Jasper Prompt Spotlight

Week 1: SECONDARY CHARACTERS

This week's topic was on secondary characters. The Eaglet with the highest score was: pithily

Mind you, the prompt was posted the way it was written without changes and correction.

Prompt work

"The government is always evil, screw you." Ama said lazily, tossing a screw at Jaime.

"I'm not saying they aren't evil, but maybe they aren't being evil right now." Jaime replied .

"The government is always evil, screw you." Jaime repeated. Tossing another screw in Jaime's lap.

Victor wanted to shove his mouse down someone's throat, preferably Ama's.

"Guy's shut up! I need to concentrate." They hadn't left the apartment in almost four weeks and as the days went by Victor got more wound up.

"You'll never get in." Amy rolled over on the spinning chair in a seemingly impossible way-on her belly with her arms around the back of the chair to hold her up.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Victor said turning a little from the monitor in front of him. "When I moved here from two cities away, I didn't realize you were all a bunch of quitters." He didn't realize they were all a bunch of girls either, well sort of.

"No one asked you to come though." Amy said. "You saw us in a freaking forum and became an interloper in an apartment belonging to three girls. Didn't your mother warn you about internet strangers?" Her long goddess braids she'd tied up had come loose but she didn't care.

Victor had turned almost completely from the monitors so Noelle took over from him, typing in command after command into the black window, though she was significantly slower. The keyboards under her fingers were the only sound in the room for a few seconds.

"Sorry for assuming," Victor said slowly. "I thought you guys cared." Then he turned back to the keyboard looked over Noelle's handiwork and continued to type. The keyboard clacking and the busy rats among snack wrappers made for a strange symphony. Ama had called Jaime a girl, it was the first time since the week Victor first arrived, when it was clear they were trying to mess with him. He wondered if it was a clue. Ama should know, she'd known Jaime for longer even longer than Noelle but Noelle never said much. She referred to Jaime as "she" just like he did but Ama always used "he" and the joke was driving him insane. Just how long will you make such a dumb prank run? Jaime didn't care, she'd told him to call her whatever. Jaime was as androgynous looking as androgynous looking could get with short hair blown out like the sun's rays around her head, usually pressed down by a beanie. The name indicated masculinity, or so he thought. He wondered if he chose to use "she" because he just might- He shook his head, he had more important things to think about. Like James.

"You guys think breaking into the government servers is just fun and games but this is bigger for me. My brother told me he'd never get into one of those death machines, he said nothing good could come out of commercializing teleportation. Said he could only be teleported over his dead body." He'd stopped typing now, his eyes were red and his hands shook.

"And the next morning, all of a sudden he did try it. He was dead before sunset."

"Oh save us the drama!" Ama turned over so she was sitting properly. "If I wanted some I'd watch a soap opera. Your brother was sick and didn't tell you. So sodding what? You're not the only one to lose a family member."

"That's not the-" he tried to say but Ama interrupted him. Noelle had taken over again.

"It happened ten years ago! You're not some protagonist in a trashy cartoon, you're an adult now, get over it. These things happen. You know how teleportation works. You know the science, let it go."

Victor stood up. "Don't-"

"Ugh." She threw her hands up with a groan then grabbed Jaime's wrist. "You wanted to teleport today right? Let's go! In fact, let's teleport all over town." Then she turned to Victor. "We don't not use the city's teleportation pods because we're scared, let me make that clear. But you should be. We haven't cracked their new fire wall in months and I won't advice you to waste that on the business of. . .well business."

She looked him straight in the eye. "Trust me. You'll regret it." She locked eyes with Noelle-who avoided it immediately- and then Jaime-who did the same.

Victor stared for a bit then sat back down, not bothering to look over what Noelle had done.

"Fine! Ignore me," Ama huffed. "But you were warned and I was never here. We were infact teleporting. Come on girl, let's go to the pod in the mall."

The door slammed shut. Jaime had followed her. Ama had called her girl again.

Next to him Noelle stood up, a pack of cigarettes in hand. "If you want to try go ahead, we all learnt the hard way." She'd breeched the firewall.

It was the first thing she'd said all day. Maybe Victor should have listened and even after he didn't maybe he shouldn't have tried to post it on the forum. For ten years he didn't get it. "I can only teleport over my dead body." He felt so stupid. He wanted to feel smart again so he posted it or attempted to: TELEPORTATION PODS=CLONING MACHINE + DISINTEGRATOR. That was the topic of the post. That was what he'd been looking for since he decided to investigate his brother's death. The obesity in the junk food, the cancer in the microwave.
Save for people like him who never used the machine the government had killed and replaced everyone.

As he tried to click send a pop-up appeared over the button, too frantic to care right the second he picked up the phone to call Jaime but heard her ringtone coming from the desktop.

Someone was video calling him from a posh looking office. A handsome man in a dapper suit. He had Jaime and Jaime had a beeping red a collar around her neck. She was dressed in an outfit he'd never seen on her a dress. She was Fuller rounder and she was kneeling on the floor next to his feet. He picked Jaime's phone.

"You were warned." he said and the collar blew up. Blood splattered on the camera.

After a few seconds -or minutes or hours he didn't know- of red and his pounding heartbeat and a frozen brain he could hear the man's deranged laughter.

"That never get old." The man said, bending over to catch his breath. Then his face became blank as a Droid. "Mind your business and I'll mind mine. She finally came to fix her body. We told her to try it a long time ago, but she was too scared to. I guess she really wants to impress you. It was only a bug-" he raised a finger. "That has been corrected. You won't come out of a pod looking like half a female, rest assured. So, try my merchandise if you get the chance or don't. Either way, don't ruin my business, or I'll ruin you." He pressed a finger to his lips and the pop-up window closed.

He couldn't think but he was thinking, he couldn't feel but it was cold. His muscles hurt. He had to do something had to tell someone, had to-

The door opened and Victor jumped. It was Jaime at the door. She jumped as well.

"The teleporter wasn't working." She explained slowly. "Noelle said she helped you get in. Are you okay? Did you use it to try and find my sex because- are you okay?"

"I'm fine." He said. "Did you really want to use the teleporter?"

She chuckled and cupped her hand beside her mouth. "Let's say, the woman in me wanted to." She smiled. It was a sad smile. He looked at the forum and closed the window it was opened on, effectively deleting the post that was never sent.

"Are you really okay?" She asked again.

"I'm fine." He smiled.