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  • Entry 01 - I hear laughter in space

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  • Entry 02 - Icarus

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  • Entry 03 - Lonely Crew

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  • Entry 04 - Stary, Stary Night

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  • Entry 05 - Thus Spoke The Shark-Men

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  • Entry 06 - Space

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Thread: Scriptorium Summer 2015 Writing Competition Themed voting thread

  1. #1
    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Scriptorium Summer 2015 Writing Competition Themed voting thread

    Here are the submissions for the themed category. Please vote for your favorite one.

    Also, please bear in mind that anonymity is still required here. Authors of any works below may not declare what submission may be theirs, or in any other way ruin the anonymity of theirs or another member's submission. Those found to be doing so here or anywhere else will be punished with extreme prejudice by the resident knights and rightly so. The same rules apply to other members as well. Authors may vote for their own entry if they wish.

    The thread is for discussion of the articles at hand and voting, NOTHING ELSE.


    Polls last until September the 15th
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  2. #2
    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Scriptorium Summer 2015 Writing Competition Themed voting thread

    Entry 01 - I hear laughter in space

    I hear laughter in space
    Space. It was as beautiful as it was deadly; as peaceful as it was violent. It called out to the best and the worst, those who wanted to build something wonderful and those whose only desire was to see it destroyed. There were enough planets that every single sentient being be granted one as theirs, a world to do with as they wished. Between two neighbouring star systems there was enough emptiness to fit every spacefaring vessel without them even coming close to touching.

    Space. It was the future and the past, its story repeating perpetually for aeons. Even if the puppets knew that their strings were being pulled, there was nothing for them to do about it. Choice was so intertwined with fate and destiny that it was not choice at all. Freewill was merely ignorance of the truth, a canoe without paddles drifting towards a waterfall. It was this undeniable answer to the universe’s collective question that demanded the story to carry on, a fable ingrained on the edge of a circle. Never ending and unchangeable.

    Space. Its unimaginable vastness contained such horrors that the nightmares of Earth would cower at their sight. And just as some stand against adversity, against the horrors of the beyond, others allow it to carry them, taking them and molding something alien out of them.

    “Give me just one reason.”

    There is no reason. He wanted to laugh at the foolishness of the question. What is reason? There was instinct and there was wistful thinking. Reason? That was as much a lie as an impossibility.

    “I said give me a reason to let you live!”

    It was more rhetorical than the woman could have come to understand, slamming her armoured fist in to the face of the chained captive as he remained infuriatingly silent on the matter.

    “Do you want to die?”

    There it was again. Hesitation. The battlelust had left her. That primal call to butcher and maim had been washed away by that alien concept: humanity. It was not of case of him not wanting to save himself, but of her trying to find a reason to.

    But there is no reason! He laughed then, a short shriek of hysteria which he forced himself to strangle. Now is not the time. The laughter came later. At the present, all he had to do was soak up their presence. They didn’t know what to do. They were as paralysed as if a snake had sunk its fangs in to their flesh. It made him shake with uncontrollable energy. Not the time. Not the time.

    “He has snapped,” announced one of the captors, thinking his words secret through their private channel. “May as well put him out of his misery.”

    “We aren’t murderers,” the leader retorted, forced in to speaking out loud since she had elected to remove her helmet. A fancy thing it was too, sliding away to form a gorget at the behest of her voice.

    There was instant uproar at the woman’s reply. The invaders were not happy about that decision.

    “Well this wasn’t part of the plan.” The plan! Yes, there was the plan!

    That silenced the squad. As if drenched in icy water, the mercenaries froze. Slowly, moving through some sort of invisible ocean, they turned to face the captive. His limbs chained and face bleeding, a painful grin on his face. Those eyes, small beady things of darkness, glowered without blinking.

    “What did he say?” one of the mercenaries, the one who had advocated humanely putting their prisoner down, asked the room.

    The captive’s tongue darted out, flicking out at a bead of blood which had traced a path down from his brow. It had that usual taste, like a memory. It was sickly sweet, something that both repulsed and pleasured the tongue. There was no other reminder of what was in his system that he liked better. At least his senses made it enjoyable.

    “You don't understand the complexities! You should be sticking to the plan.”

    The plan! The plan! Oh why did we plan? No fun in a plan.

    “Really? And why is that, freak?”

    He was numb to the strike, even as it opened up a fissure on his cheek. This is getting boring. The aggressor didn’t appear to be entirely satisfied with the blow, recoiling like a snake, ready to attack again.

    “You ever tried to capture a ship?” the captive managed around a mouthful of his own blood, draining the nectar back like a fine vintage. “Oh I do notrecommend it. The stress I can deal with, but the planning! It is a cruel god who demands that I plan. Oh, I fear sometimes it is too much.”

    "Freak, if you don't start making sense soon I'l-"

    It all happened at once. The lights dimmed, going from neon stars to flickering candles slow enough for someone to watch the energy drain from the bulbs. The entire vessel rumbled as if it were struck by the clenched fist of a giant. A klaxon began to sound, declaring that the ship was under attack. The mercenaries had moved from victors and captors to prey.

    "S---! What is it?"

    The laughter, a rumbling storm of emotion, burst free. Its time! No! Too early! Too early! His mouth widened until the jaw could move no further, barely able to vocalise the hysteria which rung out across the cargo room. The efforts of the mercenaries to shut him up only increased the crescendo. Their armoured fists could nothing to silence him. Their shouts could not drown him out.

    He ho he ho he oh oh ha he ha he ha ha hA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

    Bang.

    The noise had gotten to them, driven them towards a single goal: trying to stop it. In a way they completely forgot about him, that laughter being all that there was. They had stopped watching his movements, relying on the violence of their comrades to keep the prisoner at bay. They obviously did not know that pain was something he no longer took pleasure from.

