#triffid au

[innytoes]

21 + 46 and Reggie/Alex/Willie?

Dystopian AU + Blind Date

Anon I am so sorry but I cannot not make this pun. This is a Day of the Triffids AU. Basically, everyone who saw a mysterious asteroid shower woke up blind the next day (which is a huge portion of the population since everyone was really hyped about it). Also there's walking plants who will murder you with their tongues and then feast on your corpse.

Considering the chaotic mess the world was, they'd done alright for themselves, really. It probably helped that the band had been super tight beforehand, and that Carlos and Reggie had been super into zombie apocalypse movies. It was really not that big of a stretch to turn a zombie apocalypse plan into a 'my entire family and the whole world is blinded' plan.

In the beginning, Reggie had been the only one in their group who could see, and that was pure dumb luck. He'd forgotten what day it was, worked a full shift at the coffee shop, worked on the song he'd wanted to show Luke later, and then crashed like thirty minutes before the meteor shower was supposed to start, sleeping through all of it.

So yeah, in the beginning, it had been rough. Terrifying. Getting around as a sighted person had its own perils. Plenty of people were willing to get really violent for their chance at a sighted person to lead them around. They'd quickly worked out a system: Luke up front, Reggie subtly steering his shoulders through squeezes. That way, they moved like the others, didn't attract unwanted attention.

It was better when they'd linked up with Flynn's family. Flynn's mom was blind, had been most of her life. She'd helped the others, taught them how to get around. She's started teaching them braille. Alex' little sister, Stevie, and Carlos were picking it up quick as anything. She also loved to garden, so over the summer they'd turned a lot of the available front yard space into edible plants. Reggie's job was to do the morning patrols, finding and burning any triffid podlings that had taken root before they could become dangerous.

That's how he'd found Willie, who had been crouched in front of one of the tomato plants, shoving them in his mouth. He'd spoken before he could think about it, scolding him about not waiting until they were ripe, and Willie had shrugged and said 'they're red aren't they'. Both had realised their mistake almost immediately, but before Willie could run - or skate - away, Reggie had offered him a place to stay.

Willie fit in with their little group perfectly. He was friendly, funny, and just the right amount of chaotic. He was also beautiful, and kind, and great with kids. His laugh was the prettiest sound in the world and he knew how to get pretty much anyone out of a funk. So yeah, Reggie was smitten.

But when he’d seen Alex and Willie grow closer, of course Reggie had taken a step back. Alex deserved the world. Besides, Reggie had other responsibilities, he shouldn’t waste time mooning over some boy. He’d done it before, pushed down his crush on Alex even before the whole world fell apart, and now that was just a dull ache. In time, the same would happen with Willie, and he could move on and be happy for them.

It would be easy to hide his feelings, he figured, since only one person was around to see him. But one day Julie had followed him out during his morning patrol and confronted him about it in the most gentle way she could, and he’d spent an hour just crying in her arms. She’d urged him to talk to Willie and Alex, hinting that there might be feelings there as well, but he’d blown her off, taking her hand and describing the gardens to her while he weeded out any problems. They’d only gone back when Julie had promised his voice didn’t sound all wobbly and hoarse.

He’d forgotten to check if his eyes were still red and puffy. Because of course he had. He hadn’t had to worry about what he looked like in literal years. Which Willie of course noticed. Which had lead to the whole thing coming out anyway, Julie dragging Luke out of the studio by his ear so they could have some privacy.

They’d been dating ever since. And it was perfect. Except dates in the post apocalypse were really more ‘having dinner in the garage alone’ or ‘going to pick the tomatoes together’. It was dangerous to go outside of their little fenced off corner of the neighbourhood. It was hard for Alex to get around in the empty houses on the street, because he hadn’t memorised where everything was.

Still, on the nights the spent together on the pull-out sofa in the garage, the privacy was heaven. Curling up against Alex, playing with Willie’s hair, kissing them both without fear of being interrupted by his little brother or Luke who had an amazing song idea, it was bliss. Tonight, they were discussing things they missed from before the apocalypse. Willie missed skating competitions, and the internet. Reggie was sad they’d never make the next season of his favourite show. Alex sighed, and said he missed the beach.

Which was totally a fixable thing. It had taken them a few weeks, talking to the others behind Alex’ back, making sure everyone was okay with their day trip, preparing the safest route. Willie was the one who usually went outside their neighbourhood, scavenging and skating around. He’d mapped the safest route to the safest beach, getting rid of as many triffids as he could along the way.

But then the day had come. Ray had waited for them at the door, giving him a hug. Reggie had clung to him, nervous. He didn’t want to leave them alone. He’d been responsible for their safety for so long, it felt wrong to leave. Which was exactly why he should, Flynn’s mother had told him firmly, the week before. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” Ray said. “You boys deserve this. Go have fun. And Reggie...” He paused, and Reggie tensed. “Remember to wear sunscreen.” Ray winked at him, squeezing his arms before ushering him out of the door. 

The walk to the beach was long, and slightly tense. Willie had a make-shift molotov cocktail in one hand, and Alex’ hand in the other. Reggie was on Alex’ other side, quietly leading them around debris and muttering a running commentary of what he saw around them.

They set off at first light, so they didn’t really run into many people, and they were mostly able to avoid the ones who were out, only stopping to make polite conversation with a group of women lead by an old lady with a guide dog. They told them that the beach seemed to be clear today, as Rover hadn’t alerted once while they heard the waves. They even let Reggie give Rover a quick pet, and Alex joked that whatever happened, Reggie’s day was already made.

When they could hear the waves, Willie climbed one of the palm trees to scout the area, declaring Rover was right and it seemed to be all clear. As soon as they hit the sand, Alex laughed, stopping. He yanked his shoes off, and Reggie smiled, shoving them in his backpack while Willie pulled Alex towards the waves.

They played in the sand and the water for hours, taking turns floating on their backs, splashing at each other, just sitting in the surf and letting the waves crash over them. Kissing each other with salty lips. Eating the lunch that Flynn’s mom had packed them. Laying on their backs and soaking up the sun. Maybe even spreading out the big towel they’d packed and... taking advantage of the privacy they had (after they checked and reassured Alex there was nobody around, of course).

And when they got home, salty and sated and happy, they were welcomed with open arms, a home cooked meal, and a good bit of healthy teasing when the first thing Reggie said when asked how it had been was: “I pet a dog!”

[voltrohgodwhat]

Not sure how I got from, "I just smacked my elbow and jokingly want to make a fic segment out of it," to, "Extremely weird classic/corny sci-fi horror story on planet of alien skeletons," but here we are.

[tottwritesfanfic]

So I had a random burst of inspiration, and made the mistake of looking over my old HQ apocalypse AU yesterday, and... Well, it's not that I don't love it, because I do, and at the moment I badly wanna get back to writing it again, but...

The thing is, when I started it, the manga was... I think still on the Nekoma/Fukurodani Tokyo arc? We'd barely even met Nohebi.

So now, I'm looking at the setup for this ensemble fic which is, fundamentally, more about how mostly they all escape and rebuild society together against the odds than it is specifically an apocalypse thing, and I'm just thinking:

"Oh no but what about everyone else?"

