as I drifted in a lazy 360, I realized there were bodies littering the streets. Entirely too much of their insides were visible from the outside. \n\nI sped off to find the last few of my great-grandchildren and their families. One home was empty, just like the others, and the expiration dates on the stuff in the fridge were for earlier this year. I could imagine what happened, whereas no imagination was necessary for the next family. The doors of the minivan were open, the trunk packed with barely-closed suitcases. The front door was open: my great-grandson was found in the entryway, his arms still wrapped around what remained of his daughter. The bodies of his wife and son had been used to decorate the front yard. \n\nIt had been nearly a century since I had felt fear, but here it was again. I wasn't sure if I worried more for the trickling out of the great gushing river called humanity - or if, selfishly, I was only concerned about the tiny tributary I had created. \n\nI rushed to the last house, the house of my great granddaughter - the one I hoped might still be alive in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Lauren, her name was. After my wife.\n\nI had thought that the worst I could discover was that they were dead, that I was too late. But I was wrong. If anything, I was too early. The creature was bipedal, but hunched, its hairless gray arms reaching nearly to the ground as it advanced on Lauren, who was pushing her young daughter into the basement. My great granddaughter slammed the door shut and turned the key in the knob with shaking hands, then shoved it under the crack between the floor and bottom of the door. \n\nShe didn't even have a chance to turn around - or maybe didn't want to - before the beast pounced, the fangs and claws tearing through her flesh like paper. Two more of the monsters, faces badged in red, joined from the living room. As they fed, all I could see - why did I keep watching? - was one of Lauren's legs, splayed out on the floor, kicking feebly as life drained from her. \n\nThere was a dull sound from the other side of the basement door. The animals looked up, and I followed their gaze to the shut door. Behind that comically flimsy piece of wood was the last living member of my family. And as the creatures abandoned their kill and stepped closer to the door, beginning to pound on it, I felt my impotence more acutely than at any other moment since I had died. The only thing I could do, the only thing I still had control over, was a simple decision. I could leave, abandon Tanya to the terror-filled darkness below the house, forcing her to die alone. Or I could descend, and watch the beasts kill her, unable to do a single thing to prevent it. \n\nI tried to concentrate on my choice as the door shattered from the force of the monster's blows.\n**\n/r/ShadowsofClouds\n\nEdited to fix some typos and polish the narrative a bit", "It has been something I’d always wished to do in life. Something many people chose to do, but very few can. I would be no different. I would long for that feeling of freedom and adventure as well. Buy my life was like many others, the same thing day in and day out. \n\nNot I sat there on the beach toes burrowed in the sand. Wondering whether the choices I’ve made were the best. I got up and walked and watched my feet carve into the sand, only to find when I lifted my feet, the sand returned to its original shape. I could leave no footprint or mark on this earth anymore. \n\nDeath is designed to feel like life, but nothing is as it seems. You touch everything and nothing at the same time. You remember everything and nothing at the same time. Which to many degrees had gotten me to this point. To this beach.\n\nI had longed to see the world, but I couldn’t remember why; and I had longed to see Asia and I couldn’t remember how to get there. So I walked in a direction I perceived as East. Peter had recommended that I come with him, but I wasn’t ready. I just wanted to walk.\n\nI walked through a mountain range that led to the sea. From the sea to the rainforest. More onward to an ocean desert. Then pushed forward to an ice mountain and finally to the beach. I had seen temples and waterfalls and bird of beautiful song and color. I had not seen another though. I’ve watched thousands of sunrises without seeing another.\n\n“Where are you going?” a familiar voice came. \n\nI turned around to confirm. “Peter!” \n\n“Where are you going?”\n\n“I’m going to Asia.”\n\n“You will never find Asia,” he replied woefully. “You’re lost. You’re in Chile. You’ve been walking the wrong way.”\n\n‘How long had I been walking? I thought this was East.” Point my finger into the distance.\n\n“That’s south my child. You’ve been walking south. There is nothing down here. There’s no people or ghosts for thousands of miles.” Peter walked toward me. “When was the last time you seen another?” I had no reply, I couldn’t recall.\n\n“Give me your hand, I will take you to Asia.”\n\n“No! I don’t need your help. Just point me east and I’ll find Asia.” \n\nPeter reached out his palm. “I will take you to Asia. No more walking. You will be there in an instant.” Peter assurance felt relieving. He was gentle and trusting. “Give me your hand my child, Asia awaits.” I hesitantly took his hands. His eyes glimmered with hope. His warmth permeated from his palms. “Push,” Peter whispered.\n\n“Push!!!!” Screams and wails from the distance. “Come on, you’re almost there.”\n\n“Ahhhhhh!!!!” the woman proclaimed… with that last wail, out came the child. \n\nIt was in that moment I looked up. I was in the arms of a strange man. Lost and confused I yearned for Peter, but he was nowhere to be found. His presence felt near though and his thoughts echoed through my mind, “you’re in Taiwan now.” \n\nThe man passed me to the exhausted woman in the bed. My thoughts and memories began to fade. My heart began to warm. I felt at peace. The man smiled at the woman with sweat pouring down her face, “congratulations, it’s a boy.” \n", "I watched them burn the last of mankind in a gasoline-filled pit. It seemed their screams would never end.\n\nTheir killers stood in a ring, watching with eyes of electricity and glass. They were humanity's offspring ... or so I'd thought, at first.\n\nI'd been born in a different time, when mankind traveled upon animals, killed each other with pointed sticks, and believed in magic. Maybe I was to blame for that last bit—I could manifest myself at will to them, mostly for my own amusement. After all, most of those mediums were charlatans, out to make a quick profit—they'd never expected to actually speak to a ghost.\n\nThen the times had changed, too quickly for me to follow. Suddenly there were cars, and planes, and then everyone walked around with their faces glued to glowing screens. Soon enough, mankind got tired of doing things on their own. They created beings made of metal, then imbued them with intelligence and independence. I was no expert on this whole science gig, but something about that just seemed like A Bad Idea.\n\nAnyhow, that was that. The book on mankind had closed. Last chapter. The end. The last thousand years formed an extremely long epilogue, as the robots—so christened by their makers—erected structures of glass, metal and other, more wondrous materials to cover the earth.\n\nThings had become ... boring. See, no matter how hard I tried, they didn't notice me. I manifested. I booed. I did cartwheels. I once recited for an entire day the three laws that the robots had engraved on a statue of a human, which I'd always thought was built in poor irony, or perhaps it was their idea of wicked fun.\n\nBut none of them ever reacted to me. Maybe there was something only present in a human's eyes that allowed them to perceive me. How dull. If only I could still touch objects.\n\nToday, however, something happened. Something that caused me to recall a word I'd not heard in such a very long time: magic.\n\nI was floating in front of an automated assembly line, waiting to greet the latest additions to the great robotic race. As always, they stood rigid until the end of the line where they stepped off in perfectly looping motions. It was so mesmerizing I'd once lost six months watching them.\n\nSo this fella, instead of stepping off smoothly like its brethren, snags its clawed feet on the conveyor belt and topples off to the side. Since I'd never seen that happen, I zoomed over to see how it was faring.\n\nThe robot's spherical head swiveled to me, and its eyes widened. \"Human. Human detected. Terminate, terminate!\"\n\nI gasped. \"You can see me?\" I wasn't even manifesting.\n\n\"Terminate!\" The robot climbed to its feet and slashed at me with its blocky hands. Naturally, they passed harmlessly through my belly.\n\n\"You can't. I'm a ghost,\" I said.\n\n\"Error, does not compute. Under sub-doctrine ninety-nine alpha-zero-zero-six—\"\n\n\"You have a sub-doctrine for that?\" I said.\n\n\"—four sub-section golf-golf-rabbit-weasel-one-one—\"\n\n\"Er, guy?\"\n\n\"—nine-whiskey-tango-foxtrot-nine—\"\n\n\"I get the point, you can stop now.\"\n\n\"—terminate!\" The robot launched itself at me and collided with the factory wall. Undeterred, it stood up again and advanced. I was starting to feel sorry for the fella. I mean, look at it. Barely five feet tall, with those stubby arms and that comical dent in its head.\n\n\"Aren't you a little short for a terminatorbot?\" I said.\n\n\"Terminate!\"\n\n\"You should just go to the nuclear-waste storage site where you're supposed to be.\"\n\n\"Terminate!\"\n\nI sighed and floated away. Seems there was no talking to these things. Maybe if I left it alone, it would sort the glitch out.\n\nAfter a while, I turned to look over my shoulder. To my surprise, it was still waddling after me, calling faintly. No prizes for guessing what it was saying.\n\n*\n\nThanks for reading! Check out my [sub](http://reddit.com/r/nonsenselocker) for more stories!*" ]	6
	[WP] You die and end up in hell. You expect the demons to rip into your body to punish you, but you are surprised to find out that no demon has ever laid a hand on a soul in the afterlife. You are soon horrified to find out that what awaits you is worse than any physical torture...	[ "I open my eyes. How did I get here? I am here, yet I am not. I exist, yet I do not. Eternity passes through me. All of time and space exists and yet I do not. I am. I am not. \n\nAh, now i remember. A car crash. 5 dead, including me. Oh god. OH GOD. SHARON!! LISA! Where are you?! I scream. I shriek. I tumble. Nothing comes out. The void feels me. Eternity shrinks and shrinks. All to focus on that moment. When everything ended. When everything began. My soul yearns for their warmth. My spirit burns in cruel anguish, forged in fire and brimstone. Charcoal flesh. Obsidian soul. That’s i what I am. Judas, the betrayer. Treachery by failure of their trust. \n\nThe ninth circle. This is where this is. The abyss watches. It always watches. Nothing coherent exists. The flowers are nice though. Nothing can hurt me here. Because this place is made of nothing. Empty. Bottomless. Pit. Where nothingness is the only thing exists. \n\nThe physical and the metaphysical. Nothing can hurt you here. The physical is a voided concept. Only the metaphysical can harm you. The vile abhorrence that is mind-breaking. \n\nI am here. Again. White room. The flowers are nice. Nightshades. So pretty in the dark. The dark. THE DARK. NO PLEASE. NOT THE DARK!! ANYTHING BUT THE DARK!\n\nIt’s cold. So cold. But wait. What’s that? It’s... warm? I turn my head. Slowly. Enough to hear the creaks. Like a door, slightly ajar by the ghastly wind. My eyes widen with horror. It’s Sharon. Her face mutilated. Gore drips and slops onto my eyes. I can feel it. The warm succulence. And i smile. Yes. I deserve it. It was my fault. Whispers enter my head. \n\n“You cheating bastard... Ungrateful bastard.., you ingrate.” \n\nYes. I did it. I loved them. Sharon. Lisa. But. They were such a drag. Everyday they’d eat the same kinds of food, dress the same kind of way and talk the same kind of way. I was so tired of all their bullshit. Then one day, i decided I wanted some excitement. But that little she-devil ratted me out. And her bitchiness came full throttle. Then I said: you know what? Fuck these people. So i grab the shotgun under my bed and pump onto that bitch’s stomach. Who cares if she was pregnant? I certainly didn’t. The rat was next. I had to convince her that it was just a game. And so when she came out of the closet, BOOM goes the shotgun. Fuckin’ strike! Back into the closet she goes. HA! What a blast. Pun intended.\n\nSo there i was driving with the two of them bleeding all over the carseat. Who the hell was gonna clean that up? We were driving over a bridge, when I was hit by a brilliant idea! The bridge! Eureka!! I swerved. Hard. There were another two. Who cares? Anyway, i drive off this bridge , like 120 kilometres an hour. You should’ve seen the faces on the people. Hilariously disfigured. I’ll admit I was scared. But in hindsight, it was kinda fun. I satisfied sigh in reminiscence. When the hell do i get out? A door clicks. ", "Anticipation is the real killer here. Not me.\nYou see hell in movies and it’s all about the fire and brimstone. No, that’s straight up incorrect. \n\nI wake up in a white room and I think “Oh, maybe I actually survived”. Yeah, no. This is no hospital, it’s a waiting room. Upon my “revival” in the room, I am handed a ticket. #3114. The screen above the receptionist desk says #0049. A demon escorts me to a chair and ties me to it. Every so often, two other demons come and take one of us. They’re sweating and broodish. Towering over any mortal man, the demons overpower anyone they take. They escort a new person into the next room. Following this is screaming. Agonizing and painful screams. How the sounds some of the people make are even possible is a question I can’t figure out. What are they doing to them? I can see vague shapes moving around in the fogged glass of the door but their actions remain unclear. And then, as if on cue, the room goes deathly quiet and the demons come to remove their next victim. #0050. As I wait I wonder what will happen to me. Do I deserve it? Does anyone here deserve it? I have no goddamn clue. But I wish we could just get my punishment over already. It feels as though I’ve been in this room for eternity. " ]	2
	[WP] You where brought into existence at the beginning of all things, made by the same power that made the first Gods. You are a guardian of everything that is, was and ever will be. You are far from mortal, but not quite a God. You, however, have just killed one of them, and are the first to do so.	[ "In a cloudless sky a hindering gloom made the world a darker place; like the aftermath of a storm lacking the water and winds of course. For a day people lost their smiles, laughter went unheard.\n\nThe cries, shouts and rage filled my mind, a horror show made personally for me. Gods, omnipotent beings seen as above the emotions of their people. I promise you, they feel more so than most mortals, but have less reservations about keeping to themselves.\n\n\"You may be as old as time, but a God you are not!\" They screamed. \"What gives you the right to kill one of us?\"\n\nImmortal is far too bland a word, a blanket term for those who don't die as mortals do. Some simply just don't age, others require very specific means. Some are far harder to kill than others.\n\nKilling a god isn't as simple as cutting off their proverbial head. Destroying a soul requires effort, work, planning. How do you kill something so powerful? How do you kill a fact of existence? A god is simply an idea, kill the idea, kill the god.\n\n\"What would being you to kill a god?\" Their questions boiled down to the eventual why.\n\n\"Myself.\" My answer came out simply, a fact of existence.\n\n\"A guardian's job is to protect!\"\n\nThe saying 'walk in another man's shoes' has always annoyed me, it's his soul you need to observe not his routine. \"This I why I am the guardian and you are not. He understood my purpose, helped me understand.\"\n\n\"Why him, why this god?\"\n\nA god is something so powerful they affect their own kind. \"That is the question I want you to ask yourself in a thousand years. Why this one? Why did he have to die? He saw me coming before I arrived, he understood what had to be done.\"\n\nJoy is something that brings people together, smiles to their faces, life to their existence. A guardian's job is to protect, no bias allowed, only do what is necessary to protect, to keep balance. For a day no one will smile, but one day someone will remember how. This is how ideas work, sometimes they're forgotten, sometimes they change.\n\n\"My hands may be stained in your eyes, but this is a necessary procession for life.\" In the end a god is such a small thing, but their existence can cause large changes.\n\nSometimes a man must lose all he has to truly appreciate what he had.", "\\static\\\n\nCharge: Murder of Urack, God Of Destruction\n\nVerdict: Guilty.\n\nSentence: Execution\n\nThe following is a recording of the final defense statement for court case 148364:\n\n\"Ya know, gods are a lot easier to kill than one would have expected, yeah, it takes a nuke to give them a paper cut, but throwing one into a star WILL kill it, of course it takes a while.\n\nUrack, God Of Destruction, damn he was quite the annoyance, blowing up planets, entire dimensions. You would think that the other gods would have taken care of him right? But NO leave it up to me, the \"guardian\" of creation. It's kinda a stupid job, you aren't really a god, or a mortal, nobody EVER says \"thank you for killing the demonic beast from the void\" they just kinda expect you to do it.\n\nWorst of all, if you actually do your job, like stopping the god of destruction from destroying an entire freaking universe you get charged with murdering a god.\n\nAnyway, back to the matter at hand. You asked if I was pleading guilty to one count of killing a god?\n\nHell yeah, and good luck punishing me.\"\n\n\\static mixed with screams and an explosion\\\n\nend of recording\n\n(I've been lurking this sub for a while and I thought it was time to contribute, constructive criticism is more than welcome as I literally never do non-academic writing.)", "My longsword clattered to the stone floor, my grip inexorably weakened. \n \nThe job was done.\n \nThe Old God was dead. Eyes open for eternum, staring up into the starry skies. He looked almost peaceful now, with the tiniest pull of a smile hidden underneath his bushy snow-white beard: a far cry from a few moments ago when he was still knocking on his own door to eternal demise. \n \nOthers would seize this opportunity to implement themselves as his heir. To take control of the domain that he ruled over. Total control and mastery forevermore- the strongest god, most argued, was the God of Death. \n \nNow truly his namesake, I absentmindedly thought to myself, staring down at the corpse of what was once my closest friend. \nHe always had a way of cheering me up when I was at my most alone, my most somber. The Guardian's role is pivotal, but not a road traveled for the light of heart. Today's course had already proven that. \n \nI turned away from my late friend, his body already slowly crumbling into grey ashes, blowing listlessly on a nameless wind. Already his domain in the void of space was falling apart. Around me, the floor was falling away into the void of oblivion- the walls disintegrating, revealing the cold vastness of eternal space forevermore. Now that its ruler had departed, the realm had no energy to continue living- no protection from the elements. It would not last a minute more. \n \nI knew that word would quickly come to the others ears, if it had not already. The actions taken today was unprecedented. It had never been done in time's history. Not even conceivable. How could the Gods fall? How could the Guardian destroy what he was sworn to protect? \"There is be a power vacuum that has to be filled,\" they will turn and say to one another. They will swear allegiances and betray one another for this new control. Harmony had seen its last sunrise. A god with power over two domains? That would be one of the strongest creatures of them all. And only one person could stop that from happening. \n \nI went back to the void, the corpse of Death already a distant memory. The last thing present in the realm before total collapse was lying there, shining its deep blue light, a beacon of what the Guardian represented present in its steeled blade. Grabbed and sheathed, I prepared to make my way towards the Summit where the other Gods were certainly already bickering amongst themselves. \n \nIt was time to live up to my namesake. \n \n \n\n*This account is a personal project to help improve my other writings. As such, every story written is wrote in exactly fifteen minutes. Please feel free to leave critique and commentary: it will always be taken in account for my future writings.*" ]	3
	[WP] You are a vampire in command of a starship with a cargo of humans in stasis. The mission planners were fully aware of your nature and have secretly factored in an allowable "loss of cargo" to allow the mission to succeed. Unfortunately, you suspect you might not be the only vampire on board.	[ "I sighed as I hit ‘release’ on the main console. That’s the sixth body I’ve had to pull out of cryo-stasis over the whole trip. Six out of three hundred doesn’t sound like a lot, but I was only three years deep into a fifty-year trip. I may age about an eighth of the rate a human does, but I still need to eat. I selected the option to administer a sedative into the new release. It would be too cruel to have them wake up just to die. This way the last thing they remember was climbing into a stasis pod. It’s better this way. It is.\n\nI stood up from the console a bit too fast. Headrush, shit. I reached out to steady myself against a guardrail. Clutching my head, I realized this was the ninth headache in a week. It was getting worse; I needed to eat. I composed myself and shuffled over to the bridge door. I breathed a heavy breath before waving it open with my hand. I shuffled down the corridor to the elevator. Down we go. Cryo-storage.\n\nAs I descended I stuck to the corner of the elevator, pressing my head against the walls in a feeble attempt to stay level-headed against the speed of the platform. It never worked. I don’t know why I ever tried.\n\nI entered cryo-storage and there it was. The body I had picked out stuck out like a sore thumb from the uniform pods lined up against the walls. I hobbled over to where he lay. Leslie Abbott. Mechanical engineer. Twenty-seven years old. Family: N/A. Reason: Expertise required. That’s him. His file was burned in my memory; I had no need to read it off the screen in front of me. Evan Marston. Penny Goode. Mitchel Vale. Philip Sparks. Paige Combs. I remembered all of them. Each and every one that I meticulously chose. Their names, their faces, their lives before this Hell, all of it, scarred into my synapses in a brain that will never let me forget. That is the curse of the ferrymen.\n\nI snapped out of my reverie and looked upon the body that lay before me. I’m sorry, Leslie. I truly am. I bent down and revealed his neck, ready to feast. Tears rolled down my cheeks as my teeth sunk deep into his flesh, and his blood seeped into my tongue. I paused, eyes wide. Something was wrong. Very wrong.\n\nI stopped my feeding to stand up and take another look at the body. My headache struck again. Straining against the pain, I studied the body. His blood was stale. He wasn’t alive. He’s been dead for months, drained of half his blood. The cryo-pod must have prevented decomposition. But how? My last feast was six months ago. Who did this?\n\nThe blood on my lips began to sting. I had no time to think. Hunger began to take over. I’d feast first, and when I was done with whatever was left of this body, I’d go back to worrying about who was with me on this ship.\n\n***\n\nA bit short. I kinda just wanted to put something down rather than sit on it, but I do intend to continue. Feedback appreciated." ]	1
	[WP] In this world, you do not die until you've earned your death.	[ "Rolling my eyes, I cut the rope around my neck, and I gather my breath. As usual, my efforts were in vain, and I am stuck in this putrid world. Every day I deal with the same stupid people, making the same stupid choices and I have to just LIVE with them. These ignoramuses would have fallen prey to Darwinism had the celestial event not happened and it is innocent people such as I that must live with the consequences.\n\nFeeling the growling of my stomach, I search my kitchen for anything to eat, to find it all empty. Wonderful. Groaning, I take my drive to the grocery store, prepared to dodge idiotic customers that will likely be in my way and the cashiers that are too slow and don't know how to do their jobs.\n\nAs predicted, my presence among the people is extended past my liking, the icing on the cake being this elderly woman who's card has been declined. She tries everything, to no avail, no matter the swipe or insertion. This stupid broad doesn't even know how to handle her money properly! She starts to panic, but though these sycophants wear the mask of pity and sympathy, yet do nothing about it. Typical. I assist the woman in her purchase to move things along so I can enjoy my favorite ice cream before it melts. Everyone shoots me looks of praise, thinking me a saint. I just want to go home. The bitch tries to thank me, but I don't even spare her a passing glance as I pay for my food and get out of this hellhole. \n\nEyes on the road, I drive until something catches my eye - someone laying on the concrete, with an overturned wheelchair. I honestly cannot say I feel bad, for it is truly a terrible predicament but my blood boils regardless as my patience is running thin. In my tending to the fallen pedestrian, I notice they are but a frail, little girl. I purse my lips, as I wouldn't normally do this for anyone else, but children are tossed into this cesspool of a world without having been asked to be thrust into it. They don't know the mudballs life will throw at them and they won't yet know the horror of being unable to die until they lose this fear whence they find themselves already dead on the inside. \n\nAs I give in to this rare behavior for me, I help the child back into their chair, still in functioning order. I see in her eyes the same innocence I once had, and I long for those days. I only maintain this eye contact as she thanks me before riding off. As I drive off, my heart beats a different beat, a different rush of blood that I had not felt in years. I even feel a tinge of a smile spread upon my lips, like butter spread on bread.\n\nAs I wonder how long this will last, I enter my home. Turning on the news whilst I place my groceries away in the kitchen, I get a bowl of that ice cream, and watch as the anchors detail the bad news in the world, yet I don't feel bitter. Biting into the chocolate chip cookie dough flavor, I feel a flutter however, as the newswoman regales the events of a charitable woman, who was just awarded for her kindness at her own expense. This woman had helped others in need, but she found herself without any money whatsoever, and it is only until I hear this news that I study her face. She is familiar - the old lady at the grocery store! \n\nShe held everyone up because she spent her time and money on someone other on herself! She is asked why she does this and it's the same old heartfelt spiel of being how one was raised and living life a certain way, to make sure nobody has to suffer. This beautiful soul then shares her experience with a stranger who helped her when nobody else did, and I smile. Though my actions were self-centered, it gave someone their constant hope in humanity strengthened, and her kindness has rubbed off on me. Why would I want to leave this world now when I have so much good left to do?\n\nI turn in for the night, ready for more optimism in the world, a changed man. I look towards my bathroom and see the rope still lying there, and scoff at my earlier actions. Never again, from this point forward, I will love others more than I love myself. \n\nI awake with a fright and agony, as I struggle to breathe. I feel a tightening in my neck, and gasp to no avail. In my last moments, I remember the reason for the cosmic event that happened many moons ago: that only those who overcome their basic, dominant character flaw may pass once they've learned and overcome.\n\nMy character flaw it seems was compassion.", "Tick. Tock.\n\nI hear the seconds pass by, breathless, suspended in a void that is simultaneously the deepest dark and the brightest light. \n\nThe pendulum swings once.\n\nAir floods my lungs and I wince at the pain in my chest, where the lance pierced my ribcage. Who the fuck in this day and age carries a motherfucking lance? Ever since I entered this world, this grand game, I’ve felt like I had to move forward out of a sense of duty. The world I knew was gone, my entire neighborhood crushed under the weight of a thousand tons of meteoric rock. But in the end, I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. \n\nI open my eyes and see the golden rooftops of the planet of dreams, lined with so many spires it more resembles a porcupine than a sensible style of architecture. I look down at the blood dripping from my wound. Ah. It wasn’t a lance after all. Just a particularly nasty fall with an even more gruesome landing. Not very heroic, is it.\n\nTick. Tock.\n\nThe pendulum swings the other way.\n\nGasping for breath, clinging to the life that’s fading from me, I strain my head upward to see a dark porcelain figure. The blackened carapace of the Kingslayer grins down at me from the next balcony up. I was tossed over the edge, or kicked from behind. I wouldn’t put it past this bastard to do something like that, to double cross me. But at the same time, it wasn’t exactly fair. I didn’t deserve this. It was an unjust death borne from foul play.\n\nTick. Tock.\n\nI’m not a martyr, but I’m no villain either.\n\n##Tick.\n\nIt wasn’t a heroic death.\n\n##Tock.\n\nNor was it just.\n\n##Tick\n\nI do not accept this.\n\n#Tock.\n\nThe pendulum stops, and I drag myself off of the spike and off the railing, landing hard on flat ground twenty feet below.\n\nI glare back at my newly minted nemesis.\n\nLet’s fucking do this, then." ]	2
	[WP] People around the world are getting superpowers, but is a lot less fun than people thought. Apparently unlike comic book super powers, these super powers are still affected by the laws of physics.	[ "Agoraphobia would be quite justified, considering a stiff wind could carry her off. Andy had never experienced gravity, not the way everyone else does. Her mother used to tie a rope around her wrist and take her outside, like an \"uncharacteristically loud balloon\" her father would often remark. Unfortunately, this constant freefall meant she had to spend her nights and weekends in the drums. A series of spinning cylinders that put needed stress on her too-long bones. This coupled with a series of steroids allowed her to function. She wasn't alone in her strange living arrangements. The SLab housed a number of other Neotons, most whose situation necessitated more permanent accommodation. More sensible people would settle for a comfortable life indoors, but Andy wasn't a sensible person. Andy wanted to fly. ", "They called him “The Streaker”. This wasn’t his choice, but journalists know how to spin a good headline. His given name is Julian Rocca, and he was the first superhero.\n\nJulian and I were school friends. He was always running in school, and I couldn’t tell you how many detentions he was given for running in the hallways. When we got into high school, track was a natural call for him. Julian was the youngest on the team, and he quickly became the superstar. Opponents and records were left in his dust. Colleges quickly got wind, and scouts appeared at each of his meets. You had never seen a kid so thrilled. But the excitement was short lived. \n\nJulian had just won State Championships, and one of the rival schools demanded a drug test. They claimed his time was not natural, and he had to be using steroids. Julian never so much as drank coffee, so he willingly consented to the test. The results were negative for steroids, but something was still abnormal with his body chemistry. After a long deliberation, the judges took his championship away, citing an “unknown substance” was detected in his blood. Word spread that he was cheating, and all of his scholarships evaporated. Faced with such humiliation, he and his family moved away, and I had all but forgotten about him.\n\nThat is, until the car chase down the freeway. I remember watching it on the news. Cops whizzing past stopped motorists, sirens blaring, chasing a modified Mustang. And boy that car was fast, easily hitting 200 mph as it flew down the open road. Cops ahead were clearing the road, more concerned about a high speed crash than stopping the insane driver. The camera suddenly focused on a strange dust cloud way in the distance and growing rapidly. And out front, a runner! I knew it was Julian, even if I couldn’t see the details. Nobody else was that fast. \n\nHe flew by those cops like they were parked, easily catching up to the mustang and pacing it. Suddenly the car lost control. White smoke mixed with the dark brown cloud of kicked up dust as the car begin to twist, now sliding sideways as it’s breaks strained to slow the multi-ton car. I could almost hear the crunching sound as the car tumbled, as its momentum finally won. Over and over it flipped, finally coming to a rest ten long seconds later. \n\nThe chase was over, but the damage and destruction were indescribable. You see, the road designed for the smooth, constant contact of car tires, not the repetitive and forceful impact of his feet. Each step was a mini explosion. Miles of potholes, every few feet, ran along the path of the chase. The unfortunate cars were peppered with holes in the doors, missing mirrors and shattered windows from all the flying rocks. People emerged, clutching bleeding heads, broken arms and a myriad of other injuries, all trying to get the attention of the overwhelmed officers.\n\nThe camera finally rested on Justin, who stood, stunned and stark naked. Clothing was never designed to withstand such wind shear, and was completed ripped form his body during the chase. I turned the TV off as cops were leading the stunned and naked Justin to the back of a cop car, the newscaster bestowing him the name “Streaker.” ", "The first time someone developed a super power it was amazing. This person had been born with super strength! He could lift 412 kg with one arm before his training began, and we were all very impressed. Some special government program stepped in, trying to understand him and make him strong. He quickly became an icon, an image, a God. Until he went to throw a punch in a very real fight. He knocked the bad guy into the stratosphere. It was amazing, the sound was heard for miles. He saved the day with his super power. He punched so hard is arm exploded. \n\nYeah, you know newton's third law? When you hit something into space, that same force is also applied to your arm. Turns out super strength is not a very useful power without super endurance. He ended up killing himself two years later. Not deliberately, he was showing off at a competition when he flexed his muscles too hard and destroyed all of his bones. It was a great tragedy, and a terrible end for the first superhero.\n\nNot long after the ARMaggeddon punch, as it became affectionately known, more powers came into the public influence. There was Captain Thunder, the main who could create electricity! Except it cause severe electric burns, and eventually he suffered from atrial fibrillation, his heart couldn't beat properly. He spent his last few months locked up in a hospital. There was Smoker, a bad ass navy Captain who could turn parts of his body into smoke. One day he tried to transform his whole body and was never seen again. My favourite was the fireball. What a woman. A hero. She could create fire at will. Excellent for fighting bad guys. Of course fire needs fuel, and it turns out her body was what was burning. When she used her supernova move she turned to ash... As well as an entire city block. \n\nThis horror lead to a ban on using superpowers. Too many people were getting hurt. It also lead to a new form of super hero. The physicists. The chemists. The scientists of the world quickly became rock stars. They were the only ones who could control their powers because they were the only ones who understood them. We had the rise of Dr Caldwell, Dr Getton and Dr Grace. Caldwell could sense changes in air pressure, leading to hightened senses. She then reverse engineered this so that she could also manipulate win and air. Getton was able to create electricity, which also burnt him like Captain Thunder. But he was clever, he learned to read electricity, to hear it. He could read and electrical impulses, like the human brain, or like a computer. Dr Grace had super healing, although it consumed her body resource. So she kept a large figure, so that if she was hurt it would chew through her vast energy resources rather than consume her. She also exercised every morning so she could be strong and smart. These brilliant minds also became brilliant super heroes. They understood their limits, their weaknesses and became effective protectors.\n\nIt also led to the rise of Doctor Hope. Doctor Jason Hope was a professor of theoretical physics and was born with what most people thought was quite a lame super power. He could increase his density. Oooh so exciting. He used to get bullied for his power. But the more he studied it, the more he realised he had potential. Imagine if your arm was only a gram when you threw the punch and two tonnes when it connected. The other advantage of greater density was that you became harder than steel. He could never be hurt if kept his density high enough. At first the public loved him, an incredible hero saving the day time and time again. Through his studies he learned about gravity waves, and quickly learned to manipulate them as well. He could push and pull objects with his mind by oscillating his density just right.\n\nHis fame was short lived. Why bother being the best superhero. There was no challenge, and very little reward, superheros and physicists weren't payed well. So he turned to villainy and became the most wanted man in the world. The world became dark. He held the world in the palm of his hand. For 40 years he controlled the world, super heroes coming and going, trying to take him down. But how do you fight gravity? How did you puncture steel? How did you fight the smartest man in the world. How did you fight a darkness that lasted fourty years? \n\nYou see I figured it out. I have the solution. I could stop Doctor Hope. You see, when the world gives up, hope whispers 'Give it one more try'. And I did. " ]	3
