Thirty Days of Drabbles - Day Twenty-Eight

[jeriendhal]

For chewipaka 's prompt of "Terinu and Miles Vorkosigan"

Miles blinked. "Even by House Ryoval standards, you're incredible."

"I ain't a genetic construct, shorty," the young man said. His skin was as grey as Miles' old Denadrii uniform, with a seven foot long tail capped by an enormous spade emerging from the bottom of his spine and a pair of thin, moble spurs emerging from a scalp of long, dark blue hair. No taller than Miles himself, the boy stood warily in front of him, balanced on the balls of his bare feet, looking ready to run.

"All right, what then?" Miles asked, backing up a step, trying not to crowd the kid. Genetically modified or surgically altered, the kid had a screaming tension running through his body that Miles was achingly familiar with.

"I'm an alien, an uplifted race made by that tall fella with the horns ya met earlier."

"And he's an alien too?"

"Sure he is. What's so hard to believe about that?"

Miles sighed. "Son, I think you've been reading too much science-fiction."

* * *

Oldest joke in the book, I know...

Comments

[allah-sulu.livejournal.com]

Wash: "That's like something out of science fiction."
Zoë: "We live in a spaceship, dear."
Wash: "So?"

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Curse you and your memory of classic Firefly lines!

[chewipaka.livejournal.com]

Zoe and Wash both have points!

I typed this sitting on a couch while watching TV. I am not plugged into any outlets, and my screen is in full color. Most of my friends can access the internet on these tiny devices that they keep in their pockets/purses, in addition to checking on their bank accounts, playing games (solo and with each other), and making phone calls.

Some of them even have these devices in their cars that tells them where their car currently is on the road, and how to get to the place where they want to go.

I have over 100 books on a device that weighs less than one pound, can access the internet, play music, and store documents that I am working on.

Go back 50 or 60 years, and this was science fiction. But now it's just a fact of modern life for people in the area I live in.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Not even fifty years. I just finished watching the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Last Starfighter [1] on my PS3, a machine that has more computing power by several orders of magnitude than the Cray computer that did the movie's special effects. Very wierd now to see old Grig take out his family photo album and flash several hundred digital images on what we'd see as a smartphone and audiences then would think was impossible.

[1] OhGodOhGodOhGOD I'm old!

[chewipaka.livejournal.com]

And yet, we still look at the future and read all these science fictiony things and think "Impossible!" or at least, "Not anytime soon/not in my lifetime".

Also, btw, it's "mobile", not "moble". But I liked!

New Prompt: continue this.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

It may be the oldest joke in the book, but it works [g].

That must have befuddled Miles worse than Nicol did.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

One of These Days I'll have to finish the crossover I began to write with Mark and Kareen being kidnapped by Mavra Chan when their ship is hijacked on approach to Sergyar. Naturally Lord Auditor Miles and family are visiting the viceroys at the time, so he teams up with Rufus to chase down Mavra before she can auction off the secret of the Superluminal Drive (no need for wormholes!)

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

Yes, you should. I would be fascinated to read it [g].

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Well, you can start here. It went on for quite a bit before I stopped.

[mmegaera.livejournal.com]

I'll take a look at it when I get back from WorldCon (we're leaving a week ahead of time in order to visit Yosemite).

Thanks.