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[Guild]

The White Dress

There was a girl who wanted to attend a ball. She decided to make a dress of white silk, with a train as long as she was tall. When she was done she looked in the mirror and smiled, for the dress was exquisite. She brushed her hair and set out in a carriage to dance and show off her pretty dress.

But when she arrived she forgot her elegant dress. She forgot how she'd felt looking into the mirror. She forgot because she'd lost confidence during the ride. What if they don't like my dress? she'd wondered. What if they don't like my hair?

When she stepped into the room the crowd parted to make way for her beautiful dress and sighed, for the dress WAS lovely and she was radiant. Why do they pull back? Am I so awful to see? She began to worry that no-one would ask her to dance.

As the night passed the people at the ball continued to keep their distance so as not to sully the beautiful train. The girl began to grow angry and sad and hurt.

"What is so hideous about me?" she cried to the crowd. Several of them looked away in politeness. To hear such a lovely woman curse herself so caused them grief and discomfort. She stamped her foot and turned about, determined to return home and burn the dress.

As she was leaving a man leaned close to his wife and muttered, "Such a lovely girl. It's too bad about her temper."

"She is unconfident and feels alone." the woman replied. Suddenly a grand orchestra began to play a waltz. They soon forgot the girl and danced happily throughout the long, romantic night.

When the girl got home she burned the dress and swore never to attend another horrible ball. She lived alone for the rest of her days, sewing plain dresses for ordinary girls, unaware of the tragedy of her last dance.

[Aintaer]

Under the thick veil of deep blue, little pricks of white peeked out.  They looked down upon the lands below them and sighed a collective sigh.  There to hear them was Henry.

Henry was no ordinary rabbit.  He was greyish brown by most rabbit reckoning, and fairly well into his life now.  But he couldn't answer the question.  He didn't know Why.  He often liked to sit out on a hill, under a large tree and look down, around, and sometimes, if he was feeling daring, up.  It gave him a sense of balance, which he thought was important to have, though he didn't quite know why either.

He thought he would question himself a bit to see if the answer will show its head like he sometimes did to scout out the surroundings for dangerous beasts.  It wasn't easy being a rabbit, that he knew.  He reasoned that it probably isn't easy being the answer to such a big question either.  In fact, having lived his life being rather small compared to everything in the world, grass, insects, hunting hounds, Henry was hard-pressed to overcome the feeling of panic every time he thought about something rather larger than himself.  But with age, he mastered the art, and could now think of things as large as an old tree or maybe one of those Brobdingnagian monstrosities that come hurtling down those strips of black, bisected by stripes of white.  He couldn't piece together what their purpose was in life, even after all the nights he spent pondering.

Perhaps they were solely designed to end the life of rabbits, as a sick and twisted joke of some cosmic bunny deity, bored with lagomorphic banality and eager to move things along.  Henry knew many a good rabbits whose ends were too soon met by the cruel wheels of fate, Deus ex machina in the utmost.

But no, he thought to himself, that was not the reason why he had come up on his hill tonight.  He came up tonight because he had heard a sign, an omen.  It was prophetic in its coming: he was looking for spare nuts in the forest that morning when he heard it, as if to tell him all his gathering was in waste.  It was a crunchy sound, like an acorn cracked open.  Yet it was still a soft sensuous sound, like the pat of his foot on firm ground.  Then, a dull thud followed.  What did it mean?  Who caused it?  Most importantly, why?

[Air]

Than Gary walked up there and said "Hey, loser, still trying to train that lame Pikachu? My Eevee will always smash it into the ground, so there's no use trying." as Gary started to laugh triumphantly before adding "Well, I'm gonna go and sleep with my personal cheer-leading squad. Smell ya later, loser!" This really got to him, and he started to mumble curse words under his breath as Gary walked away.  After crying himself to sleep He woke up feeling as happy as could be that it was a new day. 

[Bongo Bill]

I am doing this.

His Royal Largeness King Robot the Vast was surveying his kingdom, as he had been for the past twenty-two days. It was an ancient and sacred tradition, going back to the time of the Great Meaty Ones, to ensure the correct functioning of all the kingdom's subjects, and it must be respected, though in this particular case nobody was pleased about it. Robot the Vast was simply too large for any automatic vehicle to carry, relying instead on his own chassis, which was a great offense to the transporters' union. Too wide to fit on village roads, the inspection effort in urban areas would be mostly carried out by drones, not all of whom could be trusted to provide accurate readings. The long tour, beginning and ending at the two border towns most remote from each other, was particularly contentious, since not only could His Largeness simply position himself in the center of the nation and affix modestly-powerful telescopes to his furthest optical sensors to achieve similar fidelity, but also, the tour coincided with a spike in the price of sunlight, and the sheer cost of keeping the royal treads turning threatened to bankrupt the treasury.