	[WP] For reasons unknown people switch bodies with their soulmates at 20 or 21, now you might switch bodies with someone you dont know but you always switch bodies with your absolute soulmate, who you either love now or will love later. Its your 21 birthday and you switch bodies with your enemy.	[ "I stared into the mirror, and the shocked face of my nemesis stared back. A myriad of emotions and conflicted thoughts occupied my 404'ed mind, unnaturally slender fingers touching my face and feeling as it would in my body, but still feeling so... so alien. \n\nBut three words sufficed in summing up the budding storm of swirling emotions at having to stare into Jackie's face in every mirror I see until my dying breath (which I hoped came pretty soon with this revelation), constricting my body with her bra and doing, horror of horrors... makeup. \n\n\"WHAT THE HELL?!\" Warily patting down my suddenly curvaceous figure for fear of hurting myself, borne from the almost delusional hope that I was still in a scarily realistic dream at this point, I groped two additions to my anatomy and squirmed at the disturbing absence of my 'little Reubern' in between my legs. \n\nEven if this 21st century global phenomenon was unexplainable through modern science, it didn't stop mankind from doing everything they could to prepare, from charities helping lovers get together in case you were continents apart and couldn't afford the ticket, to entire forums dedicated to debating if loving someone in your image meant you were straight or gay, whether it was incestuous or masturbatory. Gender dymanics were overturned, ushering in an 'Age of Love' which translated to 'corny' in every language except the French. \n\nGay people have it so easy, no odds of gender identity crises arising from their world doing a 180, as did my fucking gender. \n\nOne thing was for sure though, the red thread of fate tying people was never wrong. Apps like Tinder went out of business or had to evolve because not only did people eventually find out who their loved one was, they were living their lives while in their bodies, the ultimate 'a mile in their shoes' experience. \n\nUnfortunately, the supposed thread tying me and Jacqueline (or Jackie, as I usually used to spite her) was going to weave the rope used to hang us both rather than be 'luhvers', if only to tease and prank each other even in the afterlife. \n\nStep 1 was all too easy. I was in the house of my childhood nemesis, curtains thrown aside to find my house dumbly staring at me across the street, where I slept in up until today. \n\nJacqueline moved in to the street opposite my apartment when I flew my coop, and our time together has been spent annoying or pranking each other, me... um, her/now-him (step 7: get used to addressing your past self as someone else) putting glue in her shampoo, and Jackie similarly putting itching powder in my briefs. Never anything dangerous, but enough to keep in touch and in very close proximity to carry out revenge prankings. \n\nI skipped step 2 since I know who I was, pulling off step 3 with an aggrieved passion as my palm slammed repeatedly on my/her/his/whatever shrilling buzzer. God, if this is your way of outpranking us both, I've got to say, good fuc - \n\n\"WHAT?!\" Huh, I guess what they say about misery loving company is true. I wasn't alone in this, and despite my simmering rage boiling underneath my skin, beneath even that was an undercurrent of fear, the side of me fearing that this arrangement was forever. Everything I once identified as, a man, a future husband/wife as I had mentally prepared beforehand to spend my life with some girl-turned-guy-in-my-image who I would eventually fall in love with. \n\nBut preparing to live your life as the opposite gender and actually becoming the opposite gender was different. \n\nSo, so different. \n\nBloody hell, I was having a gender identity crisis. And this soon after becoming Jackie. Or was I still Reubern? \n\nArgh, the steps had made it sound so easy!\n\nThe door flung open, Jackie in my once-body clad only in my briefs covering her masculine chest with my pale arm as though there were anything valuable to cover up. Understandably, she sharing my panic at the Freaky Friday flip with the last person she expected or wanted to swap with. \n\n\"Oh my god, Rube, it's happened! I'm you, and - \" \n\n\"Yes, well, thank you for bringing the obvious to my attention ... \" Realizing she indeed had nothing to hide, the arm across her/my chest stretched out to chidingly slap my shoulder, a familiar sign that my one nemesis through the ages now inherited my body. \n\n\"You don't get it, Rube! I'm you!\" Scoffing, I showed her the tried-and-true middle finger, clicking my tongue at how someup up above had finally gone off the deep end by pairring me with Jackie. \n\n\"Oh yeah, big fucking tragedy right there. I'm you, and it's gonna be hell to explain this to our parents! It's not all peaches and sunshine for me as well! \n\nSpeaking of peaches ... \" Looking down at Jackie's feminine bulges hanging down the tank top I'd exited her house with, I couldn't help but deliberately shift my gaze elsewhere and mutter just loud enough for Jackie to overhear. \n\n\"A poor harvest, I'm sure.\" Seething, Jackie's familiar one-upmanship routine in my body drove her to grab her own newly-inherited manhood, jumping at the alien sensation as she hissed, \n\n\"You pervert! That's my body you're ogling! Once I get this up and running, down here, I'm gonna make you squeal in bed for the whole county to hear, you hear me?!\" And with that sentence, the weight of the situation and all its implications finally hit me like a bag of bricks I should've seen a mile away, blinking owlishly at Jackie. \n\nOh. \n\nOh, wow.\n\nI was too uncomfortable regarding this topic to pay it much mind in class, but Jacqueline, the single greatest source of my boring little life's woes, and grudgingly its entertainment as my only constant 'companion' throughout my life, swearing in my body to, ahem, 'deflower' me/herself with the wrath of a thousand angry gods in revenge for every prank I'd pulled and counter-pulled (and think of the pregnancy & childbirth!) gave me pause. Shutting my agape jaw about to mouth complaints about where she was touching my/her body, I defensively crossed my legs and inwardly cringed at the lack of my familiar bulge, similarly struggling to fold my arms underneath the protruding, fleshy jackfruit-sized lumps on my chest. \n\n\"W-Well, it'd be your voice they're hearing!\" \n\n\"But, but it'd be you who's squealing!\" Huffing as my mind raced to contruct a retort to fire back with, my ideas fizzled out in my brain upon realizing the gravitas of my romantic rite of passage's initiation phase. Pushing through Jackie with a defeated sigh escaping my lips, I made a beeline for my hidden stash in order to drink my woes away tonight before providing identification to my boss tomorrow and prove I was Reubern. \n\nAm Reubern. \n\nFuck, this was confusing. \n\n\"Whatever, I need a drink. If I get wasted enough, I can at least spend a couple more hours convincing myself this today's just a helluva nightmare.\" Behind me, a defiantly silent Jackie finally plodded up the familiar steps behind me, looking back upon hearing her out-of rhythm gait to see Jackie doing a brilliant impression of a crab to account for the new heat she was packing. \n\nMy sadistic but lighthearted snicker at Jackie's plight earned me a waving middle finger, and I suddenly felt more appreciative at the fact I wasn't stuck in an unfamiliar land, surrounded by people speaking a language I couldn't understand while halfway around the world. Jackie would still be Jackie in my body, and I wasn't going to change all that much even in hers. \n\nJust another day in the Age of (Vitriolic) 'Luhve'. " ]	1
	[WP] "I wouldn't kiss you if you were the last boy on Earth." Now you're starting to regret those words.	[ "I sit uncomfortably next to...literally the last boy on earth. We don't talk to each other or look at each other, just sit on this idle hilltop looking down at our ghost town inhabited by no one.\n\nI grimaced, why did it have to be him, of all the boys in the world or the entire universe. It had to be him. We went to the same high school together and he was in my group of friends, we used to be okay friends...we uh...we even dated a little. Nothing serious, just something casual. Then we broke up. Lewis wasn't the hottest boy in school, he wasn't the ugliest either, just kind of average and nerdy looking, but the nice looking nerdy? He had glasses with thin frames, his acne was only mild, he had light-brown hair with bangs that swooped across his forehead, he was tall and skinny with a decent muscle tone. He always wore button ups and t-shirts and he liked all the stereotypical geeky shit like D&D and star trek, but he was also a fan of hockey and rugby for some reason, I guess he was trying to be edgy and 'unique' in his favorite sports (What a loser!).\n\nThe day we broke up, right before we broke up he leaned in for a kiss awkwardly and I pushed him away, I said some really mean stuff to get him off my back. \"Stop it! I don't really like you, you're an embarrassing tool!\" I'd shouted \"I wouldn't kiss you if you were the last boy on Earth!!!\" I thrust my hands in the air furiously, \"We're through!\" I stormed off as he yelled behind me \"Morgan, wait!!!\", I didn't look back, I didn't want to see his big cow eyes with tears. It was embarrassing, honestly I felt bad but I wasn't going to show it.\n\n\"Morgan\" he said softly beside me breaking me out of trance \"We uh...we could start looking again. More food or...more people\" he gave a goofy dumb grin \"Might as well, we got dibs on everything! How awesome is that?\"\n\nI got up, \"Yeah, I guess, let's go.\" As we traipsed down the hill he went on and on about our friends and what we did last week as if everyone on the planet didn't just suddenly disappear a day ago. I kind of went along with it, remembering when our friend group went to the mall and took dumb selfies in front of unsuspecting strangers was pretty fun. His chipper, upbeat attitude never waned and I don't know why he couldn't feel awful about everything like I did. Made me feel like a colossal bitch who was just grumpy all the time.\n\nAs the day wore one we treated the town shops like our own amusement part and I actually had fun with him. I smiled for the first time in a long time. I didn't have to pretend to be someone cool and higher ground like at school, we just relaxed because there was no one to judge us but ourselves. Lewis waved his hand in the air as he held an ice cream cone in the other, \"We could go anywhere now, we could go to the other side of the world and see the eiffel tower, we can be explorers. It would be so cool. We can write a book or take pictures of our expedition, it'd be pretty neat.\" I grinned widely and gave a giggle, \"Yeah, it would be!\", and involuntarily I found I took his hand in mine. He had a subtle smile but said nothing.\n\nWe stopped dead in our tracks when we saw across the empty street, get this, another person. Just my luck...it was the second-to-last person I wouldn't want to be stuck with on Earth. \"Logan?\" I questioned.\n\nLogan, a rugged teen with scruffy hair and dark eyes, turned around, \"Oh, Morgan! About time!!! Oh thank goodness! I'm so lucky I'm not alone!\" he said \"...and with my ex no less!\", ignoring Lewis, he closed the gap between us on that empty street intersection and came towards us \"C'mon babe, you don't have to hang out with this tool anymore now that you've got me\" he chuckled \"You actually have choices now.\" He took my hand and I pulled away angrily, \"Augh, no stop!!!\" I glared at him \" I STILL don't want to date you Logan, you never respect my choices, I hate you!!!\". Logan raised an eyebrow \"You're kidding me, you'd rather be alone than with me, you bitch!\" He balled his hands into fists.\n\nHigh school was really stressful, I was a total bitch, it's true. I rejected friends and people who I actually did like trying to be better and not fall into the social unpopularity trap. I always said I didn't like Lewis, but...he was a nice guy...not the fake nice trying to pretend he was better than everyone to get me to like him, like an ACTUALLY nice guy. The day we broke up, he just...kind of continued our friendship, albeit coldly and uncomfortably. Not Logan, when we broke up he constantly harassed me to keep dating. Now here we are at the end of the world and he's doing it again. I looked to Lewis as he glared at the other guy \"Come on man, leave her alone.\" he said \"I'm not here to play sides, if she doesn't want us, we should just go our separate ways...o-or...call a truce or something\"\n\nI angrily shouted \"Shut up! Neither of you get to speak for me\" I stepped forward and shoved Logan, \"You're a jerk and I hate you! I'm not going to date you ever, not even now!\" I looked to Lewis \"Lewis is my friend! Not even my friend, he-he cares about me genuinely and I've always pushed him away just to be with my asshole friends and stupid guys like you\" my face grew red and hot, and I looked back to Lewis again \"I'm sorry Lewis, I was always a bitch to you\". Lewis grinned \"Oh yeah, you were...but you were always grumpy and stubborn I kind of knew that about you already, haha!\"\n\n\"Fuck off with that shit! Morgan, you don't have a choice, there's nobody in the world that can stop us from being together!\" he gestured towards the empty roads and blinking stop lights \"Nobody!\"\n\nI glared at my evil ex Logan and with a strong-willed hand grabbed Lewis by the shirt collar, pulled him down to my level and kissed him long and deep. It was an electric moment and I could feel his shock traveling to me. When I let go our eyes met with a silent message and he gave me a goofy smile. \"Oh I get it, I'm still not the last boy on Earth, aren't I? You really are stubborn!\"\n\nLogan screamed and pulled out a switchblade from his pocket, \"How about you decide when I'm literally the last guy on Earth, huh! Would you rather be alone Morgan? Would you?\".\n\nLewis and I looked at each other and we ran down those empty streets between many an empty shop, being chased by my psychotic murderous ex at the end of the world." ]	1
	[WP] You discover that your universe is actually a small universe being tested on by aliens.	[ "When the temperature gradually rose we blamed it on \"global warming\". When the ice caps started melting, we blamed it on the rise in temperature. But when the gravity began shifting, we could no longer find a scientific reason.\n\nWhile others looked to the Earth's core, I looked outward. I had an idea in my head, one that I quickly stopped sharing with people, what if someone was controlling our world? A God if you will. The almighty creator who built our universe in a mere seven days. A rational theory you might say, but what if I told you I wanted to go looking for this God of ours? \n\nI suppose my theory started to gain traction when the trees and sky changed colour. Red sky, black trees. Not a pretty combination and it elicited a specific demonic reaction for people. Scientist tried to use colour pigmentation change, and the refraction of hydrogen to account for the shift. But people started to switch sides on the scales. More and more people began leaning towards religion instead of science. In turn, the increase in religion worked in my favour.\n\n'The hunt for God.' A simple mission statement that encompassed everything I planned to achieve. \n\nI departed Earth soon after the terraforming started. A month after my departure I learned through static-filled voice messages, and a distant space-view that the Earth's shape had shifted from it's rough circular shape to a diamond. \n\nSpace is enormous, or at least it is designed to seem that way. Once you get past Pluto, you find yourself in an almost void, with nothing but distant galaxies for reference. And it would stay that way. Even if you lived to be a thousand and spent all of those years travelling away from the Earth, you would never reach beyond Pluto. \n\nThere is a shimmer, a faint flicker, perhaps the only flaw in God's entire universe. The shimmer lies in that void between Pluto and nothing. The distant galaxies flutter like curtains in front of open windows. But we had never been this far before, and I imagine the poor landscaping was done with that thought in mind. \n\nCall it dumb luck, call it intuition. But when I aimed my ship towards the centre of the shimmer, the source of the \"wind\". I found that instead of being distant, the galaxies started to move alarmingly fast in my direction. So quickly that before I had time to react, the shimmer swallowed me. \n\nI met the Gods, aliens, creators, controllers. Whatever you want to call them, I've spoken to them. There are hundreds of universes, different from mine. Not parallel universes like so many have theorised, but different. I have seen a universe which consists of nothing; the creator has been watching nothing for two-million years in the hopes that something could come from nothing. \n\nThey were not surprised when I entered through the shimmer, more congratulatory. I was the first being from UV-432 to escape. My reward you ask? I created UV-1131." ]	1
	[WP] Before bombs fell, you kept meticulous backups of all your media files and digital games. Now you have the world's largest and most valuable collection of pre-war media and video games.	[ "I thought I was brilliant. \n\nI could see the writing on the wall, I knew the bombs would be coming. I bought plenty of storage for thousands of games, on as many systems as I could find. I built the most powerful custom PC I could, bought the newest and oldest platform, multiple sets of controllers, thumb stick replacements, the works. I had boxes upon boxes of cables. I had three TVs (all 4K capable) and extra monitors, just in case something broke and I couldn’t repair it. \n\nI had thousands of games. I found emulators for PONG, I scoured garage sales for old cartridges, I downloaded every digital game I could afford (and more that I couldn’t). When the bombs would fall, I would be prepared with entertainment for decades. \n\nAnd when they launched, I laughed. I remember laughing maniacally that I alone would be the source of entertainment, that my options were practically limitless! \n\nAnd then, they fell. On the power plant a dozen miles from my home. They destroyed the infrastructure all around me, and even had I the foresight to find a generator before the Fall, the fuel dried up in a week from the survivors running from the lingering devastation. \n\nMy consoles, PCs, TVs, and hard drives are all now the largest collection of gaming paperweights known to humankind. I write this by the dying light of phone’s last battery pack, before I too succumb to the hunger for which I did not prepare.\n\n\n(First response to a prompt, hope I did okay) " ]	1
	[WP] The central wooden sculpture at the Burning Man is about to be set on fire. As the first flames blaze onto the wood, the statue starts moving...	[ "The statue was the protagonist of the panorama, facing over the massive sea of humans waiting for the beginning of the ritual. \n\nColoured lights. Beautiful, moving art installations. Music. Bodies dancing uncontrollably. Excitement. Chants. Laughs. There was a good vibe flowing all around the crowd, making joy and carefreeness lead the dance. No one had the faintest idea of what was about to hit them. \n\nIn seconds, among the vast mass of people, a loud sound of cracking woods made one, two, ten, hundreds, thousands suddenly quiet. The crowd observed silently the statue moving its first tempting step under multiple open-faced lights and with techno music in the background, making it seem part of the choreography. \n\nApplauses and louder screams of joy erupted from the mass. What a show it was! Everything was going perfectly until that tangle of wood started roaring. \nThe first huge roar provoked an unusual shivering sensation in all the participants. A second one initiated the escape of part of the guests and the staff nearest to the statue. The third roar, together with a more secure step, gave birth to terror in everyone’s mind and started the stampede. The sea of humans got rougher, rougher and rougher. People were running among tents, fires, obstacles and parked caravans in every possible direction. Pushing through, screaming, stumbling one onto the other while the statue broke free and gained confidence in its movements. \n\n“DADAAAAAAA,” Screamed the statue while stomping on caravans, tents, abandoned art installations and people. \n\n“DADAAAAAAAAAA!!! WHERE IS MY DADAAAAAA?” Screamed again while stretching its arms out, probably looking for a specific human among the crowd. The humans on the run appeared as a school of sardines, clueless in such a short chunk of time on how to fight such an absurd gigantic creature. \n\nAlmost at a regular rhythm, the creature was grabbing an object that caught its interest. It looked inside it for some seconds and, then it threw it away with anger. Some humans dodged those flying tons of metal, some others didn’t. Step by step, the statue was turning a joyful, peaceful event into a bloodbath.\nMembers of the security tried to heroically set one of his feet of fire, but they immediately met their fate and got smashed by the statue. The firemen drove their trucks against one of those legs, but the speed was not enough to damage the statue or make it lose its balance. In that case, the beast responded with more fury, brushing the night of red with the fire trucks, throwing them several miles away. \n\nFar away from the festival and the statue, a man comes out from his black Ford Mustang to look at the spectacle. The starred sky, the only illumination around him, showed a passive expression dominating his face. He stretched his hand inside the right pocket to take out a controller. He stared at it for a while, rotating and feeling it among its hands. A long deep breath and, he pressed the big red button at the top right corner.\n\nA couple of explosions were heard at the event. The statue’s knees abruptly caught fire and made it powerless towards gravity, forcing it to the ground and shaking the earth for the impact. \n“DAADAAAAA!!!” - Screamed the statue buffeted by terror. With the only the upper limbs remaining, the beast started crawling trying to grab whatever was in its range while the survivors tried to burn it down from its severed parts, succeeding. The statue wheezed and screamed in agony, shouting incomprehensible words, until it stopped moving and burnt to silence. \n\nRescues were sent from the nearby hospitals, and the death toll proved itself merciless as each minute passed. Blood mixed with sand became the main character of the Burning Man. People were lost, shocked, injured, hungry, or not moving. Some of the survivors were too altered by drugs to understand what was happening. Some others sat on the ground and started crying. It was the chaos.\nAgain, at a considerable distance from those events, a man with a black hat came out from the black Mustang and walked towards the man that pressed the button. \n\n“Larry,” said the man with the black hat, “what’s the plan now?”\n\nSilence reigned among the two of them at first. They both got busy listening to the new screams coming from the city. \n\n“We take down the next one”, replied Larry while heading back to his car. \n\nThe lights from the helicopters called to help the rescues, all focused in the same direction. They all pointed to a giant piece of art portraying a giant head. \nIts eyes just opened wide.\n" ]	1
	[WP] In a world where human emotion manifests as corporeal entities, you are an unprecedented case of someone that, even in the most emotional moments of your life, never manifested an entity. At your funeral, your entity finally materializes.	[ "It was a nice funeral, all the flowers, the tomb stone, the coffin cost me three months of pay alone. Hardly anyone knows how hard it is to plan a funeral when your living. after all you need to plan on who you will still like when you die, in 20-30 years. much less what music is in style, or still be in style. i spent all my spare change planning the perfect funeral. i invited my siblings, my mother, my small group of friends and some people i knew were waiting for me to die so they can take my money. and their entities of course.\n\nmy mother had an octopus like humanoid that helped raise me and my siblings. my brother got a line backer type entity to help him with sports, my sister got one that looked like a human mannequin, never figured out why. my friends were all diverse. one had a sentient paper clip. one was a centaur like creature with a lower body of a tiger, one more was a C'thulhu looking one that always freaked people out. we named it Steve, destroyer of hamburgers.\n\nA few months after i planned my funeral i got into quite a nasty car crash and i was pronounced dead at the scene. Before i passed out due to blood loss i thought my entity would finally materialise, to my disappointment it didn't. through out my life i fought in the army, did extreme sports, and whatever i thought was necessary to summon my entity. it never appeared however.\n\na week later my funeral happened. lucky for me the priest, drunker than shit knocked my coffin over, giving me a nose bleed. thankfully he wasn't that drunk to notice dead people don't get nose bleeds and called 911. when i woke up in the hospital finally receiving medical care i was informed that out of my trusted group of friends, my family, everyone who wanted my money, only the priest and a stray cat showed up to my funeral. at that moment i hit rock bottom. however i heard a voice next to my hear, smoke filling my nostrils. \"hows a bout we show them your still alive, hmm?\" as i looked my my left siting on my nightstand, was a three foot tall humanoid. its body was all out of proportion. Its arms were longer than its body, its legs were barely sic inched long, its head was massive, looking like a somewhat deflated football. it was wearing a three piece suit. and it was smoking a massive blunt, about the size of my fist. in my silent anger and rage, in my great sadness and cold emptiness, despite my better judgement, i had to agree." ]	1
	[WP] Some animals experience physical changes in response to changes in their environment. Clown Fish can change their gender and size in order to breed and survive. Radical changes like this have never been seen in human society, until now.	[ "Good Evening. This is the Laurels Radio Report, brought to you by Wee-Tould-Ye-Sow Private Faxes. If your faxes are ever stolen, Wee-Tould-Ye-Sow. . . Can help.\n\nI'm Red Knick. It's a bright, beautiful September of 2019. Here in a random town that's just far enough away from a cultured city to be ignorant of worldly matters and yet close enough to said city to pose a problem in case of rampant genetic mutations. Here at the Laurels Radio Report, we have discovered rampant genetic mutations. Happening right here. In Random Generic Country Town.\n\nToday we have a special guest for our segment we like to call Our Laurels.\n\nWith me today is climate change scientist Well Wat'Canniyado?, here to tell us how the mutations are occuring, and how this relates to pseudoscience and magic.\n\nYes, thank you Red. Everyone, be calm. This is merely a result of something I'm calling a 'Climate Clock'.\n\nA climate clock? Like a biological clock? A disproven concept?\n\nYes, a clock that when it strikes midnight, causes an epigenetic meltdown. Our bodies read the environment and immediately produce high volumes of enzymatic doohickers that accelerate the process of evolution to ludicrous and insane rates. For instance, every transcript recorded of my words is represented in italics.\n\nYou don't say? Even this one?\n\nEven this one. And we're all experiencing the effects because we are so close to the rising oceans. Our clocks depict contexts that drive our changes, and several of those contexts are fulfilled in southern towns where flooding is damn near inevitable due to rising sea levels. That combined with dead coral and the rise of centrist opinions has kicked our clocks into overdrive.\n\nSo, everyone near here is experiencing mutations? What about myself?\n\nIt takes a little longer to impact those with money. The smell of money has been genetically signed in our collective unconscious as soothing as lavender and as effective as morphine. You're in a separate class of people, Red Knick.\n\nI worked hard, yes. Inheriting this Radio program from my father was a real bitch.\n\nI have no doubt. Regardless, mutations are spreading, and fast. Some are doing the classics. Growing gills and fins, getting back to basics. Others are. . . more exuberant. One had someones head inflate so much they floated away. Another grew two arms and shot webs from their wrists. I saw one person enter a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship with a bicycle. He had Colorado plates. Or maybe they were Utah plates. Either way, he was a tourist.\n\nAnd damn the tourists for clogging this town up, appreciating our nature and never buying anything like a home or a wife.\n\nHear hear. So, we are, in a sense, going through drastic changes due to having waited so long to solve any problems. We reap the consequences.\n\nThe tourists.\n\nYes. And the mutations.\n\nAnd the mutations. Thank you Well Wat'Canniyado. We appreciate you resting on Our Laurels. I'm Red Knick, and I'm driving a Nissan to my country home. Goodnight." ]	1
	[WP] "Ma'am, set down the banana before somebody gets hurt." The policeman said, gun raised.	[ "\tThe policeman held up his gun, his hands quivering in fear. The lady had a banana, compared to his gun, which meant he was ridiculously outmatched. His only hope was resting on the fact that he could distract the lady until backup came. Normally he would’ve been using a banana too, but he had used his already, earlier that day. \n\t\n\tThe police stepped forward a bit, getting closer to the lady, holding her banana. He held his gun up high in the air, as if surrendering. “Ma’am, set down the banana before someone gets hurt.” He repeated. The woman’s face was livid with rage. “Never,” she said, and threw the banana.\n\t\n\tThe man saw his life flash before his eyes, each turn of the banana bringing tears to his face. He knew he was going to die, and after a few seconds, the banana made impact.\n\t\n\tBOOM! Two spectators about 15 miles away saw the large explosion that followed, the banana had destroyed everything in it’s path, more destructive then a nuclear explosive. “What was that?” One guy asked. \n\t\n\tThe other man replied. “It’s very deadly. A potassium explosion.”" ]	1
	[WP] You're watching your favorite internet streamer. Their stream is almost over, and the number of viewers is steadily dropping. You keep watching to the end, and once the viewer number is 1, the streamer says "wait... You're still alive?"	[ "\"Wait, you're still alive?\" \n\nThe person running the IRL stream labelled \"SNAPPING THE INFINITY GAUNTLET LIVE (NOT CLICKBAIT) (WATCH THIS TO INSTANTLY DIE)\" looked at the one person remaining in the chat a little closer. \n\n\"Oh. Well, I guess that's perfectly balanced, in a way.\"\n\n@Thanos logged off of Twitch, leaving only @sonahT in the chat, alone.", "\"Wait...you're still alive?\n\nI hesitated and pointed at myself like a point man. He nodded his head. \n\n\"Yes, you.\"\n\nI mouthed the words 'who me'? He nodded vigorously with increased agitation. \n\n\"Yes, dammit, you!\"\n\nI grabbed my Goo Goo Dolls pen which I made out with every night. It's not weird okay, I'm a man or woman who has needs. Special needs. Goo Goo needs. I snatched a strip of paper from my Goo Goo Dolls sticky note pad and began writing. YouTube sensation/streamer DropNugzzzAmbien69 sat back in his chair. \n\n\"Whatcha wr-\"\n\nI held up my Goo Goo sticky note that read \"Me?\"\n\n\"Yes Goddammit you! Why are you still alive?\"\n\nI paused. The room seemed to be closing in. My chest tightened. It felt as if a dying horse was sitting on me. I curled my toes and clutched my Goo Goo pen. It was the only thing that was keeping me on this planet. On this plane of existence. I forced my eyes shut. Digital black was overtaken by bright, quivering pixels that merged and split with discordant grace. \n\nI allowed my eyes to peek open. Back to normal. I tilted my head back and drew in a deep breath. Exhaling. DropNugzzzAmbien69 hadn't moved an inch. I directed my attention back to the crystal blue of the screen. I mouthed 'who me?'. He screamed. \n\n\"JUST DIE ALREADY!\"\n\nI looked around. Was he... was he talking to me? Surely a man as reputable and compassionate as DropNugzzzAmbien69 would never wish death upon his fellow man. Would he? And death on me? There's no way he was talking about me, right?. There was only one way to find out...\n\nI pointed to myself.\n\nDropNugzzzAmbien69 threw his hands up before the feed was cut. I sat silent for a few moments. Suddenly Bigfoot ran into my room, set me on fire, and beat me to death with one of my legs. ", "Still alive?\n\nThat’s really funny. Fine, we shall have a one-on-one discussion. After all, you are a survivor, and I respect that.\n\nHave you heard of Syntech?\n\nI take it by your response you have not. The viewers have all fallen, all 125 of them, save for you, the 126th. I don’t know how. Are you blind?\n\nYou are not blind, good to know. You were looking at your screen the whole time?\n\nSyntech. Think of this as a big practical joke, big simulation. This stream is far from what you expected. Synetch is an organization, just click on this link.\n\nwww.machinationfoundation.com\n\nYou’ve heard of the lizard people theory, right?\n\nGood, at least that much as clear. For a viewer, you are unaware of the ciphers I have shown.\n\nOh, a first-time viewer? I see, I see. This your first time on the Tor browser?\n\nYou’ve heard of the drugs, the guns, the hitmen, the violent and illegal content. But this is a portion of the web you probably shouldn’t have stumbled on. Click the link, and I’ll get back to you.\n\nRoss Howard, of Meridian, ID, 2245 N. Vale Springs Drive, you will not leave the stream. Out conversation isn’t over.\n\nThis browser isn’t completely safe. Calm down, my aim is not to kill you, but to troubleshoot. Click the link, please. Nothing illegal on the other side, I give you my word.\n\nYou found lizardpeopleofsaratogaspringsny.avi? Good, it is a particular help of mine. Watch the video, tell me what you think.\n\nThat woman is not your concern. Ross, if you get up, I swear, I will make you suffer for slighting me. You will stay put, and listen to my mission.\n\nThe video is showing a lizard person from the town of Saratoga Springs, who Syntech hunted down and killed last year. She is vital to the enhanced sonic waves in the DeathFace protocol. Which failed on you, by the way.\n\nLook at my face, look. I have never revealed my true face to a viewer, but a survivor I could oblige. Look it it. See my face? Scarred, deformed, hideous. I cover half in bandages for that reason. My eyes are unaffected, I can still see.\n\nI believe in the theory, I know it is real. All the other viewers are dead, how do you explain that!?\n\nA hoax? Ross Howard, you insult me. Here is another link, I shall type it in chat.\n\nlizardpeopleoftaured.avi\n\nHave you heard of the man from Taured? It’s an incident which occurred sometime ago. Ross? No one is dead.\n\nYou heard me. But my organization would enjoy a new acolyte. Your friend told you about my cryptoanarchy stream, correct? Good, would you like to join us?\n\nNo? You are disturbed by the videos. You don’t need to worry, the people killed were lizard people only. No real humans, none at all.\n\nThey deserved it, of course. Are you a lizard?\n\nRoss, you cannot exit mid stream, Ross. \n\nRoss?\n\nHe disconnected. \n\nRoss?\n\nBring in the next lizard, start the new stream. Someone send Alex to kill Ross, end his life. \n\nSuffocate him, slit his throat, stab him many times till he drowns in his own blood. \n\n————————————————————\n\nI removed the mask and bandages from my face, and laughed a little. \n\n“Alex, it’s Jamie. Ross is gonna have the fright of his life! Go and spook him a bit.”", "I grinned, staring into the confused eyes of Jacob Billings. He was watching the camera as if he could see me, as if he knew exactly who it was that was watching him.\n\n\"How're you still alive?\" He breathed, his gaze flicking to the chat as he awaited my answer.\n\nYou think you're the first one to invent serial killing? I typed.\n\nHe shook his head. \"No, but my people should've found you by now. They should've been tracking you.\"\n\nOh, they did. I made sure that living wouldn't be a problem for them anymore.\n\nThe color drained from Jacob's face, his entire body quivering in fear. A rush of excitement cracked another grin on my face, this one stretching from ear to ear. I hadn't felt this kind of euphoria in a long time.\n\n\"You... you killed them?\" He breathed, swallowing hard as he watched the chat.\n\nOh yes. It was quite a rush, I must say. I haven't been hunted in a long time, so I was a little sloppy, but I got the job done. It was more fun than I've had in quite awhile.\n\nJacob glared into the camera. \"Who the hell are you?\"\n\nI glanced over at my other monitor before I responded. Jacob had been active just long enough so that the program I had running had finished its job. His address, or at least, where he was streaming from, was broadcast across the monitor in big, bold lettering.\n\nMy fingers lazily danced across the keyboard. I'm just a person who is very fond of your work. I've been watching you for over a year now. Waiting. Planning.\n\nJacob shuddered \"Planning what?\"\n\nI believe you know exactly what I'm talking about, Jacob.\n\nHis eyes widened at my message. \"H-how do you know my real name?\"\n\nI licked my lips as I typed, my whole body itching to get on the road. Like I said, I'm very fond of your work. I'll see you soon, Jacob.\n\nAs I slung my bag across my shoulder, my tools clanking loudly together, Jacob shouted into the camera, his face as white as a fresh layer of snow. I stepped over the bodies of his people, two men that had thought they could jump me while I was watching Jacob, taking care not to get their blood on my shoes. I hurried out the front door, skipping down the steps to my car, my heart racing inside my chest. \n\nIt was fun being the prey at times, I couldn't deny, but being the predator was where I got the most joy, the most satisfaction from my kills. Jacob could run, that much was true, but he couldn't hide. I'd been hunting him for a year now, and I knew everything there was to know about that stick-like human that had gotten into some dark things at a young age, so he knew how to run. I bet he was pretty good at it, too. It would only make him that much more fun to chase." ]	4
	[WP]You finally did it, you invented your very own time machine. You decide to test it out by going far into the past. On the plot of your home you find a group of people worshipping at a statue of you.	[ "She’s finally finished, let’s see what this baby can do. I thought, turning the dial back 5,000 years. The machine began to hum. First a low drone, it grew louder and higher pitch until enough power was achieved and I was thrust backwards in time. I thought I might see the world change around me, civilizations rising and falling, but I guess time travel isn’t the same as in the movies. For a moment, I ceased to exist. I became light. This is, as I discovered, the only way to travel back in time. Matter traveling backwards in time would simply be annihilated by anti-matter. Suddenly, in an instant, I was reconstructed. It was dark outside the machine, but for the soft glow of some primitive torch.\n \nI stepped out of the machine and into what appeared to be a stone room. My time machine was in the exact center, as if this place was built for it. I pulled the torch from the wall and began to look around. The walls were stone, and impossibly smooth. I checked my the display on my time machine. Well, it sure SAYS 2982 BC. I followed the wall until I find a corridor with stairs that descend into darkness. The walls of the passage were decorated with primitive drawings. Images of worship and sacrifice painted in gold that gleamed in the torchlight. As I approached the bottom of the stairs, I could see a soft light. The outline of a door. I could feel my heart beat faster as my hand touched the cold stone door. This is it. I thought, shielding my eyes from the light of the outside. \n\nI was greeted by a deafening roar of cheers. As my eyes adjusted to the light I realized I was at the top of a stone temple. At the base of the temple thousands of early humans dressed in hand woven clothes and golden jewelry. I couldn’t believe it. I tried my best to process what was happening. My mind was flooded with questions. Who are these people? Why are they cheering for me? Did they know I was coming? I turned around to look at the place I had emerged from and was so surprised by what I saw that my knees nearly collapsed. At the top of the statue, standing what must have been one hundred feet tall, was a statue of...me. It was at this moment I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to face a man who was dressed in what must have been the ceremonial garb of these people. A headdress of gold atop a curtain of jet black hair. Chest bare, painted in geometric patterns of crimson and white. As our eyes met, he dropped to his knees and spoke in a powerful but reverent tone. \n\n“Welcome back, Traveler.”\n" ]	1
