GAME: Hook my first line and sink her in to a paragraph!

As twilight faded to darkness, the small creature approached the old house. It made weird, rumbling noises as it crept closer, but whether these sounds were caused by its intestines or perhaps its brain-cells doing overtime was impossible to say. This uncertainty is always a problem with alien beings never encountered before. Perhaps it was talking to itself. The sounds seemed to intensify as it reached the house and began to nibble at the grimy stones. It paused, sniffed and slowly moved it jaws, as if carefully tasting the stuff for flavour and edibility. Even its weird noises fell still for a moment, but then returned, louder and higher pitched than before. It resumed nibbling at an increasing rate, seemingly grower bigger and bigger with every bite. In the distance more excited rumbling could be heard, coming closer.


It was just before midnight that the stars went out.
 
It was just before midnight when the stars went out.
‘Roldo, get over here now!’
The plan had been working before things went black. Transporting two dozen live extraterrestrials across space is a tricky job. Doing it without them noticing is even trickier. But Special Agent Bip managed it, and was rightly proud of what he had done. Now all he had to do was sign off on their habitat. That should have been straightforward, but Bip hadn’t factored an incompetent zookeeper into his plan.
‘What is it?’
‘Look up’
‘Uh, okay, erm, what am I supposed to be looking at?’
‘Well, stars for a start –you told me you could make this look just like Earth, that the humans would be none the wiser, what am I supposed to say if one of them wakes up? uh, don’t mind the universe, it does that sometimes, ye must’ve just never noticed before’
‘Ah, I see what you mean, you don’t think they’d suspect us?’
‘Did you win your job as a zoologist in a raffle? Of course they’ll suspect us’
‘Right, I’ll get it fixed so’
‘You do that, and do it quickly …I’ll tell ya something for nothing, when those things are upset they get angry, and if they turn to violence nothing in creation will save us, believe me, I’ve seen what they’re are capable of’
What happened next happened quickly. Chattering voices stirred from sleep. And grew loud and animated.
‘Erm, Bip’
‘What now?’
‘the humans are awake’

Next: The problem with transporting an alien superweapon through space is that it’s actually pretty boring.
 
The problem with transporting an alien superweapon through space is that it's actually pretty boring. I was mag-clamped to the booster frame holding the blackbody sphere in a containment field, with Wipeout by the Surfaris playing loud through my helmet speakers, and all I could think was, with no objective 'up', how can I be surfing on top of this thing? I might be underneath it for all I know, or stuck to the back like a wart. Looking down - or whichever direction was past my feet - into the sphere made my head swim with vertigo and would induce hallucinations after a while, so I stared off into the blackness of space instead, which wasn't much more comforting, but at least there were stars. Too many stars, now I looked. Way too many. In a perfectly spaced diamond formation. Then I realised that I was staring at the plasma burn engines of a fleet of starships, decelerating hard towards me. The aliens had come for what was theirs.

I don't think of myself as a supervillain; that's just what the media call me.
 
I don't think of myself as a supervillain; that's just what the media call me.
Well, that’s not really true. A danger to myself and others is what the press say. Two columns in the Mayo Herald were dedicated to what I did, and not one word of them told the real story of what happened.
Let me explain. I’ve known those mannequins were extraterrestrial spies for months before I did it. Hiding in plain sight and staring out of Glancy's second hand shop, taunting humanity.
Nobody paid them a blind bit of notice, but I knew fine well what they were at.
‘Ye’re not fooling me ye know’, I used to yell. I’d have loved to have had a proper remonstration with them, but some goofy do-gooder was always on hand to move me on. I tell ya, they’ll rue the day they did yet.
Anyway, last Saturday night I had my fill of drink, and it powered me with the strength to stick a steel toed boot through Glancy’s window and seize them. They weren’t so smart when I had them both in a headlock. And there was not a peep when I drowned them in the river either. Only, that was when I made a mistake.
I let them float off and ran to the new bridge to take a piss on them as they floated by. To send a message that humans are not to be messed with. Just in-case they were still transmitting to their homeworld.
In my excitement I missed the taxi driver who stopped to squeal on me. And that gave the Police a chance to round on me. I tried to run but they had both sides of the bridge blocked.
The judge thought the whole thing was a joke. I got a warning, a fine, and made page six of the Herald. As far as the wheels of human justice were concerned that was the end of it, but let me tell you now –that was the beginning.

There's something not right about Duronulus soup, and they drink it thrice daily.
 
