Sebastion took a seat at the bar and gave Bishop a cold hard stare. “You got us kicked out of the casino for cheating. I fired people for a whole lot less.” Bishop snapped his fingers at the bartender and put up two fingers. “I got us kicked out for suspicion of cheating. They never proved I did and never will.” Sebastion shook his head. “You just can’t allow yourself to lose, can you?” Bishop downed his drink as soon as the bartender set it down. “Nope. I always try to win, no matter what the odds are. There isn’t a challenge that I will shy away from. I aim to win any game, build the best product, buck the worst odds, and over come any obstacle. That’s why you hired me. I’m the never
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited June 09, 2008).]
Sebastian curled himself into the fetal position on the lee side of a gigantic boulder while I completed the destruction of our hovercraft’s control panel. A compass and a chronometer were the only useful gadgets I could find that still worked. It was rather coincidental that the invisibility shield wasn’t functioning at all, but the security cameras were fully operative. When I saw the snipped wires, the truth hit me like a punch in the gut: The Berian wanted the Dytdactlyns to find us, and he wanted to watch it happen.
It would have been easy to disable the security cameras by removing a chip and cutting some wires, but there was too much adrenaline coursing through me for that, so I decided to let the Berian have his action. I braved the wind driven sand
Posts: 1888 | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
Intro 3 Title: The Taste of Terran Heart Blood
"Bedtime, Dtylan. Big day tomorrow," Tylbal said. The alien planet's swooping bats of evening were gone, and night-hunting birds now hooted at the Dtydactlyn warrior band. The young initiate glanced up at his father, who'd returned to his whispered conference with the shaman. "Yes, sir." He tossed the last bit of his roasted spider monkey on the cook-fire. The fat crackled in the flames, igniting sparks that jumped at Dtylan and sent him scurrying to his bedroll. The greasy scorched-flesh smoke and stares of animal eyes followed him. He lay awake, listening to the night-forest and feeling sick. Would the terran heart make him puke? What a disgrace!
'How many shots does it take to kill these things?' Sebastion looked down over the rock edge at the swift moving creatures. 'Three.' Bishops rifle followed the leader of the five Dtydactlyns. 'First,' he said, firing off a round, 'an ankle.' The shot struck true and the lead Dactlyn stumbled forward. 'Second,' he fired of another round, 'the stomach.' The shot knocked the Dactlyn to the ground. 'Third,' He shot at one of the following Dactlyn that was tending to the lead, 'The neck.' The rest of the Dactlyn gathered around the fallen lead Dactlyn. 'Third,' Bishop said again, 'the neck.' Another Dactlyn fell. 'Third,' he said two more times. On the second shot, he missed. 'Damnit,' Bishop looked up at sebastion, 'sometimes it takes four.'
Posts: 1888 | Registered: Jan 2008
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Thundering footsteps shook the ground, knocking Sebastian Conte to his knees. He struggled back to his feet and ran, cursing the slimy moss-covered terrain. The smell of fetid breath was overpowering. The massive beast was closing in. "How long does it take that weapon of yours to charge?" Bishop, his friend and head weapon's designer, yelled back, "It's almost done!" Almost was going to get them devoured. Sebastian, grabbing Bishop, vaulted into a cave, praying worse creatures than the one chasing them didn't call it home. Luck was not with him today. Lasers from a dozen Dtydactlyn rifles were now aimed at their heads. "You lose," the leader snarled. "Not this time." Bishop fired his weapon, and time froze.
Sebastian Conte loved to gamble; the higher the stakes, the better. Who knew the expedition to Vos would be the most exciting gamble of his life?
It started at his private poker table, in the Shangrai La hotel orbitingSentari Five. Sebastian tucked away his cards and eyed his chief weaponsdesigner, Frank Bishop. A flush should win, but with his luck tonightBishop would lay down four aces. No guts, no glory. Sebastian slid twostacks of water credits across the green velvet.
“Sir.” Sebastian’s bodyguard whispered in his ear. “A Berian wants to seeyou. Says he has the opportunity of a lifetime.”
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited June 08, 2008).]
We dodged a laser blast and Bishop shoulder-shoved me off the rise and between two huge rock formations. Though I landed hard, nothing broke. I took cover under a ledge to watch Bishop battle a Dtydactlyn. He smashed the blaster from its clawed hand with a club he had scooped up on the run, struck the creature with a fierce backhand blow and hopped off the ledge. He landed in a roll and came up in a squat. "Guide screwed us," he said, holding a homing chit. "That prototype you brought to show me..." "I don't think this will help much," he said, holding up a multipurpose knife. Then the rock stood up and turned its reptilian head.
