Notices by Whitmad (whitmad@wandering.shop)

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Crunch.
The Measurement Problem

I was thrown sideways as we turned into the avenue of limes. Ahead, the drone stood square in the gateway, its raised pulser flashed and the car lost speed, but was still travelling fast enough to hit the drone with a massive crunch. It flew up, metallic claws flailing at the bonnet until it smacked into the windscreen and rolled off to the side. Half a ton of steel and composites and it didn't even crack the glass.

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Weekend
The Measurement Problem

"Any idea when it happened?"

"Not yet. The butler had the weekend off, left Saturday morning, arrived back this morning and found him."

"I was here Friday to talk to him about our case."

Harbin gave me a furtive sideways glance. "What were you looking into? Anything that might give us a lead?"

Maybe she was just being friendly with a bit of shop talk. Maybe.

``I've got three possibles for you.''

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Murmur
The Measurement Problem

"Hi, Lewis." She gave me a smile, stopped by the door of the rental agency next door where she used to work before it closed down over a year ago. A look of puzzlement crossed her face. She raised a hand to press on the plywood that covered the door. Her gaze ranged over the front of the building: the boards over the windows, the bare panel where the company name used to be.

"No!" She murmured. "No, no, no."

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@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Grant
The Measurement Problem

"So what is the Docklands Redevelopment Corporation trying to do?" Harris asked me.

"They want to turn the old Canary Wharf complex into a canal city. Let it flood to whatever level the sea eventually settles at and build locks to manage the tides. They're buying up the properties for pennies and getting government grants for the feasibility studies. More to come when they start construction."

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

Today's #MicroPrompt: Order
The Measurement Problem

Cecilia lent me her phone so I could order a car to take me home. In clothes crisp and warm from her dryer I was carried towards London stewing in my own thoughts. Her words brought me full circle back to Alice, to the events that had destroyed her life. Three years of bitterness towards the entangled still seethed beneath the surface. Bitterness I had never known until they took Alice from me.

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Heart
The Measurement Problem

"I'm sensitive to these things. I know you don't believe me, but..."

She was right, I didn't. The one time she told me she was psychic I'd laughed. I still felt bad about that, she's a kind soul.

Her forefinger stabbed the air in my direction. "You're sensitive too for all your black cynical heart, to what happens in other worlds."

A suspicion crept up on me. "You aren't talking about astral planes here, are you?"

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Goodbye
The Measurement Problem

"She's gone. Full Omega state. Would you mind?"

I lifted her head for him to slip off the skull cap. "What did she mean, you'll get what you want?"

"My research." He looped up the cables and packed away his instruments. "Today, she hovered on the edge, lucid but still in Omega. Think what she can tell us if we can maintain that balance." He snapped his case closed. "Goodbye, Lewis. I'll be back on Monday."

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Laundry
The Measurement Problem

A pile of half-sorted laundry lay by the washing machine. Cleaning bots sat at their charging stations, all deactivated. A heap of small metal items lay on the table: tin-cans, a worn screwdriver, broken door-spring.

"Soames must have been in the middle of sorting the recycling before he left."

``No. Those are top of the line bots, they sort it and bin it themselves. Someone tipped it out to look for something.''

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Present
The Measurement Problem

Cecilia picked up right away when I called back.

"Hi, Lewis, we've been trying to reach you."

"Yeah, I got the messages. How is she?"

"Asleep. Mid-afternoon she calmed down, it was another visitor we think. She was talking to someone anyway. We could only hear her side of the conversation..."

I took her meaning. Whoever she was talking to wasn't present in our world.

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Bubble
When The Enemy Comes

... and so the second wave prepares to depart. Twelve ships heading into the Beyond, the unexplored vastness of the galaxy outside the boundary of the hundred light year bubble of settled space. Twelve thousand young couples, drawn from all the communities and ethnic groups, all the habitats and settlements of the five suns, as set down in the peace accord.

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#microprompt: Person

The Measurement Problem

"Marek's Cafe, yesterday morning. What were you doing there?"

"It's where I go if I'm early for my shift."

"You'd arranged to meet her there."

"Meet who?"

"Where is she, Drake?"

Either I was missing something, or Big Bennie had been misinformed. "I'm Organised Crime, maybe you want Missing Persons."

I rolled my head away as the fist struck with some weight behind it. I counted my teeth with my tongue.

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

Missed out on the last few of these because I was dumb enough to fall over and break my leg last week.

So it goes.

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Paperwork
The Measurement Problem

The paperwork dragged on. The time crept past my nominal end of shift. Last thing was a trip to the armoury for a replacement firearm. The powers that be get nervous about us wandering around unarmed.

It was late when I got home. Reheated lasagne, a glass of the Linlithgow, then bed, and dreams of crumbling tower blocks screaming their agony as blue flames flecked with yellow seared the flesh from their bones.

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem @aaribaud

I'm afraid I'm far too lazy to write something specifically - just post extracts of one of my Works In Progress, though I use a very relaxed definition of "Progress" in that context.

@FrostPoem

Often with these #MicroPrompt posts I have a passage just too long for a toot. I edit it down a little, then realise the cut down version is better so I paste it back into the WIP.

It's a useful exercise.

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Penny

The Measurement Problem

"It was only stopped for a moment Meera, not long enough for..."

"You're missing the point. Why didn't the southbound car pull in to the second passing place? It was closer to the point where they'd have met."

The penny dropped. Cars talk to each other, exchanging position, speed, preferred route information, optimising the traffic flow amongst themselves. "There was already a vehicle there, no room for another."

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Signal
When The Enemy Comes

"Are your people ready? You have the weapons?" Connor said.

"They're ready. When's it going to happen. Will there be a signal?" She was looking at Weaver, but Connor answered. It was his operation.

"I can't tell you when, but you'll know when the shooting starts. There will be casualties."

Johnson shrugged. "We're all dead when the Enemy comes."

#amWriting #scifi

@aaribaud

#MicroPrompt: Breakfast
The Measurement Problem

Timeless, it might have lasted seconds or hours. The sights and the sounds and the sensations filled the dream but there was no response to them; no thought, no feeling, no comprehension, no need. My alarm plucked me from it, leaving me filled with disquiet that rested with me while I showered, dressed, ate a hasty breakfast, and ran down the stairs, pausing on my way out to place a grape under the doormat.

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Tiptoe
The Measurement Problem

At the end I saw her down the stairs to the door. She stopped in the doorway and gave me a kiss on the cheek, lingering just a second as her hand found my waist. "When I relocate you could come with me," she whispered, but at the same time she hadn't spoken: she'd reached up to the back of my neck, reached up on tiptoe to kiss me. I'd taken her hand and led her back up the stairs.

"Which memory is mine," I murmured.

#amWriting #scifi

@FrostPoem

#MicroPrompt: Bottle
The Measurement Problem

Jubilee Place was bottled up.
We dived into the station entrance and down the long staircase next to the grimy corroded escalators that hadn't moved for years. Our footfalls echoed between the concrete walls of the cavernous ticket hall as we descended into the darkness and stink, until our feet splashed into the slimy detritus brought in by the last spring tide, slippery and freezing cold--I should have worn my boots.

#amWriting #scifi