penthius

"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.

When arriving in a new town, I always go to the churches and listen for the differences in their #dogma first thing. They've got a stake in keeping their congregations alive, you see, unlike town shareholders. A parable about Grnphs saved my life in Ringtown, recently.

Inspiration: dogma
Potential: low
Notes: Eh, not very interesting to me. I do think that churches would be a good way to get the lay of the town, but I'm not all that interested in this character or Weird West situation... Or it could be SF and planetary colonies, I guess.

Flames devour the clouds, while we stare in open horror. I do not know if there will be any more rainbows during my lifetime, because I do not know if there will be any more rain. I heard a rumor that some corporation signed a deal that was read to grant the cloud herders the right to do this, to vaporize our clouds and chase the vapors into their water collectors. I don't understand the rules that make it more advantageous for them to do this than to mine asteroid belts for frozen water, but something about the rules of ownership and claimed versus unclaimed space makes it easier for them to get their water from a planet instead of deep space that I guess is considered communal. "Mama, why are they eating the sky?" my three-year-old whimpered, burying her face in my leg. "I don't know, honey," I said. And although I didn't say it out loud--because you don't make promises like that to a small child, not when you don't know how long it will take or even if you will succeed--I promised to myself that I would find the answer to her question, and somewhere in there, the way to make it stop. I would see a rainbow again before I died.

Inspiration: "Drones in the Valley" - Cage the Elephant
Story potential: Medium.
Notes: Eh.

"Professor, we were wondering if you could recommend a biologist with helping us to identify--Professor? Professor, are you listening?"

Dr. Schwartz shook his head. "It doesn't matter. You do not need a biologist/ All you need to do is look in front of you."

Politely, Jim looked at the pendulum swinging in front of him. "I'm sorry, Professor, I don't think that this is quite what we need right now. There's land out there that none of us recognize, but I figure that a biologist might be able to give us an estimate of where we are."

"Ha!" Dr. Schwartz interrupted, pointing at the pendulum with a shaking finger. "There! Do you see that!?"

"No, professor, I don't. I think I'll just go--"

The professor surged to his feet and seized Jim by the shoulders. "Don't you understand? It changed! The pendulum changed! I deduce that you would notice if the sun in the sky shifted above you too greatly, so we cannot be traveling through time, or perhaps we are traveling enough through time that it syncs up...ahem. The only way the pendulum's rhythm would change is if it was in a different location. Do you understand? Go look at the land you didn't recognize earlier, and it will be even less familiar to you now!"

Inspiration: Foucault's 194th birthday
Story potential: Medium
Notes: Could be a fun shifting-place premise, but, um, I really need to do a bit more research to get the science of the observable details right.

There will always be people who romanticize the smell of books and the rustle of their pages, either because of fond childhood memories sitting on their grandpa's knee or because they think that's what a real sophisticate would like, or because--maybe--they genuinely appreciate the experience more. It's like those people who insist on their wine in bottles instead of vac-sealed pouches. They pay for the premium. So I figured that taking on a load of books was probably a good deal. I made sure it was a wide variety, with decent ratings on the booknet, in good condition. I guess I should have checked to see where they were banned, too.

Inspiration: Thinking about the future of ebooks.
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh.

Whipspring is an amazing wood, and demand for it far outstrips supply. We have tried sending it elsewhere to grow, you see, but it never spreads. What we've planted stays, and that is it. The gentle lemurites live in the whipspring stands, and we've signed a pact that they will always have adequate habitat for their numbers. The range and breeding rate means that there is very, very little whipspring that can be spared. It does usually grow back the next season, but then a new tribe of lemurites moves in, too, making it not fair game for our woodcutters. Only a handful of people grumble about this on-world. We charge ridiculous sums of money for what we do harvest--and get it--and gullible tourists are happy to shell out large cash for "genuine" whipspring wood mementos. The real stuff is only sold through the official trade stand, certified and numbered, but offworlders assume that nobody could live with a resource restriction like that. They think that there must be bribes and exceptions.

Inspiration: "bamboo" -> "bamboo lemurs"
Story Potential: Medium-high
Notes: Y'know, ecology done right. Kinda want to show people actually preserving the full extent of a habitat by choice, and it working out reallyreally well for them, even if they don't understand the role of the lemur(ite) in the spread of the valuable tree just yet, or whether the lemurites are sentient or maybe the trees are...something is.

The decline and fall of the House of Ammun began one very ordinary day at the end of the lunar cycle. It seemed like an ordinary day, at least, to the bustling housekeeper who rounded up stray teacups and dusted crumbs off the side-tables. To young Marcus, the master of the house while his father was away trading, it seemed like a very un-ordinary day! That was because it was the day that his father had promised to return from his trading voyage with a bag full of wonderful gifts and perhaps, if Marcus was very lucky, a horse that he could ride now that he was too old for his pony. And so Marcus dressed with especial care, that his father should see how grown-up he was, and he did not fidget around as much as he would have--

Inspiration: A news summary about the housing market having difficulties.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: Perhaps a Beauty-and-the-Beast sort of twist? Perhaps a standard impoverishment.

The translucent leaves were curled tightly around the package on his doorstep. He hesitated before approaching. The forest people had sometimes traded with him, by taking what it was they wanted and leaving what they thought to be a fair exchange. He was careful never to leave out anything that he didn't mind losing, and he had made a good profit off the forest people's leavings, a time or two. They never left something worthless; they always gave fair or better value, by their own particular standards. He tilted his head and stepped a little closer. Something in the leaf package moved. He jerked back, then caught himself. Had they sent him a new kind of animal for his farm? He--

Inspiration: Sun shining through the leaves of the potted plant on top of my desk.
Story Potential: Medium
Notes: And it's a baby. Or one of their own people, if they're small. Or something else alive and with an interesting challenge to it.

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Entries tagged with trade

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Flexible Terms of Delivery: SF

Hear the Dogma: Weird West

Cloudburners: Science Fiction

Pendulum Twist: Science Fiction

Print Books: Science Fiction

Preserve: Science Fiction

Decline and Fall of the House of Ammun: Fairytale

From the Forest People: Fantasy

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