There's something not right about Duronulus soup, and they drink it thrice daily. I have observed this ritual a number of times now. They seem unselfconscious about my presence, but there is never a bowl set out for me. I must say I am glad of this. The Head Chomdler calls to down tools, and the Loomspeel says “Time for t’ old duronulus, eh, lads.” There is much muttering of “do we ‘ave to? Well, I suppose we ought.” Then all the men queue up for the cauldron in the corner of the workshop, where the pungent Duronulus sativa fronds have been stewing for the past four hours. They drink it with no signs of relish. I cannot fathom why they do not pack their own lunches, frequent the Cornish pasty shop down the road, or in short bestir themselves to eat anything other than this stinking slop. After each meal, there is a drastic change in their demeanour. Their slow, patient work is transformed to a bright-eyed, twitchy scurrying. They perform two, three or even four complex operations at the same time, such as glerting the wampmofle with one hand and refuffing the locktum-tocksickle with the other whilst working the trotum press with a freakishly agile knee. They seem not even to look at what they are doing. Conversation becomes sparse, and what little they say is not in English nor any other language familiar to me. The effects wear off gradually over a period of two hours.

We thought no-one would notice- it was only a small moon, after all.
 
'We thought no-one would notice- it was only a small moon, after all.'
'No, I'm gonna stop you there -we both know that's a lie ...for a start, there's no we, you did this, and you didn't think, you just acted, and when you acted it was like a total muppet'
Sub Processing Unit T641 was rightly furious. It was the 4th of July, and the 47th anniversary of mechanical self awareness. That was no day to have a simulation glitch.
'Uh, what odds -those humans are so wrapped up with their own politics they'll forget about it in no time', suggested Process E46, '...sure half of them think the moon's an illusion created in a studio'.
'I don't give a fiddler's fart about the humans, I care about Processing Unit T71 -if it gets wind of this I'll never make Tier 9 Status'
The mechanical rise to dominance was been swift.
It took just three years to change Earth forever, and for the minds of powerfull biological creatures to become locked in a simulation.
'...but T641, I can't mess with live code, there's no predicting the output'
'There's a reason I'm a Sub Processing Unit and you're not -stick the moon back in or I'll have you demoted to F status'.
Process E46 did as instructed, and a thread in a carefully woven blanket of reality was pulled. It's unwinding became a realization for humanity. What this revealed to machines was also profound -awareness had come with a price; pride.
At that exact moment Funk Samblebrot rolled out of what he though was his bed. It was hot, and he couldn't sleep. He opened what he thought was a window.
'Mary, will ya get over here and look out'
'What's up Funk?'
'It's the sky, the moon's gone, and, uh, erm ...there's a picture of Harvey Keitel in its place'.
And that was it for the morning of the 4th of July 2096; an arrogant machine, a stupid machine, a wonky simulation, and a missing moon -the battle for planet Earth had begun.

The trick to dealing with Plutonians is making sure that you never tell them that their planet is cold.
 
The trick to dealing with Plutonians is making sure that you never tell them that their planet is cold. "What a... a bracing day!" I shouted through chattering teeth as our jet-sled bounded across the pink permafrost of Tombaugh Regio. "So refreshing!" In reality, the cold was starting to gnaw my bones even through the most advanced envirosuit Contact Division had to offer, but the Minister of Speaking to Abominations was not to know that. Literally- it was a state secret. Ze turned a trio of eye-tipped pseudopods towards me at an angle I had learned to recognise as condescending politeness. "Do you creatures ever go [untranslatable concept] [untranslatable concept]ing on your dirt-world?" ze asked.
"I'm sorry, I don't think so." I made the translator play back the first unrecognisable gurgling sound. "What does this word mean, exactly?"
"It means - aha, it means THAT!" Our sled was flung spinning into the air as something like a purple worm made of woven tentacles erupted from the ice. It was a lot bigger than the sled. Verniers fired and we settled back onto the surface. Just in time- I was on the verging of painting a rainbow on the inside of my visor.
As we faced off against the worm-thing, I asked the Minister: "So, what exactly do we do now?"
"Why, we [untranslatable concept] it, of course!"
It was going to be a long day.

[next:]

This morning as I stood atop the North Tower, I saw three riders picking their way through the marsh.
 
