Guidance - Devolution by Alicia

Devolution

This is our world.

This is our universe.

Humanity was a speck of existence. We… we are the giants who stand on the shoulders of quarks.

***

78^th of Stymphalian, 5608

For the first time in a long time, I once again began to question who I was. Humdrum answers pulsed through my brain: you’re a human presenting as the most prominent result.

I have a routine, as humans do. My routine is to wake up and not die. Not dying is a great daily objective, though not as easily accomplished as you might think. Every few days I pass through the tunnels of a time of truth transcended into dust. Man has left his imprint upon this cave’s walls. I see the archaic infrastructure of an anti-gravitational aeronautical transportation scrawled in the form of a blueprint. In bold letters atop the sheet in an ancient laptop’s typeface, it says BOEING 787 DREAMLINER. Its edges remain pressed behind the glass forged of a distant era, its sheets a mellow cream-white.

I travel the thundering tunnels, wandering in the darkness, wondering of the light.

I press my palm into the dry soil to my right, waiting as it glows to life with a singing enthusiasm.

"Transmitting…"

My impatience level is high, a trait non-existent in the artworks of my ancestors. These humans of old, with such delicate spirit, manoeuvred the globe to seek answers. How could they withstand the hours and days in their medieval flight technology? The 5590s edition of the arc-optic transmat twitters as it prepares for beaming. My hand is inevitably warming to the contact of hyper-carbon fibre on flesh as I wait. I envy my great grandfather, who experienced the speed and processing capacity of the mid 55^th century.

The darkness fades with a soft ping!

The guidance of our forebears has become simplified into a solitary catechism.

“STOP MOVING FORWARD. WE'VE GONE TOO FAR.”

Chasing a dream has become racing from a nightmare. The integrity of humanity has decomposed into the pitch black of loss into which I’m falling.

Crummy lamplight tumbles into existence as I flicker into my mother’s living room. Thin tinkling trembles through the teacups. The strange time-keeper in the corner chimes in a low tenor, bothering Amphisbaena from his slumber by the heater. He growls with a sneer. My mother has a priceless collection of road signs from a millennium ago. They all speak the same message of warning, hidden in undertones as they scream at drivers from their odd pixel manifestations.

I wait for my particles to cease their painful fusion – an unavoidable side effect of the old transmat, the only one we could afford in the new world.

I imagine the day that my cells simply don’t realign.

It’s a possibility.

I simply don’t understand humans anymore. 

~OvO~

Author's Note: 467 words. I actually went at least 5 minutes over. I wrote more than half of this blind before I actually remembered I had a stimulus and three words to shove in. So it barely relates, and the three words really were shoved in. 

I actually had many different thoughts on the direction of this story as I was writing, and it was actually my 3rd idea. My first was a repressed Victorian era young lady, my second was a young man leaving for the war with the story from the perspective of the mothers left behind (how typical), and this was my third. 

My story is a post-apocalyptic view on humans, which struggles to restore its previous height of enlightenment, even with the ancestors telling them not to, warning them to heed the warnings that they themselves did not. Honestly, it needs a lot of development. I wanted to end it with a view on the past, to maybe the persona's grandfather working with scientists and considering the moral implications etc. etc. But my mum called for dinner and :( food

Some paraphernalia:

• 78th of Stymphalian, 5608 - I made up a futuristic calendar. This story is set in the year 5608, the month Stymphalian, on the 78th day. 
• Stymphalian Birds are man-eating birds from Greek mythology [click the link for wiki page]. 
• Boeing 787 Dreamliner is one of Boeing's newer aeroplane models, introduced in October '11. 
• arc-optic is completely made up. I was thinking of optic fibre speeds. Originally I wrote just optic but it seemed too our-contemporary, so I added a random "arc" in front of it to seem more futuristic.
• hyper-carbon fibre - same as above. I was thinking of those transparent plastic displays we have nowadays. 
• Transmat - is a transport booth from general sci-fi, similar to a transporter in Star Trek. I really couldn't think sci-fi creative enough today. 
• Amphisbaena is a snake with two heads, also from Greek mythology. In my story it's the name of their pet (the futuristic species of which I'll leave to your imagination)