Like...This is a very Karasuno/Nekoma heavy fic, which is fine, and I already have like, a plan for what happens to Seijoh and Shiratorizawa, but...but there are so many more teams now??? Not to mention all the freaking family members we now know to exist.

So. I'm just sorta having a crisis at the moment about what I do. Because even though it's an apocalypse AU and people absolutely die, there's kinda...less of that than you'd think (it's mostly OCs who peg it). But equally, it feels like... would people be sitting there thinking "wow this sure is convenient then" if basically I just turned this into "hoo boy it sure seems like volleyball players inherited the earth, isn't that neat!"

[henrysblake]

one thing about me is that i will force my disparite interests together in anyway possible

[artmakerproductions]

Monsters Vs Aliens AU (#4)

The monsters.... now in colour!

This AU workshopped/made in collaboration w/ @guthrie-odonto

The Monsters: 

Susan Murphy/Ginormica is now Sam Murphy/Colossico (the "Under 60ft Man"); based on The Amazing Colossal Man and Amazing Shrinking Man. Hair is faintly more blue than pure white. His wedding attire, tuxedo suit, remains white like the dress. 

The Missing Link is now Miss Challenger (“Chell” for short), a prehistoric anomalocaris/arthropleura-like amphibious creature awoken by chemical dumping and begun terrorizing the lakeside; based on the mollusc monster from "The Monster that Challenged the World". Vaguely a more mermaid motif.

Dr. Shelly Brighton PhD aka Dr. Bride PhD, the creation of a (now deceased) mad scientist, who then herself eventually went on to pursue the sciences and began her own mad experimenting; based on the Bride of Frankenstein. Tesla coil rather than neck bolts. Said coil and hair fluctuate like store signs and those gamer room lights.

Bio Engineered Trifunctional Hybrid or simply, B.E.T.H. who was created for aesthetic appeal, pest control, and fruit production—the ultimate botanical specimen... didn't turn out how the scientists wanted when it gained consciousness; based on the Triffids, Audrey Jr. from the original 60's Little Shop of Horrors. Her face on the flower functions like cephalopod skin. It's more her "facial avatar" and her actual face is the "body". 

[alienintrees]

some modern AU headcanon stuff

Grantaire, Musichetta & Jehan have movie nights and watch shows together.

when R chooses the film, it's usually 80s horror. He loves the old special effects from The Thing, the Evil Dead films (also likes the comedy elements of Evil Dead II), Scanners and American Werewolf in London. He also likes the Bill & Ted franchise, The Lost Boys and What We Do In The Shadows (both film and series)

Chetta loves science fiction. Some favourites include Alien, Aliens, and Metropolis. Alsoo the Truman Show idk what genre that is. She's a big fan of Doctor Who, particularly episodes/serials that explore interesting concepts, like Genesis of the Daleks, Fathers Day, The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit, Waters of Mars, The God Complex, and Under The Lake/Before The Flood. To make up for my inability to think of films, she also loves sci-fi books, such as the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, Day of the Triffids and War of the Worlds.

Jehan loves fantasy, especially darker films, such as Pan's Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal and Coraline. Alsooo the Labyrinth and the BBC's Merlin series because of course. of course they love Merlin, are you kidding me?? and Ghosts, Our Flag Means Death, and Good Omens. Also Magical Mystery Tour. the spaghetti dream sequence is wonderfully horrifying and Blue Jay Way has this weird haunting energy like,, I could talk abt this film so muchhh aghhghggghhghgh (inevitable mention of the Beatles)

theres definitely more stuff i just cant think of anything atm

[menitrust]

We’re super excited to announce new Asia / Australia dates for 2023 Tix: https://menitrust.tumblr.com/

March-6, Taipei Taiwan, Legacy March-16, Aukland NZ, Power Station March-17, Melbourne AUS, 170 Russell March-21, Sydney AUS, Metro Theatre March-23, Brisbane AUS, The Triffid April-22, Seoul South Korea, Yes24 Live April-25, Tokyo Japan, Tokyo Zepp Haneda April-27, Osaka Japan, Club Quattro

Illustration : human___egg

[governmentofficial]

📎 super belated because I've only just thought of it but Day of the Triffids AU lol

Send 📎 and an AU you'd like to see my muse in, and I'll say if I'd do it!

Mycroft doesn't see the meteor shower because he is too busy working in his underground Diogenes office, thus he is not rendered blind. Because of his position, he gets a notification about what happened near immediately. Realising that society is about to fall into disrepair, he gathers as many important documents as possible that will be required for rebuilding the country once things calm down and escapes to the Holmes manor.

At the manor, he rallies the local villagers to fortify the fences around the land. They're already pretty substantial (to keep the deer in), so it's only logical that it's the best place to defend. There's room for lots of people inside the house, and the land has enough room to farm.

Initially, his worry is humans taking advantage of the mass blind popular by ransacking their neighbours. The news of the triffids escaping takes longer to reach him (at which point he promptly begins to adjust the manor's defences to keep them out too).

With everything set up, he begins to try to contact any remaining factions of the military and any foreign governments that might support him. If they want to reclaim the country, they need to eradicate the triffids before they go to seed in August...

EDIT: For context, meteors happen at the start of May. There is not much time at all until August.

Also, Mycroft is very sad is Sherlock doesn’t make it to the manor too :(

[othercat2]

Fic Snippet: A Sword in Exile

A tiny snippet of this reincarnation au bunny.

His name is John Andrew Miller and he's the adopted son of a lay missionary and part-time historian, full-time military science fiction author. (His name is not John Andrew Miller any more than his name was whatever they called him in the orphanage. He is Shen Jiu.) He gets good grades in school, and he likes to read and watch science fiction and fantasy movies. He likes going to conventions and buying more books, art, and dolls. (He should call them action figures, but "dolls" makes his adoptive relatives' eyes twitch and is objectively amusing.)

He has nightmares. His adoptive parents assume it's from the orphanage or from wherever the orphanage got him. They are wrong, but it's easier for them to believe that than to try to explain "I have very clear memories of a past life where I was tortured by a demon, and before that, I was already suffering from nightmares of having been an abused slave, and then spending my teen years being forced to do horrifically criminal acts." It was far easier to blame "monsters under the bed." (An idea he'd gotten from a TV show.)

Karen, his adoptive mother was more willing to humor his night terrors than his adoptive father. Andrew seemed to think that Shen Jiu, having suffered unknown abuse at the hands of unknown parties, should be more resilient. Shen Jiu ended up in self-defense classes to "toughen him up" though Karen had gently suggested counseling. Shen Jiu enjoys the classes and enjoys having a body that isn't frail or starved-small or broken in a thousand little ways. The self-defense class does nothing to stop the night terrors.

Karen eventually wins on the counseling, though the counseling doesn't do much to help with the night terrors either. It does a much better job at teaching Shen Jiu how to deal with his anxiety, and his temper, and in communicating with others. Shen Jiu is given medicine for the anxiety, which helps, and which Andrew does not approve of, and meditates in secret, which Andrew and Karen would both extremely disapprove of. (They believed that meditation would empty your mind and therefore leave it open to influence from evil spirits.)

As he gets older, the dreams get more vivid. He dreams of that farce of a trial, with the full knowledge that he's going to be ripped apart. He tries to warn Yue Qingyuan not to try to rescue him, no matter what, but his tongue has already been cut out. He dreams of his childhood, of running away and having strange adventures in the worlds of his books.

