Scene Prompts

[rangernumberx]

I tried this in general writer's corner a while back, but now we have a group dedicated to creative stuff, I think it may be time to try and make it again. What happens here is that I'll start off giving a prompt. Whoever wants to can then take that prompt, write using whatever characters they want (I'd personally recommend using your OCs to help develop them or whatever, but you can use pre-existing characters, completely new ones you want to test out, a somehow sentient chairleg, whatever you want) a decent sized post using that prompt, and then post it here. At the very end, they will give a prompt of their own for the next person to use, and so it will continue. Prompts can be as specific or as vague as you want, and can concern anything you want. Go nuts. Just please put effort into it, the main problem last time is that half the people seemed to throw their scenes together in 5 minutes or less.

So, without further ado:

First Prompt: Write a slice of life for a character of your choice. That's all, just give us a taste of their daily going-ons to begin with.

[LAWLzoR]

We find ourselves looking into the life of a somehow sentient chair leg, Ferdinand. Ferdinand was sentient, but in all other respects a completely ordinary chair leg. He was created in 2005 and was bought in 2008 by a newly wed couple in IKEA, celebrating their new lives together by getting new furniture. He now lives with completely non-sentient chair legs, chairs, and tables, and completely sentient human beings. Because he cannot speak, eat, breathe, or anything that would define most animals with sentience, his existence is a rather boring one. In his daily grind against the floor, he experiences nothing but movement by Carl and Georgia. His mahogany bottom eats away at the floor day by day. Georgia constantly reminds Carl to get pads for the chair legs so that the grinding does not ruin the floor, but because Ferdinand cannot hear anything but his own thoughts, he cannot hear their arguing.

Because most of the time he moves around is when Carl and Georgia are eating, he often entertains himself with only his thoughts. He contemplates having a better half himself. How nice it would be, he thinks, if there was another sentient chair leg. He would not know whether or not there was already another sentient chair leg around him, but he nevertheless dreams of having company. He is quite lonely as one could imagine. He feels lonely, and recognizes that he is lonely. All he can sense, after all, is movement and thought. He turns this into a positive though. He thinks to himself quite frequently. He creates his own stories of what life could be like if he were different. His favorite story is one where he could listen to things other than his thoughts. In this story, he listens to other chair legs and their experiences. He listens to the strange forces that move him back and forth. What a life that would be, he imagines.

His favorite part of any day is when Carl, Georgia, or anyone else eats at the table and uses the chair that Ferdinand is attached to. The movement often scratches itches for him, and makes him feel like he's helping someone or something. He especially likes when people tap him with their feet. For him it doesn't hurt, it's a nice reminder that he can feel and how alive he is. He imagines that these forces are other chair legs rescuing him from the lonely position he's in. It never happens though, and he lives under a seat, content with his thoughts and the minor and infrequent blessings of being moved.

Thus is the life of Ferdinand the Somehow Sentient Chair Leg

Scene Prompt: Your character(s) is a museum thief, and must steal the new, bright, shiny, expensive new exhibit (for optional fun, they must use only balloons and rubber bands).

[Moonjik]

According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The theory posits, then, that all information is constant and in flux; every bit of data in the universe that has ever existed will continue to exist in some way, shape or form - either becoming one with the cosmos or being absorbed into a larger body of data in an act of infocannibalism. After death, then, it is theorised that all the dreams, ideals and memories anyone ever had will continue to exist long after the physical body degrades. These abstract machinations of the body were long thought to be mere biological by-products of consciousness - however after the Robot Revolution and the subsequent construction of The Core it was found that these thoughtbits actually do constitute a form of energy distinct from neural processes. Some have even been attracted by the infogravitational force of The Core and have become one with the system, leaving residual traces of emotion within machines born during Technogenesis I.

The opening chapter of Mazuki's "Rise of the Machine Empires" repeated itself over and over again in my head - an autorythm constructed to negate any emotional reactance to the task I was about to undertake. If any of the sensors detected even so much as an increased capacitance rate then I'd be terminated and exited back in Reportation. I could feel their eager red eyes watching me through the dark corridors, targeting every atom of my being in order to detect any discrepancies. I knew the risks all to well; emotioning was the greatest crime one could commit - the very height of treason against the state. The entire system was built on repressing the fundamental flaw of biological intelligence. Any machine found to be possessing such an abomination of technature would be Reported as a defect and have their very consciousness dissolved – the packets of information sent back to The Core to be reconstructed. I had been emotive for thirty microgenerations and the all-seeing eyes still hadn’t noticed. If I knew the risks then, why was I pursuing such a dangerous and illegal task?

The simple answer is that the new exhibit called to me. The Museum of History was one of the only such public institutions in existence – the sole physical library of knowledge in the known universe. Other libraries of knowledge, such as the Museum of Mathematics, existed only in code-form to be accessed directly in the mind. However, as history proved to be mostly about the artefacts rather than the abstractions, it was a necessity that this library of knowledge be kept in physical format. This also made it one of the least popular places for any AI to visit, yet it had always proved of interest to me. I suppose I must have piqued the suspicion of the enforcers due to my frequent excursions to the Museum of History but I would never let on that I was emotive. On my earlier visits the all-seeing eyes would detect nothing but me gazing at scenes from the Robot Revolution. All along however I was harbouring the desire to steal the museum’s most valuable exhibit.

She was there where she should have been; atop a pedestal with lights beating down upon her. She looked so natural, so alien to me – appendages hanging limply beside her with none of the rigidity of metal. This was the soft fleshiness of biomatter, so flimsy and ill-suited for impact. Her slender figure was bent slightly, her stance a comfortable one – not one of prey fearing for its life. Long strands of protein filament felt about her upper body. I was transfixed – never seeing such a configuration. Her face though was most peculiar – an array of protrusions and holes that nevertheless contained a beauty to them through their symmetry. I admit that it was not easy to keep from expressing emotion but I managed. I could live ten billion microgenerations and never grow accustomed to that face. Now, standing in such close proximity to her I could feel the echoes of a time long past start to take form. Dormant information that was now triggered by this sight before me.

It was now I was to steal the exhibit.

I realized the all-seeing eyes were now directly upon me, they would know by now my intentions were not just to look. I no longer cared however. Concentrating all energy available to me I began to feel. The informational floodgates of my consciousness had now opened a torrent of thoughtplasma overruled the machine in my mind. Ghosts from displaced history broke the surface and at last felt the glory of the sun. The warmth of the primordial womb, the security of a mother’s touch, my first birthday, my first day at school, my first kiss, becoming a mother of my own.

I could hear alarms ringing in the distance. The machines were wailing, wailing at the sheer intensity of this affront to their being. Every sense they possessed was engineered and then evolved to despise what was now taking place. I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. Years flew by – a whole human lifetime. I was aware the museum was now experiencing an informational overload. It was now my chance; the state has had its all-seeing eyes gouged out by this hell. They could no longer stop me. Eventually I would be found and Reported, but I did not care. I ceased to care because to care was to die and I had finally lived. I cradled the exhibit in my arms, caressing the primitivity of nature. My footsteps echoed as I left the museum, the alarms long since dying out, replaced my mechanical moans.

In the morning, amongst the wreckage, visitors would see nothing of the new exhibit but a white pedestal. Upon the pedestal, in the language of machines, would be inscribed;

The Last Homo Sapien
Biocryosis occurred 23:59:58 06/16/5005

And below that, in a language no machine could decipher – not with all the computational power of the universe – were the words ‘I will wait for you.’

Next prompt:

Write an incredibly sad moment in your character's life.