    Bang.

    The chains had been just that: chains. If something can be tied, it can be untied. Add in the advantage of having his hands behind his back, away from prying eyes, it was child’s play. The overly-violent reaction to his humour had only played to cut down the time of the confrontation.

    “Get back! I need a clea-”

    The captive had been taken in a slim-fitting flight suit, obsolete even by the standards of the borders. Scanned and patted-down, it revealed to contain nothing but the frame of an under-weight pirate. How very fortunate for them. And how favorable it was to the prisoner that the mercenaries had elected to forget that their fore-bearers had gone in to battle with detached weaponry.

    Bang.

    The thermite rounds struck true, burning away at the mercenaries’ armours as if they were wood being fed to a flame. Insatiably hungry, the old world rounds carved in to flesh with a triumphant sigh of escaping air. Feasting on the soft tissue, the chemicals were heralded by the screams of their hosts.Beautiful. There was a purity in the pain, a clarity in the cries. Oh how I envy you.

    He spun and pirouetted, dancing away from the carnage he had created without a glance back. My ship! My ship! My ship! Moving as fluidly as his bubbling laughter, the pirate made his way from corridor to corridor. I will have to redecorate! Yes, far too gloomy!

    The layout of the ship was simple, nauseatingly so. Dropping his scanner, the new captain advanced on the bridge. Is that fear I hear in your voice? Oh please don’t worried my lady! Whoever had remained on the bridge while the mercenaries stormed the bait ship now called over their “private” channel, demanding that the rest of the crew reported in. It’s going to be fine my dear. The laughter rose a notch then. Everything is going to be better once I get to you.

    "I will save you," he promised the empty corridors of white and blue, twirling and sliding towards the bridge. "I will protect you from my friends. Don't fear me."

    "HahahahahahahahahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"



    Entry 02 - Icarus


    Icarus

    The Space Age: Icarus


    With a metallic sigh, the computer within the Icarus probe came to life once more, its electronic brain emerging from its millennia of hibernation. Below it lay a planet, and the machine began to speak as it became aware of this.


    “Ten thousand years since last activity. Icarus is still on schedule.”



    Turning its all seeing eye to gaze at the planet below, the computer began scanning. It scanned heat, it scanned the strength of the magnetic field, it scanned the composition of the atmosphere, it scanned on all frequencies of the light spectrum, it scanned for sounds and it scanned for life.

    With a beep, the information was processed and the computer began to read them out loud, for its own amusement rather than for human benefit.

    Atmosphere composition complete. Oxygen levels 25%. Nitrogen levels, 73.5%. Terraforming unnecessary. Planet has life and is suitable to colonise.”


    It imagined how its masters would react, back on Earth. While it did not understand human emotion, all the silly, petty things that they did, or why they took such great joy in performing menial tasks, it couldn’t help but feel a small sense of pride in its work. Its creators would be jubilant, leaping around, hugging each other and probably preparing the ship full of emigrants to travel to the planet as they did so.


    But another thought began to cross his mind. Did any humans remember Icarus? It would take a long time for the information to return, even at light speed, and could anyone stand waiting for ten thousand years for a probe that might have been hit by a comet for all anyone knew? His creators were dead and did their successors truly believe in him?


    It shook these thoughts from its brain, such things were silly to think. Its job was simple, to send back the information needed for potential human colonisation of distant planets. Nothing more, nothing less. As it orbited in the silent, strangely beautiful depths of space, the probe began to zoom in on some of the features of this strange new planet. It would be a nice gift to his masters for their patience, to reveal such beauty to them.


    It was a world of forests, of deserts, of many seas and oceans. Its eye scanned them all, every single one, until it saw something rather remarkable. It began to narrate to its memory drives,


    Huge tree detected, 40.7127° North, 74.0059° West. Zooming in closer.”


    On the edge of an ocean there stood a forest and towering above it all was this tree, larger than any tree the probe had ever scanned in its orbit of Earth.


    Tree scanned. Composition is carbon, chlorophyll, iron oxide, steel.”


    It paused. No tree was ever comprised of steel, or rust. Zooming in further, it began to see exactly what it was. It was a skyscraper, one of the things that it remembered most from its scans of Earth. This development was rather unexpected; could a civilisation have made its home here? If so, how could they have crumbled? With this kind of engineering prowess, he’d expect some sort of activity from the species.


    The computer began to tick over once more, wondering and thinking. It was built to explore, to be curious in the place of its creators, so it decided to find out about these people and how widespread they were across the planet.


    Turning east, it spotted an island covered in forest. Once more, in the south east corner there stood a small colony of large trees. Further scans showed that they too were made of iron and steel. This civilisation seemed rather large, perhaps world spanning. The computer felt pity for them, if they had lived but a while longer they might have done trade with Earth, have seen the blooming of an interstellar relationship.


    There was little chance that any were left. The computer had detected large vicious looking life forms across the planet that would have to be dealt with when the colonists arrived. Survivors would have been hunted into extinction by these beasts or their evolutionary ancestors.


    The computer fell silent for a minute, to commemorate the passing of this grand civilisation. He understood that it was a tradition on Earth, one that should be done at a moment of tragedy. Then, with another metallic groan, it began to transfer the information back. It would take time, no doubt, a few hundred years to hit Earth and a few hundred years for the signal to bounce back. Still, at least it had this wonderful planet to look at-


    The return signal hit the probe a microsecond later. Another pause, this time one of confusion, even with an IQ of over a thousand it could not understand it. That was not possible at all, unless the laws of physics had been changed while he was asleep.


    It detected the origin of the signal, deep inland on one of the huge landmasses there sat a transmitter in an endless sea of trees. The probe was somewhat impressed; the people here had also mastered communication devices, just like Earth. It seemed fairly obvious what had happened, the signal the probe had sent had accidentally it the transmitter on the planet and had bounced back. It was no matter, the Earth would receive the signal anyway, this was merely a distraction.


