Stealing The Dragon

I wrote this in response to tuftears's prompt "Steal the Dragon". Because it wouldn't end, it got to 1,251 words.

“It’s the only known surviving example of Empirion work, so of course the client wants it.” As always Lupien Calwilder was careful not to say the client’s name. Mr Calwilder was, officially, an attorney at law and this meeting in his office looked like any other office meeting. Lance Wing was their IT specialist, Julie Luna dealt with all their internal HR issues, while Giles Warden dealt with external HR issues, Claire Heath was the researcher and James Strath was the office driver. Fairly normal, even if most offices didn’t have a dedicated driver. Less normal were Henri Brun and Victor Ivanych Rostov who were the heights specialists, Precious Rambana the safe cracker and alarm specialist, and Mishi Keller the tunnel rat.

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The Patchwork Crow

I wrote this to ankewehner's prompt "Patchwork Crow." It runs to 329 words.

The bird hopped across the ground, cocking its head to examine what it found as it went. Its feathers were iridescent, the black feathers shining blue, green and red where the sunlight hit them.

“I’m not sure it’s supposed to look like that,” ventured Gianni critically.

“The base material resources weren’t as comprehensive as I would have liked,” agreed Marta. “The original corvid stockholdings were extremely thorough, but that section of the storage facility was badly hit during the magnetic storms and atmospheric inversions. None of the samples appear to be intact, although Palmerstone and Ngomo are still evaluating them. My resurrections are, by necessity, chimeras. Some of the material I used,” she sighed, “wasn’t even corvid.”

“At least your choices were forced by necessity,” Gianni patted her on the shoulder consolingly. “You’ve seen what Millan did with those wrens, haven’t you?”

“Actually, I read his paper too,” Marta was suddenly all frosty, “and I went back and checked the references. That is what the males actually looked like. I think he did a remarkable job to not only resurrect them but build in the species differences as well, given what there was to work with.”

“Oh,” Gianni was suitably abashed, “I assumed that because of his own modifications he was biased towards the unnaturally gaudy. Why did he even work on them? There’s so little material.”

“He was very close to Professor Olson, and the Professor longed to see something from his personal childhood live again before he died. The wrens were the only thing that fit the bill that Millan could get permission to work with.”

As they spoke, the patchwork crow found a suitable white stone, picked it up and flew off with it.

“What does it do with those?” Gianni followed the bird’s flight with his eyes.

“I’m not sure,” admitted Marta, “but it’s documented original species behaviour, and I didn’t program any behaviours into them.”

“Aaah,” Gianni’s eyes glinted with interest, “original data implementation…”

Prompt Request Closing Tonight!

Dear Gentlebeings,

I need to close my current Prompt Request to new unsponsored prompts tonight. I intend to do this at 11:30pm my time, ie in about two and a half hours.

Please, if you want to take part, now is the time to do it!

Rix

Looks Like A Beetle

I wrote this to ankewehner's prompt "Shiny Beetles." It came in at 353 words.

“Perhaps it was a Christmas beetle,” suggested Gianni. “Professor Tama has been doing a lot of work with those. Their stockholdings were practically undamaged and he’s been able to resurrect almost the entire genus in the original.”

“I know what a Christmas beetle looks like,” Greta told him. “Probably better than you do. Their base colour is yellow/gold. These things were silver.”

“Could be a new one or a completely different genus,” pointed out Gianni. “I heard Professor Tama has some students looking into staghorn beetles.”

“Those are black,” pointed out Greta. “Really, Gianni, sometimes I wonder about you.”

“I can’t do, so I audit,” he shrugged. “It’s my job to ask critical questions and point out flaws. Wouldn’t be the first time someone resurrected something with the wrong colouration. Or worse,” he added reflectively.

“I associate silver with machines more than animals,” said Greta, “and I know that’s an assumption of mine. Speaking of assumptions, Marta told me that you made a fairly big one about Millan.”

Gianni blushed. “I did the reading and then I apologised to Millan and to Marta both. But, back to those silver beetles, did any of the intrusion detectors go off?”

“Well, no,” answered Greta. “Why would they, for a beetle?”

“After the incident in Professor Formora’s lab two years ago, all the detectors are supposed to go off for any lifeform not registered to the lab they’re setup in.”

“So,” said Greta slowly, if our intrusion alarms are working, and I did see something, then that something wasn’t alive?”

“Exactly,” agreed Gianni. “Let me talk to a few people.

*******************

Later there was a meeting in a service room for one of the laboratory complexes. “We have traps in the ducts to and from Professor Tama’s labs,” said Nicholle from Maintenance, “because of his subject matter. After Gianni spoke to us, we checked them and found this,” she showed them a tiny, silver, beetle-shaped object mired in the gluey trap. “It’s definitely mechanical and it’s never been alive.”

“So, where’d it come from?” That was Greta.

Professor Tama added, “And why was it sent here?”