Fionagreywrites

Week 9 of Odd Prompts: 2024 Edition

With new life in the northern hemisphere also comes destruction. Often it’s a beneficial type that brings new life; the seed that dares to grow further, the shattered eggshell of cracked robin-egg blue. Transformation requires change, just as drafts shatter the path of previously-plotted stories.

Change is never easy, and new life edging into bloom brings new perils. This morning, the tornado sirens went off — common at the edge of the US midwest this time of year — a deep wail in the background while thunder rumbles endlessly, hail rattles and bounces against glass, all interspersed with flashes of lightning flickering against a sky. The prompts turned out to follow that theme — everyone’s got creative chaos on the brain this week!

HandStickPoke
Cedar SandersonThe havoc which marked its path…Fiona Grey
nother MikePutting a real beehive in her hairdo might have been a mistake…Cedar Sanderson
AC YoungA hardware update was required in order that the essential software update could be installed.AC Young
Leigh KimmelIt all felt like the way the air gets heavy and still right before a thunderstorm.nother Mike
Fiona GreyThe path was lined with floating jellyfish and rage.Leigh Kimmel

Change never happens exactly how one expects — aftereffects are discovered years later. What consequences will your character have from a single round of destruction? Layering their reactions to dramatic perspective shifts will realistically bring your creations to life. Still better if you draw in how characters react to additional changes, and better watch out when they’ve had enough…

SpareThe Enigma tornado touched down
Spare“We will NOT harm you. We will not ALLOW harm to come to you. Anyone attempting to harm you now has a new Problem: US!”
SpareThe post was cruel.
SpareThe mermaid in the Olympic swimming contest was a winner!
SpareThere was a frog in the toilet. Burping, loudly…
SpareThe wail of the sirens was drowned out by the roaring wind. Flashes of flickering lightning revealed…

What havoc will you wreak with prompt-spiration this week?

Image generated with Midjourney by Fiona Grey.

15 comments

  2. This week I got a boomerang prompt: A hardware update was required in order that the essential software update could be installed.

    It’s tempting to discuss prompt derangements, but let’s just say that this happens far less often than it should, so my congratulations to the MOTE elves.

    —

    URGENT!

    All Employees are alerted to the implications of the recent revelations that there is a serious security flaw in the Archipelago III operating system.

    This flaw needs to be plugged as a matter of urgency. So all company laptops must be upgraded to Archipelago IV by the end of the week.

    Employees will be aware that IT are currently in the middle of a laptop upgrade, and that not all laptops will currently run Archipelago IV.

    So, all employees with older laptops need to be fitted with an additional RAM supply using one of the USB ports.

    Employees requiring such a hardware upgrade who have already scheduled to be in the office over the coming week will be given a slot during which IT will perform the necessary hardware installation. The employee will be expected to take all necessary steps to ensure that they have no other commitments during their scheduled installation time.

    Such employees who were not intending to be in the office this week will be required to book an “outpatient appointment” at their nearest office to have the hardware installation performed.

    Employees who are unable to upgrade their laptop’s operating system by the end of the week will be unable to access the Company’s systems until the process is completed. Such employees are required to e-mail IT, and book an appointment for the required upgrade(s) to take place in office under a controlled setting.

    The e-mail finished rather abruptly. Albert read through it again.

    Then with a ping another e-mail arrived in his inbox. Albert opened it up, and read that one too.

    Dear Albert,

    Your laptop upgrade appointment will be Tuesday at 3:30pm-4:00pm. Due to the large number of laptops that need upgrade there is no flexibility in our schedule, and failure to ensure that you are available as required will be a very serious disciplinary issue.

    This e-mail also finished very abruptly, without any valediction, as if the writer couldn’t be bothered to be polite.

    Albert quickly checked his calendar. Great! He had a project meeting, including clients from another company, held virtually over the internet, from 3 to 4 on Tuesday afternoon. There was no way it could be re-scheduled, there were too many other people with too many other busy schedules for that to be realistic. He’d have to send in his apologies, and hope that everyone else was happy.

    First things first. He sent a warning e-mail to the project manager, alerting him to the fact that he’d have to apologise for not being there due to the laptop upgrade. He’d send the formal e-mail to everyone closer to the date.

    Now he would have to work hard not to get extremely irritated and wound up at IT – the IT person wasn’t to blame for this situation, and was no doubt being extremely overworked in order to solve it. No, if anyone was to blame it would be the person who wrote and/or signed off on the rude e-mails he had received.

    He sighed as he finished his work, and signed off for the week.

    After the weekend, Albert made his way in to the office as was normal for him these days. It was busy, much busier than was normal.

