Pet Shop Campaign was getting to be a little long in the tooth. The video game was more than five years old at this point, and most augmented-reality-massively-multiplayer games died off in the first two. There was always something new to try that siphoned the public’s adrenaline drops. Continue reading
fiction
Twitch Stream Story: She Exists, She Exists Not
Beth had only one reality at her disposal until that day. She thought she had many more, and she accessed them through her computer screen. She had enjoyed police procedural realities, sitcom realities, and realities that featured nothing but the creation of food that would only ever have one bite taken from it. Continue reading
Chat-your-own-Adventure #1: Raw Man Finds the Time
Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience bidding tokens (earned while watching) to determine the path of the story. The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways. Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.
Raw Man Reverse Siren Stone Skipper
The raw man walked out of his cave to scavenge for his morning breakfast. It wouldn’t be too difficult, for, just as it was every morning, the food was strewn about his home in messy clumps. He had heard it land, nasty rain, the night before. He was at the point now where the sound was soothing enough to help him get to sleep. Lots of splats and splurts meant he would eat well the next day. Continue reading
Twitch Stream Story: Precious Stones
A crab boat mostly. That’s what they were. Year in year out, through cold rain and driving cold rain. They brought up the crabs with nets, with chains, with cages, with hooks and bait. The things would scrabble against the metal and wood relentlessly, for the waters they fished were so relentlessly rainy that the crabs thought they were still under water.
It was raining again that day, and each drop had a sharp snowflake inside. Botir was on deck, manning the chains. He was an old man, he’d lost track of just how old, but his hands were still mighty leather. A tentacled horror could try to pull one of their lines and steal their catch, but Botir would yank it up to the deck, harpoon it, and eat out its eyes so it stopped struggling. Continue reading
Twitch Stream Story: The Beetrayal of B’zz B’zozz
Bzzz bzzzzz b’zzz’zzzz B’zzzzz’
B’zoooo b’zzzz b’z’z b’ooo
Bzzz bzzzzz b’zzz’zzzz B’zzzzz’
B’zoooo b’zzzz b’z’z b’ooo
Z’booo z’zzzz zzzzz
It waz B’zz’z favorite hymn. It came from the eighteenth hex of the zcroll of wild. There were many zcrollz, written acrozz the hive’z generationz, their wizdom bazed on the honey the dronez brought back. The zcroll of the wild waz written by one Z’Boz Bz’zz: a beautiful bee with fur yellow like corn zilk and brown like the underbelly of a bear. B’zz knew what zhe looked like becauze her portrait waz carved in a hexagonal cell along the back wall of the zanctuary, where mozt of the hive now ztood. Continue reading
Twitch Stream Story: Lock up your Mind
If he opened the drawer the assault would be instantaneous. At least, he though it would. His office was quiet. The door was locked. He had the lights dimmed nearly to nothing. Most of his décor was black or dark green, so the drawer with the blue label stood out against everything else. He was seated behind his desk, hands nervously at his side. It was his only chance to gain some understanding. Without the totem around his neck, he had none to grasp at anymore. Continue reading
Twitch Stream Story: The Maturation
257
257 pebbles sat in the chamber of awakening at the time of awakening. At first there was nothing to disrupt the peace it had experienced for a thousand cycles. The last time anything happened, the pebbles had been placed. Chromium flakes and crystals lined the chamber’s dome ceiling. There was no light to make the flakes sparkle, but they would have; they were still wet with dew from the last time the waters came, far before the arrival of the pebbles. Continue reading
Twitch Stream Story: A Leak in the Crystal
Garret had encountered plenty of leaks in his life. He was barely out of his twenties, but the leaks were everywhere. Once, in school, some of the data over his grades had simply ‘leaked’ out of the computer system. He’d had to repeat a class over the error.
There was a camping trip when he was a teenager where he opened the cooler, which was his responsibility, and found the bag’s containing their caught fish and their picked berries had ruptured and mixed all their juices, most of which froze into a hideous slush. Continue reading
Twitch Stream Story: The Healthy Cousin
The electricity surged through his brain, speeding his recall even as it cauterized the loose flapping edges of his soul. The memories revolved around each other, spinning and picking up speed. He remembered losing his mother to cancer. His aunt. His best friend. There had been something in their water from the new factory.
He hated the year 1916. In his neighborhood at least, that was when the factories appeared in full force, like glaciers of garbage suddenly on the horizon. They’d eaten up the work, the sky, and then his family. Continue reading
Twitch Stream Story: Orkh No Move Two Space Back!
The piece was delicately cradled in the soft palm of the young dusk elf. Her name was Nystro, but her name mattered very little at the moment. To her the only name that mattered belonged to the piece. In her hand was a likeness of her species, its wooden legs rounded to look like the bottom of a column. Its face was placid, but she sensed worry from it. Worry over the name.
There were two more new pieces in the grand game hall that day. They were held in different hands. One was firmly held in the greenish grip of an adolescent orkh. Its teeth were expertly painted with mother-of-pearl powder, so it would glisten on the tiles of the miniature battlefield. It was crafted by Ancho, and he was very proud. It would bellow its name in the middle of the game, and draw gasps from every adult around. He would be a revolutionary. Perhaps his people would turn him over the fire that night as punishment, but something had to be done. Continue reading
Blaine Arcade 