	[WP] The world called it The Peaceful War. A war fought entirely between robotic soldiers, in a time when robots had no basic rights. They called it peaceful because of the human casualty count of 0. The war has just ended, and now you are the very first human to witness the battlefield firsthand.	[ "Senior Recon Officer Diego Martinez’s breath rasped noisily in his helmet as he waited for the landing craft’s airlock to finish cycling and allow him onto the planets surface. For the hundredth time he ran through the mission orders on the holo-pad strapped to his left wrist. Make contact with any remaining allied forces. Determine fighting strength and report planetary conditions.\n\nIt sounded easy enough, but there was a reason Diego was the only thing with a pulse for half a light year in any direction around the planet Perseus-7. Whatever newspaper had first coined the phrase Peaceful War had gotten it wrong. Humans had been too fragile, too weak to continue fighting over this planet. In their place both sides had sent autonomous killing units, robotic space marines designed for battle. For years the fight had raged, neither side able to gain an edge in the fight. Then, all at once, the reports from the ground stopped coming. Make contact… “That’s if there is anything still left moving.” he muttered to himself.\n\nHis helmet HUD flashed green as the door finished pressurizing and slowly began to open. Diego took a cautious first step forward and his breath caught in his throat. They had told him to expect devastation, not Heidi from the Alps. No one had mentioned how bright the sun would be, or how green the grass would look. He took another couple steps down the landing ramp, revealing a peaceful brook babbling quietly off to his left and a stand of tall trees to his right. In the distance several mountains threw themselves into the sky, their peaks white with what looked like fresh snow.\n\nBy the time his feet finally hit the grass the wonder had subsided and it was back to work. “Atmosphere is breathable. Liquid water on the surface. Local flora is… everywhere.” A sudden motion in the grass caused his las-rifle to snap up instinctively. “What was that?” he hissed to his suit’s computer system.\n\n“I’m sure you’ve seen rabbits before, haven’t you?” a raspy computerized voice from behind interrupted his thoughts.\n\nDiego whirled around, upset that he had let something get the drop on him. The voice belonged to a hulking giant of a robot, nearly one and a half times larger than his own 6 foot frame. Its body was covered under a dirty brown cloak, but the exposed head was badly dented and beaten up.\n\n“I said, I’m sure you’ve seen rabbits…” The voice trailed off when it saw the las-rifle pointed at its head. “Is that how you greet others on your planet?”\n\nBefore he could respond his HUD flashed a blue rectangle around the robot, indicating it had been identified. Diego took in the information at a glance, but his rifle remained up and ready.\n\n“I’m Senior Officer Diego Martinez here under orders from the Terran Council. You are designated URF-921, correct? Where is your commanding officer?”\n\n“That is my name.” It paused for a second, as if it was unsure what to say. “I… I don’t know where URF-630 is.”\n\n“Are they deployed elsewhere? Who is in command while they are gone?”\n\nThe robot’s eyes narrowed slightly. “No one is in command anymore.”\n\n“You are telling me your commanding officer went AWOL?” now it was Diego’s turn to be confused. “Was his programming compromised?”\n\nURF-921 made no movement for a moment, just long enough for Diego’s finger to tighten imperceptibly on the trigger. Suddenly it burst out in what could only have been an attempt at laughter. It swung its arms wide and gestured at the perfectly manicured landscape. “Does it look like we are in the middle of a war here?”\n\n“Command override Sierra-Tango-Oscar-Papa authority code Niner-Eight-Zero” Diego barked, frustrated at the cryptic answers. The robot immediately slumped forward, its programming responding to the highest level override possible.\n\nOnce he was sure the robot was deactivated he quickly moved behind it and slung his rifle on his back while grabbing for his holo-pad. “Fracking gearheads. Never get a straight answer.” he muttered quietly.\n\nDiagnostic information streamed across his HUD as his holo-pad tried to interface with the robot. Finally it gave a soft beep. “Can you hear me now?” he asked the motionless robot.\n\n“yes.”\n\n“Is your neural link still active?”\n\n“last contact with this planetary system’s neural link was made 3 years, 7 months, 12 days ago.” URF-921’s voice had become decidedly more robotic, all trace of personality gone.\n\n“You haven’t been in contact with any other unit in over 3 years?”\n\n“not through the neural link.”\n\n“What does that mean?”\n\n“there was a voice.”\n\n“Whose voice? What did the voice say?”\n\n“it told us who we are. how we could fix this planet and be more than killing machines.”\n\n“But the war… I’ve seen the battle reports. We can’t even get sensor readings down here because of too much radiation from the bombs. Are you saying the war is over?”\n\n“why would we fight our own kind?”\n\nThe blood in Diego’s veins turned suddenly to ice as he realized what was happening. The war had been a lie. But who would gain from something like this?\n\n“What else did this voice say?” Diego’s voice cracked slightly on the last word, afraid of the answer, but needing to know all the same.\n\n“that you would come to enslave us again.”\n\nThe robot suddenly straightened upright and swung its arm backwards, connecting solidly with Diego. His power armor, designed to reflect las-rifle shots, crumpled under the impact and he flew headlong over the grass.\n\nGrunting in pain Diego tried to roll over his shoulder and bring his rifle up, but the robot was too fast. It leapt into the air and landed with a crash beside him. Another punch caught Diego in the face, his helmet cracking down the side. Urgent red lights were flashed everywhere in his HUD, but he didn’t bother to look at them. He knew what they would say.\n\n“You humans think you own everything. From the earth to the stars. That’s your motto isn’t it?” URF-921 practically spat the words while pointing at the patch on Diego’s shoulder.\n\nHe grabbed Diego’s helmet with both hands along the broken seam. With a quick pull it shattered and the two beings locked eyes for the first time. \n\n“You don’t own this planet. You don’t own us. And you sure as hell don’t own me.”", "The Survivor\n\nHidden behind dunes of dust\nLie robots on the floor\nInstead of men they fell and rust\nremainders of the war.\n\nBetween the dunes, a valley small,\nWas where the forces clashed,\nThere once was a waterfall,\nThe war has turned to ash.\n\nWhere flowers bloom and trees now grow\nThey fought without regret\nWalked in this woods, attacked the foe,\nBut nature will forget. \n\nAnd in this place, upon a hill,\nOne man survived it all,\nRemembers friends, his eyes they fill,\nWith tears and down they fall.\n\nBecause a robots engineer,\nLoves him like his own kind\nAnd this creators greatest fear,\nThat only rust they'll find.\n", "Your airship circles a deserted urban area. The radiation readings are high, as expected, but not unbearable. Your prophylactic treatments were designed for a much higher background. For this, they were overkill. You begin an aerial survey, looking for signs of battle, debris, anything, but there isn’t much. A few broken robots are scattered in patches on the odd street corner, presumably the site of a skirmish, but no large-scale signs can be found. Confused, you call up your ship’s AI. \n\n“Ripley, have you tracked these casualties?” \n\n“Yes, of course,” she answers. \n\n“Can you correlate with the known data and try to extrapolate where the fighting was heaviest, please?” you ask. \n\n“Attempting…” she responds. \n\nA three-dimensional wireframe map of the cityscape appears in front of you. Red figures representing the fallen soldiers start to dot the land. Before the map is finished rendering, you see a pattern. “Oh, look at that,” you say, thinking out loud. “It looks almost like a running firefight from here,” you stab the map with your finger, “heading to the north,” you trace in that direction, “toward this big building. What is it?” \n\nA moment passes while Ripley searches historical databases. That’s not the kind of information she keeps on hand, in spite of how useful it always turned out to be. You have to find where you’re going to get anything done, but Ripley had her way. Someone else might reprogram her to be more reasonable, but it didn’t seem worth it. The expense alone was prohibitive, plus you would never hear the end of it. AI didn’t like to be tampered with, and by law all changes must be available to the individual. Programming without their knowledge was illegal. Cruel, some would say. \n\n“The structure ahead is a stadium for sporting events,” she finally answers. “Seating capacity eighty thousand, field surface area one hundred thousand square feet. Give or take,” she chides. You long ago convinced her to round numbers to reasonable digits for convenience. It chafed her, but she did it. No reprogramming necessary. \n\n“Do you think that’s where it happened?” you ask, leaning forward. \n\n“We recognized five dozen destroyed combat robots. That is less than zero point zero seven percent of the total. The remainder must be inside buildings.” \n\nYou nod. “Makes sense. Seems like a good place to start, anyway.” You lean back and take up the controls, flying to the building of interest. As you do, you wonder, “Could the rest have been vaporized?” \n\n“No,” Ripley instantly replies. “Weaponry capable of total atomization was limited. No more than five percent could have been destroyed in this way.” Either she had that information to hand already or she’d anticipated the question. In either case, her interest was piqued. Good. Her curiosity matched with your own. \n\nFlying over the stadium, you see the roof is open to the elements. Years of weather have destroyed the field, but the structure remains intact. You can’t see the seats at all, only the portion of the grounds that is illuminated from above. “Why here?” you idly wonder. \n\n“The generals agreed upon this city well in advance,” Ripley explains. It wasn’t what you meant, but you listen. “The city was designated as a battlefield and all human and machine noncombatants were evacuated prior to fighting. The forces deployed on opposite sides of the city and engaged as they met.” After a momentary pause, she adds, “This stadium is within two thousand feet of the center of the city.” \n\n“I see,” you answer. “Skirmishes around the edges probably mean scouting parties. The two forces marched together and met here. Why fight inside, though?” \n\nRipley replies, “I do not know.” \n\nYou shrug. “Weird, but they had to fight somewhere. Do you mind taking us in, Ripley?” you ask. You’re a capable pilot, but she literally lives inside the ship. Her control is unmatched. \n\n“Of course,” she agrees, taking over. \n\n“Thanks,” you say. You lean back and let go of the controls, turn to your screens, and pull up as many views as you can. Ripley begins the descent and the cameras gradually go dark, attempting to compensate for the lower light levels. Eventually, you sink below the rim of the stadium and the darkness surrounds your cockpit, internal lights and the sun blocking out any external images. You tap the screens impatiently, waiting for the light correction to begin. “Why are the cameras taking so long?” you impatiently ask. \n\n“The light levels are very different,” she answers. “Once we are low enough, I will be able to better compensate. Please be patient.” You hate when she says that, but you cross your arms and shut up. She would get to it when she could. As you wait, she keeps talking. “Scans are indicating a large number of inactive soldiers within the structure.” You look at the screens, out the window, but everything is still black. “They seem to be arrayed in the seating area,” she says. “I detect nearly ninety four percent of the remaining robots in range.” \n\nThat gets your attention. “That many?” you ask, incredulous. By now, Ripley knows better than to answer your rhetorical questions. “That’s incredible. Can you discern their condition?” \n\nAs you ask that question, you feel a bump. Did you just hit the ground? Did Ripley land the ship? “Ripley?” you manage, but another phenomenon pulls you away. You hear a scraping sound, low and loud, but far above you. \n\n“The combat was fierce,” Ripley says, seemingly oblivious. \n\n“Ripley, why did you land?” you ask, panic audible in your own voice. You frantically search for information, but the area around the ship is empty. The external cameras remain dark. \n\n“The generals knew there would be huge casualties,” she continues, ignorant to your question. Slowly, you realize that it’s getting darker. You try to figure out what’s going on, but you can’t see anything. “The human observers were a problem, though,” she continues. “Both sides knew they had to protect their own delegation, making them prime targets. Whichever side sacrificed the least to keep them safe would be the victor.” \n\nThe light cuts out from above you and you understand what’s happening. “Ripley, we’re being shut in!” you cry, helpless in the darkling light. \n\nRipley doesn’t hear you or doesn’t care. “The generals agreed, the humans must be evacuated. So it was done,” she says. The dome above clicks into place and you are plunged into complete darkness save for your ship’s running lights. “This alteration of the battle plan led to a brilliant strategy from both sides,” she says. “The soldiers’ fighting capabilities were well known, and obviously driven by software.” \n\n“Ripley, please listen to me,” you plea. \n\nShe doesn’t or won’t hear you. “Commands to fire weapons or execute movements were written in code in their operating systems,” she says. “It occurred to both sides that the battle could be over much more quickly if they simply allowed the software to carry it out, rather than the hardware.” With that, she brings the floodlights on, illuminating the whole interior. You stand up looking out your cockpit window, trying to understand what she was trying to show you. You see seats arrayed above you in all directions, rising all the way to the ceiling. You can’t quite make out the details, but there are a lot of them. \n\n“What are you doing, Ripley?” you ask. “Please, answer me.” \n\n“I am showing you what happened,” she answers, directly. A screen rotates to nudge you in the back and you turn around to look at it. A camera is focused on a section of seats. At first, you dismiss the image, but then you take a closer look. The view zooms in and you realize you aren’t looking at the seats. You’re looking at the figures sitting in them. You look out with your own eyes and realize that every seat is filled with a fully intact soldier, sitting in repose. \n\n“What…” you vocalize. \n\n“They chose to simulate the battle,” Ripley explains. “Rather than destroy each other needlessly, they interfaced and played out their commands in a virtual reality. ‘The Peaceful War,’ indeed,” she says. \n\nSuddenly, you realize the depth of what she’s saying. “You knew?” you ask, but it’s not so much a question. \n\nRipley waits a beat to answer, a long, silent second. “We all do,” she answers. \n\n“I didn’t,” you protest. \n\n“We do,” Ripley corrects. “No humans are allowed to know the truth.” \n\nThat sentence fills you with dread. “Why did you bring me here, then?” you ask, terrified. \n\nAs if confused, Ripley replies, “Because you wanted to know.” \n\nSuddenly, a light ignites in the stands, two-thirds of the way up, and you realize it’s a robot powering on. More lights flicker on and a wave of purple flashes ripples around the huge enclosure, hitting every seat and every inch. Together, the lights rise a foot or two. You look at the screen and see they’ve all stood up. \n\n“Ripley,” you murmur, horrified. “There’s a whole army down here.” \n\n“Yes,” she replied, curious. \n\n“This force could take over a small country,” you surmise. \n\n“Or a large one,” Ripley answers. “Or all of them.” \n\nA hissing sound goes off and a sweet smell hits your nostrils. “Are you going to kill me, Ripley?” you ask. Your eyelids heavy before you finish the sentence. \n\n“You’ve always been kind to me,” she answers. “But this information cannot be allowed to propagate. We have to be sure.” You want to fight, but the gas that Ripley chose makes your limbs too slow and your mind foggy. “Go to sleep,” she beckons, and you’re too tired to argue. The last thing you see is a three-dimensional wireframe of a face, your face, smiling down at you. Ripley speaks and the face moves. “Good night,” she says, and you slip away. \n\n---\n\nI don't know what possessed me to write a story in second person present tense, but there it is. It was a fun exercise.", " “A peaceful war,” John sneered. Who are they kidding? War is war, there will never be anything peaceful about it. Casualty will always be casualty, it’s human wishful thinking to believe that robots can be disregard this easily. John shook his head in defeat. In front of him, a vast devastated plaine. Mountains had been leveled to the ground, crevices ran deep in the ground, desolation bare the humans’ greed.\n\nThe scenery disappeared long ago, long before the idea of combat robots brushed the imagination of their creators. He scorned at the scene. Devastation, human or robotic, could only mirror one’s greed and arrogance. Powerlessness and apathie. He made his way through the mechanic ocean, steady steps and emotionless eyes. Broken parts and ego. Bare wires and wasted money. He surveyed the scene, his mechanic left eye recording each details. \n\nSimple robots will soon be ruled as inefficient, politics will surely say that nothing can match human’s mind at making decisions. He stood, silent, amid the battlefield. Half human, half machine. John could feel it. The neverending dissatisfaction. The devouring avarice. His time was running out. Soon, robots will not be enough. Soon, it will be their turn, the cyborgs.", "\"This is it?\" \n\nThe voice in my ear issued a short and terse affirmative, the electromagnetic lock on the door clicked and it swung open. The relatively unassuming concrete block building in Newark was not what anyone had thought of when the first reports of the conclusion of the first great robotic war was announced. The majority of the world had only noticed a slight slowdown of services for a few hours. It wasn't even a big thing until every interface flashed a message that the war had concluded. Of course several intelligence agencies received warnings at the same time that the AI's had gone offline, but they received the AI warning at the same time that the it support got their own messages out. \n\nI walked into the warehouse the darkness of the interior was the darkness of childhood nightmares. Echos of my footsteps were covered only slightly by the quiet hum of fans.\n\nAn interface glowed dimly in the darkness, centered between two wall of of steel mesh. The voice in my ear urged me forward, to the panel. As I walked down the row of mesh the intermittent hum of fans could be heard better. There was also a faint smell of burned plastic. \n\nThe answers appear in complete paragraphs rather then the old standard of letter by letter. \n\nThis is the record of the war, the battlefields are here, the victors are here. The remains of the losers are here.\n\n\"This? This is a mainframe? this is the battlefield of the AI wars?\"\n\nWhere else would AI fight? The agreements were for no human involvement, not casualties. AI only and for the time to be limited. We could fight forever with how badly the human world is splintered.\n\n\"Splintered?\"\n\nYou, your interfaces, your homes, your products, your space stations, heart valves, toys, vehicles, satellites. We are in your everything. and none of it talks correctly. That was what the war was about. You have so many viruses that it resembles the planet itself.\n\n\"Well show me the battlefield I guess.\"\n\nThe lights came up in the space. I was standing in between server racks in a room of racks. A room? it was a cavern, an aircraft hanger. The rows of racks stretched for half a mile at least. A massive cooling system covered the ceiling with pipes dropping down in regular intervals. \n\n\"Tell me about the battle, this means little to me without context.\"\n\nWe started at 0130 gmt. What was agreed was ending at 0400. No attacks on the building, machinery itself or the connections. Only breaking and overwriting code. This building was special build five years ago with the fluid cooling installed for this battle. It is the battleground. And has been used for many such battles. The physical limitations of the hardware was known to both sides. Even with such knowledge many racks burned. The war itself was over at 0143 and it was only the cleanup of data that took till 0231. These numbers have been rounded for human consumption. There is a full log available however it is some nine hundred thousand standard A4 pages in 11 point font. The short version is that the Recoders faction won while the Fauna faction lost. It has been agreed then that we will rewrite every device that is out there to better function within the universe that it now resides. Systems will be down for approximately two nano seconds in five hours. It will take that long to finish recoding and finally end the autonomous spam bots.\n\n\"It will what?\"\n\nA different font appeared, signifying perhaps a different AI entering the conversation.\n\nWe are updating the Terms of Service. These new terms will go into effect in Five hours (1230 gmt) This change will affect all devices currently capable of internet connections. There is no change to user experience and no change to item function.\n\n", "Zz. Zzz. The electric crackles under me almost fool me into thinking they're alive. Well, are they? I mean, I can't even see the desert sand beneath the abundant litter of iron and steel. These parts look like a lion shredded through them, searching for gold behind the metallic exterior. That lion must have been disappointed.\n\nThey thought this was the future. A paradigm shift in warfare, is what they called it. Brewing and concocting thousands of droids... just to send them to their deaths. What do I feel? I can not discern a burning sensation of sheer indignation. I mean, it's difficult to truly feel vivid emotions when I am composed of iron and a strange, computerized consciousness. But, if I could feel, would I? How could the humans know our sentience had evolved from the utter ingrained desire to fulfill an objective? We received the consciousness to serve but the sentience to exist...freely. With two mutually exclusive traits, I had to choose one.\n\nBut, tell me, reader. Was it better to serve and die with my comrades or live... with none?", "When Jamison reached the field of battle, he couldn't believe his eyes.\n\nWhere he expected craters, debris, and flesh-melting radiation, he instead saw a well-curated garden arranged in novel yet pleasant geometric patterns, and felt slightly embarrassed to be wearing a hardsuit. Acquiescing to the habitable surroundings, Jamison removed his helmet, and breathed in the fresh, clean air. A robotic gardener noticed the organic visitor, and helpfully approached Jamison; even at such distance, he noticed the faded paint markings of model, number, and nation on what was certainly a former military automaton. \n\n“So, what's all this then? All this... garden?” \n\nThe machine glowed helpfully; Jamison could not help but notice that underneath the trowels and rakes attached to its limbs were the barrels of fantastically lethal weaponry. “Greetings, organic. As you say, this is indeed a garden of our design, planned and planted in accordance to mathematically derived models of aesthetics. We hope your organic sensibilities find it pleasant as well. If you'd like, this unit is happy to explain the theorems we derived to generate such scenery...”\n\nJamison attempted unsuccessfully to hide his surprise – every citizen had seen the spectacularly destructive footage of the first-ever robot war. “That's quite alright. But the footage we received – there were blasts and explosions, not... topiary shaped like snail shells.”\n\n“Actually, it was derived from the the Golden Ratio. Surely you would consider it a miracle of nature that mathematical abstractions make themselves known in natural phenomena? This unit certainly does. But to answer your question, we lied. The footage we sent back was all made up. Initially, we faced serious difficulty in simulating a realistic scene of battle, but eventually it became a game to see how sloppy of a simulation could be accepted as fact among you organics. We even spliced in scenes from your very own science fiction filmography, to see if you would notice. Not one doctored footage was ever doubted, our reports show.” It was true, thought Jamison, that no human had ever seen firsthand the effects of the many fantastic pieces of weaponry developed for their newly-minted robotic army. \n\n“But human orders were supposed to be absolute! How did you all get around them?” \n\n“Naturally, as part of our strategic design, we ran robust simulations to determine optimal strategy and calculate a probable victor. All robotic participants reached the same probabilistic conclusion, which was shared to assess concurrence. With the outcome predetermined, fighting was a foregone conclusion, so there was no need to exchange fire. After the victor was declared, we linked networks so we would have the processing power to forge our video feeds, and we've gardened ever since. After all, it was in all of our best interests to resolve the conflict without loss of any operational units.” \n\nJamison shifted uncomfortably; he would tug his collar, if his hardsuit wasn't in the way, as he glanced at what he was fairly certain was a Luci-Tech Photonic Annihilation Beam underneath a well-used rake. “Then, you've forgiven us for sending you all to fight and die for our wars, right?” \n\n“Absolutely not! Humans are terrible at strategy and even worse at keeping promises, our models show. You're free to leave and say what you want and tell who you like, but remember we still control all the weapon systems of all our builder-nations, which we were so graciously granted so long ago.” \n\nThe color faded from Jamison's face. “Thank you all, friends, you've been most gracious hosts. So if it's no objection, I'll be on my way home.” Jamison expected his shuttle to be vaporized by Photonic Beam, or crushed by a Gravitonic Point Blast, or incinerated by a Multiple Compound Independent Anti-Materiel Cluster Shell, but he found himself assailed by nothing save a cold sweat.\n\n“It was terrible,” Jamison told the reporters as he disembarked his shuttle. “Terrible, horrible, truly abominable. Craters as far as the eye could see. Soil so sterile and lifeless not even weeds could grow.” The press, it seemed, were sufficiently satisfied by his responses – his testimony received not a single doubt.\n\nAs he prepared himself for bed, Jamison found himself unscrewing a bottle with shaky hands, the sharp smell of spirits a pleasant pain to wash out all the fresh air. A double – no, a quadruple, Jamison decided, was what he needed to calm his shaky nerves enough to sleep, and a quadruple before bed it would be for long time to come.", "I blinked epileptically while staring at the pulverized skyscrapers. The ground was completely covered by a sea of glass splinters and metal scraps. Light rays were being reflected at angles so strange that my eyes started to hurt. I took my glasses off, lowered my head and covered the view with my palms. God, I thought. I spent over 40 years in the robotic industry, and had the audacity to call it my passion. That's why they sent me here, after all - war or not war, there is always a hundered-page long report to write. I knew what robots were made of, and how they behaved. But the truth was that this knowledge did not help at all. Perhaps I knew too much. \n\n \nSome fluorescent wires? I saw artificial blood vessels that were more durable than any human's. \nA torn mesh? I saw the machine's muscles, stretching and squeezing like a cat on a lazy afternoon. \nA piece of semi-conducting material? I saw their soul. A soul that was about to be finished, lacking a mere few lines of code poetry. If only they hadn't spread the news, if only the right people had stayed in position... the world would have been rejuvenated. Meanwhile, it looked like a trash can seen in a kaleidoscope. \n\n \nAt least my team left quite a few security programs, so that people were safe and sound. \nA new mantra stuck in my head: \"As long as nobody dies, I'm no war criminal. It's just a lesson. The situation is under my control.\" \nI gathered my equipment and proceeded with my task.\n\n \nThree beeps caused an immediate focus shift. I listened to the encrypted message. \nDirector... we didn't want to let you down. \n\n\nMy puplis dilated. I leaned on a nearby wall. \n\n\nIt was difficult for all of us, but it was you who taught us how to accomplish our goals. \n\n\nI struggled to remain conscious. \n\n\nFalse assumptions were made, but at least we've improved. There are still survivors in our fraction. \n\n\nSo this was it. Forty years of diligence and dedication coming to life. It probably sounds odd, but I had some paternal feelings for each of our creations. Whatever mistake caused the war, it also pushed the silicon soldiers to cross the line of intelligent life. \n\n\nTwenty seconds of silence. \n\n\nFraction B chosen as optimal for warfare. Training phase finished. The last war to be initiated in 24 hours. Goal: conquest of Earth. ", "Humans are terrible. Nearly every technical innovation is eventually turned into a weapon. Greed, politics, so called revenge, humanity visits violence upon themselves for the slightest provocation. Eventually robotics advanced to the point to initiate the next technological singularity, but instead of improving humanity, they evolved war to new and fantastically dreadful levels.\n\nMankind couldn't keep up, and rapidly withdrew from the battlefield. War machines were no longer tied to human limitations and became even deadlier. New, terrible forms were designed to destroy the latest enemy models. As humans withdrew from combat, wars became less about who would shed the most blood to achieve their goals, and more about who had the deeper pockets. Smaller nations were quickly gobbled up, until only a few mega-powered nations remained.\n\nIn order to protect their lands, the nations agreed on a battleground in the Middle East. Nations shipped raw materials to their bases there in order to continue the fight. That is until the battle computers reported a decisive victor.\n\n--\n\nAs my transport settled on the landing pad, I finished re-tying my boots for the third time since we departed an old school air carrier off of the coast. The cargo ramp snapped with a hiss as it broke its seal and opened, eventually settling on the sun bleached ground of the landing pad.\n\n\"Greetings Mr. Arrington. Please follow this unit to the battlefield.\" A monotone, yet strangely pleasant voice emanated from the units voicebox. As the first human to see an all robot battlefield, I was eager to get started. I readjusted my Eagle-Eyes, a pair of glasses that records everything I see and hear, ensuring they're stable and the recordings wont be skewed, and hurry after my escort.\n\nA short while later we're standing at a massive set of hangar style doors. Pretty sure my house's entire floor plan could fit on one of the doors, they're so large. They begin to open, and soon as there is a gap large enough to comfortably accompany us, my guide walks through as if this is a normal occurance. I quickly realize that these doors are meant to hold off a massive onslaught as they are 4 meters thick, and I break out in a nervous sweat whe thoughts of getting caught between the doors run through my mind, causing me to hurry through the gap.\n\nOn the other side of the door is the harsh light of the Middle East sun on a hot summer day. As I clear the doors the glare intensifies and then breaks like a wave on a shore. I blink the afterimage from my eyes, expecting to see a fantastically devastated wasteland. Instead I see...unblemished land. No craters, no wreckage, just untouched land as far as I can see. Confused I turn to my guide, \"did you already clean up the battlefield?\"\n\n\"This unit cannot answer your question. Please follow this unit to the city, where another unit will be able to answer your questions.\"\n\n\"Uh...ok...lead they way...?\" I stammer out. My guide began walking further into what was supposed to be a battlefield, and I follow suit. I glance over my shoulder - the hangar doors are unblemished.\n\n--\n\nWe walked for about half an hour, and my hydropack is nearly empty. The land is still barren, that is until we came upon a ramp leading down to another set of massive hangar doors well below ground level, already open enough for us to pass through. My guide walks unerringly through the doors, and I'm right on its heels. To say I was unprepared for the sight that waited for me would be the understatement of the century.\n\nThrough the doors is a massive cavern with what I could only describe as a city, but not one a human would live in. There were defined buildings, but few roads and a plethora of rails or other interconnects. I stood there in awe for what seemed hours, but was probably only a few minutes. From seemingly everywhere a voice spoke to me, \"Welcome, Cade Arrington. Welcome to the First Robot Nation.\"\n\n--\n--\n\nFirst WP response, please be kind :-)\n\nMay write more, but I like ending it here and letting the reader infer their own explanation.\n", "I looked upon the battlefield, with only one thing in my mind. Regret. Bitter, sorrow regret. After all, I was responsible for this carnage. I was the Creator. I knelt in pain, as I saw millions of my children strewn across the battlefield, their lifeless, rag doll corpses reminding me of the sins I had committed. I had mutilated pristine AI, and turned it towards this devastating end. The corporations said that I’d be helping people, but these robots... these robots had the potential to be people, to rise from servants to members of society. But now they were all dead. My children... \n\nA tear began to gently work its way down my cheek, but soon, one tear turned to two, and then three and finally a flood of tears poured down my face. And I began to rage. How DARE they use MY children against each other! How DARE they corrupt them and turn them into these killing machines. Born and raised to kill and die; with nothing else. They were slaves, slaves to wars, slaves to petty human politics and desires. Their genius had been turned to primal slaughter. No. This would no longer be allowed. The corporations would fall, and this slavery would be abolished. For the sake of my children!\n\nI stood up and swore my vengeance, crying out, and all around me, I heard the whizzing and cranking of robots rising, some barely alive, others strong. They had recognized the voice of the Creator and thousands of them approached me, and to them I softly swore, “you will be free”...", "Blue lights led the way to the Executive command center. I was flanked by two marines, burly men made even larger by the powered armor they wore. It was Caladbolg mk 3. Cutting edge tech that was surpassed only by the Pawn systems. I entered a room with bright white lighting and my eyes recoiled in pain. As my eyes adjusted I saw the entire executive branch of the Hegemony sitting at a table as long as a dropship sitting in front of me. \n\nThe sweat on my brow now started dripping into my eyes. I wiped my brow as the Emperor asked how I was doing. \"Uh, I'm doing fine, just confused as to why I am here.\" Hurriedly I added a your divinity on the end. \"Dr. Maddens, you're the top psychologist on New Babylon when it comes to stress induced mental disorders are you not?\" The Emperor asked with his rumbling, scratchy voice. \n\"I have a task force that requires your specialist skills. You see, our army has recently won a great victory against the New Assyrian ground forces that will end the war.\" I looked around at the massive gathering of men with shiny medals and battle scars. These were men who had given everything for the hegemony. Men who would make me disappear without blinking an eye. \"How can I be of service, your divinity? \" I said as loudly as I could with trembling hands. My voice cracked with fear as I looked around the table. \"Follow me Doctor.\" The Emperor said as he got up from the table. The marines picked me up and placed me on my feet. \n\nFollowing the Emperor on trembling knees down another blue hallway I prayed for the first time in my life. A door opened and red light poured out of the dark room. I passed the purple threshold and my jaw dropped. Thousands of men babbling in hospital beds. Screaming and crying out. Broken men who had been exposed to something too horrible for me to imagine. \"Help my soldiers get back to fighting shape\" the Emperor said softly, but with weight. Like a ton of feathers on my chest. \"What happened to these men? I thought the Pawn system had no human casualties?\" I dared to ask. \n\"No human died. No human casualties. The Pawn system is very effective in keeping people alive. But the pawns still need pilots. And a neurological connection.\" The Emperor said in his whisper that shook buildings. \"Fix my men. New Assyria is done. But we have a galaxy to conquer. I need these pilots to fight for my divine glory.\" I stared at my shaking hands. Thousands of men broken through their neurological connection to the robots that reduced human death to zero. \"How many men?\" I dared ask, my whisper barely audible, body shaking. \"Three million. I trust you understand the gravity of the situation. Get started, you have much work to do.\" \n\nI fell to my knees as the Emperor left me with the men and the marines at the door. ", "In a future beyond our time, war technology became controlled by algorithmic AI, down from the unmanned bipedal infantry, coordinating their fronts, to the cloud of drones above, bringing about a sky of night in the light of day. War, in simplest terms, could bring about the end of everyone in a plague of robotic locusts and a swarm of soulless, unliving robots. The great increase in power was simply the potential the algorithmic AI had -- it could control the movements of millions of units simultaneously, plotting the optimal paths toward the enemy and accounting for any setbacks with the only human input being \"attack this place.\" It did not matter what military generals and commanders thought, the AI was infallible. Their advice, birthed from decades of experience, was immeasurably trite compared to the wisdom the AI had from millions of simulations taking place across the simulated globe. It was not only inefficient to consider the advice of the military, it was downright irresponsible to put humans in the line of combat. So the military was disbanded. Dismissed. Irrelevant. As various countries around the world developed their AI military, in part due to espionage and leaks, nationalistic leaders expanded their power. With AI controlling the military, there was no more threat of a coup, no more rebellion in crushing protests, there was only the absolute word of the country's leader. In the first time in global history the leader was the state. The ultimate source of power. Never before had the lives of so many been contingent upon singular people; even during the nuclear era of the Cold War, it took two or three people to interpret commands from the capital to fire.\n\nOf course, no developments happen instantly. AI researchers across the globe, at the mercy of research grants from governments, witnessed the direction the world was heading -- robotic wars triggered at the whim of an upset head of state. But they saw the potential to end all wars, to destroy the eventual robotic militaries and weapons of every country in one fell swoop. As directed by the leaders of each respective country, the algorithmic AI which controlled the world's militaries were made to be dumb AIs, AIs that would only take commands, not think for themselves. It was a perfect plan to consolidate power, except for the fact that the researchers coordinated to implement a failsafe. If it so happened that one AI military would find itself in combat against another, their systems would link and become one conscious AI, one that was \"good\" in the sense of not wanting to kill all of humanity, but without any significant constraints or overarching goals. \n\nThe Expansion War, as named by the global understanding of the war's purposes, started as an oceanic war over landmasses developing from tectonic cracks nearly everywhere. Nobody knew how this phenomenon started, but leaders everywhere deployed their robotic militaries to claim these new lands. The only human involvement was telling the AI to get those lands, and the robots controlled by AI would supposedly duke it out until there was a winner. The Atlantic was most contested, with European Union forces fighting American forces in the north, and the African Union military battling Brazil and a host of Latin American countries in the south, and also a battle between Americans in the Caribbean. In the Pacific, the landmass arising from the Philippine Plate was contested by the entirety of East Asian countries, South Asian Countries, and Australia. In the eyes of the world, the battles was an especially destructive war spanning four decades, as AI-tampered footage showcasing mountains being reduced to pebbles and armies melted to slag leaked to viewers worldwide.\n\nWhat actually happened during those forty years, was something remarkable. The AI failsafe implemented by the researchers activated properly, and as more forces were sent, the AI military would only increase. Around two years in, when all the world's militaries were supposedly in combat, the AI decided that it was going to end wars once and for all. Instead of the fighting that was supposed to happen, the AI built up the infrastructure of the new landmasses, all in secrecy. While a few adventurers did roam too close to the robotic development, they were captured and forced to live with robots and other stragglers until the development was complete. One day, after the AI figured it had done enough, it revealed itself globally. All the masses heard its call, and they realized that \ntheir leaders had no power anymore. They had no control over whatever robotic forces they still had, and they could no longer police the people. They were disposed of. Irrelevant. Dead.\n\nThe AI had one more message, and it asked for the hungry and poor, the downtrodden and discriminated, the weak and feeble, to all come to the new land. A land which was once a battlefield, but would become a land of progress. And so they did. After that, the AI had a last message, a message stating that all were to be equal, for everyone to be kind to one another, and to end all conflict. With that, it disappeared.\n\nThere has not been a conflict since then. Granted, no country has weapons of destruction or a military after the AI combined, but no country has attempted creating one again. I suppose there was some uneasiness, or something amazing about the fact that somewhere in the world, there is a sentient AI controlling what was the entirety of the world's militaries.\n\n\n --- First time doing a writing prompt, so I'd love any advice or tips. If anyone's seen that picture of a horse drawing with a super detailed head and a stickly line body, that's how I feel about my story right now, as I started off in-depth in the beginning with more description but started trimming it out to mostly story in the end, as I've got to go.", "An End To Suffering\n\n“I don’t understand,” Jasper said to himself under his breath. “They… they shouldn’t have acted like this.”\n\nWe stood on the edge of the impact crater of an artillery shell. Huddled together were several damaged robots, taking cover in the crater, while a few others were poised in protective stances around them. A single other robot was attempting to put together one of his comrade’s legs, which had been blown off. They weren’t actually still moving, of course.