Welcome back to another week of odd prompts, and happy Thanksgiving to those of you that celebrate! This week, we feast upon prompts. A good story weaves in pieces from everywhere, just like a truly excellent potluck or fuddle mingles Aunt Betty’s perfume with the ever-present oil of a refurbished fire truck, the noise of the new puppy mixed with the clash of kitchen knives, the solidity of roast turkey countered by the silkiest of solidly whisked gravies.
No more sneaking cookies from the kitchen jar until the meal’s done. Er…the story. Onto the prompts!
| Prompter | Prompt | Prompted |
| AC Young | Why does the rain always start falling after we’ve started a task but before we’ve finished it? | nother Mike |
| Becky Jones | The dragon and his rider surfed the incoming storm front. | Fiona Grey |
| Fiona Grey | The puppy’s name was Chaos, and s/he tempted fate with every tail-wagging moment. | Becky Jones |
| Leigh Kimmel | “We are aware that you are a telepath, but without a formal certification, we cannot take that into account.” | AC Young |
| nother Mike | When the Infernal Revenue Service audits, they start with your toenails… | Leigh Kimmel |
And here are your spares. Won’t you give them an impromptu twirl around the kitchen, ladle in hand for extra flair?
| Spare | She was prepared for the end of the world, it seemed, if only she could remember where the supplies were. |
| Spare | The fire flickered with the occasional unnatural shade of purple, and if no one else thought it worthy of comment, then he would also stay mum. |
| Spare | “Spin sunwise once more, add the tulip leaves to the tincture, and then…” |
| Spare | The idea settled slowly into his head, as if he’d entered a cloud of pixie dust that sparked madness. |
| Spare | It’s one of those annoying things that everyone knows is technically impossible, and yet there it is. |
| Spare | When you don’t care enough to send the worst… |
That’s it for this week, but there’ll be more to follow. Interested in playing along yourself? We’re a friendly bunch, and there’s room in the kitchen and at table. There’s even probably pie. Cheers!
Header image by Fiona Grey
More Odds Than Ends 
Leigh Kimmel prompted me this week with: “We are aware that you are a telepath, but without a formal certification, we cannot take that into account.”
That may say more about the attitude of the speaker than anything else, but a telepath isn’t going to be fooled.
—
I am a telepath. We started popping up out of the woodwork about ten years ago, now. My own abilities started to appear when I was about fifteen or sixteen.
But proving it – that’s a constantly moving target. Every three months, or so it seems, the Planetary Accreditation Bureau change the rules, scrapping the previous tests and coming up with new ones. And every time they do, my previous set of test results – which they haven’t got around to reviewing – become worthless, and I have to start all over from scratch again.
And now I was effectively out of time. It was time for me to go through the process to determine which primary and secondary training courses I would be assigned to. I wasn’t worried about any of the practical or theoretical exams – worst case scenario I could pull the procedures or answers out of someone else’s head (which is cheating, but as long as I learned the stuff for when I needed it out in the field, was it anyone’s business). But aptitude mattered – I didn’t want one of the boring assignments that anyone could do and so only the less-capable were assigned to. I wanted one of the better assignments, something in which my telepathy would be useful.
But I still didn’t have the accreditation that I was a telepath – and by my reckoning one of the more powerful ones the planet had yet produced. But I had no more time to prove this.
“Hethentaller!” yelled the obviously bored out of her wits secretary – I didn’t want to end up on that track.
That was me. It was my time to enter the lions’ den, and face the committee that would decide my immediate fate.
I stood up and headed into the Chamber of Destiny. The door closed smoothly behind me of its own accord. The single chair that was for me was in the centre of the floor. The committee were seated on an arced dais, so that they could all look down on the supplicant – and I could tell from their thoughts that they did all think themselves better than those unfortunates coming before them for judgement.
I was expected to sit down, so I did.
“State your name,” intoned the chairwoman. Her boredom hadn’t made it into her voice, but I could sense it in the way the command made it from her brain to her larynx.
“Hethentaller, Kentlyn, Ma’am,” was my reply, toned to try not to let on that I’d observed anything I shouldn’t.
The chairwoman started rummaging through a thick file. It was mine – I could see my name in block capital letters on the front cover, though I couldn’t see what was on any of the printed pages therein.
“You have some interesting ambitions, Hethentaller.” She meant something different – she felt that I was seeking something that was far above my station. “We are aware from your partial – multiple partial – PAB forms that you are a telepath. But without formal certification of this from the PAB we cannot take this into account. And you have very little else in your applications that would permit us to justify assigning you to training in any of your stated preferences.” Not stated, not appearing in her tone, but clearly present in her internal attitude, was her delight in putting me, an upstart, firmly back into my place.
