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Challenge #01847-E023: The Only Sensible One

"We are a crew of 7 persons : 2 deathworlders, 4 havenworlders and a sentient AI. The havenworlders are the scientist and the AI is the medic. I'm the only human and the security officer. What is my problem ? Well, let me think about it... . The captain is an adrenaline junky who might send the ship in a high danger zone just for his rush, the doc is obsessed with humans, and the havenworlders are just... too curious without self-preservation instincts.... Two days ago one of them found and lit a flare because "it's pretty". Inside the ship.

Did you ever feel like you are the last sane man on the ship ?" -- Anon Guest

I used to joke that I'm not the security chief, I'm the ship's mother. It's... not a joke any more. Or at least, it's stopped being funny. I'm looking after four little tiny bird people with breakable damn bones whose first instinct with cliffs is to jump off and go, 'wheee!' And I'm one of those species for whom that instinct is a bad thing. Then there's Grox. A heavy-worlder who can do that sort of thing, bounce, and laugh about it after.

Let's just say I added wing and parachute capabilities to my livesuit and leave it at that. And then there's Bosco. Well. I call them Bosco. Their actual designation has way more letters and numbers than I care to pronounce. The most pronounceable part of it sounds something like 'Bosco' and it took us two entire Standard Months to work that one out. Bosco's an AI. One of the ones where their creator actually aimed for that output and not -say- a Deuteronomy situation where a Nae'hyn got bored and made a baby. Like. Out of spare parts.

Bosco's technically a medical probe? Their mind and memory are in a back-up black box set-up with remote connectivity to their body of the day. Technically speaking, Bosco can teleport anywhere within comms range, so long as there's a body there. Ze has a cosmetic form, which is sort of humanoid if you like Daft Punk mixed in with Metropolis and deliberately on the non-human peak of the Uncanny Valley. Oh, and all of hir exploration bodies are (a) organic (b) disposable and (c) capable of being shot from the ship and surviving a sub-orbital cannonade.

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Challenge #01846-E022: Where's the Cheevs?

Pokémon Go... in space -- TheDragonsFlame

Trends come, trends go, and some are revived, zombie like, from a place where they should have stayed buried. You can make up your minds about which ones are which. For a patch of time in the 1930's, the name Judith became incredibly popular, and was rarely that popular again. For a spate in the 1980's, every girl child was named Kylie. And pretty much since the 1980's until the current era, there has been Pokémon.

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Challenge #01845-E021: Art in All Forms

Alien walking past human's quarters hears a harsh, vaguely rhythmic sound.

Alien knocks on human's door, enters, and finds that it's audio sensory organs are assaulted by this noise, the noise is so loud it is almost painful for the Alien's ears.

Alien: "Human, what is this noise?"

Human: "This is my music, you don't like it?"

Alien: "I don't know, the volume is a bit high and it sounds rather harsh, what is this music called?"

Human: "Many humans don't like

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Challenge #01844-E020: Considering Coconuts

http://otherwindow.tumblr.com/post/168918610430/ -- Anon Guest

Merfolk didn't want to have much to do with the surface. There was plenty more to eat under the water and they knew it. But the two-legs-like-us[1] were getting deeper and deeper nets, and something had to be done. Let's just say mistakes were made on both sides. Most notable of these is coconuts.

For eons of Merfolk civilisation, they understood coconuts as ill omens. Something that is made to float, sinking

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Challenge #01843-E019: Reminded of the Babe?

Don't do something permanently stupid just because you're temporarily upset. -- Anon Guest

My mother said/ I never should/ play with the faeries in the wood... - nursery rhyme.

The fae folk had her baby. Toddler. Even though her child could walk and talk after a fashion and perform simple tasks, Esa was still her baby and would be so until the day Risso died. Which might be soon, considering that she was marching into Fae territory with naught but her apron

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Challenge #01842-E018: A Place to Fit

The adventures/escapades of a Numidid raised by/among humans -- TheDragonsFlame

[AN: This continues on from this thing ]

Family is more than the people that excreted you, so goes the galactic saying. Family can be a bunch of loner weirdoes and their adopted Numidid keet called Pip. Scavenger M. DeVries and his daughter, Pip, cut quite a figure in the news, and they did so for all of forty-eight hours.