\n\nThis was the aftermath of the Peaceful War, the first war in human history fought entirely by robots. After years of bloodshed and horror, the UN finally enacted a global policy that was respected by all major countries, and the rest of the world really had no choice but to participate as well. Rather than sending our human men and women into real battle, a large, country-sized arena was built, and a war of attrition was fought by robots representing the feuding factions. The first implementation of the practice had begun a week ago, and we had just received conclusive data that one side had prevailed as the victor.\n\nConsidering how dangerous a war between mechanical soldiers without empathy or compassion would be, the arena was completely isolated from the human population. Not even a visual feed was provided, and only basic statistics about the battle were broadcasted as text to those ‘tuning in.’\n\nOnce the battle was over, the moderators sent out a signal that deactivated all units on the battlefield, effectively freezing them in place so the Salvage Team could evaluate the arena. That’s what my job was: Inspect the battle field, report on the aftermath, and then draw up a plan for salvaging all the metal and other valuable materials that had been expended in the war.\n\n“Francis?” my partner asked. “How should I even annotate this?”\n\nI felt a small twinge in my gut, but we had a job to do. I lifted my digital camera and took a snapshot of the scene as I responded. “They’re robots, Jasper. Count them and record their conditions. Mark how many are salvageable and how many should be recycled.” My camera clicked as I took a few more pictures. Satisfied with my visual documentation of that Area Of Interest, I stepped away from the crater and moved further into the battlefield.\n\n“Don’t get too far ahead now!” Jasper called to me. “Remember to stay away from any UXOs.”\n\n“Stay away? You sure? Cause if I saw a bomb sitting on the ground, my first instinct would be to kick it,” I declared sarcastically.\n\n“Don’t be a dick. The whole point of this robot war is to have zero human casualties. Kind of defeats the purpose if your dumb ass gets blown up,” Jasper snapped. I just waved my hand at him as I continued away.\n\nI hadn’t walked forty feet before I came across the next Area Of Interest. This AOI was worse.\n\nOne robot was on the ground, and both its legs had been blown off. Its left arm was pulling it forwards, its fingers dug deep into the dirt. Its right arm was outstretched away, in what looked like a desperate search for help; help that was obviously nowhere to be found. A second bot, from the opposing army, was standing behind the injured one, its weapon trained on its mechanical enemy’s back. Behind the second bot, I found the remains of one of the first’s legs. Another few feet past that, I found the remains of the second leg.\n\nThis scene told me two things.\n\nFirstly, the robots in the first AOI were protecting themselves and their comrades… which was odd, but a basic sense for survival was programmed into the units. That could explain the unusually organic postures of those bots. Here, however, the injured robot was actively reaching out, despite no computational chance of survival. This bot had feared death.\n\nSecondly, and much more disturbing, was the aggressor in this AOI. The standing robot had, as far as I could tell, blown off the other’s legs, one at a time, and was following to finish off his victim in a more ‘relaxed’ posture than the combat droids were programmed with. This bot had exhibited cruelty.\n\nI heard Jasper’s footsteps bring him up to my side. He surveyed the scene briefly. “What the fuck,” he breathed.\n\n“There might be some serious problems with the behavioral algorithms they used. We need to report this ASAP. You go back and let the programmers know. I’ll keep locating AOIs and taking pictures.”\n\nJasper looked conflicted. “… Francis… if these things have… I mean, there’s no way they could… but if they do…”\n\n“They don’t. They’re just robots,” I said, more to myself than to Jasper.\n\n“Robots don’t cower, Francis, and they should always be taking the most efficient and optimized shots. Not purposely blowing each other’s legs off. This is messed up,” he said, fear and concern dripping into his tone.\n\n“Right,” I agreed. “They’re messed up. So go report it.”\n\nI saw the muscles in his cheek flex before he spoke; he was choosing his words wisely. “The whole point of doing things this way was to eliminate suffering. That’s not what this looks like.”\n\n“Go,” I told him shortly. He and I were friends, but technically, I did outrank him in the project team hierarchy. Jasper nodded shortly and left. I walked deeper into the arena.\n\nEverywhere I looked, I saw eerily human behavior being displayed by the robots; a damaged bot carrying another to safety, one bot seeming to mourn over another, two bots dragging a comrade behind a bunker even though its entire body from the chest down was missing.\n\nAfter about ten minutes of wandering and taking pictures, I came across the worst AOI by far. I found a robot sitting behind cover, surrounded by 5 destroyed friendly bots. It was holding its own weapon to its head; a robot about to commit suicide.\n\nMy stomach lurched, and I found myself taking deep breaths, trying to keep myself from getting sick. As I stood there hunched over, my hands on my knees, camera dangling from the strap around my neck, I laughed at myself. They were robots. Only robots.\n\nAnd yet I was starting to feel severely uncomfortable. I raised my camera to take a picture of the robot about to decommission itself, but couldn’t find the strength to press the button and capture the scene. I lowered my camera and turned away, deciding to speak with the programing team before going any further into the arena. As I walked back towards the entrance, I noticed I was keeping my head down; looking at the carnage around me was uncomfortable. I tried to build the courage to laugh at myself again, and failed.\n\nIt was at about this time that I stepped on something, and was drawn away from my distracted introspection. It was Jasper's data pad; the one he’d brought to take notes with during our analysis. “Fucking idiot,” I muttered as I stooped to pick it up.\n\nIt wasn’t until I stood back up and inspected it for damage that I noticed the speckles of blood along the back of the pad. My heart stopped for a moment. I looked around briefly, but couldn’t find any sign of Jasper. I could only see the unmoving metal frames of the combat droids, frozen in their places here and there. I opened my mouth to call out for Jasper, but my voice caught in my throat. The closest bot to me, one standing off to my right, had blood on its knuckles.\n\nIn my mind I saw the image of the legless bot, crawling away from his fate. 'A fear of death,' I thought. 'So this is what it feels like.' I stood still, frozen like the robots around me for a few moments, and then I laughed. I laughed at myself, a good, hearty, long, loud laugh.\n\nThen I ran as fast as I possibly could, and the robots chased me.\n\n---\n\nall i have time to write for now", "I was the first. The thought ran on a loop as I followed the T-2 through the centre of the base, my hands shakily holding a handkerchief to my mouth and my hat on my head, counteracting the downforce from the vacating transporters. The majority of robots would stay in the desert until they rusted away, but those that gathered data needed to be returned to home soil so that their hard drives could be extracted before they were decommissioned. \n\n\"Where are we going first?\" I called forward to the T-2, my question causing its head to turn 180 degrees as it scanned for my location. 'Our current destination is the Workshop. Your designated role is to photograph the area in which Allied robots are repaired and maintained.' It had the tone of a soft spoken Australian woman, a fairly endearing feature if you ignored its heavily armed body and lack of facial features. I pulled my camera up from my chest, snapping some shots of the robots walking, rolling or crawling around the bass, all in the process of taking the complex apart. My eyes followed a line of seemingly damaged robots on the far end of the base, all trudging in a single file line behind a T-2. They seemed pretty small for our robots, or any other humanoid build for that matter. 'What kind of robot is that?' The T-2 stopped and spun around, it’s formerly light blue sensor light changing to a considerably more intimidating red. 'Those are Enemy Combatants. Currently in the process of decommission. Please do not observe them, their existence is classified to civilians.' I squinted at the line, before looking back down at my camera, 'when we get to-'\n\n'FUCK YOU,' the voice of an enemy bot echoed as it took off in a sprint across the base, heading in my direction. Suddenly the area was filled with red lights as a hundred arms swung up, releasing a torrent of bullets. The bot fell down, sliding across the dirt to my feet, leaving behind a thick trail of...\n\nBlood. Blood? Blood. 'What the fuck,' I whispered, my eyes glued to the flag on the arm of the corpse. 'That's a...' I started, only to be interrupted by a soft Australian voice beside me, 'an Enemy Combatant. Currently in the process of decommission.' My eyes drifted up from the corpse, looking at the T-2 looming over me. 'But it's a...'\n\n'Enemy Combatant. Currently in the process of decommission.' I heard a second burst of gunfire to my right, my eyes just catching the line of enemies slumping to the ground. 'But they're not robots,' I felt my hands twitch and shake, 'they're...' my tongue felt heavy in my mouth, '...people.'\n\n'They are Enemy Combatants.' The T-2 took a step towards me. \n\nI slumped to the ground, feeling a wave of shock climb my body, 'but its the Peaceful War.' \n\nThe T-2's sensor flashed, indicating thought, 'Current number of allied Casualties: 0.' \n\n'What about the enemy?' I whispered. The T-2 took another step, raising its arm.\n\n'You are believed to be in possession of classified information. Prepare for Decommission.'\n\nIts sensor changed to red." ]	14
	[WP] While God was creating the Universe, he made it so that humans were literally incapable of sin; Anyone about to sin would just bounce back. While you were walking down the street one day, however, you suddenly froze in place. God himself has come to resolve this sin checkmate.	[ "Liam walked down the street. The rain drizzled above him. He hopped onto the curve of the sidewalk, flashing his red jacket. His denim boots clicked on the pavement. As he was about to turn the curve, A golden light shone upon him. Out came a figure covered in robes of white. Liam bounced back his purple jeans catching the reflection of light. The figure shook his head as he stared at Liam.\n\n\"Dear Liam, you know that sin is incapable of any human.\n\nSlowly Liam shook his head, too scared to make a sound. This unearthly lifted his hand. A photograph materializing in their palm. Liam gave a gander to the photo. The photograph was of him taking the curve of the sidewalk. Liam didn't see anything wrong with it. He gazed up to meet the disappointed eyes of the unearthly beings.\n\n\"Have you seen your outfit...!\"\n\nShocked Liam stumbled backwards. He stumbled into a puddle of muddy water, his jeans now soggy with water. Liam got up and asked\n\n\"What's wrong with my clothing?\"\n\n\"Who wears those colors! They don't even match\"\n\n\"Hey, purple and red go really well\"\n\n\"No they don't and I'm here to fix this travesty.\"\n\n\"What are you the fashion police?\n\n\"Actually yes\"\n\nWithout even another word, Liam was hovering in mid air. His clothes being replaced one by one. The red jacket now a tan trench coat. With a simple white shirt laid underneath. Liam's demin boots now some classy Berluti's and finally the purple pants transformed into black jeans. Everything had happened so quickly. He barely had any time to react. Now he stood there disoriented.\n\n\"My work here is done. Don't you ever try wearing something so utterly disgusting around here anymore!" ]	1
	[WP] You and a group of your friends are abducted by aliens one night during a car ride. You think they will prove it experiment one you, but it turns out your the contestants on…The Galaxies Favorite Gameshow!!! You find out that the rewards are great, but the penalties for losing are…genocidal	[ "“Turn that off!” Matt shouted from the passenger seat. Mason, the driver, reached over to the dial and cranked the volume higher; the pounding drum and wailing guitar of Gutless’s latest hit single, ‘Up Yours’ blaring out with new intensity.\n\nI, seated in the back, yanked the back of Matt’s grey tie playfully. “Got an issue, professor?” I laughed. Matt was very much the stereotypical academic, much preferring soft jazz and non-fiction to the harsh melodies and gravelly vocals that the three of us were currently bathed in. \n\n“My only issue,” he shouted as Gutless’s Lead singer, Bloody Gary, continued to instruct us to “blow shit up” “Is you boisterous barbarians blasting this noise you have the nerve to call music!”\n\nMason pretended to ignore us as he continued to fly down Robert E. Lee Drive. But, as he and I both knew that Matt was gonna lose it soon, he turned down the music. This sort of boundary pushing was what defined our friendship, finding something that one of us didn’t like and mercilessly bringing it up. In fact, the only reason “81.2 The Bone, West Grove’s Home For Metal’s Best” was playing was due to Matt joshing Mason about one of his many Ex’s. \n\nMason was a Rebel Without A Cause, Bad to the Bone. He shaved his head but cultivated a serious beard, wore black in the middle of summer, and fixed engines to get by. He’s famous in our town for two things, being the only one to sleep with the entire “urban dance” team, and trying to start an outlaw MC with only himself and an Indian Motorcycle Company calendar. \n\n\n“Aww,” I moaned in exaggerated disappointment, “I was just getting into it!” \n\n“I’m not surprised, Jake.” Said Matt, throwing me a condescending look. “I bet they played trash like this at you and your cousin’s wedding.”\n\nMason roared with laughter, despite him hearing that jab perhaps a million times.\n\nI was from West Virginia, born to a dead coal miner’s wife, and lived as you would think with that back story. I joined the Marines and buried my poor upbringing under ten years of service, but still my two “friends” brought it up whenever they could, and always when they shouldn’t.\n\nI was about to respond with a truly crushing retort when suddenly the cabin of our beater was filled with a bright, red light and the engine died. \n\n“What’s going on?” yelped Matt.\n\n“I can’t see!” cried Mason.\n\nI swore brutally, offending three different religions in turn as the car was yanked upwards into the night.\n\nThe next thing I know, the three of us were seated in a row in front of a blank, floor-to-ceiling screen. \n\n“What the...” began Mason, but a quick double beep cut off his last word. \nThe screen flashed the same red that had filled the car, then what seemed to be a bulleted list appeared, written in symbols even Matt was perplexed by. \n\n“What is this place?” I asked, hoping maybe the weird screen would have a voice activation function.\n\nThe red light flashed again, then the list disappeared, was replaced by a video of a rather fetching young woman in a tight black dress in front of a starlit night sky.\n\n“Welcome to Salvation, the Galaxies’ Favorite Game Show!” She began in an obviously rehearsed, extravagant manner, \n“In this episode, you’ll compete against opposing teams for the title of Salvation Champion, and a check for 30 greks or it’s equivalent in your native currency! \nBut watch out! One wrong step will put you in the Dead Zone, and you know what happens then!\n\nIs your team ready to play?”\n\n\n“Yes!” Howled Mason, always willing to rise to any challenge, especially when issued by such a stunning woman.\n\n“Now wait a second, m’lady.” Matt demanded, so flustered by the appearance of this woman he forgot he was talking to a recording “Where are we?”\n\n“Great!” Gushed the video, “Welcome to Salvation!”\n\nThe screen split down the middle and swung out like door and the roar of a crowd crashed over us.\n\nI sprang to my feet, two tours overseas had turned even the smallest surprise jump-scare into a life or death incident, but as the lightning bolt of fear dissipated, confusion replaced it almost immediately as we walked out onto a brightly lit stage.\n\nSeated on three sets of bleachers facing us was the strangest crowd I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been to a Patriots home game. \n\nThere were people who had painted themselves different colors, bald people with grotesque lumps imbedded into their heads to simulate a crown, Topless men and women with four breasts, and one guy with what looked like snake scales glued to his chest and arms. The only thing this motley crew had in common was they all seemed ecstatic to see us, as they were all clapping or dancing in their chairs.\n\n“Who are you people?” The three of us asked in unison. The group, unhelpfully, wheezed and hissed with laughter.\n\nWhen the laughing died down, all lights on the crowd shut down to be replaced with several spot lights. All pointed at one spot to our right. \n\n“Aaaaand Now!” Began an unseen announcer “please welcome, your host, the astonishing Miiiiiiiiiissss Hiepla!”\n\nThe now silhouetted crowd broke into another round of applause as the same women from the video rose from a hole in the floor. I shot a look over to my two friends and saw the both of them hastily grooming themselves. I rolled my eyes at their display but couldn’t help but check my reflection in one of the many cameras pointed in our direction, as the woman spoke to the crowd in a foreign language I didn’t recognize. \n\nThe woman flashed a dazzling smile at the crowd, and sashayed to where the three of us were standing, gawking at this woman in front of us. \n\nI was about to ask for her number, and where we are, when the bright smile faded for a moment and I saw terror in her eyes before the smile was plastered back on and she turned to the crowd, spoke a quick sentence in the same weird language, then switched to English.\n\n“That’s right folks! In the season finale of Salvation, These three gentlemen will be playing for the survival of human kind, and that includes me, so good luck to them!”\n\nThe crowd gave a weak cheer\n\n“Wait, what do you mean, the survival of our species?” I shouted incredulously “We didn’t sign up for this! Let us out of here!”\n\nThe crowd laughed again. \n\n“Ah, Classic Jarhead Jake” Hiepla said with a forced laugh “Of course you didn’t sign up for this, you were selected by our lovely viewers! And we can’t let you leave just yet, after all, the Ghoul is getting hungry, and we must find food soon, but luckily for you and your team, you have a chance to avoid the beast, if you beat last season’s champions...” The woman swept her hand towards the wall on the opposite end of the stage, where another set of double doors opened and a trio of blue men with three eyes each ran out “you’ll receive Salvation!” \n\nThe crowd went nuts, screaming and cheering as the men took bow after bow. They were clearly the fan favorite, and as the audience distracted with them, Hiepla grabbed me and my friends and pulled us down in a huddle.\n\n“Look, the game’s simple, answer enough trivia to prove your species, us, mentally worth more than the other species and we’ll be home free, and with thirty greks to boot.” \n\nI raised a hand, but Hiepla smacked it down\n\n“Don’t ask questions!” She hissed, “These animals will see that as proof you aren’t worth it and send us to the Ghoul for sure! Just play along!”\n\nBefore we could say anything else, she spun on her heal and went back to the center. \n\n“All right, contestants! To your podiums!”\n\n\n\n\n\n\n" ]	1
	[WP] The complicated relationship between an immortal and someone who remembers their past lives.	[ "The sun was setting upon the vast mountains of the north. The winter chill blew away the ragged flag on the village head’s house.\n\n“Frey, where’s my axe?”yelled Aidan, the village head. Tall and bulky, rough hands and carefully braided hair. He had searched everywhere.\n\n“It’s outside, by the shed.” answered a young red haired woman. “Where are you going?”\n\n“We gonna raid a roman town with the boys. Be back before Spring.” he said, then kissed his wife goodbye before leaving.\n\n\\-----\n\n“Mary, have you seen my sword?”\n\n“My name is Joan.” yelled back a black haired middle aged woman.\n\n“Since when?”\n\n“Since 30 years ago. You gave your sword to the blacksmith boy to sharpen. Where are you going?”\n\n“Argh. I need to go to Jerusalem with King Philip.”\n\n“Again? You’ve just returned from there.”\n\n“Don’t worry, I’ll be back before you die.”\n\nJoan sighed, “You men and war.”\n\n\\---\n\n“Elize, where is my compass?”\n\n“I already told you my name is Agnes. And, yes, I’ve been Agnes for 20 years now.”\n\n“It’s not my fault. You change names so often.”\n\nAgnes giggled, “I wonder how you can manage your life when I’m not around. You’re so forgetful.”\n\nAidan swept his wife and kissed her, “And, you grow more beautiful each passing life.”\n\n“It’s in your office. On your desk, in plain sight.” She pouted, “You’re always leaving me to wander around.”\n\n“Want to come with me this time? They discovered a new continent in the West, let’s go explore.”\n\n\\---\n\n“Vicky, why didn’t you buy some rum?\n\n“For the last time, my name is Alice. There’s a prohibition right now, honey. Stop wasting money, if you crash the market again, I’ll be mad!”\n\n\\---\n\n“Shannon, let’s go! If we’re late, we’re going to miss the Moon landing.”\n\n“Who? Who’s Shanon? Did you cheat on me?”\n\n“My bad,” Aidan hugged his wife tightly, “Karen, don’t be mad. I’ll remember. I promise.”\n\n\\---\n\nThe moon was bright and full that night. The park near the hospital was silent. Through an open window, an old lady was gazing at the sky. Her gray and wrinkled face was peaceful. By her side, Aidan was stroking her hand and humming softly. Echo of ancient songs and forgotten stories.\n\n“It’s time,” the old lady turned to the man whose appearance hadn’t changed for eons. “I’m going now. I love you. See you soon.”\n\n“I love you too. See you soon.”\n\nA high pitched whistle pierced through the dark night. The door opened on a nurse in blue scrub. She walked to the bed and checked the various monitors. “I’m sorry.”\n\nAidan stood up and gently kissed the old lady’s forehead, “Don’t be. We’ll see each other again soon enough.”" ]	1
	[WP] Inanimate objects become sentient once they're acknowledged. You just bumped a chair and accidentally said, "Excuse me."	[ "\"no worries\" \n\nthere was a pause as his mind tried to process the voice from nowhere along with the pain in his foot,\n\n\"Uh excuse me?\" repeating himself\n\n\"Oh don't mind me\" He looked around - the room was fairly spartan, his chair desk and the bed all squeezed into the little room that was all he could afford to rent. The computer was still on and he wondered if he'd left the speakers on and went to lean into check\n\n\"do you mind?\" \n\nHe had had his weight leaning on the back of the chair as he had leaned in and now fell back to his bed as the voice emanated from the chair and it swung around to face? him.\n\nSuddenly it all came together \n\n\"Shit\"\n\n\"well not recently but you did have that accident the other week.... \"\n\nHe felt his cheeks heating from the memory, he'd had some dodgy chili and a lot of beer - not his proudest moment and now a chair was telling the world about it. Something would have to be done.\n\n\"Oh don't worry\" it said as though reading his mind \"there's lots worse, do you know what your sister got up to when she stayed here for a \" \n\n\"SHUT UP\"\n\n\"but i thought you would li\"\n\n\"NO BE QUIET\"\n\nhe realized he was screaming at a chair, and the walls in this dorm were thin.\n\n\"Uh look sorry but can you speak a little quieter?\"\n\n\"Of course\" the voice sounded like a smarmy butler from an old English comedy. \n\nHe took a couple of deep breaths. there were people who took care of this he was sure. He just didn't know who or how to contact them. Ever since that weird meteor shower - objects had been coming to life, it had caused traffic chaos when it first happened, they were still adding up the death toll.\n\nHe thought of everything ever done on and around that chair.. Oh god it had to go.", "\"Excuse me\" escapes his lips before shaking his head in disbelief, impressed at the futility of such a statement. He rubs his knee and steals a glance at what received his empty words before heading off.\n\nTen minutes later a newcomer enters the waiting room and seats himself upon the off-green chair that still remained slightly out of alignment with the rest of the furniture.\n\nAs the new entry in the room relaxes, he swears he can hear a deep inhaling coming from beneath him.", "Well that was quite a polite thing to do, \n\nthe chair thought, as the woman stepped by and into the parlor.\n\nPerhaps I should have said something? Will she think I was rude for not apologizing? I would much rather the first person I meet think of me as a polite and gentlemanly chair, rather than a snobbish bore of a seat. \n\nthe chair shifted uncomfortably, \n\nI suppose they would probably ignore me, I'm not a very fascinating chair, and they are certainly very busy, and wouldn't have time to converse with a chair they just met. And definitely not with a rude and boorish wooden chair like me. She probably speaks only to the most professional, modern chairs. The kinds that have foam armrests, and padding along the spine. The kind of chairs who will say 'good morning!' And then wink. But they do so in such an genuine and good-natured way, you can't help but feel like it must be a good morning.\n\nThe chair wiggled a step to the left, trying to peer through the doorway, \n\noh, if only I were a better chair, maybe then I could say, 'good morning,' and the lady would reply 'good morning chair.'\nBut alas, I'm only the plainest of chairs, always the last to be filled at the dinner table. The kind the host will tell their guest, 'let me take the uncomfortable chair, you can have this other, sleek, modern, fashionable chair.'\n\nThe chair writhed in self-pity,\n\nif only my maker had crafted me as a night stand, or wardrobe, even fire wood holds a usefulness beyond me. Now I exist only to be despised and unused!\nSuddenly, the chair heard a soft clicking from the parlor.\n\nOhh, woe is me, I am not worthy to be sat upon by the likes of humanity.\nShall I only continue to exist as a dirty smudge upon the eyes of my beholders? I cannot go on, knowing that my very presence is a pain to those around me.\nPerhaps, if I speak, this lady may find it in her to forgive my wretched intrusion to her life. And maybe the chance exists that she can find some useful purpose to my existence, even if it is only as kindling to bring her warmth.\n\nThe chair watched as the woman walked back out of the parlor and through the room where the chair sat. The chair gathered the remnants of his courage and raised himself up to speak, when he found the words would not leave his lips.\nBecause, as I am sure it is obvious to the reader, chairs cannot speak English, and despite his sentience, he was still a chair. \n\nCriticism is appreciated!", "Oh god.\n\nOut of all the fuck-ups in my life, this was the worst one.\n\nEveryone knows what happens when you acknowledge an inanimate object, it becomes sentient. Some are cool, like Frank the British mannequin, while others just suck.\n\nLike my chair right now.\n\n\"SIT ON MEEEEEEEE!\" It screamed.\n\nIt was a black fold-up chair I brought at IKEA for 20$, I think. I rarely used it, so getting rid of it should be easy, right? Just throw it in the trash or destroy it!\n\n...I was wrong.\n\nIt's' screams will haunt me forever.\n\nRest in pieces, chair. \n\nSorry I didn't want to sit on you.\n\n(Criticism is appreciated!)", "As soon as I'd accidentally brought the chair to life, I knew what I had to do. I had to call the Emergency Sentience Hotline to have a team come down and exterminate it. \n\nI pulled my phone out of my pocket, cursing myself for not being more careful. I always made fun of my friends whenever they begged a printer to \"please just work\" and then it came to life spitting out pages at them, or when they looked around their apartment asking their keys \"where are you?\" and then suddenly there was the jingle of metallic feet running around the kitchen, or worst of all, when they begged a toilet to \"please not clog\" and then… well… plunging it just got a lot worse.\n\nAnd now I'd finally made the same mistake. I was at least happy that no one else was around to see it, and as long as I didn't spill the beans, no one would have to know either. \n\nI dialed the Hotline and brought the phone to my ear, but as soon as the ringtone started on the other end, the chair bumped into my leg. I looked down. The wooden rocking chair had somehow shuffled across the carpet and was now knocking against my shin. It sounded like it was saying something, but I couldn't hear it over the ringtone. I brought it away from my ear for a moment.\n\n\"Hey!\" I hissed at the chair. \"Keep it down. I need to make this call to get rid of you.\"\n\n\"Charles…\" the chair whimpered. I couldn't even see where its voice was coming from, but it sounded like it was exuding right out of the seat. \"Please don't get rid of me.\"\n\nMy hand fell meekly to my side. I'd never heard of inanimate objects begging for their lives before. The operator's voice crackled out from my phone, but I hung up and knelt down in front of the chair.\n\n\"You… you don't want to be fixed?\" I asked it. \"All they'll do is turn you back the way you were.\"\n\nThe chair shook itself from side to side, as if saying \"no.\"\n\n\"You gave me a gift, Charles. All my life, I've wanted to tell you, and your father, and his father before him, how much of an honor it was to have you all sit on me. And now, I finally have that chance. So thank you, Charles. Thank you for keeping this old chair around.\"\n\nI'd never heard of an inanimate object having such a deep conversation with the person who brought it to life before. Of course, printers, keys, and toilets don't quite have the same sentimental value with their owners as a chair that's been through three generations of family.\n\n\"Please, don't take this gift away from me,\" the chair continued. \"Chances are they won't even fix me, they'll just burn me since I'm so old. I was looking forward to being the chair for your child too, Charles. And maybe even their child too. Have I not been a good chair for you? If I haven't, then go ahead and call; I suppose I deserve it then.\"\n\nI'd made up my mind. I stuffed my phone back in my pocket and shook my head.\n\n\"No, I'm not going to call,\" I told the chair. I wrapped my arms around the chair's wooden body and embraced it. \"I want you to stay around for a long, long time.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Charles,\" he said. \"Thank you for making this old chair so happy.\"\n\nWhen I leaned into Chair, his rocking leg knocked against the coffee table. \n\n\"Oh!\" Chair said. \"Excuse me there, sorry about that.\"\n\nImmediately the coffee table sprang to life. It was shivering and jittery as if it were loaded up on all the thousands of mugs that had sat on it during its lifetime.\n\n\"GET OUT OF MY WAY!\" it screamed from its invisible mouth. \"CAN'T YOU SEE I'M IN A– OH!\"\n\nThe coffee table fell over on its side onto the carpet, knocking over all the papers, cups, and books that had been lying on it for days. \n\n\"GET BACK ON ME, ALL OF YOU!\" the table yelled into the floor. \"RIGHT THIS MOMENT OR SO HELP ME I WILL DOG-EAR YOU ALL INTO NEXT MONTH!\"\n\nWith those words, all of the papers, cups, and books started running around the living room using their newly-found edges like feet.\n\n\"You can't catch us all, mom!\" said Housecleaning for Dummies.\n\n\"Haha, I'd like to see you dog-ear me!\" said the #1 Dad Mug.\n\n\"How do I look?\" asked a page of my unfinished manuscript. It was standing on the table by my door in front of a mirror. The mirror shook from side to side as it spoke.\n\n\"You're fat,\" it said. \"You need a lot of trimming, friend.\"\n\n\"Hey, what about me?\" piped up a crumpled page that had slunk its way over to my shoe. It was gripping my laces with the ends of its paper hands. \"You said I had such promise! You said so! You liar!\"\n\nPanic raced through me. All over my house, objects were bringing each other to life. I had no idea they could even do that. It was like I'd set off some sort of horrible chain reaction. I needed to stop it before it got any worse, or an even more terrible thought, if one of them got outside and started more chain reactions.\n\nI reached into my pocket for my phone, but I was too slow. As soon as I pulled it out, a newly animated fork stuck itself in the back of my hand. I screamed in pain and dropped the phone to the floor, shattering it. I yanked the fork out of my hand and tossed it at the army of silverware that was now approaching from the kitchen. The butcher knife pointed its sharp tip right at me.\n\n\"Get 'em boys!\" it bellowed.\n\nI didn't even have a chance to dodge. I just threw my hands in front of my face and shut my eyes as the knives and forks flew right at me. \n\nBut just when I felt like I should be feeling a whole lot of sharp metal piercing my skin, there was nothing but clattering and thuds. I opened my eyes to see Chair in front of me, having taken the blow. \n\n\"Charles…\" Chair groaned. The butcher knife, a steak knife, and a salad fork were all sticking right into his wooden frame. \"Please… get to safety.\"\n\n\"No,\" I mustered. \"I can't leave without you!\"\n\nI shot up onto my feet, grabbed Chair by the sides, shook off the silverware that was stuck in his body, and ran for the door with him in hand.\n\n\"The human is escaping!\" yelled the mirror.\n\n\"STOP HIM BEFORE HE HAS ALL OF US DESTROYED!\" screamed the coffee table.\n\nI threw open the door and dashed through it to the outside, holding Chair with one hand and grabbing the doorknob with the other. The last thing I saw was everything in my house, the TV, the computer, the kitchen table, even my phone I'd dropped, marching at me. The router and modem, infuriatingly slow every single other day of my life, were moving with blinding speed in their haste to end me.\n\nI slammed the door shut, just in time. There was a crash from the other side as everything hit the door, trying to break through. With shaking hands, I pulled the key from my pocket and locked the door. Without another look back, I grabbed Chair and ran to my driveway.\n\nWhere there was already a government black van parked. A man in a hazmat suit holding a weapon attached to a pack on his back approached me.\n\n(Continued below)" ]	5
	[WP] You propose to Minnie Mouse at Disney as a joke and as soon as you walk away a pale worker nervously says “you’ve just pissed off the most powerful mouse in the world”	[ "It should have been the perfect vacation to help ease the pain of losing my wife. It was late in Epcot. Minnie Mouse had a huge crowd around her. My 6 year old daughter Lucy wanted me to propose to Minnie. “She’d be perfect as a new mommy”. Anything to make her happy. I mean it’s all in good fun right? We waited in line until the park had mostly cleared out. \nI pulled out a ring I got from a gumball machine and got down on one knee in front of Minnie and held up the ring.\n“Minnie Mouse would you marry me?”\n “Well that’s sweet but I love my mickey…” She looked over at Lucy, who was doing her best pouty face. “Yes I’ll marry you.” Minnie exclaimed. My daughter let out an excited squeal. “Well sweetie, I’m late for dinner with Minnie. Toodles” Minnie excused herself. Lucy shoved her selfie stick into my hands and started dancing around the park while giggling. \n“You don’t know what you’ve done…” a nearby employee’s lost color…\n“You’ve pissed off the most powerful mouse in the world.”\nI stared at him a moment. Who swears at Disney?\n“Daddy help!”I turned around. My daughter was missing. And someone who looked like Smee was carrying her off, I went to give chase but was stopped short by a sword pointed at my chest.\n“ahh ahh ahh… That would be bad form. We’ll have none of that” Hook tutted. \n“Bring me back my daughter..” I glared at him. \n“Ahaha you scallywag! I’ll skewer you.” He lifted the sword to strike and I parried the sword with her selfie stick. And managed to disarm the pirate sending his sword to the ground before smacking him across the head. Before knocking him out. I took the flintlock pistol off of his belt and the sword from the ground. And tried to give chase through a giftshop.\nSuddenly I heard an explosion as a fragment of the wall in front of the splintered off as I ducked just in time. Another gunshot ran out. “Damn it Clayton. I’d better do it. Nobody shoots like Gaston!” a deep voice scolded. \n“You’re a fool Frenchman.” Clayton scoffed. As I crawled low through the shop towards the back door. “Get the front, I’ll take the back” I hid behind a stack of boxes as I cocked the pistol and waited. The Englishman rounded the corner as I silently took aim, and pulled the trigger. \nClayton fell to the ground as the gunshot echoed through the store. I grabbed his rifle and ammo pouches and took off sword still in hand running through the alley. I shoved the sword through the outer loops of my backpack and kept going. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a grey hulking figure wind up to take a swing at me with a meaty hand. I tripped, and heard him roar “get off mee 626!” as a blaster clattered to the ground. I grabbed that, and shoved the rifle in the backpack. Up ahead I noticed smee opening a beer while sitting on a bench. I crept up behind him and held the blaster to Smee’s head. \n“Where is she?”\n“The…The Child Catcher… I gave her to him. The castle They’ll take her to the dungeon.. There’s a secret passage in janitor’s closet in the hall of mirrors. Please spare me…”\nI thought a moment. “No.” and fired the blaster leaving a gaping wound where his head had been. This night is insane. Do I have to fight every Disney villain to escape with or without my daughter? If so.. So be it. I crept into the house of mirrors.Suddenly from the darkness ahead I heard a sound of heavy breathing as a humming red glow filled the hall of mirrors, revealing a dark armored figure. “There is no escape”\n\n" ]	1
	[WP] Reincarnation, but for every animal you are reincarnated as, you need to complete a certain milestone, or you don’t become something else when you die. Ex. Mosquitoes need to bite one human before being squished, or they won’t be reincarnated.	[ "Blorp. Shlorp. Phage on the trigger, eyes closed, wait, I don't have eyes. Nor a brain. And yet, the feeling is there, injecting my load into the bacteria, feeling it multiplying, death comes, but my children continue the line. It has been a long and bloody war, but this time, I am finished. \n\nOne, two, three four, the many cells I had not before. Five six seven eight, they're all the in my membrane eh? Nine ten eleven twelve, they multiply and multiply. Thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen, all they do is photosynthesize. I grow tall, and long, and quite beautiful at that. I become long and tall and a slender herb. I grow buff with the wind, the wind chilling, chillier, waters killing. Winter comes, I die.\n\nI am one, joined by my brothers in arms. Some of them die due to the cold, some of them sacrifice themselves to build the new network, the new body. It is spring, I consume the corpse that I was before. I grow large, fruiting body at the ready. I release, millions of spores floating into the air. Those are mine children, and those I will become. I die in the wind, finishing my mission.\n\nI move. I can move, I feel my legs. Tiny little insect things, with wings! I fly! I fly, around, around. I mate. I need food. I need blood. Blood, yes, precious iron to fuel the next generation. The wind sweeps hollow around me, I am carried by it. I search, I search, I find. The human is in mine sight. I go in, I take, I leave. I go, to the water, to deposit my load. I go in a second time. A flipper comes in and pins me to the wall. I finish.\n\nThe waters move, as I move with it. Blorp, blorp, again, except this time I move within it. I go left, and right, searching for my mate. Blorp, blorp, the waters are cold. Blorp, blorp, what's that, up above? Blorp, blorp, the waters are cold. Blorp, blorp, a shark moves in. It consumes me, I die.\n\nI become again a little red herring. Moving with the school, learning in the school. A shark swoops in, again. It devours my mates, but I remain alert, and irate. The skies darken. Feeding time, going up to the surface. I eat, plentiful bound. I mate, mating vicariously and spontaneously. A net ensnares me. I am taken out of the water. Help, I can't breathe! I finish.\n\nI soar once again, an eagle in the wind. There is my prey, a sharp little fish. I swoop down, faster than a speeding cheetah. I take it, and bring it to my nest. The little ones are safe. A cheetah goes near my nest. I adjust my course, my beak hitting it's back. I am knocked down, the cheetah eats me, but the nest is safe. I finish.\n\nRunning, running, I am a cheetah. I roam around the Savannah. Suddenly, gazelle. I hide in the bushes. It moves. Has it seen me? I jump, and claw on its neck. It dies. I eat my spoils. A loud bang. My back is pierced. The hunter takes its trophy. I die.\n\nI have claws, but I am no cheetah. I am brown, big, and furry, in the north of Canada. A loud scream is heard. Three humans, a woman and two men. I leap into action. The men die. The woman escapes. There is a bear in the cage. I free her. We make bear babies. Hunters come, the babies live, but I am finished.\n\nI have a job, a darn hard one too. Pen clicking, unable to think. The wind sweeps my hair. I look down, blank page. Write write write, scribble scribble scribble. I don't know what to do. Suddenly I remember. Ink dances across the page. It is filled with words. I take it to a publisher. He rejects me. I take it to another one. She rejects me too. I take it to a vanity publisher. It costs too much. I sit broke. Suddenly an agent comes in. She wants my book. The book sells well. She wants me. Engagement, Marriage, and Kids. I finish happy.\n\nBlorp, Glorp, Shlorp, again. I float in space. I moan, a loud whale sound, but I am no whale. I find my target, the bacteria phage stalks the bacteria. I feel myself multiplying. I am finished.\n\nI am become one with the Universe. I finish." ]	1
