TrufflesVonLaw
Truffles' Advent Calender, Day 1
Advent Index
Next day
December 1st, 2117
A vessel sped through the void of space. Behind it sat a red planet, one that seemed to grow smaller every day. Ahead, a brighter planet loomed, patches of green visible in the ocean of blue. Six letters were emblazoned along each of the four arms of the ship, which branched out from a central wing. It gently rotated as it shot away from the red planet. Against the dark backdrop, only a few patches of light were visible along the ship. One such light, sitting at the very end of one of the arms, flickered.
Inside, a man was bent over a desk. He held a pen over a sheet of paper covered in scribbled notes, and was concentrating furiously on a small box in front of him. He flinched as the light flickered, and glanced up at the ceiling.
Beside the desk was a narrow bed, the sheets sprawled across the mattress with no regard for any sense of tidiness – part of it drooped over the side of the bed onto the floor.
A small pinging sounded through the air, and the monitor on the box lit up. The man leaned forward, his glasses almost touching the monitor. Then, he scribbled across the page a little more, and tapped the screen.
As the glow from the box faded away, a console on the wall to his right lit up, and a harsh beeping filled the air. The man cursed and slammed the console as he yelled.
“Will you stop pestering me, Ad?”
“Mr. Orion, I must insist you stop working and report to the cafeteria. It’s almost midday, and you still haven’t eaten anything.”
The man – Gregory Orion - “Maybe I’d be able to get this work done faster if you weren’t pestering me every five minutes. I’ll be fine.”
The console let out another beep. “I understand your work is important, Mr. Orion. But to eat any later would be sub-optimal, nutritionally speaking.” The clipped voice paused for a moment. “And it has been two hours since I last contacted you, not five minutes.”
Gregory groaned. “Fine, I’ll go.” He tapped a button on the box, and pushed himself off the table. Stepping over two large books splayed across the ground, he made his way over to the metal door, on the opposite end of the room to his desk. He pushed in a level, and the door slid open. “Stupid machine…” he muttered, walking through into the corridor.
The cafeteria was empty, and he spent his entire mealtime staring daggers into the console sitting by the entrance to the kitchen. When he was finished, he threw his tray in the disposal unit, and moved towards the corridor. As he did so, the console let another beep out, and he drew to a halt. “Now what?”
“You need to make sure you complete-“
“Complete my mandatory daily exercise quota, I know.” Gregory rolled his eyes and strode back out into the corridor. He kept talking as he entered another arm of the ship. “Is there anyone in the gym right now?”
“Currently, Mr. Tuscotto is in the gym.”
“Fine. I need to catch up with him anyway.” Gregory continued on his path, eventually sliding open a large door to the gym. From a window in the corridor he could see his colleague engrossed in weightlifting.
Gregory walked in and sat down on a cycle machine across from the man. He began pedalling gently, waiting for the man to finish. Eventually he rested the bar above his head and sat up.
“Good afternoon, Craig.”
Craig nodded at him and smirked. “Ad harangued you into this too, huh?”
“If I had it my way I would have skipped breakfast and would still be analysing those samples.”
Craig snorted, “Guess that’s why they made Ad so annoying.”
Gregory grumbled under his breath. Some time passed, and the two men continued exercising. Gregory spoke up again when there was another lull in their routines.
“Feels weird to be going back, right? After all that training?”
“I feel like I only just stepped on this ship. I guess time flies whether you’re in space or not.” Craig’s eyes glazed slightly, and he stared out the window at the end of the gym. The void stretched in front of them, punctuated with the glow of distant stars. “Shame we’ll miss Christmas, though.”
“That’s one way to look at it. It’ll a nice reason for us to celebrate just before we arrive, at least.”
“There’s not exactly much opportunity to get presents up here, though.”
Gregg chuckled, but fell silent once more. After another period of silence, the door slid open once more, and a tall woman stepped into the room.
“Captain.” The two men spoke in unison, glancing over to her.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen. Our glorious AI has been badgering me all day to come here, despite the pressing issues we’re having right now.” She shot a look at the console sitting by the door. “Are you happy now?”
Another beep. “I’ll be perfectly content once you’ve finished exercising, Captain Ross.”
Gregory’s brow creased. “Pressing issues, Captain?”
The Captain started stretching. “Nothing to worry about, for now. There have been a few minor autopilot malfunctions, and Terrence is concerned about drifting. I’ve got to meet with engineering later to talk about it.”
