Writing Challenges
This week's Odd Prompts writing challenge at More Odds than Ends was from AC Young: A firecat in the neighbourhood was bad enough. When one of them had kittens…
So what's a firecat? Given that it's clearly a Bad Thing, it suggests that it's some kind of fire elemental, with the mischievous nature of a cat. However, that still leaves open the question of its size -- is it like a domestic cat, or something larger, like a bobcat or even a mountain lion? Are they just nuisances, or are they actively dangerous?
It felt like something in a game, but whose? Could it be one of the otome games Elaine plays? Maybe The Chef's Apprentice. Or maybe in Princess Quest, the game she uses to try to get Mary through the "daddy's little princess" stage?
Or maybe it could be something that Toni's doing in Phoenix in Cyberspace, maybe Magic Garden, since firecats and fire-kittens have that feel of whimsy.
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Firecats and Kittens
Midway through supper, Toni’s phone rang. It shouldn’t have gotten through her layers of focuses and do-not-disturbs, but there it was on the table beside her, the whole screen flashing red with Top Priority Alert.
Eyes wide with alarm, Toni answered. Formal, professional response, which meant she recognized the number as someone high up in Digital Dreams, probably in management rather than a fellow techie. And from the audio leaking around Toni's ear, not happy at all.
When she spoke again, her voice was tight. "That's not good."
More half-heard speech, impossible to make out words but enough to know that things were Not Well. The longer it went on, the more alarmed Toni's expression became.
Much as Roger wanted to use a system call to open a private channel with Toni, he knew she could not afford the distraction. Not to mention that, if the caller was as important as every sign suggested, there would be a ton of watchdog programs on the connection - and he could not afford to come to the attention of them.
As a Navy officer and an astronaut, he had plenty of experience with waiting for things to reveal themselves at their own pace. So he waited through more cryptic bits of halfalogue, all clearly showing that something had gone very badly wrong. Technical stuff about the settings for various kinds of creatures in one or another game, but not enough for him to place it anywhere in his limited knowledge of Toni's employer's systems.
"I'll be right on it." Toni hung up and the phone vanished as quickly as it had appeared upon the dinner table.
"Rog, we've got a serious problem. Some hacker got into Magic Garden and has reset the parameters on the firecats. They're supposed to be elementals, which means that they're each unique and don't reproduce, but they're now acting like monsters. One of them's just produced a whole nest of kittens, and we don't know how quickly they'll develop their abilities - or control over them."
"No, that's not good." Roger considered whether Toni would be able to work from here, or if Digital Dreams would not let that information be piped into a simulation of a computer inside a storyscape. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Toni considered, then shook her head. "Right now it's probably just as well if you lay low. We're going to have all the security systems dialed up to eleventy while we're trying to track down this hacker, so we can't really afford to have you showing up on their watchdog software. If we're really careful, I might be able to send you stuff and make it look like I'm just running some kind of back-end processor, but even that has a certain element of risk to it."
"Understood." Roger didn't like the situation, but he understood the precarious nature of his situation.
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I would've liked to take it further, to see some actual problem-solving, but too much of this week has gone to getting ready for InConJunction. However, we'll see where I take it when I finally start putting Phoenix in Cyberspace together to make a complete work of fiction.
I also got a story done for this week's Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Writing Challenge. My effort is from the Grissom timeline, as Lisa Fox contemplates her role in the Sharp Resistance.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
There will be a new word and picture prompt up at Indies Unlimited on Saturday. Until then, the polls will open tomorrow for voting on the Readers' Choice Award, and will close at 5PM on Thursday.
In the meantime, keep writing.
So what's a firecat? Given that it's clearly a Bad Thing, it suggests that it's some kind of fire elemental, with the mischievous nature of a cat. However, that still leaves open the question of its size -- is it like a domestic cat, or something larger, like a bobcat or even a mountain lion? Are they just nuisances, or are they actively dangerous?
It felt like something in a game, but whose? Could it be one of the otome games Elaine plays? Maybe The Chef's Apprentice. Or maybe in Princess Quest, the game she uses to try to get Mary through the "daddy's little princess" stage?
Or maybe it could be something that Toni's doing in Phoenix in Cyberspace, maybe Magic Garden, since firecats and fire-kittens have that feel of whimsy.
===========================================================================================
Firecats and Kittens
Midway through supper, Toni’s phone rang. It shouldn’t have gotten through her layers of focuses and do-not-disturbs, but there it was on the table beside her, the whole screen flashing red with Top Priority Alert.
Eyes wide with alarm, Toni answered. Formal, professional response, which meant she recognized the number as someone high up in Digital Dreams, probably in management rather than a fellow techie. And from the audio leaking around Toni's ear, not happy at all.
When she spoke again, her voice was tight. "That's not good."
More half-heard speech, impossible to make out words but enough to know that things were Not Well. The longer it went on, the more alarmed Toni's expression became.
Much as Roger wanted to use a system call to open a private channel with Toni, he knew she could not afford the distraction. Not to mention that, if the caller was as important as every sign suggested, there would be a ton of watchdog programs on the connection - and he could not afford to come to the attention of them.
As a Navy officer and an astronaut, he had plenty of experience with waiting for things to reveal themselves at their own pace. So he waited through more cryptic bits of halfalogue, all clearly showing that something had gone very badly wrong. Technical stuff about the settings for various kinds of creatures in one or another game, but not enough for him to place it anywhere in his limited knowledge of Toni's employer's systems.
"I'll be right on it." Toni hung up and the phone vanished as quickly as it had appeared upon the dinner table.
"Rog, we've got a serious problem. Some hacker got into Magic Garden and has reset the parameters on the firecats. They're supposed to be elementals, which means that they're each unique and don't reproduce, but they're now acting like monsters. One of them's just produced a whole nest of kittens, and we don't know how quickly they'll develop their abilities - or control over them."
"No, that's not good." Roger considered whether Toni would be able to work from here, or if Digital Dreams would not let that information be piped into a simulation of a computer inside a storyscape. "Is there anything I can do to help?"
Toni considered, then shook her head. "Right now it's probably just as well if you lay low. We're going to have all the security systems dialed up to eleventy while we're trying to track down this hacker, so we can't really afford to have you showing up on their watchdog software. If we're really careful, I might be able to send you stuff and make it look like I'm just running some kind of back-end processor, but even that has a certain element of risk to it."
"Understood." Roger didn't like the situation, but he understood the precarious nature of his situation.
==========================================================================================
I would've liked to take it further, to see some actual problem-solving, but too much of this week has gone to getting ready for InConJunction. However, we'll see where I take it when I finally start putting Phoenix in Cyberspace together to make a complete work of fiction.
I also got a story done for this week's Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Writing Challenge. My effort is from the Grissom timeline, as Lisa Fox contemplates her role in the Sharp Resistance.
As always, if you'd like to participate in Odd Prompts, just send your prompt in to oddprompts@gmail.com to be assigned a prompt of your own. Or if you're not up to the commitment of trading prompts, you can always check out the spare prompts and see if any of them tickle your creativity.
There will be a new word and picture prompt up at Indies Unlimited on Saturday. Until then, the polls will open tomorrow for voting on the Readers' Choice Award, and will close at 5PM on Thursday.
In the meantime, keep writing.