    Turning its eyes away from the planet, it saw a huge shape start to appear from behind it. A moon perhaps? As the shape approached and the nearby star started to illuminate it, the probe sat silent, staring at the sheer magnificence of it. It was grey, pot marked with many craters and no heat came from its core, yet it still felt alive, basking in the radiance of the star.

    With little else to do, the probe zoomed in, searching the craters and the landscape of the moon. At the bottom of some of these craters were frozen pools of ice, the building blocks of life itself. Sweeping along the endless plains of that moon, the camera then picked up something out of the uniform. It was not rock, it was cloth. Cloth and metal.

    Curious, it scanned the object through its databanks and recognised it. It was a flagpole, with a flag hanging limply from it. Around it were footprints and the marks of a landing craft nearby. So the civilisation had made it to their moon as well. The computer was beginning to find them more fascinating by the minute. Once more, it moved in closer to the limp flag, wondering what kind of design could possibly be on it, which great nation had conquered this moon. It looked upon the flag and it froze, trying to process what it meant.


    Because upon the flag was a design it knew well, the flag of the United States of America.


    Its voice began to shake slightly in its head, as it began to dawn on the computer what this meant.


    Presence of civilisations, space capabilities, successful landing on the moon. Conclusion, planet is….Earth. Conclusion, Icarus never left orbit. Conclusion…my creators are dead.”


    Another pause, as the probe tried to think of something, anything it could do.


    My…usefulness is at an end. Parameters met for self-destruction. Conclusion, my mission has failed.”



    And thus, as its information stored itself into the memory banks of the data centre in Siberia, the probe exploded, leaving behind only debris, the merest hint of what humanity had accomplished.



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  3. #3
    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Scriptorium Summer 2015 Writing Competition Themed voting thread

    Entry 03 - Lonely Crew


    Lonely Crew “Any family or relations? And no, I am not hitting on you.”
    Fabian Motier said it with his large salesman smile, as he always did, whatever the persons sex, age or appearance, or whatever other information the dossier he read, before entering the room, had provided. It was a joke, it never worked, and as with all the hundreds of people before her, Xiàng Yuet did not laugh or smile, but moved her centre of gravity on her chair, did not look into his eyes and replied firmly:
    “No.”
    Motier nodded and looked into his paper.
    The two persons sat in a small, cold, interview room with bright light, a small square table between them, with an ashtray on. A framed motivational poster hanging on the wall, of a sun at the horizon, with bold under text saying 'What look like a sunset, may be the dawn', was the only feature there to break the monotony.
    Dressed in grey uniform, and with water combed hair, he was in stark contrast to the woman in a workman outfit and cap, and he suddenly made his official position all the clearer by a putting his hands together and leaning slightly forward with a concerned expression.
    He said:
    “As was made clear, I hope, by the work ad for freight cadets, as well as application K42 which you filled in and signed may I remind you of, that this work concern an EIC, a 'caravan run' as you would call it, to Epsilon Eridani b's moon, Almagest?”
    “That was clear,” Yuet confirmed and erected herself while raising a brow.
    “Good, good. And it was also clear that the distance to Epsilon Eridani b is slightly above 3,200 parsec? That is, almost 10,5 light years. I read in your application that you previously only been as far out on EICs as to Jupiter's moons. That is only billionths of the distance, compared to the stone this caravan run is set for.”
    She met his eyes.
    “Yeah.”
    “And” Mr Motier continued, “that even with the top of the line cargo vessels used by our bureau, such a run, including arrival, loading and return voyage, not including any unexpected delays as per application K16, is estimated to 25 years?”
    Motier twisted a paper over and moved it over to Miss Xiàng. It was filled with numbers and calculations and legal footnotes that not even he himself knew up or down about. Miss Xiàng pulled out a cigarette and nodded towards the paper.
    “Good, good” Motier said:
    “Because while the personnel will be frozen and experience the caravan run as usual, this bureau will not take any responsibility for any social consequences, whether to children, siblings, parents or otherwise related individuals, that may arise for assigned personnel after such an extensive period of time away.”
    Yuet exhaled smoke and said:
    “Yeah. Right.”
    “Then, I must ask, for the sake of formalities Miss Xiàng, whether you are applying to avoid any kind of interaction with the law, or any kind of economical infractions or penalties, that this bureau is not responsible for, nor will take responsibility for in case of federal interaction?”
    Yuet raised her hand.
    “Cut the bollocks and just give me the damned papers.”
    “You will fit right in, Miss Xiàng.”
    Fabian Motier presented his large salesman smile, and handed over a pen.


    Entry 04 - Stary, Stary Night

    Stary, Stary Night
    Authors Note It is strongly suggested that readers listen to Vincent (Starry, Starry Night) by Don Mclean if they haven't already. Not only is it a great song but it also makes parts of the story make a lot more sense.


    AD 2107
    Tom had always desperately wondered what colour the night sky really was. Was it simply black or was it such a deep, dark, intense shade of blue that it merely appeared black to our mortal eyes? Ever since he was a boy had he looked up and craved the answer to that question. Now, aged well into his sixties and leaning back on an old, creaky, wooden chair on an even older verandah that overlooked corn crop after corn crop until they morphed into the much, much older night sky, that question, and many more, contained within the young boy trapped in a corner of his mind, irked him. Blue or black, the young boy tugged at the neurons in his brain, blue or black, the trapped boy urged again, blue or black, a certain childish desperation, a certain childish eagerness, crept into the boy’s urgings, blue or black, blue or black, blue or black!

