01 Dec 2021
Today’s prompt: “Interview your oldest relative.”
“What’s your secret to living so long?” you ask your great-great-grandma.
“Fuckin’ clean living,” your great-great-grandma says, taking a drag of her third chain-smoked cigarette followed by a sip of bourbon.
“No, seriously,” you say.
“Well, actually, death has come for me many times,” she says.
“Really?”
“But he always seems to take someone else instead. I’ve been in car wrecks. Shipwrecks. I’ve had more deadly diseases than I remember the names of. But just when it seemed like I was ready to die, someone else near me would die instead.” She takes another sip of bourbon.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’d be half-dead in a hospital bed, and suddenly the nurse keels over, and the next day I’m discharged like nothing happened. It’s like death’s on my trail, but he loses my scent and gets confused and takes the first person he sees.” She takes another drag of her Kools.
A skeletal figure in a black robe appears before you. His scythe drops toward your neck, and suddenly you’re watching your great-great-grandma talking to your body as your head tilts back.
Your great-great-grandma isn’t watching either you or your body. She’s too busy lighting another cigarette with the butt of the one she just finished. “I think it might be a pheromone thing,” she mumbles.
29 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “Your last year on Earth”
Okay, I’m looking at the Wikipedia page for 2021, and maybe let’s ignore a lot of the stuff that was going on in the news because a lot of it was super depressing (I’m looking at you, January 6, but also there’s a lot of COVID deaths and a surprising number of military coups abroad). Except for the stuff that was going on in space. That was pretty cool. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission landed at Jezero Crater, bringing with it the Ingenuity helicopter, which performed the first powered flight on another planet. Plus the Juno spacecraft did a flyby of Ganymede, the first time that’s happened in 20 years. Plus NASA launched Lucy, which is going to explore the Trojan asteroids. Plus SpaceX and Blue Origin did some stuff, but maybe let’s forget about that because billionaires using their money to have a dick-measuring contest around who gets to go to space first makes me depressed again. Other nations did cool space shit too – China started its own space station, and the UAE launched the first Arabian mission to orbit Mars. Also, apparently the first transplant of both arms and shoulders happened in Lyon, France, in January, so that’s neat. Good job, science. Good job, medicine.
So let’s focus on what your year was like. You got super into TikTok. You got super into Squid Game. You discovered a new dry rub recipe you really like. That was fun! What else, what else…. Oh, you became the first casualty of the Omicron variant in your home country. Man, now I’m bummed out again.
26 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “What is the most difficult decision you’ve ever made?”
You run down the hallway pursued by a rabid, snarling hybrid bear/pterodactyl/scorpion. You glance behind you as you run. It practically takes up the whole hallway. There’s no going back.
The hallway ends in a small chamber with three doors.
One of them is labeled “Lava Pit.”
One of them is labeled “The Vacuum of Space.”
One of them is labeled “Giant Rotating Buzzsaws Galore!”
24 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “Describe an eccentric person in action”
Look, just because this particular cultist wears an oversized neon green top hat that would be the envy of Jamiroquai, puts plantains in everything he eats, and uses nunchucks as his weapon of choice, does not make him any less deadly than your classic black robe-wearing, ceremonial dagger-wielding cultist. Just because his fighting stance is more absurd than any in the stupidest action comedies you’ve ever seen, doesn’t mean you won’t be on the ground in an instant as his nunchucks first strike your hands, forcing you to drop your defensive weapon, and then your head, concussing you. Just because he’s loudly singing “Happy” by Pharrell Williams does not mean you won’t quickly expire as he cinches the nunchuck chains around your throat.
22 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “Sitting in a single location for 20 minutes, take notes focusing exclusively on the sounds you can hear.”
You know, I’ve been sitting in your mausoleum for the last 20 minutes and I can’t hear anything at all other than the hum of nearby traffic. Either you didn’t have any unfinished business, or ghosts are totally overrated.
19 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “How is hand-held technology (i.e., cell phones, iPods) affecting public social behavior and interaction in the public space? How has it impacted everyday street life and our ability to meet and deal with strangers?”
The inclusion of “iPod” in today’s prompt led me to check the copyright date on this book of writing prompts. It is ten years old. A lot has happened in ten years. I’m sure that if you were to go back in time and talk to the authors of this book about social media, they would be absolutely shocked at its role in spreading anti-vaccine propaganda during a global pandemic that has killed over 5 million people worldwide; about the way it has been abused by foreign actors to wreak havoc on our elections; about the role it plays in causing eating disorders in teens; about Facebook’s ties to sex trafficking; and about the way it has spread conspiracy theories like QAnon.
On an everyday street life level, however, it has also contributed to a lack of awareness of your surroundings. You walk down the sidewalk with your air pods in, staring at your phone, completely oblivious to everything about you.
Hand-held tech being everywhere has a third effect. Technomancers have had a harder time controlling their powers when they’re constantly surrounded by handheld devices and bluetooth waves. Rumor is a technomage once accidentally took out ten city blocks when he got too close to an AWS data center. Of course, your eyes were on your phone when a nearby technomancer was overclocking due to the exposure to too many nearby pedestrians all on their smartphones at once. You didn’t even see them juddering with technomagic power, electricity crackling down their limbs and shedding itself along the roadside as they were lifted into the air by the spike in their power. You didn’t notice as all the electromagnetic fields of all the devices around them intersected and flooded the technomancer until they could absorb no more. And you didn’t even look up from your phone as they transmuted all this technomagic energy into raw kinetic power, ripping up the nearby concrete and emitting a force blast that killed five, including you.
17 Nov 2021
Today’s prompt: “Recall a recent dialogue between you and a friend.”
“So what’s new?” you ask Jorge as the waiter brings your beer.
“I got a job,” Jorge says.
“That’s great!” you say. Jorge’s been looking for work for a while. “Is it another construction company?”
“No,” Jorge says. “I kind of changed industries.”
“Oh. What are you doing now?”
“Ugh. I really don’t want to get into it,” he says. “It’s like, literally soul-sucking.”
“I think you mean figuratively.”
“Whatever. These guys will take any warm body. Also, the uniform sucks.”
“Not figure-flattering enough for you?” you tease.
“Not at all,” he smiles. He takes a drink of his beer. “I guess the one good thing is job security.”
“Yeah?”
“Business has been booming the last few years. And it’s one of those industries that’s always going to be around.”
Three weeks later, your car gets T-boned by an SUV. Dazed, you start to check yourself for injuries. But you can’t feel anything. Your legs. Your arms. Nothing. You can’t move a muscle. “Holy shit,” you think, “am I paralyzed?” And then in your mind’s eye, you see the truck coming at you. You look at the damage done to the driver’s side of your car. “Shit,” you think. “I’m surprised I survived that.”
And then you realize that the reason you can’t move your arms and legs is that you aren’t in your body.
And then you see Jorge. In a long, black hooded cloak, and carrying a scythe. He looks like he’s cosplaying as the grim reaper.
The cloak is really not working for his body type.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s literally soul-sucking.”