"I love you," the bitty love bot whispered from the pillow on the other side of the bed, where her boyfriend used to sleep before he said it wasn't working and they should see other people, by which he apparently meant they should stop seeing each other at all and as far as other people, she didn't know, but she'd seen him post selfies with cute girls. A different girl each time.

"I love you," the bitty love bot whispered as it sat on the corner of the kitchen counter, while she microwaved a frozen dinner for one, a dinner that had the smart portion size but only half the flavor of the luxurious home-cooked, butter-heavy meals she used to cook for the two of them.

"I love you," the bitty love bot whispered to the picture of her, the picture that used to be a picture of them before he left her and she tore his half of the picture up. She was at the gym, and she did not take the bot with her there.

"I love you," the bitty love bot whispered, its voice blending with the shower as she sat in the tub and sobbed with the shower beating over her bowed back.


Inspiration: https://marywinkler.deviantart.com/art/Bitty-Love-Bot-542060528
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: I think I want this to go in a romantic,happy direction. Maybe she throws it out, it finds another boy, and somehow the two get together??

Your mama warned you that I wasn't a good idea, that I was nothing but trouble for any girl who go close to me. I'm telling you she's right, but there's a piece of heaven within my chunk of hell. You'll never know real heaven unless you try mine. That's the vibe that he sat there putting out as long as he could, sitting in the college coffee shop, wearing a leather jacket covered in patches for bands long since dead and gone and activist groups busted by the police for activities that went beyond the permissible. His hair was cut short to his head except on one side, where he'd grown in long enough to brush his cheekbones and then put in dreads. The better to show off the line of earrings that marched down the ear on the opposite side. If a college girl glanced his way, she'd see the tattoos peeking out at the cuffs of his shirt and out of his collar, but she'd also see that he was reading a philosophy book. Hook em in both ways, that was the plan. He knew it wasn't the done thing to call it putting out a vibe these days--that would have been the right term about forty years earlier--but it was what it was. That era had been really dumb in some ways, but it had gotten some things rights. Vibes was one of those things. And sure enough, he saw a demurely dressed young woman with only a single piercing in her ears and her hair combed smooth and shoulder-length giving him the look. She read his vibe, and she wanted what her mama had always told her to avoid. It wasn't like he was lying, either, though it surely was a pity that no woman yet had managed to get through the hell to find the heaven.


Inspiration: "Your Mama Warned You" - The Eels
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh. Seems pretty standard urban fantasy.

Only a spouse or close relation may represent you in the court of law," the magisterial processor said, peering seriously over her blindfold at Rand. "You have got to be kidding me." "No. It is designed so that persons with bonds and family ties, who are naturally more socially-guided, have a greater chance of avoiding the law." "But all my family is across the galaxy! It would take them years to get here, and you have scheduled my trial to begin in two weeks!" "Then I suggest you visit the love district." "I'm about to get locked up for the rest of my natural life or until some relative travels here and launches an appeal, which guarantees nothing, and you're telling me to go find a hooker?!" "No. That would be the sex district. I'm telling you to go find someone to love you, to marry them, and to have them represent you." "Do you even hear what you're saying??"


Inspiration: A comedy sketch about it being improbable that Dr. Doolittle is represented by his wife as a lawyer.
Story potential: Medium-high
Notes: Could be fun, in that odd little romance-science fiction niche. Would need a second plot about some threat to the female who he persuades to marry him.

The scent of honey on her skin lured and repelled him at the same time. He knew what honey meant: sweetness in the death and starvation of other living creatures. He knew about women like him, who went to the gray market and sold their goods in places not regulated by common decency. He knew, even, where this specific woman lived, roughly, since he'd seen her in a few different gray markets and could triangulate well enough. And he knew that she said her honey was local and good for the asthma and allergies that half the people he knew had. A relic of the old, wasteful times, and the chemical residues that remained.


Inspiration: Burt's Bees hand lotion
Story potential: Low.
Notes: More of a setting or a character, I think. And then he goes to her house and finds she has an uncanny empathy with the animals--bees and a goat--and the bees voluntarily leave a row with larva, and etc. This story is also confused about whether it's fantasy or magic realism or sociological science fiction or what.

She always said our relationship wouldn't work because our atomic numbers were too far apart. She was light and quick, up near the top of the scale, and I was heavy and slow, down near the bottom. She flitted around the lab with a smile for everyone (even myself, when I was a new hire and entirely unsure of my way around the science station). She went to every single organized social event--once, after we were together long enough that people assumed it was more than the on-again/off-again temporary linkings formed and dissolved so rapidly in such a small environment, she didn't show up for a shuffleboard night and I had people knocking on my door all evening long checking to see if she was alright. She wasn't. She had received news of her grandmother's death, far away and beyond reach, and it had temporarily jostled her out of her orbit.


