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Challenge #01546-D085: Proof of Concept

The concept of sound didn't exist until roughly the 1870s, when the gramophone was invented. -- RecklessPrudence

[AN: Which is weird, because Aristotle linked hearing with the element of air. Source. And more than a few attempts were made to record sound. Source2 ]

"A listening engine?" Clara repeated.

"To aid the deaf, I initially thought. Something to translate the noises we make into a visual medium, and thereby aid understanding. Of course, its spelling would be atrocious, but the message should get through." Montague tweaked his latest contraption. There was an ear trumpet, and a progression of springs, and a pencil balanced carefully against a roll of paper. "So far, I've been analysing the vibrations of the human voice. Watch."

He wound the machine up and pressed a switch. Then recited, "You look wonderful, today, my dearest Clara," into the trumpet. Things jiggled. The pencil moved as if it were possessed. It all stopped again when Montague flipped the switch the other way.

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Challenge #01545-D084: Hoarded Labyrinth

Unpacking a Packrat's Hoard. -- Anon Guest

It was a lovely old house, that was certain. It was such a shame that it was filled, floor to ceiling, with packrattus. Great-Aunt Shirl had been one of those people who kept the wrapping paper off of her presents and the stubs from her movie tickets. Everything she had, was kept in the box it came in. And the shopping bag it arrived home in. About the only thing she threw out was the

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Challenge #01544-D083: Il Pleut

They can make it rain, some perform Arcane rituals, some pray. But of course there is the old tried and true methods. -- Knitnan

There's a reason why the Affiliate College of Rainmakers is on a boat. And why the uniform contains rain coats and wellingtons. You don't collect so many Rainmakers in one place without taking precautions. It's only by the third year of attempting control that many students actually achieve it.

Though it is hard to tell without field trips.

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Challenge #01543-D082: No More Tea!

"What are They doing here?" he pointed to a pile of colourful objects.

"Oh, the Tea Cosies, we find them very handy in the Experimental Maths Lab."

Kudos for referencing The Goodies, "I'm a Tea pot! I'm a Tea pot" meltdowns. -- Anon Guest

"People actually go mad and think they're tea pots?" said Kerl. "That happens?"

"Not... quite," allowed Mars, who was the head of the department. "Have you any understanding of five-dimensional math?"

"I don't think five people alive have

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Challenge #01542-D081: A Painful Setback

Like most toilets in Educational facilities this one was littered in graffiti, some of it actually, (a) anatomically correct and, (b) spelled right. Someone had scrawled 'Plumbing does not define Genius or Worth!' -- Anon Guest

Those were inspirational words, but when one was battling digestive upset, plumbing certainly interfered with one's ability to learn. Taerl read arguments from other scholars, including one who repeatedly asked for proof of assorted statements. Someone else, irritated with the non-rebuttal, had scrawled, DO YOUR

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Challenge #01541-D080: Soured Gift

Wings are the symbol of mages, a manifestation of their powers. But magic isn't something easily accepted. People will do anything to be normal. -- YizukiKhons

They appear with the first use of magic, which can happen at any time following the day that a child first recognises that their own actions have consequences beyond themselves. Some say that their size indicates the mage's power. They are made of light, and it is not their size, which is illusory, but the luminosity

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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

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Challenge #01533-D072: Sufficiently Confusing Circuitry

The Magic/More Magic switch. Details here. -- RecklessPrudence

Rael, fresh into independant JOATing, stared at the switch on the homebrew cabinet. A human had to have made this. The pencilled annotation on the toggle switch had two options. Magic and More Magic. Experimentally, he flipped the switch to More Magic and rebooted the kludge of a machine.

It worked perfectly.

Rael was not content to receive a handful of Seconds for this much work, and took the outer casing off to

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Challenge #01532-D071: Unseen Flaws

"What? What is it?" "Give me a minute. I've been an idiot and I'm trying to compensate." -- RecklessPrudence

"No, no, no, no, no!" Paper snowed from its fountaining upwards. Judging by the look of things, inspiration had been going in entirely in the wrong direction. "It's all shit! It's nonsense! Rubbish! Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish..." And then Maester Kadfel fell to sobbing at her desk.

Thaldrik fielded as many pages as he could catch, and laboriously rounded up the others. Months of

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