Hmm, I think I know exactly how to take this prompt in a direction you're not expecting :)
A conspirator "We're entering system KL-49--" came the near-monotonous drone of the navigator, Vizile, as the spaceship The Pearly King reached the edges of a medium-sized solar system and started slowing down. "Rascal-3!" shouted Captain Rascal over the official nomenclature. "-91-alpha-3," said Vizile who disliked being interrupted. There were rumours around the ship that he was a cyborg, given how emotionless he often seemed to be, even though the ship's doctor had stated repeatedly that Vizile was just repressed and as human as could be expected. "You cannot rename system--" "I can, and I have," said Rascal, bouncing up and down on the throne-like command chair. "--s without following protocol," continued Vizile reproachfully, "and apart from that, this would be the third system you've tried to name Rascal-3." "Rascal-4 then!" There was an audible sigh from the navigator's helm. "If you must, Captain, then it will be Rascal-7." "Butter!" The doors to the bridge creaked open. They were supposed to whoosh as per long-standing orders in the Imperial Spacefleet Command but once again Captain Rascal had his own way of doing things and had pestered the Spacefleet engineers until they'd decided that a door making a drawn-out creak was preferable to being talked at by someone who appeared to be on amphetamines for the pleasure of it. Justyna, head of the Science Squad, came in with a slightly sour look on her face, exacerbated by her hating the creak that Rascal has insisted on. She was tall, mousy-haired and her face was slightly ratty, both in that she had a pointy chin, bright, darting eyes and a button nose, but also in that she had picked up a skin infection on their last space-station stopover and it was causing the skin around her eyes and nose to flake. "Ah, Justyna!" Rascal bounced to his feet with the energy of a toddler just woken from a nap and pointed dramatically across the bridge at her. He was short, dressed impeccably in full dress uniform for no good reason, had cropped black hair, green eyes that twinkled with incipient mischief and a smile that was both endearing and terrifying to anyone who knew him. "We've arrived in Rascal-3!" "Rascal-7," corrected Vizile who was working through the renaming protocol on his computer, wondering what reason he was going to give this time. "Exactly! So we need to know what's in here and name it!" "You can't just name thing--" started Vizile again. He was still staring at the forms on his screen so didn't see the shushing gesture Rascal made with one hand.
"Let's deploy the Butcher!" said Rascal, drowning out Vizile's monotonous complaint. "The Butcher is out of commission," said Justyna. She felt a faint tinge of guilt for lying to Rascal -- he was the captain after all -- but the Butcher scanned things to a destructive level and she was certain that the last time he'd ordered it used they'd accidentally (depending on how you looked at it) destroyed an entire continent's worth of flora. "We expected you'd want to use it again so we proactively moved our maintenance schedule up to ensure it's in good condition. Of course, we weren't expecting you to find another system so soon." "Bugger," said Rascal. The fact that his favourite positive word ("Butter!") and negative word sounded so similar caused a fair amount of confusion amongst the crew, especially those that found his accent difficult in the first place. "So what else can we scan with?" "The Butcher doesn't sca--" started Vizile, but was talked over. "The Conspirator is online," said Justyna. The Conspirator deployed spiral beams of phased electromagnetic radiation to generate interference patterns that deflected off things in their path and were conjoined back to together, hence the name. In fact the beams were helices and the conjoining was more of an analytical processing, but conspirator sounded much better than helixanalator and that seemed to matter when talking to Captain Rascal. She wasn't entirely certain that he didn't have the emotional range of the toddler whose energy he'd clearly stolen. "Butter!" Rascal's cheerfulness was back again and despite herself Justyna could feel her mood lifting in sympathy. "Let's conspire to find out what's here then!" "The Conspirator doesn't verbify like that," said Vizile. His screen was telling him that Spacefleet Command had noticed an unusual amount of renaming coming from the Pearly King and were requesting additional proof of identity. "It does now! Maximum conspiring, Justyna! Make it glow!" "I think you mean, 'make it so,'" muttered Vizile glumly. "I definitely don't!"