    In fact, it was carnage. The IT people were constantly rushing from desk to desk, looking ever more frazzled as the day went on. The conversations in the kitchen whenever Albert got another mug of tea were all about IT running late and then taking an age to do nothing.

    By the time Albert’s day was over, a number of his colleagues were fuming that their laptops had yet to be upgraded, and that they couldn’t go home until they had been.

    It didn’t help that everyone had been sent another snotty e-mail from IT, implying that the delays weren’t IT’s fault, but were instead due to employees not being ready for their appointments. The ‘It’s all your fault – fix it!’ attitude got Albert’s back up, and from what he could hear, his colleagues felt the same.

    On Tuesday it didn’t look as if things had improved. By lunchtime another e-mail had arrived complaining that the employees with “outpatient appointments” weren’t arriving on time, and that this was causing delays elsewhere. This caused more irritation at IT.

    Just after lunch, Albert did what he should have done first thing Monday morning. He sent the e-mail to tell everyone that due to unavoidable unexpected commitments he couldn’t make the 3pm meeting. Then he did a series of small tasks and waited.

    3:30 came and went. 4 o’clock came and went. Albert was sitting at his desk, with an empty mug, not wanting to get a refill just in case the IT person arrived late, found him not at his desk, and got his bosses to blame Albert for the further delay.

    It was half-four when the frazzled IT worker made it to Albert’s desk. Albert swiftly saved everything, shut everything down, and handed his laptop over.

    “Right. I’m off to get a tea. Do you want one?”

    “What?” The IT bloke looked up. “Oh, tea. Thanks, but I won’t have time to drink it.”

    Albert headed off to the kitchen with his empty mug. When he returned with a full mug of delicious tea, fuel of any office, something had been inserted into the side of his laptop, and the IT bloke was fiddling in the laptop’s settings.

    Albert didn’t pretend to understand the procedure that was required to perform the hardware install. But he understood why IT was struggling to keep to schedule, because it took the IT bloke three-quarters of an hour to get everything set up, and hand him back his laptop.

    Next step, install Archipelago IV.

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      • No apology required.

        I did the calculations a long time ago. If we have two prompts, there are two possible ways to assign them, and in only one of them does everyone get someone else’s prompt, so a 50% probability. That’s the high point. For three prompts we have 6 possible arrangements, and only 2 avoid boomerangs, so a 33.3…% probability. That’s the low point. For 5 prompts and above, the probability of a random arrangement having no boomerangs is between 36.5% and 37%. As the number of prompts tends to infinity, the probability tends to 1/e.

        Looking at it another way, the probability that a random assignment gives an entrant their own prompt back is 1/n, where n is the number of prompts to be re-arranged.

        So, not only is the number of weeks with a boomerang prompt far lower than it should be, the number of times I’ve had my own prompt back is also far lower than it should be (twice in over 150 prompt entries).

        So, no apology required. The rarity of this instead requires that I congratulate the MOTE elves on making this such a rarity.

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  3. Sounds like what used to happen when the university gave us new computers. “You need to be in your office between x and y.” Time x zips by, time y is almost there when an email from IT arrives… due to scheduling issues we will come to your office tomorrow between 9 and noon.”
    Me: Nope, I’m teaching for that entire block.
    IT: Oh. Um…

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  6. Leigh Kimmel proposed…

    It all felt like the way the air gets heavy and still right before a thunderstorm.

    [hum, that buzz just before a thunderstorm… okay…]

    The writer stared at the blank screen. His fingers curved over the keyboard, and he started to lean forward, then… lifted his hands away, and scratched his chin. No, no, no, that wouldn’t do it. But maybe…

    It all felt like the way the air gets heavy and still right before a thunderstorm.

    He blinked a few times, and started to type… then highlighted that mess, and hit the backspace key. Argh! There had to be a good way to start this…

    Okay, stop a moment, and think about where you are going with the story? I mean, what’s the setting? Who are the characters? What do they want to achieve, and what’s blocking them?

    What do you mean, have some guy with a gun jump into the alley with them?

    That screen just sat there, waiting. And the writer writhed in his chair, his mind… not blank, just scurrying hither and yon, chasing all those bright ideas, trying to figure out where to start…

    After a while, he carefully, and slowly, typed on the keyboard. On the screen, the letters appeared.

    The quick brown fix jumped over the lazy black dog… and back again.

    He slumped, his hands quiet beside the keyboard. No, that wouldn’t do at all. But maybe he should grab that book of jokes, pick one out, and embellish it? After he had a cup of tea…

    [and the thunder and lightning waited, like the bated breath of the person hiding in the closet when the ghoul crawled out from underneath the bed, and the pigs, waiting to see if the wolf would break down the door, and… don’t you wait!  Go ahead and do it. You’ll be glad you did!]

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