I decided to put forth some of the one or two page stories that I wrote years ago, and never finished. Perhaps, you can give me some ideas as to how to continue them, or you may want to use them as a start to your own stories. Feel free.
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Unfinished Story - Repudi-Logic
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It was a great day. The sun overhead was shining, casting the red-blue shadows that Cornesk liked so much. The fields of wheat were swaying with the wind. Even the repudi were making their soothing crackling sounds.
“How could life get any better,” thought Cornesk.
The afternoon had been a little warm for him. Sometimes it reached 45 degrees Celsius but the evenings, like this one, were perfect. Not that a guy didn’t have to get used to the continuous light, but those were small matters. Hampton was the planet for him.
A small repudi snaked around Cornesk’s ankle making a chattering sound like oatmeal funneled through an aluminum foil tube.
“Well hello. Come to play did you?
Ever since the first expedition landed on Hampton the settlers found the one indigenous land animal both frightening in appearance and playful in action. The Repudi was like a cross between a dwarf alligator and a python dipped in breakfast cereal. The outer skin was a mixture of organic glues and pebbles, grass, sand, or whatever the little creatures rolled around in that day. It made a great covering for their tender skin and made for good camouflage.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have any sandpaper with me.”
Children discovered one day that the only think the Repudi liked better than eating was trying to cover themselves with sandpaper. Some child thought that it would be a good joke to glue a piece to a board and watch the Repudi try to take it. However, the Repudi seemed to enjoy rolling over the same piece of sandpaper trying to pick it up on their backs. Now whenever someone came along a Repudi it would make it’s sound and demand that they be given a sandpaper block.
In fact, sandpaper blocks were the only way that the scientists could coax a Repudi to the lab so they could take a sample or the organic glue they used. It was some marvelous stuff. The Repudi not only secreted this wonder glue but could neutralize it with another enzyme from their bodies when they wished to shed their “coat”.
So far there were hundreds of applications for it. Many of the houses were effectively wind and water proof because of a good coating of the glue. Since the mining operations couldn’t keep up with the demand for metal nails, planks were glued together. The stuff was amazing. Even the weavers started using it to glue several lengths of cloth together to make sails for the few small ships that were built.
Hampton was a class IV agricultural world that allowed use of indigenous building materials and enforced population growth. The Grand Council had found that if settlers used indigenous materials but had no growth controls that the planet started looking like old earth after a couple of hundred years. The forests would be gone, the atmosphere poisoned, the seas contaminated. It seemed that it was either use synthetic materials with no population growth or indigenous materials with controlled growth.
So far Hampton was unique in that the average population growth had never exceeded the parameters laid down by the Council. Not one pregnancy had to be aborted, nor one “eighty” euthanized. There were even jokes made that Hampton itself was exerting some control over the settlers so that not too many people were born and not too many died.
Now where had Cornesk’s mind gone. Here the Repudi had not only wrapped itself around his trouser leg but it was stuck there!! And good.
“Okay boy. Now let go. I need to get going!” Cornesk admonished the Repudi.
The repudi closed itself tighter around his leg, burying it’s tiny fangs into his shin.
“That’s it!”
Cornesk took an enzyme spray out of his pocket and let the Repudi have it. In second the Repudi came loose along with its covering or rock and grass. It slithered away with astonishing speed.
“Now what got into that beast,” though Cornesk. “I never heard of one of the Repudi biting anyone. “Cornesk hurried to the Medistead, the one designated medical house in the colony.
The Medistead was not only the first building built but the original family that lived there had changed their last name to Medistead. Right now the younger daughter was the current meditech.
“Rachael must be in her forties by now,” thought Cornesk. “Still a fine looking woman I must say! Not that she would ever like an old bloak like me, but I might be great for a one night stand.”
Just then Cornesk’s ankle twisted in the underbrush and his body pitched forward, hitting the ground with a whoosh of air.
“Son of a …”
“Hey, are you all right?” said a concerned female voice.
Cornesk looked up and found himself looking at Rachael bending over him, a puzzled expression on her face.
“Oh yeah. I just tripped over some damn thing. And one of those little beast bit me in the ankle back in the meadow.”
“What! I never heard of the Repudi biting anyone.”
“Well you have now!”
Rachael reached down and gave Cornesk a hand up. When he put weight back on his ankle it was like a hot butcher’s knife digging into his flesh.
“Whoah! Wait a minute while I get some splints from my house,” Rachael said.
Cornesk tried to get up again but the pain was just too much.
“Stop it! You stay right where you are and don’t move until I get back!” Rachael said.
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Enjoy.
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