"Not Dead This Time" Writing Challenge

VOTE
It's a hard choice between worms and:-) leaves or robots, a REALLY hard choice... In fact the more I think about it, the more I do prefer worms, especially when they have an attitude and end up getting bit in half and eaten! And the poor leaf floated away with half it's epidermis eaten.
Robots is good, but worms is even better! :-)

VOTE
But it's a hard choice between between worms and leaves or robots!

I can't decide which story to vote for so I'm going to come back later and vote. I really like this story and I like your ending better than Philip's, and the dialogue was perfect :o)

OK, OK. Sorry it's late. Anthropomorphism isn't really my thing. Anyway WARNING: If you are sensitive to bad language don't read this story. If you are under eighteen years of age go, RIGHT NOW, and get your parent or otherwise legally approved guardian and get them to review this story and decide whether or not they think it's appropriate reading material for your age. Otherwise, enjoy the ride.


- You know the first time I saw Tilly Macgregor she was face down in a pool of water.
- Wollondilly Beach?
- Yep. Wollondilly Beach. Summer of ’83.
- Record swell that year.
- Yep. Breakers up to ten metres. Like fucking Hawaii only colder.
- Always was a fucking mad place.
- Hawaii?
- Na. Inside of Tilly’s head. How many boards’ she done in, ya reckon?
- Six or seven...
- A year.
- Yep. Since ’83, anyway. Almost did her head in too that year. Blood all over the rocks.
- Bloody miracle it’s taken this long.
- Yep.
- You think we should tell someone?
- Probably. Needs scraping off the rocks before kids see it.
- Yep.
- Good warning though. Sign of how often enthusiasm’s inversely proportional to talent.
- In-what? You know you shouldn’t say stuff like that. People almost forget you went off to like lah-di-dah university and you go and say stuff like that.
- Don’t need a university education to know you shouldn’t surf a twelve metre off the bloody Roaring Forties unless you’re bloody suicidal.
- Yeah. Suicidal.
- Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that. Not appropriate, given the circumstances.
- Yeah. Not appropriate. Bracing though?
- Bracing?
- Facing your own mortality. Fucking hounding boggas. Breathing in the spray up to the crest. Like fucking meditation.
- You’re as much a lunatic as Tilly is... was. You know that, don’t you?
- What a way to go, but.
- Drowning under a burning fucking house?
- Sacrificing yourself to the surf gods... D’ you see that?
- What?
- Tha...
- I don’t see... fu... Tilly?
- Gnnnh.... ughmph... gnnn...
- Tilly?
- Gnnh... mnggg... gnnnhh... suckergnnhs... Where’s me spl... gnnh... board?
- Other end of the beach in about a million pieces. You mad fucking feline. Seriously thought you were fucked for good this time.
- Gnnh... yeah... noticed. Nice fucking eulogy gnh. Specially liked the bit about all me talent.
- Talk about nine effing lives. Haven’t you used all of ‘em?
- Don’t believe in limits, pussies. And I’m not fuckin’ dead yet.

VOTE, although I'm still slightly disappointed you didn't include the bear...

It's probably the scientist in me that was totally amused by chloroplasts zinging and leaves getting eaten down to their vascular bundles. I also found the moral of the story obtuse and subversive, which can only be attractive. I couldn't decide whether you were targeting a young audience or satirising for an older one, but I don't think it matters all that much. I found it interesting that both you and Philip chose to write very action-based stories (basically an amusing list of things done by a rescuer to a rescuee) and in both cases the rescuer ended badly. I wonder if it's the anthropomorphism that does it, or if a character called Tilly Macgregor is inevitably a chaos-maker. Anyway, here's my VOTE.

The first time I saw Tilly MacGregor, she was face down in a pool of water.

Not that worms really have faces, making it difficult to utilize the term ‘face down’ with any measure of precision, but the part of her anatomy that I understood to be a face-like element was certainly submerged in the murky pond that resided under my branch.

At least I was fairly sure it was Tilly MacGregor, the worm. Her reputation preceded her.

It preceded her because Tilly was not merely any worm. She was a worm who gave herself airs. Not airs as in the fresh airs of a wind, but airs as in the hoity-toity huffy-puffy I'm better than you airs: the nasty airs of an entity hovering at a level it doesn't have the praise-worthiness to deserve. She thought she was better than us leaves because she stomached her way over the earth and was actually mobile while we perforce stayed stationary. I knew this because our comrades from other trees told us about her atrocious, socially unacceptable behavior. Looking upon them with her face-element thing, she would flick the top half of her wormy body in a show of contempt for their immobility, then she would wriggle away.