He dreams ridiculous fantasies of leaving Cang Qiong Mountain Sect (as if he had been free to do so) and going on to becoming a rogue cultivator, a star ranger, a dragonrider, and the annalist of a company of mercenaries. Sometimes he was hunted down by his (former) martial siblings and he always rejected them with the aid of his new friends.

He dreams of speaking to his martial siblings. He dreams of telling them the truth, and not caring at all. In these dreams, he's tired beyond bearing and he doesn't care one whit about appearing the cold and distant immortal. All he wants to do is finally unburden himself. He both doesn't care at all and he hates beyond reason. He tells frozen faces of his hatred and fear, and sometimes these dreams pair up with his fancies of leaving Cang Qiong Mountain Sect and he wakes from them laughing or crying with relief.

References for those wondering:

ElfQuest, Richard and Wendy Pini

Dragonriders of Pern, Anne McCaffrey

Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

Star Rangers, Andre Norton

The Time Machine, HG Wells

The Black Company, Glen Cook

Star Wars

Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome

[tangledthoughtsofleaving]

Russian Circles + TToL - Aus Tour 2024

We're very excited to be taking our new record around Australia in 2024 with the legendary Russian Circles. We're lucky enough to have played with Russian Circles a bunch of times and can't wait to do it again - as well as getting to see one the best bands in the world every night, they are just the best dudes. Bring on 2024!

RUSSIAN CIRCLES, Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving - Sunday, 4 February 2024 - Metro Theatre (Sydney, NSW) - TICKETS

RUSSIAN CIRCLES, Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving - Monday, 5 February 2024 - The Gov (Adelaide, SA) - TICKETS

RUSSIAN CIRCLES, Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving - Tuesday, 6 February 2024 - Rosemount Hotel (North Perth, WA) - TICKETS

RUSSIAN CIRCLES, Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving - Thursday, 8 February 2024 - The Triffid (Brisbane, QLD) - TICKETS

RUSSIAN CIRCLES, Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving - Friday, 9 February 2024 - Max Watts (Melbourne, VIC) - TICKETS

RUSSIAN CIRCLES, Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving - Saturday, 10 February 2024 - Max Watts (Melbourne, VIC) - TICKETS

Note that we won't be doing the NZ leg of the tour.

[gazeta24br]

Quase um ano desde o lançamento de seu segundo álbum de estúdio, Girlfriend, a banda alt-pop THE DRIVER ERA lançou seu terceiro álbum, Summer Mixtape, mundialmente hoje. Apresentando 11 faixas novas – incluindo a faixa de dança aprovada pela Rolling Stone, “Keep Moving Forward” (ft. Nikka Costa), o nostálgico single de verão “Malibu“, e o sexy single “Fantasy”, Summer Mixtape está atualmente disponível para compra nos formatos de edição limitada de vinil branco, cassete e CD. Para encomendar, visite www.thedriverera.com. Se Girlfriend é o álbum que foi escrito e produzido durante uma época em que Ross e Rocky estavam apenas com seus entes queridos, Summer Mixtape é o disco que explora o fio condutor que une aventura, vida noturna e intimidade. EmSummer Mixtape, influências e temas cintilam ao longo de todo o disco, provando ser uma experiência auditiva que difere dos dois últimos discos. “Sempre gostamos de nos expressar de uma maneira crua e honesta, mas este lançamento vai um pouco mais difícil”, descreve Rocky. “Com Summer Mixtape, estas são músicas que são um aceno para aquele estado em que você quer estar – se divertindo e aproveitando a vida com as pessoas de quem você gosta”. Enquanto “Malibu” explora o sentimento de ‘primeiros’, o último single da banda “Fantasy” é sobre o que vem depois – intimidade e compreensão. “Esta música era na verdade uma que estava em uma pasta de músicas inéditas que estávamos passando quando estávamos em uma sessão”, diz Rocky. “Ross começou a cantar o refrão e apenas fez sentido” “É uma canção que soa como se fosse sobre um ‘momento sexy’, mas mais importante ainda é sobre a natureza profunda da intimidade e aprender sobre como ela pode crescer”, descreve Ross. “Uma vez que você esteja confortável e íntimo de um certo indivíduo, você pensa que sabe tudo sobre ele, mas está constantemente aprendendo coisas novas sobre ele. É uma coisa linda que aprendi sobre a monogamia; alguns pensam que o compromisso é confinante, mas eu acho que é libertador. ‘Fantasy’ é uma canção que representa isso”. O vídeo oficial de “Fantasy” está disponível no Youtube. Assista AQUI Compre Summer Mixtape Agora AQUI Ouça Summer Mixtape AQUI Depois de uma série bem sucedida de shows esgotados nos EUA e na América Latina no início deste ano, a banda está atualmente na etapa internacional da GIRLFRIEND World Tour, atingindo 32 cidades do Japão, Austrália & Nova Zelândia, e Europa & Reino Unido pela primeira vez como The Driver Era. Para ingressos e pacotes VIP, por favor, visitewww.thedriverera.com. THE DRIVER ERA TOUR DATES 19 de Setembrov- OSAKA, JP @ NAMBA HATCH 20 de Setembro  – TOKYO, JP @ ZeppDiverCity 23 de Setembro – NEWSTEAD, AU @ The Triffid (SOLD OUT) 24 de Setembro – SYDNEY, AU @ Roundhouse (SOLD OUT) 25 de Setembro – MELBOURNE, AU @ 170 Russell (SOLD OUT) 26 de Setembro – MELBOURNE, AU@ 170 Russell 28 de Setembro – AUCKLAND, NZ @ Powerstation 4 de Outubro – LONDON, GB O2 @ Shepherd’s Bush Empire (SOLD OUT) 5 de Outubro  – LONDON, GB O2 @ Shepherd’s Bush Empire (SOLD OUT) 7 de Outubro – BIRMINGHAM, GB @ O2 Institute 8 de Outubro – NEWCASTLE, GB @ University (SOLD OUT) 10 de Outubro  – GLASGOW, GB@ O2 Academy 11 de Outubro – DUBLIN, IE @ Vicar Street (SOLD OUT) 12 de Outubro – MANCHESTER, GB@ Academy (SOLD OUT) 14 de Outubro – UTRECHT, NL @ TivoliVredenburg – Ronda (SOLD OUT) 15 de Outubro – PARIS, FR @ Le Bataclan (SOLD OUT) 17 de Outubro – BARCELONA, ES @ Razzmatazz (SOLD OUT) 18 de Outubro – MADRID, ES@ La Riviera (SOLD OUT) 21 de Outubro – MUNICH, DE @ Muffathalle 23 de Outubro – MILAN, IT @ Alcatraz 24 de Outubro – VIENNA, IT @ Ottakringer Brauerei 25 de Outubro – KRAKÓW, PL @ Kwadrat 26 de Outubro – WARSAW, PL @ Progresja 28 de Outubro – PRAGUE, CZ @ MeetFactory (SOLD OUT) 31 de Outubro – BERLIN, DE @ Metropol 1 de Novembro  – COPENHAGEN, DK @ DR Koncerthuset(SOLD OUT) 2 de Novembro – STOCKHOLM, SE @ Nalen (SOLD OUT) 4 de Novembro – HAMBURG, DE @ Stage Club (SOLD OUT)

6 de Novembro – TILBURG, NL @ O13 7 de Novembro  – KÖLN, DE @ Essigfabrik 8 de Novembro – ANTWERP, BE @ Trix 9 de Novembro – ZURICH, CH @ Dynamo

[innytoes]

More Triffid AU thoughts because apparently the book stuck with me even though I read it like 15 years ago.

