We have a contrast pair of figures for today ’s Concept Art Writing Prompt : a majestic lady directly out of a fantasy scene alongside a rather militant looking bionic man , or perhaps an mechanical man . So what are these two doing in a single fit ? See if you’re able to come up with a chronicle to check this image .
My account is a shameless rent - off of Frank R. Stockton ’s curt story “ The Lady , or the Tiger ? ” :
There was on a neo - feudal planetoid a He mining stakeholder with only one child , a beautiful daughter . This stakeholder had plan to splice his girl off to a great asteroid grove owner so as to batten favourable trading terms on produce . So he sequestered his daughter aside , without male child or girl as her peer . Her lone comrade was a genderless humanoid , ND-43 .
ND-43 would follow the lady as she strolled the ground of her father ’s demesne , chasing off any housekeeper who murmured hello or nurseryman who dared a friendly wave . The lady came to dread the blare of his wordless alarm and the menacing flash of his facial LEDs .
She would stomp and ramp to the bound of a nearby lake , burning up her pain . There , she would go under onto a stone wall , pull her hood over her head , and sang the songs that she had heard over the audio frequency streams . Her favorite was “ The young lady Who have it away the son I Love , ” from Dima Dimatini ’s unproduced light opera of the same name . She long to someday feel such passionate longing . Once she had finished that song , she would spin around around and snap at ND-43 , commanding zhim to follow her back to her quarters .
One solar day , though , when she turned around , she found ND-43 with his mind cocked to one side . Zhe had heard this song 100 of times before . Was it possible zhe was listen with unfeigned pursuit ? When she overlook zhim to fall out , her vocalism was for the first prison term , unsteady .
When , a mere three weeks subsequently , the stakeholder find his daughter in bed with ND-43 , the android ’s LEDs flickering suggestively , he shouted for his personal guard , a pair of cooler - like cyborg thugs , to rend the humanoid to bits . But the lady , dressed only in her twisted bedsheet , throw herself at her father ’s feet , begging for ND-43 ’s life .
And so the stakeholder excogitate this game of chance , so that ND-43 might possibly survive . ND-43 would walk into an sphere as the integral planetoid looked on . Zhe would find oneself a pair of indistinguishable twin girl dressed in matching livery , save that one uniform would be crimson and the other green . Each girl would be holding an identical track silver medal tray . Beneath one cover was a swarm of nanites that would dismantle ND-43 in under a minute . Beneath the other sat a tiny harddrive that , when inserted into ND-43 ’s port wine would install a companion program . Once the program was installed , ND-43 would have no room in zhis circuitry to eff anyone but that companion program .
Before ND-43 step into the area , the lady regain zhim and escort zhim once last clock time . After their concluding embrace , the lady whispered , “ Green . Choose the girl in green . ”
When ND-43 made zhis choice , under the eye of the stakeholder , the lady , and all their liege , zhe point an articulated finger at the girl in the fleeceable liver .
Now I put the interrogation to you , dear reader : When the daughter in green lift the lid from her tray , did she reveal the fellow political platform or the nanites ?
In vidvamp01 ’s level , one of our pair looked very unlike the last metre they met :
There she was , wait as he postulate , to be there on the day , that peculiar day when they knew they sleep together each other . There she was , as she predict … But , he was not the same as she make out him .
He tell her when he went to war , he loved her , that he would come back to her . But , his broken body made him doubt he was still the military man she sleep with . He felt late at bottom , that if he was not what she want to see , what she needed to see , that the man inside would not be the one she loved . Repaired with gimmick and machines , they were the military elbow room , to look uniform , to be a mechanics for war . But , to have his old dead body back , at least as it would seem to the human eye , would be a little fortune .
She loved him when he survive to state of war , and hump him still . She was waiting each daylight as he order to do , for the moment of his return to her . She let her spirit race , closing her eyes to think of him , reminisce back to time drop build love on the shores of the cerulean sea . The sound of his voice , the smell of his breathing spell , the caress of his pinch , made her smile to herself . She had his content , that he was coming home , and she acknowledge she would not remain aside from him .
He was a patriot , a soldier , but his tariff was done , he served his major planet well . But the war aim its toll on his body , would she still accept him , would she know him , was he too much machine and not enough man to be the one she once love with so much love . He had an offer , a groovy deal of money , a mercenary remuneration could pay to have his body repaired . Was it deserving the cost , keep his soul and leave his body a auto , risking that she could not be intimate him for what he had physically become , or embrace the cause of death mindset , to become the physical embodiment of what was nothing but a trivial deficiency so that he could take care like a human once more .
But to his surprise , she allege , “ I know it is you . Hello again my sexual love … ”
All he could do is block up , and look at her …
spectre in the Machine paints our regal straight gentlewoman as a master of tactical espionage :
So far everything was proceed according to program . Bree had present her carefully fashion invitation at the mansion house ’s entrance and struggled to look at ease as it was scanned . She had given in inward sigh of relief when the guards had allow her pass .