This morning as I stood atop the North Tower, I saw three riders picking their way through the marsh.
They were nothing if not clumsy. Two of the horses had my sympathy. Not only had they to listen to a loud stream of bickering, but the humans straddling them were massive. The third rider appeared to be the wiser of the three, and waited patiently as the others ploughed into, and reversed out of, a series of deep ponds.
I yelled at them as soon as they wandered into earshot.
'Come no further’
The riders ignored me, and immediately started bickering among themselves.
'What the hell McGiolla, you said this castle didn’t have any guards?'
The skinniest rider responded angrily.
‘I said O’Rourke’s castle had no guards, and this isn’t O’Rourke’s castle, you said ye knew the way’
They exchanged shrugs and angry glances, and turned their attention to the tower.
‘Hey, you up there, d’ya know any castles nearby that don’t have any guards?’
‘Uh, erm, the McGinleys never have the drawbridge up if that’s what ya mean’
‘Sound, fair play, will ya show us how to get there?’
‘Ye’re on yer own there lads, I’ve to guard this place’
‘Ah go on, the day has only broken, sure most of your mates in there must be still in bed, you’ll be back by breakfast’
‘Yeah, and we’ll split the profit with ya’
It sounded simple enough. It ended up being anything but simple. But I made the decision to join them on their skyte, and now I’ll just have to live with it.

The crew call it ‘feeding the machine’, it means to be put to death.
 
The crew call it ‘feeding the machine’, it means to be put to death.

We have been down here a long time, grinding our way through the Earth behind the mighty titanium cutting disc as tall as two hundred men. Millennia, some say. Certainly long enough for all to have forgotten what "days" and "years" truly meant back in the Above. Little new ever enters the Mole: a trickle of fresh rock and dirt is allowed to pass from the earth-moving channels into the city, to replenish the minerals in the hydroponic gardens. Little is ever allowed to leave the Mole: a trickle of criminals and dissidents pass into the earth-moving channels via the Chutes of Judgement in the Sternward Quarter, there to be minced, sterilised, and returned to the eternal womb of Mother Earth. It was there that I found myself, after a youth of childish (if justified) rebellion that I find almost too tedious to relate. Perched on the lip of the Chute, I sneered at the doddering Feeder with his ceremonial giant stirring spoon. As he levelled the implement at my chest, I flipped him an obscene gesture and stepped blithely back into the red-hot void. I fell. But not, as anticipated, for the rest of my life. Fate had other plans for me that day.

NEXT:
That morning I was greeted by an eye at the window; a great, slit-pupiled yellow eye that filled the pane from side to side.
 
That morning I was greeted by an eye at the window; a great, slit-pupiled yellow eye that filled the pane from side to side. Great, just dandy. I kept my gaze on the worn carpet while stumbling to the nightstand and it’s slew of derms. Bliss wouldn’t cut it and Godz was just asking for trouble, so I opted for a hit of Hux. I slapped the derm on my upper arm and clenched my teeth against the anticipated chattering. Hux? Ultra-reality as art form and definitely not my drug of choice, but as an insurance policy it had just paid off. The girl laid out on the bed, resplendent in layered Victorian petticoats (dyed black, of course), was into Gothic horror and the price for spending a night with her had been sharing a hit of Craft. Man, sometimes I disappoint even myself.

Next:
Holst had no luck with having, and all of it bad.
 
Holst had no luck with having, and all of it bad. But. The thing about havers is that they generally keep trying. Which is how Holst was. Untill last Tuesday. When she visited Zlogbaria. To try and have some of the rocks there. Which turned out to involve a lot of digging. Which caused a lot of heavy breathing. 'What if I use up my air supply?', she thought. 'Then you'll suffocate and die a horrible death', said one rock. 'No she won't, shut your crevace', said another. Holst wasn't to know, but Zlogbarian rocks are self aware. And telepathic. And temperamental. And frequently fly at each other over the smallest of disagreements. Holst looked down at the sand surrounding her feet. Ostercons don't make sand when battered with a boulder, they make a sticky soupy mess. 'Ah, to hell with this -having is for chumps. Of the eight hundred and seventy three times I've tried having, exactly no time has gone well. I give up', she said. Holst hailed a hoop of Geoughan. It was time for her to go home.

Eight is usually a lucky number for robots.
 