Inspiration: Googled "A is for--" and skipped to "Atomic Number."
Story potential: Medium-high potential
Notes: Not a bad idea for a series of stories--or at least a series of writing prompts! Or maybe a story structure that links all the alphabet together, if I wanted to do some stunt writing. This is maybe one of those best-with-unspecified-gender-protag stories, though in my mind it's two females. But erk--a physics and chemistry refresher course would be needed.

Rabbit was in love. His machine-gun turrets rotated involuntarily when he saw her, and his sights telescoped in to focus on the lovely fur that covered her breasts. She had the latest stealth modifications, he saw, so she was the latest line of scouts from CoreHead. His leg thumped involuntarily against the rack of the seat he was cuffed into, waiting for the next battle release. She was free--and that said something, too. Of course, she wasn't the heavily armed monstrosity that he was, the one that could take out a city on his own. She was a Bunny, not a Thumper. He'd never understood until this moment why the stealthers all were made female, but he figured that if his protocols hadn't stopped him, he would have rolled over without even trying a good rabbit-kick, if she said it would make her happy. Maybe a non-mod Boss Human wouldn't have had that reaction, but Rabbit didn't know. He guessed some of them were susceptible. And there were some Bunnies that had other roles. You saw a lot of them in the cathouses, or in bars, or sometimes in specialty movies. Maybe that was why the WarBunnies were adapted from that line.


Inspiration: A "bunny in love" icon.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Ah, furry GMO super-soldier luuuuv!

A boy wants a Christmas cookie. If she didn't want people to come sniffing around, he reasoned, she wouldn't live in a gingerbread house. And she wouldn't be baking sugar cookies--mm, sugar cookies, fresh from the oven. He salivated, and a long tongue unrolled to lick his chops as he slunk around the corner of the house. He didn't even give though to changing back to human form, though he'd heard that some people were less scared of a tall, rangy man with impossible hair and a sharp smile than they were of a wolf. Silly people. The wolf was simple. The man got complicated, sometimes, if he stayed i man-shape for too long. They were in the woods. So, a wolf was the right shape. Wolf wanted a cookie.


Inspiration: Image of Christmas cookies.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Eh. This is an odd spawn of fairytales and urban fantasy.

Every time I leave, I'm coming back to her. Until the last time, when I came back and she was gone. It was a shock, as if one of the planets in orbit was just--missing. I went to her apartment, and a tough China-gang girl cursed me out. I went to her landlord, and he shrugged as if to say what could he do about youth today? I went to her job and found out she hadn't been working there for years. Or at least that's what they said. There was a little shift in the eyes of the person I spoke to, so I'm not counting that as the strict truth. I went to her family, who I'd never met because, she said, I never stuck around. Her family said she'd been dead for years. They showed me the--

Inspiration: "Sally is a..." by Shwayze
Story Potential: High
Notes: This is interesting enough, but it all depends on how it turns out.

The vase nodded gracefully as they passed, and she laughed delightedly. He reached out and plucked the flower the vase proffered, tucking it behind her ear, and slipped the vase a few dollars behind his back. The vase bowed and retreated on stubby legs to sit in the corner and rearrange its roses. The violin strutted forward and leaned back, allowing the arch of its belly to barely brush its bow arm. The strings soughed softly, a question inviting a response. The man laughed and nodded. With a wave of its bow, the violin summoned an accordion and another violin to the table, where they played romantic music until the menu waddled out, its bow legs making it slow, pen and paper in one hand, napkin in another, wine list in a third.

Inspiration: Looking at a "nodding vase" for sale.
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: This is a charming scenelet, but not a story.

The vinegar rinse had done nothing for her freckles, which still lined up like constellations along her nose. It wouldn't be so bad if they'd stop *moving*, but as it was, a swain had only to stare into her eyes...and then let his gaze drift down to her freckles...and before long he'd be too dizzy to walk straight. True, it was an advantage when bargaining at the shops, since shopkeepers disliked being dizzy and disliked even more when she struck up conversations with their customers and made *them* dizzy, but she would vastly prefer clear porcelain skin, deep eyes, magnificent hair, and soft hands--the sort of thing that her sister was always being praised for. She? Well, she never--

Inspiration: Dad talking about a vinegar rinse for washing dishes.
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: I like the character, but so far the story does not distinguish itself.