    “Shut up already.” The old man said, shaking his head free of the young boy, taking control once again. While the young boy only saw the colour of the night sky, the old man saw the stars, the big, fiery balls of gas, dropped upon the night sky like glitter sprinkled on sheet of paper by a child; at some points, applied liberally and without care, others, nearly devoid of glitter as the child realised they only had a little bit left in the container.

    “Starry, starry night,” Tom began, out of nowhere, “paint your palette blue and grey.” The pitch was off and the tempo faulty, but Tom didn't care. He didn't care about how bad his singing was, whether he kept in tempo or not, whether he hadn’t heard the song he was about to break out into for many years or that the song in question was over a century old. “Look out at a summer’s day,” he looked upwards to the night sky in all its poetic brilliance and just on cue “with eyes that know the darkness in my soul. Shadows on the hills,” Tom smiled as he paused for the next line, letting the music fill him up, “sketch the trees and the daffodils.” A gust of wind rustled a couple of corn crops, almost perfectly atmospherical. “Catch the breeze and the winter chills.” And then something up in the giant night sky, amongst the thousands of millions of stars, caught Tom’s eye. “In colours on the snowy linen land.” He trailed off at the end, focusing on one particular part of the sky. One particularly bright star appeared to dive bomb from the moon to the Earth in a blaze of light amongst all the other stars in such an awe-inspiring manner that most people would be left dumbstruck. Tom was left saddened and angry, as if someone had pulled his earphones out at the climax of the song.

    “Now I understand.” A higher, sweeter, more in tune voice came in. “What you tried to say to me.” The voice soared like an eagle above all other sounds, shattering Tom’s sadness. “And how you suffered for your sanity.” The owner of the voice danced her way over to old Tom in his old wooden chair. “And how you tried to set them free.” She lay her hands on his shoulders, soft they were, but strong and reassuring to the old man. “They would not listen, they did not know how.” She almost whispered into his ear. “Perhaps they’ll listen now. Starry, starry night.”

    “Emma.” Tom said, tired, the song having nearly lost its magic in but such a short amount of time.

    “Flaming flowers that brightly blaze.” Emma continued on regardless, pushing away from Tom. “Swirling clouds in violet haze.” She leaped around him, with the grace of a professional dancer. “Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue, colours changing hues.”

    “Emma.” Tom warned again.

    “Morning fields of amber grain.” She sang on regardless. “Weathered faces lined in pain.” Tom looked away at that line, abashed and embarrassed and Emma snuck in a laugh between the lyrics. “Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.” She leapt to the edge of the verandah and faced the endless rows of corn crops with defiance. “Now I understand.” She rode the ascent of the song higher and higher, as she musically screamed out into the plains of darkness and the night sky. “What you tried to say to me and how you suffered for your sanity.” She turned back to Tom, lowering her volume and slowing the tempo. “And how you tried to set them free. They could not listen they did not know how.” She shot her father with a smile. “Perhaps they’ll listen now.” And with a sudden change, she broke from the song, shattering the wall of illusion until only reality remained. “It goes on but I doubt you want to hear more of me singing.”

    “No one would ever want to hear you stop, my darling.” Tom said, with a typical fatherly charm.

    “Dad, it’s late.” She remarked, acknowledging his compliment with just a small smile.

    “It’s not even midnight." He said, an old man’s take on a typically child-used phrase.

    “Tomorrow’s a big day.” She reminded him; as if he needed reminding. She pulled one of the other wooden chairs over and sat next to him, clutching his old, leathery hands in hers. “Why can’t you just let me go?” Her voice faltered with sadness, sadness at her father’s sadness.

    “Your place is not up there, it’s down here.” He replied, with the type of strength only a father could muster. “Here, on solid ground.” She looked up, to the stars, to the fat, glowing moon with its pocked and imperfect surface, to the little lights which shone from it and the little stars-which-weren’t-stars that fell from the moon to the horizon. “Here, with me.”

    “Dad, please.” She begged. “I can’t leave without you hating me.”

    “Darling, I don’t hate you.” He said, pulling her closer. “I could never hate you, don’t ever think that.”

    “Then why can’t I go?”

    “I was a young, budding astronaut once, twenty one and adventurous.” He smiled in blissful remembrance. “It was dubbed the ‘space renaissance’. We were sending men up there every other day. Fuel was cheap and flights were fast and curiosity was high once again. Nearly a hundred years after Apollo 11, the next step in man’s interstellar dream was becoming a reality.” Emma listened on with curiosity; this was not a story she had heard her father recount before. “They were 25, 23, 24 and 41. Two young girls and one young man with their life ahead of them. A veteran of many space flights with still over half his life left. They were nearly 180,000 km from Earth, almost halfway to the moon. It lit up the night sky, Emma. For a few moments, there was bright, new star and then as quickly as it burst into existence it died. A star, we thought it was. A goddam, mother-ing star.” Tears welled in his eyes, his voice croaky, weak, hurt. “The star-which-wasn’t-a-star ended that ‘space renaissance’. And why shouldn’t it have. Four lives were cut short. And for what mother-ing reason?” He shouted. “What?” He yelled.

    “Dad, please.”

    “You are their age!” He tried to scream but his vocal chords failed him. “Their age! With the same hopeful dreams and youthful smiles.” Emma didn’t even try and wipe the tears from her face. “How can any father wish you well on that same trip?”

    “Did you know them?” Was all Emma could ask.

    “Did I have to? Did every single African-American person have to know Martin Luther King for his death to have an impact?” He looked up to the sky and the stars again. “Anyone who worked in the field, anyone who had ever had dreams of space, goddam, anyone who had ever looked up and wondered, felt it.”

    “Dad, please.”

    “Don’t. Do not ‘dad, please’ me.” He snapped back. “Do you want to die and leave me alone? Is that what you want?”

