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!

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Comments

Prompt 1

[boundbooks]

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

Re: Prompt 1

[jerico_cacaw]

"One wonders what they'll come up with next," Beatty says, the diminutive tree barely taking space in his gloved hand. That these people freely choose to endanger their fellow citizen for a fancy is something he can't understand. "Search them," he orders, tossing the offensive item in the portable burner. "Every pocket, every crevice, their lungs' air even, I don't care."

The last bag is being closed, its occupant the only one still fighting, when Montag returns with a stack of statements and his face disfigured by disgust.

"Eight adults, tree of them with first-degree genetic ties," he sums up. "They knew exactly what they were doing."

Beatty shakes his head. The life long sentence these men and women are going to receive would have been, were he to be in their place, even more devastating that the capital verdict they've barely avoided by complying with the half a dozen ban.

"How many hours are we going to lose?" he asks, looking at the swarm of officers flooding the crime scene.

"Twelve each on personal decontamination for the immediate response team, thirty-six for the cleaning squad additionally to the up to seventy-two hours it'll take them to vacuum seal the place. As for the neighbors on a three block radius, eight hours on relocation, a week on quarantine and an estimate drop of one point two months on both their current and newly assigned job's efficiency. The detour will add from three to twelve minutes on the public transportation system, depending on the route. Do you really want the numbers?"

Beatty shakes his head, no. He's going to read and sign Montag's final report; he can live without knowing the total figures until then. His counter blips, twelve more minutes before his air reserves are depleted.

"Have the B team search their assigned living locations. We still don't know where the hell they are bringing the damn pocket trees from."

"You don't think it is from beyond the borders." Anymore, Montag doesn't add, something Beatty is thankful for. If it turns out his assistant was right from the start and there's a domestic vivarium, life is going to become infinitely more difficult for them all.

[boundbooks]

That image is just the right spooky touch for this story. It's a tiiiiiny secret tree. :3

[jerico_cacaw]

And the spookiest thing is that They Do Exist (and are called pet trees) :O

[boundbooks]

Holy cow, I thought that was photoshopped! I am now tempted to start carrying one around as a symbol of The Revolution. XD

[jerico_cacaw]

I actually googled "how to make your own pet tree". No useful link was found, though :(

(I think the suspicious-looking comments are indeed spam; they all have exactly 1 (one) mistake in exactly 1 (one) word. Suspicious! I don't know why they might want to do it, though. I thought the purpose of spam was to try to trick you into buying something? But there's no link ... *is mystified*)

[boundbooks]

I was quite mystified as well! The only think I could think was that perhaps they were trying to either set up some kind of key code in the titles for Google purposes (the comment titles were all a mix of random letters) or get enough comments on DW that weren't reported as spam in order to make the IP look legit or something.

*shrug*

We shall never know the truth! Although, I am amused that a community devoted to dystopias got trolled by a random, bot-like anonymous commentator with mysterious intentions. It was very fitting! :P

[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.

entry by tangerine

[(Anonymous)]

The Syracuse Seniors Gardening Club hadn't planned for this kind of retirement. But gatherings were banned, nanobots were in every flowerpot, and Molly's prize begonia had attempted to eat her cat – well, something had to be done.

They'd split into three groups. Syracuse East was led by Maria, a retired biodesigner who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of roses and a genetic recombinator; her mobile and satellite command-responsive rose mutations deserved a Gruber Prize. Alexei was an affable garbage man well-known for offering to haul away yard waste. He was also a war-veteran logistical genius who drove his truck with the same care as his long-ago recon-tank; he knew Syracuse's gardens well. Jenny discovered the gun store's AARP discount. Its employees thought that she was indulging her pensioned husband, Minh, who served twenty years in the Army Corps of Engineers. Minh's expertise was custom ammunition and high-velocity injection devices; he couldn't hit the broadside of a barn, but former competitive sharp-shooter Jenny could hit a can at two thousand yards on a foggy night. Jenny's rifle delivered more than one rose's needle-vial of mutation agent.

