robots

Regular Romp #8: Prod Measures Up

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring

DarkhorseProductions

There were eight ships currently docked at the Tape Maestro station. Prod Darkorse had the job of knowing exactly how far each of them had traveled to get there. That was the easy part though, as each space-faring vessel trailed a giant cloth tape measure that terminated at their starting point. He knew that the drumstick-shaped golden ship had traveled exactly 6,569,435 indents to reach Tape Maestro. He knew the silver discus had gone only 302,649 indents. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Engine in the Attic

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A scifi story about posthumanism and discrimination

Every footstep had to be sanctioned. Infrak’s steps had been predetermined for more than four years now. Each step with his giant feet, each as wide as a schooner, was clearly marked with concrete borders. These steps moved in a circle around the city. It was his patrol route, now that he wasn’t needed for battle any longer. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 13

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-escalation    4-action    5-tragedy    6-world-changing

The minefield has been moved. It now connects the Trap to a new world, a new game. There is no destruction this time, nothing forcing them to flee. Only the brave, curious, and strange will take the journey. Who will step through the fog and face the myriad dangers of the field?

Three enter: Grayjay the angry resident bird, Mack the disconnected robot, and Sashonne the jovial judge. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #3: Maddyn’s Token Trial

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring Maddyn13

Lucid Maddyn had a passing thought about wordless hours. How many wordless hours had he racked up sitting in that desk chair? Sometimes it was the whole morning, as he avoided eye contact with any of the hundreds of people passing through the arcade in its early hours. It was a skill unto itself, as many of them were children, their eyes drawn by Maddyn’s impressive height. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Story One: The Pip Cages

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story is the culmination of our interactive activities over on our Twitch livestream.  Characters and their fates were partly decided based on audience participation.  Check out the earlier sessions if you wish to learn where these characters came from.

People often feel trapped in dreams. They sink into the ground, encounter locked doors, or become surrounded by shadowy figures. Sometimes it’s enough to pull one from sleep, sweating and clutching at their heart as if the nightmares tried to steal it out of their chest. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Character Guide

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

This post exists as a guide to the full roster of twenty characters to make it through our interactive fiction activities over on twitch.tv/blainearcade.  The characters were auctioned off to people who acted as the character’s ‘saint’, influencing the character’s future.  Each character was also placed in a squad by their saint, detailing their role in our big on-stream stories and determining the level of risk they faced. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Tick Tock Lullaby

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: The first child raised by artificial intelligence goes out into the human world for the first time.

Elta was the city of the future. All the signs said so, and they weren’t liars like the signs down in the medicine district. Even in its earliest stages it promised the world’s cleanest streets, automaton public servants, and a grand subterranean clock that would keep everything on schedule for all time, provided someone occasionally went down and scraped off the rust. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 6

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-escalation    4-action    5-tragedy    6-world-changing

A world lies in ruin, its debris drifting on a bottomless sea. Its remaining people, from all places and periods, have one chance of survival. One world will take them, but they must make the journey on their own. Between the two lies the minefield: a vast varied expanse of debris both magical and scientific. Salvation is on the other side.

Three figures emerge from the fog of their sputtering world: Rudas the useless satyr, Mr. 32 the moralistic fridge, and Blurry the sketched fat cat. They see the minefield before them, knowing little, and walk forward. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 2

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-maintain    4-escalation    5-action    6-tragedy

A world lies in ruin, its debris drifting on a bottomless sea. Its remaining people, from all places and periods, have one chance of survival. One world will take them, but they must make the journey on their own. Between the two lies the minefield: a vast varied expanse of debris both magical and scientific. Salvation is on the other side.

Three figures emerge from the fog of their sputtering world: BPR-7, Chelsea who must ride, and the red huntress. They see the minefield before them, knowing little, and walk forward. Continue reading →

The Caloric Kiss: A Pseudoscience Tryst (Finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 1 hour, 24 minutes)

Roasting over an Open Fire

For the longest leg of their return journey Wallace was stuck in bed below decks, recovering from his injured shoulder.  His inability to sit still had forced the nurse onboard to re-stitch the wound three separate times.  She swore it was like he was trying to leave a trail of blood from Europe to America and that Tycho, whose arm was in a splint while the fractures healed, was a much better patient.  Whenever she worked Wallace simply grunted along with whatever she said.  His mind was on other things, like the surprising bedside attendance of Rosamin and the others.  They were there like cousins whenever he was awake, ready to talk about whatever was happening on the boat.  He wondered if they were simply in his life now, like hairs on a mole.  If they tagged along wherever he went he would have to explain to his family why all these pale people kept following him around. Continue reading →