The train up the avenue begins to fade from view as it switches over to the liminal track. She watches, gritting her teeth, and swears that she will get on the next liminal train, that she will make it to her appointment in time, that she will not cop out and catch a mundane train and arrive fifteen minutes late for a job interview that she really, really needs to ace in order to afford her apartment in a secured building. She can endure liminal for that long, she can, really. She can't afford to get kicked out of her apartment because she couldn't live in an unsecured apartment, couldn't take the risk of a cockroach climbing out of her drain and talking to her, or of her apartment suddenly beginning to breath or heave its lungs. Traumatic stress syndrome is what she writes on all the grant applications she files for extra funds, but she thinks of it as commonsense, really. Who the heck wants to live in a place where things are unreliable? She has obtained a passport, and she sometimes thinks of filing for a work visa or a student visa or some kind of papers that will get her into the steady states, but her skills aren't that great, certainly not good enough to get her waived in. So she saved her pennies and dreams of maybe someday taking an extended vacation into normality.


Inspiration: "Life in Mono" - Mono (Electric)
Story potential: High.
Notes: I really like this worldbuilding idea. Seems like a good way to work in rabbithole stories, too...though they'd be more blatant than the sneaky rabbithole in mundane world ones. And...not a bad story title.

He didn't find out about the ordinary places where the regular workers could retreat to until he went to Space Bob's burger, ordered the basic burger, and burst out in tears when the waitress glided up with a burger on a bun, with lettuce and tomato and pickles cut in the shapes of the planets, with fries extruded to resemble space elevators, and the plate being a smooth bowl with a surface that pulsed constantly with strobe lights like one of the mythical UFOs. The ketchup was green, just to make it more alien, and now and then the silhouette of an alien waving walked along the side of the bowl. It was just all too much. He'd stood with the uneasy stomach that lighter gravity produced, he'd done okay with windows that you felt like you could fall into the abyss through, and it was this stupid, simple tourist trap burger that was his undoing. He wasn't a guy to cry, either, something he thought was important he explain to the waitress when she hurried over. Her expression was ruefully amused as she answered--


Inspiration: A friend posting a video of his "basic sashimi."
Story potential: Medium
Notes: Nice touch for setting up the character/worldbuilding. Basic job hazing on a space tourist trap.

The kinderwar that year was feroicious; the little ones had found a new leader and were actually using tactics that might--granted, over centuries--let them win.

"Remind me to get the name of that one," Mosby panted, his back to the wall. "I want him to be on my side once the kinder are brought in. Assuming he lives, and right now I half want to kill him myself." The dragons surroudning them outside belched fireballs over the walls into the common area. "Make that more than half."

"Be strong. Six more months and then they'll have to pull back to keep from freezing--"


Inspiration: Patricia C. Wrede's fantasy worldbuilding questions about magic (http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions-magic-and-magicians/): "Does becoming a magician require some rite of passage (investing one’s power in an object, being chosen by the gods, constructing or being given a permanent link to the source of power) or does it just happen naturally, as a gradual result of much study or as a part of growing up?"
Potential: High, I guess. I think it could be an interesting setting, but I'm not sure what the story would be.
Notes: The standard is for people to gain their magic around adolescence. What if instead that was when people lost their magic and had to become civilized? How would that affect the already fraught power dynamic between adults and children? What if they separated?

The cemetery fairies were lonely. Nobody buried the bodies in winter, and it made them restless. Not to mention the cold made their wings stiff and likely to tear if they tried to move too fast. The fairies made little snow fairies over the graves, they cleaned away lichen that was stiff and dried, and they recited the names and lives of the people buried beneath them. That only took a little of their time, however, so most of the time they spent huddled inside urns and pine trees and mausoleums, their wings wrapped round themselves to keep the cold from getting too intense. They weren't weak Southern fairies, to drop off into hibernation at the touch of a chill breeze, but--

Inspiration: http://www.flickr.com/photos/piedpiper1/3058008086/
Story Potential: Medium.
Notes: Not really a story here, but I like the idea of cemetery fairies. Must remember it when I write a fantasy world.

