SEASON 5 HAS ARRIVED!

It’s been too long, hasn’t it? You thought we’d forgotten you, right? Wrong. After two long years, season 5 is nearly upon us. The only thing left to do is for you, our adoring and long-suffering (not to mention patient) fans and readers to pick the story you want us to write.

Read through the following story lines and then pick your favourite. It’s as simple as playing Candy Crush ad infinitum. We’ve all done this, right? Now it’s time to put us writers to the test. Choose wisely, people. Your species depends on making the right choice.

Polls close next Monday. Be nice.

THE CHOICES

1. You are the town’s only medical practitioner in the deepest west in the early 1800s. Your ramshackle office doubles as the pharmacy and outpost general store. You hear galloping horses up the dusty main street with a sudden halt outside your veranda. The door flings open and the sheriff, red faced pleads with you to come help with a patient.

 “I know we don't always see eye to eye Doc, you bein’, well, the way you are, but this here is one if your 'erm, folk. You'd be the best to help them.”

 You blush with both anger and embarrassment. You've worked hard for years to fit into the town and had thought you'd managed to hide your difference. You follow the Sheriff out to his horse to see a shape covered in a blanket and tied to his pack horse. A green tentacle peeps from under the blanket. You nod, and both you and the Sheriff go to bring the body in to your office.

2. You are at the cutting edge of Victorian science, insomuch as you like to cut people up… you, know, FOR SCIENCE! Today is the day you unveil you latest abomination, but first you need the parts. Was it the legs of a fashion model and the arms of a body builder, or vice-versa? Did you lay in a fresh supply of brains? One false move and you’ll have the local peasantry at your gates wanting to offer you an excellent deal on used farm implements and torches.  What’s their problem, you’re only playing God! FOOLS! Have your best maniacal laugh ready and sharpen your scalpels, Doctor, they don’t call it Mad Science for nothing …

3. You've been cast as an extra on a new sci-fi series on a major television network. Your cousin, one of the writers for the show, lets it slip that you’ve impressed the director. He casually mentions that if a more significant role were to become available, you might be considered for the part. He also leaks another project he is working on—a revolutionary reality series that tests the boundaries of human behavior with the promise of fame and glory, as well as the coveted lead in a project that’s in-the-works. It’s all great news, and you’re willing to do just about anything for a role—even if it means eliminating your competition, hijacking the script, or blindly signing on to a kill-or-be-killed dating show.

4. You write erotic fiction, nonsense fuck stories about chiseled abs, and romance, and dowdy women finding themselves sexually when they discover chiseled abs. Sometimes there's also a whip. It's all very silly. You write a lot of it. You sell even more. It pays for your car, and your second car, and the golf cart you drive to the guest house when you want to "get away from it all."

Your life is perfect.

Until your "greatest fan" arrives.

5. You and you friend, Tony, decide to go to the circus. As you sit under the tent, the clowns run into the ring. You've never liked clowns and these look scarier than all the clowns you've ever seen. You look for a way to leave but Tony won't let you go anywhere. During all the chaos with the scary clowns an elephant knocks over the post holding the tent up, sending the big top crashing down. Worse than that, the huge wooden pillar is falling toward you. Suddenly a trap door opens in the sawdust at your feet and a clown tries to pull you down a tunnel . . .

6. You dive over the hood of the car as the building explodes. Yelling in your radio for your partner, you risk a glance at the street and discover-to your horror-the explosion has not contained the zombie epidemic. The animated corpses of Girl Scouts begin to surround you. You never signed up for this, you were quite content riding out your life slugging free Slurpees at work. How could you know the nacho cheese you poured onto customers nachos would be the perfect chemical cocktail for the apocalypse. You shake your head to clear the thought and realize you are now surrounded by the Scouts.

7. In the not too distant future, only one telecommunication company has survived to provide the world with television, Internet and phone service.

It is the day before the series finale of Fancy Chair Gambit, a fantasy program in which ten thousand different families have vied with one another to rule the kingdom. Over the past twenty years fans have watched in rapt attention as person after person has been killed off until there are literally only two people left in the kingdom and everyone must know, will it be a Barren or a Sanmix who sits upon the fancy chair.

   Suddenly, every screen in the world goes blank. A man, driven mad over the ridiculous seventy three hour window of time someone needing service or installation must wait without leaving his home, has taken over the broadcast and will not release television to the people.

It is up to you, as the leader of an elite team of tv service providers, to stop this man and return television and internet to the world before it is too late!

8. You wake up to the worst hangover you can imagine.

It feels like you've got the percussion section of the London Philharmonic behind your eyes playing the 1812 overture; your tongue tastes like a donkey pissed on it and your body is in shock that you're still alive.

When you can finally move your head, you realise that you are lying on a hospital bed wrapped in bandages and there are reporters being held back from the entrance to the ward you are on. Your fellow patients appear to be looking at you as if you'd just grown horns and a tail. And going by the movement under the sheet covering you, that last one might be true.

And you can't remember what happened last night or who you are. What do you do next? Wait until you can accost some nurse and demand answers or haul your mummified arse out of bed and track down your memories?

9. Dr. William Glass gave you his new "glass heart" Artificial heart when you were dying as a baby. Your parents were told that you would need a new one every few years. Unfortunately the glass heart was a design that never caught on, and having one makes you incapable of obtaining the Newer artificial Heart.

You have about six months left on your ticker to hunt down Dr. Glass and get him to fix you up.

10. You are an award-winning baker. Your cakes, buns, cookies, and breads are the *ahem* toast of gastronomes everywhere. But your fame isn’t just global; it’s interstellar. Representatives (also known as the Invading Forces) of the Magellan System have ordered you to bake for their ailing emperor. Failure to do so will result in the instant extermination of the human race. It’s time to Bake or Die.