Craig came to a halt, and stood up. “Hope it all goes well, Captain. Speaking of meetings. Gregory, would you mind coming with me? The boss wanted to have a chat about that anomalous reading we found.”
The pair of them showered and changed, before hurrying along back to the arm Gregory had come from, where the science team lived. “I thought we agreed that was just a statistical error?”
“Melanie re-ran the tests, and she’s not so sure any more.”
Gregory ran back to his room to grab his notes, before dashing into the large lab which took up most of the space in the arm.
An hour and a half, and about two hundred foul looks at Craig later, Gregory was about ready to fall asleep.
Upon his entrance, Melanie had immediately launched into a summary of every test she had performed that day, then demanded the same from Craig and Gregory. Gregory felt every second of Craig’s talk of rock densities and sediments. When his turn came, he had tried to avoid the interrogation.
“Mel’, we’re not on Mars any more. The mission was a success, we got everything we needed. Do we have to go through this every day?”
“The fieldwork is done, Mr. Orion, but you know as well as I do that that was just the beginning of our work. We’re on a strict deadline here, and we need to have finished our report by the time we reach Earth. And if we want to our reputations intact – and I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t intend to retreat into obscurity after this – that means doing as thorough a job as we can. Now, what exactly have you done today?”
So, he had gone through his notes in painstaking detail. When he had finally received a satisfied nod from Melanie, he sat down in his seat and let out a long breath.
“Now, I assume Craig told you I had misgivings about our little anomaly?”
“That metallic rock we found, right? It was the wrong makeup for where we found it? I thought we agreed it was a rare metal, and it was just bad luck we didn’t find any more in the area?”
“Yes, well, I looked at it again, and I’m not sure. I’m holding off on any hypotheses for now, but we need to make sure we haven’t overlooked anything in that regard.”
They had spent some more time discussing the specifics of their data, until a familiar beep came from the console.
“Current ship time is 10 PM. Sleep is recommended. Ship switching to night mode.”
The lights in the corridor dimmed. Melanie stood up. “We’ll talk more about this tomorrow.” Before either of the men could speak up, she had stalked out of the room.
Gregory shook his head. “She’s worse than the AI.”
“Well, she keeps us working, at least.”
“I don’t know about that. We’d get a lot more work done if we didn’t have to have these inane meetings that take forever.” He frowned, “Do you really think there’s something off about that rock?”
“Honestly? Probably not. That kind of thing is accounted for in most major models. But Melanie’s right – we should be certain before making any sweeping statements.”
Shortly after their conversation, Gregory re-entered his room. He opened the box on the desk, which was now empty. He searched the area, but found no sign of the sample he had been analysing. He raised his hand to the console, but thought better of it, pulling away. Instead, he simply collapsed into bed.
The Advent’s four arms continued to spin, moving towards Earth. The red planet shrunk further into the distance.
Next day
Truffles' Advent Calender
One story/bit of story per day up until Christmas. I'll post links here as they're added.
Dec 1: Dec. 1, 2117
Dec 2: Dec. 2, 1917
Dec 3: Dec. 3, 2117
Dec 4: Not posted yet.
Dec 5: Not posted yet.
Dec 6: Not posted yet.
Dec 7: Not posted yet.
Dec 8: Not posted yet.
Dec 9: Not posted yet.
Dec 10: Not posted yet.
Dec 11: Not posted yet.
Dec 12: Not posted yet.
Dec 13: Not posted yet.
Dec 14: Not posted yet.
Dec 15: Not posted yet.
Dec 16: Not posted yet.
Dec 17: Not posted yet.
Dec 18: Not posted yet.
Dec 19: Not posted yet.
Dec 20: Not posted yet.
Dec 21: Not posted yet.
Dec 22: Not posted yet.
Dec 23: Not posted yet.
Christmas Eve: Not posted yet.
Christmas Day: Not posted yet.
Hope y'all enjoy!
16 facts about Shelley
1: Shelley was born in the Nook. He has no idea who his parents are, and has no particular desire to find out. He’d rather spend his time reading his way through all the books in Wynsiph.
2: While Shelley is comfortable reading about most any topic, his favourite is subject is the theory and use of magic.
3: The only time Shelley tried to go ice skating, the ice cracked and he almost fell in. He now hates ice and tries to stay away from it as much as possible.
4: Shelley very rarely reads any fiction, considering this to be a waste of his time. When he does, it’s always murder mysteries. He refuses to read the endings before he’s solved the murder himself, and as a result, has been stuck on the same novel for the past 6 months.
