They say you can't do anything useful when you're in orbit around the Ethelred system, but I happen to disagree. I've taken up quilting. It's practical enough that there are set steps you can fix your mind to, but whimsical enough to express some of the more outlandish flights of fancy that dance through our heads on the station there. I'm not entirely sure why they keep sending us there. Sure, we're all the most staid, level-headed, dull individuals they can find--while still being intelligent enough to qualify for all the tests--but it doesn't matter. We can't do the things that they want us to do, not consistently. One of the scientists said, back when we were in training, that it was an interesting challenge to design experiments and projects that intermittent and failing input could still be valuable from. Maybe that was it. Maybe they thought it was an interesting variation to explore. Maybe they're still hoping to find someone so utterly matter-of-fact that they will function normally. Maybe it's part of an unwritten policy that *every* alien world needs to have a station above it, no matter what.


Inspiration: Oh, thinking about doing useful things while working against The Resistance.
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Setting?

He saw the chaos around him and tilted his head to the side, perceiving and creating patterns of viewing that would be most pleasing. "Move that stone two feet to the left," he ordered, and his robot creaked over and did as he requested. He stared upwards at the tree branches. They filled a loose definition of order, if he cut down one of the trees and turned it into a five-pointed star of blue sky above him. Then the swirl of birds plunged through the opening and nested in the doomed tree. Their spiral was perfectly harmonious, and he gasped at its beauty. What an interesting twist, that what was at first unharmonious should be what created the greater interest.

Inspiration: "Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature."
—Eric Hoffer (This is what happens when I randomly google 'random'.)
Potential: Low.
Notes: Eh. It's an interestingly different way of looking at creativity, but this story failed to introduce order into the randomness of freewriting. ;)