Group Adaptive Story - Like the onebyone story, only stranger.

[taya17]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]This was part of our assessment for one of the modules I was taking last semester. What the tutor did was to start a story on the class forum, and we had to add to it following a bunch of 'rules' he'd set up. Apparently, it was a study of emergent systems, where we (the students) were 'agents' following a simple set of rules, and the story that resulted was the 'emergent system'.

I've always wanted to do one on a sci-fi forum. So, lemme start (and hope others will take a shine to it ) I think the rules were:

[bost_uid0] 1) Each person can post once a day.
2) The post must not exceed 10 lines.
3) On Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays, you can start completely unrelated threads[/bost_uid0] (i.e. jumping settings, changing a whole set of characters)[bost_uid0]
4) You can include any character in the story in your post, provided that character has turned up within ten posts of your post [/bost_uid0](i.e. if Tuvok's last appearance was in post 5, and you're on post 11, you can include Tuvok, but if you're on post 30 and Tuvok hasn't turned up since post 10, you can't include him ... unless it's a Sunday, Tuesday or a Friday!)


I think that was it. Oh well, no harm trying.

"John closed his eyes as he leaned back in the train seat. The vehicle's hypersmooth thrumming was soothing, but it didn't ease the worries he felt. Suddenly, he heard giggling, and opened his eyes, only to be greeted by the sight of a little girl on the opposite row whispering into her mother's ear. He looked down and realized his socks were mismatched: one was red and the other was blue. He laughed, despite himself.

The train arrived at his station and he disembarked. To his surprise, his girlfriend was waiting for him on the platform. As he ran over to greet her, the station was rocked by a gigantic blast......"

Hope the rules aren't too confusing... if so, do what I always do... wing it! I don't really care that much about them. :giggles:

Have fun

Edit: p.s. yep, you can name the girlfriend. I was just too lazy to. *smiles*[/colorost_uid0]

[NAHTMMM]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0]John closed his eyes as he leaned back in the train seat. The vehicle's hypersmooth thrumming was soothing, but it didn't ease the worries he felt. Suddenly, he heard giggling, and opened his eyes, only to be greeted by the sight of a little girl on the opposite row whispering into her mother's ear. He looked down and realized his socks were mismatched: one was red and the other was blue. He laughed, despite himself.

The train arrived at his station and he disembarked. To his surprise, his girlfriend was waiting for him on the platform. As he ran over to greet her, the station was rocked by a gigantic blast......[/quoteost_uid0]

Seeing as how it's Sunday, I'd better get some more characters in...

"For most of the world, however, the morning was peaceful. Geordi, for example, had taken advantage of his leave by sleeping in till eleven. Now he sat quietly at the restaurant table, perusing an article in the local newspaper about a capybara that had been trained to spell out 'w-o-m-b-a-t'.

His communicator beeped. Geordi closed his eyes and silently cursed the author for ruining yet another peaceful vacation before tapping it. 'LaForge here.'
'Picard here. Sorry to interrupt your time off, but Admiral Nocheeseyet has requested an emergency meeting of all senior officers--Troi, myself, Data, Worf, Riker, Doctor Crusher, and you*--in thirty minutes to discuss a string of terrorist attacks across the Federation. I gather there may be a serious security breach by a foreign power at the root of this. Lieutenant Saxama will provide you with the beaming coordinates.'"


* [/colorost_uid0]

[NeoMatrix]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Well, its monday here, so I got to stay on topic, I think.

"John and his girlfriend (Can I give her a name?) ran for cover from the flying debris from the explosion. They could here ships flying overhead, but not the familiar federation sound. John paused briefly to look up to get a glimpse of the attacking ships. He remembered from his studies that the ships were Klingon Bird of Prey. He wondered how they got past Earth's defenses. There was another explosion behind him. He turned around quickly, only to see his girlfriend trapped under some debris."[/colorost_uid0]

[Things Are Good]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Well, it's still Sunday night where I live. This ought to be fun.

Josie the Angry Cow was grazing one day when she saw the door to a nearby house was open. She went over to look at what was inside this house, and received the shock of her life. Farmer Joe, who had grown grass for her for so long and had always been so nice to her, was laying in bed, dead. Josie tried to go inside to get a better look, but she tragically was unable to fit through the doorway, so she simply decided to dejectedly walk away in that silly way cows have, alone and distraught.[/colorost_uid0]

[Standback]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Please pardon the interruption.

(Um... It seems self evident that only the first person on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays gets to change the scene... otherwise you get a gazillion snippets on those days, followed by drawn out scenes...

