Winter Ceramic DM™: THE WINNER!
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Since that's the case, here's a quick primer on how to link a photo as an active text link in VBB:
1. Copy your story from Word into the "post reply" field. Don't submit it yet.
2. Open a second window. Go click on Mythago's photo link. Edit-copy the url from the address bar.
3. Go to the right point in your text, just BEFORE the words you want to use as your link. Type the following, only using square brackets instead of curly:
{url=
Then edit-paste in the link. Follow that with a closed bracket, a ].
4. Now, go to right AFTER the words that you want to act as your link. Here, type this line:
{/url}
As before, make the curly brackets square.
5. Do this for the other photos as well.
EXAMPLE: For instance, let's say I want to link Mythago's first round 3 photo into the sentence "Boy, she sure is handy around the house." Using square brackets instead of curly brackets, I would type:
"Boy, she sure is {url=http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=12291}handy{/url} around the house.
Thus, when using the proper square brackets, it would look like:
"Boy, she sure is handy around the house.
Hope that's helpful to folks.
1. Copy your story from Word into the "post reply" field. Don't submit it yet.
2. Open a second window. Go click on Mythago's photo link. Edit-copy the url from the address bar.
3. Go to the right point in your text, just BEFORE the words you want to use as your link. Type the following, only using square brackets instead of curly:
{url=
Then edit-paste in the link. Follow that with a closed bracket, a ].
4. Now, go to right AFTER the words that you want to act as your link. Here, type this line:
{/url}
As before, make the curly brackets square.
5. Do this for the other photos as well.
EXAMPLE: For instance, let's say I want to link Mythago's first round 3 photo into the sentence "Boy, she sure is handy around the house." Using square brackets instead of curly brackets, I would type:
"Boy, she sure is {url=http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=12291}handy{/url} around the house.
Thus, when using the proper square brackets, it would look like:
"Boy, she sure is handy around the house.
Hope that's helpful to folks.
Last edited:
alsih2o
First Post
Fishin' Hole
I bend down low, scooping up the black, rich soil in my cupped hands. The nearly intoxicating smell of the fertile earth fills my head, and then the computer cuts in.
“Sir, I believe we have found the Hominid you are looking for.” it says in the soothing female voice my mother chose.
My mother.
I blame my mother.
“I blame my mother” It feels better to say it out loud.
The fog in my head starts to ease off. I will never get used to the feeling of coming out of cryo. Every time I wake up I think I am back on a terrestrial planet. Every time I am still out here listening to the constant monotone hum of the ship. It doesn’t take more than a few days of that omnipresent noise before you realize why they call us drones.
170,000 cubic meters of soil and stone may not sound like a lot until you have seen a ships hold full of it, you get a strong sense of awe. Or uselessness. I think I will go with the latter. This is one hell of a way for Marine to spend his days.
Not that I was a Marine. But I wanted to be one. Worse than anything I wanted to be a Marine. Tall, proud, thick with body armor and armed with the best equipment Earth credits can buy. Marching shoulder to shoulder into a massive Battleship.
“But the Merchant Marine is the Marines too” mother would say. “Earn some money, see the galaxy”
This damned ship was her idea too. It cost me every penny I got for graduation form the Academy, all my savings from hull-cleaning after classes everyday (do you know how embarrassing it is to have to go to school still smelling of Berulean space mites?) and a “small loan” from Mom.
So here I sit on a cold, old freighter that delivers me and my cargo wherever it is told and returns home automatically. See the galaxy my ass.
Adding insult to injury she had to come in and decorate.
In case you missed that one I said “Decorate.” A freighter. Decorations.
“Pay attention to history.” she said “All kinds of great men have sailed off for economic reasons rather than military causes.”
‘All kinds of great men’ was also her excuse for the wheel. A real one mind you. I now own (most of) the only ship in this sector with a real, honest-to-god ship’s wheel. Right there, at the helm I stand at a giant chunk of wood and glue and brass while a computer makes 1.2 million calculations per minute to keep me from slamming into a star, or for that matter a wee bit too much dust, especially at this speed.
But I don’t mind. I don’t mind the big, clunky ships wheel, I don’t mind that she hung signal lanterns at the doors to the fore deck. I don’t even mind
It was the bells. Three bells she bought from some hack off-planet merchant who swore they were antiques. She programmed the computer to play them just like a ship’s bells.
