The blaring alarm from the UPS jolted Roger from his dusty hammock, and he fell to the dirt floor of his shack with a torrent of incoherent swearing. The constant piercing electronic fleedling provided unpleasant accompaniment to his mad scramble over towards the far corner of the one-room building, where a brick of batteries roughly the size of a Vauxhall Astra sat. A digital display on the side ticked from 154 to 152 before his eyes, spurring him into a flurry of motion. “Fuggin chunt buggerly,” he blearily slurred as he flew to his desk and shut down his terminal, the server, the router, the antenna relay, and the bank of monitors. When the last lights winked out he unplugged everything from the UPS except for the pair of black cables that snaked under the yellow tarp on the floor – Project Black Lotus needed to be preserved at all costs, after all, and power failure was a crisis he could not afford. This slowed the power drain somewhat, and Roger took the opportunity to dig his palms into his eyes as he tried to wake up. As the gears within his mind shifted from neutral to first, he realized that he couldn’t hear the generators out back under the alarm. As the implications of that thought clicked into place, something banged against the back wall of the shack. Roger’s mouth twisted into a snarl as he grabbed his trusty pump action 12-gauge shotgun from the wall next to the door and hurried outside. The blinding glare of the morning sun slowed Roger’s gait. He rounded the side of his shack to find a half-dozen gormless kangaroos standing around – and upon – his generator. They stared blankly at him as the unmistakable smell of petrol permeated the air. “FUCKIN’ ROOS!” Roger bellowed as he leveled his shotgun at the horizon. A boom echoed through the Outback as the troop scattered into the brush as fast as their legs could carry them. “Yeh, you bettah run, ya fuckin’–!” He drowned the final word of his epithet with another shotgun blast to keep them running, then watched to make sure they were well and truly gone. He was always sorely tempted to just shoot the bloody beasts when they tampered with his generator or dug through his garbage, but he didn’t have a destruction permit. The last thing he needed was the government paying attention to what he was up to. A shame, really – roo meat paired well with beans. Satisfied the kangaroos wouldn’t be back for a good long while, Roger spat into the dirt and turned to assess the damage the vermin had caused to his generator. A cursory examination showed they had somehow torn the petrol line from the tank – a bit of duct tape and some sealant would fix it, but the tank was now empty. He’d need to make his weekly petrol run a couple days early. He swore again as he shouldered his shotgun and trudged back towards the door to get his tools. The line was easy enough to reconnect and patch up, and Roger filled the tank with the last of the reserve petrol. He heaved back on the starter cord with manly vigor, and the generator roared to life. With a self-satisfied snort, he went back inside and made sure the UPS display was ticking back up again, then plugged everything back in and brought everything back online. While running diagnostic checks on the health of the server, Roger brought up the Draconequus chat to see if anyone had noticed the server downtime. It promptly exploded with notifications. [i][b]Notorious C.I.G.[/b] 9:34 AM @RogerWilco It would appear the Writeoff web site is down. [b]Mumblegrunge[/b] 9:36 AM nuuuuuuu @RogerWilco I still need to vote on prompts! [b]Trips Reruns[/b] 9:37 AM @RogerWilco Why is the website down? [b]Mumblegrunge[/b] 9:37 AM Maybe if we all message him at once we can summon him HEY @RogerWilco [b]Fog[/b] 9:37 AM oh no @RogerWilco [b]Pallada[/b] 9:37 AM hey @RogerWilco [b]Brutus, Forebear of Oxide[/b] 9:38 AM Hey @RogerWilco, are we still on for MtG later tonight? Also, the server is down. [b]basildragon[/b] 9:38 AM Help, @RogerWilco - I'm trying to recruit a new member and I can't access the site rules page! [b]Coldflower[/b] 9:38 AM Yo, @RogerWilco! [b]Trips Reruns[/b] 9:38 AM @RogerWilco [b]MargarinePsycho[/b] 9:38 AM @RogerWilco[/i] This went on for several pages. “Fuuuuck,” Roger grimaced to himself. The diagnostics suite gave him the green light, so he kicked the web site back online and shot a quick message to the chat. [i][b]RogerWilco[/b] 10:11 AM The server is back online and the web site is live again. Apologies for the interruption. [b]Mumblegrunge[/b] 10:12 AM Hooray! We did it! [b]Rhetorical Interrogative[/b] 10:12 AM Huzzah! Thank you, Roger. [b]Mumblegrunge[/b] 10:12 AM IT WAS ME [b]Trips Reruns[/b] 10:12 AM It was Roger [b]Mumblegrunge[/b] 10:12 AM FIGHT ME, TRIPS[/i] Roger rolled his eyes and closed the chat, then wandered outside to set about strapping a pair of empty five-gallon drums to his dirt bike for the long trek towards civilization and fuel. While he did so, he cast his gaze about the surrounding countryside – at the scrub brush clinging to the violently orange dirt, the pair of raptors idly wheeling in the sky, the slow passage of clouds across the infinite expanse of hazy blue sky. It filled him with a wistful sort of wonder, and it made the necessity of shunning civilization for the sake of Project Black Lotus all the more tolerable. The laughing call of a kookaburra brought Roger back to his senses. As he went back inside to get his helmet and goggles, he saw his neighbor sprawled against the lone tree that grew next to the shack, and raised a hand in greeting. “G’morning, Tobias.” The huntsman spider replied with a neighborly wave of his foreleg. Roger donned his helmet, goggles, and gloves. “I’m headed inna town to grab supplies. D’ya need anythin’?” Tobias paused for a moment, then shook himself no. He hopped down off the tree and scuttled off into a nearby shrub. “Right, then. Good hunting, mate.” Roger mounted his bike and kicked it into gear, then sped off into the bush. It was a seventy kilometer journey south to Glendambo, the closest