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bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
I'm in. I have work off tomorrow so I'll channel my inner lit chick and come up with something.

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bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
The Beauty of Progress (500 words)

Katerina sat in the bright lighting of her office, going over a final set of reports before she could leave for the night. She had plans to meet up with Sophie and Ashlee for a couple of martinis at some new high-profile club, but recently hanging out with them had been a slog. Ever since she consolidated her power as CEO of Fortuna Solutions, Katerina got the feeling that her best friends had become distant. She thought that maybe they didn't really appreciate everything she had done for them. Without her, they would have probably been euthanized by now. Sophie had a lazy eye and brittle hair, and Ashlee had an all around weak genestock. They were lucky they had all been such good friends in college. She decided to talk to them tonight over drinks to try and clear the stale air that was gathering.

The lights in the office flickered to Katerina's annoyance. The architects said this building, 'a monument to human progress' the board had called it, was supposed to be technologically flawless. Yet little things like this kept popping up. She pulled a titanium-alloyed flask from the desk drawer and took a long pull. If she was going to confront her friends about the jealousy that was obviously brewing deep inside of them, she would need a little something to help lead the way.

With a loud crack the brushed steel door of her office burst inwards, metal shards flying.

"Tristero," she said to the hulking man standing in the doorway. He was shirtless, his muscles bulging unnaturally. They had been colleagues, once. And lovers. He was pencil thin back then. "I see you genehacked yourself."

"It's my right as an individual, Kat. What you and Fortuna are doing is wrong. You can't quash the free market and dictate social norms like this. I know you, Kat. You can't possibly subscribe to this sort of abbhorent philosophy," he rambled, as idealistic and misguided as ever. Katerina took another swig from the flask.
"This is the free market, Tristero. This is what the consumer wanted, so we gave it to them. You always said you wanted to make the world a more beautiful place. Now it is."

"Yeah, but not like this," he stammered.

"Well. Don't do anything stupid now. Security is probably on the way," she said. He looked around, flexing nervously. She held out the flask. "One for old times' sake?"

She watched him mull it over, whatever mental gymnastics he was doing visible on his face. Finally he approached the desk, half-stumbling on his tree trunk legs, hands outstretched. He might have been reaching for the flask, or he might have been going to strangle her. Either way, his contorted features registered surprise as the bullet entered his brain. His body slumped to the ground. The carpet was ruined.

What a great start to the night, Katerina thought, putting her handgun back into her purse. Hopefully her chat with the girls would go better.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
I agree with the crits, I wanted to go more over the top but I was already over wordcount and had to trim stuff. I guess I should have just removed all the psuedo-Randian dialogue since it was so terrible.

But there is no room for regret in the Thunderdome so gently caress everyone this is a goddamn competition more serious than all that boring poo poo with the Architect in the Matrix Reloaded or whatever.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
I am in. I can't stay away, even if I wanted to.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
I am a straight able bodied Caucasian dude from the west coast.

Lionel Messi’s Righteous Left Foot (1156 words)

I enter the boarding house alone, the click-clack of my cane announcing my presence. The gauchos are huddled up around the tiny television set, watching the World Cup. “Messi, Messi!” they cheer. The national team might have scored a goal, or they might have won, I don’t know. I have never much for sports.

One of them, Raul, hears me and asks, “Quienés?” without looking in my direction.

“Luis,” I respond. He shouts something in return, telling me to go out to the fence of the estancia. I shuffle back outside. The mid-morning sun is blinding. I have to squint as I make my way around the boarding house out to the fence, dragging my twisted, withered left foot behind me.

This morning my mother dragged me out of bed, shouting that I had a job request, along with other more unpleasant things. One of these days I’m going to kick her out of the house, make her move in with the other shrill old widows at the other end of town. But a job is a job, I told myself. I roused myself from some mediocre state of slumber, which is hard to come by when your entire leg is in crippling pain most of the day, and set to work. See, I have something of a reputation in the village, a reputation I have to maintain. People come to me when they need help. When they lose something, when they suspect their lover is being unfaithful, when the neighborhood dog is found skinned in an alley. I’m pretty good at that sort of thing. I went to secondary school after all.