See, here's the thing. There's some things a man just can't tolerate in his backyard, and constant ghosts of his wife and the pool boy rolling around is one of them. So I called for the exorcist. Some memories are so strong and so painful that they just stick around like glue. I knew that even if I sold my very nice home and moved, there was about a fifty-fifty chance the ghosts would follow me. Even if I got an apartment in a skyscraper, 50 stories up, they'd be rolling around there in the clouds just beyond my balcony. I didn't expect the exorcist to be pretty. I mean, I'd never really needed an exorcist before, and the ones on the TV shows are always male, scary-looking, and more than a little spooky. She was just a little slip of a thing with a sunshine smile and a bright floral print sun-dress with a matching bag that was--

Inspiration: "backyard"
Story Potential: High, at least as a setting.
Notes: I kinda like the idea of a world where there are visible ghosts, and they do cause problems, but they're all "strongly emotional event" ghosts, not dead people. Could significantly alter some societal rules.

The twinkle of the stars chimed softly against ship's ears, tuned to hear the sounds between the stars, tuned to find the pattern of the melody and follow it, steering clear of the discontinuity of a flaring star, the harsh discord of a local war, the only way that anyone could ever follow the hard paths of all the worlds that all the people had settled on. It was difficult, once off-ship, to readjust to the sounds of people around one, living freely, chattering, babbling, clashing pans one against the other. On ship, the pilot-composer was shielded fully from everyone. If necessary, there was a window that they could signal from, signs that could be held up to communicate. Sound was forbidden. A stray sneeze could send a ship careening off into a cloud of dark matter that would--

Inspiration: "Alamout" by Glen Hall
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I find the notion of this setting and character intriguing enough to want to explore it further, though there's no plot depth here, just a sketch of a profession and a character.

The shell gave easily beneath her prying fingers. It was too easy, she stopped for a second, hesitating. Everybody knew that opening the previous shells was difficult. She'd never heard anybody say anything about anyone ever having it easy. Maybe it was like oysters, she thought. Maybe if they died, their shells just opened up on their own. Maybe that was why nobody had ever found it. Maybe she was the first one to find a dead one. If that was true--she shivered with delight at the idea of the sort of reward she'd get for that. Dead of natural causes? The scientists would be shitting themselves over that one. They'd spent so much time trying to figure out how to kill the damn things, without one drop of luck, that they'd be relieved to know that the critters could even *die*.

Inspiration: Clamshell I found in the Mississippi River
Story Potential: Low. Just a minute, not an actual story.
Notes: Could add good background detail to an alien invasion story, though.

The straw wine was ripening beneath the cellars, waiting to be drunk at the midsummer's celebration. It had come a long way from strawberries picked at the beginning of summer, dried across summer's hottest days, and fermented through the long winter. It was a celebration of the warm days, the days when food was easy to hand, warmth was free, and a man or woman could walk for weeks to see their kin or to go on adventure, all without fear of a sudden storm that could kill them sweeping up. Money and power lost their sway in the summertime, and the best of the nobles knew and accepted that. The worst lot regarded it with thin-lipped sneers and sought ways to make summer's freedom limited and restricted and more like their favorite winter--

Inspiration: "Straw wine"
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Mmm...nice celebration of the passing of winter. Interesting idea for how a society works--there's always been a certain licentiousness to summer celebrations, but I like the idea of a double society: one for winter, one for summer.

The feet were excellent prototypes, she admitted, stooping to examine them. They were strong, arched, and lightly veined, as the feet of an actual dancer would be. There were even a couple of calluses: grace notes, she thought, but ones that the true connoisseurs would appreciate. Or no, she realized, as she looked closer, they were not as much of a luxury as she had thought. There were tiny perforations in the calluses that she guessed would expel compressed gas when the dancer signaled that she or he wanted to jet ion a particular direction. She smiled a little. The heel calluses would make a much better appearance than the odd colored splotches that their competitors were trying. "They're quite good," she said aloud, looking up.

Inspiration: "feet" "prototype"
Story Potential: Low.
Notes: Prosthetics for dancers in zero-g. Meh. Might work with that entertainment-diplomats-in-space idea.

Inseparable they were when they were little, cute as buttons, round as houses, and green as the sky. As they grew older, their skin paled to yellow, they lengthened out a little and grew proper legs, they lost their cuteness in adolescent awkwardness, but they stayed inseparable. The mothers tut-tutted over it, of course: children of different castes weren't supposed to want to play together at all, much less in preference to children of their own society. At first, they let it slide because the children were too young to know better. Later, they let it slide because it had become plain that Lila would grow up to be a potential Queen, and nobody wanted to irritate one who might someday rule them all.

Inspiration: 'inseparable'
Story Potential: High.
Notes: If only because I love-love-love that opening line. And the society set-up is neat. Could be either science fiction or fantasy or--no, really, I guess it would have to be one or the other/both.