Taya, I await your arbitration, as I don't know whether I should be writing about the exploding train or Josie the Angry Cow...

I also humbly suggest that some small, tiny, infinitesimal effort might be made to actually keep scenes vaguely related to each other, perhaps existing in the same general universe. Following Geordi LaForge up with Josie the Angry Cow do not seem to bode a good start. It's amusing, yes, but personally, it doesn't seem like much fun to write the story like that. A story can be funny and ridiculous, and that's great, but if it's just a disconnected random jumble - well, disconnected random jumbles just aren't all that funny.

If I'm off the mark here - I'll go start my own 'semi-structured Round Robin' thread, and leave this one in peace.)

(Edit: minor clarification)[/colorost_uid0]

[taya17]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Welllll.... the trick is to tie all the disparate threads together. (hence, emergent system). Kinda like a peanuts comic that I once saw where snoopy types all these unrelated threads and then brings them all together in the end.

Well.... I can try to remedy that.

"John was frantically trying to free his girlfriend from the trapped rubble when he heard the familiar whining sound of the transporter beside him. Thinking it was a rescue team, he turned towards the sound, only to find himself staring at a... cow?

Josie was confused. One moment she had been standing in Farmer Joe's field, and now she was standing in the middle of this dark, smoky and quite alarming place, staring at a pop-eyed man with grime on his face and mismatched socks. What in the world was going on?"[/colorost_uid0]

[NeoMatrix]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Geordi on the otherhand, was beamed to the farm where Josie once was. All of the other senior officers were already there. They were all confused because this was not the place of the meeting. They tried their com-badges, but they were not working. They decided to look around and try to find clues. They went inside the house, and while using their tricorders, they found the owner of the house to whom Josie thought was dead. Actually, he was dying. He told the crew that his name was Neo and that he is a Caretaker, and that when he started dying, the Klingons were able to get past the Caretakers defenses. He sent his cow to find the man with the mismatched socks, who is the caretakers long lost son.[/colorost_uid0]

[PointyHairedJedi]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]As Neo gasped his last, the gaggle of officers was startled to hear a strange, drawn-out mechanical, almost grating noise. La Forge, who happened to be the ranking officer out of the group, led them outside with their phasers drawn, to be confronted by the rather incongruous sight of an antiquated blue police telephone box. "What the heck is that?" exclaimed La Forge. One of the other officers, wearing the blue of a science officer, nervously stepped forward. "It's a, a telephone box. They were used in twentieth century Britain by the police force of the time before the advent of mobile radio trans..." He was cut off by the door swinging noisily open, and the appearance of a man in a large coat wearing a ridiculously long scarf, a blonde woman and, bizzarely, a small robotic dog. There was a long moment of silence, broken at last by the blonde woman, who, after a rather thatrical sigh, tured to her companion and said "We're lost again, aren't we?"


For those of you that have absolutely no knowledge of [iost_uid0]Doctor Who[/iost_uid0], the three new characters are the fourth Doctor, Romana and K9.[/colorost_uid0]

[NAHTMMM]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]You could've fooled me. I would've figured it was Doctor 4 and "Ace" (or would that be another name for the same person?). [/colorost_uid0]

[PointyHairedJedi]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]No. Ace was a companion of the seventh Doctor.[/colorost_uid0]

[Things Are Good]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Just as the doctor and his friends were trying to figure out where they were, an interdimensional vortex opened up and out came four figures. "Well," Quinn said hastily, trying to cover up their method of arrival, "we're from Canada."
here was a long and awkward pause.
"Who the bloody hell are you?" Professor Arturo asked. "And what's going on?"
"We don't...err...know," Romana said.
"Aw, hell," they all said together.
"That cow looks angry," Wade added.

Go me, being a Sliders fanboy![/colorost_uid0]

[NAHTMMM]

[color=#000000ost_uid0][quoteost_uid0="PointyHairedJedi"]No. Ace was a companion of the seventh Doctor.[/quoteost_uid0]
Just as well--if it had been Ace, the situation could've gotten brutal.

(Waits to see if there's supposed to be any reaction to that )


Oh, er, yes, the story...

hmmm...




The cow was indeed disgruntled. The telephone box had managed to land squarely on the secret opening to the underground shelter that held the device that would disable the cow's disguise. So the cow had to walk all the way to the son's house without even a faint smidgen of a hope of getting a ride.


He rapped on the door and mooed. After a minute, the door opened and a man poked his head out.

