"Here's the thing." He squirmed. "You gotta be #flexible about the terms of delivery."

"We need agricultural equipment, delivered and functional in this colony's environment, before the first rain. It's very simple."

"You haven't met the Kblv."

"But it'll work?"

"Somehow."

Inspiration: flexible
Potential: High.
Notes: This could be a really weird/charming or SF horror set-up. The aliens do meet their trade obligations, but in very weird ways that can go all kinds of unexpected directions. But it will at least serve as agricultural equipment. I dunno. Seems like a fun set-up.

We have the saying, "Naked as a werewolf," for two reasons. One, people don't always have a choice in why they're #naked, so be kind to them. Two, you never know how dangerous a naked person is, so try not to get killed. #vss365 #prompt

Inspiration: #naked
Story potential: High.
Notes: Mostly I really like the voice of this one. I'm thinking this is a law enforcement person, or some kind of social worker.

The train was late, of course. It was only a few minutes, but he felt like he stood out in the crowd. Anyone looking at him would surely and immediately say, "He doesn't belong here." The longer he waited for the train, the more likely it was that someone would spot him. He was taller than most, his coloring was more fair, and his clothes were too new. He was too clean. He'd been warned about these things, but with the mission done and everything arranged, he had thought he would be fine to finally wash properly and wear something that made him feel less depressed and drab than the dark-clothed, shorter, bustling people around him. It was foolish. Everywhere on the train platform, there were signs advertising, "Watch out for time hijackers! If you see someone who does not fit, let a rail guard know!"


Inspiration: Searched "problem" on art station, found picture of man on train platform. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/DaNke
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like the idea of a society being aware and resistant to time travelers working among them, like there is actually a war between the present and at least one of the futures.

"Sir, where should we put the bodies?" the soldier asked. He was young enough that the fringes of his gills were greenish from nausea after the slaughter.

She sighed. Always the way. They were ordered here to murder a populace of creatures, sentient creatures in their own way even if they failed to pass some of the most critical tests to ensure Sentient Protection. The recruits were filled with stories of glory and battles for the good of the sentient alliance and told they were doing the right thing, the good thing, the thing that would allow more of their children to spawn. It was even true. They just weren't told that it would feel like murder.

She looked around the campsite. River, no, didn't want to contaminate it. Hard ground, no good for digging. Very little fuel to burn the bodies, and it would waste precious time for her soldiers to dig. She pointed. "Throw the bodies around the tree."

The clinging to their belief in tree gods that would walk among them and save them was one of the things that showed they weren't real sentients.


Inspiration: https://www.hcn.org/articles/scientific-research-tossing-salmon-for-science
Story potential: High
Notes: The bodies (maybe usually in graveyards) accelerate the growth of the "tree gods" from the trees that the "foolish natives" worshiped. Ooooooo .... spawning pools, have it lead to her coming to terms with some of her spawn dying, eating each other, but also deliberately feeding one--the kinder, more charitable one--against custom, to help it to grow. "There are worse deaths than those that bring something better into the world," she whispered to it. (Okay, that twist/character arc makes this story strong.)

Two souls, lost kids, pretending they were renegades riding the trains with the soldiers traveling from their homes to volunteer with the opposite side. Sometimes they glimpsed trains going back home, with soldiers traveling from over there to fight on their side. It was fine, mostly. The soldiers laughed and called the kids brave ones and shared their tinned fish or the fresh-baked bread from home that wouldn't last, anyway, so why shouldn't they all share it together. It felt like a party, a little, like a celebration even though they'd all read the newspaper reports of the deaths and they'd seen the photographs of piles of corpses. It was a war worth fighting, after all, for the most basic of reasons, and none of these soldiers would die, not one, they would all come back covered in glory. The program promised that.


Inspiration: "Renegades" song
Story potential: High potential
Notes: I ... really like the idea that this is the build-up to some kind of cyborg volunteer program, and the kids get swept in too. (Young teenagers, boy and girl, brother and sister? No love interest.)

They were the first of their model number to be self-repairing, something that they saw at first with pride and later with great relief as more and more of their batch-mates succumbed either to metal fatigue or processor overload or--if they managed to have a good contract--they signed away their lifetime for the length of time it took for the new part to expire, by which time they needed a new part anyway. They had nowhere to get it except through the licensed store, and that was an expense that only warm-bodied owners could afford. They had no owner, and they liked it that way. They got junk parts when they hadn't worked in a while. Once or twice they'd even scavenged old processor parts from

Inspiration: deviantart.com picture, "Broken," of android bending over a clearly dead woman on the street.
Potential: High.
Notes: A woman has done some kindnesses for them, so they rescue her and use parts to fix her up. Not a romance. Think of Frankenstein, medical costs, indentured nature, corporations "owning" people, maybe becoming an android is in some way better for her. Metal mask, passes/does not pass as human? Thoughts.