-So Reggie wakes up to his brother screaming that he can’t see, and freaks out, and rushes to get help only to open the door and it’s chaos outside because pretty much EVERYONE can’t see. His parents are gone (or did they even come home?). He does the first thing he can think of: put Stevie on his bike and ride to the Molinas, dodging and serving blind pedestrians along the way.

-The band was supposed to have a Meteor Watch Party, which Reggie missed, but it is very convenient because everyone is already in one place. They quickly piece together what happened, because Reggie (who slept through the meteor shower) is the only one who can see.

-Reggie and Carlos quickly retrofit their zombie apocalypse plans. He feels bad raiding a grocery store, even worse raiding the pharmacy, but Alex needs his inhalers and if this isn’t temporary, things could get very bad very fast.

-He realises this when he’s nearly kidnapped by a cop who can’t see anymore, who tries to hold him at gunpoint and force him to be his guide. (He throws a can of beans at a car, making the alarm go off and distracting the cop, and hightails it out of there, figuring out pretty quickly that letting anyone know he can see is a very, very bad idea.)

-Luke 100% is the first to stop freaking out because they can still play music, right?

-Over the next few weeks, things both get very bad (fires, car accidents, desperate people) and then very quiet. Reggie spends time raiding more stores for supplies (sometimes with the help of Luke or Ray, though he hates the idea of putting Ray in danger when he has kids to worry about).

-He also goes around to all of their family’s houses. His parents are nowhere to be found, but he packs up some stuff for him and Stevie. Tía Victoria isn’t home, and the hospital she works at is such chaos that Reggie quickly flees.

-He never, ever tells Luke what he found on the Patterson’s street. And he makes sure that if they ever regain sight, Luke will never, ever see it either.

-He visits Flynn’s family, and they seem to be doing more alright than the other survivors he’s passed that are still in their homes. Probably because Flynn’s mom has been blind for most of her life already. The first thing Flynn says when she realises Reggie can see is: Reggie, give it to me straight.... does my outfit clash? (And if Reggie has a little hysterical breakdown at that, well, he’s earned it.) Eventually, they all agree to move in together, because it’s safer to stick together.

-Alex’ parents and family aren’t home, but he said to check at the church as well, which he does. He’s surprised to find that there are a number of sighted people at the church, so he lingers at the open door and stares blankly at a spot on the wall and listens to the sermon. When he starts hearing words thrown around like ‘gods will’ and ‘women of breeding age’ and ‘repopulation’, he decides it’s time to get Alex’ sister out of there really fast. He speeds back to the house to get Alex (since he’s not sure if Olivia would come with him if without that).

-When Alex arrives, Reggie carefully leads him to Olivia. Alex tells his folks he’s taking Olivia, and that there isn’t shit they can do about it, because they can’t see. (Olivia is more than happy to go with them if it means not being a baby incubator.) They get out, leaving Alex’ parents behind wondering if Alex can see (he can’t, but with some silent directing by Reggie he could fake it). They did agree beforehand if anything were to happen, Reggie would grab Liv and run.

-100% Alex made sure his parents thought that The Gays were Immune, which probably put a spanner in the whole cult thing the people at the church were trying to set up.

-The amount of anxiety Alex goes through, not only being blind but now being solely responsible for his sister, it’s pretty intense. Especially when you can’t just run away and hide or go for a walk alone to clear your head. There’s a lot of frantic drumming.

-Ray teaches Reggie how to drive, even when blind. He’s mostly working off muscle memory, listening to the sound of the engine, and hoping Reggie’s good enough at steering to not hit anything. They don’t need to go fast, but being able to drive means fewer trips to the supermarket. (Also, when Alex eventually bangs through one of his drums and freaks out, Luke and Reggie go get him a new one. A blind Luke in a music store is a Bad Idea and he’s banned from subsequent trips unless he promises to hold Reggie or Julie’s hand the entire time.)

-Eventually life quiets down, which is both good and horrific if you think about it long enough. They move Flynn’s family into the Molina house. They start checking all the houses and figuring out who is still there, who is gone. Reggie buries more bodies than he cares to remember. But it’s better than his friends tripping over them in the streets.

-Then, the triffids break out of their farms and it’s like the apocalypse all over again.

-After a few years they do have things pretty under control. They’ve fenced off a large part of the neighbourhood. The only other survivor in the fence is an old lady that Reggie goes to check on every day, until he doesn’t have to anymore. She wrote him a note in frightening good penmanship for someone who couldn’t see, that he didn’t need to feel bad, but that her meds ran out a long while ago and she was ready to go meet her husband.

-Every week they patrol the fences and set fire to any mature triffids they find. Who would have thought anyone would trust Luke with a flamethrower, let alone a blind Luke?

-Flynn’s dad used to be an electrician and they rig up some was to get power and collect and purify water.

-The sheer feels of Ray teaching the boys how to shave without being able to see. (Luke complains about having to until Julie is like: no kisses until you get rid of that itchy upper lip. He turns around real fast after that.) 

-Willie was locked in the basement as punishment by his shitty evil foster dad. When Caleb figured out what was going on the next day, and that people who didn’t see the meteors could still see, you better believe he made sure to cuff Willie or tie him up so he couldn’t escape and use him to his advantage.

-Eventually Willie manages to escape, possibly by luring Caleb over a cliff or to a triffid or something.

-Willie settles in to the Molina-Taylor homestead pretty easily. He’s fed properly, they let him skate around the abandoned streets, Carlos even helps him build a ramp. He can see Reggie is nearing a breaking point and takes over some of his tasks.

-Every evening Reggie helps Flynn find the clothes she wants to wear. When Willie comes back with clothes from his raiding-outside-the-neighbourhood trips, he always makes sure to describe them to Flynn in detail so she knows what she’s wearing. He gets her the most fashionable clothes he can find.

-Don’t think about Ray getting sick and getting a fever, and Reggie insisting he’ll stay up with him because he’s the only one who can read the thermostat (besides Willie, who was out all day trying to find meds and is exhausted.) Don’t think about people trying to tell him they’ll just wake him for the reading and he’s already doing so much.

-Don’t think about Reggie shouting ‘He’s my dad too!’ at Julie before immediately apologising, because of the yelling, because of course it’s not the same and he isn’t really...

-And Julie just hugs him and tells him of course Ray is his dad too, but he’s stretching himself too thin. They compromise, Reggie will stay with him until his fever breaks.

-As the teens grow into adults, there are some very serious talks about Privacy. It starts with rotating who gets to sleep out in the studio. Eventually, Julie and Luke move into the house next door, possibly with Flynn (and a good pair of earplugs). They tear down the fence between the two properties for easy acces. Maybe even build a tunnel connecting the two.

-Mr and Mrs Taylor across the street. They’d move back to their house, but it’s too far down the block to be safe. Still, everyone spends a few days moving around furniture to get the house to their liking.