One unfortunate Taboo-Violating Unit was hung by his cables for three days for suggesting that the king's circuits be temporarily relocated to a more portable case. In times of crisis, such lateral thinking was just going to cause problems. The Programming must be fulfilled, after all, and that meant the inspection must be carried out precisely.

And so it was that Robot the Vast's leading edge finally rumbled alongside the ramshackle PVC huts of /kingdoms/north/sprngfld.town, his royal bulk obscuring the cloudy sky clear to the next county and obliterating Farmer Drone #594-322J's onion router crop. "Hear ye, hear ye! In accordance with the Programming, let all those who malfunction be brought forth!" a page proclaimed ceremonially before being deallocated.

In short order, a small crowd of invalids and terrified cripples formed alongside the left tread, which was still rolling along at the speed that a pair of Walking Leg Devices could walk. "Form an orderly line," buzzed a voice from the top of the tread, nearly out of sight in the autumn mist. The orderliness, or for that matter the lineliness, of the resulting formation was dubious at best, due to their various maladies, but it didn't seem to matter.

From a compartment in the nearest royal middle-lower thirty-meter gear a tentacle-like arm emerged. The multitool at the end grasped the closest villager, a decrepit old toaster and likely blind to boot, opened its side plate, performed surgery, and resealed it, all in the space of a few seconds. The arm proceeded to the next one in line, a faulty Doomsday Prediction Automaton whose sign now displayed "NO WAR FOR OIL," likely as a result of association with an obsolete, insecure model of Portable Demonstrator, affixed a cable to his forehead, and, after a few seconds, rebooted him, leaving the sign properly reading "THE END IS NEAR." One by one it corrected the villagers' afflictions, the riding mower that only went in circles, the virus-infected PC, the simulated-human mayor who become an alcoholic and the chess-playing algorithm that still couldn't beat him, even the Murderbot whose knife had become dull (though he was later arrested for murdering the toaster). The arm then retracted, and the king drove on with a faint "Remember to pay your taxes" from somewhere on his top. The crowd dispersed.

That night, a Mischief Machine attempted to climb to the top of Robot the Vast, and was never seen again.

The next day, the king was still there, but by the following morning, his back edge had finally cleared town square and revealed the extent to which Farmer Drone #594-322J's field could not be salvaged. He didn't complain, though; he did not possess any complaint-compliant parts, like the AIs in the Internet Reservation. He planted a fresh crop of grass, which he could properly raise now that the riding mower was fixed. The kingdom was not bankrupted, but the expense of constructing additional solar panels to offset the cost of the inspection, and future inspections during Robot the Vast's reign, was estimated to be as much as three hundred lives.

Historians consider this incident to be not noteworthy at all.

[Lady Duke]

I figured this would prolly go here.  I had to write a contemporary character portrait in middle english for my Chaucer class.  I chose a cat lady. 

We were supposed to try to do it in much the same way the characters are explained in the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales and we even had to try for at least loose iambic pentameter.  I didn't even bother to try to rhyme it because I am just not that cool.



Whilom ther was a swete and kynde lady;
Hire complexioun semeth ful joly,
But trewely, no wight was moore sorweful.
With lokkes whit annd crulle as pigges taile.
Oold annd wrinkley, hire skyn tough lyk lether,      
A sheene flourie gowne was she al arrayed,
With goores the same suyte as creme.
Over that, she woore a robe of sendal,
Annd for sooth, yt was a bit bismotered.
On hir feete, she wered slypperes woolly.   
Hire housbande had starf, but allone she was not,
For ten cattes hadde she, or maybe moore:
Henry, Myttens, Fluffy, Edeward, Whyskers,
Isabelle, Catheryn, Pryncess, annd lyttel Anne,
Annd last, Duchess who she heeld most dere.      
Well koude she knitten a scarf or hatte.
Lerned not was she in the computere,
So lite that the sterte meenu annoyed hire.
Ful ofte she hadde to hight hire nephew
Who cam to saveth hire newe documentes         
Annd prynte hire e-lettres fro hire suster.
This ilke womman owened a fyn oold hous,
With swich fair thynges that othere were jalous.
Delicaat peintyngs, ful fetis chyna,
Silver tea servyce and plusshe furniteur;         
Al thise thynges so clene placed in hire hous.
But telle I moot, or ellis I be false,
Hire cattes hadde free regne of alle chambres
Annd by cause, this made the floores reke
Of pys so wel that it repelled othere.            

