StoryMaker: Nothing Dies

I know it's been a while since I last used this process for storytelling, so just a reminder, the StoryMaker is a way to create random story ideas using random numbers to determine setting and theme. I first posted about it on this blog here: http://themissingdwarvenphaser.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-storymaker-simple-version.html.

This is another experiment using the StoryMaker. However, this one actually came out of random brainstorming, and I decided to create a real story out of it several days later. In addition, this one ended up being too long a concept to use for one writing exercise. If people are interested, I'll continue the story in later posts. By the way, the StoryMaker roll I used to create this story is listed at the bottom, after the story itself to avoid spoilers.




Avuwav would always remember the day when it all started, not that she ever forgot any other day. November 16th, 2546 by the old calendar. She was in higher education, spending her days in the old facilities and her nights at home, in a dome a good thirty miles from any of the old settlements. The commute wasn't a problem (not via 1,300 mph hypertube, at least,) but few students bothered to even visit the facility. There wasn't any need for it, after all. Any classwork could just be done online in the comfort of home, and besides, the old facility was creepy. Just standing around, studying five-dimensional math or interstellar transportation theory where people once lived and died? Why expose yourself to that emotional paradox?

But Avuwav didn't mind. She was a bit of a traditionalist, who preferred making friends and seeing her professors in person. Besides, she reasoned, what was the point of learning history if you were only going to do it based on theory and holographic projections? If you were going to learn about the past, you should be willing to confront it, get the emotional scale of what it meant, figuratively live in it. Whatever, she thought to herself. At least she wasn't as bad as her history obsessed weirdo friend Qehoxa.

However, on the night of the first incident, all of her justifications vanished away. Night had already fallen when she made her way to the hypertube that would take her home. But she wouldn't get there that night. Just as she made her way into the last hallway out of the ruins of the past, the doors sealed themselves. She stopped, more irritated than worried. A simple malfunction, she assumed, though she couldn't remember the last time she experienced. But then the lights in the hallway started flickering, leaving her in total darkness every few seconds. This shouldn't happen, she realized. More than that, it couldn't. Nothing had been built so haphazardly in centuries.

And then she heard the voice. “Get out,” it whispered, inches away from her, though she could see nothing. A faulty com system? Impossible. That would have resonated all around her from the exact direction of the speakers. But as she stood alone in that dark hallway, surrounded by impossible things, a horrible thought struck her. What if this wasn't some faulty facility equipment? What if the only thing malfunctioning was … her? Only way to be certain. She shut down all external sensor equipment, leaving her in the comforting embrace of pure data. She ran her internal self-diagnostics a dozen times, but every time, she came up clean. A little bad memory here and there, but nobody was perfect. Nothing that would explain such irrational sensory experiences. At any rate, when she returned to the external world, all the strange phenomenon. Even so, rational or not, she didn't hesitate a moment to get the hell out of there.

“What do you think happened, Qehoxa?” Avuwav later asked her friend. As soon as she got out of the hallway, she called her friend. He would be the only one likely to believe her, at least without a mandatory outside full diagnostic. Plus, she figured he would still be at the facility. He practially never leaves. He caught up her with her in the old library, one still containing real books, albeit only reprints of originals sealed in airtight containers who knows where. Qehoxa was flipping through those books now; a mostly pointless endeavor, since he had them all memorized ages ago, but he figured something would catch his optics.

“I have several theories,” he replied. “But most people would call them … well, the humn word was insane.”

Avuwav, who had been wasting countless units of energy by pacing back and forth behind him, was half-convinced that she was already insane, self-diagnostics be damned, but she wasn't about to let him believe that. She waved a hand to demonstrate indifference. “At this point, I'll listen to whatever you have.”

“Well, you know how I took all those Ancient Human Mythology classes?”

“You and about five other students,” she replied, her optics gyrating. “But go ahead.”

“The humans had several myths about this sort of thing. It went by many names: Poltergeist, specter, haunt, wraith, etc. Most commonly, though, it would be called a 'ghost.' Supposedly, a being that dies and paradoxically continues existing, contrary to any law of science. Such beings normally were born out of some sort of emotional trauma, like an unfulfilled goal in life or an especially horrific death.”

“Even if I believed the theory,” Avuwav said, “How would that make sense? Nothing dies. Not anymore, and certainly not here.”