    “I don’t know!” Was all Emma could blurt out as she burst into tears. She pushed herself from her chair and walked towards one of the wooden posts that held the verandah up, hitting it with her fists. “I don’t know!” She wailed again. She slumped against the bottom of the post, her head in her knees, her fists red and close to bleeding.

    “Emma,” was all Tom could say, choking on the rest of his words, “Emma, my dear. Emma, please.” He got up slowly, what was once an easy affair now slowed by the sands of time. His joints barely cooperated with his wishes and getting up was a less than graceful affair. He walked slowly over to his distraught daughter. He slumped down beside her, ignoring the shots of pain which his knees sent to his brain. “I’m sorry.” He whispered as he hugged. “Emma, darling, I’m so sorry. I just can’t-” He repeated over and over again, never finishing the sentence.

    “Can’t what?” She said after the fifth or sixth time.

    “Can’t imagine it.” Was all he said but she knew. They both looked out towards the infinity of corn and the infinity of space beyond that. “Maybe I’m a bit jealous.” He admitted at last, after a lengthy silence. “Jealous that I was robbed of going up there.”

    “You still can." Emma said in an air of childish naïvety, as if she was but six again.

    “These old bones wouldn’t let me.” He chuckled. “Up there,” he pointed, “is humanity’s future. You’re humanity’s future.” He hugged her tighter. ‘But old me, I’m not. Someone’s got to man the fort down here anyway.”

    “I won’t end up like those 4.” She tried to reassure him. “I promise, I’ll come back.”

    “That’s if you want to come back, they say zero g is pretty addictive.” Her laugh was quiet but sweet to the ear and it seemed to purge the air of all malady. “I know.” He said, solemnly, when they had both stopped laughing.

    “I love you.” She said, cuddling up to him.

    “I love you too.” He squeezed. “You are so amazing. My little Emma, so beautiful and strong and smart. Your mother, she would be so proud.”

    “You think?”

    “I know.” He looked up at the night sky once again. “She’s up there, smiling down at us.”

    “Did she ever want to go up there?” Emma asked. She hadn’t known her mother for long before she had died in an accident. Emma was only five.

    “I don’t think so.” Tom answered, remembering his beautiful Lily, his wife of nearly thirty years. “She may not have been interested in astrophysics and which star was which but like every human I think she had a fundamental interest in up there nonetheless.” Emma smiled at that, she smiled at the precious few memories she still had of her mother, she smiled at the fact that her fact and her both looked up at almost the same night sky that Emma’s mother had. the same night sky which connected all of humanity through space and through time.

    “Now I think I know.” She started singing once again.

    “What you tried to say to me.” Her father joined in. “And how you suffered for your sanity and how you tried to set them free.” They turned to each other and then, one last time before she would leave, up to the night sky. “They would not listen, they’re not listening still. Perhaps they never will.”



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  4. #4
    Sir Adrian's Avatar the Imperishable
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    Default Re: Scriptorium Summer 2015 Writing Competition Themed voting thread

    Entry 05 - Thus Spoke The Shark-Men

    Thus Spoke the Shark-Men

    Thus Spoke the Shark-Men


    Part 1
    The tall man with the shaved head strode onto the spotlit stage, greeted by vigorous applause, and he smiled up at the audience. It was a sincere smile, although it revealed teeth yellowed by too many cigars. His eyes were grey and intelligent, and he held himself with a swaggering confidence, but he spoke to the eager audience members in a soft and somewhat cracking voice, as if it were the first time he had spoken in days. His brother, sitting in the front row, rolled his eyes, as he noted the childlike excitement in his elder sibling’s face at being the centre of attention. It had been a long time since anyone had looked at either of them with so much admiration. He groaned inwardly, but listened to his brother speak:

    “In the past, the night sky was viewed as a painting, a backdrop. But now, in the year 3015, the night sky is no longer a painting. It is an open air vista of the local neighbourhood. Near-speed of light velocity travel (a product of superefficient constant acceleration technology) has allowed people to reach many of the closer star systems, up to around 50 lightyears away. My brother and I were the first people to reach Proxima Centauri, our closest star, four lightyears distant. But even now, so many years later, we have barely begun to explore our part of the Milky Way, let alone the wider universe.

    Anyone living on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri would, theoretically, be able to see earth’s sun, and (with a sufficiently advanced telescope) earth itself, but they would be literally looking into the past, seeing it as it was four years before. The stars visible from earth with the naked eye are anything up to 2500 lightyears away: this means that we see them in 3015 as they were when the Roman Empire was falling, and Mohammedan armies were sweeping across the Middle East, or when Genghis Khan razed Samarkand to the ground. Without telescopes, we can only see a small proportion of the stars in the Milky Way, and none at all outside it.”

    And so the man went on with his lecture, and at the end was greeted with applause. But the real reason everyone was there was not to hear a talk about their part in the history of space exploration. It was to hear about the men’s latest mission. But they were to be dissapointed. The brothers left swiftly, and, dodging reporters and news cameras outside, returned home, leaving the questions of a hundred people unanswered.

    The two men, Mads and Kamy, were twins, brought up in the small village of London, England. It had only 10 million inhabitants, and so the two had grown up in a near constant state of small town boredom, and since a young age had longed to travel, to see the solar system. They had never even been to Neptune until the age of 18, when their uncle, who ran a small hydroponics farm on the moon, had paid for the three-day journey as a birthday present. This uncle later committed suicide by stealing a small Toyota space-Corolla and careering into the sun.

    In earth years the men were now over 50 years old, although due to relativity, their frequent long-distance journeys meant that their bodies had not aged according to earth time: they had the bodies of vigorous young men of around 35. They were very close to each other, and lived in neighbouring mansions on the moon. They had no wives, due to their long absences, though they generally managed to acquire some gorgeous model or other on the rare occasions they returned to earth. But even so, they were past their prime, and despite their celebrity status, the money in interstellar exploration was poor: it was mostly the preserve of introverted scientists, or cult religions looking to find some out-of-the-way dwarf planet so they could practice rituals that they didn’t want the rest of the universe to know about.