00:30 1 bell
01:00 2 bells
01:30 2 bells, pause, 1 bell
02:00 2 bells, pause, 2 bells
02:30 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 1 bell
03:00 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 2 bells
03:30 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 1 bell
04:00 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 2 bells
This might have been great when you were on the deck of a sailing vessel in the midst of some god-forsaken ocean trying to get through a four hour shift, but I assure you it is a special kind of hell when your mother chooses this little pattern out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia without consulting the cryo manuals.
You see cryo isn’t perfect yet, and the manual recommends turning off all the alarms on a ship that do not end the cryocycle. These sounds penetrate the module and stir whoever might be inside. Like me.
Three years I have been huddled up in that damned tube, bells ringing the half hour and hour. They penetrated the chamber just enough to bring me to the edge of wakefulness. Just enough to remind me of where I was. Just enough to spoil my rest, but not enough to end the cryocycle. Every time I was pushed back down in to sleep by the cryo-unit. It was like the groggy, congested sleep of the flu.
For three years.
The computer chimes in again “Preparing reinforced orbit now, sir”
“I blame my mother” I have to say it one more time, just because it felt so good.
“I apologize sir” the computer interrupted “but should I be making observation on your maternal relationship?”
I briefly contemplate jettisoning the voice relays from the computer and reading displays myself but think better of it. “No, no, just finish putting us into orbit and prep me a meal. Preferably something that will get this terrible taste out of my mouth.”
------------------------------------------
Four hours later and I am beginning to feel human again. I ported out the bells. I had hoped the two bronze ones would at least make a slight flare on re-entry but no such luck, at least nothing I could see form this orbit.
I have checked the computer twice and it appears that the invoice is correct. All this soil and rock is for the one loony bastard who lives on this crappy planet. What kind of nut job lives alone on an oceanic world?
This moron doesn’t even have a com system, I am going to have to let the computer port me down there so I can find out where he wants it. I hate porting with a passion. I am always worried that the computer will fail while I am someplace I don’t want to be, or what if I lose my homing control? The stupid computer doesn’t have the common sense to quit playing the damned bells for no one after a year or so but I am supposed to believe it will remember to find me and port me back without my homing controller? Damn my mother for brokering these shady deals.
--------------------------------------------
Three hours later and I have ported to the location the computer said our buyer is at. If you can call this a location.
It is nothing. Absolute nothing. One speck of earth half the size of my ship in the middle of a Terra Size 3 planet. Nothing but rock, a little soil and the sorriest looking man I have ever seen. He is just sitting there, at the edge of the rock, fishing.
“Did you order a parcel of soil and rock?” I ask.
He nearly shoots out of his pants when he hears me, I should have considered the effect of porting down right behind one of these weird hermit types.
He lands splay legged in the shallow and stares at me for a brief moment, then sputters to life like some ancient internal combustion machine. “YOU! You…You are HERE! Here. You ARE here.”
Now, I try to be respectful of other people and their differences but I just woke up from a bad 3 year nap with a nagging reminder form my mother every 30 minutes and I am not gonna stand around playing word games with a hermit.
“Yeah, me, here, all that. The question stands old man. Are you the guy I am here to see or am I lost in space?”
The reference goes right over his head (they always do, no one remembers the classics) and he responds “Oh! Oh! I am definitely the ‘guy you are here to see‘. Are you the one who took my order? I sent it out with visitors 7 years ago, I thought it was lost for sure!”
“I didn’t take any order old man.” I explain. “I am here courtesy of my wack-job mother and whoever it is she is making deals with this week.”
I survey the islet that we stand on and ask “Is there somewhere you want all this, I mean, I seem to be bringing you more than you’ve got”
“More than I’ve got indeed.” he says “You see my whole kingdom here.”
I have to ask, like an idiot. “Are you some kind of scientist? Or you a hermit or what?”
“Some kind or what indeed. I came here to study the tide, catch some fish, maybe write a paper, or if I was lucky, a book.” He points to the stick jutting up form the far shore “My first day I started tide measurements, but I got attached to this place”
I turn, and make notice of the pole with its seat halfway up. Small knots and twigs from the sole scrawny bush o the island mark tidal variations.
“What do you do when the tide is up?” I ask. “It must swallow this whole island.”
“Ride the seat deary” he says. “The waves are low here, if you hold tight you won’t fall.”
That’s when I realize his voice has moved closer. I turn and he is on me. All calloused hands and the smell of fetid fish. I try to push against his tattered clothes but my arms are still so weak from the cryo.
He pins my right arm by my head and forces my mouth open with his thumb. The salt stuck in his beard and hair breaks loose in small crusts and stings my eyes.