Syracuse West held bake sales, weeded public library gardens, and volunteered for arts galas. In truth, they weeded stock tips right out of corporate guests' mouths, usually by offering a cookie, a glass of champagne and inquiring if their little company was doing well. Under the leadership of Fatimah, a retired CPA, they laundered investment returns through Icelandic bank accounts and EU bearer bonds. Molly and her brother John clerked at Syracuse Trust Bank and co-signed the club's sparsely-funded Senior Savings checking account. In the evening, they monitored the club's two and a half million euro anonymous portfolio.

Everyone in Syracuse knew Alice Chen, the retired four-term Senator who opened charity balls, scholarship fundraisers and served on the board of every city and state-wide beautification project. Alice also led Syracuse North, an anonymous cell which worked the nation's political back-alleys. Alice's list of favors-owed could have been Washington D.C.'s most exclusive contact list; few resisted when Alice wrangled for federal flower gardening contracts to go through Syracuse. Besides, Syracuse's roses were cheap, hardy and astonishingly adaptive; they flourished in parts of the country where roses never had before.

It took almost ten years of dedication, sweat, and more than one grandchild's missed birthday party, but the nation would never forget the Night of the Roses.

Re: Prompt 1

[disadj.blogspot.com]

They were foolish to try it. I'm sure they would blame me for what happened. After all, I did it. I'm sure an red-blood NuAmexadian would blame me. But that would be naive. They have only themselves to blame.

As far as risk/reward dynamics go a 6 person book club is about as skewed as it gets. One less person and you're covered for an unexpected stranger asking for directions. Two less and if the in-laws show up you can invite them in and act like normal people.

Are those two extra club members adding that much scintillating literary insight? They were reading period literature from the mid aughts for chrissakes. This is the era that gave us Twilight and Tweeting.

Fuck.

I don't always relish my jobs but this one, well, like I said, they brought it on themselves. Someone had credits. That same someone had a grudge against not one but two of the members of this little social gathering.

The transaction was smooth and clandestine. We met one on one at my apartment. Not my HOME mind you, that's... elsewhere. I get edgy in groups of three. Four people and if I didn't plan it I'm gone.

I've read horror stories about two minivans full of laser-ball moms taking their mewling brood to practice having a fender bender and there's nothing left but smoke and some charred grip-shoes.

One tasteful Angel Ivy Ring Topiary poised artistically on a window sill with a great view and you're goners. All 7+ of you.

The gathering size thing, that's well known. People are so terrified of the rule they act on the far other extreme. They try to pretend their lives aren't completely dictated by this cruel (if brilliant) social control mechanism and try to go on about their daily lives.

Everyone knows the exceptions. Events with license status, such as certain recreational events, (see laser ball), the manufacturing, the corporate drone tanks, even a few religions cover you to, from and at the event.

Oh yeah, and of course the rally days. Any time some government big-op wants to hold a rally everyone swarms to it, enjoying the 4 hour suspension of the crowd rule. The real schmoozes only speak for about 15 minutes and for the next 3 hours and 45 minutes the flash-bars make a year's worth of profit, then go into stasis until the next rally.

Only a select few not in the government know about the damn plants though. How they got a camera in every house plant from my 89 year old mother's half dead ficus to the six-thousand credit Cactus Combo Bonsai arrangement in some rich toolbox's foyer is beyond me, but it's brilliant. Nobody ever looks for a camera in their houseplant.

I found out about them. And knowing that secret opens up a great career opportunity. 15K credits just for showing up uninvited.

The look on their faces is priceless as they look up from their reading and notice one unfamiliar face.

"Mind if I join?" I smile big for the Ponytail Palm in the living room.

The group leader opens his mouth.

He almost finishes his scream.

"Griefeeee-"

I'm already gone as the hellfire rounds from some patrolling gunship are turning the house into ashes.