26 )
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No one knew where they came from, but little people appeared in the apartment building. They were about one and a half knuckles high, far more intelligent than any insect.
The little people were quite intelligent and knew how to work together on a project. For their size, they were pretty strong too.
A few that were captured one way or anther had bits of metal or wood that were used as weapons. They could slice their way through any soft plastic packaging.
Like any insect, they did their damage, ruining foods and objects.
Some scientists were brought in and it was decided that the people could not actively kill the little people, such as fogging the place. Instead, they would have to try to starve them out some way, get them to move away, possibly return to where they came from.
The problem was that they were brilliant at getting into things. Normal packaging was not stopping them. One thing was that there were few insects in the homes they appeared in, since they hunted the insects.
After about a year, teams came in and emptied the kitchens, cleaned them up and then brought in jars and stuff to hold the soft packaging. the home owners were shocked at what foods they had that they had forgotten about that the little people had gotten into.
It did not take long for the little people to figure out how to unscrew the lids of jars. People would enter their kitchens and find jar lids everywhere and food gotten into. It was slower to get into and the damage was less, but it did not stop them from getting into food.
Some people reported that where containers were stacked, the little people could only get into the top containers. It did not take long for people to add a board on top the jars in the cupboards. That did not help for the jars on the counters.
One day, Charley got really ticked at the little people being into the counter jars. He had already solved their access to the jars.
He grabbed some heavy pans and stuck them on top the jars one day as he was leaving for work.
The little people could access the lids, but since most of the pans were just slightly larger than the lids, they could not get their people in place to turn the lids, or if they did turn the lids, they could not get them over the ridge. The pans were too heavy for the little people to lift.
After about a week, Charley stopped seeing the little people. He mentioned this to the officials. Other people tried it and most found that their pans were not heavy enough. they started buying heavy pans for their jars or adding heavy objects to the bottoms of the pans.
the little people were good at getting onto the tops and pushing heavy objects off slick pan bottoms.
Slowly people started seeing bugs in their homes. they got excited. the little people were gone.
the last little people were seen in one corner home in the building. the guy had been on vacation and had not learned that he needed heavy pans.
When the little people were obviously gone, the building was fogged. Since a forest was behind the building, the little people likely went into the forest to disappear forever.

27 )
I have written many story ideas based on the stopping of time, all with interesting and strange effects. The first one I wrote was at the turn of 2000.
I generally use particle physics experiments as the cause. It is an easy excuse where we MIGHT have doubts of what might happen.
I usually have time getting stuck with one point on the earth, and have the effects working its way around the planet so the characters of the story have warning of what to expect, time to figure out how to get around not having time working.
I came up with a concept for another time story recently, and then it dawned on me what would really happen with such an event.
"Time is God's way to make sure everything does not happen at once." If there was no time, we would be celebrating the creation of Adam at the same time as we were mourning of the last breath of the last person of history.
If time stopped completely, nothing would happen ever again, or everything in the future would happen at the same time. The only way that works for someone, is if that person had a goal nothing would let them fail to achieve, and time stops, ending his quest. That really does not have a story unless the person was after the end of all creation. If time ends, then the supreme being arrives sees what happened and why, and makes a small correction such as removing the universe destroyer and restarts time. This would be a good story but in essence I already told it except for the reasons and causes around it. Maybe some other time.
Now if the stop of time is fairly local, the one might get all sorts of strange things. Generally, most of my time-stop story ideas usually fell into this category, other than the last one where the world was torn out of the universe for a period of time.
Now. If the time stop involves just the local area like the solar system or just the planet, time outside the effected area would continue to run and some of that might bleed in. Thinking back to the way other story ideas were written, that was why people and things continued to move around and exist. Time bled into the void and kept things moving, though there were strange effects.
The story Idea that seeded this post is based on that.
The high energy particle physics experiments went wrong. Theory by those who studied it later, thought that was that a magnetic failure at the moment of highest power during an experiment, caused a local rip in fabric of time. The rip expanded at the speed of light, but faded out just past the farthest detectable planet.
Waves of time flowed into the void from outside, not from all directions. If they had a way to trace or record it, the scientists could have been able to trace the direction of time, and know where the exact center of the universe was and the true speed of time. As it was, they were shut out before they realized they could have done real science.
For most people, they saw little change at first. Only scientific and engineering firms, saw the effect first. careful measurements and synchronized activities started going wrong. Then devices such as communications started failing as their timing went off in communications with other devices.
Within a few hours, clocks were shown to be wrong, not agreeing with each other. A thousandth of an inch difference might add up to a couple minutes difference in a day.
