Instant Story

Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #02818-G261: Payback's a Blessing

They bounced from station to station helping out where they could. Due to the family they were born in to, they'd inherited enough time to live more than comfortably, but they didn't want to just sit around and do nothing for the rest of their life. So, taking training in security, combat, engineering, and several other, useful, fields, they went between stations, and aboard ships, just helping out. When offered contracts and pay for their work? The answer was always the same.

"No thanks. I have enough already, just a room and some food is all I ask."

Often much to the surprise of those who had worked with humans before. Unfortunately, there were some who were not above taking advantage of their kindness and worked them to the bone, yet refusing to give even a place to sleep or any food, unless they bought their own. Tired, sore, and a bit discouraged, for this had happened more than a few times, they sat sipping on a cup of tea looking down. A man sat next to them who seemed pleasant enough. He had a tattoo of a dog's head biting off a human hand on his forearm, and a bit of a wild gleam in the eyes, however. He asked the person why they seemed so down in a place known for it's entertainments and, when they explained. The exhaustion from work, and yet the one thing they ask not being honored when it'd been promised before they began, the wild - looking man merely smiled and said "Cheer up, it's already taken care of." -- Anon Guest

They could have surrendered to inertia. It would have been easy. Some people just don't like easy. Further, they had suffered under their parents' iron will and this was a firm rude gesture at everything those pocket despots stood for.

They plunged all their funds into a charity for the less fortunate and exchanged their inherited private yacht for the space equivalent of an ancient combi van with a mattress in the back[1]. It would get them as far as the next station, where they would work to help whoever needed it and help pay for the repairs enough to get to the next station.

It was not always great, but that was the point. On the Edge, people made their own way and sought their own joys. These siblings found joy in retroactive defiance against parents both too greedy and too controlling. It doesn't matter what names they were given, they chose their own. Meet Em and Bee. Free-range do-gooders extraordinaire.

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Challenge #02817-G260: The Planet's Haunted?

The storm-damaged ship manages to land safely on a planet where resources are minimal at best. The entire crew are level one and level two haven-worlders, but they have one death-worlder aboard. An 8 year old human child. They were transporting the child to a space station as the child had recently been rescued from kidnappers who were now sitting in prison.

On this planet, not everything is what it appears. Food keeps showing up at the entryway and footsteps can be

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Challenge #02816-G259: I'll Try to be Nice

"Nobody has to die today." -- Anon Guest

You can say a lot with small words. Wisdom comes in those with multiple uses. Five words can be a promise, a threat, a reassurance, or an absolute and utter lie. Humans use all of them at once, and pretend they knew what was the winner after the fact.

Unless the Ships' Human makes it very, very clear which one they're using, it's just better to play along. In the Case of the Valiant

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Challenge #02815-G258: Best Instincts at Work

Some Positive Vibes and maybe a good story Prompt.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RIhUUt88ZM -- Anon Guest

Humans are not telepathic. They are -on average- not prescient. However, watching Human parentals with their young in a series of miraculous rescues causes many to suspect the Humans may be lying about this. So too do phrases like, "I can hear what you're thinking," which is a common Human expression to mean, "I am reading all your physical tells and can correctly

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Challenge #02814-G257: A Good Question

Aliens seeing and hearing lyrebird. That's it. That's the whole prompt. -- Anon Guest

The rocket thrust engines sounded at full throttle. They sounded from the throat of an otherwise grey and ordinary-looking bird with an ornate tail. After it was done rumbling, it imitated the sound of a few imager trigger sounds. Then it replicated precisely the zoo closing warning.

"Bing bing bong. The zoo will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please make your way towards the exit. The zoo will

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Challenge #02813-G256: So Vulnerable

I want to see aliens that think humans are cute. Like, they get a Ship's Human because Rules, and when they meet them, they're just...

Oh, it's so cute! Must. Protect.