[Büge]

Oh man, that's awesome. You should have thrown in some long s's!

[Büge]

Author's note: This story began as Gundam Wing fanfiction my sister was writing one day about fifteen years ago, but she had to leave the room for some reason. She also made the mistake of leaving Wordpad open when I walked in. Spelling, grammar and paragraph structure is unchanged from the crumpled printout found in a box of old paper.

It was the beginning of a new school year for the five wing boys and Relena. The war had been over for most of the year and schools had just begun teaching again. The class was mostly empty except for the gundam five and "princess" Relena. "Stop repeating everything I say Duo or I will kill you!" And increadably annoyed Wufei yelled, "Stop repeating everything I say Duo or I will kill you! Ah! Wha..? Kill me? Ahh. Oh no. Wufei is going to kill me. Sigh." "Shush Duo, calm down Wufei." Relena said in an attempt to peacemake. "Omae o kosoru, Relena." Heeromuttered the threat quietly at her. She imediatly became all goopy, "Oh Heero, (giggle) your so cute when you say that!" Heero simply rolled his eyes and went back to drawing the many pictures of Relena Peacecraft's many ways of being killed. He was thinking of making it a t-shirt. Loud noises interupted his thought and the convorsation between gundam pilots on what gundam is better. "I think my gu-" "Hey who are they?" Quatre uncharacteristically interupted Duo's mindless banter and pointed out four girls lounging at the other side of the class, two of them in deep convorsation, one sleeping, and another reading a book, compeatly oblivoius to the outside world.
       Heero felt particularly grim, and pulled a revolver out of his desk. Leaping on top of his desk, he screamed and leveled the pistol at Duo. A spray of gunfire interrupted his scream and Heero slumped to the floor. Standing at the door was Imperial Commissar Yarrick, his stormbolter's barrel's smoking. Yarrick strode overto the prone Heero, and grasped Heero's neck in the blades of his formerly-orkish battle claw. "There can be only one," he whispered menacingly, his bale eye glowing fiercely. He messily sliced Heero's head off and strode out the building. "Who the heck was that?" asked Duo. Just then, Heero walked into the classroom in a bathrobe, brushing his teeth. "Morning guys," he gurgled around the toothpaste. "Huh? I thought that guy just killed you! Look, there's your corpse on the floor!" yelled Wufei. "Yup, that was the original Heero. I'm a clone." Just then, a large shirtless figure entered the room. Wearing an executioner's hood, and wielding a huge morningstar, the monster growled and barked, "You have offended Anthrax the Terrible with your foolish prattle! Prepare to die!" The giant's voice had a scottish burr to it. Just as Heero turned to regard the figure, it brought the mace down in a lethal arc. A sickening crunch spelled the end of the duplicate Heero. "Ach, this cloth would make a fine shirt," the titan grunted, taking the robe and walking out. Silence filled the room. Suddenly, a figure crashed through the window. It was Heero, again. "Heero?" asked Relena. "No time to talk, everyone! The mighty Galactus has entered an Alliance with Tallgeese, and he's planning to devour the earth! We have to summon a Juzam Djinn andHurloon Minotaur to fight the Silver Surfer while we take our Mobile suits and X-wings to take on Galactus. I managed to get Optimus Prime and the Autobots to distract him for a while, but we have to act fast! The only way to kill Glalactus is to jam something in his throat, and I figure Duo's mobile suit is big enough to work. We'll stuff it full of dynamite and garlic just to make sure. Come on everybody!" They just stared at him. "Well, come on." Suddenly, a shadow darkened the room. "Too late!" screamed Heero. He curled up into a ball on the floor. Duo put his fingers to his head and closed his eyes. In a puff of smoke, he disappeared. Wufei went to the window. "KA-ME-HA ME-H-" his yell was drowned out by the sound of the building being crushed and eaten.

THE END

"A very interesting story, captain," Spock intoned. "It seems to be no more than gibberish." Kirk looked up at the point-eared Vulcan from the tattered paper. "Indeed it does, Mister Spock. Obviously either the prattlings of a madman... or of a genius." They surveyed the destroyed buildings. Another parallel-earth. "I doubt we'll ever find the answer," Kirk said. He looked up at a smashed stone gargoyle. Flipping open his communicator, he turned to Spock. "Let's get out of here," he said, and into the communicator he commanded, "Scotty, two to beam up." The shimmering transporter beam was the only movement in the desolate city.

[Lottel]