Round 1: The Dolphins of Despair

[boundbooks]

It's time for the first round of Government Controlled Cats!

The Prompts:

Griefing: Gatherings of more than six unrelated people have been banned and the government controls houseplants.

Spin: Keychains have been banned and the government controls bowling.

Survive: Crock pots have been banned and the government controls words of more than two syllables.

Swell: Glitter has been banned and the government controls platform shoes.

Snow: Brainstorms have been banned and the government controls con badges.

The Format: An excerpt from selected prompt's novel.
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 June 8th, 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!

governmentcats | RSS Feed

Comments

Re: Prompt 5

[helensaito]

The girl was no older than twelve and no younger than eight, had shockingly purple hair, and was waiting for her soldering iron to heat up. I sat down at her table, carefully, so as not to disturb anything.

My own badge still had the mandatory plastic casing on it. Our con had its own circuit board badges, even today, but if you got caught hacking one in public and a Fed happened to be around, you could be in trouble.

If you happened to be a Fed, and you didn't put a stop to it, you could be in trouble. But she hadn't done anything, hadn't even touched the soldering iron to the badge yet. The plastic casing was off, but in itself that wasn't illegal.

As for Tiny Purple-Haired Hacker, it wasn't as if she could hide behind the excuse that she didn't realize she was doing anything wrong. The anti-badge hacking laws were nearly as old as she was. Con organizers had to get official approval for their badge designs, and electronic badges like these required a token effort from the organizers to keep them from being hacked, such as plastic casing. But the fact that the anti-modding laws were a normal part of her con experience wasn't stopping her.

"What are you going to do with your badge?"

She looked up as if noticing me for the first time. I wasn't exactly unusual around here. Thirtysomething white guy, beard, black t-shirt with geek jokes. One of thousands. I never got spotted as a Fed, but the way her eyes narrowed made me wonder if she'd figured me out already.

After a moment's assessment, she held up her badge and pointed at the QR code on the embedded e-ink display.

"I'm going to make it point to my blog instead," she said, all matter-of-fact, a slight tilt to her chin when she said it. "And before you ask, it was all my idea. Nobody helped me."

Another asinine law, but this time she was following it. There were strict regulations on creative development these days, particularly in the fields of computers and electronics. Anyone not working for a corporation was supposed to work on their own. No community involvement, no brainstorming. It'd been a nice try at killing off the open source movement, but after three years of that, open source hadn't gone anywhere.

So maybe Tiny Purple-Haired Hacker was just proud of herself. Maybe she just wanted it to be her accomplishment and no one else's. She probably got asked all too often if her father helped her with her projects.

She put a micro-USB port onto the back of the badge and soldered it on, and as I watched, a whole new badge was born. When she was finished, she uploaded her image, e-ink display blinking to show a brand-new QR code.

I couldn't help but grin. There was definitely hope for the future.

Re: Prompt 5

[mrkinch]

Awwww. I love Tiny Purple-Haired Hacker.^^ But the scenario is frightening, though sadly it would be welcomed by many.

Re: Prompt 5

[cesare]

It's a spooky idea of the future, but I can't help grinning a little and picturing a Hit Girl who's hyperskilled at programming instead of fighting. :D

[boundbooks]

Your comment looks odd and spammy, and it appears that you left three similar comments, so I am erring on the side of caution and deleting it. If it's not spam, feel free to correct me.