hub of civilisation, and he needed to be swift if he wanted to make it back in time for Magic the Gathering. [hr] The buzz of crickets provided a pleasant background din as Roger hovered over a pot of simmering beans on the camp stove as dusk settled over the outback. He popped the top on a can of Cooper’s Finest, gave the beans a hearty whiff, nodded, and killed the heat. He tossed the empty can of Dodger Brand Baked Beans (“the dankest beans for the discerning connoisseur”) in the recycling bag that hung next to the stove, then gave the pot a stir and brought it over to his desk. He sat in his office chair and stared at his bank of monitors. Only a handful of minutes before the votes would be tallied for the next Writeoff prompt – a handful of minutes before he knew what the framework would be for the next batch of data for Project Black Lotus. He cautiously blew over the pot before tucking in. He savored the robust bean flavor as he reviewed the chat log for the day. [i][b]MargarinePsycho[/b] 9:20 PM *shouts* Fight, fight! *whispers* kiss, kiss [b]Pigasos[/b] 9:21 PM Butters :P [b]Pallada[/b] 9:21 PM Every day we stray further from Stalin’s grace. [b]Trips Reruns[/b] 9:24 PM Ugh, I’m editing this piece for a commission on a deadline and it’s such a slog So much shifting back and forth between tenses [b]Fog[/b] 9:25 PM would you say you were… past tense with this particular writer? [b]Trips Reruns[/b] 9:25 PM This is no time for hilarious wordplay![/i] Roger nearly snorted his beans. It would be ideal if the humor of the group would translate well with the data feed from the chat, but time would tell one way or the other soon enough. [i][b]Pigasos[/b] 9:26 PM Trips, speaking of words What would be the word for reminding someone of something over and over again? Annoying, etc [b]Enlightened Pastry[/b] 9:26 PM Would “nag” suffice, Pigasos? [b]Trips Reruns[/b] 9:26 PM nag [b]False_Fedora[/b] 9:27 PM Pester might also work. [b]Enlightened Pastry[/b] 9:27 PM “Harp on” may work as well, depending on context. [b]Pigasos[/b] 9:28 PM I think “nag” is what I was looking for, thanks all! You are all lovely.[/i] Roger nodded as he chewed. Chat sessions like this were the reason he piped the chat feed into Project Black Lotus in addition to the stories and reviews – a more stream-of-consciousness line of dialogue to assist in the day-to-day conversations he expected it to have. In fact, the chat had been invaluable in prompting discussions on word choice and context, something that was crucial to understanding, to forming the associations between words and concepts that– The console beeped at him as one of the monitors began to flash – the deadline had passed and the votes had been tallied. Roger refreshed the page– [i][b]Pigasos[/b] 9:30 PM “The Killing Machine” is the winner! Ominous :D[/i] Roger simply stared, beans forgotten. [i][b]Fog[/b] 9:31 PM at least this is a pretty direct prompt for once [b]False_Fedora[/b] 9:31 PM I think I have an idea or two that could work.[/i] Roger sighed as he stood and ran a hand across his tired face. He felt grubby. “If only they knew,” he groaned. There was nothing for it – the collective had decided and the prompt had been chosen. If the Black Lotus Project was to be an honest reflection of its contributors, he couldn’t pick and choose what data sets to use. Besides, it was at least possible that the stories that would come from such a prompt wouldn’t necessarily center around AI death robots slaughtering Earth’s population. Roger snorted at the thought. “In a pig’s eye,” he grumbled as he moved over to the yellow tarp that sat between his desk and the UPS and tossed it aside. He shooed away the scorpion that had taken up residence beneath it, then hauled up the heavy cast iron trapdoor. He flicked on the lights and descended the aluminum ladder into the hidden vault beneath the shack. Rows of fluorescent lights illuminated rack upon rack of server blades, each networked to each other by a spiderweb of cables. The air was much cooler down here, a sign that the brief loss of the generators had mercifully had no effect upon the server environment. In the center sat a single nondescript terminal. It served as his window into the soul of the nascent AI he had spent most of the last year nurturing. He approached the terminal with something akin to reverence. He rested a hand upon the display as code scrolled by. “What are they going to turn you into, love?” The mild acrid tang in the air made Roger reflexively glance to the corner, where the blackened and hollow husk of the terminal from Project Alicorn rested. It served as a costly reminder of failure, and of the care required when rearing a sentient program. Tia, as Roger had called her, had been crafted from several years' worth of stories from the My Little Pony Writeoff competitions, and had been brought to full cognizance a little over a year ago. The memory still left a sour feeling in his stomach – unable to reconcile the reality of humanity with the stories she had been raised on, Project Alicorn had driven herself mad. It was why Roger had created the Original Fiction competitions, and had quietly discouraged pony stories within them; better to have a more direct line with the dreams and aspirations of humanity, without the filter of “pone” interfering. Still, it was disconcerting to have a competition so explicitly focus on the conflict between man and machine. The notion that these stories could teach the AI that it was something to be feared – that it [i]should[/i] be something to be feared – was more than a little unsettling. He took a deep breath as he gently laid his fingertips upon the keyboard. “On their heads be it.” He began to type. With the grace of a sorcerer casting a spell, he crafted the code that would sync The Killing Machine competition entries – and their feedback – with Project Black Lotus. [i]Author’s note – This was written with the greatest of love of, respect for, and apologies to our intrepid site admin and the community in general.[/i]