Ten excruciating minutes later, I reach my destination, and I see Alonso sitting on the fence, hand-rolled cigarette in his hand, looking as dashing as ever in his red poncho. My heart begins to pound.

“Hola,” I say, thrilled to both be standing still and be in the presence of such a classically beautiful man.

Hola, Luisito,” he says before blowing out a stream of silver smoke. I pull a cigarette of my own out of my satchel and lean against the fence.

“I hear something happened here last night,” I ask between drags. The nicotine feels good in my lungs. The only thing better was booze and heroin for the pain, but I quit the hard stuff a couple years back and in any case I needed a clear head for whatever was coming up ahead. In order to deduce things, and other poo poo like that.

“Yes,” he says. Alonso is a man of few words. I like that, because I can’t hear out of one of my ears. My left one, if it matters. The lesson to be earned here is that motorcycles will gently caress you up.

He hops off the fence and opens a gate, leads me into the field. There is no one else around. I start thinking about Alonso and I, alone in the field, nothing dirty at first, maybe just gazing into each other’s eyes a bit, maybe a tender caress or two. I’m a romantic at heart. This world is so knee deep in its own poo poo that sometimes you need the little things to lift you up out of it, to take your mind off of things, especially when your mind wants to keep going back to how much your leg loving hurts trying to navigate this uneven terrain where every misstep is rewarded with fire and pain. My mind was about to get into to the dirty stuff but then a rank smell fills my nostrils and takes me out of my sweet reverie. Alonso doesn’t seem bothered by it so I don’t ask questions and try to keep my breakfast in my stomach.

The foul odor makes a lot more sense a minute later. Alonso hands me a handkerchief to cover my face, and I take it graciously, machismo be damned. I am no gaucho. I come across a pile of charred flesh and blackened bone and I do what most people do, think what the gently caress and get the hell out. Except not the second part, I’m a goddamned professional, so I stand there, hold my breath, and try to figure things out.

From beneath the handkerchief I begin asking questions, and a picture begins to form. This isn’t the first time this has happened, according to Alonso, but they decided it was about time to call in a new set of eyes, someone who has seen this before. Well, I haven’t, not the burnt carcass of a bull anyway, but every case can be boiled down to a few essentials. A perpetrator, a motive, and so on. I come up with some more probing questions, hoping to get more than one word answers from Alonso. I end up disappointed.

“Why would someone do this?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Maybe they are Chilean.” He’s on to something there. If there’s one thing we Argentineans learn at a young age, it’s “gently caress the Chileans”, but that doesn’t seem to apply to this situation. Except that Chileans are loving assholes and would probably do something like this if they weren’t so goddamned lazy. I tell Alonso this. He smiles.

“What about rivals? Anyone trying to buy you out?”

“We are the oldest estancia in the area. The others don’t mess with us.”

“Teenagers?” I ask.

“No cajones.” I nod in agreement. Our local teenagers are weak, probably still nursing off their mother’s tits. None of them had the guts to burn livestock in effigy.

“Have you set a watch?”

“I have. I saw nothing.”

“What about the other gauchos? Raul? Carlos Echevarria? Ramon Salazar?”

“Nothing. I was on watch. They only watch futbol.”

“Messi scored the gamewinner,” I tell him. He shrugs and says nothing. We stand there in silence next to the carcass. Maggots have began to crawl across its surface. I feel nauseated, but still my mind turns. And then everything clicks into place.

“It was you, Alonso.”

Still he says nothing. We stand there out in the field, my twisted leg still throbbing, looking at each other. I know I am right. He knows I am right.

“Why?”

“You, Luisito. It was always you. From the moment I laid my handsome eyes on you I have imagined only this moment,” he says. Maybe not exactly like that, because there was a dead loving cow next to us and he was not a winner with words, but for a moment, a single moment, the pain dissipated and I felt whole again.

He was four paces away. I must have given myself away because he closed the gap in two before I could react, and as we held each other that single moment stretched on forever. The handkerchief fell from my hand and even though the smell of death filled my nose and maggots wriggled through decaying flesh yards away, I was happy.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
I'm in. Its been two weeks and I want to play with the cool kids again.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
I am stuck at work until like 1030 ET, so I probably won't be able to submit in time. I hang my head in shame beneath the 'Dome. I'll try though. Don't take this as me giving up.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
A View of Mt. Fuji from Beneath the Wave (769 words)

I crash into the raging waters, my body flailing against the currents until I surface, sputtering and coughing. A wave rolls on top of me and I fight to keep myself from being sucked under.