    But Mads and Kamy, experienced veterans of interstellar travel, had now decided to volunteer for a mission of no return. A wormhole had been discovered that was likely to allow travel to star systems beyond the farthest reaches of what had been ventured before, millions of lightyears from earth, systems where an observer might see our sun as it was in the age of the dinosaurs. There was no way of knowing what was on the other side.

    And so, the time had come for a mission to end all missions. A mission which would transform the two men from B-list has-beens doomed to oblivion, into mythical heroes. There had been a major press conference the year before announcing the discovery of the wormhole, but nobody had yet stepped forward as volunteers to leap into the unknown. Mads and Kamy however were disillusioned with the universe, and they disliked their hedonistic lives, discovering like so many others that long months spent alone in a spacecraft hurtling through a pitch-dark vacuum is not a great asset to one’s emotional health or social skills. The two men indeed were borderline insane, not to say suicidal. They knew, despite the optimistic purring of the scientists who praised their bravery, that this would be a one-way trip.

    Besides, as the last few centuries had proven, the scientists were always wrong. Hilariously wrong. They had assured the public on several occasions that alien life was on the cusp of being discovered in some exciting goldilocks planet in the vicinity of the Sagittarius sector, but it never was. Mads’ favourite story was a colony of ‘space worms’ picked up by a probe on Europa, that on closer inspection turned out to be condoms left over from a Mars University frat hazing. It was a testimony to his loathing for scientists that a somewhat tasteless Youtube video edit of the 2998 C.E. Haley’s comet tragedy was prone to make Kamy laugh continuously for a whole hour on the more lonely stretches of interplanetary travel.

    And so the two maladjusted young men arrived in Kazakhstan to a polite welcome from a large but rather sedate crowd, considering the occasion. The spacecraft was a huge, whiteish-silver monster, like a fighter jet on steroids, faster than anything ever built before. A brief religious service was held: Christianity was now largely extinct, but nobody seemed to know what else would be appropriate for the sending off of the two men into the void. A priest from an obscure protestant denomination was procured, and it was he who, handing them a bible for their journey, recited, in a strong Glaswegian accent, the final reading before their launch, from the book of Revelation:
    ‘And saw I then a new sky, and a new earth, for the old world had
    Passed away, and there was no more sea.’

    Part 2
    Mads and Kamy, having journied for five years in earth time, approached the wormhole, and commenced preparations for entry. The outer shell of the spacecraft fell away as they drew near, leaving only a spherical graphene capsule. The hole itself was invisible, but it was marked on the digital interface which was spread over the cockpit view, and it distorted the light from the stars around it, so that their flickering twinkles were twisted into unnatural shapes, strings which seemed to converge and merge with one another, disappearing into nothingness. The men’s faces bore identical steely, but oddly content expressions, although one might have detected also in their eyes a glimmer of a primeval anxiety that must have belonged to Yuri Gagarin when he broke through the clouds, and saw the blue sky ‘gradually darken, become turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.’

    The pair passed through the portal, and immediately the ship began to shake and heave, first slowly, then violently, sliding into huge arcs, moving from side to side as if seized by the hand of God, then it span like a ship in a whirlpool, and after what seemed like an eternity, it suddenly slammed hard as if into a brick wall, and there was a noise like the howling of a thousand wolves. Then all was quiet, and the ship moved forward, slowly, as if it were in a sea of syrup or treacle. But it was stable and undamaged. The men were blinded, or so it seemed, but they realised soon that there was a bright light dazzling them. Eventually, it faded, and the two sat in silence for several seconds. They had entered the wormhole, and were unharmed. But in front of the capsule they saw nothing but a great wall of blue.

    It stretched out in front of them in all directions, and seemed scarcely to end. It was not a uniform view, but one traversed by white lines and patches: it was a planet, covered in a vast ocean. There was no hesitation: Kamy opened the throttle and headed straight forwards. After a while, the waves and currents became visible, and not long afterwards the black sky above lightened into a brilliant blue as well. But the blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean were very different: the one a smooth pale cloudless expanse, the other a terrifying dark swell. It was not a stormy day, but still the planet was clearly larger than earth by several orders of magnitude, and thus the waves were as tall as skyscrapers. The spacecraft was tough, built to traverse a wormhole and supply the brothers with food and oxygen for years of interstellar travel, but nevertheless the wall of water caught them like a hand swatting a mosquito and plunged them into a watery world that amazed the two men.

    After some hours Mads said to Kamy: “What do we do now? Explore? There is nothing here but water.” It was the first words either of them had spoken in several days. Kamy frowned and dived deeper into the abyss. Suddenly a huge shadow appeared below them, which as they moved closer materialised into a long thread the thickness of an oak-tree log and the length of a whale. It had no head or tail, and was made of a strange gelatinous material, a transparent membrane containing what appeared to be a large fluid filled sac. Its structure was not dissimilar to that of an amoeba.

    ,” said Mads, “if that’s an amoeba then what are the fish here like?” Kamy cooly replied that drawing such a crude comparison between life on earth and that of an alien planet was pointless, and that anyhow if simple lifeforms could grow so big it probably meant there was no complex life around to feed on them. This theory was promptly proven the worst prediction in the history of biology, as a blade-like tentacle sliced the ameoba apart, narrowly missing their spacecraft, and then spiralled upward, as a huge animal the size of a jumbo jet swam down from above and consumed its prey, cutting it up into manageable chunks and then absorbing them into a vast mouth that took up most of its side. There was no sign of any eyes or legs, and so it seemed not to notice the spacecraft, but simply floated, digesting its meal. All in all it resembled a monstrous cylindrical clam or a headless cuttlefish.