Clung-yung-yung, the n-dimensional luton round ricocheted off the bundyuv trunk like a steel halyard whacking a flag pole. "Cripes, Bishop," Sebastian Conte said. He pointed the finger cannon at the sky. "Isn't it supposed to annihilate the target?" "Not a dendrosaur tree." Bishop examined the dent made in the cerostanium trunk by the luton round. "When the irresistible force meets the immovable object they both give a little." "Where's the big game at, Berian sur Tometh?" Sebastian traced an arc with the leveled finger cannon. "I want to take home a huge trophy. Uh, Bishop, where's Tometh?" Bishop slipped a finger cannon over his palm. "Did the zuzzard bugs just go quiet or did they stop ticking when you fired?" A dot painted Sebastian's forehead. "Get down," Bishop screamed.
posted
Well, I had to call it. I am leaving tomorrow on vacation and decided the laptop should stay at home. I think we got everybody thought. I'll tally votes when I get back Thursday.
Posts: 1888 | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
I thought we had until Thursday to send to you. I thought it had been extended a further week. *walks away, confused--screws up his half-done entry and slings it the bin*
[This message has been edited by skadder (edited June 09, 2008).]
Yup, the new regime starts week eleven (this Friday). Although Doctor is ahead of you, I have not recieved his synopsis, so if you send me yours today, you will be up this Friday. Alternatively I have a reserve synopsis I will use if you are not ready--but you will still need to get me your synopsis a week before it is up e.g. latest this Friday for posting by me a week on Friday.
Send your entries to me then and I'll post them if you like. As far as the length of the submissions go SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED is always on the job. So hold off on crits. I already submitted mine. Skadder pull that submit out of the trash. You got to try and keep that a hat another week.
Sebastian leaned back in his chair. The shuttle door lifted and the world of Vos opened before him. The red sky of the third sun, bled into snow-capped mountains covered by lush forests laced with rivers and lakes.
“Jurassic Fricken Park, baby!”
Despite the ill feelings of earlier, Sebastian couldn’t help but crack a smile at his over enthusiastic weapons designer.
A dull horn sounded in the distance. Dark shapes filled the air.
Bishop turned Sebastian’s way, his white teeth shining bright against his tanned skin, blonde highlights sparkling in dark hair. He caressed his latest invention, a nuclear infused throwback to the Gatlin gun. “I feel like Torak, baby!”
Sebastian shook his head. “This ain’t no video game, kid.”
posted
The template is A->M and M is the 13th letter of the alphabet, so each line of letters defines a line, and it is 13 lines high.
Ensure that the template and the 13 lines you measure it against are both measured using the same font. It has to be courier (because each letter is the same size) and the same font size.
After you past the template into MS WOrd adjust your margins so the template fits exactly (courier 12 pt), then remove it and paste the 13 lines in (courier 12 pt)--it is 19 lines long.
Adam
[This message has been edited by skadder (edited June 09, 2008).]
posted
Can't you just fill the posting box too? That's how I've always done it. Lots simpler, and it should work out to be the same number of lines. At least I've never had anything cut before.
[This message has been edited by Unwritten (edited June 09, 2008).]
posted
The box seems to vary with different people. Using the template ensures people can check their own boxes.
Posts: 2995 | Registered: Oct 2007
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posted
Could we get a ruling on that pres? When is the deadline for posting then? If you like, I could hold off on the rest or post them as i get them. What do you say?
Posts: 3072 | Registered: Dec 2007
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Last entries to Snapper by Thursday night. I will close competition at midnight GMT. Anything not posted by then is not entered. Voting opens immediately after until Monday night, results by Bentree Tuesday.
'kay?
Times Roman use letters of different sizes. An 'I' uses less space than an 'M'. Courier uses a typeface (because it was developed for typewriters) where all the letters use the same amount of space (even punctuation marks), therefore the number of characters you can fit on a line of a fixed length remains constant.
When working out 13 lines use courier 12 point--use the template. I am happy to send anyone who wants one a .doc formatted with the correct margins and font. As long as it is 13 lines on that .doc IT IS CORRECT.
Adam
[This message has been edited by skadder (edited June 09, 2008).]
posted
No see above. Originally benttree said we had until Thursday but then mysteriously shortened it. We are extending until the usual Thursday deadline.
Posts: 2995 | Registered: Oct 2007
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Sebastian chucked a resin-plant on the embers. Sparks crackled up in the chilly morning air. He glanced across the dusty plain. He loved a sunrise and this was special; Vos’s sun bathed the massive continental worm, Vir’nush, in amber light.
A tree crashed into the clearing, shattering Sebastian’s meditations. He spun round—his hearting hammering--and held his breath; there was something wrong. Silence--where were the perimeter defence drones?
Sebastian bounded across the guide’s hex-shelter, “Krovolak, where are the dron--?” He stopped; the shelter was empty, but for a small object on the floor.
