Festival of the lanterns began mid-October, just as the leaves began to change colors. We all got the idea from something the Japanese had been doing for a while (even if on a different day), but we did it on a much bigger scale. We wanted to show our appreciation, and to show that we believed in what had happened. We wanted to prove that we weren't the Deniers who still ran most of the news and the government. We gathered from all corners, all religions, all races, all countries, and all ages and genders. We pooled our funds so that we could purchase the hot air balloons that would truly make this a thing, and then we scheduled hot air balloon festivals all across the world. Even the deniers couldn't (usually) refuse the permits, because--why were they so keen on us not doing this again? If they explained why, they spread the truth more than we would, having our quiet lantern festivals without any proselytizing. If you knew, if you'd seen, then you knew. We might talk about it amongst ourselves or tell our children the story, but we knew better than to try and persuade others. Maybe they honestly hadn't seen it and fund it too ridiculous to believe, or maybe they were purchased by the government and decided that the only path forward was to pretend it had never happened.


Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smb_flickr/9728530273/
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh. I mean, I'm thinking aliens, maybe fixing global climate change or something like that, but...still meh. Love hot air balloons, though.

We were all laughing last summer when the YouTube series of videos ("The Truth") started. Funny stuff, right? Government conspiracies, fluoride as a calming agent in the tap water, and so on. At first, we *could* laugh at it. Then the site went viral, videos proliferated on YouTube, the Daily Show started showing a new one every day, and suddenly we found that we had to go, we had to watch, we had to believe. We could laugh at the funny bits, but then we'd go home and buy only bottled water or whatever. You started seeing people wearing tin-foil hats on the street. It was like an earworm song that you just couldn't get out of your head until you accepted it as part of reality. By the time that the conditioning psychologists analyzed the videos and found all the high-level headhacks imbedded in them, it was too late. We were all conditioned to disbelieve them, and we were *heavily* conditioned to watch the newest videos, which were being aired on the news, on all channels, by that time.


Inspiration: http://boingboing.net/2012/05/08/hasan-minhaj-nails-the-ashton.html
Story Potential: High?
Notes: This isn't pulling me in super-much, but I guess the potential for ridiculousness makes it high potential.

It was an inside job. They knew it was an inside job. But they refused to even tell him what the "inside" was. And they *still* expected his to solve the damned thing! He stared at the pair sitting across the desk from him. They smiled blandly back at him, though their eyes were worried. "The pay will be very generous--" the tall one ventured. "I'm sure it will be. What I'm not sure of is how the hell you expect me to investigate anything when you won't even tell me what, who, or how I'm investigating anything!" They exchanged glances, and then the short one said tentatively, "We understand that you're very good." "Good, I am. A miracle-worker, not so much." Except for--

Inspiration: @cvalenti talking about secret societies and @wishiwasyou saying it was an inside job on Twitter.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Of course, as an initiate he'd only have access to the lower-level secrets. Hrm. This would require some noodling to work out.

It was the blank that worried her. It was a small thing at first, she thought, because she could remember remembering things surrounding it, but the blank grew, and that worried her more. She could, if she was clever, skirt around it by remembering herself remembering the blank, and she could write down the memories and hide them and find them later, but the original memory--was gone. IT was strange, remembering herself remembering a void. She developed all kinds of tricks to deal with it, and she had to use them faster and faster as the gap grew. Bad enough that the gap grew for herself, but she was sure it was a medical problem and that her doctor would be able to solve it, give her a medication or an operation or some cognitive therapy that would fix it all. She grew really scared only when she realized that others there had a gap, too.

Inspiration: Having a blank page to fill.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Don't we all fear forgetting? This could be strong. Some nice Steven King/John Wyndham-style of story.

The killer stabbed them, and then jumped off the tower to his death, the news reports all said. The premier extended his great sympathies to their families and offered wishes for their full recovery, those who had lived past the first few minutes. Three dead, and two in the hospital. What the news reports didn't mention was that the bodies of the dead had been covered up within minutes and whisked out of sight, so that nobody could see what happened to them after they died. What the news reports also didn't mention was that the hospital the two survivors had been taken to was a military facility, and that--

Inspiration: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/09/olympics.murder/index.html
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Nothing super-appealing, but nothing wrong with it as a story concept either.

"All I want is the truth," he whispered as he brought the rifle stock up to rest against his shoulder. He prayed that he was about to shoot an innocent man. If he fired his shot, and the Pope died, then all was well with the world. He himself, of course, would burn in hell--he could not ask forgiveness for this act, because he knew that he would not truly repent and therefore true forgiveness could not be granted him. If he shot the Pope and the Pope survived, he would know another answer, and it was one that shook him down to his core, the answer that made him wake up bolt upright in the middle of the night, breathing hard and with his sheets soaked with sweat. If he shot the Pope and the Pope survived, the president was next on his list. The president would be even more closely guarded--too many--


Inspiration: "Gimme Some Truth" - Generation X, and my survival day calendar describing how Pope John Paul II was shot in 1981.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Yeah, I think it is high potential, but this sort of conspiracy-theory, anti-establishment, paranoid thing is a style that I usually avoid writing. We'll see.

The stained glass window in the old church looked as if somebody had lobbed a grenade through it, and the explosion had blown out all the glass. There were a few scorched edges still embedded in the frame, but every single other piece of glass was gone. Constable Drury scratched his head. "Well," he said, "what did they take?" "Nothing!" said the priest. "I'd say it was vandals, but it's most peculiar...most peculiar indeed. Every single piece of glass from the windows is gone. There are no pieces of broken glass anywhere!" "Would that have been difficult?"


Inspiration: Continuing the Stained Glass Harvest theme.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Could be either a cozy mystery, or a conspiracy theory/occult thriller.