[Placeholder] (Complete) NaNoWriMo 2016

Reality's Odds and Ends

"I really want to work on the blog archives." The Writer stared at the plethora of unposted work in her Google Docs folders and tried to ignore her desire to Organize ALL The Things. "I could just tidy up for just a minute..."

"That way leads madness," said the Muse solemnly.

"I know, I just– gah!" She threw up her hands. "I know it's just NaNo procrastinating, but I really really don't want to work on the story today."

"So take a break and do some world building." The Muse was busy hopping around on AO3 looking for another fan fiction author to binge read. "It's not like you did a whole lot of that before we got into this. Backstories! Side stories! Go, go, go!"

"Eh, I suppose you have a point." The Writer closed out her Google Docs and reopened the novel. "I'll just start up a 'other stuff' chapter. I was sort of hoping to avoid all of that this time around."

"There are people who put 99 Bottles of Beers on the Wall in their stories," The Muse shrugged.

"True, true." The Writer started the word count timer and hoped for the best.

~*~*~*~*~

"We don't have a choice," said the alien of no particular name, who I shall now call Sven. "We're down to three people and you know we aren't going to make it much longer."

"We can't just kidnap people!" Anastasia objected, "and Ship isn't equipped to handle livestock."

"Then we modify things or we look for volunteers." Sven ran a hand through ruffled feathers, trying to calm himself. "We can't let this ship get away, this is too important."

"We don't even know if anyone else made it out," Anastasia said. "This could all be pointless."

"Statistically, at least a fourth of the ships should have survived this long." Offered Ship. "There simply weren't enough shadow ships to destroy them all, even accounting for early successes which allow more than one target per ship–"

"Don't talk like that!" Anastasia yelled at the ceiling. "These are people not numbers!"

"He's a computer," said Cedric said, limping into the room. His feathers were dull and flat against his skin. At best he had another few months left, at worse... he wasn't oblivious to the fact that they needed a solution and they needed one now. "And the ship that is chasing us is a computer. We have to think like them if this is to work."

"How hard would it be to modify one of the cargo bays to handle livestock?" Sven asked Ship.

"It would depend on the livestock, but it shouldn't be too difficult. I can produce most basic food equivalents and altering the atmosphere within the room is easy enough." Ship answered. "Once I have more information on the specific animal can provide a more accurate answer."

"So we stop for scans," Cedric said firmly. "We'll pick up whatever we can and move on."

"It has to be an animal," insisted Anastasia. "We can't do this to people."

"We won't," promised Sven.

~*~*~*~*~

The Muse looked up from her fanfic. "Wait, so how did Ship go from picking up animals to picking up people?"

"Getting there, getting there..." The Writer was busy trying to sketch out a rough timeline of how long Ship had been traveling. "Oof, I really wasn't planning on writing anything else in this universe, but there are some interesting stories here."

"Well we're still behind, so outline later, word count now." The Muse reached over and reset the word sprint timer.

~*~*~*~*~