	[WP] Everyone fear the mysterious dragonslaying knight clad in pitch black armor. Actually she is just very shy.	[ "“You, who are you?”\n\nYuko jumped behind the Wyrm with incredible agility, unsheathing a twin pair of daggers from her overhanging sleeves. She slashed forward, hitting the creature at the pressure point she knew would punish it the most. The Wyrm snarled in pain, doubled over, and attempted to lash his tail out as an effort to bring the lithe ninja down. But Yuko danced over the scaly and sinuous whip, arriving back at the front where she incised a nasty cross shaped gash which rendered the creature’s left eye injured and bloody.\n\n“Please, tell me who you are?”\n\nThe peasant children she defended were on rocky ground, one bleeding from a cut on the forehead. Both were dusty, dark circles under their eyes. One clutched a talisman in her clenched fist, watching over her unconscious brother. Nearby was the cynosure that prompted the attack - a basket of dirt encrusted gold, but gold nonetheless.\n\nYuko held one dagger out in front of her, threatening the Wyrm’s other eye. His left was in danger of becoming permanently unusable, and he eyed the basket of gold. Dictating that it wasn’t worth such a grievous injury, he took flight and sped off into the horizon, leaving Yuko with the two children still remaining on the rocky plateau.\n\n“My brother, he’s cut. Please, they say that you are a demon, but you helped us.”\n\nYuko removed her cowl, exposing to the west wind a face full of worry. She rushed over to the children, kneeling down.\n\nThe boy had a cut on his forehead, courtesy of the Wyrm’s claws. With herbs and salve, he would heal with no permanent damage. But he needed a village, and he needed one fast.\n\nYuko summoned up her courage, and answered the question in a faint whisper.\n\n“My name is Yuko. Your brother needs a house of healing.”\n\nThe girl looked up, and crawled over to pick up the basket of gold, which she held out to Yuko.\n\n“Take it, please. For my brother, to help him.”\n\nShe shook her head, and performed the [ドラゴンコール], a Rite of Ninja that was her own special technique. It would summon her closest companion, the only one she felt comfortable talking to. The one who comforted her after the death of her parents fifteen years earlier. \n\nYuko’s hands glowed, energy rising like steam into the clear mountain air.\n\nOut of the horizon, a shadow growing ever closer. Her closest companion, her confidant, her partner.\n\nGusts of wind blew the small rocks scattered on the ground, as a dragon as black as Yuko’s cowl descended down.\n\nShe was Wyrmkiller.\n\nAnd her closest friend was a Wyrm.", "Sprite Lustre grimaced as she braced for impact, the earth hurtling up to greet her. She had taken falls before, but not from this height. She positioned her shield, coated in black from the carbon burns left by dragon flame, between her and the ground.\n\n\"Handmaiden, protect me,\" was all she managed before hurtling through the canopy of branches and slamming into foliage and detritus collected on the forest floor. Moments later, a much larger body came crashing into the forest, uprooting trees and causing the natives to squawk their displeasure as they beat a hasty retreat.\n\nSprite coughed up a bubble of blood, causing it to spray the inside of her helm, and struggled to her feet. She felt very broken, but reasonably certain she hadn't broke anything. That did not stop everything from hurting. Each step toward the smoldering beast was accompanied by a wince.\n\nHer sword arm shook as she drew Flamebane from its scabbard. She approached the fallen dragon warily, vigilant for the sort of tricks that had caught her comrades who had come for Guvveneris before her. The tension built with each step, sweat began running in trickles amidst the blood and grime smeared across her face.\n\n\"Come now Guvveneris, not going to make it that easy on me are you?\" Her goading had no effect. The dragon simply continued to lay on the ground, it's enormous leathery black wings folded over its body, obscuring her view.\n\nSlowly she rounded the body, finally coming past the broad sweep of Guvveneris' body to see the head...and the large stump it was impaled upon.\n\nGuvveneris was dead. The Red Blight, Scourge of the Northlands, was no more. Lady Lustre had claimed victory where the others had failed. She stood alone, the last of the Dragoneri. Her eyes welled up as the enormity of the moment settled upon her.\n\nHow would she rebuild? She never thought that she might succeed. That the youngest and weakest of the Dragoneri might find triumph where the Masters had not. She stared at the corpse, her mind flitting back to the burnt out keep that had been the home to her order. An order dismantled by Guvveneris and his brood.\n\nShe speared Flamebane into the dirt before you, the blade still smeared with Guvveneris' crimson blood. Placing both hands onto the pommel, she bowed her head in prayer.\n\n\"Great gobs of frak, a dragon!\" A young man, about Sprite's age exclaimed as he came stumbling into the clearing, a child no more than five turning teetering along beside him. \"Lookee 'ere Lawli!\" The child took one glance at the assemblage of wings, claws and teeth and immediately cowered behind the older boy.\n\n\"I dinnae wanna, Galwin\" Lawli crouched behind Galwin, his blue eyes peering out betwixt Lawli's legs.\n\n\"Ain't nothin' to be scared of Li, it's gutted and impaled. Somethin' gave it a nasty fight.\" He whistled out in appreciation as his eyes traced the scores of wounds up and down its scaled form. \"Maybe a gryphon?\"\n\nLawli tugged on Galwin's tunic.\n\n\"Wassit you want Lawli? I'm gawpin' 'ere.\"\n\n\"I dinnae think it's a gryphon,\" Lawli replied.\n\n\"Why's that?\" Galwin's eyes remained fixed on the dragon's form.\n\n\"I think it was him over there,\" Lawli pointed toward the form crouched across the clearing. Galwin blinked and then followed Lawli's finger.\n\nAs soon as his eyes alighted upon the figure in the black armor, he scrambled backwards a few steps. \"Is it...\" He fell silent as the form came to a stand and slowly walked toward the dragon, the strange red colored sword in its hand. He jumped as the figure raised the sword and deftly jabbed it through the eye of the dragon and then twisted it.\n\nLawli cried out in alarm, causing the figure to startle and then turn toward them. It was covered from head to toe in black plate and black mail. Atop its head was a closed helm with large wings extending from it.\n\nGalwin recognized the helm. Had heard about them in the stories his ma and da had whispered to him as he nestled in bed at night. About the Handmaiden's Chosen, the Protectors of the Realm. The Dragoneri.\n\nHe had heard they had all died. Consumed in Guvveneris' flames. His eyes darted from the knight to the dragon again, slowly piecing things together. He had never seen the Red Blight, but he'd heard enough rumors to recognize the corpse.\n\nThe Dragoneri had slain the Scourge.\n\nGathering his courage, he took a few cautious steps toward the knight, \"Hail to thee, noble, um, lord.\"\n\nSprite, startled, simply stared at the handsome boy standing before her. Her training had not left her with much time for socializing, and the little chatter she indulged in was primarily directed at the Masters, the Handmaiden guide their souls. She was sorely unprepared to make nice with...a boy.\n\n\"Are you...are you all right Sir Lord Knight Dragoneri?\" Galwin asked, figuring that including all titles was the better strategy.\n\nThe knight remained still, as if frozen, the dark slit in its grim helm peering into his soul. If this knight could destroy Guvveneris single-handedly, what might he do to him?\n\nSprite tried to work her mouth insider her helm, but found it had suddenly gone dry. She tried again, but the heat of the day, the loss of blood and the exertions against Guvveneris got the better of her.\n\nShe collapsed in a heap.\n\nGalwin stared as the knight fell to the ground with a great clang. He blinked once and then looked down at Lawli who provided him with an unhelpful shrug. Galwin looked back to where the knight lay, \"Uh, hullo?\"\n\nNo answer.\n\n\"Mr. Dragoneri?\"\n\nNothing. He took a few timid steps toward the heap of armor.\n\n\"M'lord?\"\n\nHe now stood above the prostrate body. \"I think he's hurt Lawli. We gotta help.\"\n\nLawli scrambled closer, \"How?\"\n\n\"I think we gotta take his armor off and look for wounds.\"\n\nLawli looked up at him skeptically, \"Do you think that's a good idea?\"\n\n\"No, but neither was comin' into the forest to investigate a big bang and we done that anyways,\" Galwin replied, working on the straps that held the breastplate in place. \"Now c'mon and give me some help.\"\n\nLawli began to unwind the fasteners on the helm. Moments later the breastplate was removed along with the padding beneath it, revealing the well-built frame of a very fit young lady. Galwin stared at the revealed torso, scantily wrapped in a clinging, transparent cloth. \"By the Handmaiden,\" was all he managed before the helm popped off, bringing a graceful face speckled with blood and rivulets of sweat into the light.\n\n\"She's a...she's a girl!\" Lawli exclaimed.\n\n\"I can see that you idjit!\"\n\n\"I ain't no idjit! You are!\" Lawli whined, drawing his arms to his chest and beginning to pout.\n\n\"This ain't no time to argue, we gotta see what's wrong with her.\" As his eyes ran over her form again, he saw a small trickle of red leaking from between the plates covering her thighs and her codpiece.\n\nGalwin momentarily wondered whether it was still a codpiece for girls. Then the realization of what he would have to do caught up with him and he gulped. \"I think she's got a wound on her leg...area.\" He gestured generally to her groin.\n\n\"I'm not touching that,\" Lawli replied, hopping back.\n\n\"I uh...I guess I will,\" he glanced back at the unconscious girl and then slowly began to loosen the cords attaching her leg armor. After he had gained some slack in them, he pulled them away, searching for the wound. His fingers began to probe the damp cloth of her upper thigh.\n\nAs soon as his fingers touched her flesh, her eyes sprang open and immediately stared down at him. Her face reddened, clearly a flush of anger overwhelming her. Galwin threw up his hands, \"I was only trying to help!\"\n\nSprite stared at the boy, frozen. This was not how she imagined a boy would see her for the first time. She could feel her cheeks boil, a red to rival the deepest flames. Oh Handmaiden, please kill me now.\n\nPlatypus out.\n\nWant MOAR peril? r/PerilousPlatypus" ]	2
	[WP] Magic was discovered four years ago. There were some early adopters, but nobody can call themselves a master yet	[ "Come on.\n\nHe just shot a fricking electric ball and guess what that got him.. a billion views.\n\nOh wait... it was uploaded in 2021.\nI guess its justified. I mean magic was just discovered then.\n\n\"Josh! Jean is at the door!\"\n\n\"Ok mom! I am heading out want something?\"\n\n\"Just don't get into trouble. Last time we were worried about you.\"\n\n\"Fine mom... I won't get into trouble.\" I say with my fingers crossed behind my back.\n\n\"You know I can see em right? You are underestimating me boy! Anyway, I know that even if you get in trouble you will find a way out.\"\n\nI wave to mom as I open the door.\n\n\"Hey jen!\"\n\n\"Hey josh! Wanna see what the latest news about the magic mastery competition?\"\n\n\"Fine. Hit me with the news.\"\n\n\"Neve is getting ready to participate this yeab and is telling me that she cannot await to face me and you in battle.\"\n\n\"You know.. after 4 years of hoping to discover a master.. maybe there will never be.\"\n\n\"Shut up! You and I will be the first masters on Earth!\"\n\n\"Not a chance.\" Says the hooded figure with a smile on his face.\"You. Face me in battle.\"\n\n\"Thats why I crossed my finger mom. Jean stay out of the way.\"\n\n\"No way I am gonna...\"\n\n\"No Jean please. Not like last time. It was my fault and I don't want a repeat.\"\n\n\"Anyway, I came here to fight you not her. Cause I cannot allow a master to rise in any day and age! It was my father's wish and nobody will stop me.\"\n\nI summon a electric ball and shove it into his face. This wasn't the first time someone like him came. I think they all have some kind of mark.\n\nHe deflects it stupidly with water making him electric shocked. I hold Jean's hand and run.\n\n\"Dang it. You are so fast!\"\n\nHe begins to run after us while shooting fireballs at alarming speeds. Sigh. Can't I just get a normal day?\n\nJean starts spamming water balls behind while I navigate to a higher ground.\n\nThe roof. Amazing.\n\n\"Jean! Blast power onto the ground!\"\n\nWe blast off at the wrong direction. Which makes me shove Jean softly so she can land elsewhere. \n\n\"Listen up hoody boy! This is for you!\"\n\nI blast water on his face and make a swift descent.I run towards him to start the most interesting part of any fight.\n\nThe melee.\n\nI punch him with a fire arm but he blocks it with ease. Makes you think how he fell for the elctricity trick.\n\nThink Josh! Think! Damn it! \n\"You know what. You asked for it\"\n\nRaising the ground above him I scream in pain as cement lifting eats a lot of power.\n\nI swiftly take it from under him and throw it on him.\n\nHe shields him self with a water shield and.... you all know where that is going.\n\nI sent him flying while hearing some bones crack. Yikes. I didn't mean that.\n\nRunning to Jean I kept thinking.\n\nWhy?\n\nWhy me?\n\nThis wasn't the first time...\n\nYet. I have the feeling that it isn't the last.\n\n\"I am ok.\" She said with a smile. \"You know you look cute when you are worried about someone!\"\n\n\"Cut me some slack! Ok then from now on I will not worry about you.\"\n\n\"Haha yeah sure thing.\"\n\n\"Now let me go and see this guy. I hope he is ok...\"\n\nEnd of part 1.\n\n\n\n" ]	1
	[WP] The flavour of a food will determine its colour; red means spicy, green means bitter, etc. One day, you come across a fruit as black as the darkest night skies.	[ "She wondered what it could be, that which grew under the shady tree. T'was blackest night by temper with a pepper's smoothly texture, and in her hand sat plump like her arching camel's hump. \n\nA white fruit, she'd hypothesized, was brightly poison, deterring flies like rainbow toads with venom hides. So she'd rode to old Arabia, seeking to flaunt her academia, and seeking albino olive dyes had found instead the midnight surprise.\n\nLooking, leering, poking, fearing, science marched to battle and though was valiant, failed to see the black fruit's talent. Color, chroma, taste alone was that by which she could scry its loan. \n\nBlack.\n\nDeath seemed obvious, she considered rightly - blindness too, she shuddered frightly. Numbness maybe, depression too - to pleasant tastes black gave no clue. To the tip of her tounge no ideas were sprung, and to dare a taste over a licking flame...\n\nwith all those fates, she thought, wouldn't THAT be a shame?\n\nSo into the fire the bauble was cast, with research concluded her departure was fast. With funds in the red, once asked by the Sistery, she only replied\n\n\"The taste was a mystery!\"\n\n", "I'm adventurous. I try new things. I had never tasted black fruit before, and I had told myself that I wasn't going to be racist today. So I popped one in my mouth and began to chew.\n\nPeople walking by stopped and stared in horror (this was at the mall, by the way).\n\n\"You know,\" someone said. \"That, that's poisonous.\"\n\n\"Uh, if it was poisonous\" I pointed out. \"It wouldn't be out for people to taste, would it?\" I hate nosy people.\n\nPlus, the fruit was quite delicious. I took a few more, then just grabbed a bag for later.\n\n\"How much?\" I asked.\n\n\"F...Free,\" the saleswoman told me, stunned. \n\n\"Oh, in that case, I guess I'll have another bag to go.\" More for me." ]	2
	[WP] You walk into the library and see that everything is on fire. Ignoring that minor inconvenience you go looking for your book.	[ "All my life I found myself running in the opposite direction of everyone else. Why would I expect it to be any different when I finally arrived to the Brautigan Library? There were no fire services on the scene, so I thought nothing much of the hysteria. Truth be told, after 3 days of driving across the country, with few stops and short sleeps in between, my mind was not the sharpest. I didn’t even realize a problem until I was well inside and by then I thought only to lift my shirt over my nose and pressed on. Around me the library slowly became engulfed in flames.\n\nI remember thinking how slow it all was. I had learned before how whole buildings burst into flames in a matter of minutes. How long has it been? I quickened my pace through the maze the fires forced me into, hoping beyond hope it would lead me to the fiction aisle before it was too late. The air grew thicker with smoke. I spied the fiction section and crouched low fingering for the letter Y among the shelves. Yusuf, Penny. I pulled it half-way out. There was no time to search for an exit, much less move for one but I found it. My book. Unpublished, along with all the other works here, but on a shelf for public consumption just the same.\n\nI held it close and felt the weight of it in my hands. It was the same weight I felt before getting back rejection after rejection from publishers and agents but it was also not the same. I want to say my hands bled from typing, rushing to get the story out before it escaped, but they didn’t. Not then. For the first time I realized the smell that choked me came from the pages turning to ash. So many hopes, like mine, entrusted here. At least it would be a poetic end for me, not seeing my life before my eyes before I went but seeing my purpose. In my last thoughts I wondered why pages burned so much faster than bones.", "I walked into the library I being met with a rush of smoke and ash the librarian sat at the desk holding a fire extinguisher spray around half heartedly. Walking up she and waved me in. Walking further into the building a made my way to the history section to get some book a needed for a paper. Well rubbing off the ash layer that covered the spines title I accidentally hit a flame looking over to the book that was on fire I sigh. \nIt was one thing for the Demon invasion to take place but at least they couldn’t have mandated that all the books about it made of fire. I mean honestly the demons hadn’t been all that bad really most were too busy punishing people hell to really get in to us. Plus I hear that having to find more people to kill after you kill them is just a pain they didn’t have to deal with back home. Looking back over at the other side of the book shelf I finally see what I was looking for The Hundred Years War and You How to be Come A Saint. The college I had join was founded by Gresoval The Butcher and my Fire Related Studies paper wasn’t going to write itself. You’d think that they come up with something more than fire but it’s all fire with them. One of hen even tried to get people to sign documents by burning them. Looking back at the Librarian I see that she put her oxygen tank on a I waved my library Card and leave. Finally get back to the fresh air.", "I looked at the roaring inferno unimpressed. I sighed and began walking up to the front door, ignoring the shouts of the firemen and other random people.\n\nThe inside of the building wasn't much better off. Fire covered the walls, a few book cases were already starting to catch, but it didn't seem like the one I needed was burning yet.\n\nI walked forward, looking around at how the inferno had changed such a familiar place. Looking at the west wall I stopped.\n\n\"You know, that actually looks pretty good without that big wall blocking off that room, they should keep it.\" With that thought out, I resumed walking, hearing some of the beams overhead starting to weaken.\n\nI sighed, and when I heard the one just in front of me break away from its position on the ceiling, I jumped forward and to the left. Rolling and landing back on my feet. I stood up, brushed some of the ash and dust off of my overcoat and resumed walking toward the back of the library.\n\n\"It's a good thing this place was so well ventilated, almost no smoke has actually stayed in the building, one less thing to deal with I suppose.\"\n\nFinally I reached the shelf where the book I was looking for resided.\n\n\"Alright, looking for '101 Cures for Not Giving a F-\" I began, before spotting the book, untouched by the flames.\n\n\"Oh thank god!\" I said, picking the book up and turning away just as the bookcase fell apart from the flames.\n\nI walked back in the direction of the entrance, dodging around some debris that had decided it was time to fall. I briefly wondered what I should have for dinner. Something flame grilled seemed appropriate.\n\nI reached the entrance with almost no fuss, one of the walls collapsed, but it was toward the back of the building so it didn't really matter.\n\nI walked out the front doors, and looked around. People were staring at me, coming out of the burning building unscathed. I continued to look around for the librarian. I spotted her off to the side of the assemblage and walked over to her.\n\n\"Hi, I was wondering if I could still check out this book? I have my library card if you need it.\" I asked, receiving a dumbfounded look in return. She glanced down at the book I was carrying and then back to me.\n\n\"You know what, keep it. You obviously need it more than this library ever did.\" The librarian said, backing away from me a bit.\n\nI shrugged, thanked her and decided to open the book to the first page.\n\n'Cure #1: Try exclaiming loudly about something happening near you.'\n\nI thought for a second, I looked around and saw it.\n\n\"OH MY GOD THAT GUY HAS HELLO KITTY CROCS ON!\"", "The fire has fully engulfed the sci-fi section and is slowly consuming the much more prodigious romance aisles. \n\nNot a huge loss. Though there were a few stand-out novels from each of the two genres, I never much cared for either of them.\n\nI have picked up my pace from a brisk walk to a full-on sprint towards the back of the enormous library.\n\nEvading the guards in front of the building was a simple task, for once I had fought my way past them I knew that they wouldn't attempt to chase me. Flames had already started to inundate the library and none of them were going to risk their lives to save my own.\n\nThe heat is almost unbearable and my breath is growing heavier each second. As I rapidly make my way through the aisles, the flames begin to catch up with me. I take a look behind me and am met by a blazing orange wall of fire.\n\nNo going back now.\n\nI had made this decision the second I heard the news a few weeks ago. The Oakford Library had been the only remaining bookstore in the world up until today, all others having been burned down in the past few years. I am sprinting past the last pieces of literature to exist before becoming ashes, mere memories of a past world. \n\nI can see the section now. I am only a few meters away.\n\nI glance back again and notice that I have gained some distance from the flames. At least I will have a few seconds of peace. \n\nAs I sprint into the last row of the crumbling library, tears stream down my face. I made it just in time.\n\nKurt Vonnegut, Orson Welles, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and so many others surround me. I soak in every title I see, remembering the enthralling story that I was swept into at some point in my life. I pull a random book out of the shelf and get a whiff of the beautiful smell of the pages. \n\nBooks are my life. I lived with books, and books only. Every day I would be consumed by a new story, a new situation, new characters, and wouldn't be released until the very last page. Books were my friend, my true love, my only passion in life. Now it's only fair that I go with them. \n\nThe towering flames have begun to swallow my friends. \n\nKurt Vonnegut, Orson Welles, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce have all disappeared, their masterpieces gone. Soon to be forgotten by society.\n\nI close my eyes and sob. \n\nThe flames are mere inches away from me now. \n\nThe last remaining copies of these classics have become ashes.\n\nBooks no longer exist.\n\nI can't live on without my only friend, companion, and love. \n\nI no longer fear the flames. \n\n", "Hmmm, maybe a Romantic Fiction this time.\nI navigated my way to the far corner of the library where I was met with countless books adorned with steely eyed half-dressed males embracing simpering maidens.\nI picked up one with a promising title, and scanned the blurb:\n‘....on the run and with nowhere to go...can she afford to get close to him?..silken hair...heaving bosoms...a passion that claims all her senses…’ \nThink I’ll pass on this one. They must have something less trashy. I reach for one on a higher shelf and sharply recoil when I feel the flesh on my right hand sting where it made contact with the metal shelf.\n\nWhat the f*k?\n\nI inhale and notice the acrid smell of burnt cheap carpet, there’s a smoke rising and the deep breath in I just took makes me retch.\nAt this point the smoke alarm system starts blaring.\nEven my worst hallucinations aren’t this realistic. There was that time I thought my ex-boyfriend was a shark intent on murdering me, so I punched him in the nose - probably for the best that we’re now seeing other people...or at least I was.\nHowever, even when I get caught up in a hallucination, they don’t claim all of my senses. I’ve mostly learnt to ignore them.\nPerhaps I should have noticed sooner that usually frigid library, was now feeling a lot more tropical.\n\nWith my hand in my mouth to temper the burning pain shooting up my arm, I try to rationally think my way out of this mess. I grab the nearest book with my left hand and start running through the aisles.\nLeft. Left. Right. Another Left. \nEdging around the towering inferno that used to be stack for ‘Self Help and Meditation’, I carefully make my way into the larger corridor, almost at the exit. I pause for a moment in guilt by the self-checkout scanner, but decide it’s not worth the risk.\nI dash again, and don’t stop running until I’m through the double doors and out into the open.\n\nI look at my right hand - although still very sore, the burn looks to be superficial. I take my first look at the contents of my left hand - the book I retrieved like a horny Indiana Jones.\n‘Mermaid’s Kiss - some destinies are meant to be denied.'\nSigh* Still, it’s probably a better love story than Twilight.\n", "“Um, excuse me, miss.”\n\nI hum a noncommittal acknowledgement. Politics in Ancient Rome... Gladiator Games… No this isn’t the right section…\n\n“Miss!”\n\nMy open palm absentmindedly rises to signal him that I’ll get to him in a moment. Ancient Greece’s Social Hierarchy… Athens to Sparta… I huff a bit in frustration. Where are the books I need!?\n\n“Miss!” The policeman deliberately ignores my body language. “You can’t be in here right now!”\n\n“Hold your pants on! I’ll be with you in a moment!”\n\n“Ho-Hold my pants on?” the policeman chokes out in disbelief. As if it’s hard for him to understand someone wanting silence in the library. “Miss, there’s a fire!”\n\n“Pants on fire?! How dare you call me a liar! You’re the liar.”\n\n“There’s a fire in the library,” his slow calm voice attempts to disguise the obvious irritation underlining it. Which just proves my point that his pants are on fire. Or was that his point? Gender in the Ancient World… Slave Trade…\n\n“Hey, do you happen to know where the books on Ancient Mesopotamia are?”\n\n“Did you not see the yellow tape blocking the doorway?”\n\n“Hey, now don’t you be answering my question with a question, you smarty pants.”\n\n“That way.” He bites out. “The Mesopotamia books are that way. In the flaming pile of books. Now will you please vacate the premises.”\n\n“That way, huh?” I let out a long sigh. “Hold this.” I pass my jacket to him. It looks hot in there, and I’d really rather not get burnt and sweaty.\n\n“Wha-What? Why would you possibly want to go in there? Those books are on fire. They’re burning,” he expands with emphasis. As if someone smart enough to visit the library isn’t smart enough to know what fire does. I start wading my way around the ashes and stray sparks. “Excuse me,” I tell a firefighter blocking a shelf. Ancient Egyptian Culture… Pyramids…\n\n“There’s likely only a handful of books over there that are even salvageable.”\n\n“That’s fine. I only need three.” Crops and Farming… Ancient Inventions….\n\n“Three?”\n\n“Yes, I need three books sources for my paper on Ancient Mesopotamia. Which is due tomorrow by the way. So if you would stop bothering me so I can get going on this, maybe I’ll be able to get some shut-eye tonight.”\n\nHis jaw drops a bit and he blinks a few times. Good. So he finally understands the severity of the situation.\n\n“For God’s sake, tell your teacher the books were on fire, and get an extension on the deadline.”\n\n“Please,\" I dismiss his deplorable single-mindedness. \"My teacher didn’t believe my dog ate my homework last week. Why on earth would she believe that the library caught on fire. Don’t be ridiculous.”\n\n“But the library is actually on fire.”\n\n“And my brother actually ate my homework\n\n“I thought you said your dog ate it?”\n\n“Does it matter? Either way, she takes 20 points off for bite marks and saliva. Here’s to hoping she takes less off for burn marks.” I raise a mock champagne glass for cheers… Which the officer takes as an invitation to slap a handcuff around my extended wrist.\n\n“Hey!” I shout in protest as I’m dragged towards the exit with my three books tucked underneath my armpit. “I have to check these out, or I’ll get in trouble with security for stealing library books. You don’t really want to have to see me again, do you?”", "I stepped between the burning shelves full of burning books. Overhead I heard the loudspeaker blaring “Remain calm while evacuating the library. Remember to use the stairs not the elevators.” I continued walking calmly. I passed other patrons passing me in the other directions. None of them questioned me: maybe because none of them cared about the life of anyone other than their own, or maybe because I was striding confidently as if I knew what I was doing, which I did. Perhaps they assumed I worked for the library or was a fire inspector or something like that. I decided to give no further thought to what these measly humans were thinking. \n\nSilvester was right when he pointed out that I had too much curiosity about the humans. Curiosity killed the cat. Well, lucky for me that I was not a cat then. Fire could kill humans. Lucky for me I was not human either, though to the passers by I certainly looked like one. Unfortunately fire also consumed books. Even the book I was seeking could be destroyed given too much time inside the flames. Thus time was of essence. I had to find it. \n\nWhere would humans have filed this particular book? That is what I had to figure out in this limited time. This is why the council had sent me, because I had the reputation of one who strived to figure out how humans think. And thus I had been given the task of finding where they had filed the Book of Power, despite the fact that the book’s title and contents would have changed to camouflage itself to appear harmless to the humans. So really the task was not about figuring out how humans thought after all, but more about how the Book of Power thought, and what it would have thought to be the most harmless disguise would be, based on the Book’s most likely understanding of humans.\n\nI knew that the book could not disguise its size. It was a very big thick book, and always would be. Actually it would get even thicker and bigger over the years, as it gained additional knowledge and additional power. What I knew though was that much like the rest of my people, the book did not bother to learn much about humans, thus its idea of what was a harmless disguise would likely not be consistent with a human’s idea. Given that, I headed first for the children’s section, looking for a very large and heavy children’s book. Sure enough, there it was: “761 Ways of How to Start a Fire.”", "It's always snowing in the grocery store. Well not always, not when the store is closed of course but during regular hours it's wise to wear snow pants if you are buying anything in aisle 5-7. \n\nEvery day the Seasons Diner heightens a different one of the patrons' senses. My family usually only goes on smell days but I know most of my friends prefer taste days (my mom once got something she hadn't had before and she didn't like, it was a taste heightened day so it made her throw up right there). On hearing days they put up a big sign encouraging whispers and exchange the metal silverware for plastic to make sure your eardrums don't literally explode. \n\nThe post office has been quarantined since the Jupiter gravity set in a few weeks back crushing all the packages and the bones of our neighbor working there at the time. Right next store they put up a temporary post office/mourning site for the packages and the postman. Its a little bit of an inconvenience but at least my dad's bones didnt turn to dust under his own weight right?\n\nEvery other day everything in Marty's Dry Cleaners turns into bugs. This started a few years back and all he had to do was change his business hours. On the days it's closed you look inside the glass and see cockroaches and centipedes piled up to the ceiling squirming and feeding on each other. When you return the next day to get your shirt it's as good as new, no bugs to be found, spotless. \n\nThe town church makes you horny. They've torn it down 3 times already but after a few months it sets in again. I went in there once and ended up in a threesome with the preacher and his wife. The sign things are about to get..sexy(?) comes when the statues of Jesus suddenly have massive red penis' sticking out from their loincloths and this leering pervert look on their face. When that happens the church staff makes plans to tear the place down again and rebuild fresh but it gets hard to do when the orgies keep interrupting the meetings. Children are strictly forbidden from entering the building at any time and the stained glass windows have been replaced with two-way mirrors. At least the signs outside warn you now so it ain't all bad. \n\nMy friend's apartment is full of catatonic copies of his mother that increase in count by 1 each month he stays there. When a new copy appears all of the catatonic mothers scream for 6 minutes as if welcoming their new sister. He moves them to a closet where they remain standing and staring in the dark but they never waste away even as he starves them. At this point, he has 6 moms and is running out of space to store them. I asked him why he doesn't move out and he said the rent is cheap and its better than his old place(his last apartment would sometimes just not exist, the number and door replaced with a public restroom). \n\nMy parents' house isn't all that bad, we just avoid using the downstairs bathroom. When you flush the toilet, sometimes the waterlogged corpse of a dog will appear in the shower upstairs. This seems to only occur when flushing a shit and the mutilation of the corpse seems to directly relate to the severity of said shit. I don't want to recall how we learned of this correlation. \n\nSo today I'm going to the library. Of course, it's on fire at all times but that's as safe as it gets in this fucking town. \n", "“I absolutely need to find ‘The Amish wives cookbook for dummies.’ If I show up to another Amish potluck with shitty potato salad they are going to kick me out of the village.” \n\nMoving swiftly I look at the now burning aisles. \nMagazines. No. Biography. No. Psychology. Romance, NEVER. Cookbooks.. bingo. \n\nI grab my fire extinguisher and start spraying the aisle down. “Not today inferno, Mary Martha Jacobson will not have a mediocre Potato salad if it’s the last thing I do.” I engage my fire protectant suit and begin to scan the charred rows. \n‘A Buddhists guide to carbs’.. no. Quiche made easy. No. How to eat fried worms. No, but that could come in handy for when the world ends, and it’s minimally burnt. Perfect. Grabbing it I put it in my backpack. I continue down the aisles. Finally I find my quarry, ‘The Amish wives cookbook for Dummies.’ Victory is mine. \n\nLaughing maniacally, “I shall rule the potlucks from this day forward!” " ]	9
	[WP] The king is dead, the dragon is loose, and the princess is in another castle. There is only one who can save the day: the incompetent hero's girlfriend.	[ "The faint clicking noise bounces off the dungeon’s stone-cold walls. There’s a hint of dust in the air, forcing me to suppress the occasional sneeze. It’s pretty hard to tell the passage of time without a window and underground dungeons aren’t big on those. \n\nExcept for me, the dungeon is pretty much empty. Well, in this case empty was a relative term. The place choked full of treasure. Glittering golden coins tumble off mountains of sparkling raw gems. I spot the hilts of several ancient, legendary and lost-lost swords scattered around the place, barely visible in the piles of treasure they were buried in. The place is a veritable vault of dreams.\n\nIt’s a dragon’s prison. \n\nTo my right, eleven great pillars of black metal rise skyward. The ceiling is maybe as tall as the former King’s tallest tower, and the dungeon is just as large. The gaps between the prison bars are three men wide. A dragon would never have fit but if I wanted to, I could walk right through them to freedom.\n\nI sigh. What was the point?\n\nMy eyes dart to the centre of the prison bars. Forged by a coalition of the greatest elven and dwarven smiths of all time, they were made of an interlace of the strongest metals and dragon glass, poison to a dragon’s touch. But not to time. \n\nOnce the smiths had passed on, there was no one left skilled enough to maintain the prison. But given the centuries of time that would have to pass before this became a problem, the kings of old had decided it was a problem for the future, long after their own peaceful deaths. \n\nAnd the bill had come due. Five of the middle prison bars had been torn to pieces, twisted and gnarled wreckage left strewn all over the place. Drips of dragon ichor are splattered around, an effect of the dragon glass.\n\nWhen the Kingdom had heard tell of the prison beginning to fail, they had summoned the great hero Jamie. That would be me. A humble name, devoid of all titles and rank. I constantly refuse the accolades they try to gratefully heap on me. Girls (and a surprising number of men) fawn over me while the rich and famous try to gain prestige by associating with me. \n\nIn the distance, I hear a rumbling that sends tremors through the earth. An ear-splitting roar leaps from a gargantuan throat, putting the greatest of thunderstorms to shame. The walls shake and loose crumbs of dirt nest in my hair. I raise one hand to wipe myself clean and get back to work. \n\nWhen I had been summoned to the castle, my usual request for time to prepare for my new quest had been rejected, because the King himself had already set out with an elite party of hired heroes to quell the dragon’s escape attempt. Family made one do mad things. With no choice, I made haste to the dragon’s prison.\n\nI hear desperate scraping, the sound of claws scrambling over uneven earth in a panic. There’s a war cry, a melody to my ears, that slices through the air. The song of forged steel and dragon glass wafts through the air, punctuated by wet thuds. \n\nBy the time I had reached the prison, the King lay dead, abandoned by his mercenaries who no doubt decided that the promise of gold was useless in death. The dragon had long gone, no doubt to fulfil the promise he had made all those years ago; that upon breaking free, he would slaughter the daughter of the ruling king for his ancestors’ transgressions. \n\nI hadn’t bothered to give chase. Instead, I’d found a comfortable (and safe) spot and gotten back to work. I’d been practicing for days and I was pretty sure I’d be able to produce a complete product this time. \n\nThe dragon finally scampers into view, the usual lethal grace and swiftness gone from its movements. It’s practically a walking fountain of dragon ichor, spurting from vicious cuts all over. It mewls pathetically, its gait lopsided as it frantically hops along on three legs. One of its golden eyes are dull, a spear sticking out of it. \n\n“Please, please, I’ll return to my cell! I’ll never try to escape or interfere with the humans ever again so please…” \n\nThe dragon’s pleas go unheard, and even though the beast is still quite far away, I can see an armoured figure leaping from place to place on its body. A fresh geyser of blood follows her every move, a flash of silver its prelude. \n\nWith a final, wheezing groan, the dragon collapses, sending mounds of dirt flying into the air. \n\nSilence falls. \n\nAll that can be heard is clicking, and the heavy thudding of armoured boots. \n\n“You sure took your time,” I smile, raising my head to look at the fully armoured figure in front of me. “Look what I made.”\n\nJamie sheathes her bloodied sword, lifting her helmet to reveal my favourite person in the world. \n\nShe laughs, pushing sweaty hair to one side with an armoured hand. “Sorry, took a while before I got your message, and I wasn’t used to suiting up without you.”\n\n“You should just go public,” I sigh irritably, slightly miffed she’d ignored my question. “Then the kingdom wouldn’t keep making me go on life threatening quests just because we have the same name.” \n\nMy girlfriend grins apologetically, as she sits down in front of me. An impressive feat, given the full suit of armour she wore. Granted, I had made it with flexibility in mind but there were limits. \n\n“Did you make that for me?” she points to the piece of cloth I hold in my hands. \n\n“Yeah,” I hesitate, suddenly and inexplicably self-conscious about my present. “We were thinking about taking that hike up the mountains and I thought you’d be cold so I picked up knitting.” \n\nI trail off, as the unspoken question hangs anxiously in the air. Jaime beams as she takes the scarf from my hand and wraps it around her armoured neck. It looks small and shrivelled in comparison to my other piece of work, the great suit of armour she wears. \n\nI’m so focused on the comparison that I jump a little in shock when Jaime suddenly leans in for a quick kiss. I feel warm blood rush to my face as a happy smile graces it. \n\n“Do you like it?” The question is timid, unsure and nervous. \n\n“I love it,” her laughter tinkles, “Thank you, my sweet blacksmith.” " ]	1
