Prompt: A case of mistaken identity

"Sir, they've declared war!" yelled Lance, bursting into the oval office.

"Who?!" Shouted the President, springing up from his chair.

The presidents' aid looked down at his clipboard for a moment.

"Uh, Korea."

"North or South?"

"Which one do you think?!" Lance shouted.

"I'm sorry Sam, but you do realize that this is a big deal."

"It's Lance, sir, and yes sir, I know. I'm sorry for losing my composure."

The room grew still and silent. Lance smoothed his thin mustache.

The president wiped a bead of sweat trickling down his face, and took his seat again. Finally poised and ready to handle the situation, he took a swig of scotch from the sweaty lowball glass on his desk. Next to his mistress, he could always count on that glass to be at his side.

"Well, it's not like we haven't seen this coming. How urgent is the situation?"

"Well sir, " said Lance, trying to swallow past a lump in his throat, "The Air Force has confirmed fighters approaching Washington as we speak, and -"

"Holy Moley! We've got to do something now! Scramble fighters to cover the coastline!"

"They're already on their way, sir."

"Good. I want you to alert the cabinet that I'm envoking an executive decision and making a retaliatory response as of this moment."

"Sir, surely your aren't going to..."

Lance voice trailed off as the President lifted a stack of files off of a polished wood box with the presidential seal embossed on the front. He rubbed his chin for a moment, staring at it, and then lifted the cover. Poking out of a bed of blue velvet lie a large red button and a rotary dial. The President leaned in and scrunched his nose, examining a small plaque next to the dial.

"Get me my glasses and another scotch, won't you Sam? I can't read this."

"Of course, sir. And my name is Lance, sir." Said Lance, rushing to the wet bar.

The President, finding an odd ability to take pleasure from the moment, leaned back in his chair and lit a cigar. He put his feet up on the desk as he watched Lance scurry about the room looking for his glasses.

"You know Sam, there's a promotion in this for ya," he said through teeth clenching to keep the cigar in place.

"It's Lance, sir. Thank you, sir. Ah! Here we are," said Lance, relieved to have found the President's glasses.

"Thanks, Sam. Now, let's see here..."

The President unfolded his specs and put them on. Again, his nose scrunched as he leaned forward to examine the plaque next to the rotary dial. He read aloud:

"It says here to 'Turn dial to indicate enemy. Press button to fire missiles.' Seems simple enough."

The President slowly clasped his fingers around the center of the knob. He made eye contact with Lance before returning his gaze to the knob and turned the dial until the display read: NORTH KOREA.

As the President reached for the button, lance stepped forward and raised an arm towards him.

"What is it Sam?"

"Lance, sir. Um, I just thought you might want to say something very thoughtful and maudlin before firing the missiles."

"Something for the history books, huh? I think I can manage that. You must be looking to be an admiral or something," he said leaning back in his chair again and tossing a wink towards his aide.

"Let's see, let's see. Um, how about "On this day, I send some missiles to Korea?' That's good enough."

As Lance stepped forward to encourage something more poetic, the President rose quickly from his chair and saluted Lance.

"On this day," he began to shout "I send some missiles to Korea!"

With his saluting hand slapped the red button as if he were delivering a low-five. A cacophony of shouts and sirens sounded outside the doors to the office. Red flashing lights on motors descended from the ceiling as all other lights extinguished themselves.

"That's it, Sam. North Korea will be no more. Now, moving on to the next line of business: I want to assure that all suspected North Korean agents in the US are brought in for interrogation."

"Lance, sir, " began Lance, glancing down at his clipboard, "and, the uh NSA has already -"

He stumbled in his thoughts. Something on his clipboard drew his attention.

"Well Lance, what is it?"

"Sir, how acurate are those missiles?" Asked Lance, staring at his clipboard as if he could change what it reads just by looking at it intensely.

"Why should I know? Does it help if I know that they have lasers in them?"

"I'm not sure," said Lance, "but let's just hope they miss by a LOT or get blown off course by a storm or something."

"What are you trying to tell me?"

"Sir, my name is SAM. S-A-M. My name is undeniably SAM and I," Lance swallowed to help his dry throat to deliver the rest of the news. "I uh, accidentally told you to fire on North Korea instead of China."

Prompt: A fable

The Grasshopper and the Octopus:

All year long the grasshopper kept burying acorns for winter while the octopus mooched off his girlfriend and watched TV. Then the winter came, and the grasshopper died, and the octopus ate all his acorns and also he got a race car.

Just kidding. Beatings to whomever doesn't know where that came from.




Ok. Here it is for real:

One clear spring day, a squirrel was sprinting down a path towards his larder. Off the side of the road he saw something he hadn't noticed before. There, under the shade of a tree, sat an old goat quietly chewing his cud. Next to him was an upturned water bucket, with a note scratched into the wood that read:

"UPTURNED THIS BUCKET REMAINS!"

