| Origin | Message in a bottle | Destination |
| Padre | “In the midst of unpacking everything, they found…” | Fiona Grey |
| Fiona Grey | “That’s the practice war.” | nother Mike |
| Leigh Kimmel | At least we eliminated *that* possible explanation for the problem | Becky Jones |
| Becky Jones | The ghosts drifted through the crowd topping off champagne glasses. | Leigh Kimmel |
| nother Mike | There were tentacles in the bubble bath… | AC Young |
| AC Young | When not in Rome… | Padre |
Time, and tides, currents and winds: all factors that influence that bottle. The same prompt could wash up on very different shores. Let’s see where you take yours! If you didn’t send one in, there is always a spare prompt to pick up and run with.
| Spare | “What did you expect, giving away octopi like that?” |
| Spare | The bazaar had everything, from anteaters to zebras… |
| Spare | The rhinoceros ambled quietly into the field, sat down, and chewed on the dandelions… |
| Spare | There were three dead trolls in a baggie on the kitchen counter. |
| Spare | Don’t give up the ship! |
You never know quite what you’ll get, like this peculiarly placid rhino from the spare prompts…
More Odds Than Ends 
[…] An early one this week from Padre, inspired by unpacking, while nother Mike takes on the practice war. Check out more, over at MOTE! […]
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This week I found a bottle from nother Mike containing the message: There were tentacles in the bubble bath…
Poor Jackie…
—
Jackie was looking forwards to trying out her new bubble bath. She had spotted it on the shelves at the supermarket, and had bought it on reading that it promised a magical experience.
She finished the washing up, dried up all her crockery etc., and put it all away. Then it was time for a nice leisurely bath.
She headed upstairs to the bathroom, and ran the bath. Once the water was nice and hot, she put in the plug and poured in some on the bubble bath liquid.
By the time the bath was fill, and Jackie turned the tap back off, she was fully undressed.
The smell filling the room was exquisite, the smell of the sea. She got in and prepared to lounge comfortably in the water.
Then… She thought she saw something moving in the water. Perhaps it was nothing. But that wasn’t! That was a tentacle. And it wasn’t the only one. There were creatures in the bath with her!
Jackie screamed, and got out of the bath as quickly as possible, splashing water everywhere.
She dried herself as swiftly as she could. After she was decently attired once more, she picked up the bottle once more. She wanted to find the phone number to complain.
As she scanned the text on the back she spotted the occasional phrase: “infused with magic,” “creates a unique underwater experience,” “creates miniature squid to swim with the bather.”
Jackie looked across at the bath, still full of water and covered in a thick layer of blue-green bubbles. Those things weren’t a mistake, they were intended, and if she’d read the back beforehand she’d have known. She gulped. She didn’t think being surprised by something she should have been expecting was grounds to phone the company up. So she needed to experience the effect for longer to justify her complaints.
Filled with trepidation, she undressed once more and prepared to experience the uniquely scary underwater experience that the bubble bath had created.
She got in, and tensed up as the tentacles reappeared. They were the harbingers of the miniature squid mentioned in the text, and they were moving through the water. Now to experience the full horror of this magical experience.
Except that it wasn’t that horrific. As the minutes passed and nothing nasty happened, Jackie relaxed. And discovered that it was a weirdly pleasant experience.
She probably wouldn’t but any more of this particular bubble bath (but if the company had variants with more pleasant sea creatures she might try them). But she wouldn’t throw the rest away either. It might take a while, but she’d finish it off.
Eventually it was time to get out, dry off, get dressed, and mop up the mess from earlier. She sighed, and got on with the clean up. It certainly hadn’t been a boring evening.
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Y’a know, if there was a way to package critters to swim in your bubble bath, I’ll bet someone would do it! Of course, the fun part is imagining just who all would buy it! Well done…
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Fiona Grey floated the message…
“That’s the practice war.”
[hum, a little VR and such mixup? Well, let’s see…]
“Fresh meat, sarge.”
The private grinned at the recruits stumbling off the bus. He knew they had already been run through their physical, had their hair shaved, been given new clothes that almost fit, and otherwise run around. But now came the real start of their training.
“Line up! You’re not civvies anymore, so start acting like military men!”
The sergeant managed to get everyone’s attention with one booming shout. They all quickly sorted themselves out and lined up in front of him.
He started pacing along the line, looking at them. The private walked behind him.
“All right. I know you miss your mommies, but we’re here to turn you into fighting troops. And the first step in that is going to be a little battle! That’s right, in just a minute, we’re going to fit you into these cubicles behind me, and you will get your first taste of war!”
Several of the recruits looked over at the cubicles, and nodded. Everyone had heard of the new training system, based on virtual reality, that actually put you into the middle of a simulated war. Where you tried your best to fight alongside the rest of your team, and got killed or won, depending on what happened.
And, in moments, the sergeant and the private had them all fastened into their cubicles. The sergeant tapped at the terminal for a few minutes, starting the training unit. He liked to start them with a charge up the beach at Normandy. In moments, there were screams coming from the cubicles as they experienced that horror first-hand.
The sergeant lifted his head and shook it.
“That’s the practice war.”
He knew that they would come out shivering and convinced that war was hell. Guess what, it was! But after they had fought and died in a different battle every day for the next training period, they might be able to stand up and fight a real war. At least, that was the theory.
And he could hardly wait to start teaching them what they could do to give themselves and their team a better chance of living through that hell.
[oh, I kind of like that! ]
[first rough draft, untouched by revision… but I think I’ll put it up and see what you think of it!]
[Something for the rhino to chew on in between dandelions…]
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[…] week at More Odds Than Ends, Leigh Kimmel and I traded prompts. She challenged me with: At least we eliminated *that* possible […]
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AC Young suggested, “When not in Rome…”
Theo looked out over the table. They had been planning this game for weeks and it had taken an hour to set up. Mike had the terrain in place before he arrived and they had both had their lists built. The miniatures had taken a couple weeks to complete, as well.
Actually, that wasn’t true. Theo had been working on his late Imperial legion for a year. He was almost done, but had felt the need to add a couple more units of auxilia for this battle. That had taken a couple weeks to complete. And Mike had his army ready as well, Anglo-Saxon warriors, ready to storm across the fields at his forces.
Theo looked at it again. He really ought to have more cavalry and a druid if he was going to really be trying to play Arthur… Maybe that should be his next project.
“When in Rome…” Theo said.
“Umm, but we’re not in Rome. What do we do when not in Rome?”
Theo looked at Mike and smiled. “When not in Rome? Well, we’d do the same thing that we would do if we were in Rome, only quicker and more viciously.”
“Why?”
“Because we have something to prove.” He pulled out his dice. “Roll off to see who goes first?”
The battle ran for a couple hours, but in the end he was victorious. The barbarians were no match for a good legion, even at the end of the empire. He drove home thinking about all the changes he needed to make for the next game.
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Mine is now up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1521109.html. It’s going to be fun to be able to explore this horror-lite game a little more, but this week’s been difficult. I just got a story done in time for a hard deadline, I have another for a hard deadline Friday, I may need to hunt down an important financial document that’s vanished into the clutter in this house, and I need to keep making headway on a long-term project.
So much to do, so little time — and always more tasks coming down the pike at me.
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