5: Shelley secretly dislikes his grey colouration, and envies those with brighter colours. Although he knows it’s ridiculous to think fur colour could be related to personality, deep down, he fears that it’s a reflection of his true personality.
6: Apart from magic, Shelley’s favourite topic to read about is mushrooms. However, he dislikes the taste of the edible ones, and is too scared of accidental poisoning or intoxication to try searching for them in the wild.
7: Shelley claims to avoid magic-users whenever possible because he’s scared of the possible effects of magic going wrong (and, indeed, has read enough to know how bad this can be). However, the truth is he is simply jealous of proficient magic users.
8: One of Shelley’s greatest fears is a gathering, party or sleepover in the library – an event that would force himself out of his favourite place, for fear of having to interact with Wyngrew more interested in making noise than reading.
9: Shelley has a great respect for adult Wyngrew, especially those who don’t try to patronise him or get him to socialise.
10: Shelley will tolerate the presence and noise of Mayhem while he’s trying to read for about 10 minutes before walking away. This is at least 8 minutes more than he will tolerate any other Wyngling.
11: Despite his copious reading on the subject, Shelley has never actually cooked for himself, and secretly worries about what he will do when he eventually moves out of the Nook.
12: Shelley considers his greatest weakness to be his inability to participate in small talk, wishing he was better able to accurately express the various ideas he reads about.
13: Although Shelley would never claim to be superstitious, he always feels a twinge of unease when he encounters the number ‘13’, feeling much better after he has passed that page number.
14: Despite the copious amounts of reading he does, Shelley is actually a fairly terrible writer – he doesn’t go into nearly enough detail about whatever he’s writing about, and commits a ridiculous amount of grammatical errors.
15: His drawing isn’t much better.
16: The closest Shelley has ever come to a physical altercation was just after he met Mayhem, and was tackled while walking through the corridors of the Nook by the Wyngling. He fled to his room and didn’t leave for the rest of the day.
Bonus fun fact: I had no idea about any of these other facts before I sat down to write them; Shelley was very much a prioritisation of speed over design, and I'm only now sort of feeling my way deeper into who he is.Tags! (feel free to ignore if you already did/don't wanna)
RedRoronoa Mayhem
ittybittypigeontitty Zero!
zetina Sorrel (this never said Letty)
Pannzilla Totty
red-anteater Plum
Feligriffin McNaiiiiiir~
RandomComicSheet Hestiaaaaa :3
Hope y'all enjoyed~
Go go gadget Pokemon Meme
Rules:
1) Switch to "All regions"
2) Switch to "1"
3) Only one pokemon per question
Extra) This is you
Guess me and Algaecroc are toad buddies.
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1) This Pokemon is your best friend
Yeah most of my best friends are way better at art than me.
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2) This Pokemon is your boss who you need to impress for a promotion.
Don't kill me please.
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3) This Pokemon is your partner in a science project.
If I can stop petting you for long enough sure.
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4) This Pokemon is looking for any possible way to murder you.
WHAT DID I DO YOU'RE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE POKEMON
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5) This Pokemon is your boy(girl?)friend.
UM
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6) This Pokemon is your ex.
It was a tough choice, I had to wrestle with myself before I decided to break up.
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7) This Pokemon stalks you every waking moment.
Not even mad.
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8) This Pokemon just stole all your cheesecake.
JESUS CHRIST TAKE IT LEAVE ME ALONE PLEASE
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9) This Pokemon is what you felt in your bed last night.
What a shocking twist.
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10) This Pokemon punched your
WHY AM I DATING YOU AGAIN
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12) This Pokemon would do anything to steal your shoes.
Go away stupid crow.
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13) This Pokemon died by your hands.
I can probably forget about that promotion.
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14) This Pokemon is your loyal companion for life.
Um... It's not that I don't appreciate your loyalty or anything, but... //sigh.
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15) This Pokemon is your loving pet.
THAT'S more like it. //Flies off. Wait we forgot Cottonee? I'm sure he'll be fiiiine.
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16) This Pokemon is your dentist.
...Really?
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17) This Pokemon is what you dream about every day.
Someday, I, too, may be in the top percentage...
18) This is the Pokemon you found in your basement when you moved into your new house.
CROOOOOCCC
#WhatIsInTheBasement
THIS MEME WAS A LOT OF FUN.
Giveaway Journal
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