“Bishop,” Sebastian shouted over his shoulder, “You better get up your arse up—NOW.” He picked up the voice recorder.
posted
An FYI, the source code textarea attribute for the posting box has the values set at 13 rows and 65 columns. Translated into wordprocessor speak that is a maximum of 845 characters, including puctuation and white spaces but not hard or soft returns, although a line will return soft if a word runs past the 65-character textarea length. Line breaks are designated as returns in wordprocessor formating code.
In the textarea matrix, a hard return consumes whatever number of characters are left over, just as a blank line will also consume a row of 65 characters. However, if the line of text and spaces is full left to right, then it will have the entire 65 characters, exactly as a document formated to standard 1-inch margins and in a 12 point monospace font like Courier will. Multiple white spaces will consume a number of characters in the posting textarea but won't display on a web page. Only one white space will display. Also the lines as displayed on the web page won't break at 65 characters unless there's a hard return. Browers ignore soft returns, instead outputting to whatever the table column width attribute value is, in this case it's 534 pixels.
The font attribute for these web pages is set at font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif, the individual posts' font face is set at Arial, Veradana, Helvetica, all of which are variable pitch font faces. If your system doesn't have Arial, it will try in order Verdana, Helvetica, or default to whatever font is specified for your browser as the sans-serif font. The way the lines display on each browser will vary because the page displays in variable pitch, whereas the textarea matrix is monospaced.
Hmm, interestingly 13 is a factor of 65.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited June 09, 2008).]
posted
Okay, I've checked the entries according to the 13-line template, and cut #1 down to size. Some of them are short of 13 lines, though, as was pointed out.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
Anyone else noticed that Entry Six has 6 occassions where two words touch? e.g.
Bill looked the thewardrobe.
Is this a clever way to get another word in your 13 lines or an oversight? Perhaps the writer didn't want to edit any thing out and thought of this novel solution. Very clever--although this happens to be one of the twelve line entries--so he could have had a whole line more! I doubt it was intentional, but it was interesting as there no other mistakes.
Sebastian shielded his eyes against the sun and stepped off the ground transport. Even before he scanned the horizon he knew something was wrong. Of course if was--he should have known better than to listen to Bishop. Nothing but red rock and dust stretched before them. No town, no escort, no Belerian contact.
As if on cue, Bishop jostled him from behind with one of the suitcases. "All right, we're hustling, we're hustling!" he called back to the ship just as the door snapped shut. "Damn Similians, always in a hurry."
"Hey!" Sebastian waved to the ground transport even as it rose up into the air, covering him with dust.
hat's odd," Bishop said, taking in the landscape while Sebastian coughed. "Well, Ty must be delayed. Or maybe he's
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited June 11, 2008).]
Sebastian experienced a moment of disorientation as the shuttle equalized cabin pressure to match the heavy atmosphere of Vos. A brief moment after the air pumps stuttered to a halt, the rear hatch made a loud clanking noise and then opened, letting a foggy and damp breeze blow into the cabin. Bishop leaned forward in his seat across from Sebastian and inhaled a long deep breath. He gripped his plasma stunner as he peered through the mist, his fingers tapping on the worn and pitted steel of the handle. An unknown animal called out in the distance, a high pitched screetch. He glanced at Sebastian, a smirk on his face, before rising to his feet.
The door to the pilot’s cabin swung open, and their guide stepped into the hold. “Welcome gentles, to Vos,” he said with
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited June 11, 2008).]
I lay down my cards and the holo-croupier barks "winner, Mr. Conte". Bishop laughs a bit too loud and punches my shoulder. He's a boor, even sober, but he's the best sub-quantum weaponry engineer this side of the galaxy. Ignoring my drunken friend, I lean back, take a long drag on my cigarette and scope out the Berian I've just crushed. Victory itself, beating an opponent, satisfies me more than all those credits glowing on the table.
The Berian smiles. "I see money no longer nourishes you," he says. It's my turn to smile. "Rather than settle my debt with currency," he continues, "I have a proposition."
I'm interested. "I'm listening."
The Berian lowers his voice. "How would you like to play a more dangerous game?"
Bishop's dark, chin-length hair clung wet to her face as she stood contorted inside the Chanda tree's sprawling root systems. She heard the dying Dtydactlyn screech in agony as it stumbled to the ground. The Vetin dart she crammed into its neck was already working, its pores expanding to allow the animal to free bleed right through its thick, heavy skin.
"So the Vetins really do work?" Sebastian panted, catching his breath.
"They kill wonderfully," she swatted in front of her face, "but it does nothing for the swarms of guul flies that follow them."
"That was all of them?" he hoped as he asked. "I only saw
[This message has been edited by snapper (edited June 12, 2008).]
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