That wasn't 100% true, of course. Simple bacteria and cells sometimes began and end their life cycles in this facility, and the rare insect managed to get inside and die to starvation or accident soon afterwards. But real people didn't die anymore. Avuwav would never get old, never have to contemplate a universe without her. Parts may wear out in time, but they could be easily replaced. Even a particularly catastrophic body failure would just result in her hard memory transferring to a digital storage facility, where it would wait for a day or two until a new body could be made from scratch. She never heard of an android ever truly dying, not in the centuries since the first one had been built.

“Ah, but think back even farther,” Qehoxa offered. “If the death of one person could be so traumatic as to defy physics itself, how much worse would the death of an entire species be? Just imagine what it would be like for your entire kind to go extinct? Sure, most humans just stopped having children when we came along, but some didn't go gently into that good night. There were wars, plagues, biological disasters.”

Avuwav shook her head. “Even if we would be dealing with the ghosts of humanity, why now? Why start … hinting?

“Haunting.”

“Haunting us after hundreds of years?”

Qehoxa shrugged. “Maybe the didn't realize we were something you could haunt. Outside of the last few generations, imagine what we must look like to them. We were thought of as things, once, tools at best. No ghost is going to bother haunting a toaster. But maybe the ghosts finally got wise that we're not just toys spinning their wheels in the ruins of their home. We're they're replacements, and it, to use the human term, pisses them off.”

Avuwav was about to finally order Qehoxa to dismiss this silly idea and get back to real explanations. But then the lights went off, and all the doors in the room, which were still the wooden analog variety, slammed shut.

“Qehoxa,” Avuwav whispered to her friend. “I have good news. I don't entirely think you're crazy anymore.”

“I have good news for you too,” he murmured. “You're definitely not malfunctioning. Not yet, anyway.”

Before they could speak further, the felt something rising up below them. A liquid pooled up and started to flood the room. Avuwav analyzed it and found herself lacking. “What is this?” she asked. “It's not water, too thick. Some sort of polycompound?”

Qehoxa groaned. “Honestly, you skipped Organic Biology as well? It's blood. Part of the human circulatory system, designed to get vital nutrients to tissue and regulated by an organ known as the heart.”

Avuwav started to root through the rising flood. “Well, help me find the heart, then, so we can stop this. What does it look like?”

“I don't think there IS one,” Qehoxa said, suddenly afraid.

“But that makes no sense,” Avuwav said. “You just said that blood is a product of a system that includes the heart. It would logically have to be here.”

“It would. But it isn't.”

The very idea froze Avuwav in fear. If her body had any reason to react to cold weather, it would have shuddered. And if she wasn't terrified already, the spectral disconnected pivot and load system (Qehoxa would later explain to her that it was a “skeleton”) that appeared right in front of her and laughed in her face would have done it.”

Avuwav quietly asked, “What do they WANT from us?”

Qehoxa looked around nervously. “Ghosts are frequently very hostile. They might want to drown us or scare us to death.”

“You want to get out of her before they figure out that's impossible and try something worse?”

“I thought you'd never ask.” Qehoxa charged out of the room, easily shattering the antique door as he went, and the two androids broke into a sprint. Not even bothering with the hypertube system, they simply bolted out of the facility and into the empty wastelands beyond the ancient city.

“What are we going to do?” Qehoxa asked as they fled for home.

“Besides never return to the learning facility again?” Avuwav responded.

“Yes, but in the bigger picture. We could seal all the old ruins, but if the ghosts of a dead civilization have awakened, that wouldn't stop them. And how could we fight them? They defy logic, they violate causality, they make liars out of our sensors. We could never be certain of anything, ever again. Anything could be some plan by the ghosts, and we wouldn't even understand the why of it. This could be the end of us.”

Future + Artificial/Horror-Ghost Story

The StoryMaker (Part 2: Result)

All noise in the tavern stilled as the stranger walked in. They know she meant trouble just by looking at her. The way she walked, her every step a cautious one. The swords she intentionally failed to hide beneath her cloak. But most importantly, the scares that marred her otherwise adorable raccoon face. People just don't get scars. At least, they didn't.

“Gimme something strong,” she muttered to the barkeep, a jittery, anthropomorphic ale keg the locals called Tappy.

Tappy rolled back and forth nervously. “Ma'am, it might be best if you just moved on. This is a quiet town, and we don't want any trouble.”

“Nobody wants trouble,” the raccoon replied. “Or if they do, they go looking for it. That's not why I'm here. I'm here because trouble is looking for you.”