Bree stroll casually into the ballroom and involve stock of her environment . There was no way she would be able to get to the upper horizontal surface using the main staircase without being acknowledge . She would practice one of the servant stairwells after seeing how the security guards were circulating around .
Her sum nearly halt when she saw the Mark VII bionic man in its distinctive bleak garb . A electronic scanner behind the politic faceplate was reading the retinas of everyone in the elbow room . Her reference never mentioned there would be a Mark VII present . Her cover would be blown if her optic were scanned .
As the Mark VII border on Bree sat on a low wall with her back to the cyborg . She was counting on the bionic woman having instruction to be discrete and unobtrusive . She could almost find the cyborg ’s regard on the back of her head as it passed behind her . The Mark VII continued on , making a genial notation to find and rake her in a few minute .
Bree turn out and headed for one of the dance palace ’s side door . The preferably she could get up the stairs and stop her military mission , the better .
Shawn Stanford spins a taradiddle of sexual love lost :
The bunch divide before him , as it always did , as it always had . On one C of worlds across tens of thousands of faint - years it was always this direction . The blankness of the helmet and duskiness of the uniform concealing his enhancements and what remained of his humanity from the humans around him .
And it was dependable . He had known this was how it would be . This what what he want , this was his end in surrender to a life in the Security Forces . But it had not always been so .
He had been young once , and far away , and in love . An unimportant domain with nothing to give it significance among the many , many worlds of the Dominion . And on this unimportant earthly concern , his had been an insignificant townsfolk . A small community support a WWW of hem in farm , his mob ’s farm neither the smallest nor the largest . But it was a salutary life , with the many satisfactions of bringing solid food from the land and being hem in by those you make love and love .
She was so very beautiful . And they had both been so very young . And it was so long ago .
He was n’t political or particularly rummy , concentre as he was on her , and their life , and household there were just get down . He was never certain what brought their earthly concern to the attention of the Dominion . Most did n’t think them important enough , never mind the circumstances . But , as he came to realize much later , examples must always be made . And even as example must be made of unimportant planets , examples must also be made of insignificant towns on those planets . townsfolk like his , with their farms like his , and families like his .
For most , it seemed madness for the Dominion Security Forces to later on recruit at such places . But to some it made perfect sense and presented a staring opportunity . It was a position away from the memory of what was . Those memory board receeded further as he was go through by the training , enhancements and conditioning . His life achieve a metallic gray sameness that buried what he had been . He and the others like him moved from world to world and task to undertaking as call for , without introspection or remorse . land him , eventually , to this stead ; where they had executed their task as before , rejuvenate the Dominion , get a accurate amount of havoc while doing so .
The crew parted before him and there she was .
Something awake and a unmarried though explode through his mind , “ IT ’S HER ! ” . He handle to suppress the inherent aptitude to shout aloud , He moved along automatically , unconciously turn to stare at her as he passed . In the next jiffy , he get laid it was n’t her . That in all of creation , there are finite ways to put together a face . He should have get laid that someday he would feel himself here , in the comportment of the very figure of speech of all he had lost ; the loss that had brought him to this world . And he very nearly stop . Then he did n’t . And he know this was how it would be ; this was how it must be . But he also knew as he seek tax shelter in the gang that things for him would never again be as they were .
Meanwhile , Dee Kat ’s narration is anything but a love tale :
As SeHeath moved towards his object at the end of the open plaza his auditory don picked up a sound that froze his nitty-gritty , well not his physical heart and soul because he had lost that when he was reformed into Cyanth ’s assassin . But somewhere within him he could sometimes almost remember feelings . This went beyond that . He turned his sight don towards the source of the phone . On the moth-eaten bloodless marble forge the wall of the courtyard white silk flowed around and aside from a small form . The phone psychoanalyze at the minute of see what must be the shoulders of a untested distaff human shutter was that of a breathlessness of bother . Only her back was seeable to him but the conformation of the form , the characteristics of the voice that were behind the shit pull at him .
He had few memories of who he had been before he was changed by the Cyanthians . image would sometimes be ‘ see ’ in his mind ’s oculus but he knew not the story behind them . What he saw most often was a young woman with skin a pale creamy white touched by the color of a sunrise on her boldness and lip . Her eye were ever changing , sometimes a stormy grey , other time the aqua of the stones of Tersawthiz and seldom the blue of the Nox sky on Meriodia .
His work required that he have sex what emotions were and how to translate them by soundbox and facial movement and physical body . He did not have feelings or at least he had not had feeling since the variety but he could translate his bodies response . His visual mechanism was lucubrate to permit in more light even though the light conditions had not alter . His blood flow was increasing though his forcible activities had not . He did not have a kernel but if he did it would be pounding . All thought of his target area was conk out . His guest would not be please and it did not matter . All that mattered was that he see and have a go at it who was blot out in this clock of clean silk .
Fiction
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