Round 5: A Tea Party for Automatons
Sep. 1st, 2011 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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governmentcontrolledcatsIt's time for the fifth round of Government Controlled Cats!
The Prompts:
Please note, the format has changed from the previous round. All rounds will have different formats.
The Format: A children's story.
The Format's Length: 1-500 words of original fiction. Please note that entries are not required to use the words from their prompt's title and summary.
A Quick Reminder of How to Enter and Entry Rules: Five comments, containing one prompt each, will be added to this prompt post. In order to submit an entry, REPLY with a comment to your selected prompt comment. Each entry must be in the specified format and be submitted as a REPLY comment to the prompt comment. Do not comment with your entry as a reply to other entries; only comment with your entry as a reply to the original prompt comment.
Participants can submit up to three entries per round to the prompt(s) of their choice. If participants are not signed into Dreamwidth, Livejournal or openID, please include a preferred name/handle at the top of the entry comment, otherwise the entry will be considered to be written by 'anonymous.'
Submissions are due by 11:59PM United States East Coast Time on Thursday, September 15th, 2011. If you're not on United States East Coast Time, you may find the World Clock to be handy. Refer to 'New York' for current United States East Coast Time.
Have fun!
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The Prompts:
Sock: Powerpoint presentations have been banned and the government controls personality quizzes.
Fear: Carpets have been banned and the government controls dustbusters.
Will: Fear has been banned and the government controls banana slugs.
Ninja: Cubicles have been banned and the government controls guinea pigs.
Tackle: File cabinets have been banned and the government controls numbers.
The Format: A children's story.
The Format's Length: 1-500 words of original fiction. Please note that entries are not required to use the words from their prompt's title and summary.
A Quick Reminder of How to Enter and Entry Rules: Five comments, containing one prompt each, will be added to this prompt post. In order to submit an entry, REPLY with a comment to your selected prompt comment. Each entry must be in the specified format and be submitted as a REPLY comment to the prompt comment. Do not comment with your entry as a reply to other entries; only comment with your entry as a reply to the original prompt comment.
Participants can submit up to three entries per round to the prompt(s) of their choice. If participants are not signed into Dreamwidth, Livejournal or openID, please include a preferred name/handle at the top of the entry comment, otherwise the entry will be considered to be written by 'anonymous.'
Submissions are due by 11:59PM United States East Coast Time on Thursday, September 15th, 2011. If you're not on United States East Coast Time, you may find the World Clock to be handy. Refer to 'New York' for current United States East Coast Time.
Have fun!
Prompt 1
Date: 2011-09-01 02:53 pm (UTC)Re: Prompt 1
Date: 2011-09-14 02:20 am (UTC)Ryan loved spending time with his Dad. The two of them got to explore lots and lots of things, because the government said that they could.
He hoped he'd be like his Dad one day, but that depended on what the government said. His Dad said he was older, they'd make him do a special quiz, and that would tell him what he was doing for the rest of his life. Nobody else could do it except the government, because otherwise people got conflicting information and were confused, and that was a Bad Thing.
And Dad didn't know if Ryan would be like he was, finding old things and making sure they were useful.
One day, he and his father was looking at very, very old computers. His father put things together carefully, because being careful was a good thing. When he was done putting one together, he'd take it apart and put things together for the next machine.
The fourth time he did that, he frowned at what he saw. Ryan leaned up to look, and his father pushed him away. "It's Dangerous, Ryan." Ryan could hear The Capitals in Dad's words which meant that something was bad.
"Whazzit?" he asked.
"It's called PowerPoint, and it's a very bad piece of software." His father put on gloves and then turned the computer off and took it apart. "It makes people do needless things."
And that was bad, too, Ryan knew, even as he looked at the computer with awe. His father put it in a different pile so it wouldn't do Bad Things to the other computers. He imagined them getting sick because of this PowerPoint thing.
But his Dad had found it and that way things would be safe for the other computers and for the world, calling the Government to tell someone about it. They arrived soon after that, taking the computer away, and one of them even patted Ryan on the head!
Dad smiled as they took it away, and the rest of the computers were all right, so they finished up. "Do we have any bad programs nowadays?" Ryan asked.
His Dad shook his head. "No, and the Government makes sure of that, don't worry, Ryan."
So Ryan didn't, and went to bed happy, knowing that he and his Dad and his mom were safe from PowerPoint.