He looms above my face and says “Very attached you see, by my first catch from this sea.”
He snatches my homing controller form my neck and moves his head towards mine, mouth agape like some akward lover. As I look I see the light coming from the back of his throat, and the orange bile containing the worm begins to ooze forth from his mouth and fill mine. It spills into my sinuses and chokes me, it overfills me and runs down my face, seeping into my ears and hair. It burns as I feel it oozing its way down my throat and into my lungs.
“Very attched” he says, standing over me, growing dim as he presses the large blue button on the homing controller and ports away.
---------------------------------------------------
So, mostly I just fish now. At least my seat is comfortable.
The old coot could have left me the soil and rock at least. It would have beat what he did leave me. Just this worm, sitting inside me. I can hear it you know, just like the bells it keeps me from ever resting well. I know it won’t let me leave the planet as long as it is inside me, but I am not sure I have the patience for someone to find me on this awful puddle.
I suppose I shouldn’t fel to bad. He is locked on a course for home.
And now he is going to have deal with mother.
I bend down low, scooping up the black, rich soil in my cupped hands. The nearly intoxicating smell of the fertile earth fills my head, and then the computer cuts in.
“Sir, I believe we have found the Hominid you are looking for.” it says in the soothing female voice my mother chose.
My mother.
I blame my mother.
“I blame my mother” It feels better to say it out loud.
The fog in my head starts to ease off. I will never get used to the feeling of coming out of cryo. Every time I wake up I think I am back on a terrestrial planet. Every time I am still out here listening to the constant monotone hum of the ship. It doesn’t take more than a few days of that omnipresent noise before you realize why they call us drones.
170,000 cubic meters of soil and stone may not sound like a lot until you have seen a ships hold full of it, you get a strong sense of awe. Or uselessness. I think I will go with the latter. This is one hell of a way for Marine to spend his days.
Not that I was a Marine. But I wanted to be one. Worse than anything I wanted to be a Marine. Tall, proud, thick with body armor and armed with the best equipment Earth credits can buy. Marching shoulder to shoulder into a massive Battleship.
“But the Merchant Marine is the Marines too” mother would say. “Earn some money, see the galaxy”
This damned ship was her idea too. It cost me every penny I got for graduation form the Academy, all my savings from hull-cleaning after classes everyday (do you know how embarrassing it is to have to go to school still smelling of Berulean space mites?) and a “small loan” from Mom.
So here I sit on a cold, old freighter that delivers me and my cargo wherever it is told and returns home automatically. See the galaxy my ass.
Adding insult to injury she had to come in and decorate.
In case you missed that one I said “Decorate.” A freighter. Decorations.
“Pay attention to history.” she said “All kinds of great men have sailed off for economic reasons rather than military causes.”
‘All kinds of great men’ was also her excuse for the wheel. A real one mind you. I now own (most of) the only ship in this sector with a real, honest-to-god ship’s wheel. Right there, at the helm I stand at a giant chunk of wood and glue and brass while a computer makes 1.2 million calculations per minute to keep me from slamming into a star, or for that matter a wee bit too much dust, especially at this speed.
But I don’t mind. I don’t mind the big, clunky ships wheel, I don’t mind that she hung signal lanterns at the doors to the fore deck. I don’t even mind
It was the bells. Three bells she bought from some hack off-planet merchant who swore they were antiques. She programmed the computer to play them just like a ship’s bells.
00:30 1 bell
01:00 2 bells
01:30 2 bells, pause, 1 bell
02:00 2 bells, pause, 2 bells
02:30 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 1 bell
03:00 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 2 bells
03:30 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 1 bell
04:00 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 2 bells, pause, 2 bells
This might have been great when you were on the deck of a sailing vessel in the midst of some god-forsaken ocean trying to get through a four hour shift, but I assure you it is a special kind of hell when your mother chooses this little pattern out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia without consulting the cryo manuals.
You see cryo isn’t perfect yet, and the manual recommends turning off all the alarms on a ship that do not end the cryocycle. These sounds penetrate the module and stir whoever might be inside. Like me.
Three years I have been huddled up in that damned tube, bells ringing the half hour and hour. They penetrated the chamber just enough to bring me to the edge of wakefulness. Just enough to remind me of where I was. Just enough to spoil my rest, but not enough to end the cryocycle. Every time I was pushed back down in to sleep by the cryo-unit. It was like the groggy, congested sleep of the flu.
For three years.
The computer chimes in again “Preparing reinforced orbit now, sir”
“I blame my mother” I have to say it one more time, just because it felt so good.