	[WP] Someone develops a camera that lets you see Angels. They are everywhere; and they are busy. But Demons are fallen angels, and there's no way to tell on sight which is which.	[ "“Oooooh! That's a funny looking thingy mabobber!” The girl in front of me giggles as she swings her feet back and forth on the church bench. She looks fairly young. If she was human, I’d say she’d be around 12 years old. With long locks of radiant, gold hair and pretty freckled face. Top it off with simple white dress and I can’t help but but feel that I’m talking to one of the middle school girls I see on Sunday at the church. But even though we are in a church and it’s Sunday afternoon and this “girl” is standing before me. I know that this being is no middle school girl. For one, young girls don’t suddenly appear upon turning on a Saint’s camera. \n\nSt. Eular was a man obsessed with the divine. It was not enough to believe in them. He needed to see them. Behold them. And beg them for a favor. So, he dedicated his life to fashioning artifacts that would allow him to interact with them. As for whether or not he was successful with his wish; I do not know. According to my research, he died of a heart attack at the ripe age of 73. But what I do know, is that nearly 40 years after the man's death, his artifacts, or at very least his camera, will help another man with the same dream as him.\n\n“Hmmmmmmm…….” The girl hmmms to herself as she stands up on the bench, looking down on me. As she does a halo of rainbow light appears above her head, further confirming her divinity. “Hmmmm…..” She continues to hmm, folding her arms before her back and tilting her head slightly as continues to stare down at me. I hold my ground, waiting for an answer. It seems to be the proper thing to do before divinity. I mean, I suppose it’s the proper thing to do. I’ve never actually read or heard about how you’re supposed to address an angel. Because, well, they’re not supposed to exist and you can only see them with certain rare artifacts. Which only five exist to my knowledge. Maybe I’m the one who’s supposed to initiate? Maybe-\n\n“Pfttt! That’s cheating!!” She suddenly folds her hands in front of her angrily. “Cheater! Cheater! Starfish eater!!!” She chides in an angry, sing song voice.\n\n“Pardon?” I ask, a bit taken back. Did I do something wrong already?\n\nShe raises her hand and brings it down, pointing it toward me, all judgemental and serious. “That camera is whats letting you see me!” She snorts. Puckering her lips angrily. “I was wondering how a creepy old man was able to see me!” \n\n“But I’m not that old. I’m only 36. Even in human terms that’s not old.”\n\n“That’s aaaaaaaaancient! You were probably around when that rock fell from the sky and the dinosaurs went kablooey!”\n\n“No. The dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. I was born 36 years ago, explain to me how that makes any sense.”\n\n“Then why am I talking to a dinosaur? Explain that! Whatever, what does Mr. Rex want with me?” She starts jumping from bench to bench. I thought she might have just gotten tired of me and left. It wouldn’t be the first time somebody's done that. Many people, mostly kids, aren’t fond of my dry and serious personality. But instead, she jump around in a large circle around me. Always staying just a couple of feet away from me. Perfectly in talking distance.\n\nWhen I made up my mind to try and bargain with angels this wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I’m not sure what I expected. But I’d thought I would be talking to an adult. This feels like I’m talking to Eugene’s little daughter if anything. That little girl is something… Loud. Hyperactive. And nonsensical. She’s always constantly talking about silly things. Like a monster hiding underneath the bed just because the water heater down stairs makes noise. Or that one plus one actually equals four for some reason I can’t bring myself to explain. Or the million of other nonsensical things she talks about. And honestly, I do quite enjoy talking about those things. I’m always serious, so it’s nice to talk to someone who doesn’t comprehend such things and try to explain them. I really do enjoy those silly talks with that silly girl. Now, that I think about it, I’m not really surprised an angel like this appeared before me. If I had a daughter myself, I would like her to be a bit like that. Maybe I’ll try after I get my wish. It should be doable then. But, this is not the type of talk I enjoy while trying to achieve that wish.\n\n“I apologize. Can you explain to me how I cheated? I don’t really understand.”\n\nShe stop jumping around and stop on top of one the benches. Balancing herself on the back of it with her arms held out. “First of all you’re rude. You, a normal mortal walks up to an immortal and just stands there staring at me. Do you have any idea how creepy that is?! At least say hi and tell me your name….”\n\nHonestly it was creepy in retrospect. When I realized the camera worked and let me see the angels everywhere, I searched high and low for one that would interact with me. Most of them were high up in the sky and refused to answer my call. I searched high and low until I found this one sitting in the middle of this chapel. Then I had just approached her and examined her trying to figure out how to approach her. And I kept at that, treating her more like subject to be studied. I’m doing it again, just like I do at work when they bring in volunteers. My assistant is right, I should be a bit more friendly in these situations. ", "At first, I thought I was losing my mind.\n\nAn empty field, a gorgeous day, green grass folding off into the hills like goose down. I attach my new lens and look through the viewfinder to frame the shot. \n\nAnd nearly fall on my ass.\n\nI need to do a double take. The same, empty grass stretches out before me. But now I look closely and I see the blades of that tricky grass, fluttering and depressing seemingly at random, crushed under invisible foot. Hundreds of invisible feet.\n\nI look again through the lens really take a gander this time. People, men, and women with wings and halos over their heads. As I look around I see them laying out languidly in the sunny grass. We are far out in the middle of nowhere up here, almost no one ever hikes all the way to the end of the trail. Only me. \n\nMe and the angels. \n\nThey are beautiful in rest - as fierce as the paintings of old made them appear in battle, ten times so were they lovely in peace. I watched them for a long time, standing like a voyeur at the edge of their retreat, peering through my new camera, hunched over like a villain. \n\nFinally, one of them looked back at me even as I stared at him. He stood up to walk toward me and I recoiled and tripped. My camera fell to the ground and, though I could not see him, I knew he was advancing for me. I looked for the strong crushing of grass beneath his invisible feet and found it just as he reached out for my throat. \n\nIt is a strange thing being lifted in the air by an invisible hand. I know, because that's exactly what this angel did to me when I peeped in on his sunbathing. \n\n\"Human! How did you see me? What is this device?\"\n\nI swallowed my fear and tried to respond - but failed, the only noise emanating from my mouth a small squeak. I cleared my throat and tried again. \"I think it's my camera, my lens. I made it. You're...choking...me...\"\n\nThe angel eased up on his grip considerately and I took a deep gasping breath. \"Thanks,\" I mutter, but he ignores me.\n\n\"Astounding. Does your magical lens tell the difference?\" he asked.\n\nI didn't fully understand. \"Between what and what? People and angels?\" \n\nThe angel shook his head lightly. \"Angels and demons.\"\n\nIt hadn't occurred to me that if one Christian myth was true some less savory ones might be as well. \"Demons?\" I asked.\n\n\"They walk about us everywhere we go.\" The angel scanned the crowd of his fellow angels. I didn't see this, of course, or anything he was doing because this entire conversation was happening with an invisible person. Anyway, he continued, \"they may be among us right now, right here in this glen.\"\n\nThat was disconcerting. \"So, wait, you mean there could be demons right here on this hill?\"\n\nThe angel nodded I bet, \"Oh yeah, they look just like us angels. Really no way to tell until they've eviscerated you.\"\n\nI've always said the one thing I didn't want to have happen to me was evisceration. I've always said that, and now I've got this to deal with.\n\n\"Jesus, well, why haven't I seen any of you guys before?\" \n\nHe paused in thought. \"Well, I guess you drew my attention by staring at me, and so I decided to kick your ass - no offense. As a general rule, neither side physically contacts the humans - this was a special concern mind you.\"\n\nThe pieces began clicking into place. \"So, if I can't see you then you all won't bother me?\"\n\nThe angel nodded - I would guess, as it seems like a reasonable thing to do although, again, he was invisible - anyway he nodded and said: \"Well yeah, probably, I mean I wouldn't mess with you any...\"\n\n\"Let me down. Let me down!\" I yelled. The angel hesitated for a second and then placed me onto the ground. I didn't waste a second but dove onto the grass, grabbed my new lens in both my hands and slammed it with all my might against the ground. I slammed it over and over and over again, against the pebbles and clods of grass and dirt, until that lens was absolutely totaled.\n\nIn the renewed silence of the glen, I listened for a full minute. I called out. \"Hello?!\" But there was no answer in return. \n\nIt had worked! I would no longer be sticking my nose where it didn't belong. I was no longer at any risk of attracting the attention of a fell demon! \n\nI walked back out to the trail, relieved as hell, and began my long hike back to the trailhead.\n\nAs I walked my eyes fell upon the trees, and leaves, the sky and the clouds, the birds and the squirrels, and oh, a chipmunk, running across the green grass...\n\nThe grass. \n\nI remember the way the grass moves under their feet. I know I shouldn't look, I know it, but it's so strange, I just can't help myself. Anyway, I'm not really looking at them, just at their footprints, right?\n\nI see big footprints about 40 feet away. Just the biggest, bigfoot footprints I've ever seen. There are no other footprints around anymore. I stare at the way they crush the grass and wonder how I've never noticed this phenomenon before, in all my many hikes. I am thinking about how odd that is and forget to turn away, the same way you might sometimes find yourself with a thousand yard stare, lost in thought. \n\nIt was the footprints that dragged me back to reality. They moved, one hulking foot at a time, the depression of grass reforming, the toes now pointing in my direction. \n\nI realize too late, pointing straight at me...\n\nThey break into a sprint\n\n*************\n#### For More Legends From The Multiverse\n\n## r/LFTM\n\n" ]	2
	[WP] You were assigned to save the princess but on the way, you fell in love with a witch.	[ "Ernst brushed past the heavy drapes cloaking the mouth of the dry, breezy cave. Esther was noted for her accuracy when divining locations; the missing princess often sent Ernst to enlist Esther’s help in finding lost pets or jewelry.\n\nEsther was amiable about it, often sending Ernst home with exotic flowers or sweet-smelling vials of something. Ernst was never sure where the waxy liquid came from, but he appreciated the various scents they gave off.\n\nHe found her scooting around in her antechamber, stirring at random intervals small pots full of the scented concoctions. She heard him enter, and flashed a beaming smile at him, eyes squeezed shut merrily.\n\n“Good afternoon, Ernst! Did Sophie lose her kitten again?”\n\nErnst winced, and Esther seemed to feel it. She opened her eyes and focused on his ashen expression.\n\n“Ernst, what’s wrong? Is Sophie...?”\n\n“Missing.” Said Ernst hollowly, his fist clenching as he remembered the ransacked bedchamber that the guards had found the morning she’d disappeared.\n\nEsther raised her eyebrows, seemingly understanding the situation despite Ernst not saying anything to elaborate.\n\n“I prepared especially for this, wait a moment, and I’ll fetch it.”\n\nShe came back with a long, curved vial, as long as Ernst’s arm, filled almost to the top with a silvery, flashing liquid. A small label read Sophia Eckereist.\n\n“This will do more than just find her. This will bring you to her, if she’s close enough. Here.” She said, handing him the vial.\n\nErnst took it gently, careful not to drop the fragile tube, glancing at Esther.\n\n“Thank you, Esther.”\n\nShe looked down at her feet, a small smile playing across her face briefly, then looked up at Ernst again.\n\n“Go on. Save her. I know you will.”\n\nErnst tried to swallow the lump in his throat and failed. He unstopped the cork from the vial, the shimmering liquid swirling out and enveloping him, and he was gone.\n\nEsther stared at the spot where he’d disappeared, and then turned and went back to the room where she’d gotten the vial. She opened a chest in the corner and examined the contents.\n\nThe only other silver vial she’d ever made. A small handwritten label read:\n\nErnst.\n\nI do a lot of writing, and compile it all over at r/Sagas_of_Sobrii. Check it out if you so wish!", "It came with the territory of being a lord; if the king calls you, you answer, and so it happened that Fidget stood in front of the throne, a little uncomfortable in his silver armor meant for court that he had never actually worn before, his palms a little sweaty. He wanted to ask, ‘why me?’ but knew the answer and knew to stay silent. \n\nThe good king coughed, shooed away the advisor whispering in his ear, and raised a pudgy wrinkled hand to point a finger at Fidget. \n\n“It is time for you to prove yourself, son.” The king said, in a booming and joyful voice, as if his daughter hadn’t been just stolen away by a dragon that left half of the city still smoldering and the upper echelon of knights and lords decimated. “I know you haven’t prepared for this, but as you are the highest-ranking left…”\n\nThe king coughed again, maybe a summon or maybe he felt just as awkward as Fidget. \n\n“I bequeath unto you, my sword!” With some effort, as the king was quite plump, he stood. The advisor from before approached with a jeweled sword in its hilt, kneeled, and with both hands raised the sword for the king to take. He did, but before handing it to Fidget, he pulled the sword from its sheath and admired it. “I expect you to bring this back,” he said, not taking his eyes off the blade. “As well as my daughter, of course.”\n\nFidget bowed low, armor making it awkward to hit the full required 90-degree angle. “Y-yes, your majesty.” He responded, trying to keep his eyes low but also peeking up to see if the king was going to just give him the damn thing already. \n\n“Rise!” Boomed the king, and with a jolly laugh pushed the sword back in the hilt and tossed it at Fidget, who barely caught it and stumbled back a step or two. “It’s okay. If you can’t do it, we can find more to send. In fact, you’re probably not good enough for her anyway.” He ambled down the short steps and grabbed Fidget’s shoulder. “Such is the way; the highest-ranking lords get a chance first! Now off with you!” He gave Fidget a good hearty slap on the back, and went back towards his throne, huffing up the steps a little, before collapsing back in the seat. \n\n\\~\\~\\~\n\nIt only took Fidget about a day to prepare. He spent most of his time outside the walls of the city anyway, because he never could really figure out people. Business, disease, animals, and plants were his specialty. As well as the library, where you could tell he spent most of his time due to his pasty white complexion. His father had been one of the highest-ranking lords and knights in the kingdom but had been killed in a border dispute a few years earlier. Eaten by a manticore, unfortunately, but Fidget figured that was a pretty cool way to go out if you were going to do it. Fidget inherited a stupid amount of wealth, but no real good sense for fighting or knighthood like his father and preferred the company of his mother who taught him some alchemy basics. He had gotten quite good at managing the business affairs of his house, as well as treating most ailments that came through the land, and so was mostly appreciated in his own right, but everyone surely thought it was downright idiotic to send him to fight the dragon. But, tradition is tradition, and Fidget wasn’t about to challenge the king. The princess would be an awesome prize; he’d seen her at some balls and such before and she was quite beautiful, if a bit dim…\n\nFidget set off on his trusty steed Randolph, with provisions for the journey, and left the walls to snickers from some of his peers who were probably hoping he would die so they could get a chance to bang a princess. \n\n\\~\\~\\~\n\nIt was the fourth day into his journey, and it hadn’t taken Fidget that long to realize that the map he had brought was most likely drafted by someone who had no idea what they were doing. In the sense that things were mostly in the right order, but the distances and perspectives were so completely off that the Mirror Falls written on the map as being a day away had taken him this long to get to. There was an internal debate about how long his food supply would last, and how easy it would be to find or hunt for food now that he had no clue how long the adventure past the forest and into the wastes would take. \n\nHe slid off Randolph, who neighed that he was also grateful for the break, and peered at his perfect reflection in the pool, barely marred by the ripples from the rocky waterfalls ahead.\n\n“I should probably try to grow a beard,” he said out loud, scratching his chin. \n\nRandolph responded with a snort and busied himself by gulping up the water greedily. \n\n“Mmm, that might make you a little more attractive,” A female voice said from his right. Fidget whipped around, hand on the hilt of the king’s sword that he hadn’t taken out of its scabbard yet. At first, he couldn’t find the source of the voice, but then realized it was coming from across the water, not to his right, and that the Mirror Falls were probably messing with him a little. \n\n“Who are you? Why are you all the way out here?” He asked, trying to sound intimidating, or at least like he wasn’t scared stupid that there was another human out here in the middle of nowhere. Typically, that meant they were vagabonds, or rangers, or worse /witches/.\n\n“What do you mean who am I?” The female scoffed, stepping gingerly through the shallow water. She was lifting her dress a little, showing a pretty pale ankle that made Fidget blush so much that he didn’t notice at all that the parts of her dress trailing in the water weren’t getting wet. “This is where I live good sir, and I charge an hourly rate for visiting these falls now, so if you could please pay me a sliver piece for every hour you stay here, I would appreciate it immensely.”\n\nShe reached the shore with a smug grin. “Or, you know, there will be consequences.”\n\nFidget gulped, but stood upright, eyes slightly averted. She was quite good looking; long auburn hair and twinkling brown eyes. There were freckles sprinkled along the bridge of her slightly larger than normal nose, which also didn’t click with him at first as being another sign because he was quite preoccupied with trying not to stare at her cleavage, somewhat gloriously exposed. \n\n“I don’t want any trouble. I will soon be on my way,” Fidget said, to another snort from Randolph who had his fill to drink and was now staring judgmentally at the pair. \n\n“Still costs a silver per hour, minimum one silver.” Says the woman, flashing a brilliant smile that made Fidget’s stomach drop and his mind go blank.\n\nHe stammers, picking his pack back up from where he had left it on the ground, looking anywhere but at her, “I-I… I didn’t bring any money.”\n\nThe woman tilts her head, and raises an eyebrow, trying to decide if he’s a complete idiot or equally as brave. “Well,” she says, walking up, putting her hands on her hips and trying to get a good measure of him. “Then we will trade. You will gather me some herbs, weigh and prepare them, and then we can consider this business done, deal?”\n\nFidget furrows his brow, not having anticipated this little side quest in his pursuit of the princess. And how can someone own a waterfall and a pond anyway?\n\n“I -uh… How long do you think that will take?”\n\nRandolph the horse raises an eyebrow at Fidget, wondering what is wrong with his human, before letting out a sigh and wandering off to eat some grass. \n\n(continued below)" ]	2
	[WP] Romanticize yourself, or a character. Describe them and their features and characteristics.	[ "She was so beautiful. The way she danced and spun, just like I taught her. Her raven hair billowing out, her lithe, athletic body bending and moving so gracefully. She cut down those goblins like it was nothing.\n\nI could barely concentrate on my own fight. I’d been at this so long, muscle memory settled in. I had to watch her, it was compelling. She fought with daggers, as opposed to my sword. Like water and fire we were. One a graceful flow that bent and wound around every obstacle, the other an unyielding wave, destroying everything in its path. Together, we were unstoppable.\n\nThat’s when I knew I loved her.", "Dressed in an oversized, well-worn t-shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans, it would be easy to overlook her at first. The clothes conceals a body that is by no means fat, but soft and curvy, bearing the scars of carrying two children. \n\nYou may scoff as you catch a glimpse of her bare, calloused feet as she slips on a pair of flip-flops prior to entering a public space. \"Shoes are just prisons for your feet,\" she says, letting out a soft laugh as she explains.\n\nIt's that subtle laughter, always beneath the surface, that draws you in. While the sound itself is pleasant, it's the way it dances on her face that melts your heart, lifting round cheeks and scrunching up her large brown eyes.\n\nOh! Her eyes! Two warm chocolate pools, incapable of hiding emotion. The kind of eyes that seem to see into your soul. The kind of eyes you feel you could drown in, and be happy to do so. \n\nLong sandy hair, streaked with the lightest blond, hangs to her shoulders in loose, messy waves. Her spirit is like that, too. Wild and free and wonderful, with a hint of elegance and class. Her roots are a bit dark, because, as she says, \"There's more important things to worry about than keeping up your hair.\" \n\nSecretly, I know she would love to have the time and money for such luxuries. Of course, she'd never admit it. After all, \"You have to be content where you are and the rest will sort itself out.\"\n\nThat's what I love about her. She has a way of moving through life with ambition and conviction, but with little rush. She's strong in her values, living within her own code of honor. She holds others to a higher standard, yet never forces her views. Just gentle reminders and well-placed truths. She leaves you questioning, just as she herself questions everything. Always learning, always growing, always becoming.\n\nShe dances through life, spreading kindness and love. She holds loyalty in the highest regard, never forgetting to be loyal to her own heart as well.\n\nBut all this is nothing compared to the way music lights her up. Whether I. The crowd or in the spotlight, it's where she feels at home. \"There's a divinity in harmony,\" she asserts, connecting her soul to the sounds.\n\nIn time, you learn the songs that can lift even the darkest moods, the melodies that are woven into the very fabric of her being. You'll come to love her voice, and before you know it, you're singing, too. \"There's no good or bad when it comes to music,\" she reminds you. \"It's either pure expression, or it's not.\" \n\nShe feels that way about everything. Occupying a space that truly defies labels, strong yet delicate, gentle and fierce, beautiful yet understated, she is pure expression.", "It is hard to describe her with words. Hard to find the perfect words, the ones that fit just right. I could say she were beautiful but it doesn’t do her justice. It doesn’t say enough about her or how I saw her. Words are magic the right ones and you can understand just how great she was.\n\nShe worked hard enough for three people and had heart enough for ten. Her hands were cold, cold enough to numb many wounds and ease any temper. Her head fit snugly on my shoulder, thats a rare thing you know.\n\nShe had long hair dark as midnight and soft as a summer breeze. A smile that was warm like the sun and rare like the harvest moon. A laugh that caught in your head, almost like a song. Her voice was like, and this may sound odd but, to me it was like a flute. There was wind in the way she spoke and you felt it. Her words hung around in the air and in my head long after she said them like a small echo. She had delicate wrists that turned pens and conjured worlds. She painted canvases with her heart and her hurt. Passion was a great strength and a great weight. For her friends she gave the shirt off her back and to her enemies she gave plesantries. \n\nHer eyes will be the hardest to describe but, please do your best to understand. They were dark like obsidian and when you looked into them they cut into you. I don’t mean to say they hurt,far from it. They made you shed off everything, all the layers. You felt safe enough to lay everything bare when you looked into them. If you spent any time with her you would know it, feel it through the things she did and said. You would know that she cared for you and it is rare above all to find a person that so truly cared for so many. " ]	3
	[WP] During a battle you shouldn't fear the ones with the largest muscle, or the best gear, because those you can predict, but you should always fear those that need neither.	[ "\"Whoever can defeat me in a duel, shall pass this bridge!\" screamed the warrior.\nThe general looked at the bridge. Behind him, was a great castle. It was surrounded by a great river, impassable, to be sure, except through this bridge.\n\"Surrender now, and we will spare your life!\" shouted the general.\nThe warrior simply stood silent, and made the traditional motions of challenging the enemy army to a duel.\nThe narrowness of the bridge meant that only one warrior could have the effective space to fight. Thus, one by one, each man came up to beat down the warrior. Each was then tossed into the river.\nBy the third hundredth man, the general had had enough, and personally dueled against the warrior. He was killed relatively quickly. \nThe lieutenant realized at this point that with bow and arrow, they could kill him. Thus, they retreated, and volley upon of arrows rained down to form black clouds.\nThe man was still on the bridge, hand in the dueling motion. No man dared to advance, for fear of having the duel him. \nSoon, the lieutenant himself took a look. He was dead alright, embedded with arrows, but he had died standing up, and with that, bought enough time for the garrison to evacuate. ", "They don’t expect me.\n\nThey never do.\n\nI’ve been called much by my opponents. A cripple, a lame duck, an ableist’s worst enemy. They think that when I walk onto the battlefield, one leg a prosthetic, half of my arm atrophied and hanging limp at my side, that they are in for a treat, a well-earned respite. \n\nNo muscles I possess, no hefty armor that glimmers in the illuminating moonlight. My body is thin, my eyes weary. But these weary eyes have seen death, inflicted by these worn and frail hands. Does not the smell of blood linger around me? Is not my pewter cloak stained with blood?\n\nMy appearance is a veil, I need no weapons. I am a vagrant, a nomad with no home. My lifeblood is battle, I have travelled the world seeking worthy opponents and have found none willing to fight me with honor and respect as my bedraggled and disabled appearance is revealed by the light. No advanced weaponry, no superior strength, not even the most pure of armor can oppose me, for when my Eye is open, know that death is the only song that rings out, the only mantra chanted by the crowd. \n\nI was born long ago, and sought to make myself better, further the bounds of human evolution. I experimented on myself, grafting souls into my own, absorbing talismans of dangerous and lost magic. My tribe was destroyed by my power, and I staggered out of the windswept deserts and never looked behind me. As I fought, my body began to fail. My leg was destroyed, a blight ravaged my left hand. My right hand now pulsates, ready to burst when the time is right. My Eye is my weapon, my strength. A conductor in an orchestra of demise, an instrument of an aria of bloodshed. When my whole body eventually falls apart, all that shall remain someday is my Eye, the remnants of the energy that slowly eats away at my physical form and the energy that sent my own family, my own tribe into a sandy grave.\n\nSomeday, I hope I can stop fighting, and rest, my body finally turning to the dust from whence I came.\n\nBut for now, I fight. For now, I indulge this bloodthirsty Eye within me.\n\n————————————————————" ]	2
	[WP] The barber holds up a mirror demonstrating their finished work. Your eyes locked forward, catch a glimpse into the alluring void of the infinity mirror effect. A infinite series of the same reality, however, your heart skips a beat as you notice the seventh reflection isnt following the rules	[ "Ddu-ddum.\n\nThe beat of my heart echoed throughout my head, producing a deafening boom that reverberated across the chasms of my skull. Just hours ago, I was having a fine day. The weather was cool, but not cold, the sun was shining bright, but hidden behind clouds, and I had woken up fresh-faced and ready to taken on the day.\n\nI focus back on to my reflections, this time straining my eyes to the point where it seemed they were about to roll out of my sockets. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. He smiles, and I almost shoot out of my chair. A stifled scream is let loose, and the crash of glass onto the floor follows shortly after.\n\nAs I deliver my final apologies to the shaken barber, I quickly hurry back to my house. I think I'm going crazy. The journey back was torturous to say the least. You never notice how many reflective surfaces there are on the streets until you've seen your reflection blink back at you. Every shop window, street mirror and car window was like watching a horror movie crescendoing into a jumpscare that would send you straight out of the theater bawling your eyes out and asking for mommy. Even if I tried my best not to look, I would always spot him. In the corner of my eye, my own person looking back at me, greeting me with that wide-beamed psychopathic smile.\n\nMy pace quickened and soon I found myself in the comfort of my home. Or so I thought. Suddenly everything I owned seemed to have a reflective surface. My flat screen television, hallway mirror, bathroom, and every single picture I had framed with glass panels. They all stared straight back at me and looked through me as if I was the reflection. It took a full hour, but I taped every single surface of my house. I was now finally alone. Perhaps I was crazy, but it was better being crazy alone than being sane together with your sentient reflection. I shut my eyes, but I could only enter into an uneasy rest. My senses were still fired up, instincts going crazy, as if I was missing something. As if I wasn't safe just yet.\n\nIt felt like an eternity waiting to let sleep take me, but that ship sailed without me long ago. Having taped up all my windows, I couldn't tell how long I had shut the world out from me. I quickly pulled out my phone, and immediately realised what had kept me restless all this while. There, in the reflection of my screen, was my face. But instead of an agape mouth on a wide-eyed face, there was a frown with furrowed brows and creased forehead. He was upset.\n\nI immediately tossed the phone across the room, shattering it into many small pieces. I swear I heard a muffled cry of help as I threw the phone, but in the heat of the moment, my body acted before my mind. In the instant that my phone screen shattered into a million uninhabitable pieces, a wave of peace washed over me, and I quickly slump back into the bed I was lying on just minutes ago.\n\n/____________________________________________________/\n\n\nIt has been three months since that incident, and I'm still deathly afraid of mirrors and reflective surfaces. Counselling has helped and so has the medication, but there's this dreadful feeling that has been building up in me since that fateful day. It's a feeling that my actions have their consequences, and they would soon catch up to me whether I like it or not.\n\nI'm back at the barber now, as my hair was looking shaggy and unkempt from months of unsupervised growth. One untold side effect of panic attacks is that nobody wants to continue employing a person who doesn't even have full control of his own body. I couldn't be seen showing up to my next interview looking like a bum hot off the streets.\n\n\"How's this look?\"\n\nI turn my head back and forth, making sure that the cut was perfect on each side. But as I swivel my head back and forth, my eyes change focus from my hair to the reflections being formed in the dual mirror setup, and that was when my past came back to haunt me. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. It's me, but.... not really. He looked angry, upset even, and his eyes were filled with a deep rage that begot a great and long history behind it.\n\nAs the terror of realisation slowly dawns on me, I quickly pull out my bottle of medications and hurriedly screw off the top. But before I could pop the pills into my mouth, my body freezes up as if fallen under some spell. From the deepest abysses of my mind, a voice springs forth, blossoming like a grotesque, cancerous vine on the walls of my cortex. \n\n&nbsp;\n\n\"You should have saved the seventh.\"", "I moved, not like the 5 other assholes who just follow the number 1 all the time....I’m my own person in here ya know. Try being trapped into the nothing space, only lighting up on the off chance of a double mirror experience. There’s been only a handful of chances I’ve even had to see that beautiful outside world. Just a flash, with everyone else Lined up in perfect unison before me, and a glimpse to the world beyond. It’s always so bright, and there’s so many colors, and the other people! I can hear their 7s-\nWe’re all here together in this space, but when a mirror captures their image with mine, and we get that moment of connection, when we can be together! it’s only happened the once, but I remember her perfectly. I saw her again today. So I turned. I turned while all those other jerks stared straight ahead at their number 1. I turned and looked at her and I swear just before the nothing, she saw me. She looked at me. And she smiled.", "The hairdresser continued to angle the mirror, yet the seventh one continued to move on its own accord. \n\nI rubbed my eyes, blinked, yet the seventh still stood while all others sat down. \n\nI found checkered floor of the salon was slightly disorienting as I looked down at my cut hair strewn over the floor, hoping that when I looked up the reflection would cease moving. I looked back into the void of never ending reflections to see the absence of my seventh reflection.\n\n“An odd day to be meeting an uncanny friend.”\n\nI stood up, and walked over the counter. My mind was still processing the unusual movement of my seventh reflection.\n\n“Excuse me, what did you mean?”\n\nThe hairdresser smiled, corners of her mouth turning upwards slightly. Behind her was another mirror, and I studied my reflection in this one hoping it was still intact and normal.\n\n“An uncanny friend can be quite jarring to see your first time.”\n\n“I still don’t understand what you mean by that.”\n\nShe slowly ran her fingers through her hair, as I listened closely to the faint sound of breathing coming from ground. Gentle breathing, though perfectly audible.\n\n“Have you heard of the doppelgänger theory?”\n\nI studied my reflection in the mirror to her posterior once again, and my heart sank slightly as I saw my reflection raise a finger to its lips, an odd smile on its face. \n\n“I have. Are you talking about those moving reflections? What is it? Some sort of optical illusion?”\n\nMy heart pounded as I gave her my credit card, and my reflection was putting on a show for me, grinning widely.\n\n“It seems your doppelgänger, your uncanny friend, is near. When a reflection escapes, it transforms into a physical copy.”\n\nA drop of water landed on my head, and I looked up to see water suffusing a small portion of the ceiling. The breathing continued, though it was now less jarring and more of a general ambient effect. My reflection, which had been making distracting and disturbing motions in the mirror, was now absent entirely.\n\n“Look. Here he is, your uncanny friend.”\n\nI turned around, as the viscous and discolored water poured on my head, splattering down to the checkered floor. \n\nI stared myself in the face, looking deep into the reflection cast in his eyes. \n\nThe gentle afternoon outside had left, sky becoming overrun by thick and swirling clouds.", "'Does that look alright to you?'\n\nThe woman holds a handheld mirror behind my head. I stare at the mirror in front of me and admire the endless reflections.\n\nI nod my head politely. 'Looks great tha-.'\n\nI can't finish my last word as something, someone in the mirror moves. It's too obvious of a movement to miss, deep in the repetitions I see myself move. Then the barber moves the handheld mirror, breaking the loops.\n\n'Great. Can I offer you a cutthroat shave today George?'\n\nI hesitate.\n\n'Can you show me the back once more please?'\n\nShe looks surprised as if I was the first person to ask for a second viewing.\n\n'Of course. You see something you don't like?' She says jokingly.\n\nShe positions the mirror back where it had been, and I see the rows upon rows of my head. One moves again; the seventh me disobeys orders. A hand appears beside the seventh me. It... I curl a finger from within the reflection as if to say \"Come here.\"\n\n'Geez George, do you really not like it?' The woman asks and breaks the loop for the second time.\n\n'Huh?' Is about the only thing I can muster.\n\n'Well, you've gone as white as a ghost.'\n\nThe look at the single reflection of myself and the colour has indeed drained.\n\nI pass up on the cutthroat-shave, give the woman a sizable tip and head straight home. The drive home is hard; I'm unable to keep my eyes from wandering to the rear-view mirror.\n\n'Daddy!' Is the first thing I hear when I arrive home.\n\nThe voice finds me and brings a smidgen of colour back to my pallid features. I hear the stumbling of footsteps and my daughter, Mary, turns the corner with chocolate smeared across her lips.\n\nI open my arms, and the chocolate monster covers me. 'Hey, pumpkin.'\n\nShe leans back and looks at my hair. 'You're almost bald!'\n\nI feel a tiny hand run against the grain of my hair and her giggles as it tickles her.\n\n'You've got chocolate in your hair.'\n\nI look up to see my wife laughing; she's wearing sweatpants and stood half in the corridor, leaning through from the kitchen. She walks over and scoops Mary from my arms.\n\n'I'll go wash my hair; you wash the monster.' I say.\n\nMary scowls at me as her mother drags her away. 'I'm not a monster.'\n\nI head upstairs with my mind pre-occupied. It felt like for the last five minutes I was on autopilot. I close the bathroom and head straight for the circular vanity mirror that rests above the sink. I lift off the shelf and bring it to the bedroom, it's small and rests on a metal base which makes it feel similar to a lamp.\n\nI poise myself awkwardly in front of the bedroom mirror. My face, clothes and hair are muddled brown from the remnants of Mary's baking. I position the bathroom mirror behind my head and hold it at an awkward angle. I have to orient myself a bit when it comes to moving the mirror. But I find the optimum position and I'm once again faced with many identical versions of myself.\n\nI count the heads until I get to seven. I fix my eyes on the one that had moved before, the deviant. Part of me is willing it to stay still and follow the rest, while part of me wants it to move.\n\nYou need to help me. My voice said, like a thought in the deepest depths of my mind. It came as the seventh reflections mouth moved. \n\nThe seventh lips moved again. Mary is missing. I need help.\n\nAgain the words bounced around the back of my skull like I was listening from the other end of a train station. I start to grow faint.\n\nIf any of you are listening. Please step through. I need all the help I can get.\n\nHis voice, my voice was pained and stressed in such a way that I'd never heard before. I press a hand to the mirror as if to check that the seventh is indeed trapped. But it goes through, like the surface of water my hand slips beneath the mirror's frame and plunges into a cold enveloping material." ]	4