"Oh, hullo there, Uncle Morpheus," the man said carelessly. "Does Father want me to go see him?"

The cow mooed in what could almost have been Morse code.

"Mentally unstable visitors, huh? All right, give me a moment and I'll get my shotgun."[/colorost_uid0]

[NeoMatrix]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Private Log of La Forge: I had seen enough. Earth was under attack, there is a mad cow on the loose, and the crew is stuck on a farm with Bill and Ted (Doctor, Romana and K9). What else could go wrong? Anyway, how hard would it be for a cow to find someone with mismatched socks. Aren't cows colorblind? I know I wouldnt be able to find him. I hope we arent stuck in the Gamma Quadrant, or whereever Voyager ended up. I am just going to sit on this rock and wish I was in my own bed. On second thought, the blonde chic is hot. Anyway, I must find a way to get off this farm.[/colorost_uid0]

[Standback]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]"Observe," said Data, patiently. "This sock is blue. This scok is red. It also has little yellow circles, commonly referred to as 'polka dots,' upon it, while the blue on does not. Can you see the differences between these two socks?"

"Moooo," said Josie.

"So they are not a pair, correct, Josie? They are [iost_uid0]mismatched.[/iost_uid0] Mismatched, Josie."

"Moooooo."

Data turned to Riker. "I think we are making some progress, sir."[/colorost_uid0]

[Opium]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Quinn thought a moment. Then said "Hold it...we're from Canada, but...mismatched socks are an INTENTIONAL act.Therefore, it is not some sort of birthright. Therefore, this could be an IMPOSTER! Therefore..." Then Picard emerged from under a hay stack and said "Excuse me, but I am the ranking officer here. Quinn, shut up. Troi, read everyone's mind. Geordi, use your visor to take readings. Worf, fire at Will. Sweet, wonderful Crusher...tend to Will." Everyone did that, until The Caretaker told everyone some important revelation...


((um, all these people were forgotten about a couple of posts ago, so I brought them back. Neh))[/colorost_uid0]

[taya17]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]"The cow... is in the wrong place! I sent her to look for my son a couple of minutes ago... why is she back here?"

"It must have been a backwash from the eddies in the spacetime fabric caused by the arrival of the Sliders," mused Geordi. "Could you send her-- and all of us back to where your son is?"

"I've got a better idea," said Quinn, and suddenly there was a bright light...[/colorost_uid0]

[NeoMatrix]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Meanwhile, back at the train station, Neo's son, John, was in a panic. His girlfriend was still trapped underneath the rubble and he had no way to get it off of her. He was so distracted, that he didnt realize that Josie was gone. He held on to his girlfriends hand and told her that she was going to be ok. At that moment, a bright light appeared. When the light dissappeared, he saw that Josie and the crew standing there. Data noticed the girl trapped, so he lifted the debris off her, while Crusher looked over her. Picard walked over to John and said, "You must be the one." John was puzzled. Josie said, "Moo Moo Mooooo!" John got this eerie feeling because he knew what Josie said. John said, "I guess it is time then."[/colorost_uid0]

[Standback]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]"I knew it was coming," John said. "I always used to ask Dad, 'How will I know?' And he'd say, 'You'll know, John. You'll know, because when the entire train station blows up all around you, that's kind of hard to miss.'"

"Are you saying that blowing up train stations is one of your latent powers as 'the One'?" Picard asked.

"I'm afraid so," said John. "That, summoning cows, telekinetic power over cheese, and the ability to pull live eels out of thin air."

He pulled himself up. "And now that my powers have begun to develop... I must start on my journey."[/colorost_uid0]

[taya17]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Suddenly, the roof caved in on Picard.

(Trust me, you can submit one-line additions as well. )[/colorost_uid0]

[Opium]

[color=#000000ost_uid0]Ha HA! It's Friday, therefore...


Data tried to free Picard, but failed miserably. Suddenly, out of nowhere, the Scoobies appeared. "Oops" said Willow "I guess I kinda stuck us in the Sci-Fi demention while bringing Tara and Anya back so Xander and I can be happy." Buffy quickly helped Data with the collapsed roof, while Xander set about rebuilding the train station, while Tara and Willow Googled "train station collapse in alternate universe". After all that action, Spike and Buffy went to the restroom to....talk...and Anya said to Picard "Picard, would you like to avenge who did this to you?" Picard said "I'de wish someone would fire at Will. It's always his fault. He should not have been trying to figure out what happens when you ram a train into in 20th century rail station" Instantly, Will Riker...


(( edited to add words that should have been there in the first place))[/colorost_uid0]