Quotas: Science Fiction

It all came down to quotas in the end. Quotas and quotes. When the company president said, "Come back with your shield or on it," most people interpreted it as meaning that if you didn't hit your quotas or even exceed them, you would be fired. A few people interpreted it as meaning that if you didn't hit your quotas, you should become your quotas. Two people interpreted it as meaning that if you didn't hit your quotas, you and your family should become the quota, but thankfully people a little bit wiser in human psychology and how a trapped animal would act stepped in and warned them that that would be going a bit too far and would most certainly do terrible, terrible things to company morale and loyalty and retention rates, even among employees who had never come within a whisper of not meeting their quotas. So there he was, a good six people short of quota, and pretty damn desperate to make it. He'd never come this close to falling short before, not with only twenty-four hours left, and so--


Inspiration: Freewriting late at night to hit my word quota.
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: This idea has been done many times before, though.

Surfing: Science Fiction

When you surf the waves at Remotown, you carry a speargun, and you're part daredevil, part hero. The hero part comes with the chance that you'll be attacked by a voidfish and kill it. The damn things have destroyed all our attempts to set up a protected nursery for smaller, gentler fish. They'll even flop across the land for up to a quarter-mile, just to get to a protected nursery. So far they haven't left the water to go after us mammals, but most people make sure that their house is at least a mile away from the shore, just in case they change their mind and smell the fish we had for dinner or something. Because yes, there are still fish. River fish and lake fish, we can set up protected nurseries inland without a problem, though there are just as many sharp-toothed nasties in the bodies of water that aren't salt.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juanrfabeiro/9079492120/in/explore-2013-06-18
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Mostly just a bit of setting.