Well, needless to say, she wasn't a popular one among us, and now I saw her squiggling about on the surface of the pond, trying desperately to make it back to shore before a nice fat rainbow trout came and gobbled her up. Already I saw the telltale, iridescent flash of a fin as one circled her in anticipation. The rest of my leaf buddies whispered in a soft cacophony around me. "It's her, it's her! Where's her airs now?"

But as I fluttered on my branch, enjoying the lovely sunshiny day and the breeze sliding across my red-veins and green flatness, I gazed down upon Tilly struggling for her life on the surface of the water, and I felt sorry for her. Yes! I did! After all, she could never hover suspended in air as I could. For, oh, what a wonderful life it was hanging from a tree branch! Being part of an entire community of like-minded and like-bodied individuals who fluttered and whispered in sync with me whenever the wind set us to rustling in unison. Yes, this was the life, and I'd lived a full one, including having been splattered on in fly-by's by birds, which was always a break from the routine day.

And poor Tilly would never experience that. Even if by some miracle she survived long enough to get back ashore, she would be condemned to worming her way over the dirt all her life - which looked like it was going to be a short one.

I couldn't stop my self pity, and, having lived my own full life, decided to do something magnificent with the rest of it.

I wrenched myself as hard as I could, fluttering for all I was worth. Ungh, ugnh, uuuuuuugh! Flutter, dammit! Flutter some more! Uungh! Flutter for all you’re worth, Leaf Number One-Thousand-Three-Hundred-Twenty-Two! Uuungh!

Then – at last, at long last! – it came: a tiny popping snap.

Success! My chloroplasts all zinged for joy!

Then I was wafting through the air. I alit upon the glassy surface of the water close to Tilly. Catching sight of me, she worked her little wormy way over to me and wriggled onto my red-veined surface. She couldn’t speak, just as I couldn’t, having no mouth with which to emit anything, but I knew she was grateful. After all, I was bearing her back to a life where she would have a second chance to climb high and experience the wonders of dangling from a tree...

Wait, wait, what was that? Had the ungrateful worm just taken a nibble out of my epidermis? She had, that sneaky, close-relative-to-a-snake! Oooh, I was quaking mad now. How dare she! Is this how you treat your rescuer? I couldn’t let her get to my vascular bundles.

I considered capsizing her, but knew down to my cuticles that this was my crowning glory in life. I had to get her ashore even if she consumed my epidermis and all my vascular bundles, too. I could do this.

I had to do this.

For the glory of all leaves, to prove our collective worth.

And so I fluttered some more, drifting along just peachily – even if I was getting a bit holey where Tilly’s face-element was chewing me down to my mesophyll – but then a shadow passed over us, and it wasn’t the leafy branch I was used to shadowing me.

It was one of the flying splatterers!

The flap of its wing snipped the air, then came the whoosh of the swooping feathered predator and the flash of its sharp beak, and suddenly Tilly was snapped in two and gobbled up by the mighty, fearsome, horror-inducing WREN, scourge of all wormkind!

I watched the bottom half of Tilly topple back into the water close to my stem.

Crud. There went my purpose in life. The reason I abandoned my branch and set out into the wide world.

So now what?

So now, my dear fellow flutterers, now I take with me a valuable lesson learned for my next life: Don't help others, 'cuz they’ll only eat you down to your vascular bundles, get chopped in half, and leave you adrift with nothing to show for your efforts but holes.

VOTE (but I like Anneke's ending better!)

This story had me laughing out loud at the IT jargon. Esp. these parts:
- I made my way back to the lovely #AE402B coloured plain
- sleeping eyes staring up at me, causing my code to skip a line.
- after a few attempts at using different clutching algorithms
- do you think you’re doing with your filthy paws in my control box?
- Son of a fuelling tank! - I'm going to use this one next time I have an argument with an IT guy :o)
But I still can't decide which one to vote for - yours or Anneke's, so I'm going to come back later (God willing) and vote then.

Hi Philip. Given the non-humanoid topic, I pictured your characters in a sort of R2-D2 style. I found it fun how Eric the robot combined the usual objective detailed analysis with quite a lot of subjectiveness/ opinion. On balance though, it was a very action-based story, reminding me of the classic sci-fi I used to read back in my teenaged years - a nostalgia trip for me. I felt as though the target audience was a young one and I'm not sure why; I wonder if you took out the amusing names and words and left the story otherwise exactly the same, would it seem older and sadder.