I'm upset about this story, because I wish I was bothered and had enough time to bring it up to standard. Oh well, criticise away! :P

An Instant - Colours by Selina

An Instant - Colours

He inhaled deeply the serene air coupled with delicate redolence of flowers at Sydney Harbour National Park with the corners of his mouth turned upwards, forming deep wrinkles on his coarse face. Today must be a magnificent day, with an azure sky above me! He exclaimed, although he had never seen colours before. ‘Azure’ was the colour of the sky people described to him.

His walking cane leaned next to a tree while he ran his fingers down the intricately carved grooves of his violin, with a blissful smile hanging on his face. Gently placing the violin beneath his chin, the usual familiar smell of mahogany and home surrounded him, creating relaxation for him at this foreign environment. He placed his fingers at the worn spots on the fretboard, where countless hours of fingering for notes caused the lacquer to thin, exposing the rich varnish beneath. As he drew the bow across the stings, small wisps of rosin float lazily above the instrument while mellifluent melody and dulcet rhythm of Canon in D by Pachelbel pours forth from the violin’s hollow body.

He closed his eyes. But it was not dark. This was the only instant where he could see the world full of colour that he imagined how they should be. A warm breeze swept past him. The notes around him fluttered and danced joyfully in the wind along with the music, and he would sit on the chartreuse grass, smiling from deep within his heart and charily observing his children’s facial features and expressions while they are playing. That was his precious instant in the wind.

The soothing song ended softly but his world of colours continued resonating in his head.

Author's notes:

283 words, which is very very short! This piece conveys my love towards violin despite the fact that i have no clue how to play it... Anyways, sorry for being really late! 

Please criticise and recommend more sophisticated words I could replace. 

Guidance - the stimulus!

Thanks to Alison! :)

New Rules: Three words have been chosen which must be included in the creative for the further development of our vocabulary inclusion.

The three words:

1. Truth
2. Spirit
3. Integrity

Fight - A Moral Greyscale by Jennifer

A Moral Greyscale

The accelerated lash of a trained soldier's boot on my left cheek, and the momentary yet lethal darkness sends me down onto the perilous base of the invaded trench.

The stalemate had been broken.

In the frenzy I taste the thick blood of my bitten tongue, metallic like the deafening barrage of overhead gunfire. It is only a split second before I recover and search frantically for the soldier who had attacked me. Letting go of a single life will result in the death of many more.

I spot the soldier's pale complexion over ten metres away, his skin a stark contrast against the muddy earth which lines the trench, against the dark green uniform which crowds the narrow area ... against the rest of us.

"GET HIM!" I bellow in agony as his shrinking figure recedes into our living quarters. 

Then the reluctantly anticipated fire of a machine gun, the howls and shrieks of combat mates violently ambushed. It is difficult not to picture the carnage which will await my return. Blood and revolting gore, but this time of my friends ... my friends, of whom we had sworn an eternal allegiance.

The culminating fury erupts within me as the crazed scream of a mad fighter - and my paralysis shatters. I storm through the length of the trench with a regained strength, treading on the hands and shoulders of my fallen army.

He is still there, the cold satisfaction of murder plastered over his white ghost of a face. 

He is white. Just like those who had slaughtered my village. White.

Charging towards him, I tackle him to the ground with the power of countless memories of loss. He loses his machine gun, as I did my parents. My friends. My elders. Everything was gone.

I strike his stomach like a frenzied animal, drawing on the forgotten strength of pain. He tries to strike me again, this time with the dagger attached to the side of his shoe. He misses. 

He sends his foot flying against the stone surface, dislodging the earthly remains of the trench wall which topples over us. Pushing us closer together, urging us to exact our revenge.