“I apologize sir” the computer interrupted “but should I be making observation on your maternal relationship?”
I briefly contemplate jettisoning the voice relays from the computer and reading displays myself but think better of it. “No, no, just finish putting us into orbit and prep me a meal. Preferably something that will get this terrible taste out of my mouth.”
------------------------------------------
Four hours later and I am beginning to feel human again. I ported out the bells. I had hoped the two bronze ones would at least make a slight flare on re-entry but no such luck, at least nothing I could see form this orbit.
I have checked the computer twice and it appears that the invoice is correct. All this soil and rock is for the one loony bastard who lives on this crappy planet. What kind of nut job lives alone on an oceanic world?
This moron doesn’t even have a com system, I am going to have to let the computer port me down there so I can find out where he wants it. I hate porting with a passion. I am always worried that the computer will fail while I am someplace I don’t want to be, or what if I lose my homing control? The stupid computer doesn’t have the common sense to quit playing the damned bells for no one after a year or so but I am supposed to believe it will remember to find me and port me back without my homing controller? Damn my mother for brokering these shady deals.
--------------------------------------------
Three hours later and I have ported to the location the computer said our buyer is at. If you can call this a location.
It is nothing. Absolute nothing. One speck of earth half the size of my ship in the middle of a Terra Size 3 planet. Nothing but rock, a little soil and the sorriest looking man I have ever seen. He is just sitting there, at the edge of the rock, fishing.
“Did you order a parcel of soil and rock?” I ask.
He nearly shoots out of his pants when he hears me, I should have considered the effect of porting down right behind one of these weird hermit types.
He lands splay legged in the shallow and stares at me for a brief moment, then sputters to life like some ancient internal combustion machine. “YOU! You…You are HERE! Here. You ARE here.”
Now, I try to be respectful of other people and their differences but I just woke up from a bad 3 year nap with a nagging reminder form my mother every 30 minutes and I am not gonna stand around playing word games with a hermit.
“Yeah, me, here, all that. The question stands old man. Are you the guy I am here to see or am I lost in space?”
The reference goes right over his head (they always do, no one remembers the classics) and he responds “Oh! Oh! I am definitely the ‘guy you are here to see‘. Are you the one who took my order? I sent it out with visitors 7 years ago, I thought it was lost for sure!”
“I didn’t take any order old man.” I explain. “I am here courtesy of my wack-job mother and whoever it is she is making deals with this week.”
I survey the islet that we stand on and ask “Is there somewhere you want all this, I mean, I seem to be bringing you more than you’ve got”
“More than I’ve got indeed.” he says “You see my whole kingdom here.”
I have to ask, like an idiot. “Are you some kind of scientist? Or you a hermit or what?”
“Some kind or what indeed. I came here to study the tide, catch some fish, maybe write a paper, or if I was lucky, a book.” He points to the stick jutting up form the far shore “My first day I started tide measurements, but I got attached to this place”
I turn, and make notice of the pole with its seat halfway up. Small knots and twigs from the sole scrawny bush o the island mark tidal variations.
“What do you do when the tide is up?” I ask. “It must swallow this whole island.”
“Ride the seat deary” he says. “The waves are low here, if you hold tight you won’t fall.”
That’s when I realize his voice has moved closer. I turn and he is on me. All calloused hands and the smell of fetid fish. I try to push against his tattered clothes but my arms are still so weak from the cryo.
He pins my right arm by my head and forces my mouth open with his thumb. The salt stuck in his beard and hair breaks loose in small crusts and stings my eyes.
He looms above my face and says “Very attached you see, by my first catch from this sea.”
He snatches my homing controller form my neck and moves his head towards mine, mouth agape like some akward lover. As I look I see the light coming from the back of his throat, and the orange bile containing the worm begins to ooze forth from his mouth and fill mine. It spills into my sinuses and chokes me, it overfills me and runs down my face, seeping into my ears and hair. It burns as I feel it oozing its way down my throat and into my lungs.
“Very attched” he says, standing over me, growing dim as he presses the large blue button on the homing controller and ports away.
---------------------------------------------------
So, mostly I just fish now. At least my seat is comfortable.
The old coot could have left me the soil and rock at least. It would have beat what he did leave me. Just this worm, sitting inside me. I can hear it you know, just like the bells it keeps me from ever resting well. I know it won’t let me leave the planet as long as it is inside me, but I am not sure I have the patience for someone to find me on this awful puddle.
I suppose I shouldn’t fel to bad. He is locked on a course for home.
And now he is going to have deal with mother.
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