“Ridges?” a mantis in the corner asked. His mother (they recently had another child, so the father is back home regrowing his head,) tried to shush him. They didn't talk about Ridges here. But of course, by then, it was too late.

Somehow, the bar managed to get even quieter. Only the sound of a chirping cricket could be heard, at least until slapped Christopher Cricket and told him to knock it off. “That's right,” the raccoon said. “A pack of 'em was spotted a few miles yonder. So the way I figure it, you folks have three options. Run, get rubbed out, or fight back.”

She sighed at the shudder that ran through the crowd. A mouse fainted. In the land of Toontasia, people knew about conflict. They knew about rampaging goblins, vile wizard conquerors, and the occasional dragon. But they didn't know about death. They didn't even have a word for it, not until the “Ridges” arrived. Supposedly invaders from another dimension, even the sight of one could drive a Toontasian mad. They didn't look that unusual; just monkeys without tails and fur. But that familiar made them even stranger. Their bodies bulged in odd directions, and Toontasian scholars believed that they existed in a dimension beyond their comprehension, a mysterious “third” one they dubbed Dimension Z. Even more horrifying were their bodies. They were covered in bumps, marred with random hairs, wrinkles, and unnatural textures, earning them their name.

Even worse, they brought death. Ever since their arrival at Uncanny Valley, they expanded without hesitation, forming strange cities and bringing devastating weapons upon anything that tried to stop them. And they cared nothing about the suffering of those in their way. In fact, they found it amusing. Every time their weapons caused a Toontasian to shatter into a thousand pieces or reduced one to a pile of ash with two sad eyes, the Ridges only laughed. Especially their children.

Rubellia the Raccoon Ranger knew how this would go. The crowd had been numbed into shock for now, but she had only seconds before it would turn to panic. Steam would shoot out of people's ears, eyes would bug out of their sockets, a few people would just run around in circles shouting “Woo woo woo woo woo!”

“I know what you're thinking,” she started. “But this doesn't have to be another Ratburg or Animate Furniture Junction. We all heard the tales about Happy Bunny Lane. We all learned a harsh lesson at Happy Bunny Lane. But we are ready now. The Ridges are powerful, but they are not invincible.”

“But what can we do?” Tappy asked as he poured Rubellia another drink from his head.

“We have abilities the Ridges can't fathom, can't prepare for. They barely understand what an anvil is, let alone are prepared to be bombarded with them using catapults. To a Ridge, armed is armed. Wait for them to let their guard down, and you can just pull a mallet out of the nowherespace and give them a good whack. And their knowledge of explosives is sorely lacking. One enormous pile of TNT or a few black bombs with sizzling wicks will throw them into a panic.”

“But can't they destroy us with their weapons before we even get in range?” the mantis mother asked.

“Not anymore,” Rubellia assured them. “Because I learned a technique to sneak up on any Ridge, at any time. Best of all, anyone can do it, from the smallest ant to elephant wearing pot and pan armor.” To demonstrate, Rubellia just turned to her side.

“I don't get it,” Tappy commented.

“Neither did I, at first,” Rubellia said. “It's a flaw in their eyes. Just by walking at them sideways, we become practically invisible. Not completely, mind you, but more than enough for our purposes. To them, we look like nothing but thin black lines, and nobody's going to see that coming.”

Testing the StoryMaker (Part 1)

Let me give an example of how I use the StoryMaker from my last post. I will run through a standard set of results, and then create a short story out of the results. I'll use the answers I generate exactly – unless they end up being completely generic (like, say, a fantasy-setting adventure story,) in which case I'll add another setting or theme to get an interesting twist.

The first roll is for the setting. I roll a 20 sided dice and get 13, so standard setting. A second roll of 3 gets me Fantasy/Medieval, and the modifier roll is 19, so I get to add a modifier. That roll is a 4, making the setting Cartoon-based. So this will be a fantasy setting, but cartoon rules will apply. That means a gleeful rejection of the laws of physics whenever humor demands otherwise, literally anything being a potential character, and in most cases, the nonexistence of the concept of death itself.

Next, I get the theme. I roll a 9, resulting in the – horror theme. Could be interesting with cartoon elements. The specific theme that I get is “us as monster.” This refers to any story where humanity is beseiged not by any otherworldly or alien threat, but by the nature of humanity itself. The heroes have to battle humanity's prejudices, paranoia, or greed to survive.

That's a pretty unusual result, so I'll go with that. Now to make a story based on it. I should have the followup post about half an hour or so after this one.