-Alex, Reggie and Willie don’t move out, though they might move into the studio loft. Sometimes when needed, Reggie or Willie will sleep over at one of the other houses. But Alex is way too anxious to learn a whole new layout of a whole new house, and he doesn’t want to leave Liv alone, even though tells Alex it’s fiiine, she’s practically an adult now, Lex. (”You are sixteen! That is not an adult! I don’t care if it is the apocalypse!”)

-After the first successful beach trip, they maybe take a few more in larger groups. Not too often that it becomes a routine, because leaving their home defenseless is a bad idea. But for very special occasions, they do.

-It is a very awkward conversation when Julie is like: hey Reggie can you do me a favour and tell me if this has one line or two lines? Yeah thanks that’s what I thought so anyway I’m pregnant. And Reggie is like WHY DID YOU JUST SHOVE SOMETHING YOU PEED ON AT MY FACE before realising what this means and then he’s ecstatic and calling dibs on godfather and second-coolest uncle (after Carlos of course.)

-Luke and Julie 100% had a discussion where the went back and forth between ‘should I take a pregnancy test and ask Reggie or Willie’ vs ‘do we just not say anything and hope nobody bumps into Julie until Reggie or Willie very awkwardly brings up her giant stomach’ but in the end they decided they probably needed to tell people because of the whole ‘eating for two’ and ‘Willie can you please go and steal some pregnancy vitamins’ thing.

-They all live happily ever after except for the whole triffid apocalypse thing.

[nehswritesstuffs]

Embrace the Raven - A Halloween Whouffle Event - Part 3 of 5

Hi all–the Clara’s Diner Discord server is at it again, except this time it’s a bunch of spooky and spoopy prompts for this, the autumn season!

1300 words; this one definitely presented a specific challenge, which is sort of why I chose it to begin with; another AU just because I can; someone who went through school in the UK please feel free to correct me on if the books mentioned would even be close to things Clara might teach (willingly or not)

Days 15-21: Genre Shift | Body Swap

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

“Alright kids, I need you to leave your books with me for the weekend—we get new ones on Monday, ones we actually want to read this time,” Clara reminded the students as the bell rang, cutting her short on time. It was the last class of the day, which meant that it was also the most boisterous. Within moments, there were no tweens in the room, a pile of well-worn copies of The Day of the Triffids on the table, and the blissful sound of silence beginning to permeate the building.

The end of the day was such a guilty pleasure.

Clara took her time getting over to the table and placing the books all in neat piles. There was enough for her to confidently say that everyone had remembered to turn their copy in—it was going to make the sign-in process a breeze—they seemed to be getting better at this whole thing, which was a good sign. Possibly by the school year’s end, they might actually have graduated to orderly stacks, though she figured that it would depend on how much of the required curriculum they were able to concentrate all the way through in order to get to the things that she slipped in.

“Delivery of materials,” announced a voice, accompanied by a gentle knock on the open door. She didn’t need to look away from cleaning the whiteboard to know it was the substitute caretaker, a wiry man with greying brown hair and a burring Glasgow accent softened by prior years in academia. The Doctor, as he was often called, wheeled in a cart possessing all the copies of Hogfather she would need on Monday, so he could also wheel out The Day of the Triffids as well. She heard him shuffling around by the books, the paperback tomes flopping unceremoniously against the particleboard tabletop.

“You’re early,” she commented.

“I need to get work done,” he replied casually. “It might be temporary, but it’s still my job.”

“I know… just…” She paused before wiping clean the last bit of writing, contemplating where she wanted the conversation to go. He made the decision for her, appearing behind her in order to place his hands on her waist and a kiss atop her hair. It was an admittedly good decision, though one she was careful about making during official school hours. “A bit handsy today, are we?”

“It will be good when we don’t have to tiptoe around everything and everyone here,” he admitted. She leaned back against him, turning the hold into a hug, taking advantage of the fact he ran warm on chilly, rainy days such as the one they found themselves in. “Coburn better find a permanent replacement soon.”

“The replacement could be you.”

“As much as I enjoy the prospect of spending more time with you during the day, I think it would be best if I take that band position on the other side of the borough instead,” he grumbled. “Being in different schools would be less messy anyhow.”

“Our schedules would at least align.”

“…and I’m tired of bouncing from job to job; I can finally be in charge of a music department again.”

“You never know what might happen if you stay here.”

“That’s true…” He held her as she turned around in his grasp, placing her hands on his chest. “I didn’t think I’d be running into someone quite like you when I pulled a favor for a job at an old mate’s school.”

“You really can find the weirdest things in the oddest of places,” Clara chuckled lowly. She cradled his face in her hands as she guided him down towards her.

Their lips were about to brush against one another when a loud bang in the corridor caught them off-guard, making them both jump. It wasn't a close clap of thunder, but sounded more like something heavy falling on the tile. A chill washed over them, an uneasy feeling filtering through their bodies from toes on up.

“What was that…?” the Doctor wondered aloud. He let go of Clara and moved cautiously towards the door, unsure of what was waiting out there for him. A quick peek and he saw that the corridor was completely empty. “That’s odd…”

“Do you think there’s someone playing a prank?” she asked in exasperation. “It is October, after all.”

“No… that was too loud a noise to have been anything but right there,” he said, motioning towards a nearby spot of floor. The two adults wondered how they were being subject to such teen-sourced anguish, only for there to be a loud noise that spooked them from inside the classroom.

“Jesus!” Clara swore as she stormed back into the classroom. “I swear, don’t you mess with me! It will go on your record!”

Silence.

“It’s probably a tape recorder,” the Doctor sighed. He followed her, watching as she began to look around the room for evidence of teenaged tampering. “Did you remain in the room all day today?”

“Tape recorder? I thought you were just experienced in the sack, not straight-up old,” she sniped. He rolled his eyes as he investigated different nooks and crannies, pointedly ignoring her comment. “Do you really think they just planted a speaker somewhere?”

“You never really know.”

It was her turn to roll her eyes as he turned the phrase on her. Clara went to look underneath her desk, making sure nothing was planted there while she stepped out to the loo earlier. There was nothing and she sat in her chair as the Doctor attempted to peek behind a shelving unit.

Just then, clear on the other side of the room, the piles of paperbacks began jettisoning themselves off the table and cart they had been sitting on. Pratchett mixed with Wyndham, the entire thing becoming a major mess. Clara jolted to her feet and went towards the Doctor, while he went towards her.

“What the bloody hell is that?” she whispered, eyes wide.

“I don’t know…” He began to step forwards, only for her to grab him by the hand. “What…?”

“Why are they doing that?” she wondered aloud. “This is more than a simple prank.” She stepped forward, putting herself between the Doctor and the books.

“Clara, I...”

“Let me be brave,” she insisted. She took a few more steps until she was in the middle of the paperback carnage, staring at the bit of air above the table. She squared her shoulder and set her face, knowing she was not going to be cowed in her own classroom. “Who are you and what do you want?”

Then, out of thin air, a figure began to appear. It was a woman, around her age, looking like she was a translucent school marm straight out of the 1960s. The apparition was partway in the table, partway above it, and it scowled at her intensely.

“Get out of my room,” the apparition ordered. “This is my classroom.”