I looked around the chamber, at the assembled men and women. It was clear that they were all minded to reject me for my desired roles, not because they were unconvinced I could do them, but because they all had their favourites, and they didn’t want me to take one of their slots.
I didn’t want to be Harrison before the Longitude Board, getting nowhere even though I’d demonstrated my work to be good enough – one of my classmates had watched an old documentary about old terran navigational problems once, and I’d picked the facts out of his head the next day. I needed to say something that would persuade them to give me a chance – but not at the expense of anyone they wanted to proceed ahead of me. There seemed to be only one thing I could attempt.
“Ma’am, I believe that this committee has the authority to compel the PAB to determine my status as a telepath. May I request that it does so?”
I had surprised them. They were good enough actors that I couldn’t see it in their attitudes, but I could sense it in their heads.
“You are aware that if we proceed down this route that you will lose your current slot in the assignment process and will have to reappear before us at the end of the queue?”
“I am aware of this.”
“And that many of the training courses will already have been completely filled by then, including many of the ones you have listed as your preferred options.”
“I am aware of this.”
Silence fell. The chairwoman did something and the mute screen switched on. The committee started discussing something between themselves.
I couldn’t hear a word, but I didn’t need to. I could keep track of what their position was likely to be by their thoughts and feelings. I deliberately didn’t smile as I realised that my gamble – a very dangerous gamble that might force me down a route even worse than not taking the risk right now – was going to happen.
“We have agreed to require your full telepathic accreditation be completed before we judge your case. You will be called before us once more in two weeks.”
I stood. I bowed to the committee, and left the room the way I had come in – not normally done, but required in this case.
Now I had to speak to the secretary, and get myself properly tested by the PAB. Hopefully there would still be some good courses available in a fortnight.
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I like it! Oh, and I just read your story in Fantastic Schools! Wonderful story!
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Thanks. It improved a great deal in response to editor’s comments.
I enjoyed reading your story.
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Finally catching up. Quite fun! (And will be binging Fantastic Schools next week.)
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AC Young pondered…
Why does the rain always start falling after we’ve started a task but before we’ve finished it?
[Aha! Now, is the problem the alignment of the start of tasks and the start of rain, or is it that the rain starts before finishing a task, which may indicate something about our rate of closure of tasks? Raindrops keep falling on my head…]
Harry stumbled out of the rain, and shook his fist at the sky. Then he looked at his grandfather and asked, “Why does the rain always start falling after we’ve started a task but before we’ve finished it?”
His grandfather chuckled, and said, “I think you’ve got that backwards. It ain’t the rain, it’s the way you count things.”
Harry wrinkled his brow and said, “What do you mean, grandpa?”
His grandfather held his hand up, and lifted a finger.
“Okay, tell me, did it rain while you fed the chickens this morning?”
“No, but…”
“Hold on a minute. Did you finish that task?”
“Well, yes, but…”
“Matter of fact, you’ve done quite a few little tasks today, without being bothered by the rain, right? But you started raking the yard, and… it started raining. So you quit raking. You didn’t finish.”
“That’s what I mean!”
“Wait a minute, now. Was it that the rain caught sight of you raking and came along just to keep you from finishing? Or is it that you started something, the rain came along, and you decided not to finish?”
“Well, yes, I guess you could say that.”
“So, let’s look at some things that might happen. First, what if it starts raining before you start a task?”
“We’ll, I probably don’t start, or at least I wait until the rain stops.”
“Right! So you don’t even notice those times. And what about when you finish the job, and then it starts raining?”
“Okay, I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the rain when that happens.”
His grandfather tapped his nose.
“You got it. About the only time you notice the rain is when you start a task, and the rain comes while you are working on it. So… it isn’t that the rain always starts falling while you’re doing something, it’s just that you notice it when it happens. And you ignore all those other times, when you either finished the task before the rain started, or you didn’t start the task because it was already raining. Seriously, rain doesn’t care about your work, it’s just that you notice when it interrupts you.”
Harry thought about it, and then smiled.
“You know, I think you might be right.”
His grandfather chuckled, and said, “Well, thank you for that. And by the way, I’ve got some chores for you to do. Inside, so the rain doesn’t fall on you!”
Harry laughed….
[that’s kind of funny… those wise old grandpa’s]
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Nice. A good explanation of the “remember evidence in favour of the assumption, forget evidence to the contrary” principle that underpins such blanket statements.
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[…] The dragon and his rider surfed the incoming storm front. For more prompting fun, head on over to More Odds Than Ends and see what everyone came up with this week. If you want to join in, just pick up a spare and […]
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[…] Becky and I traded prompts this week. I received dragons surfing the storm (and took some liberties); she found Chaos in a puppy. Find more over at MOTE! […]
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And now mine is up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1442885.html. It’s yet another story of the Voting Dead.
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