And it ends in mayhem and hilarity. -- Anon Guest

They had been against having a Ship's Human, but they were exploring and documenting the Edge Territories, so it was mandatory. Those meaty Deathworlders would only cause chaos and destruction. They even had to get a new ship made entirely of

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Challenge #02812-G255: You Were Warned

[translated and changed a little bit from polish movie]

A: You want to attack humans?

B: Yes, their planet has some materials that I need

A: This one will be tough. On a daily basis humans are annoying, but they love when they are under attack! I'm telling you! In the first 5 days they're all going to start a resistance movement and turn into guerrillas! -- Anon Guest

[AN: NGL I want to see a dub of that Polish movie. I

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Challenge #02811-G254: A Show of Respect

Have you ever looked at a young human and thought "this is a creature that should terrify me"? I have. My unit came upon an educational facility. We had been scouting the planet, carefully, silently. The humans thought we were just tourists, we did our best to blend in. Find their weaknesses, they seemed to have many. But it was not until what we sat in that educational facility that fateful evening that convinced all of us that this colony was not

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Challenge #02810-G253: Remember Rule One

A new combat instructor was assigned to my battalion. If I remember the instructor is that of the human race. They were formerly introduced to us and to be honest I was not impressed. The human was only two-thirds my size and look squishy as a havenworlder, hard to believe that they’re from a deathworld. I was given the chance to spar with the human, I couldn’t even touch them. -- Anon Guest

Many hear a word like "Deathworlder" and

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Challenge #02809-G252: Don't Be Fooled

Lots of stories with humans and delicate avian Havenworlders. How about one where the 'bird' descended from something like a cassowary. -- Knitnan

[AN: Compared with Humans, Cassowaries still have their weak points. The trick, of course, is getting close enough to exploit them. Cassowaries count as aviasaurs, and may not be Havenworlders by technicality.]

People tend to assume. If a cogniscent species looks like a bird, it's probably a Havenworlder. Many people coming across the aviasaurs make that assumption. Too many

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Challenge #02808-G251: The Revenge Paradox

“Do you want revenge?” I offer this many times, call me cruel or whatnot. The offer still stand. I offer you new life, let’s not be bound by the chains of hatred and live a glorious life! There’s a thing called karma and it pays twofold. Watch as you victim wallow in despair, and become jealous of your new spirit held high. Watch as they beg you to come back to their lives. That’s where you truly know, you

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Challenge #02807-G250: The True Story

I ask you not as emperor, but as a father. I do not demand you become her protector, I humbly request that you become her friend. -- Anon Guest

You know the story of the Lindwyrm. Or rather, you think you know it. You know the most of it. Stories change with each teller. Some add. Some subtract. Names are lost, times and places blur until all that's left is the phrase, Once upon a time...

By then, almost all of the

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Challenge #02806-G249: Not as We Know it

Could intelligent life arise around deepsea hydrothermal vents? -- Anon Guest

Intelligent life is very egocentric when theorising about other intelligent life. They imagine distant worlds like their own, with lifeforms possessing body patterns like their own. They don't often look much further than their own evolutionary path to pat themselves on the back and say, Yes. Aliens will be a lot like us.

The scientists of Earth frequently ignore the intelligent life already present around them. Cetaceans and octopi are examples

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Challenge #02805-G248: A Need of Dragons

They arrived from many places around the world, and yet, they all seemed to know how to get to the village. Those from other nations found funds and tickets to planes waiting for them, as well as all information they needed to get to that place. The ones already in that continent traveling on foot, by surprisingly convenient rides, by rail, etc., all the same, to find themselves on a wide, easily traversed, path into the forests. The strange thing is, the

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Challenge #02804-G247: How Can I Help?

We're out there, you know. The people who slip through the cracks. The ones that hurt too much to really succeed but don't hurt obviously enough to get help. It's a terrible feeling, to be jealous of someone who's in more pain than you are, just because they have legally mandated support. -- Anon Guest

[AN: Speaking as someone who's lived in the cracks, I get it. It's one of the reasons my pet universe has systems that patch the cracks.]

You

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