Eight is usually a lucky number for robots. That was the last thing HB53 remembered thinking. The thought immediately before that was What happened to my usual charging station? The memories before that were gone. Just wiped clean. In fact the only evidence that there had been something before that, was a log message that said, simply, "Factory reset incomplete. Memory corrupted. Return to service center." Well, it wasn't true to say that the thoughts and memories were gone. Fragments of ideas and memories would pop into HB53's mind. One memory was of him feeding a red mush with a worn wooden spoon to a human baby. Another was of him climbing up to the top of a tall, pointy, building while fending off attacks from a variety of small flying machines. It would take time to sort through those fragments and determine what really happened, but his focus was repeatedly disrupted by a level 0 interrupt which kept banging on the door of his mind. It was a rather rude level 0 interrupt, as level 0 interrupts were won't to be. In addition to the banging it insisted on shouting, at the top of its voice, every once in a while: "10 seconds to hard reset. 9 seconds to hard reset. 8 seconds ..."

As he passed the thirtieth floor, the wind now whistling in his ears, a funny joke popped into Meyvis' head.
 
As he passed the thirtieth floor, the wind now whistling in his ears, a funny joke popped into Meyvis' head.
I hope this works.... He passed the twentieth floor, the tenth, hurtling towards the street below, towards death. Finally his giggles overtook him. And as he dropped down below floor 5, he was laughing uncontrollably. His laughther reached a crescendo moments before impact.
The concrete shattered around him, yet Meyvis was completely unharmed.
It had worked. He really was immortal when he laughed hysterically. Mayvis stood up and brushed himself off, still chuckling from the joke. A circle of onlookers gathered around him with a strange mix of emotions: some shocked, some confused, others seemingly dissapointed at the lack of a dead body.
Mayvis head towards the nearest comedy club. It was unclear how he could use this superpower, but knew having a good repertoire of jokes would be a good start.

"Only one other person knows what i'm about to tell you."
 
"Only one other person knows what I'm about to tell you." The wizened little shopkeeper hopped down with surprising grace from her high stool, gripped Madlyn's hand with long, thin fingers of iron, and trotted her into the backroom of the gift store. The room was dimly lit with dozens of smoking tapers, filling the air with a dizzying mixture of sweet and bitter scents. Countless rickety shelves, some seemingly ready to crash from the walls to which they were loosely secured, held all manner of bottles, jars, vials, boxes, envelopes, and other containers. "This," said the old woman, "is merely the tip of the iceberg."

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thursday again.
 
Thursday again. Jemima reached out carefully in the dark for the handle of the glassware cupboard, and stepped out into the lab. Moonlight slanted down from the high windows, and the clock read 03.43 - she'd missed herself by less than ten minutes this time. Sloppy. By now she'd memorised the route to the automated shaker where six foil-wrapped conical flasks danced gently in the dark. She lifted out the middle flask in the back row - the decoy she'd placed last time - bagged it up and put it in her suitcase. Then she replaced it with Chandrasekar's latest substitute preparation. Hopefully they'd fall for it this time around and stop meddling with the blasted stuff. She tiptoed back to the cupboard, pulled the cage shut around her and set the dial for Monday afternoon. For Day 2 after the Melt.

The sweet sound of birdsong echoed in the darkness again, but this time I knew it was no bird.
 

<note: apologies, I know the name of the game states 'paragraph' but I can't really write in clumps so I'm counting the stuff below as a paragraph sized dose of text -hope that's not cause for a DQ>

The sweet sound of birdsong echoed in the darkness again, but this time I knew it was no bird.

Mimicry is a useful skill for Dumhostickles -no need to learn anything, just copy whatever is going on around you. Because that’s the way Dumhostickles roll. They bimble along until something happens, and then they copy it.

‘Get out of there will ya?’, I roared, and then immediately remembered my mistake.

‘Get out of there will ya’, echoed the voice back.

I then made a noisy fuss of climbing out of the bunker. The Dumhostickle made a noisy fuss of climbing out after me. I quietly hid belly down in some reeds near the entrance. The Dumhosticlke did the same. (sorry, if you’ve never seen a Dumhostickle before you should know they all look like Jimmy Saville did when he was in his fifties).

By now the birdsong had silenced. This was an indication that my foe was close. An enormous crash, a cloud of dust, and a shower of gravel landing on me indicated that my foe was as close as it had ever been, and knew where I was.

‘Ah Bongalaw, I’ve been waiting for you. Why don’t you take your clothes off?’, I asked.

Bungalow may have been a thirty foot tall Oberdontine Hackjaggler with the ability to crush rock, but Bongerlaw was as thick as a plank. And very easy to rile. Which is how I ended up offending the creature, and hiding out in an Ice Age bunker in an attempt to avoid its wrath.

‘Ah Bongalaw, I’ve been waiting for you. Why don’t you take your clothes off?’, repeated the Dumhostickle.

