Realm of the InterNutter

Thoughts, stories and ideas.

Challenge #01540-D079: What Do You Mean, 'Mostly Harmless'?

Before we made contact, humans were considered a myth, the Galactic Governments greatest hoax. No one species could possibly be THAT insane.

It's very stressful for the rest of the Galaxy when they discover humans are indeed real, and just as insane as they'd heard. -- Anon Guest

Everyone in the Galactic Alliance knew the stories that spacers told of humans. Near misses. Close encounters. Abductions. Scouts told stories of dead worlds where relics of these peculiar, hairless, bipedal mammals had once reigned and then destroyed themselves. Tales of impossible wreckage that should have killed all aboard on impact, yet the surrounding area showed signs of habitation before it was seemingly abandoned.

Scavengers, scroungers, and asteroid prospectors would swap tales of meeting humans. Some would even exchange what they believed to be human entertainment media. Transcribed, of course, into more usable formats, which always caused the source to be questioned. The stories were always larger than life. How first contact situations happened purely by accident and the human vessel in question was never found again.

It wasn't until the Armoured Cephalopod came to answer the distress call of a scavenger ship named the Corvid that an encounter was confirmed. Also crippled on the dwarf planets' surface was a human vessel. The saurian scavenger and the human had accidentally crashed and forged an alliance based on the simple fact that they were clearly going to die on their own.

Continue Reading

Prompts remaining: 16 Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!

Can I skip today?

Monday wore me out. Tuesday, likewise. I am not built for extended travel. If I'm going long distances for extended periods of time, I need like 12 to 24 hours to recuperate after the travel, please.

Today, after two days of hither and yon, after going through the emotional wringer, after coming home after all that and still wringing a piece of coherent story out of my addled brain... I want nothing more than to retreat into a pillow-fort of solitude and

Read more »

Challenge #01539-D078: Strangely Met

The world's reaction when a ship looking a lot like a vaguely aerodynamic brick lands at Cape Canaveral, looking for some fresh fruit & veg ("Reconstituted is good, but fresh is always better"), a top-up on hydrogen for their fusion reactor ("Haven't seen a depot for twelve jumps, and my magscoop's on the blink again - old damage from some pirates, probably should replace it"), a repair tech for said magscoop ("Got anyone qualified in Grade As? It's a Lurrkon Class Three,

Read more »

Funeral, today.

I don't know when today's Instant will be published, but I'm doing my best to see that the flow of fiction remains largely uninterrupted.

I'm on support duty, today. Propping up those I love through their time of trial. And according to my brain, it means bringing along enough tissues. Which means all of the carry packs I have left, because I overcompensate.

Yes. I know. I'm mental. I can deal with that.

Read more »

Challenge #01538-D077: A Stay in a Haunted House

Just because something is supernatural doesn't mean it won't follow a learnable set of rules. It just means the "why" of those rules isn't bound to make logical sense. -- RecklessPrudence

It was an old house. Of course it came with a ghost. It had been a farm in the ancient days of yore, before urbanisation subdivided the land again and yet again, and it became the last house along a new street that had once been its driveway, and, simultaneously, the

Read more »

Hello, crap, meet fan.

[AN: This should have been posted a week ago. Very sorry]

Beloved's father died, yesterday. I know nothing else beyond that news.

It's a bit of a blow. And I know it's bloody stupid to associate that with a novel, but I was doing some minor edits on KFZ both before the day, and on the day. Correlation is not causation.

But damn, I'm starting to believe that book is cursed. Every time I mess with it, something horrible happens.

I gotta

Read more »

Crowded Days Ahead

Chaos is seeing her shrink, today. We're all going to a funeral, tomorrow. I have no idea what Wednesday holds, but it's bound to include looking for more Beta-readers for Beauties, and possibly working on Chaos' very first book. I should have the time by then.

I need to figure out a way to make an iced coffee that I can tolerate, because there's no way I can drive as much as I'm driving, this week, without caffeine. One that will (a)

Read more »

Challenge #01537-D076: No Place Like It

It was a Trucker's Drinking Hole, beer on tap and lachrymose songs on the Juke Box. It didn't matter that 16 wheelers were replaced by space haulers, some things never changed. -- Anon Guest

After months of monotony, hauling whatever the cargo was, even an AI would crave variety from the humdrum. And this place was the one-stop shop. Inebriants for those on rest cycle. Stimulants for those just stopping by. The inevitable tones of Cryin' Joe Bardnaw on the jukebox, jukebox

Read more »

New toys

Beloved bought me a vinyl turntable, yesterday. While I was out with Chaos and gently stewing in my own juices, Beloved was rearranging the front room to include surround sound, once more1. Beloved, who claims to be tone deaf, has turned into an audiophile overnight.

So now I own a record player that doesn't take twenty minutes to warm up2 and is compatible with most of the other technology in the house. Plus there's a chance I can bootleg save

Read more »

Challenge #01536-D075: Dire Times at the Dog and Duck

It was one of those places that people went to, to drink as much as possible in the shortest time. There were tiles well above head height, the floor was tiled and covered in sawdust, at shift change staff hosed it out and put down fresh sawdust. -- Anon Guest

There wasn't a menu. There weren't interesting bottles on the back shelf. There was barely a back shelf, which held a bottle of suspicious pickled eggs, which also held a pickled vermin

Read more »

Social Obligations

Chaos is attending a party, today. This is a chance for me to network with other Parentals, and social interaction practice for a chronic introvert. No, not Chaos. Think again. Yep. Me.

Chaos is going to be fine. She'll just leap in while I'm still solving five-dimensional social conversation math. I'll wear my little SPG gear pin just in case there's a fellow Steampunk nerd there. I always have high hopes of making a new, nerdy friend.

And if someone asks... and

Read more »

Challenge #01535-D074: Action and Consequence

There is a minor but critical distinction between being right and being not wrong. -- RecklessPrudence

Someone had graffitied a museum's promotional poster. The poster, being about a dinosaur exhibit, featured the ever-popular T-Rex. The graffito read, He's a chicken, I tell you! A giant chicken![1]

There was no need to arrest the offending graffiti artist because the local paleontological fans had already corralled them and were having a Well-Actually contest. Lyr hung back and observed, just in case things got

Read more »

Slow start

Since nobody gets out of bed before 5:30 anyway, I'm re-setting my alarm to that time and not waking up early for half an hour of heartbreaking inertia. And that's all I have this morning. Inertia has me in its wicked claws today.

I woke up at around 3 and tried and failed to get back to sleep. A combo of Beloved's snoring and the various little annoying lights in the room kept me awake. The phone makes the body lotion

Read more »

Challenge #01534-D073: Wyrd Customs

"How normal is this occurrence that there's automated vocal procedures to talk about the demonic presence?" -- RecklessPrudence

This lot of magicians had graduated through technology and out the other side, never once stopping in at Global Pollution Station for a long debate about how dangerous pollution was, when you really got down to it. Shayde was impressed. Not many worlds actually noticed the long-term effects of certain technologies and decided to look at other ways to do things while the water

Read more »

Struggle to juggle

I think I should probably try to do a "head space" comic per day. As well as the other stuff. I've learned I can only handle animation in small doses, so maybe five frames a go is my limit. And I still haven't posted the progress pix for the latest art piece I'm working on.

I know that it looks like a bag of suck at the moment, which is why I haven't posted it.

Bag of suck or not, I feel

Read more »