Just Add Prompt

One good turn deserves another - a wai

[AN: O noes! Looks like an accidental premature submission. I shall do what I can with what there is…]

(#00311)

It took her two hours to reach the accident site. By then, most of the fires were out, and most of the people who had survived the crash had perished.

Nothing to be done about that. The authorities were days away. Things rarely fell from the sky, and when they did, they never hit places like Tullagawupwup. And you certainly never heard of them hitting the scrubby back paddocks of a cattle farm out in the boonies of Tullagawupwup.

But here one was.

Darla didn’t bother with what it was. She soaked her hat and clothes before getting close enough to the fires to put them out with some all-purpose C-O-two. She didn’t bother with the dead, yet. They didn’t need helping.

There. One moving body. Darla extinguished the flames before she went for the big medkit. She got the survivor free and into the shade of the ute before she noticed the poor blighter was not from this planet.

He was not your typical X-files alien. He looked more like a lost dinosaur than a Grey. “You’re gonna be all right, mate,” she soothed. “Gotta clean the wounds, bandage ‘em up.” She worked as she spoke. “I know, there’s not three chances in Hell that you understand a word I say, but a calm voice works wonders, eh? I can tell you’re not from around here. Judging by the way you aren’t fighting, you can tell I’m good people.” She patched up what there was obvious to patch up and let the poor bugger have a drink of water. Water was safe. Couldn’t let him have anything else until some kind of communication barrier was broken.

“You are… very good people,” said the dinosaur.

Well, shit. “You’re pretty good at English,” Darla managed. “I’m Darla Wolanggu.”

“Ch'chezrith,” said the dinosaur.

Lots of things got sorted out in the shade of that ute. Including the fact that Ch'chezrith knew he was dying, and that Darla couldn’t do anything to stop it. He put a pendant around her neck as compensation for her time, and told her that she could use it to help better the world.

And then he died.

She didn’t want the world knowing about alien dinosaurs, so she got on the CB and told the authorities that it was a light plane crash. No survivors. And that she would get more local help with the bodies.

What she got was three cousins and a back-hoe to very quietly place the bodies in the earth, and turn a loose panel from their craft into a ground-level marker.

Ch'chezrith and his crew. They boldly went, and now they’re gone.

They finished with beers and a camp by the wreckage.

“Dun’t look like no plane,” said cousin Merv.

“Nuh,” agreed cousin Blue.

“Reckon we could strip it. I know a fella. Bit of acetylene and Bob’s yer uncle. Can’t tell two bits of buggered scrap apart.” Cousin George finished his insights with a sip of beer.

“Wish I knew what t’ do with this bloody thing,” said Darla, indicating the gift pendant.

Half the wreckage literally tore itself apart and re-assembled into a sort of demountable science station. The four of them poked around in it, but it became pretty clear that only Darla could make it do anything.

Ch'chezrith had given her the keys to his sufficiently advanced technology.

And among the many things it could do for her was control local weather patterns.

The Drought Ender was born.

[Muse food remaining: 8 (fic war prompts: 0) Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]

So, there’s Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Then there’s what I first ran across attributed (in a Uni textbook, no less!) as Murphy’s reformulation of Clarke’s law: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Then there’s what is in the textbook as a Programmers’ restatement of Murphy’s reformulation of Clarke: Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a rigged demonstration.

(Well, you mentioned prior experience in that last snippet, so…)

T'reka and hugs.

(also if the story you mentioned being sparked from that gets written, I totally want in on your beta reading list and will probably buy it multiple times)

[AN: After I finish writing the Hevun’s Child series I will be working on The Amity Incident. 120K word goal. But before that, I think I deserve a week’s rest, don’t you?]

There was

It is said that life is a comedy to those who think,
And a tragedy to those who feel.  I never could figure out
Which it was for me.  May you have better luck. – RecklessPrudence

(#00308)

T-shirts had made a comeback, though many cogniscents who had taken them up had not grasped some of the basic concepts. Like, they had to feature something witty, controversial, or downright offensive.

