scifi

Chat-your-own-Adventure #30: From Morsel to Big Bite

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting 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.

Freak Dog Show                     Freak Farmer’s Market                           Freak Star

“Is it supposed to be that color?” Michelle asked. She wasn’t asking anyone in particular. Three of her associates were in the lounge with her, and any of them was welcome to look out the viewing window and see the star in the distance. Only one did; they weren’t getting paid at that moment, so there was no point in analyzing anything. Better to keep their eyes glued to their imitation beef stroganoff before it went cold. Their ship’s food imitator was notoriously uncooperative; anything that went cold went as hard as yeast-less bread. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #29: Parts Littering the Sea

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience voting 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.

Paper                                                          Iron                                                        Wood

The storm made quick work of the cliff side, speeding what should have been more than a hundred years of weathering. The rock fell away, revealing the iron plate beneath. It had no visible hatches or doorways. There were no words or pictograms. It was almost like it was natural, simply a collection of all the most like-minded iron atoms in the world. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #12: Leor the Tenth, Possibly Last

~ 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

LiorX

Sixty-eight people milled about on the beach pretending to enjoy various activities. There was a game of volleyball going; the ball hadn’t touched the ground in more than forty minutes. Neither team had scored yet. They didn’t need to. The game was simply decoration, like the surfers lounging against their posted boards and the children building sand castles so tall and symmetrical that no actual child could resist toppling them. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #11: Sir Moanle at the Luncheon

~ 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

Sermonal

Most people chose to capture moments like that with paint or, if they could afford it, the newfangled tin plate photography. Sir Moanle was a simpler man who painted with nothing but the sparsely-haired brush of his memory. If the image had any bare patches they were filled in over time, as he observed that sunrise over the river every day for three months. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 16

~ 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: Glitterhook the pirate who thinks he’s a unicorn, Cricketty the empty bent mimic chest, and Sailor Midnight the Gothic sailor booted from her ship. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Dusk Runner

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: the story of a clipper-class airship called the Dusk Runner.

The great cities of mankind’s first and only steam empire had risen into the sky with brass spears and aluminum windmills. The airships used to see these towers, like a mineral garden sculpted from a dwarf treasure hoard, but they were no longer visible. The city produced its own clouds in vast numbers; they became a second sea obscuring the upper reaches of the entire empire. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #9: Don’t Search the House of Dread

~ 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

houseofdredd

There was a depth to mankind’s plans for the future that was poorly understood. Even its clues were well hidden, invisible within mundane darkness like the interior of a virtual trash can. Mankind saw fit to ditch the physical realm of its birth and transfer all intelligence to a realm of electricity and data. The most difficult part was the transition, where each human mind had to decided what to leave behind and what to rebuild. Continue reading →

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: The Joke’s on you and you’re on Everything

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: While drunkenly setting up your avatar for a simulated world, you find a developer’s Easter egg and end up with the rarest character class in the game. There is only one: the village idiot.

I was at a point in my life where I was doing a lot of things drunk. It was like a game; how intoxicated could I be while still getting the task done and not getting noticed? I shopped for sweaters drunk. Hiked drunk. Even coded drunk. It’s very strange to look at a program written by an intellectually-meandering version of yourself. It’s like seeing a toy train’s tracks cross over each other a hundred times, and never in the same place. Continue reading →