The silver dagger dislodges. He wails as the blade slides to within a few metres' distance, sending us into a frantic brawl. He elbows my thigh sharply, temporarily disabling me as he scampers toward the blade. His hand is merely centimetres from the blade before I clasp his neck, strangling him as I drag him along the blood-stained floor.

I reach for the blade, but the solace of cold metal in my hand does not arrive. I almost forget myself - whipping around, I force the dagger against the soldier's white neck.

Against a boy's white neck. His horror stricken eyes match chillingly, incongruously, with the snicker of murder on his mouth. He has aged too much. 

It will take only a flick of the wrist to send this boy to the hellish suffering he deserves. 

He is white. I am black. White, black, white, black, white, black ...

Author's Note: 515 words. Sorry about any parallels between this story and the first creative I wrote on this blog (Chastity - My Kind). I think I tried to refrain from specifically using the phrase 'my kind' haha ... don't remember if I succeeded :|

I was originally going to end it with something like white, black, something brown then something about how there's always a bit of each in each other (yin and yang) or some deep philosophical statement. As expected, that never happened.

I should probably add more to this author's note. On another note (do you see what I did there? I get amused by my own sense of humour), I need to sleep. I realise that I only ever post here right before I go to bed .........

edit: In case you thought I was pulling that lunacy about white, black and brown from nowhere, it's me reading too much into the colours of the cat and dog :P

Fight - 99 Luftballons by Alicia

99 Luftballons

1139 hours, Vandenberg Air Base, CA.

“Sir, are you sure?”

“Are you here to question my orders, or to follow them, Lieutenant?” Commanding Officer Phillip Savoy barked, his hands tightening into fists by his thighs.

The officer beside him assumed an expression of obedience, but not before Savoy glimpsed the contempt and fear. They were in the middle of a war here, and it was not the time for frightened officers to forget their place.

 “Launch missilery action Lima Alpha.”

The order was repeated and echoed across the room until it was transmitted into the radio communication system.

“Echo Romeo Tango, launching Lima Alpha countdown in 5...”

 Across the fiery evening sky, missiles streamed, trailing a blazing pure white tail of steam towards unsuspecting destruction.

“ETI two minutes…”

***

1840 hours, East Germany.

“Maria, let’s go home.”

Maria jumped off the small construction of torn brick and items that people simply didn’t want anymore. Her patchy red shoes scuffed against an old wooden doll that had lost the glimmer of its maker’s love. The long pleat of her skirt brushed past a heavy scorched leather suitcase weighed down by a mountain of memories and lost faith. In the glimmering heat of the sunset, they glowed with an unnatural presence as if warning them 

to forget, or was it to remember?

Her younger brother, Friedrich, ran around her in circles, his head thrown back and lips parted as he gazed upwards to the horizon, towards their design. Already, their art was far away. The fluorescing eyes of streetlamps as they made their way down the Straße hissed in anticipation of night.

More eyes began to emerge from darkened alleyways as cats slinked outwards, marking their way around the two children in silence and care. 

Fifty stars came shooting out of the sky.

Dogs could be heard in the distance, barking in paranoia about the ninety-nine red balloons the two children had set free into the air.

What stupid dogs they were. 

~OvO~

Author's Note: 330 words. I know, I cheated with the stimulus a bit. But I did this story as a roughly (highly inaccurate) historical fiction because I'm trying to write my After the Bomb story and I'm getting really stuck.

In case it wasn't apparent, the dogs are the Americans, and for some reason, cats are Germans. This is highly inaccurate. The fifty stars are the missiles, it's a bit hyperbolic but it seemed fittingly American. 

AH! The name of this and the story idea itself, is all entirely based on the song called 99 Luftballons by Nena. It's an anti-war song written sometime during the Cold War, which translates to 99 Red Balloons in English. 

• Strasse (or Straße) is German for street. 
• ETI is Estimated Time Impact, although I just made that up. 
• The times seem really weird, being 1139 and then 1840, but it's apparently a 7 hour difference between America and Germany. I just didn't bother checking specifically for California. 

