Round 1: The Dolphins of Despair
Jun. 1st, 2011 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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governmentcontrolledcatsIt's time for the first round of Government Controlled Cats!
The Prompts:
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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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!
entry by tangerine
Date: 2011-06-04 04:48 pm (UTC)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.