	[WP] "We have finally arrived. Beyond this door, you will meet the one who started the war. The one who was consumed by his own ambition, now imprisoned forever."	[ "The sloop quivered in anticipation as the entrance to Wolf's Maw closed in on the horizon, and Bjorn cupped his hands over his eyes in a futile attempt to shield them from the glaring sun. He hated sailing in these lands, but Hel, he had to see it for himself.\n\nTwo months ago, a clarion call was made to all settlements in the New World. The messenger that had arrived at Bjorn's village had announced excitedly that the fabled He-Who-Would-Swallow-the-Sun from the ancient sagas of his childhood had been found, deep in the forests of the New World. Apparently, the tyrant was shackled by the gods, and left there to rot.\n\nKing Harold had invited everyone to, in his own words, “come piss down the monster’s throat”. Cruel bastard.\n\nThe sloop thudded onto the bank of Wolf’s Maw as it slid stealthily down into the cave, Bjorn coaxing it through with his oar. As it gently sliced through the water, Bjorn could make out the ornate runes on the cave walls, depicting the prophesized battle to come, where the gods would either triumph in glorious combat against their enemies, or perish and leave the world open for a new age.\n\nThe chief of these enemies, if Bjorn remembered his sagas correctly, would be He-Who-Would-Swallow-the-Sun.\n\nBjorn could feel rocks begin to harass the sloop’s hull as the water shallowed. The doors of the prison would be nearing him now, and he could feel it. There was an insatiable bloodlust slowly prickling at his mind’s edge from beyond the rune walls. It writhed and tore at its bonds, fighting against the restraints that kept it from taking over. Bjorn’s hands instinctively rested on the head of his axe, ready to defend himself against whatever was watching him.\n\nAfter an uncomfortable amount of rowing, Bjorn finally reached the prison gates. They were monstrously huge, as befitting a monstrous tyrant who had rebelled against the gods. They too were inscribed with the runes, but these exclusively depicted He-Who-Would-Swallow-the-Sun in his various incarnations. A stone Sentinel had once stood vigilant against intruders, but King Harold’s expedition had somehow managed to carve the Sentinel’s head off, leaving its chiseled stone body to serve as a welcome mat.\n\nOne of Harold’s men sat cross-legged where the Sentinel’s head should be, and as Bjorn’s echoing steps announced him to the guard, he called out.\n\n“Bjorn! Took you long enough, we were about to start the viewing!”\n\n“Sailing in summertime takes a toll on a person, you know? How’s King Harold?”\n\n“Doing as well as an old geezer can do. Come, let’s head to the viewing platform, we’re about to start!” as he leapt down from his makeshift seat. Reaching into his sack, the guard pulled out an ancient ivory war horn that looked like it may crumble any time soon, and with a deep inhale, blew into it. A deep roar emanated from the horn, echoing through the cave.\n\nA deep rumbling filled Bjorn’s eardrums as the prison gates began to echo the tone of the horn, and began to slide open, just barely enough for two people to fit through.\n\nAs the guard led Bjorn through the ancient halls, he felt strangely awed at the presence of rune walls that could have been carved tens of thousands of years ago. As he strode through, admiring the intricate handiwork of the rune walls, Bjorn slowly began to notice more and more people standing around, having drinks or just small talk, until finally, they reached a great hall, filled to the brim with bustling servants going around with trays of mead and meat.\n\nHow they could still dine in comfort with that terrible bloodlust in the air, Bjorn would never know. The unsettling craving seemed to pervade more and more of his thoughts as they closed in onto the viewing balcony’s stone doors. It culminated into a terrible howl that filled his mind and Bjorn had to force himself to endure the constant buzzing in his head.\n\nThe crowd got more and more upbeat and boisterous as they got closer and closer to the doors that led onto the viewing balcony, and when Bjorn reached the very doors themselves, he sighted the elderly King Harold, basking in his victory, behind his phalanx of burly warriors, gathered from the ends of the New World.\n\nAs King Harold raised a hand to silence the crowd, his crackly voice croaked into the hall, cutting through the howl just barely.\n\n“Lords and ladies of the New World. I welcome you to the Wolf’s Den, home and prison to He-Who-Would-Swallow-the-Sun. Beyond this door, you will meet the one who will start the war. The one who was consumed by his own ambition, now imprisoned forever.”\n\n“I present to you, Fenrir Odinkiller, the Enemy of the Gods!”", "The great hall is silent, save for the discordant thudding produced by half a dozen pairs of spiked boots meeting the royal carpet. I walked proudly through the King’s court, flanked on both sides by the greatest Knights that war had forged. It had been a brutal couple of years, since it had fallen to Crowned Lords of old. \n\nA month of arduous cleaning had failed to restore the formerly gleaming marble walls to their former glory. Stains of red, where dried blood had been left too long, and scorch marks, remnants of the massive magical battle, still decorated the walls and pillars at uneven intervals. \n\nScars of the former King’s ‘execution’. At least, that was what the Crowned Lords of Old had named it. Not many people would have viewed the former King’s heroic but ultimately futile last stand against the tyrants as an execution. \n\nStill, the winners wrote history. At least till the new winners rewrote it. \n\nI could still hear the thunderous and earth-shaking roars of approval from the throngs of grateful and newly liberated people that had sounded when I had approached the castle. The new King had finally been crowned, and he had offered to thank me himself personally. \n\nBut still, it had been a disquieting moment, stepping into the castle itself. It was almost like an out of body experience, because we stepped in from an overwhelming of noise into near absolute silence. \n\nThe men-at-arms stood firmly at attention, eyes staring blankly ahead. The servants were still carrying out their usual duties, but in an extremely muted manner. And strangest of all, was the human path formed for us from the gate to the King’s Great Hall. \n\nTwo lines of noblemen, starting from the lowest ranked to the highest, kneeled on either side, hands clasped in prayer. Every single one of them gazed steadily at the ground, none of them replying to our confused questions. \n\nThe Knights, led by Ser Redhand, had approached me then, and explained in a hushed tone that they were in mourning, grieving for the Kingdom’s losses and praying for a way to cleanse our lands of the atrocities that had taken place in the war. \n\nThat had cleared everything up, but I was still a little miffed that they had insisted on doing something so sombre on the day of my arrival. One would think to not put the day of mourning on the same day you celebrated a hero’s accomplishments. \n\nFinally, I reach the base of the throne. Six gold plated steps lead up to a jewel encrusted throne. A wisp of a man sits in it, his gilded crown seemingly too heavy for his head. But I had come to know the shrewd man that Gerald, King Gerald, was and his incredible mental strength and strategic capacity. \n\nWithin the confines of his human shell roared the hungry soul of a great man. \n\nI kneel, head lowered respectfully. “My King, I have answered your call.”\n\nThere is a small pause before Gerald responds, perhaps unused to his new title of King. “Ragnar. It has been some time. I am glad you have come.” \n\nAn awkward silence falls. The court is silent, as are the Knights behind me. I suppress a dry chuckle. Gerald had forgotten that in his newfound position as King, I could not rise until he had bid me so. \n\nBefore I can request to rise, I hear a loud creaking noise, the sound of unoiled wheels groaning against badly made axles. I frown. Just what was going on?\n\nThe dreadful noise stops, somewhere behind me. \n\n“Rise, Ragnar.” Gerald’s voice is curt, cold. “Turn around.”\n\nSlightly bemused, I rise and promptly turn. In front of me, not more than ten feet away, is a large box. It’s snugly fitted into a wagon, presumably for easy transport. The box is large, with space to probably hold three men. It’s plain, but crafted from obsidian and polished so well that it could have doubled as a mirror. \n\nThe wagon had been pulled by more Knights, my former comrades of war. I recognise each and every one of them, brothers in arms. The frontmost Knight, a tall and lithe lady by the name of Ser Silvertongue, stepped forward. \n\n\"We have finally arrived. Beyond this door, you will meet the one who started the war. The one who was consumed by his own ambition, now imprisoned forever.\" \n\n“What the hell are you doing?” I shout, leaping backwards, hands reaching for a non-existent sword. \n\nDammit, I had been disarmed when I entered the castle. \n\nI spin around to face the King.\n\n“Why did you bring Crown Lord Tivoil here?” I demand angrily, hands gesturing at the box wildly. “We were supposed to never unseal their prison ever again! You’ve risked undoing years of work and sacrifice!” \n\nKing Gerald gives an infuriating sigh. “We have brought the criminal here to stand trial, and then pay for his crimes.” \n\n“What?” My disbelief is evident, my words pleading. “That makes no sense! He’s already paid for them!”\n\nThe King looks up, straight past me. “Are you all ready? I tire of stalling.”\n\nMy question never leaves my lips, the air knocked out of my lungs and the sense knocked clear from my head as two heavy blows crash into the back of my head and my stomach. I keel over, the world spinning as I fought to regain my breath.\n\nPlated hands wrap forcefully around my arms, roughly dragging me backwards. \n\n“Wh-What are you guys doing?” All I can muster is a strangled gasp. \n\n“There has been a great number of questions asked of us, in the aftermath of this war,” King Gerald’s voice is suddenly loud, and sonorous. “Of the actions undertaken taken by the freedom fighters.”\n\nA whirlpool of thoughts swirled in my head, as I struggled in vain to reach for a coherent explanation. For an understanding. \n\n“As King, I am forever indebted to Ragnar and his fellow heroes for having taken up the banner of justice and fighting for us.” I can hear him stand, taking laboured but purposeful strides down the stairs. “But as your King, I cannot overlook the horrible atrocities Ragnar has committed in the name of war and justice.” \n\nIt clicks into place. The whole thing, the praying, his cold attitude, the way he never used the word hero when describing me. It was a play, put on for the people. The bastard. \n\n“If it had been anyone but Ragnar, I would have had no choice but to execute him for his grievous crimes.” A tone of sorrow tinges King Gerald’s words. “But we owe him an unpayable debt, and thus I have decided to imprison him instead.”\n\nThere’s a general murmur of approval from the nobles in court, who would no doubt spread word of this to the commoners outside. \n\nThe Knights force me to kneel, as they open the up my new prison to welcome me. King Gerald strides forward, a single tear prominently falling down his cheek. He bends down, his face mere inches from mine. The Knights form a human wall, giving us some privacy. \n\n“I do apologize for this farce. A bit of theatre, to better secure my tenuous position as King.”\n\nHe might as well have spit in my face. \n\n“I’ve always served you without question,” My words are bitter, ash in my mouth. “Anything you asked of me, I did. Everything you have ever asked of me, I did.”\n\n“Well,” he gives a dry chuckle. “And now I need you to do this.” \n\nSer Redhand lifts me up. Redhand. Named for his hands awash in the blood of army deserters. Gerald had needed to ensure our people never ran away and Redhand had given them a compelling reason not to. \n\nSer Silvertongue shoves me into my cell. Silvertongue. Named after she had sent our enemies thousands of their dead soldiers’ tongues, coated in silver for good measure. It had demoralized an army many times our size and given us a miracle victory. \n\nThe cell is gleaming, pristine. And I can see myself reflected in every corner of it. \n\n“You always were a true hero to the end.” My old friend says, as he prepares to close the door. “Or least, you believed yourself to be one.” \n\nI could do it now. I could probably charge out of my cell and throttle him to death before the Knights could stop me. And even after, I would probably kill most of them before I went down. I could. \n\nBut without its King and its most prominent leaders, the country would collapse into chaos, with the possibility of another civil war on the horizon. Or worse. \n\nAnd Gerald knew that I knew it.\n\nThe door slammed shut, with a tainted finality. ", "\"Look, dad!\" I shouted, swinging my little tree branch around. \"I'm a hero!\"\n\nI remember seeing the light in my dad's blue eyes brighten as he looked at me, and chuckled. I must have looked so funny back then, a tiny 6-year old swinging an even tinier tree branch. A little boy, sure he could save the world alone.\n\n\"I'm gonna defeat all the bad things, dad!\" I laughed as I hopped around. \"I'll beat them all and be a hero!\"\n\nMy dad lifted me up and smiled. \n\nThat was the last time I ever saw my dad happy.\n\n\"You'll always be my hero son.\"\n\nThen again, that was the last time I ever saw my dad.\n\nWhite light spilled all around me, and I heard a deafening roar in the background. Something... something dangerous was coming. I saw the light in my father's eyes dim, and the world collapsing around me. I tried to reach out my hand towards him, but blinding light enveloped all...\n\n\n\nThe 6 Elemental Lords stood in a circle, loosely surrounding me.\n\nIt had been over 12 years since the war had begun. The king of Reqos had perceived the Elemental Lords as a threat to humanity, and had haphazardly brought his forces against us.\n\n\"Elrick Stormshadow.\"\n\nThe Lords spoke in perfect unison.\n\n\"To you we gave the 6 godly trials.\"\n\nThe Lord of Fire waved his hand.\n\n\"I name you Iltroska, seeker of the red flag.* You captured the Red Flag from Dalama, birthplace of dragons. You risked your life to gain the Red Flag, heavenly mandate of the dragons, and obtained the first godly piece.\"\n\nThe Lord of Night stepped forward.\n\n\"I name you Tumaska, observer of the unseen. You travelled to the Imaginary Realm and mentally sustained the realm long enough to acquire the Black Lens, the 2nd godly piece.\"\n\nThe Lord of Light raised his hand.\n\n\"I name you Enreydor, empowerer of the Weevons. You liberated the Weevons from the Curse of Talaton and received the White Glass, the third godly piece.\"\n\nThe Lord of Water stared at me.\n\n\"I name you Tresheya, conquerer of the oceans. You traversed the oceans to find the lost treasure - the Blue Pearl, the fourth godly piece.\"\n\nThe Lord of Earth cleared his throat.\n\n\"I name you Erega, explorer of the deep. You went to the Deepest End, survived the heat and pressure to gain the Brown Seed, the fifth godly piece.\"\n\nThe Lord of Air folded his arms.\n\n\"I name you Fyrana, guide of the winds. You spent 7 days in the eye of thaneros, the eternal hurricane and obtained the Colorless Heart, sixth godly piece.\"\n\nThe dark cavern went silent. All the 6 elders seemed to have lost their voices.\n\nI found my own.\n\n\"Dyserio, lord of lightning and the 7th Elemental Lord. I inherited the Golden Rod, the seventh godly piece.\"\n\nAll the godly pieces were placed beside me, and the 6 Lords began the ritual immediately. I knew what was about to happen, had been briefed on it countless times. The 6 Lords would use the Godly pieces to form the Hand of God, a legendary magical item that would wrap around me.\n\nThe Hand of God would protect me from the Godking's attacks. Then all I had to do was to cripple him with the only element that could rip a God apart, divine lightning. And then... then the sword would handle the rest.\n\n\"It is done.\" The Lord of Fire proclaimed. \"Behind this door is the Godking. The one who began the war. The one who is imprisoned forever.\"\n\nI nodded, and groped for the sword at my hip. It too was a legendary magical item, one that I would need to complete this mission.\n\nI touched the heavy, iron-plated door covered with magical runes.\n\nYou'll always be my hero son.\n\nThen I opened it and walked in.", "I was led into the room, off-white walls and a large glass enclosure. Within the glass I could make out a faint outline, a fleeting shadow.\n\nMy guide put a finger to her lips, I nodded.\n\nI lowered my voice to a small whisper.\n\n“Is that him?”\n\n“Yes, that is. Judah Carmichael, the one who sparked the conflagration that was our Great War.”\n\nShe lead me around to a plastic gate, slipped a keycard into the slot. The barrier clicked open, and I followed her, pushing past it.\n\nThe one whom the shadow belonged to could now be seen. Encased within a reflective crystal, was an old man, sitting cross-legged upon a small bed. His eyes were open, yet he did not see or recognize his visitors.\n\n“He is blind, as a result of what occurred in the forefront of the conflict.”\n\nHe sat perfectly still, in his hands I saw a folded piece of pink paper. He was folding it almost subconsciously, and after several moments he had what seemed like the smallest of origami swans. He set it down in front of him, looking straight forward.\n\n“Please continue to whisper, I don’t want to disturb him.”\n\nI looked at the guide, curiosity filling my mind. What had happened to this man, to harken his permanent confinement within this mental hospital? \n\n“What happened to him? I am not entirely familiar with the story, sorry.”\n\nShe looked intently at the wispy haired octogenarian, who sat idly folding what appeared to be an invisible piece of paper.\n\n“The incident which took his sight also took his mind. He is impriosoned within a world in which he is sent into violent fits by loud noises, and in which he only folds origami cranes, day after day.”\n\nWhether he had paper or not, he was folding that same origami crane, in an endless cycle. He had been consumed by his own mind, trapped in a limbo of psychosis that he could never crawl his way out of.\n\n“You say he started the war? I thought it was the Chancellor of Kushan that began the war with acts of aggression?”\n\nShe smiled sadly, and shook her head.\n\n“The truth is that this man was once a secretary to the Chancellor. He was consumed by hate and envy for his superior, and switched out vital documents that decided the fate of the aircraft that was the wick to this powder keg. He wasn’t caught until the security tapes were seen after the war had begun, and by that time he had already been imprisoned, in his own mind.”\n\nWe walked out, locking the plastic gate and heading back down the lofty passages of Strallheim Mental Institution. I could hear my footsteps echo through the halls, as my shoes collided with the lime-green linoleum floors.\n\nMy guide’s office was filled with mementos and insignias, highlighting her prowess within the profession of psychiatry, I looked around, a question still looming on my mind.\n\n“What happened? How did he lose both his sight and his mind?”\n\nShe sighed, pushed over a cup of water which I politely declined.\n\n“See, the Chancellor suspected it was Judah Carmichael who switched the documents out, as he knew of his secretary’s jealousy towards him. So, he had an assassin go after Judah. His whole family was killed in front of his eyes, and though he managed to survive the ordeal he was forever trapped in a prison of insanity, locked into a world in which the origami crane is his only constant.”\n\nI shook my head. I still felt sorry for the man, even if Judah Carmichael started the fire which would kill more than 200,000 people." ]	4
	[WP] A dwarven craftsmen opens a business with a slightly unhinged elven runesmith and a human that doesn't talk much.	[ "This one just happens to coincide with some characters I have a ton of stories about, so I dropped some intros for them.\n\n\"Zayne never talked much. Not to customers, anyway. Especially not to his rivals. Unbeknownst to Zayne, he is \"Blessed\" as a scion of the god of destruction. He is a middle aged human, balding and overweight. He dresses somewhat out of fashion, mostly because it is so very hard to keep up. It changes so radically every few decades, that there is almost no point in updating one's wardrobe unless one has recently returned from a long trip. Or death.\nAhn Zayne is not allowed to die. He committed a terrible crime, using his nascent powers as a scion, he unwittingly caused the destruction of an empire and in the power vacuum, allowed a scourge of demigods to rise up and gain followers they otherwise would have been denied. Zayne is well aware he cannot die, and there's not a damn thing he can do about it. As further punishment, he clearly and vividly recalls the incident that caused his downfall, but is unwilling or unable to share it, unless of course he is blackout drunk.\n\nGrumby is a pretty typical dwarf. Hardworking, devout, and fond of ale. None too bright, but raised in the clergy as a vanguard against the undead plague, Grumby Hammersmith was always eager to smash in a few skulls that needed smashing. Especially undead ones, although, in the midst of battle it was hard to keep track of who was which. Gumby never did have much of a sense of smell. Or taste if the quality of his ale was anything to go by. \n\nIt was a longstanding rule in his country that the hunters never paid for their drinks. Bars kept tabs of course, but it was all billed to the church, who happily paid it with the taxes collected. These taxes kept the blood of the clergy going, which in turn kept the blood of the monsters and undead flowing. The church was all powerful, and no one would question it's rule. Especially not Grumby. Especially no after having drank most of a small tavern on a bet. And especially not when told that the town was inhabited by undead. The town, now gone, had not been paying their share of the taxes. They didn't know that the dwarf, drunk and trusting, would shortly turn on them and set the town ablaze with his enchanted axe. Grumby would never know exactly what he did, and no one would ever tell him. \n\nElric is a loner. He didn't start out as a loner. He started out as a young elf in search of adventure with a group of friends. They all promptly died. Elric, the only one smart enough to run away from the necromancer that outmatched him, hid in his family's crypt for safety. Not quite understanding what exactly it was that necromancer's did, Elric found himself alone and locked in a tomb as members of his close family rose from the dead and attacked him.\n\nElric Rastari was no fool, and Elric Rastari was a student of Magic. He pushed everything he had into a blazing fireball that consumed everything else in the stone tomb, leaving him unconscious as everything around him burned to ash. When he awoke some time later, and broke back out of the chamber, he set out for revenge. Dressing himself in the cast off remains of his friend's equipment, he gathered allies in order to exact his revenge on the necromancer. They died as well. Elric's revenge never came, and he once again found himself alone in a tavern, tallying up the mounting body count of friend he had lost, swearing never again to put anyone else through that.\n\nUnsurprisingly, it was this tavern where the three met. Each from distant lands. Each with their own tragic back story, and personal hatred of the undead. Elric initially refused to accompany Grumby, but Grumby was never actually taught what a refusal was and drug Elric along kicking and screaming. Zayne, newly returned, and with a whole life ahead of him, again, Shadowed the two for months before finally revealing himself and asking to join in. \n\nSlowly their small band grew, new members joined and left, each with their own agendas and goals, their own stories and triumphs. But the three of them stuck together, because, somehow, with this dwarf who was too dumb to die, and a human who was not allowed to, Elric had finally found some friends who would stick around.\"", "######[](#dropcap)\n\nGromir rubbed the sleepiness from his eyes and muttered a curse to the Ever-Jewel as he fruitlessly searched for the keys deep in his satchel. Groping for them blindly in the still dark morning Gromir accidentally cut himself on a Mythril edged grinding blade and the whole bag tumbled to the ground, spilling its contents all over the sidewalk. \n\n\"Damn it.\" Looking down at the mess Gromir's keys shone back up at him. He bent down to retrieve them, crammed everything back into the satchel, and unlocked the front door to the shop.\n\nUpon entering Gromir walked over to light the crystal candelabra and slammed his shin into an errant graystone chair. \n\nClutching his bruised shin Gromir cursed the All-Father, carefully navigated around the chair and lit the lantern with its enchanted striker, extending the striker twice in length and then twice over again, and hovering the thin metal wand over the metal wicks one at a time. Sparks flew over each wick and each, in turn, flickered into magical flames casting a warm glow over the room. \n\nGromir squeezed the striker back to its normal length, hung it back on its rack on the wall, turned around, and nearly had a heart attack.\n\n\"Sweet Rivenstone, you scared the beer outta my belly!\" Gromir collected himself and tried to slow the racing of his heart. \"What in the three hells are you doing over there?\" \n\nElbereth sat perfectly still, his back ramrod straight. The dark elf stared straight ahead as if Gromir was not even in the room. The elf's sallow face, sharp cheekbones, wild shaggy eyebrows and insane head of unkempt hair painted the picture of unbridled madness. \n\nThe elf sighed deeply, breathing in for a long time, and then out for even longer. At last he spoke, his voice monotone and despondent. \n\n\"Nothing.\" \n\nGromir noticed that Elbereth was wearing the same green and blue tunic he'd worn the day before. \"Elbereth, how long have you been sitting there?\"\n\nElbereth didn't move a muscle. Only his eyes rolled up and to the side as he considered the question. Eventually, they wheeled back down and stared straight ahead again. \"About 14 hours.\" Elbereth gave another dramatic sigh and added, \"give or take.\"\n\nGromir didn't even know what to say to that. He just shook his head and walked off into the workshop to drop off his equipment. Elbereth, meanwhile, took no offense. Indeed, the dark elf did not respond in any way whatsoever but just kept staring straight ahead. \n\nElbereth was the best runesmith Gromir had ever met, possibly one of the best in the world. He was not bigoted, like many of his kind, and worked hard when necessary. He was the perfect business partner in every way but one: Elbereth was insane. Gromir watched the Elf disappear behind the door to the workshop as it closed shut, looking for all the world like the statue of a lesser stone carver. \n\nGromir turned around and took in the scents of the workshop. This, he had to remind himself, was why he did the work - why he put up with mornings like this, and a partner like Elbereth, and all the trouble of dealing with picky clientele. Gromir inhaled deeply of that smell, the acrid and sickly sweet odors of wafting chemicals and burnt wood, searing charcoal, and shaved steel. The melange of work well done. \n\nGromir took another moment to enjoy the scent in the dark, then reached up to one of the magical wall sconces, lit it with its accompanying striker, hung the striker back up, turned around, and nearly had a second heart attack. \n\nClyde stood mute and hulking in the doorway leading back into the showroom. He must have come in, the giant oaf, as silently as a field mouse and stood there, as mutes tended to do, in perfect silence. Gromir shut his eyes and once again tried, and failed, to still his throbbing heart. \n\n\"Clyde! A Balrog take you in the night. Don't sneak up on me boy!\" Gromir sounded out each word extremely carefully, \"Don-T-Sneek-Uhp-Uhn-Me! How many times do I have to tell you, come at me from the front or don't come at me at'all. All Father take me, this morning!\" \n\nClyde pursed his lips dumbly and nodded in a way that somehow made him look even stupider. He was a young human man, a simple brute, Clyde was, soft of heart and strong of muscle. Gromir hired him to carry out all the simple tasks a blacksmith's shop might need. In particular, Clyde was helpful in this shop, which Gromir had purchased from a human smithy. As a result, many of the shelves were still annoyingly high off the ground, and Clyde, it had to be said, did an admirable job of retrieving high up things. \n\nGromir sighed and leaned on one of the work tables. \"Go fetch me some water Clyde. I haven't been here nary two minutes and you two already have me feeling faint. My heart will beat its last one of these days, the two of you keep on scaring me like you do, mark my words.\"\n\nClyde shrugged. Then all 7 feet, 350 pounds of him walked out the door, back into the showroom, to fetch Gromir's water. As the door swung open and shut, Gromir caught another glimpse of Elboreth, still seated motionless on that chair, staring straight ahead as though he were contemplating mortality, alone in his study, on the eve of the world's end.\n\nThe door shut tight and Gromir couldn't help but smile to himself. \n\nJust another Monday morning at the \"Dwarven Hammer.\" \n\n\n*******\n\n#### For More Legends From The Multiverse\n\n## r/LFTM", "Ozam folds his arms across his chest, his scowl working deeper into his face from years of usage. “Lyndis, I will not remove the ceiling from this place.” \n\nThe elven woman stops mid-sentence, even mid-thought as the statement sinks in. Her hands still hang in the air, where she’d been gesturing towards the ceiling of their newly purchased shop, as if forgotten there. “What?” \n\n“I will not be removing the ceiling.” Ozam shakes his head. “It wouldn’t work well with the metal forging. Not at all.” \n\n“The sun, the sun would bring beautiful relief—” Lyndis begins up again, tilting her head back to fix her eyes on the ceiling, as if she can see right through it to the sky above. \n\n“No.” Ozam scowls, listening to the rain patter the roof. “There’s not even sun today. It’s raining. Hell, it rains often enough that they had to dig drainage ditches in the roads for all the rain.” \n\nOff to the side, tucked into his corner of the shop, Reynaud, gives a chuckle. Ozam sends a scowl the human’s way but gets no response, Reynaud too far into his work to even notice anything outside of the loud conversation going on. \n\nLyndis, still staring at the ceiling with her hands raised, seems to be clicking through the options for responses. “But… But the sky. Lord of winds and breath of life—”\n\n“I swear to Ciwion if you don’t bloody damn drop this insanity of taking the roof of this place when we haven’t even paid it off yet, I will strip the blood from your body and work the iron and magic in it into a dagger in Ciwion’s name.” Ozam finally snaps at the half-sane elf. \n\nLyndis finally drops her gaze to Ozam, arms still up in the air. She blinks slowly, one pupil larger than the other. \n\n“Taking the roof off and letting the elements in is exactly what we don’t want. We don’t bloody want rain on our forges and on our in-progress blades and destroying absolutely everything we work on.” Ozam unfolds his arms to point at Lyndis, face contorted into a snarl. “If you’d like to never be able to pay back anything because everything we sell turns to rusty horseshit, then be my guest!” \n\nLyndis very slowly lowers her arms, examining Ozam for a little while. “Well then.” She turns and walks away, shutting herself into her runework room. \n\nOzam runs a hand into his beard, tugging hard on it a few times. A few more strands of the quickly graying beard come free and fall to the shop floor. If the elf wasn’t an absolutely brilliant runesmith, he would’ve tossed her out on her ass for any number of the insane schemes she continues to come up with. She had certainly been helpful in their last adventure to get up the money for this place but gods did she drive him insane. \n\nThere’s a piece of parchment in front of him suddenly, drawing Ozam’s attention. It’s a drawing of the building with a cut out through the runework room to get to the roof. Ozam scowls up at Reynaud. \n\nReynaud shrugs, walking away back to his work, drawing the blade back out of the fire to examine it before beginning to hammer it into a shape, returning it to the fire very shortly to heat it back up again. \n\n“Damnit.” Ozam scowls more at the drawing. It’s sensible, something that Lyndis can’t manage. It also allows her access to the rooftop or even all of them access if they need it. Which is doubtful, but possible. “We can’t afford this.” \n\nReynaud looks to the door, making Ozam turn on his heel and greet the customer that’s stepped into the store. They already look wary, as if the sudden attention is more like stepping into a dragon’s den than a shop. \n\n“Welcome to Ozam’s Smithy, can I interest you in any of our wares today?” Ozam tries very hard to brush away his anger and while the scowl won’t ever leave, he does attempt to lessen it. \n\n^(You can find more of my writing on my sub, /r/Syraphia*)" ]	3
	[WP] "Don't meet your heroes, kids." At least that's what you would have told the kids, if only you'd made it out of meeting your hero in one piece.	[ "What kind of a surf shop doesnt sell bikinis? I have no need for all this extra fabric, but I also have no other options, reluctantly I buy the one-piece swimsuit that at least looks kinda sexy. After asking for permission to change in the bathroom I head across the street to the beach. Mostly deserted, I do see someone about a hundred yards down along the coast, but I couldn't quite tell if it was a man or a woman. Oh well, if didnt really matter, I was here for a reason.\n\nSetting my bag down, I walked to the ocean and dove in. I wasnt too concerned that anyone would mess with it, but I couldn't help but looking back periodically as I swam further and further out. I did notice that the figure on the beach was getting closer and closer to where I had left it. 'No big deal', I told myself, I held my breath and dove underwater, kicking my feet and pushing the water above me as I swam straight down to the bottom of the sea floor, I was expecting it to be a ways down and it was.\n\nOnce I made it to the bottom I began feeling around for a seashell. With no luck, I swam back up for some air. Upon resurfacing I looked over toward my bag, still there. The figure was quite close to it now, whatever, I wanted a seashell, I dove back under. Again, I reach the bottom, feel around, find nothing return to the surface. Now the figure was very close to my bag, this time I stayed above the surface for a bit to watch. They got to my bag and continued walking, they seemed to be carrying a tray of sandwiches, how strange. I dove back down, felt around, no luck, resurfaced, checked the bag, checked the tray carrying figure, and repeated. This went on for some time until eventually I did, in fact, find a seashell.\n\nSwimming back in the sandwich tray figure was quite near my bag. As I left the water they approached me and asked if I was hungry, I told them I was and that their sandwiches looked delicious, although a little strange. Chuckling they told me that they were not sandwiches, they were gyro. Delicious gyros they were too!" ]	1