Because that was when the Galactic Alliance rediscovered a colony world

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Challenge #01841-E017: The Biological Solution

[End the story with this sentence] “Behold... the mighty predator.” -- TheDragonsFlame

First came the epithelials, and there was the Dust Problem. Amelioration worked, to a degree, but cleansing schedules soon became hell for multiple species. And someone discovered Fhitts and Squidges. Small, jellyfish-like animals that floated around via hydrogen gas bags. They either filter-fed as they drifted around on the air currents, or -in the case of the Fhitts- jetted about in active pursuit.

Then the Fhitts and the Squidges became

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Challenge #01840-E016: Toxic, Useless, and Ugly

"A man of words and not of deeds, is like a garden full of weeds." -- Knitnan

"I will work so hard," he said. "I won't even have time for golf. I won't have time to tweet. I'm talking bloody knuckles. I'm talking wearing out the grindstone with my nose. I'm talking twenty-four-seven. Hard. Sweaty. Work. For you. For all of you." And then he spent more days on the golf course, on holiday, or on leave than any other leader to

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Challenge #01839-E015: A Grand Day Off

Shoes off, comfy clothes, and good read. No phones, no Internet connection, a little bit of Heaven, and Room Service thrown in. Best Break Ever! -- Knitnan

Sometimes, you just need to get away. And sometimes, the problem with going anywhere is that the things you want to get away from tend to follow you around. And today, Ana needed to get away from the entire world.

To that end, she had carefully arranged this day. A new book. A collection of

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Challenge #01838-E014: Hour of Need

It had been a hard day today, she Needed chocolate! -- Anon Guest

So. Let's recap. Best beloved and most capable person in the house arrested for a crime they couldn't possibly commit. On a day when she had needed to run around between four different destination, with stops on the way to pick up whatever. And stops at the bank to get her running money for the week because their mutual funds had been frozen and their family still needed to

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Challenge #01837-E013: The Helpful Cup

Hot sweetened tea and maybe a biscuit or sandwich will help to solve most problems. -- Anon Guest

In the grand scheme of things, Britanians never expect much out of the Tea Lady. Some sage advice, a rambling story about their youngest, and, of course, tea. If you knew how to play your cards right, you might get a Jammy Dodger or a Scotch Finger. That was the way it had always been. Until Ambassador Harry.

So far, she had helped the

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Challenge #01836-E012: Debunked Beliefs

Non-human sentients are used to thinking of humans as impossibly durable daredevils of highly questionable sanity. However, historical human science fiction, pre-first contact, typically has humans depicting themselves as either ordinary everymen and everywomen in a world full of sentients who were stronger, smart, harder to kill, and/or had space magic at their disposal. Humans were surprised when their cynicism didn't play out. Aliens are shocked that humans could have ever considered themselves as such. -- Anon Guest

"And this one

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Challenge #01835-E011: The Caring Gap

Their world was games, and Facebook and selfies. Then they wound up in an emergency ward and discovered electric lives are no substitute for the real thing. -- Knitnan

[AN: You clearly have no understanding of modern connectivity. AKA: "You dang kids get off of your social media and get a real life!" ::shakes cane::]

Alice was technically a Cam Girl and technically a Gamer. In reality, that meant grinding assorted games for a pitiful income per game per hour, and taking

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Challenge #01834-E010: The Stakes

A wager will often get results when pleading fails. -- Anon Guest

One has to be wealthy to be eccentric. If you're poor, you're just odd. People could tell that Felwar Nassidd was an eccentric from a long line of eccentrics. The first dead-giveaway was the name. The second was their Wagers of Benevolence.

They laid a two hundred billion dollar bet that a town wouldn't be able to completely convert to green energy, and feed the populace proper nutrition at the

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Challenge #01833-E009: Revenge is Purring

If you truly hate someone give them a baby bear. Comment from Historical source. Nobody mentioned Bears just get big. But what if you give them a pregnant female house cat? -- Anon Guest

Across societies, across worlds, there are things that could be counted as gifts - but definitely aren't. Drum kits for the hated one's children. A bear cub. A baby ape. A dragon's egg. All of those and more can only be called trouble. And then there is the

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