Struck with curiosity, the squirrel quickly ran up to the goat and asked why the bucket was upside down.

"The hawk, who looks over this valley, turned over the old bucket for reasons I do not know. He scratched the note there and told me to look after the bucket and warn any who may try to right it."

"Warn of what?" Inquired the Squirrel.

"Foolish regret." said the old goat.

"Is that so, you silly goat? You spend your days looking over an old bucket and you have no idea why. You are old and soon you will die. The hawk must have given you this duty so you will feel of use, since you are too weak to do much else than sit under a tree and chew cud."

"The hawk is generous, yes, but he is also wise," said the goat. "I believe he gave me the task because my years have given me discipline to carry out my duty day in and out without fail. If he were to choose someone young like you, you would leave it alone to chase after a young female or try to store your larder under it."

"You have been stupid old timer," scoffed the squirrel. "You protect only yourself from foolish regret. The bucket is empty and the hawk took pity on you!"

And with that, he ran up to the bucket and kicked it over.

What lay under the bucket was a giant cockroach. As soon as the warm sunlight touched it, the cockroach began chasing the squirrel around the base of the tree. Wherever the squirrel fled to, it followed. Finally, the cockroach caught up with the squirrel and began to eat him.

Between cries of agony, the squirrel shouted:

"Goat, you tricked me!"

The goat ran for help as fast as his old legs could take him, but he did not get far; for the shadow of the hawk crossed the valley and sped down towards the tree. He swooped down and picked up the cockroach and dropped it from a great height to its' death.

The hawk returned and looked sternly at the squirrel, lying in terrible pain.

"That goat tricked me," croaked the squirrel "he should be dropped, too!"

The hawk responded with a look of pity. Then he turned to the goat and said:

"Goat, you have done your job, and a good one at that. Go the mouth of the river. It will take a while to get there, but there is sweet grass there that you can call your own and you will stay well fed for the rest of your days. I may call on you at some time and I hope you will permit me to give you another important task."

The goat thanked the hawk and gingerly walked toward the path without looking back.

Then the hawk retrieved the bucket and flew away, leaving the heedless squirrel to die of his wounds.

Prompt: The end of the world

They assembled the most discrete and aberrantly brilliant. In secrecy they prayed and designed and built it over a decade. In the final days before they used it, before world ended, they named it Shiva.

It was too large to deploy from the air and too heavy to tow behind a barge. Instead it simply remained in the tower it was constructed in. On the street seventy-three floors below, no one would realize what was housed inside it's benign facade. From the outside it was only a bank, but there was no money in it's vaults. Instead that money was poured into bringing The Destroyer to life.

No other bomb constructed bore a resemblance to it: Six large spheres orbited a seventh, smaller one: one covering each pole and one over each hemisphere. The design was inspired by previous concepts of implosion bombs, however the inward-firing explosives used to start the reaction were atomic in nature themselves. Only a kiloton each, they still provided more than enough force to crush the mass of plutonium at the center and create an explosion equal to ten billion tons of dynamite. Two hundred times larger than the highest-yield device ever detonated before, there was no need for it to be deliverable by jet or rocket - it would reach all targets.

Then, just before daylight, a prayer was uttered and it was detonated.

The flash of the initiating devices was so bright as to temporarily blind those looking in it's direction. A nanosecond later, the flash of the main unit was so brilliant and immense, that the world felt sunlight on the Eastern and Western hemispheres at the same time. Five hundred miles away, the light was intense enough to burn and blind any not behind cover. The flash burned shadows into walls, and turned grass and trees to flame.

Before the light had faded out, the hot compression wave had already reached the sea and set the surface aboil. Already the sky scraper it was born in had been pressed into the ball of liquid earth that melted beneath. The surrounding buildings were dismantled by the sweep of The Destroyer's arms. It ripped open tunnels and hillsides. It uprooted trees and crushed homes. The tremendous air pressure caused those within a hundred miles to have their muscles ripped off their bones without breaking the skin. Their lungs collapsed.

In place of the building grew a pillar of smoke and ash that lifted a fireball the size of a moon. It was lifted so high into the atmosphere that it was suffocated and extinguished. However, the stem still stood, miles across and seemingly infinite in hight. It turned slowly like a rooted tornado. The spinning continued for hours, and took weeks to settle in a cloud of fine dust.

The wrath left a molten crater that dwarfed nations. It dispatched millions and spread across half the continent and into the sea by hundreds of miles.

What destruction remained was carried across the world on high winds.

In a few years, the sounds of animals ceased. Crops did not grow. Babies died of leukemia. The survivors died, cowering in fear and muttering unheard prayers. A decade passed and finally all were lost to the anonymity of death.

What would remain would be unending fire and the roar of an angry god consuming the last of the Earth.