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.

Priya smiled at him through the tummy of his Talk-Teddy. "I recorded this message for you after schoolwork," she said. "Mother is so strict about me doing everything in its time. Maybe we can chat again on Wednesday." Across a continent, Rajesh leaned back and listened to Priya chatting, watching her animated face in his Talk-Teddy. Once the recording was done, Talk-Teddy began to talk with him. Their teddies had introduced them first, three years ago, when Rajesh won the all-school math quiz and Priya had done the same in her school. Rajesh wasn't sure how big a deal that was because his teachers refused to tell him if they graded on a curve or not, and of course, since he never saw the other students--


Inspiration: Evan's creepy Toytalk link
Story potential: High
Notes: Where the AI toys act as marriage brokers from the very earliest interactions (after matching horoscope, etc.). The full arc of an lifelong long-distance relationship. Maybe at the end she doesn't even exist, but what they created does? Whether it be digital children (one wants to be a doctor) or something else. Options include LMoE, plague bunkers, ineligibility for the reproductive pool, or something else. Needs a second plotline to be a good story. Maybe this *is* the second plotline.

You don't know me, but I know you. Your husband Dan doesn't know my friend Joe, but Joe knows him. Your neighbor Rod doesn't know my other friend Mary, but she knows him. That's the price you pay for living in a great and free society with a social net that protects you all, even if you don't know it. No unemployment, no infertility, no substance abuse problems, no legal problems. Anytime something like that happens, one of my friends sees it and one of your friends gets a fantastic job offer that they can't refuse. Huge party time! Then they leave, and you get a few letters now and again, referencing all the in-jokes you need, and eventually you just get a couple of Christmas cards and one day you realize you haven't heard from good old Jane in a long time, and wasn't it wonderful how she got that job right when she needed it most? And you try sending a letter, but it gets returned saying Unable to Forward, and maybe you try googling her or checking her social feed, but all it says is that she met a wonderful guy and changed her name and is going to spend more time with her family. Then there are a few cat pictures and some recipes and then nothing, right about the same time you stopped getting Christmas cards from her. Why do we go to all this trouble, you ask?


Inspiration: "Anonymous Face" - Quix*o*tic
Story Potential: Medium-high?
Notes: Mmm, tasty dystopia. I like this setting, but all the plot hints appear to be missing.

It was time for the faces to go out, to be seen on the streets, so they ducked into their changing rooms and put on their hero clothes and their big bright smiles, and washed away the bloodstains and the whiskey sweats. The heels lounged around and rested in their dressing rooms. Everybody knew the heels only came out at night. Now and then, they had to run an errand during daylight hours, but they were careful to wear disguises--real ones, not the easily seen through ones they wore when the thing called for a "disguise." The faces went out, smiled for the camera, kissed the babies, shook the father's hands, flirted with the mothers, and did a little civil due diligence. The heels unanimously agreed that they had it best because nobody expected them to do that sort of thing and they got paid better, too. Of course, they couldn't be seen to prosper--

Inspiration: http://franticplanet.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/the-mad-lies-of-hulk-hogan/
Story Potential: High
Notes: Could be a fun little dystopia. Also, wow is the world of professional wrestling ever insane!

"Wake up, time to die!" boomed the overhead speakers at 6 AM. We all groaned and threw pillows at the video monitors--that joke was old before we were born, and we knew it. Cultural induction meant that we got to watch all the pop culture from the twenty years before we were born and most of the current stuff, too, though we knew they censored things they thought might alter our psyches from the current youth movements. I don't know why they thought current events would have more influence on us than past ones; from our view in the bunker, it was all the same. And so we had a flapper and a Goth among us, even if the flapper could only cut her hair appropriately and roll up long fake cigarette holders out of paper, and the Goth could only manage lipstick in a really dark shade of red, and foundation for the pale-skinned, not the dead-skinned.

Inspiration: Mention of the Suicide Squad comic book (which I haven't read or heard of before--http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1401235441/boingboing), and an article about Stalin notebooks selling in Moscow (http://boingboing.net/2012/04/06/stalin-notebooks-are-hot-selle.html)
Story Potential: Medium? High?
Notes: This is a strange, weird, sideways world, and I like it.

The black moth super-worker was born on a dark day in the gene labs. They'd been trying for a super-soldier, because that was where the money was at, but what they wound up with instead was a creature that had an unerring instinct for paperwork, a satisfaction in a job well done, low sleep requirements, an adequate but not-troublemaking imagination, and a homing instinct fulfilled by routine and office nesting. They had the batch, it seemed to be useful, and so they sold them or manumitted them after a certain work contract, and they sent them out into the world. It didn't matter much to the black moths where they lived, so long as they could maintain their jobs. You would find them congregating in foreclosed homes, with four suits hanging in the closet, a hotwired toaster that they could steal electricity from the streetlamps for toasting hot dogs, a bed of old newspapers or phone books, and a bucket of water for washing and brushing teeth.


Inspiration: rainbow -> Black Moth Superrainbow -> the beginning of their video for "Born on a Day" (http://www.blackmothsuperrainbow.com/news.htm)
Story Potential: Low
Notes: A bit of setting/character, not interesting enough to me to be a story on its own.

The squarehead stopped him before he reached the gate of the factory. "State your name and business."

"I just want to see Kitty," he said quickly. "Nothing official, no business, I just want--."

"No business is not allowed."

"It's her break time in five," he insisted. "Her legally allotted break time. That's like not being in the business at all. I can see her if she's not in the business." He waited, watching the nanny circuits in the squarehead click through their paces, and hoped that would be enough to allow him in. What any roundhead would know without even having to think about it, some of the squareheads--the ones who went too far to the machine--would agree to because it made squarelogic. The same kind of squarelogic that--


Inspiration: This photograph of a piece of really awesome graffiti art.
Story Potential: Medium-high.
Notes: Not a new idea, really, but I like the setting idea. And hints of some difficulty with Kitty.

The truth hurts, the way that no lie can, and so she used truth as a weapon polished sharp and gleaming. She worked with liars and cheats, swayers and persuaders, and they all thought she was more ruthless, more vicious than they. It was true. She had a network of truthfinders, though others might call them detectives or snoops or informers. She had a database of the truth, though others might call it blackmail material. One of her long-standing dreams was of the day she would die. Oh, she didn't know the specifics of her death, nothing like that, but she knew what would happen once she was reported dead. People would laugh and cry, thinking themselves freed of the truth, and then--then her database would unfold like a flower--


Inspiration: "The Truth" - Handsome Boy Modeling School
Story Potential: Medium
Notes: A pretty conceit, to switch the blackmail viewpoint like this, but needs higher or more personal stakes, not to mention a threat from the outside.

The twist came when she thought she was about ready o give up. The sweet at the end of the race (or the threat, depending on if you were a news camera or someone running the damned race--and she meant damned in the most literal sense). Her little daughter, waving proudly to Mommy from the finish line. And god! but she hated them for taking her out, where she would see what happened when Mommy didn't win. There were a row of children at the finish line. She heard the woman behind her give a grunt of pain at the sight. And what would those children grow up with, seeing their mothers die in front of them? She knew they wouldn't shield the children's eyes: tears made such good television.

Inspiration: Um...a Halloween background and a running shoe ad.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Eh. Nothing new here.