Some, Rael noted, had gone for profound.

Shayde, sporting one that read, Life

Adhuc Vivo!
(It’s Latin, look it up)

Yes, the parentheses were on the gravestone too. – RecklessPrudence

(#00307)

[AN: For those too lazy to do as the parentheses suggest, it translates out to “Thus far, alive.” which is a very ironic thing to stick on a gravestone]

It was a long trip home, and lead naturally to introspection.

“Plant a tree and think of me,” Rael recited. “Did you choose that epitaph?”

“I

The last Homo Sapiens Sapiens lay dying. Who hears their final words? Who are our species’ successors?

Go as uplifting or as dark as you wish. – RecklessPrudence

(#00305)

The machines were very good at keeping him alive. They had done so for almost two hundred years.

And it wasn’t fair that a majority of them were spent in a bed, watching other innovations and marvelous things happen in the world. Watching the new definition of humanity do marvelous

Luckily, the researchers were actually _aware_ of the past century-plus of musing on the subject, and didn’t react like paranoid idiots.

Whether the creation of the AI was intentional or not, I leave up to you. – RecklessPrudence

(#00304)

Gravity generators needed a Cargo Cult to make them go. Each machine was the same, up until the final pass, where the Cargo Cult took over and the machine was ‘birthed’.

The cult called itself the Nae'hyn, and was

Place names change over time. Often in response to something that happened at that location that changed how people thought about it. For instance, did you know that it’s nigh-impossible to easily find an English source for what the locals called ANZAC Cove before WW1?

What about when the meaning behind the new name is forgotten… why is this place named [name here]? It doesn’t fit with the surrounding place names… – RecklessPrudence

(#00303)

Part of Shayde&

I am somewhat preoccupied telling the Laws of Physics to shut up and sit down. – RecklessPrudence

(#00301)

It took Kev most of the year to work out that Katie Walker was smarter than she seemed. When the dawn came, it was like watching a gigantic fusion energy generator rise over the horizon.

She was coding in her notebook again. Gibberish to Kev’s eyes. She used to count and mutter when writing in there, now, she just wrote in a

My stomach is in my throat right now. It’s trying to spit acid on the parts of my brain that remember reading that message. – RecklessPrudence

(#00300)

It had been an ordinary chat in Shayde’s office until Blenkinsop arrived with the lead-lined lockbox.

“Oh joy, it’s a nastygram from Greater Deregulation. Fan-fookain’-tastic…” She got out and donned a pair of gloves, goggles, and a filter mask.

Then, with ceremony and aplomb, carefully

Can somebody help me find my retinas?
Last I heard, they were screaming and trying to hide under a table.

I leave it to you to determine if the sight was physically, emotionally, or mentally traumatic. – RecklessPrudence

(#00299)

She had been intending to say, “I’m no tryin’ tae escape, ye ken, but somethin’s gone wrong wi’ the air in there.”

She only got as far as, “I’m no trying’

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – RecklessPrudence

(#00298)

Walter had left his house unlocked. Everything inside was in more disarray than usual. There was no sign of Walter and, most alarming off all, the cage was empty.

The cage that contained possibly the most dangerous creature in the world. Correction, the cage that had contained, etcetera. Which meant that It must have got out.

Take a breath. Keep calm. Look at

Don’t knock on death’s door. Ring the bell and run. He hates that.

Bonus points if you have Death be somewhat Pratchettian. – RecklessPrudence

(#00297)

“What is this? Another bubble-reality? Why is everything shades of black?”

“Aw fook,” growled Shayde. “This isnae a bubble. It’s a pocket.”

“There are pocket realities?”

“Aye, where d'ye think I keep all me shit?”

Rael glared at her. “Seriously.

I know you can’t drink most alcohol, and I’m leery of too much of the stuff myself - but I can’t help but like this quote:

I ran screaming out of adolescence, and when I hit the border somebody gave me the legal right to drink. It’s all just finely tuned memory loss since then. – RecklessPrudence

(#00296)

“And why can’t such a fine lady as yourself go out dancing with