“Not anymore,” Clara fired back. She widened her stance slightly, solidifying it, as she crossed her arms over her chest. “This is Miss Oswald’s Literature Class.”

“History,” the apparition stated. “This is Miss Wright’s History Class.”

“Maybe it was fifty years ago, but not anymore.”

“Clara, I think we need to get out of here.”

“I am arguing with a ghost—don’t test me right now.”

“You know there’s no such things as ghosts, which means we need to get out of here right now.” The apparition grew in size, towering over them both, head threatening to phase through the ceiling.

“THIS IS MY CLASSROOM,” it bellowed. As it inhaled, the Doctor took Clara by the hand and the two began to sprint towards the door.

The door shut and locked, trapping them inside.

Oh shit.

[tottwritesfanfic]

So, like the fool I am, I learnt that Writers’ Inktober is also a thing, so naturally I had to get in on that.I’m not sure I’ll do it every day from the prompt list I found (I’ll link that over here as well I guess!), but I’m starting out properly at least.

It’s been a while since I wrote with a cartridge pen, so it was nice to get back into it again! This is actually the first time I’ve used the pen in the photos - I have another which I typically use because it has the most comfy grip of all time, but that one needs cleaning out.

And, yes. This is angst set in the Triffid AU. Sorry about that. I blame my music playlist for shuffling to a melancholy track right as I got started.

[lhs3020b]

In a very unexpected moment tonight, I found myself writing something. Yes, some actual fiction. Umm, wow. It’s not particularly-polished, I certainly wouldn’t call it “good”, but nonetheless, here is a thing.

This is a ghost from an old, 2015-era writing project of mine. You probably will have seen bits of it before. This would be the opening portion of the novel, if the novel was still in any way a possibility. The two main characters meet and compare notes on themselves and the confusing mess of the world they live in.

(A passing content note: their world is recovering in some ways and has been worse inside both Tai and Corazon’s lifetimes, but it is not a happy place, and some very bad things have happened. So a measure of reader discretion is advised.)

(Also, yes, the ending is quite abrupt - it’s 2 AM so I should probably consider calling it a night.)

Anyway, have about ~3500 words of fiction...

               ‘We have arrived at the Corazon residence,’ the car said.

               Lieutenant Tai Zhang looked up from her phone. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Lock the doors while I’m out, but don’t drive off. I should only be a few minutes.’

               The car said, ‘For insurance purposes I’m instructed to remind you that I have an anti-carjacking protocol-’

               ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Tai sighed. ‘If one of the locals tries to put you up on bricks, you’ll zap them with a stun charge and zoom off. And howl for the police. Who may even turn up, who knows. And Dr Corazon and I will have to walk back to the Fleet base. I get it, I get it. Now let me get on with my job.’

               The car took the hint and shut up. It wasn’t a full Tech Mind, of course – no way could the Navy afford their contracting rates – but its social simulation unit wasn’t entirely stupid either. The door unfolded upwards. Hot, damp January air flooded in, along with the smells of the city. Vegetation, oil, a hint of sewage and a whiff of something rotten. Actually, compared to the New Dockside area, this wasn’t so bad.

               Tai climbed out of the car; the door hissed down behind her. She took a look around herself. She was stood on a cracked and pitted curbside. Amazingly, it looked like pre-Contact concrete. There was certainly no sign that it had experienced any recent maintenance. To judge from the fractured blocks, some of which lay out of place, it may well not have had any repairs since the early 2040s.

               ‘At least there is a pavement around here,’ Tai muttered. New London had a lot of dirt tracks; the first tsunami had sunk a good chunk of the old city and the quakes had done for a lot of what survived. Rock One, after all, had come down right in the middle of the North Sea. Whilst it had been the smallest of the two impactors, nonetheless it had been big enough. It was fair to say that coastal and near-coastal Europe had had a bad day.

               Just as the car had promised, Corazon’s house was right in front of her. Tai was interested to note that it was a treehouse, clearly post-Contact. All bulbous and round, big fat leaves hanging over its top. Windows and a door had been incorporated into the bioengineered wood. The house-tree seemed fully grown, and from the lichen on the bark, it had to be at least a few years old. As she looked around, Tai saw that most of the neighbouring dwellings were also treehouses, though confusingly, there was a surviving pre-Contact apartment block on the corner of the street. The brickwork and the old-style PVC windows looked incredibly out of place, the building equivalent of a fly stuck in amber.

               Tai fingered the collar of her uniform jacket. She felt uncomfortably-hot. A glance at her phone revealed that the air temperature was hovering around twenty-five degrees Celsius – not exceptionally hot for the time of year, but certainly enough to be unpleasant. No point wasting any time, then. She needed to go and collect their guest.

               Tai opened the little picket-fence gate in front of the house and started down the path. Next to her, an array of solar panels was tracking the Sun. Corazon’s garden also had a backup wind turbine, parked on the opposite side of the path. Apparently the academic didn’t trust the municipal grid. Honestly, Tai couldn’t blame him, though on the other hand it did seem a bit excessive. After all, this was the 2060s, not the ‘50s. Even a chaotic urban mess like New London averaged about six hours’ reliable electricity per day.

               Tai reached the door. She lifted her hand and knocked smartly on it, rapping three times. It was an Academy instinct, repeatedly burnt into her brain by the Fleet’s officer candidate school. You always knocked three times and waited before entering, unless of course you really liked doing lots of push-ups. This January morning was, in Tai’s opinion, far too hot for push-ups.

               She heard some clattering from inside the house. ‘Wait, wait, I’m on my way!’ a muffled voice said. It was male, with an accent she couldn’t quite place.

               The door opened. Tai blinked. ‘Uh,’ she said.

               The man looked at her, seeming a bit confused. Then recognition flickered across his face. ‘Oh of course!’ he said. ‘You’re from the Fleet, aren’t you. They said they’d be sending a car, though I did wonder if it would actually turn up.’

               Tai managed to recover her surprise. She hadn’t realised that her passenger-to-be was old. From his grey hair and wrinkled face, he couldn’t be under fifty. With a slight shiver, Tai realised what that meant – he’d been born, and had grown up, beforehand. Before all of it happened.

               ‘Dr Carlos Corazon, I assume?’ she said. He nodded. ‘Lovely to meet you. I’m Lieutenant Tai Zhang, and I’ve been tasked with bringing you to the shuttle-dock. We’ll be going up to the Relentless together, for the shakedown flight.’

               Corazon blinked. ‘They’re farming out their officers on taxi duty? The Navy really must be a bit strained.’

               Oh great, Corazon was one of those people who thought the Navy was a waste of time. It was certainly a common opinion throughout AU-Earth. Certainly it wasn’t entirely wrong. Even the most powerful human-built warship wouldn’t do much damage to even a small Spiral Fleet cruiser. Still, Tai felt this criticism missed the point somewhat. Even if the AU-E Fleet was mostly an exercise in public relations, it was still important to show that the AU-E had something to offer to the wider Concordium.

               Also, Corazon had another point, though she doubted he realised it. Tai had no sooner arrived at the ship then she’d found herself immediately ordered off it again, to go and collect some random civilian. She supposed it reflected the last-minute chaos going on within the ship’s complement as it got ready for its first ever flight as an actual ship of the line. A lot of the ship’s officers hadn’t even arrived until yesterday; Tai wasn’t even the latest assignee to make their way to their birth. They were due to undock in less than twenty-four hours; this was not the best use of her time. Tai should be down in Engineering, meeting with her department, getting to know the crew’s names and faces and getting their shift-schedules and duty rosters finalised.

