"I'll sit here, brother, and lend you my ear." The old man looked sympathetically at him, a cooling coffee mug between them, and Randy thought, "Fuck it." The old man was probably some minister trying to convert him or save his soul, but hell, Randy needed to talk to somebody,and if the burden of it made the old man have nightmares like Randy did, well, at least he wasn't dumping that burden on somebody he knew and liked. It wasn't like he could tell his parents or his girl or even his buddies from Iraq. They used to joke that they'd seen shit that there just wasn't shit like anywhere else, and that was true, but hell, now he'd seen shit that even they didn't know or believe existed, but he'd been into that shit all alone, so he didn't even have any buddies--


Inspiration: "It's Not Easy" - Glen Ahhaitty
Story Potential: Medium
Notes: I like the character/story set-up, but there isn't an actual story here. Could be a great intro for any number of horror stories.

The error message flashed up in front of him on the elevator's wallplate. "Error. Error. Unauthorized person has accessed the motive codes. Please remain calm and attempt to contact the authorities." That error was rapidly followed by a string of others as the elevator tried to contact the police and failed, tried to deploy the safety mechanisms and failed, tried to reboot and failed. He'd been nervous about the reboot, because it would mean free fall for the time the elevator took to restart, but he only became truly worried about his safety after it failed. He had plenty of enemies, yes, but they'd always seemed the polite, businesslike kind to him, not the sort that would act directly against him. He was right, as he found out later. The elevator--

Inspiration: Getting an error message when I tried to get through to Google.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: The story might be interesting, but I do not know what the story is. This is not it.

The free pass was lying in the middle of a pool of vomit. Not even the half-digested Skunnoina flivver-rat was enough to keep her from snatching it out before a cop came along to investigate the passed out, maybe-dead tourist lying in the puddle. She tucked it under her shirt, her nostrils narrowing to try and block out the lingering vomit reek, and scurried along the corridor to the cubby that she rented from Mama Simsung for a hundred credits or a take of equal value. Once she had squirmed into the 6' x 3' x 3' cubicle that she called home, she pulled the pass out from under her shirt. She didn't--

Inspiration: The free pass program currently being offered by the library.
Story Potential: High, as far as it goes.
Notes: This is a story beginning I could slide into like sliding my feet into a pair of comfortable old shoes--that's my way of saying it's not very original and it's got a definite Golden Age sci-fi juvenile feel to it. Some days, that ain't a bad thing. And it's only a beginning--it could go pretty much anywhere from here.