About the only people who could guess what the time really was, was people who had several dozen or hundred clocks in view. One needed ignore the clocks that were the farthest off, and then average the rest of the clocks. Then they would be within half an hour of what time would actually look like.
One problem was that the planet got light from the sun, they got reflected light from the planets, but star light did not enter. Actually, it entered but was changed so drastically that it was no visible. Detectors seldom worked.
Tracking the orbits of the planets really sent astrophysicists into a frenzy. the would go twice as fast at one point, half as fast at another. It was weird to see the farthest visible planet do a whole, twelve-year orbit in a month.
Machinery was not working well. Anything interlocked by belts or gears ran, but two machines working together, never did. two or more parts all did something different. A baking factory had cooked breads come out the starting end raw, for a short time as a wave of time caused it to go backwards.
There were incidents of two people talking, becoming and old man and returning to normal, between several words had been reported, but not proven. One also unproven report was someone leaped off the building to commit suicide and found themselves laying on the ground unharmed. A time wave hit on the way down, slowing his physical speed in comparison to the ground so when he left the time wave, he hit the ground at a speed that kept him from serious injury.
The waves of time, were waves in the fourth and fifth dimension, which had little or no rhyme or reason in the third dimension we experience. time going backwards, forward, doing strange things I don't have time to recount, were effects of the waves.
It takes a period of time before the rip in the fabric of time to repair itself and things become normal. the people's opinion of exploratory sciences change during that period.
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My note said "the effects of time stopping. All clocks and machinery move at different speeds." I planned on that really being the only visible change except I got into explaining the effect again.

28 )
The Greebs were super deadly soldiers. no one had a chance against them before. Sanders was picking the brains of his command for any bit of information he could get that might be of use against the Greebs.
The officers told about tactics and strategies of the Greebs and what failed and why. Sanders asked about their training. The Greebs were driven, like slaves, not given a chance to rest, if they were not sleeping or practicing their fighting, they were training to look and react perfectly to impress the officer corps. they were programmed for many of their actions and training.
One officer mentioned that they were programmed to stand at attention when an officer approaches. One people tried to use that against them but that failed. there was no way to get a proper emulation of a parade officer in battle conditions.
the officer mentioned they were also programmed to stand at attention during certain patriotic songs, division songs and certain military songs.
Sanders held his hand up for a moment. "get me some of their patriotic songs."
"which ones, sir?
"If you get any, see if you can get all of them." He turned to leave the room. "Get me any information you can on the commanders and soldiers they will have on the battle field while you are at it. I know they won't be perfect data, but get what you can.
Sanders had his soldiers drilled in their fighting methods. The only change he made to standard training was he had them work on marksmanship. One other change was that every squad was given a set of directional speakers and a data chip that the sound machine could scroll through.
He let it leak that the chips had important speeches of the Greebs.
Soon they were in the battle area. both sides had forces searching the area. Sanders had most of his forces at normal defensive areas, and then went out with small forces.
He found a force of greebs. It was a very small force and any normal military action would be an easy defeat, but the Greebs were super soldiers. All he could do with his larger force was to pin them down.
He checked his data and then ordered the squad leaders to set up the speakers and put the data to number two eighty six. He then told the soldiers to fire only when the Greebs were fully standing. that was not a logical order. He flipped a switch on his unit and the rest of the speaker units came on.
Music came out really loud. The Greebs stopped firing, then they stood up, one by one. Sanders told them to hold their fire. they stood with their rifles at their sides, saluting with the other hand.
There appeared to be no more Greebs standing, Sanders ordered open fire. He then moved the force forward to make sure there were no survivors. Two had to be shot at close range.
He ordered that no weapons or artifacts were to be taken. Other than walking through the battle field, there would be no disturbances.
They caught three other squads the same way. The second was resistant to standing up so he changed the song and they popped up automatically.
Listening to the Greeb communications, they found the soldiers dead and there was nothing to explain that they were taken out so easily.
Time after time, the Greeb Command would find their super soldiers laid out dead. They had to figure out why this was happening. It was not normal.
Sanders was testing the effects of different songs on the soldiers. He was searching out what songs had the strongest, least resistible effects on their programming. Some songs were simply patriotic songs, but some were tied to programming.
When he was confident with his examination, and satisfied with the Greeb forces he eliminated, he went into attack mode.
The Greebs had withdrawn for a bit to regroup and reequipped themselves. typical for this battle field. Sanders moved out the moment their withdrawal was detected.
Sanders was just outside the Greeb lines, following the rules of engagement, he did a signal that indicated the Greebs were about to be challenged. He waited half the allotted time and ordered the attack.
