Round 5: A Tea Party for Automatons

[boundbooks]

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

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.

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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Comments

Re: Prompt 1

[estirose]

Ryan and the Bad Software

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.