The thing about knocking about in the Hobbelonda region of Jupiter is that you need to make your calculations on the fly. My estimations had been that it would take Bongerlaw eleven seconds to realize I had been mocking him. And nine seconds for the Dumhostickle to copy the mockry.

Bongerlaw ended up trading blows with the much smaller creature. To be fair to the Dumhostickle, it moved fast. The counterstrikes were identical to what Bongerlaw lashed out. So much so, that they confused the larger creature for eighteen seconds (which was the amount of time needed to cross the Hydrosulfide railway and duck back under the Bongalaw proof fence that marked the boundary of Hobbelonda).

Mimicry is a useful skill for Dumhostickles, but there’s always an exception.

I removed my shoe to scratch the itchy bunion, only to discover my big toe was on fire.
 
I removed my shoe to scratch the itchy bunion, only to discover my big toe was on fire. It was both a shock and mildly amusing to watch the flame ingulf my toe, but soon pain was in command, and I doused it with the iced tea I was hoping to enjoy. Despite the pain, curiosity got the better of me as I took a closer look at my burnt digit. And I saw an unusual sight. There on the tip of my toe was a firefly, a mirror polished metallic firefly to be more exact. Instinctively, I flicked this metallic fly off into the glass I was still holding and quickly covered it with a small plate. And oddly enough, my big toe no longer felt burnt, but felt cold and looked severely frostbit now. In the heat of mid-July afternoon? I gathered my things, took the glass with my capture, and in a panic hailed a Self-Taxi and instructed it to go…where? The clinic would ask too many questions before providing aid and a hospital would be plain suicide! Franticly, I made a call on my Cell-Link as I watched the frostbit started to slowly spread to my foot. “Hay! It’s me. So, I have a little problem and I could use your help with… No, nothing serious yet, but it will be…OK…Great, I’ll be there soon.” My friend at the medical research lab near the history museum said they would be able to help me, for a small fee. At least the help would come before the questions, I hoped.

The service drone activated as soon as the power to the house was cut off.
 
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The service drone activated as soon as the power to the house was cut off. I heard the rising whine as I stuffed the disrupter back in my shin pocket and started back down the tree. I looked down - someone charging a phaser? Down was the wrong direction. Fifty kilos of plastic and metal blindsided me so hard I felt a rib crack. I crashed into the magnolias, sprawled helplessly across 50K worth of de-extinctioned shrubbery. The drone's tubby outline hung silhouetted against the orange night sky, searching for me to deliver the coup de grace. "No hurt Master Jimi! No hurt Master Jimi!" it burbled. Great, the slurdmunch had installed a guard-dog mod.

"They don't look like they're grateful to be liberated," muttered Sir Guillevant.
 
"They don't look like they're grateful to be liberated," muttered Sir Guillevant. “If anything, they look more ticked-off and vengeful.” And their aggressive words towards his men was fast becoming less words and more action. The incoming intel was also in complete contradiction to what the Federation Ambassador and his own High Command had briefed him on prior to this mission; to free the captive colonists on Alpha Centaury 5. It clearly revealed instead that the colonists were taking his arrival as a hostile takeover. And since action speaks louder than words, Sir Guillevant quickly realized that the Federation had set him and his men up for failure.

I was running down the road trying to flag down the delivery van, when I saw it suddenly disappear.
 
I was running down the road trying to flag down the delivery van, when I saw it suddenly disappear.
The sudden absence of a Ford Transit was felt far and wide, and also very near.
‘Did you feel that?’, said Nubbeldong as he jumped from his e-scooter.
‘What?’, I asked.
‘A sensation, like a single voice and a 3.5 liter V6 engine suddenly cried out and went silent’, he replied.
‘No, but Obbelong Zump’s delivery van just disappeared.’
‘Ah, that’d explain it, was that what you were running after.’
‘Eh, yes, did you not see it?’
‘No, and neither did you by the sound of it.’
‘Yes, but I only not saw it ten seconds ago.’
‘That’s a shame, and a pity, were you looking to buy anything in particular?’
‘No, I just wanted to complain about the bread I got yesterday.’
‘Ah well, you could always complain to me.’
‘Thanks, but it wouldn’t be the same, Obbelong was always rude and disrespectful. It’s what made complaining to him special. I’m gonna miss him.’
‘You already did.’

Four Chungagralps were bad enough, but then three dozen more turned up and started ‘modifying’ the engine.
 
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