Here’s a Telegraph article about the incident.
Flashback- 2009: an unknown force mangles a wind turbine in Lincolnshire, UK.
Flash forward- 2011: your challenge is to write a flash fiction tale explaining the mysterious “wine turbine destruction” incident.
Did a UFO do it? Or maybe highly selective ice? How about a giant illuminated octopus?
What’s your explanation?
Genre- horror, science fiction, or fantasy.
Or if you actually KNOW what caused the incident, write a non-fiction explanation.
Oh yeah- of all the eligible* entries (excluding my own) I’ll select one at random as the prize winner. The prize? This T-shirt! (Available in blue, and in your choice of size, or a reasonable substitution if shirt is unavailable at time of winning. Must have Amazon.com account.)
*Eligible: Entries must have word count of 500 – 1000, and be a cohesive story or explanation of the “wind turbine destruction” incident referenced above. Post your entry on your blog, and link to it in the comments of this post. Deadline is next Friday at noon, EST, 12-16-11. EXTENDED to SATURDAY at NOON, EST, 12-31-11! WOW! I’ll be posting my entry here by then.
Here’s mine:
Spin, Baby, Spin!
“Attention Earth base, this is Svigz base, do you receive?”
“Yes, Svigz base. This is Earth base, we receive. We are ready for your next instruction.”
“Excellent. We will transmit your instruction, but first we have some bad news. The conditions on Svigz have further deteriorated. We regret to inform you that Svigz is at war. Our entire planet. Our worst fears are coming true, as prophesized. The carbon in Svigz’s atmosphere is nearly depleted, and Svigzians are suffocating by the hundreds of thousands. We must transport our top officials, dignitaries, and wealth-holders immediately.”
“Oh the Svigzianity! Why didn’t we listen to our prophets? The science was there all along!”
“Pure Svigzian greed, my friend. But we’ve no time to dwell on our foibles. Is Earth ready for the Svigzian transport?”
“Only in the areas heavily populated by the dominant Earth life forms.”
“You mean the dominant life forms aren’t dead yet?”
“Not all of them.”
“What about the under-populated areas? The atmospheric carbon isn’t at a high enough level?”
“Not yet, but many of the moderately populated areas are reaching acceptable carbon levels.”
“Excellent.”
“But there’s a problem.”
“What? Dead Earthlings are piling up faster than you can burn them?”
“No. Some of the dominant life forms are starting to slow the production of atmospheric carbon emissions. Some are even switching from oil and coal power to geothermal and solar power.”
“No. That can’t be. Not after all the probes we put into the hydrocarbon and war industries. Are the probes malfunctioning?”
“No, they’re working at top efficiency, and have recruited the vast majority of the dominant life forms on Earth. But the worst development is that some of the highly intelligent Earthlings are switching to spin power.”
“What’s spin power?”
“It’s carbon-free and peaceful. I’ve researched it, and as far as I can tell, it uses Earth’s temperature differentiations to produce energy. The differentiations cause the atmosphere to shift over the Earth’s surface, and the resulting energy is captured by giant, elevated spinning blades. It’s horrible. The spinning blades not only produce carbon-free energy, they hypnotize the rest of the dominant life forms into making even more blade spinners. Soon Earth will be covered with giant, rotating, carbon-free energy machines. We’re doomed!”
“Did you hit the spinners with the plasmic octo-ice ray?”
“The ice ray doesn’t work so well on Earth. We only managed to temporarily disable one of those nasty spinny things. But now there are ten in its place.”
“We can’t give up yet.”
“But what can we do? The Earthlings keep making more spinny things.”
“We’ve no choice but to reactivate our Palin probe.”
“But the Palin already announced it would not seek presidential status!”
“Excellent. The Palin’s fan base will undoubtedly see the reversal as a display of maverick behavior. They’ll love it. And make sure Palin gets a bravery award this time. Tack a bravery pin on Palin’s wealth lapel, right under the USA flag pin. The USA-ers value bravery up there with myth-worship and wealth-worship.”
“Understood. But how do we secure the Palin’s award?”
“Plant a youtube video of Palin shooting wolves from helicopters. That will guarantee a bravery award. It worked for our Vick probe.”
X
Happy Holidays, readers!
Doing my part to promote lovely wind turbine energy,
CM