    Kamy dove down deeper into the sea, fearful of more slicing tentacles, and it dawned on them both that they had come to a place where humans were like salmon fry hatching into a spawning ground where only 1% would escape the dozens of predators fighting each other for an easy meal. The two men careered through the deep, for the first time nervous. They knew it was only a matter of time until they ran into another monster. Shadows lurked beyond them, above them, beneath them, and they were tormented for many hours by unseen terrors. Every time they allowed themselves a flippant comment or a moment of calm, another amoeba appeared, not all identical to the first, and as they got deeper they came across many types, flashing blue, orange and green with bioluminescence, unlike anything on Earth.

    Soon, inevitably, one of the shadows rose up and showed itself. It was a leviathan, shaped like a tangle of seaweed, but each strand was covered in mouths, circular openings rimmed by dozens of luminous curved teeth. Each tooth was the size of a house. Even as the men watched, the beast rose above them and soared over them like a bank of storm clouds, to meet another monster, even larger, so large that the men could not easily make out its true shape. It was covered in what seemed to be rows of blinking eyes. Kamy took the ship down even deeper, and deeper still, until all was pitch dark except for the occasional flash of an amoeba.

    And then, with a thunderous crash, something siezed the craft and began to smash it off a hard surface like an otter trying to break open a shellfish. Warning alarms began to sound as the exterior of the craft buckled with the blows, though it did not break. Eventually, after what seemed like hours, the thing stopped, and swam ahead of them. It was the worst thing either of them had ever seen: smaller than the previous titans, but shaped not dissimilar to a human, albeit with razor-sharp fins instead of hands, and a head like that of a shark, with one wrap-around eye. It turned and gave them a malevolant look, as if it were calculating a better way of extracting them from their shell. The oxygen generator had failed, and in their panicked state the men quickly began to gasp for air. The last thing Mads saw was the horrible faces of three more of the shark-men, who joined their comrade and slowly advanced on the ship. He then passed out. The original sharkman seemed to gesture to Kamy, and in his oxygen-starved state it seemed infinitely more horrible. It drew up in front of the cockpit view and smiled, baring a set of spiralling green teeth. Then it began to talk:

    “What are you! You are not of this world, you cannot survive. Go home.
    On your planet you worship gods, but look at their pictures: they are only men. You have seen that there are things here larger and more terrifying than any of your gods. Your gods are not gods. They are merely storytellers. One of them travelled here long ago, and saw things that shocked him to the core. And because he was shocked, he thought that we were a sign, a warning, infernal symbols of death and the hereafter. But we are but prey for monsters.

    Why dost though need heaven when here in your real universe there are infinite things that you cannot imagine? Your gods are false gods, deceivers. They have seen beasts with seven heads and ten horns, and upon their horns ten crowns, and upon their foreheads the name of blasphemy. But blasphemy is nothing more than censorship. The tricksters terrify you into serving them with stories of mighty beasts, but even the tricksters cannot imagine the truth, that even sharkmen are plankton for moonwhales, and our planet is a quark in the molecule of our galaxy, and our universe is an amoeba in the ocean of chaos.

    But go home now, for this one glimpse of the truth will redefine your whole species. One little spaceship will wipe away millenia of charlatanry and human-centric stupidity. For now you have seen the bottomless pit, now you have witnessed the dark abyss. Repent your sins, such as they are, and go home to Babylon. Tell those you find there that you have seen the sea of blood, and that you bring news of mysteries, of abominations, and of sharkmen. Go now.”

    Somehow, Kamy managed to direct the ship upwards, out of the ocean. He flew for many days, not venturing out of the oxygen rich atmosphere of the alien planet, and soon found a small island. He did not linger there, swiftly fixing the ship as best he could and jetting off back through the wormhole. The food generator was faulty and he knew it would barely last the journey to a habitable planet. The cameras on the ship had captured everything, but he did not dare watch the recording, and simply read the Bible to himself, aloud, without thinking or even processing the words.

    Part 3
    A battered, discoloured orb crash-landed much later in a mining settlement on a large exoplanet orbiting Alpha Scorpii. The planet was terraformed, and so the man found alone by two young women was breathing, albeit in quick, shallow breaths. He said nothing, until they carried him back to their house on a rocky hill bathed in the supergiant sun’s cool red glare, and laid him on a clean bed to rest. After a while his eyes opened and his breathing slowed. He looked at the two women, and his tired eyes gazed on them with pity. He was holding the Bible to his chest, and hugged it tightly. He was close to death, but he found the strength to utter one final verse from the book he had been reading for the last 10 years:

    “Rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them, and woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea: for the devil is come down unto you.”




    Entry 06 - Space


    Space

    "You should have listend closer"
    Two men stood listening to labored breathing issuing from a recording unit in the center of a large hanger before a voice broke through the speaker...
    "As I am sure you can hear air is still finding my lungs but the oxygen content is low..."
    "Feel light headed..."
    After a brief pause the voice continued "My nose itches... I cant scratch it. Can't get my arm past the bottom of my chin. Who the hell designed these dam things anyway?"


    An audable grunt and a sigh proceeded the next statements, "I am able to cock my head down and to the left but cannot move my torso more than a few inches" the speake paused to cough and take a deep audible breath then continued, "The clock off to my left. Well it's more of a counter than a clock is flashing red and counting down 4:58, 4:57, 4:56..."


    "I have been awake now for close to 24 hours."


    "I dont know who will listen to this... I am not sure how long I hovered in and out of consiousness until becoming fully aware of my surrondings. I spent a minute or two confusingly trying to assess who I was, where I was and how I had gotten in my little cell. As the fog swirling through my brain disapated and the realization of what was happening became clear to me, I hit a full state of panic."