               Instead she was here, stood on a doormat somewhere out in New London’s half-resurrected urban carcass.

               ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the sooner we’re under way, the better.’

               The Relentless was the Fleet’s newest warship; its maiden voyage would also be carrying a complement of notaries. Some of them were journalists, some of them were various apparatchiks linked to the current federal coalition government, and a few were people of note from wider society. Dr Corazon was apparently somewhat known within the astronomical community, presumably hence his invitation.

               ‘Cool,’ Corazon said. ‘Just let me grab my bag…’

               He turned around and disappeared back into the house. Tai fought the urge to roll her eyes at his disorganisation. A few moments later, the academic reappeared, clutching a carry-bag. To Tai’s eyes it didn’t look like he had remotely enough changes of clothes – but, she decided that was his problem and not hers.

               ‘This way,’ she said, gesturing him toward the car.

               He closed the door of the house behind him, locking then double-locking it. ‘Just let me arm the security system,’ he said, pulling out his phone. Tai waited patiently as Corazon fiddled with the keys. Something beeped and he looked satisfied. His phone disappeared back into a pocket. This at least was an urge Tai could understand.

               ‘Lots of crime around here?’ she asked.

               He shrugged. ‘Some. Barnet’s not too bad. There are worse boroughs, it’s actually fairly good around here. Most people on this street have formal jobs, you know?’

               ‘That might attract the gangs,’ Tai noted. ‘Rich neighbourhood and all that.’

               Corazon shrugged. ‘My security system is a licensed Tech Mind unit. Non-sentient, of course, but advanced enough to handle itself.’

               ‘That and a treehouse,’ Tai observed. ‘Those are triffid products. You clearly like your aliens.’

               They started walking toward the car. Corazon said, ‘Might as well get used to it. They’re here to stay, you know. I probably know that better than most.’

               ‘If you don’t mind me asking,’ Tai said, ‘how old are you?’

               Corazon rolled his eyes. ‘I knew that question was coming. I get that a lot. Apparently I’m the first old man some of our undergraduates have ever seen.’

               That was unlikely in practise – even today, about twenty percent of the AU-E’s population had been born before 2040 – but it wasn’t entirely-impossible either. People in the mid-to-late 2040s and the ‘50s had produced a lot of kids, and that was probably just as well given how few of them there had been left. The New Baby Boom was showing signs of cooling down, though honestly, that was probably not a bad thing either. The planet wasn’t in a great state, and overshooting its carrying capacity was probably a bad idea.

               ‘You didn’t answer the question,’ Tai said.

               Corazon looked irritated. ‘No, I suppose I didn’t, did I? All right, if you insist, I’m sixty-three. I was born in 2004.’

               Tai blinked. ‘Shit,’ she said.

               ‘Yeah,’ Corazon agreed. There wasn’t any need to elaborate on that one.

               An awkward silence descended as they approached the car. Tai sent the all-clear to the security system. The doors were folding up and quite suddenly, it began to get dark. Tai felt confused – she couldn’t see any clouds and the forecast for the day had been for clear weather.

               ‘Oh,’ Corazon said. ‘Of course. Right on cue!’ He pointed up at the sky.

               Tai glanced quickly upwards. A big bite was eating the side of the Sun. Corazon said, ‘Parasol Two. Bang on time.’

               Oh, of course. Tai had completely forgotten about the parasol-satellite’s scheduled appointment with the Sun.

               ‘Let’s get in the car,’ Tai said. Even though this was a relatively upscale neighbourhood, she didn’t really want to be stood around on the pavement during the parasol-eclipse. There was such a thing as asking for trouble.

               Corazon needed no urging. Moments later they were both safely ensconced in the car. Outside, smoothly and without fuss, an artificial night was falling over the city. Lights flickered on inside buildings, stars bloomed across the now-nightfallen heavens and a few of the streetlights even turned on. The rest were either broken or missing their bulbs.

               ‘Car,’ Tai said, ‘take us to the Fleet’s dockside complex, please.’

               ‘Acknowledged,’ the vehicle’s electronic voice said.

The electric engine gently purred to life and the headlights came on. The car pulled out from the curb and began its journey through the city.

‘It will rain later, I expect,’ Corazon remarked. ‘Once the Parasol moves over, I mean. The drop in air temperature can drive condensation in the clouds.’

The forecast hadn’t mentioned that, but Tai supposed it wouldn’t be surprising if it was wrong.

‘Do you find the eclipses weird?’ Tai asked. She realised, just a moment too late, that the question was probably too personal and probably too judgemental. Her passenger certainly thought so. Even in the internal lights of the car, his face darkened.

‘Young lady,’ Corazon snapped, ‘I find everything about this world weird. This is nothing like the place I thought I’d grow old in. It’s the same planet, but a different universe. Though I’m sure that won’t make much sense to you. From the looks of you I’m guessing you’re a post-Contact child.’

He was, Tai thought, rather patronising. She wondered if it was deliberate. No, she didn’t think so. It was just how he was. Perhaps this had been normal behaviour, perfectly average for the world prior to June the Eighth, 2040.

‘I was born in 2042,’ Tai said. ‘I never knew my parents. They got Lung Rot and died not long after I was born.’

The academic didn’t appear to have heard her. He was still staring upwards at the sky.

‘No,’ Corazon said, ‘at least the eclipses make sense. Giant mirror-satellites in orbit, blocking out some sunlight, keeping the temperatures down. Stopping a damaged atmosphere from frying the planet. People did have ideas like that, you know, before. The Contact War made it worse, but climate change existed before 2040. Hell, I vaguely remember hearing about it back in the 2000s!’

Tai boggled. ‘You remember back then?’

‘A bit. I was six in 2010, remember? I do recall the family being very upset about something around ‘08, though I didn’t really understand it.’

‘What could it have been?’ Tai asked. ‘There weren’t any problems then!’

‘There was a planet-wide economic collapse,’ Corazon said. ‘Though nothing like as bad as what happened in the Forties – or the Twenties, for that matter. Anyway it hardly matters now. It was something we did to ourselves, without any external help.’ He looked at the sky, and shuddered. A haunted expression flooded across his face. ‘You know, not like that.’

The artificial night had filled the sky with stars. Some of them were moving – spacecraft, on their journeys to and from any number of destinations. A lot of them were concentrated in the direction of the Moon, though there was no surprise there. The Moon was the main reason the Spiral Concordium bothered with Sol and its planets, after all. It was indirectly the source of all this trouble.

But Corazon wasn’t looking at any of that. His eyes were locked on something else, lower down in the sky. It was pitted and cratered, a rough spheroid, greyish in colour. It was currently in crescent phase, hanging low in the sky and close to the artifically-occluded Sun. But there was no mistaking it.

‘Rock Three,’ Corazon said. ‘That fucker. The one that would have ended us.’