We are three days out from Yokohama, tracking a pod of dolphins we tagged last summer. Against the dark sky our ship looms over me. I think I can make out figures rushing around on the deck, but I can’t be sure. My colleague Ryosuke or one of the crew members must have seen me spill over the railing during that last swell. I pray that they did. Another wave breaks on top of me, forcing me under the surface once again.

The lungs are a delicate organ. An inverted tree of ever-thinning tubes, each tiny branch ends in a cluster of filament-thin air sacs. These alveoli are covered in a network of blood vessels, allowing oxygen to cross into our bloodstream, sustaining our meager existences. At least for one more breath.

I take that next breath, coughing out water, the salt burning my throat and stinging my eyes. I strain to see the deck of the ship through blurred vision and sheets of rain. I still cannot make out any shapes, but I think I hear a voice calling my name. I tread water and try to stay afloat.

The storm came on quick, without warning. Ryosuke and I had rushed out to secure our expensive equipment, to make sure the waterproof tarps and cases were in place. Our hired crew told us to stay put in the cabin, but I had refused. If our equipment became damaged the entire project was over, the grants and university funding utterly wasted. We would not be able to stand that shame.

To my right I see another monstrous wave hurtling towards me.

I had always been infatuated with the sea and its violent beauty. In my tiny apartment I have but one piece of art, a full color reproduction of Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. A gift from my girlfriend when I became a full faculty member, I had hung it in my sparse kitchen area. It reminds me of her, now my ex, the fire that burned with her despite the serene exterior. I had faced the brunt her fury many times, and I had survived. She was my own Great Wave, and I loved her.

I watch the wave as the crest breaks above me. My muscles grow weak fighting the current and the chop of the ocean. The wall of water buries me and I lose control of my body as I am violently jerked beneath the surface. I force my eyes open, hoping to orient myself, but everything is swirling, bubbling, frothing. I swim upwards – what I hope is upwards – my arms stretching for the surface.

My lungs burn. They ache, full of carbon dioxide, waiting for release.

My fingers find nothing but more water and I panic, not that I wasn’t panicking before but this time is worse, I thrash around in a panic, praying to the gods that I will break through, that Ryosuke or someone, anyone, will save me, will pluck me out of the water, shake me off, and give me a warm cup of tea.

My lungs burn. They fill with seawater, the brine rushing through the intricate system of tubes, filling the tiny sacs until they are about to burst. Each breath I take sends my oxygen-deprived brain into a new tailspin of horror, my body wracked with spasms, my fingers still clawing feebly for the long lost surface world, the world of the living.

I am sinking now, falling downwards into the darkness of the abyss, and my mind slows. The inferno raging in my chest has dulled. It is still there, but it feels as if it is happening to someone else’s body, that it is not me that is drowning but some perfect facsimile of me.

My vision is fading but I can make out a shape in front of me in the gloom. A person, perhaps a woman. She is pale, blurry, and beautiful, her dark hair flowing out in the current. I close my eyes. With the last of my senses I feel her embrace, her skin clammy but radiating warmth. Not heat, but warmth.

The rest of the world fades out. I can’t seem to remember who I am, what I am doing, but I no longer care.

The great wave has claimed me and I am at peace.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009

Capntastic posted:

BLOOD! I knew you had BLOOD! in you.

Blood and thunder, comrade.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
Once, in the grimy darkness of the 'dome, I pissed right into my opponent's eye and they didn't even blink.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009

Erik Shawn-Bohner posted:

I just had a deep thought guys. What if Robert Ludlum's character, instead of Jason Bourne, was named Jason White. That'd make a difference.

Whoa. My mind is blown. Gonna have to pour a drink and recover from this.

bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009

Martello posted:

I didn't enjoy reading any of Austen's stuff ether. I dunno about that privilege bullshit, I just subjectively don't like her writing.

I'm cool with Austen because she didn't write Jane Eyre which is probably one of my least favorite novels ever.

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bigmcgaffney
Apr 19, 2009
I am in.