An Instant - Blinding Wind by Jennifer

Blinding Wind

"The government housing? You mean that eyesore of a debilitated shack which sits clumsily on the brink of our otherwise pristine neighbourhood?

"No way, you can't be serious. Mum, I'm not coming with you. Haven't you heard the rumours? Everyone says that the girl who went missing last month was last spotted just two streets away from that row of government housing."

My mum darts me that familiar glare, the oh-you-are-such-a-snobby-twenty-first-century-first-world-country-teenager look.

"There's no proof behind that - and you know it. I expected something more reasonable from you, Mel."

I admire my nails in an attempt to hide my defeat. A painful essence of truth in her statement had struck me, but it was much easier to pretend not to care.

"Come on, we're leaving now. At least you can say you've volunteered before at your next job interview."

She flashes one of her taunting grins as I shoot her an affectionate scowl, grabbing several bottles of hand sanitiser and pepper spray into my bag behind her back.

***

Even from afar, the cacophonous multitude of languages shrouds me in confusion. What were they gossiping about? A lady hanging up her laundry takes a quick glance at me - then a few seconds later shouts something in some foreign tongue to her daughter behind her. A momentary fury swells within me as I imagine her making a racist joke - was it the colour of my skin? Or my mass of curly hair?

But as the young girl turns around she only appears two or three years my junior, albeit several centimetres taller than me. Where was her cultural dress? Everyone at school said that the area was extremely distinct because all its residents wore peculiar cultural dresses - almost like a fancy dress party, but daily.

In fact she was clad in a t-shirt and jeans, her white socks peaking peeking out through her ... Nike sneakers which I had been begging my mum for three months to buy me. I tug at my mother's hand eagerly, but she ignores me and starts searching for the other volunteers.

The young girl turns around on her sneakers and begins heading my way. Subconsciously, I roll my eyes in an exasperated sigh - I was too exhausted for a wordless exchange, facilitated only by universal hand gestures at ineffectively overcoming the language barrier. That's how all the movies showed two different cultures communicating, wasn't it?

"Hey, are you one of the volunteers? I think the others are meeting up over there."

She points to some unfamiliar location to no avail, as I recover from the shock of her perfect English. Why of course. She would attend the local high school, just like me. Maybe I had even seen her before?

As she turned around I tried to photoshop her silhouette out and drop her in the midst of our school campus ... surprisingly she would blend in well. Actually, there would be no indication whatsoever of her living in government housing. Where were the broken shoes, the greasy hair, the notable accents or stuttering of those who live here? 

Author's Note: 520 words. haha, as you can see, I have not finished. and my bedtime is nigh. i almost need to go to bed. this one is pretty colloquial, I haven't actually gotten to the main point at all sadly :( i tried to intersperse the colloquial language with some heavier matter later, to show how their two lives are interlinked and stuff. but i shall leave that to a commenter's analysis :P i might actually keep working on this creative and post it on my personal page when done :) maybe. 

well it goes on with how (in an extremely cliched manner - because I lack the creative juices to transcend this clichedness) the persona realises all the social and political stigma associated with not-as-well-off families. And something like this was meant to be one of those lines: "And it took only an instant for me to recognise the false stories, the false rumours, the false speculations. We had all been blinded by the suffocating wind of society and politics, our minds pushed to and fro into what we would like to be thinking." Then something about me being cleansed of the 'paint' and untrue (yes, trying to find another word for false --> consequence of limited vocab) perceptions which once plagued the persona, revealing her true self.

I know right. I invite anyone to challenge me in being the self-named queen of clichedness.

It probably isn't really belonging either, more CHANGE or JOURNEY. Good night! :)

change of plans, actually on to read Alicia's creative! :P

Fight - the stimulus!

Thanks to Maggie! :)

Because this stimulus is so specific, it's okay if you don't really...use it... But don't be discouraged! Give it a go, it'll test the limits of your adaptability. :) Don't forget, there are metaphorical ways of including it.