3 comments:
Hmm, I think I know exactly how to take this prompt in a direction you're not expecting :)
A conspirator
"We're entering system KL-49--" came the near-monotonous drone of the navigator, Vizile, as the spaceship The Pearly King reached the edges of a medium-sized solar system and started slowing down.
"Rascal-3!" shouted Captain Rascal over the official nomenclature.
"-91-alpha-3," said Vizile who disliked being interrupted. There were rumours around the ship that he was a cyborg, given how emotionless he often seemed to be, even though the ship's doctor had stated repeatedly that Vizile was just repressed and as human as could be expected. "You cannot rename system--"
"I can, and I have," said Rascal, bouncing up and down on the throne-like command chair.
"--s without following protocol," continued Vizile reproachfully, "and apart from that, this would be the third system you've tried to name Rascal-3."
"Rascal-4 then!"
There was an audible sigh from the navigator's helm. "If you must, Captain, then it will be Rascal-7."
"Butter!"
The doors to the bridge creaked open. They were supposed to whoosh as per long-standing orders in the Imperial Spacefleet Command but once again Captain Rascal had his own way of doing things and had pestered the Spacefleet engineers until they'd decided that a door making a drawn-out creak was preferable to being talked at by someone who appeared to be on amphetamines for the pleasure of it. Justyna, head of the Science Squad, came in with a slightly sour look on her face, exacerbated by her hating the creak that Rascal has insisted on. She was tall, mousy-haired and her face was slightly ratty, both in that she had a pointy chin, bright, darting eyes and a button nose, but also in that she had picked up a skin infection on their last space-station stopover and it was causing the skin around her eyes and nose to flake.
"Ah, Justyna!" Rascal bounced to his feet with the energy of a toddler just woken from a nap and pointed dramatically across the bridge at her. He was short, dressed impeccably in full dress uniform for no good reason, had cropped black hair, green eyes that twinkled with incipient mischief and a smile that was both endearing and terrifying to anyone who knew him. "We've arrived in Rascal-3!"
"Rascal-7," corrected Vizile who was working through the renaming protocol on his computer, wondering what reason he was going to give this time.
"Exactly! So we need to know what's in here and name it!"
"You can't just name thing--" started Vizile again. He was still staring at the forms on his screen so didn't see the shushing gesture Rascal made with one hand.
"Let's deploy the Butcher!" said Rascal, drowning out Vizile's monotonous complaint.
"The Butcher is out of commission," said Justyna. She felt a faint tinge of guilt for lying to Rascal -- he was the captain after all -- but the Butcher scanned things to a destructive level and she was certain that the last time he'd ordered it used they'd accidentally (depending on how you looked at it) destroyed an entire continent's worth of flora. "We expected you'd want to use it again so we proactively moved our maintenance schedule up to ensure it's in good condition. Of course, we weren't expecting you to find another system so soon."
"Bugger," said Rascal. The fact that his favourite positive word ("Butter!") and negative word sounded so similar caused a fair amount of confusion amongst the crew, especially those that found his accent difficult in the first place. "So what else can we scan with?"
"The Butcher doesn't sca--" started Vizile, but was talked over.
"The Conspirator is online," said Justyna. The Conspirator deployed spiral beams of phased electromagnetic radiation to generate interference patterns that deflected off things in their path and were conjoined back to together, hence the name. In fact the beams were helices and the conjoining was more of an analytical processing, but conspirator sounded much better than helixanalator and that seemed to matter when talking to Captain Rascal. She wasn't entirely certain that he didn't have the emotional range of the toddler whose energy he'd clearly stolen.
"Butter!" Rascal's cheerfulness was back again and despite herself Justyna could feel her mood lifting in sympathy. "Let's conspire to find out what's here then!"
"The Conspirator doesn't verbify like that," said Vizile. His screen was telling him that Spacefleet Command had noticed an unusual amount of renaming coming from the Pearly King and were requesting additional proof of identity.
"It does now! Maximum conspiring, Justyna! Make it glow!"
"I think you mean, 'make it so,'" muttered Vizile glumly.
"I definitely don't!"
Greg - well, glad the inspiration came easily!
Haha, Rascal's enthusiasm is infectious. Too bad Vizile is immune...
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