For a short time, the two sides were fighting as equals. Sander's battle plan was a full assault on one point, driving as deep through the center as possible, then expand out. this placed a concentration of weaponry on the Surprised Greebs so he had an advantage on them while they were disorganized.
his forces were finally stopped and now the Greebs were starting to fight like they were supposed to. Sanders could see the officer corps of the Greebs. On his orders, the speakers came out and the songs started playing.
He pushed his forces into the saluting Greebs until he reached and captured the entire officer corps. He then made them order the Greebs to stand down. the music stopped and the greebs were defeated.
The entire greebs force was taken off the battle field No communications went out after the first warning of attack.
The Greebs home base sat waiting for a communication and none came. Just like the squads that disappeared out in the field, found dead without an explanation, the Greeb transportation force arrived to an empty battle field and no explanation. the only thing they found of any battle were the bagged up bodies of the fallen, both in the field and in the camp. No signals, or messages. the transportation force took the bodies away.
Sanders separated the officer corps from the soldiers, and simply transported the soldiers with his own, back home.
The greeb soldiers went through extensive reprogramming to clear them of the urge to salute when the songs were played. Given a choice of returning home or making a home with Sander's people, they chose to stay.
The Greebs refused to fight Sander's people any more. they were quick to negotiate solutions to the squabbles. They had no idea what Sanders had done, but losing an entire force without a trace was too unsettling to suffer again.

29 )
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The high lords could modify their bodies in many ways. Usually, they did not, but some would modify their bodies for sports or war. they might expand their brain to have more intellectual capacity. add extra fingers or even arms for dexterity or to work better. Since their were lower beings to do work, most simply stayed normal.
The favorite hobby for the high lords was to make life miserable for low beings. Every single one of them worked hard to perfect being a jerk. They had the money and power to where no one could do anything about it.
Brunus was part of a ship that ran into problems when they crossed space. they docked with the space station and quickly found they could not afford repairs or docking fees. Their ship was sold for scrap and they got jobs within the space station.
Brunus was basically a ship drudge and soldier on board his ship, and now was simply a dumb office worker.
He had a temper, but was good at controlling it. The high lords would come in and start tormenting him. He would ignore them entirely, working on his projects, or at least his step on the project, before giving them any attention. He spoke very slowly to them, indicating he had difficulty in understanding them, even though he could imitate their speech patterns quite well when among friends. he kept his job as he was able to work, never late and actually got assignments done in spite the high lords.
One high lord modified his body completely. he made himself a balloon. His bones and vital organs were as small as possible. His muscles and flesh could be puffed up with great force, making him bigger than most small rooms. He had killed several lower people by crushing or suffocating them to death. He would walk into a room, and inflate his body rapidly, giving him pressure on all surfaces, hold it for a time, then let the air out. Anybody who survived that was lucky.
The high lord had to time things just right. No one other than the perspective victim could be where they could get caught by his pressure. He also watched for sharp objects. A few others with this modification have died when they hit something sharp and popped.
Brunus was in the corner going over a few books. He felt a presence in the room. he turned and saw it was a high lord. the high lord started inflating rapidly. Brunus automatically went to his belt and pulled out a knife and pointed the point high at the expanding edge. The high lord stopped inflating.
Brunus slid closer to the corner, getting farther away. The high lord shifted his position and started inflating again.
Brunus held his knife up again. The high lord stopped inflating.
"Are you trying to kill me?" The high lord finally asked during another pause.
"I was going to ask you the same question." Brunus said carefully.
"sharp objects are illegal around me. you know it."
"I don't suggest you puff up around sharp objects then," Brunus as he waved his blade a little.
They stood there for a couple minutes, wondering if Brunus would put away his knife or if the high lord would deflate. the high lord finally gave in and drew himself back to a normal form
Brunus's knife was already in the holster on his hip. "I am always sharp." Brunus said as he showed his finger nails were very rough. I won't be caught off guard."
there was sort of a truce between them for a while. It then looked like Brunus was cleaned up and unarmed. the high lord walked into the room and started inflating.
Brunus suddenly had a long pin in his hands. He leaned against the expanding body and touched it with the tip of the pin, not enough to do any damage.
The high lord stopped expanding and looked in a panic. He was on the verge of dying if he expanded any more. Brunus told him to deflate. The high lord did and left.
A bit later, Brunus was told that it was the high lord's goal in life to make life miserable for lower creatures. Brunus decided he was not a lower creature, He was a representative of his race that had entered space on their own. He decided to make life miserable for the high lords. He started doing practical jokes on the high lords. His captain helped him plan the most complex ones out. The high lords would walk into the prank and Brunus was not thought smart enough to be the one doing it. It had to be one of their own. for him, it was a great cover.