It was harmless now, of course. The 3008th Division of the Spiral Fleet had seen to that, stabilising it onto a safe-if-low orbit around the Earth. But the engineers of the New And Bountiful Prosperity Combine had done their work correctly – had Rock Three impacted, it would have been sufficient to end the Earth’s biosphere, and hide all the evidence of New Prosperity’s crimes forever. The Moon would have been theirs, along with all its reserves of precious Lovecraftium, and the uninhabitable neighbouring planet would have been passed off as a tragic cosmic accident.

‘Three hundred miles wide,’ Corazon said. ‘They actually towed it in all the way from the Kuiper Disc. It wasn’t even in our records before they tossed it at us. Not even a tsunami-making rock. An ocean-boiling rock.’

Rock Three was now a de facto second moon and a permanent fixture in the Earth’s skies, but it was also something that had very nearly been the tombstone for an entire planet. For all the horror they had inflicted, for all the hundreds of millions of people they’d killed, Rocks One and Two had merely been the opening salvos.

‘And of course they tossed in Lung Rot,’ Tai said. ‘As a nice little fuck-you parting-shot.’

‘Yeah, had that.’ Corazon looked grim, then he shrugged. ‘Wasn’t fun. It was like doing Covid all over again. Just joyous. Gotta love hacking up fungal slime out of your own alveoli all day.’

He shuddered. It was a whole-body convulsion.

The Contact War and the two Rocks had been bad, but it was Lung Rot that had done the real, lasting damage. During the early Forties, people had been dying fast enough that the survival of the species had seemed in question for a time, though in practise the Spiral Concordium would never have allowed that. Even if it required raising a cloned population somewhere else, in some carefully-sterilised biodome on some other planet, the Concordium would not have allowed an actual extinction-event. The whole point of the galactic union, for all of its many flaws, was preventing exactly that sort of horror. The Contact War itself should never have happened, of course, but once the Concordium had belatedly become aware of what New Prosperity was doing, they had moved to shut it down. New Prosperity no longer existed; the entire organisation had been declared traitors and anyone who survived the Battle of Earth had been mercilessly hunted down. If there were any former Prosperity scions left out there somewhere, they knew better by now then to advertise their survival.

Lung Rot had been a vicious punch in the face, a final little parting-present from New Prosperity, the spores air-dropped into multiple locations across the Earth even as the Combine’s forces crumbled under the Spiral assault. No-one was really sure why they’d done it. It had gained them nothing; if Rock Three had left any questions unanswered, then Lung Rot surely had removed any doubt about the Combine’s intentions. Their fall had been absolute, from one of the oldest, wealthiest and most-celebrated organisations in the Milky Way to one of the most-despised collections of traitors who had ever lived.

Suddenly, Tai had to talk. The urge was abrupt, dominating, complete. It was probably also a bad idea, but you didn’t always get the choice with these things. The words were flowing from her mouth, and like it or not, they weren’t going to just magically turn off.

‘My earliest actual memory is when they sprayed the camps,’ Tai said. ‘I was in one of the refugee ones, just another orphaned toddler. I had a cough by then, of course. Everyone did. There was space in our tent – a lot of people had been taken out. New people weren’t coming in, not anymore. I didn’t really know what it meant then, of course. But then one day people were – excited? It was weird. I’d never seen them like that. There was suddenly not any crying. People were hugging each other and smiling. I remember they pulled me out of the tent. People were coming out of the tents, everywhere. There was an actual crowd. Cheering, even! It was some triffids that came through. They were pulling a spray-tank. They sprayed all of us – one of them even shoved the nozzle in my mouth!’

‘And the retroviral agent re-wrote your lungs,’ Corazon noted. ‘So they now secrete a natural fungicide, keeping the Lung Rot mycelium at subclinical levels. Yeah, something similar happened to me. Kind of crazy, one of the happiest days of my life, you know? The day in 2045, when the aliens came to genetically-engineer all of us.’ He shook his head. ‘Flying saucers spraying the cities with bio-agents, and people dancing in the streets below! Would’ve been unimaginable just ten years before.’

This chatter was, of course, a normal thing. Tai had had lots of conversations like this. It was quite an average event for people to compare their traumas – virtually everyone living in the AU-Earth had some emotional burden that they were carrying around with them. It was true that social conditions were improving – things were merely “bad” now, rather then the “borderline-apocalyptic” of twenty years previously – but an important part of getting to know someone was trying to gently figure out where their personal sore spots and pain-points lay. Triggering someone into a flashback episode was generally considered to be a social faux pas, especially if it was done deliberately. There were also practical concerns too. It was difficult for a workplace to function if half its staff were either lying on the floor sobbing or had been driven to flee the building by their own inner demons.

Corazon sighed, shrugged and opened his bag. Tai read that as his cue to dismiss this topic. He’d said his piece. And so, she supposed, had she. He knew not to mention the camps, she knew not to mention Lung Rot. They’d told each other what they needed to know, and now it was time to move smoothly onwards.

To Tai’s surprise, he pulled out a pair of knitting needles and a ball of wool. Moments later, a pair of half-finished socks emerged. ‘I am glad someone decided to save the sheep,’ he remarked. ‘We lost so many of the others.’

Lung Rot had been aimed at humans, of course, but the mycelium was at home in any warm, enclosed, moist, dark space. There had been extinctions all throughout Class Mammalia. A whole host of species now only existed as captive populations in carefully-maintained bio-domes, and they were the lucky ones. Someone had cared enough to try to rescue them, during the end of the world.

And the less said about that, the better.

‘You like knitting?’ Tai asked.

Corazon nodded. ‘Actually I make sixty percent of my income from it. My lectureship is nice, but academia is more like a hobby with an office.’ He started up on the socks, the needles twisting and twirling through a series of moves that Tai’s eyes struggled to follow.

‘You sell socks?’ Tai asked. It didn’t surprise her that Corazon had a side-hustle – the AU-Earth’s budgetary situation was tight, and that was very visible in public sector salaries. It was just as well that Tai’s role as an officer came with government-subsidised housing, because there was no way she could afford anything minimally-pleasant on the private market.

‘No, scarves, usually,’ Corazon said. ‘They’re mostly bought by ash lizards. I got into it almost by accident, when I went to Nine Shadows And Six Rivers back in ’52. Took my needles and stuff with me, made a scarf on the ship out. It was just something to do, you know? But when we arrived I gave it to one of our liaison team, as a gift – and they loved it. Before I knew it I had a waiting-list of gender-bending alien lizards, who all wanted individual knitted scarves.’ He snorted. ‘I got to live the high life out on Nine Shadows, while the rest of the exchange group had to slum it, down on the cheap floors of the arcology.’

‘Oh of course,’ Tai said. ‘They like decoration, don’t they?’

‘They don’t go in for clothes in quite the way we do – heat retention messes up their metabolisms something chronic. But they do go in for decoration. Necklaces, wrist-sheathes, sashes. Scarves. Natural materials are particularly-prized.’ He shrugged. ‘Who would have known that knitted goods would be a key export from this planet?’

[artmakerproductions]

Monsters Vs Aliens AU (#3)

More concepts for the AU (workshopped/collabed w/ @guthrie-odonto)

Gallaxhar (now Gallaxitress; Gal - a - icks-tress, the last bit as if saying mistress), Alien Robot, ReptiliAnt, and the updated version of Brin, now changed to a plant creature, BETH, Bio Engineered Trifunctional Hybrid modelled after Triffids and Audrey Jr. from the original 60’s Little Shop of Horrors.