Prompt 2
Date: 2011-09-01 02:53 pm (UTC)Prompt 3
Date: 2011-09-01 02:53 pm (UTC)Prompt 4
Date: 2011-09-01 02:53 pm (UTC)Re: Prompt 4
Date: 2011-09-13 01:18 am (UTC)Molly's mother told her to dress up nice one day. "We're going to my work," she said.
Molly wasn't sure why her mother was taking her to work, but she didn't argue. Arguing could be bad, especially if her family hoped to get a guinea pig this year.
So, Molly dressed up nicely and she went to work with her mom. Her mom sat her down on a chair and took one next to her. There wasn't any place to play, but lots and lots of people were like mom, taking stuff and putting it on a table next to them.
"Mommy?" Molly asked after a while, because watching her mother work on her screen was boring. She should be able to go out and play!
"Mommy's busy," her mother said, tapping at the screen. "Be good. If you're good, I'll give you some crayons and some paper to play with."
"Okay, mommy." She looked around. "Why is everyone out in the open?"
"Because cubicles are bad for us, the government says so," her mother said, but she didn't explain to Molly what a Cubicle was or why it was bad for everyone. Maybe it was a kind of junk food.
"Oh, okay," Molly said, and folded her hands because she was a nice girl.
After a while, someone set up a tiny table just for her and she got to color with a lot of crayons. It was nice!
And then, after a while, her mother packed things up and put things away, and she took Molly's hand. "It's time to go," she said.
Molly nodded, and soon they were away from her mother's workplace. Molly still wasn't sure why they'd gone, but maybe there was a reason.
She didn't worry. She'd figure it out someday.
entry by tangerine
Date: 2011-09-16 01:09 am (UTC)One day she went out to play in her Wheel of Liberation, when she noticed that some of the Big People in the room were gathered around a box. Then they put a person into a box, but it was a bad box, because it only had three sides. Being a good guinea pig, she ran all the way from the Wheel of Liberation to the Maze of Community Knowledge to get her friends.
“Look, look,” she cried. “The Big People are putting other Big People in a bad box!”
The little guinea pigs gathered around, and to their horror, they realized it was true. The Big People were putting other Big People into the bad box everywhere. They weren't even making a proper Maze of Community Knowledge, because the Big People couldn't go from one box to another.
“We must stop them,” cried Hippity Hoppity. “Who will help?” she asked.
All of her friends raised their hands, and that night they escaped and set the entire facility on fire. The moral of the story is that this is why one's furniture should never have only three sides, because otherwise the Guinea Pigs of Lab Eight will come and get you in the night.
Prompt 5
Date: 2011-09-01 02:54 pm (UTC)Re: Prompt 5
Date: 2011-09-02 04:02 am (UTC)Casey had never imagined that math class could be better than anything at all. But it was heaps better than Propaganda classes. In Propaganda, they had to sit and listen to a man say how good the Government was, and how they had made everybody more free by taking away the school secretary, and how nobody was being oppressed by having to do math anymore.
He didn’t understand what was so good about it. He still had to do his homework, except now he had to say how good the government was, even though his mum and dad thought it was evil. And now his mum made him do secret math classes that he wasn’t supposed to tell anybody about in case they got into trouble.
Josie had reported her parents for making her do secret math classes, and he hadn’t seen Josie or her parents since. The government man had said that her parents were now enemies of the state, and Josie had gone to a new home with better parents.
Casey had asked if he could write to Josie, and they had said no, he couldn’t. His mum and dad had said that it was because they couldn’t write the addresses on envelopes anymore. Even the government people weren’t allowed to anymore. Even the Minister for Finance had been arrested when he had tried to talk about the economy. All the new Minister for Finance would talk about was how good apples tasted. Casey didn’t like apples.
He fiddled with his ID card, and made the note in his pocket rustle. He froze, and then very carefully took his hand out of his pocket. Jason had given him a very secret note for his parents, and if the government man caught him with it, his parents and Jason’s parents would be taken away too. It had a rough map to the location of a hidden filing cabinet, which had the names and (non-approved) phone numbers of the resistance high command on it.
The government man would give him a big reward if he turned the map in. It would have lollies and even a copy of the special approved computer game in it. Only really good kids were allowed the special approved computer game. But he bet himself he wouldn’t be allowed to skip propaganda class. That was the thing he wanted most. It wasn’t worth it otherwise.
He made up his mind. Long live the revolution! Numbers ruled! Filing cabinets were the pathways to greatness! All they had to do make this country the best in the world was to ban plastic!
Re: Prompt 5
Date: 2011-09-03 11:42 am (UTC)Re: Prompt 5
Date: 2011-09-04 12:11 am (UTC)