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.
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.