The inflating high lord walked into the room one day with intention of inflating, and then noticed sharp pins and metal points attached to the walls and furniture of the room. It was not a room Brunus was even allowed to be in. The high lord ran out of there in panic. No one ever removed the sharp edges from the room.
Every now and then, a sharp edge appeared in one room or another, and Brunus was not the one doing it. Brunus never did put any sharp objects in his room other than the knife he carried and a sharp pin.
Other high lords, being caught in many practical jokes, had backed off on their making life miserable for everyone. Enough of the others had joined in on the practical jokes that Brunus seldom had to set up a practical joke against the high lords. That some people got caught in the jokes helped people think they might be by high lords. With the pressure off, Brunus found his job rather nice to do never bothered to sign in for an advancement.

30 )
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People listening to the chirping of birds, think they sound so pretty, so sweet, so loving. What people don't realize that they are in an epic battle for territory and resources among the birds.
The explorers found a new planet that had advanced life. Such planets were rare enough to be worthy of excitement. Space probes flew low and found there were forests, animals and some signs of civilization.
Explorers don't have the equipment of the "first in" scouts, who are usually the next team that would come to such planet. They were a long time away. The main job of the explorers was to locate and report planets of interest. Civilized races were so rare that the explorers felt it important to find out more about them.
The explorers used their slowest probes, adding pieces and parts to slow them down even more, so they could get more detailed images of world. A form of parachute turned out to work best.
The processed images showed that there were several dozen different intelligent species. that got the explorers really interested.
They headed down to the planet after a lot of preparation and after receiving permission. the explorers, which there were a hundred on board the ship, split up in groups. Thirty remained on board ship, Ten stayed on the shuttles to recover anybody who was in trouble, and the remaining sixty landed on the planet in different locations in groups of five. Their armored space suits protected them from most anything that would be dangerous on the planet.
They located different races in their areas and studied them. They turned out to have similar forms. bipedal upright walking, a pair of arms, some had tails, others did not have them. Their arms and legs had two more joints than the explorers had. Their skin colors were different and their heads had different patterns of ridges. The mother ship received and passed on data from the different teams.
The people seamed to be peaceful, no signs of heavy weapons. They did have tools for use on treating kills of small animals, but mostly they ate plants. the design of the weapons were not really good for hunting.
the explorers find that members of certain species would appear at the edges of the villages and talk to the villagers. This was happening more and more. the explorers realized that something was up. The villages acted very irritated as time went on and the explorers knew they were not the cause. they always kept their distances, tried not to be seen when possible.
One day, the villagers picked up small pack and left their villages. men, women and children were on the move.
All explorers reported that their villages were moving. The explorers could only follow.
Villages of different races met and then walked side by side. They were all heading in the same direction. the mother ship did a calculation and told them where they would likely meet if they kept at this same pace. some of the emergency ships dropped down to a grassy field area and dropped down sensors all over the place so there would be a detailed record if this was the location they were going.
The explorers fell back to follow. As expected, the two groups of nearly two million people, about half the detected population of the planet, met at one location.
The people formed in lines, generally, no two members of the same race side by side.
they watched each other for a long moment, then one side started singing. the other sided started singing.
the explorers debated if this was an operatic challenge. they had been singing for several minutes. when they started there was no pattern to what they were singing, then their songs started meshing between the different races. their songs were different but were interrelated.
as they watched the two groups, the explorers realized there was a difference in the similar races on the two sides. they were singing slightly different songs.
the music was beautiful. there was talk about selling the songs for big money.
One of the explorers suddenly grabbed his head. he dropped to the ground and the pain stopped. Then several of the people on each side fell. The people were belting out their music with everything they had. the explorers all dropped lower, usually on their knees. they reported the peoples wincing in pain, a few more fell over. they thought they might be wearing themselves out in their effort to sing with every thing they had.
the mother ship then reported that one of the peoples fell on a sensor and the person was dead.
soon, peoples were falling all over the place, An explorer got up to change his location and fell. He was not dead, but had received serious damage from harmonics.
The northern group started withdrawing and the southern group started across the field, running a distance, then singing with all their might, before running again. The explorers could not run, and really could not move. they had to stay and await their fate. the peoples gave them a push, knocking them over, as they passed. the explorers stayed put where they laid, just to stay out of trouble.
There were some explorers who had fallen well behind in the migration. They reported that only a thousand of the northerners passed them when they reached a river crossing where all of them had to gather.
the explorers followed the different groups as they traveled back home. The explorers stayed for another month to see how the people recovered. then they went home.
In their report, they said that the race had a singing war. It sounded sweet and lovely, but was really a battle to the death.