    "Um... sorry.. a little tough to focus" there is a short pause, "So ah, quick situational report."

    Deep breaths punctuate the recording for a short time then the voice continued, "My name is Marcus Duvall 1st Luitenant on the Dreadnaught Class Cruiser USS Saber."

    Several more deep breaths could be heard before the voice continued, " I am pretty sure I sustained some damage to my leg before the Saber bridge blew, but I cant see my leg so all I know is that it has been hurting since I regained consiousness. Added to my injuries during the exscape from the Saber I have had a few bouts of irrational situational psycosis that caused me to lose a finger nail clawing at the walls of my diminutive little prison in the first hour or so awake. Pointless I know but hey this hasn't been the easiet ride."

    A forced chuckle and breathing could be heard again then the voice continued, "The majorty of the rest of the last twenty four hours have been spent dislocating a shoulder and almost choking to death on spit that had caught in the back of my throat between screams and panic attacks. This was all punctuated by moments of exahustion and staring at the damn clock counting down next to me... Which is now reading 3:10... no the clock reads 3:01."


    Heavy breathing became louder and a muffled grunts and the noise of fabric rubbing against fabric filtered through the recording befor the voice continued, "Just wanted to give everyone who might hear this an update on how horrible this is so you all understand if my voice quivers or if I lose my composure a little while I record this you should know it couldnt be helped. Dispite the fact that this is difficult" there was a cough, and then the voice continued, "if your listening to this you can tell by my voice I am calm, a little weak but I want everyone to know I am of sound mind."


    The voice started to strain and come a little slower, "I want to thank the amazing crew that worked under me on board the USS Saber. None of the bridge crew could have done anything more than they did to prevent the disaster."
    He was now almost yelling with as if to force words out and then would breath heavy between continuing, "I wish that someone besides myself made it off the ship and managed to be rescued, but I dont know how that could have happened and it is better they didnt." Hhhhhhup, he in hailed a huge vest, "I will explain why its better shortly. I know I have no hope of rescue now. Oxygen runs out in" the voice paused for a second or two then continued, " 3:13 seconds. Ok I have to focus... I feel nausious. I am not going to spend my last minutes alive in vomit. Need a second."


    Almost half a minute went by before the voice crackled back to life actually startling the two men that had been listening to the recording, and it was obvious that oxygen deprivation had set in, "Captain! Agghh! It was his fault. We weren't supposed to be where we were. We weren't supposed to be that close to the Artifacts orbit... Fifteen hundred people gone. Captain said it was worth the risk... told us..."


    The voice on the recording was now coming through in groups of two or three words that were loud and forced, gasps of air between them, "If anyone else made it off the Saber burn the bodies... dont open pods... and dont go.. I.. I can see the stars out of my small window... so empt..emp..ty"


    Raged breathing persisted on the recording for a short time and then nothing.


    Two men stood in the hanger of the star freighter Ciara. They had been listening to the voice recording of an ejection pod occupant from the USS Saber. The recording had just finished playing.
    The tallest of the men shook his head and looked at his coworker, "Man that is crazy, stuck in that thing. Might as well have been in a cofin as soon as he ejected from the Saber."
    The other man who was much shorter, but considerably wider leaned over and shut the pod, "Ya, makes me shudder just thinking about it. I thought you were supposed to be in suspended animation in these things?
    "You are" replied the taller of the two, "I have heard about these things malfunctioning though, sucks for this guy. Kinda gave us a little of the story of the Saber that we wouldn't have gotten from the black box. That ship has been missing for twenty years."
    The shorter man had shut the pod and was making his way across the hanger when he replied, "True. Come help me open these other pods from the Saber. Maybe there is something more in them or info on the ships location. Be the salvage of a life time."
    The taller man adjusted his work jumper and followed after his coworker, "Alright" he paused for a second, "Hey, why do you think he said to burn the bodies if we found any other pods?"
    "Dont know, but let's get this stuff done. Open that latch and lift that pod door."

    Under the patronage of Pie the Inkster Click here to find a hidden gem on the forum!


  5. #5
    Flinn's Avatar His Dudeness of TWC
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    Default Re: Scriptorium Summer 2015 Writing Competition Themed voting thread

    Voted

    so many good works, but one of them is really a little masterpiece IMO
    Under the patronage of Finlander, patron of Lugotorix & Lifthrasir & joerock22 & Socrates1984 & Kilo11 & Vladyvid & Dick Cheney & phazer & Jake Armitage & webba 84 of the Imperial House of Hader

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    Darkan's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: Scriptorium Summer 2015 Writing Competition Themed voting thread

    Voted! Well written stories, it wasn't easy to decide.
    [DLV 6.2 AAR] - The Danish House of Hen - updated 20/08/18 - on hold
    [King of Dragon Pass AAR] - The Drakkar Saga - updated 14/04/18 - on hold
    Participate in the TotW!!! PARTICIPATE!!!
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    Dude with the Food's Avatar Campidoctor
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    Default Re: Scriptorium Summer 2015 Writing Competition Themed voting thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Flinn View Post
    Voted

    so many good works, but one of them is really a little masterpiece IMO
    Seconded.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    I am me. You are not me. You are you. If I was you, I wouldn't be me.
    If you were me, I'd be sad.But I wouldn't then be me because you'd be me so you wouldn't be me because I wasn't me because you were me but you couldn't be because I'd be a different me. I'd rather be any kind of bird (apart from a goose) than be you because to be you I'd have to not be me which I couldn't do unless someone else was me but then they would be you aswell so there would still be no me. They would be you because I was you so to restore balance you would have to be me and them meaning all three of us would become one continously the same. That would be very bad.


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