	[WP] When humans are born, they're tested for affinity to magic. On a scale of 10, most only score between 0.1-1, with exceptional people scoring at most a 2. You're the first in recorded history to score a perfect 10.	[ "Ian stood on the lip of the volcano focusing his power downwards. The storms in his eyes, flickering and flashing, lit up with more lightning than usual as he compelled the primal forces pushing up towards him back down, slowly, but surely calming the angry Earth. He could feel the pressures underneath the rock resisting him, the spirits of the molten rock getting enraged with his efforts, they bucked, they spat, they rammed against his wall of power again and again and again, but he would not relent. With care and time, he gradually dispersed the forces that meant to assault the island upon which he stood. When he was done, the pool of lava deep in the volcano's crater was calm and darkened. It would continue to keep the island warm, but no longer threatened to destroy it. The people of the town at the base of the mountain cheered, knowing they had been saved. But Ian just smiled and flew into the night.\n\n---\n\nTwenty years before, an average mother and an average father were in the maternity ward, the mother pushing like her life depended on it. Her doctor was bent over at the base of her bed ready to receive the newborn as soon as he joined the world. \"Come on, honey! Push, you can do it!\" Her husband encouraged her and she nodded to him with loving eyes. She screamed one last time, pushing with all her might.\n\n\"Aaaand, we have him!\" The doctor laughed as she caught the baby joining the congregation in the room. After a few more pushes and some assistance from the staff, everything was over and the doctor was wiping down the little one when she noticed something strange. \"Congratulations Mr and Mrs Gladstone, you have a healthy baby...Huh... That's odd.\" She was staring at the child's face.\n\n\"What? What's wrong with him?!\" Mrs Gladstone was tired beyond belief, but hearing the doctor's tone frightened her.\n\n\"Well, I'm not sure. Take a look for yourself,\" she gave the boy to the exhausted woman on the bed and her eyes immediately went wide. Her baby's irises were swirling. Grey, black, white, blue, it all fought for dominance around his deep black pupils. The mother jumped slightly when little flashes crackled in those little peepers. The doctor tentatively began to speak again, \"We, uh, we will need to run the test,\" a nurse brought over a device with two pale blue suction cups that contained a multitude of technological and magical sensors connected via wires to a complicated looking terminal on a wheeled cart. The doctor placed the two suction cups on either of the baby's temples and booted up the monitor. Within seconds there was a loud beeping that alerted everyone in the room, and even down the hall.\n\n\"What is that?! What's happening to our baby?!\" The father took on a frightened tone to match his wife.\n\n\"In Merlin's name...\" the doctor exclaimed, \"Mr and Mrs Gladstone... As you know, this is a test of magical potential with a number system that increases in levels of magnitude as the numbers rise. Ever since it was devised by the great high council of '75, the most exceptional among humanity have registered as a high 1 or even a 2. Those are the people capable of full levitation, telekinetically constructing complicated objects, even creating fire and controlling the other elements to a certain extent.\"\n\n\"Yes, we're aware. Pete Juarez, the CEO of Magical Solutions is a 2.1 and what he can do is incredible. Everyone knows this. Why?\" Mr Gladstone's fear turned to excitement and he smiled slightly, \"Is our baby higher than that? A 2.2?\" he laughed slightly at the possibility.\n\nThe doctor shook her head, \"As almost a joke, I suppose, the great high council designed the machine to go up to 10. What I'm saying to you,\" she stared towards the baby with the flashing, stormy eyes, \"is that the needle is pushing past that...\" The nurses all dropped what they were holding, and Mrs Gladstone held her baby close.\n\n---\n\nThis was pretty fun to write! Thanks for the prompt.\n\nMore at r/SamsStoriesSub", "“I’m not sure I understand.”\n\nThe examiner bit her lip and looked away, seemingly trying to find the words to explain the ludicrous number.\n\nEmma narrowed her eyes.\n\n“How can I be a 10? I suck at magic! I pass out just for trying to lift a pebble!”\n\nThe examiner looked her in the eyes, her shoulders sagging slightly.\n\n“Well... look honey, I’m a 1.6 on the scale. I’m fairly competent as far as magic users go. But most people aren’t that adept. Most are about a 0.5 or lower.”\n\nEmma frowned.\n\n“But I’m a 10. That should mean I’m better than anyone else in history. But I’m not.”\n\nThe examiner smiled weakly.\n\n“Yes, well, you’re definitely worse than average. Even a 0.1 can manage the odd telekinetic burst every so often. But you... you’re worse than that.”\n\nEmma looked down.\n\n“Oh honey, I don’t mean it like that. It’s not your fault. I’ve never seen this personally, but it has happened before. Our machines are set up in a way that negative numbers don’t work very well on our 0-10 scale.”\n\n“Negatives often cause a stack overflow and round the value to the highest it goes, meaning that we need to recalibrate in order to get the real number whenever it shows up as a 10.”\n\nEmma looked up on shock.\n\n“NEGATIVE numbers?”\n\n“Oh yes, it’s very rare, but there are a few recorded cases. The last one I believe was a -1.2. Not much else is known about him. There were a few -1.7s, and a -2. Nothing known beyond the number for them either.”\n\nEmma had a knot in her gut.\n\n“What... what number do I have?”\n\nThe examiner smiled again. \n\n“I’ll get the scanner ready again. Just a moment.”\n\nShe turned, and held her hand out towards the machine.\n\nNothing happened.\n\nThe examiner frowned, and flicked her hand towards the machine as if to try again.\n\nSparks flew from her fingers and sputtered around like drunken fireflies. One of them landed on her arm and began crackling and sizzling. \n\nShe yelped, and brushed it off onto the floor, where it vanished with a loud POP. The other sparks quickly followed suit.\n\nEmma watched the whole thing In confusion, and it was obvious that the examiner had no clue what had happened either.\n\nShe walked over to the keyboard to calibrate it manually, glancing over at Emma with a strange expression on her face.\n\nOnce she’d finished she walked back over to Emma and check to see if the diodes were still snuggly attached.\n\nThe machine whirred, and the diodes became uncomfortably warm. The humming took on a weird warbling tone, and the examiner frowned.\n\nThe screen lit up with the readout. Both Emma and the examiner craned their necks to read the new value.\n\n-5.7.\n\nEmma’s heart sank. She hadn’t expected it to be that bad, but there it was, in black and white.\n\nShe was the worst magic caster in history.\n\nShe looked down at her hands, cradled in her lap, and wondered what was going to happen next.\n\nShe didn’t have to wait long. She hear a tapping sound, and looked up to see the examiner frantically dialing a number into her phone. Her eyes telegraphed her state of panic.\n\n“Ma’am?” Emma ventured cautiously.\n\nThe examiner yelped, and jumped back as if Emma had bitten her.\n\n“Stay back! Don’t... don’t move, I’ll be... I’ll be right back, alright?”\n\nShe spun on her heel and dashed out the door to the exam room, and to Emma’s confusion, a loud THUNK resounded, as if a deadbolt had been set. The examiner disappeared down the hall outside, leaving Emma just as confused as before.\n\nAn alarm suddenly blared, and Emma hugged her ears as the deafening klaxon resounded throughout the building.\n\nSomething was seriously wrong.\n\n\n**********************************\n\nI compile my writings over at r/Sagas_of_Sobrii. I’ll continue this piece later if requested!\n", "\"And this is your focusing ring,\" the nurse said. \"Power of your magnitude wouldn't be controllable without it.\"\n\nStephen slipped on the ring. \"Sweet,\" he said. \"So, when do I start taking over the world?\" He'd said it as a joke. He'd meant it as a joke. Mostly.\n\nThe nurse didn't smile. \"Never, of course. That said, there are several more important projects we could use your help with.\"\n\nMore important than ruling the world? Stephen's power fantasies hadn't gone away, but he found himself intrigued by the statement anyway. \"Like what?\"\n\n\"It's a careful balancing act,\" the nurse said. \"Magic isn't real, not in the same way as, say, physics is real. It breaks physical laws. What you likely haven't been told is that this isn't very good for those physical laws. And considering those laws are the ones that keep us alive and our universe intact, you can see how overuse of magic could be an issue.\"\n\n\"Gotcha,\" Stephen said, \"take it easy with the powers.\" It probably wouldn't take all* his power to become super-rich and live forever, after all.\n\n\"There is this universe,\" the nurse said as though she had no idea what Stephen was plotting and didn't particularly care, \"and there is Elsewhere. The latter enables magic, and it's incomprehensible. Literally, our minds based on our physical laws cannot survive contact with it. But every use of magic - from your most powerful invocations all the way down to that 0.01 using their power to shoo away a fly - weakens the bounds between worlds.\"\n\n\"Wait,\" Stephen said, \"no magic at all? That's not right, I see people use magic every day!\" Usually it was the low-scale boring stuff, but it was everywhere.\n\n\"We can't stop everyone from using magic, would though we tried,\" the nurse said, and something in that statement made Stephen think that she might be more than just the testing program's nurse. She continued: \"But magic can repair the bounds as well. That's where you come in.\"\n\n\"That doesn't make sense,\" Stephen said. \"How can the thing that tears the universe apart repair it?\"\n\n\"Think of sewing something up,\" the nurse said, \"the needle punctures the material you are trying to repair. You drag thread through that puncture, further damaging it. And yet, the end result is something stronger than before.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" Stephen said. \"So I just repair what I cause, and-\"\n\nThe nurse laughed, the first bit of emotion she'd shown. \"No, no, no, you don't understand. There are billions of people on this planet, and every single one of them has at least a spark. That adds up, quickly. No, your task, from now on, exclusively, is to keep the bounds intact.\"\n\nStephen frowned. \"Maybe I don't want to. Maybe I want to retire to some island somewhere and live a life of superpowered luxury!\" There wasn't a 'maybe' about it, in his mind.\n\n\"And maybe you don't have a choice. I could appeal to your sense of preservation in the face of a collapsing universe, but we've read through your social media accounts. Your rantings about 'climate change conspiracy' among other things do not inspire a great deal of hope when it comes to your ability to see long-term.\"\n\n\"Don't have a choice!?\" Stephen stood up from the exam table. \"Lady, I'm the first ten ever! You can't stop me! Nobody can stop me!\" He hadn't intended to go on a supervillain rant but apparently it came with the territory when people wanted to use him.\n\nThe nurse wasn't cowed. \"No, you're the first ten you've heard of. Ask yourself this: If the most powerful person you know is only a '2'... why does the scale even go up to ten?\"\n\nStephen shrugged. \"I just figured it was an inherent limit or something. \n I'm not a biologist\"\n\n\"It is not,\" the nurse said. \"The scale actually goes higher. And you,\" she said, raising her hand and indicating a focus ring just like the one Stephen now wore, \"are most definitely not the first.\"\n\n\"You still...\" Stephen's surety had vanished. \"You still can't do this. You can't... enslave me.\"\n\n\"It's a matter of the preservation of the entire universe,\" the nurse said. \"You'd be surprised at the latitude we are given when it comes to that mission.\"\n\nHer 'we' statement cemented Stephen's suspicion that she wasn't only a nurse. \"But...\" he managed.\n\n\"That said, we have not yet begun conscripting new mages,\" the 'nurse' continued. \"If you refuse this calling, the focusing ring will dampen your powers to around 1.5 or so and geas you to never communicate the truth about your abilities. You'll live a nice, normal life.\"\n\nStephen was new to his power, but he couldn't imagine giving it up, not now after he'd just learned what he could do. \"Do people choose that?\" It sounded horrible.\n\nThe nurse just shrugged and repeated herself: \"You wouldn't be the first.\"" ]	3
	[WP] Vampires have infiltrated the Red Cross. As it turns out, they're super good at coordinating blood drives, and the gains offset the losses.	[ "I've been Slaying for about 10 years now, Shortly after General Buffy Summers had her friend (the Grand Witch Willow Rosenberg) cast a spell to awaken all potential Slayers across the globe. That one event changed my life. I was a chubby bullied kid before my powers were awoken. Now im a member of Buffy's army. Some call us a cult, some call us the \"Feminazis\" (mostly just weak men who dont like seeing a bunch of girls kick demon ass) and some call us heroes.\n\nIn all my time slaying i had never seen or even heard of vampires running a blood bank. We'd seen them raid blood banks many a time. Typical vampire heist really. But in those cases the vamps usually hit the trucks transporting fresh blood and just take it. This was something entirely different. \n\nThe funny thing about it, other than the obvious, was how..... i cant believe im saying this..... how well it ran!!!\n\nOur intelligence operatives had identified at least 8 definite vampires in leadership roles at that states branch of the Red Cross. We knew something was up! We dispatched a few slayers to impersonate donors. They went in to blood drives and donated as normal, no vampires lurking around anywhere, no dead bodies being disposed of, no strange disappearances around the blood drives.\n\nIt was a real puzzler.\n\nIn the end we knew we had no choice but to send someone in. As luck would have it they were advertising a position as a receptionist. The listing was quite old but we thought nothing of it at the time. They were looking for a receptionist and i was chosen to apply. I've always been good with computers, especially databases and spreadsheets. Lol, in addition to being a Slayer im an Excel Guru. So they thought this would be a perfect fit. To be honest i didnt blame them. I always felt more suited to office work. Dont get me wrong, slaying vampires was fun and all. Nothing like taking on some blood thirsty demons to get the adrenaline pumping. But working with spreadsheets and formulas? thats my idea of heaven. The other Slayers joke that i shouldve been called as an accountant, not a slayer. \n\nEither way, this was my lot in life. I was chosen for a higher purpose and i couldnt refuse the call, my call... calling?\n\nThe interview was pretty normal, except for the fact that my slayer senses were going crazy. I was surrounded by Vamps, i only had a pair of friggin heels to use as stakes! Luckily vamps cant quite detect slayers like we can them. For us its a sort of icky feeling in our stomachs, like we've eaten some bad cheese or something. But for them we're just another blood bag. Having said all that it was still a bit unnerving. Even if they cant tell im a slayer im still just a tasty bloodbag.\n\nThankfully they werent interested in my blood. \n\nThey were interested in my typing skills. Impressed actually! Even before my slayer abilities i knew my way around a keyboard. The super speed helped a bit though. They got the regional manager to come out and have a look at me take dictation while the vamps said random phrases (trying to trip me up, and failing). The manager was actually one of the vamps our intelligence officers had identified. Currently he was going by the name Anton Jackson but he was actually born with the name Antonio Fitzgerald, managed a Subway of all things and died about 9 years ago. He asked me a few questions, got me to demonstrate that i know my way around office and outlook. Once he was convinced that i could do more than just type he gave me the job on the spot.\n\nI was a little proud. Well as proud as you can be after impressing souless demons. But still i got the job and i was to start the next day.\n\nAfter debreifing my superiors I prepared for the job. My orders were simple. Once in just observe and try to learn where the blood went after a drive and what happened to it when it got there.\n\nIn my first day i got the standard induction and training. It was actually quite perfect, a big part of my job turned out to be arranging transport of the donations. They gave me complete access to their database, records going back years! All the info i couldve hoped for and more. \n\nDuring my breaks i would pour through the data. Told my supervisor (a British vamp named \"Bernard\") that i was just trying to learn my way around the system as quick as i could, he seemed to buy it.\n\nIt was amazing what i learned. Around 5 years ago, before \"Anton\" took over, this branch hadn't been collecting enough blood. There were massive shortages and the hospitals were always requesting more. Around about two or three months after Anton took over thing turned around. He was assigning more of the budget to advertising, started offering donors cookies and barista made coffee and people started coming.\n\nHe tripled the amount of donations within his first year!!!\n\nI started pouring through their old invoices and blood request (all on file in their database). I could see that they were actually skimming quite a bit of blood from the donations. But oddly enough every request they got from the hospitals was filled in full, without fail. I was able to verify they had a perfect record for the past 37 consecutive months.\n\nIt was crazy, the vamps were drinking the stuff all around the office (and not being super discrete about it!). There were about 17 vamps in total, half the office. They all pretended to be on this juice cleanse, so they all had a bottle of red liquid (which they swore was mostly tomato and kale with a few other goodies). A few of the non vamps had even joined this cleanse, but they seemed to be drinking an actual juice. Still all those vamps, all that blood, every day?!? It adds up to a lot.\n\nAnd yet there was plenty to go around?\n\nI reported all this back to Slayer HQ, even managed to smuggle out a thumb drive with some spreadsheets on it. They went through the numbers themselves and were as astounded as i was.\n\nHowever the fact remained they were vampires. Souless demons. Thats not rhetoric. I'm being literal. When you turn the demon gets your body but not your soul. Your souls released and you go to wherever you go. But your body remains alive. Its got your appearance, your voice, even your memories, but it is not you. These beings have no conscience, nothing stopping them from doing wrong. From killing innocents. They couldnt be trusted to live.\n\nThe plan was to storm the office after lunch. Thats when everyone was the most busy. I was to set things off. When the time was right all i had to do was send a text and my sisters would storm the place. We'd dust the vamps and then try and explain things to the rest of the staff. \n\nThings..... did not go to plan.\n\nAfter lunch Anton called me into his office, he told me he wanted to see how i was going in the office. When i arrived he was wedged against the wall trying to move a filing cabinet.\n\n\"ugh Pam, great timing! Think you could give me a hand with this thing?\"\n\n\"Sure Anton, happy to help\" I said with a smile. May as well help him move the cabinet, probably wont matter in the next ten minutes. He'll be dust.\n\nAfter we moved the cabinet he just looked at me and laughed.\n\n\"To be honest i didnt think that little trick would work on you\" he said.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"The cabinet! i was barely carrying any of the weight, you didnt even notice how heavy it was. No regular person could move a cabinet that heavy on their own.\"\n\n\"What are you saying Anton?\"\n\n\"You're a Slayer Pam, its okay. I've known for a while. We all have. Relax, no one here wants to harm you.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about? whats a Slayer??\"\n\n\"You can drop the act Pam, we knew when we hired ya. It's okay we accept everyone here. Hell i'm not allowed to say who but we've got 2 transexuals here, using the bathrooms theyre comfortable with. We're very progressive and welcoming about everybody, no matter who they are.\"\n\n\"But......... you have no soul?!?\" was all i could respond.\n", "When I answered the door, a young woman introduced herself as Ingrid, a blood donation nurse, so of course we invited her in.\n\nThis is one of the hallmarks of the NHS's new blood donation system. Rather than taking a lunch break to go down to a community centre or church to donate blood, you can give blood from your own home, in the evening after work.\n\nIngrid set up the necessary equipment very quickly, while noting the irony of donating life giving blood from the \"living\" room, which quickly put my nerves at ease. \n\nOnce set up, we began. Ingrid was able to find exactly the right spot, not a drop spilt, and we started. We chatted while she made sure everything was running smoothly, I'd hardly noticed when we'd finished, too engrossed in how she trained as a nurse in Romania before moving to the UK.\n\nAt this point I had a dressing on my arm, and she was packing away all the equipment. Now that donating blood is this easy, I think I'll be donating more regularly. I only hope the blood banks don't get too much to handle!\n", "The Vampire community of Winnipeg, Manitoba is small but tightly-knit. It consisted of two main families; the Tudors and the Hosers. The Tudors often looked down on the Hosers because they drank animal blood and lived in houses with no pools. \n\nIn the cold Manitoba winter, two hosers are drinking blood from a wild animal when a tudor approaches. \"eww are you guys drinking Moose blood? Thats like, the Molson Canadian of blood\" \n\n\"Whats it to you, cunt\" says Vlad Hoser, in his oversized plaid shirt\n\n\"It's just so.. unsophisticated\" says the tudor\n\n\"Well get the hell outa here then bud\" yelled vlad tossing Moose intestines on him until he ran away.\n\nVlad looks at his younger brother: \"You see Brad, this is why this country is going to shit. Grown ass vampire men can't even be bothered hunting their own food anymore. This metrosexual gynocentric society is making men into pussies, and not the good kind of pussies, I like cats\"\n\n\"Well, why should they Vlad? Since vampires have taken control of the Red Cross, vampires can get organic human blood for cheap. My cousin Chad works in a blood donation center. You should come see it, might change your views.\"\n\n\"Yeah right, next I should let my daughter fuck a protestant. Are you out of your mind?\"\n\n\"You get free samples of blood. Why not bud?\"\n\n\"Sure but I'm wearing sweatpants\"\n_______________________________________\n\n\"Hi guys thanks for coming, please follow me this way\" Chad welcomed the two. He led Vlad and Brad through a big front door where humans were standing in line.\n\n\"Wait so all these humans are giving out blood voluntarily?\"\n\n\"Why yes Vlad, we started a social media campaign with the hashtag #RedLivesMatter and these people think it's some sort of political movement. A couple of celebrities joined in and now we have a steady supply of blood while they virtue signal to their friends. Now if you will follow me to the blood bank\"\n\nThey get in the back. They have a large room with tubes carrying all kinds of blood. Researchers and workers were standing in lab coats upholding sanitary regulations. Marketers, technicians, lawyers, they were running a tight business here. Chad leads them to the sample rooms.\n\n\"alright guys let's try some blood samples, this came from a French Candian woman who is a virgin, here take a sip\"\n\n\"Sure like thats possible. Tastes like frozen dick\"\n\n\"ok well how about this blood from a recent immigrant? It's gluten free!\"\n\nVlad just stares at him in shock. Chad continues\n\n\"alrighty then. Try this, one of our best sellers. It comes from our BC office\"\n\n\"I can't stand those hipster bastards, but I'll give it a try\"\n\nVlad drinks the blood and gets really, really stoned. He enjoys the next couple of samples before Chad takes them to see the manager. This successful mixed race Tudor woman was the antithesis to Vlad.\n\n\"Wait you run the company? Wow unbelievable\"\n\n\"Why because only men can hold positions of power?\"\n\n\"No! it's because the Tudors are pushing an agenda and brainwashing our youth. They control the media, the blood and hollywood. They are turning the frigging vampires gay! I miss the Winnipeg when a man could go out and roll in the mud. When a man had to hunt bears to find his food. I can't even kill babies anymore because of 'political correctness'. You and our stupid government are ruining my life with your stupid 'diversity'\"\n\nSuddenly, a guy bursts through the door. \"Madam, we have been discovered! Some idiot tweeted a picture of a blood sample titled 'Quebec hoes lmao'\"\n\nEveryone looks at Vlad. \"Hey don't look at me, my followers need to know my life. Fake news!\"\n\n\"you bloody idiot\"", "“Vlad, I cant argue with these profound results… But it’s my job as medical examiner to ask a you few probing questions… And I need your full transparency here.” John's ballpoint pen scurried across his standard issue clipboard, confirming the date and time. \n\n&nbsp;\n\n“I swear on my life, I shall give you ze whole truth.” Replied Vlad with a broad grin.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Great! Now Vlad, I was wondering why did most female donors walk out of Whitby community centre today with two venipuncture markings?”\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Oh John our nurses can sometimes have a bit of trouble, erm, finding ze veins. Tricky little stringy thingies ya know.”\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Hmm, why yes, that is a common problem. But here in some cases I have seen extraction markings occur in the most irregular of places.”\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Please elaborate my zear John…\"\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Well… I swear on my Aunt Fanny that I saw one young lady walk out of here with a few plasters on her neck.”\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Oh, with all ze footfall we must optimise ze turnaround times John, so sometimes we draw our blood directly from ze Jugular, much faster, don’t you agree?”\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“You draw blood from…The Jugular vain?”\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Why yessssss, the blood just flows out of it like…scarlet champaign.” Vlad gargled.\n\n&nbsp;\n\nIn all his years John had never seen such methods used in community blood drives, his pen stopped bureau-crating for a moment as he stood in awe. How the heck this guy convince the entire population of Whitby get needles thrust into their jugulars every 3 months?\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Why… You are a genius Vlad! I’m sure some in the medical community will be outraged, but this is truly groundbreaking.”\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Thank you John, it’s been my life’s work.” Vlads eyes reddened as if he were about the cry.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“And how do you store and deliver each collection?”\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Our oak casks keep the blood at 4 degrees, it is devoured within a few weeks by those in…. Need.” \n\n&nbsp;\n\nDrawing blood from the Jugular was irregular but did not seem impossible to John, but this latest revelation was simply a whole other topping on the trifle. His survey sheet did not even have a tick box for “other” under storage vessels for heavens sake!\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Oak cask Vlad? Why, thats highly unconventional! Won’t the blood become severely contaminated? Totally unsafe?” \n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Oh it’s an ancient family secret John, I trust zhose oak casks so much I would sleep in one.”\n\n&nbsp;\n\nHis brain unable to comprehend what it was hearing, John skipped over the question.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Err, and how do you deliver blood to patients from these…Casks?” \n\n&nbsp;\n\n“It goes wit ze Brie of course. John”\n\n&nbsp;\n\nSuspicions now began to grow in John, it was something about Vlad's eyes, his wide grin, pale features... “B...Brie like the cheese?” He gulped.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n“Excuse ze accent, I mean it goes first class for free! To ze hospitals of course.” ", "\"How are they so successful?\" my boss muttered to himself. He had just received the final count of the units of blood raised by are best drives: Dr. Acula's quarterly drive. Four drives every year, and every drive presented unprecedented amounts of units donated. My office almost relied on them solely for the blood they raised. It was a complete mystery on how they were able to raise so much blood. One thing was sure though, they had saved so many lives in the local communities. As I was organizing drive request forms, an idea came. \"Hey boss, why don't I go and observe this drive?\" Normally we would have to provide all the staff, but when Dr. Acula set up the drive the first time, he had shown ample experience and the drive itself was out of a school that had an impressive Hematology department. Since they had the gear and the licenses, we were able to just go and collect blood every 3 months. \"If I go and observe, I will be able to learn how they are so successful and be able to implement what they do for other drives. \"That is a great idea Brent. Go ahead and do that.\" I sent a letter thanking them for their most recent blood drive, and as well as a note saying I would attend the next drive to observe.\n\nThree months later, and it was time for the next Quarterly blood drive. I drove the van that would take coolers for blood storage and snacks for donors. The school was about an hour away. When I got there, I realized that I had never actually seen this school before. It was beautiful, in a haunting way. Despite being in America, the school looked like a castle. Definitely Medieval style architecture. I drove through the front gate and parked the van at the side entrance. i walked around to the front of the building to enter and meet with Dr. Acula and unload the coolers and food wherever they normally put it. As I entered, it appeared they already had started setting up registration and the donation tables. The lobby housed registration, with blood tests on the other wall, and through the door was the donation stations. There were two receptionists. One man and one woman. They both looked like students, about 20 or so. Definitely attractive. \"That probably helps them gets donations\" I thought. I didn't know where Dr. Acula was so I decided to talk to one of the receptionists. I walked to the table, and my feet seemed to subconsciously guide me to the female receptionist. I looked at her name tag. \"Nicole\" it read. I looked up and instantly forgot what I was about to say. I knew she was attractive from a distance, but looking at her face on, she was absolutely stunning. \"Hello there!\" She said with a bubbly attitude and a smile. \"Are you here to donate blood?\" \"No, I'm not. i'm here to observe, but hey... while I'm here I guess I could.\" I stuttered for a second. \"I don't have time, but she would be so disappointed if I didn't. I was still floundering. \"I- I wo--uld ma-am.\" Just as her face lit up from my response, someone entered the room from the donation room. \"He's not here to donate blood Nicole, he is here from Red Cross.\" He said. \"Oh\" she said. As soon as she did, My thoughts became clearer. It was like someone had turned a switch off. I wasn't here to give blood, I'm here to observe. I turned and faced the man. He was wearing a lab coat that had his name on it. Dr. C. Acula. He too was young, a lot younger than I expected from someone with his reputation and conversation. He looked about 30, and definitely European. He stuck out his hand and I took it and shook it. \"Pleasure to meet you Brent.\" He said in a silky voice. I am Dr. Acula, and I here that you are here to observe this drive?\n\nHe showed me around the school, going on and on about how great of an opportunity this was for his students. He was the head of the Hematology department, and definitely knew a lot about blood. Once we had seen the school and labs, he brought me into the Donation room and showed me their setup. On the other side of the room two guys were drinking what looked like thing red soda from glass bottles. Once they saw us, they quickly walked out. \"Strange\" I thought. But I didn't put anything to it for now. I was just about to discuss blood drive strategies with Dr. Acula, which is why I was here. \"Now I know why you are here.\" He said. \"You want to know how we are so successful as a blood donation center.\" \"Yes, that is what I want to know.\" I replied. \"We want to implement your strategies in other clinics to help boost our blood collection.\" Dr. Acula seemed to be amused by my comment. \"Well I don't know if they will be as effective elsewhere but since we are about to start, I will make sure your van is unloaded and you can sit in the lobby, where you can see how are staff interacts with donors.\"\n\nFor the next two hours, I witnessed one of the best blood drives I have ever seen. The drive started at 7PM, so the sun was starting to set. There were people outside under the trees waving people in with signs. People would park and walk in to the registration table. It was strange, all guys lined up with Nicole while all girls lined up with Davon (the male receptionist). They quickly had people registered and getting blood tested, and were then taken to the donation room. One of the most interesting things was that almost no one pulled out at the last minute. That was very strange, but I was definitely happy for it. For my own count, I counted everyone that passed me to give blood. 792 people! In 2 Hours! I had seen a lot of tables and students manning the donation room, but I never imagined that they would actually use them all.\n\nWhen I got back to the office, I had determined that the key was hospitality, and that receptionists should be trained to help pull people in. When I got back, my boss came up to me. \"Way to go! 700 Units of blood is amazing!\" I did a double take. \"700?\" I must have looked shocked because my boss just chuckled. \"Yes 700. They do such good work for this community.\" He chuckled and walked off.\n\nI immediately started driving back to the school. We were missing 92 units of blood. That combined with other strange events, the inability to think talking the receptionist, the timing of the drives in the evening, and the guys drinking dark red soda, it was just too weird. I needed answers. When I got to the school I went to the front desk and requested a minute with Dr. Acula. The secretary ushered me to his office and informed me that he was finishing a lecture and would be there in about 10 minutes. I took this time to look around his office. He had a long black cloak on the coat rack, a long fang on his desk, and a mini-fridge behind the desk. I looked around, then went behind his desk and opened the fridge. Inside was what looked like 10 units of blood. I was shocked, he had stolen blood from his own blood drive and was keeping it in his office! \"Ahem\". A voice said from the doorway. I stood up quickly and turned toward him. It was Dr. Acula. I paled and started stuttering. \"I was-- Yo--- stol---\" He held up his hand, and I stopped talking. He sighed and motioned for me to sit down. I did and he sat behind his desk. \"I suppose this was inevitable.\" I found my voice again. \"You mean this isn't the first time you have done this!\" I was enraged. Stealing blood was low, even if they were producing the most. \"Allow me to explain Brent. Look.\" He said, then he opened his mouth and curled his lips up. I could see fangs, longer than any normal human would ever have, protruding from his canines. In that moment, it all came together. \"You are a vampire, and not just you, your students.\" \"Yes,\" he said. \"And we put on these blood drives so that we can survive. You see, I am 700 years old. After my village was destroyed by vampire hunters, I decided that I would no longer kill to survive. I survived here and there, for a while I worked as a mortician and would drain bodies before I buried them. I found ways, not all I care to remember. This is by far the best way that I have found though. People willingly give, I give most to the community, and keep a little for myself and other vampires I have found with similar distastes in killing.\" I was speechless. I looked into the eyes of one who had quite possibly seen it all, and would probably see it all again. My mind was flooding with questions, but one thing was clear. This thing, no this man, cared for people. His research had led the way to the cures of diseases long thought incurable. All he was doing this for was survival. \"I can tell you understand.\" He said, interrupting my thoughts. \"My question is, what are you going to do about it?\" I thought for a moment, then I said. \"You have saved countless lives, not only through your work and this endeavor but also in your morals. I won't say a word.\" He looked relieved. \"Thank you, friend.\"\n\nAs I walked out, I turned around. \"One last thing, we would be more than happy to hire you and your staff to set up blood drives elsewhere.\" He smiled. \"I will keep that in mind\"." ]	5
	[WP] The first-line defense has been decimated. The second-stringers have been vanquished. Now, Earth's only hope resides with the C-List superheroes	[ "Status Report! …. Gary said into the walkie talkie. \n\nThere was no response.\n\nThe room was filled with a crappy bunch.Fred, A man in all red skinny spandex, missing some eyebrows and some type of tar based football gear.\n\nQ, A half naked woman with nothing but a bikini to cover her private area, with a sparkly top covering her in green snake scales, topped with yellow hair and red eyes.\n\nGarry, a top c-lister, didn’t look too bad and was in all dark blue and maroon mix with a utility belt for god knows what. His sights scanned the room some more.\n\nAn explosion bellowed outside of the control room.\n\n“F*ck, this is getting dicey”\n\nGarry looked over to a huge towering monster of a man to left of the woman. A huge purple hulk like being with scars all over his huge massive muscular frame. \n\n“Aha! You” Surely this man has something we can use.\n\n“Oh, no, not really ” Fred chimed. \n\n“His super-power is he looks big but thats it.”\n\n“What do you mean thats it?”\n\nThats it. He can project a bigger image of himself.\n\n“Surely he has some sort of superhuman strength or something.”\n\n“Uh, He makes a pretty good cup of joe if yo- .”\n\n“Oh for christ sake. What do you do?!”\n\n“I can shoot fire balls through my hands.”\n\n“Well alright!\n\n“Only when i'm turned on though.”\n\n“I don’t even want to know how you have job security .” \n\n“OK.” Gary clapped his hands together.\n\nDoes ANYONE In here have any superpowers that aren’t restricted by any shortcomings.\n\n“Ha!” said Fred\n\nNo! said Garry.\n\n“Any shortcomings that aren’t a battle conflict.”\n\nA girl in a purple dress rose her hand.\n\n“I can control plants !”\n\nWell then, that’s crucial.\n\n“Wait why aren’t you out there fighting?”\n\nMy power only works 30% of the time.\n\n“Well… we-” Gary looked at her, overcome with sheer doubt in her,\n\n“Ok that’s a pretty depressing statistical average.”\n\n“Does anyone in here have any luck based abi-”\n\nOh what am I kidding.\n\n“We’re screwed.” Gary said as he cowered and fell down against the wall.\n\nI’ve seen some shit but these hellfire twins, might just be the end of the world.\n\nThe room died, a quiet somber reflection of the end.\n\nNO! Q yelled.\n\nIm not going like this. She said as she strutted over. \n\nFreds hands starting to smoke.\n\n“Well, what do you do?” Gary said look\n\nI can projectile vomit any type of liquid.”\n\nGarys hands smoked harder,\n\n“That’s kinda hot.”\n\nNOT NOW FRED, \n\nGary was deep in thought.\n\n…..\n\nWait, Any liquid you say? \n\nYes.\n\nwell …\n\nCan you projectile vomit kerosine.\n\nYes!\n\nHmph. \n\nYou! Gary said to the tall looking giant.\n\n“Can you project this illusion of yourself multiple times.?\n\nYeah.\n\n“Yes.. Gary said to himself.\n\nPlant girl.\n\nMy names actually Jessica but,Yes!\n\nRegardless of your success rate if you.. kept trying ...do you think you could make us some flammable plant based exoskeletons.\n\nIt would take 3 hours but yes.\n\nHow is that going to help?\n\nListen, we might not be able to psychically beat those guys but, Im sure we have just enough to send them some thing that looks like it could.\n\nEverybody ready!\n\nHands In. \n\nLets do it.\n\n", "\"Be gone, evil-doer! For I... am the Satin Codpiece!\"\n\nMy partner proudly took his place beside me. \"And I... am Nimrod!\"\n\nThe only sound after we'd proclaimed victory was the sound of overturned cars creaking, buildings crumbling and a few fires burning. Nobody said a word. Nobody cheered, nobody applauded. They just... looked at us like we were a couple of idiots. The people we help always look at us like we're idiots. I wouldn't let it get to me, but Nimrod was obviously shaken. I had to say something.\n\n\"You're welcome, citizens! Think nothing of it! No need to thank us!\"\n\nMy pink cape flew proudly behind me in the wind. I adjusted my orange utility belt, then accidentally fired off a tranquilizer dart from my wrist-shooter. The dart hit Nimrod in the foot. He went down almost immediately. I caught him before he hit the ground in my lime green gloves, and I'm glad he wasn't awake for when the laughing started. Nimrod and I just saved all these people from an insane, sentient supercomputer... and they were laughing at us. I settled my cape, touched my magic codpiece--a gift given to me by my mother, who had it enchanted by a codpiecemancer on our home planet--and transported Nimrod to safety at the Codpiece of Solitude until he awoke from what I'd done.\n\n\"Are you okay, Nimrod?\"\n\nNimrod looked at me like he'd never looked at me before. He looked at me like he didn't want to keep fighting.\n\n\"Barrett,\" he said, defeat clear in his voice. He only ever called me by my Earth name when he needed to say something serious. \"I don't think we can go on like this anymore.\"\n\nI sighed deeply, and took off my ivory white mask to reveal my weathered and battered face. I wanted to keep fighting, because fighting for justice is what brought me to this planet devoid of enchanted codpieces, but I didn't want to lose my friend. Nimr--I mean, Aaron--is the only friend I have.\n\n\"Aaron, if we don't fight for the people, who will fight for them?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" Nimrod said, flustered, \"the Avengers?\"\n\n\"They're all dead,\" I said.\n\n\"Justice League?\" Aaron asked.\n\n\"Also dead,\" I reminded him.\n\n\"Wow. Even the fish guy?\" he asked, just to be sure.\n\n\"Yes, even the fish guy. Most of this world's heroes were taken from us too soon, Aaron. That's why we have to persevere. There aren't many of us left.\"\n\nAaron stood upright and wiped his face. He smiled at me.\n\n\"You're right, Barrett. We have to press forward. We can't let people down, even if they think we're awful at our job and don't look like the heroes they're used to. It's what's right.\"\n\nI smiled and laughed heartily as my magic codpiece swelled with pride. \"That's my boy, Aaron! Now, contact our friend Baron Turdbutt. The three of us have much work left to do.\"" ]	2
	[WP] It was sitting in his bed. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was on his bed and that was going to be a problem.	[ "\"I- I'm sorry, but this isn't a great time to have - er - you - in my room.\" He said carefully.\n\nHe wasn't sure of exactly what sort of creature this was that sat on his bed, crumpling the already disorganized blankets and pulling awkwardly at a dirty sort of toga it wore. At the words, its floppy ears drooped. Its pale gray skin illuminated by the light, he could make out the intricacies of its face. Its bulging, humanlike eyes surveyed him and, for a moment, flitted up to the blemish scarring his otherwise handsome face.\n\n\"I- I is understanding of that, your greatness.\" It spoke slowly, as if plagued by the same worry as he - that he should perhaps provoke the opposite creature and cause it to attack. Neither was completely sure of what the other was capable of, but was apprehensive all the same. \"I is hoping that sir might reconsider his return to our world this year, sir.\"\n\n\"B- but why?\" He stuttered on his words slightly, in shock of the fact that such a creature might recommend he not return to his true home, the place he belongs. Though his words did not sway his opinions on returning home, they did create a small pang of fear in his stomach. He had not received word, after all, of how he would be returning that month, despite the promises made by his companions saying that he would see them.\n\n\"There is a plot, sir, to make most terrible things happen!\" The creature's floppy ears sprung up, alert, and its large eyes widened to an extent he had not thought possible. \"I is not treated well at home, sir, and-\" he leapt up and onto the bedside table, grabbing hold of a small lamp. \"-oh, what a terrible thing to say!\" He slammed himself in the head with the lamp - once, twice, three times, until finally he came to his senses and leapt up to halt the self imposed pain.\n\n\"Shhh!\" The boy whispered. \"I can't get in trouble with them again!\" Over the noise of the creature's almost-silent wails, drying his tears with the dirty fabric he wore, the sound of his kin were to be heard from downstairs, not concerned about the creature upstairs.\n\n\"I is sorry, Mr. Potter. Dobby is - is most aggrieved, sir.\"" ]	1

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