100 Words of Astounding Beauty Red Button Audio @RedBAudio
S02E09 - Homages II (Wringing)
Featuring
Guest | Title of original | Homage 1 | Homage 2 | Title of Homage 2 |
Amelia Armande | From the margins | Paul Davies | Tom McNally | Confundamubulus approaches |
Joshua Crisp | Dies Iudicii | Tom McNally | Paul Davies | Archaeotheologists |
Paul Davies | Crabalocker | Claudia Treacher | Amelia Armande | The Crab King |
Claudia Treacher | Old medicine | Amelia Armande | Joshua Crisp | Happiness is Just A Warpway Away |
Tom McNally | The last steak bake on the hot plate | Joshua Crisp | Claudia Treacher | Saurian Wash |
Listener | Submission title | Prompt | |
1 | Noah Bradbury | véttr | s02e08 |
2 | The Last Bastion of Creativity | N/A |
Welcome to One Hundred Words of Astounding Beauty, a flash-fiction podcast where a handful of writers each make a story with a limited wordcount in a limited time.
This is the ninth episode of our second season. Tradition dictates that the ninth episode be an Homages episode, where we pass our stories round the circle like a freshly-fed baby.
I am your host, Tom McNally and joining me tonight, our classic line-up, introducing themselves by a short freeform warm-up prompted by a single word, are our writers:
The storm has a face. Baring gritty teeth. Swirling sand above. Camel trains beneath. Roaring through the sky. Tents are torn apart. Just hold your breath Pray for its depart. |
Jump. Jump and sing. Jump and sing and chant. Jump and sing and chant and bleed. Jump and sing and chant and bleed and weep. Weep. Weep for the sandstorm. |
Sandstorm! You say sandstorm. I’ll help you! Yellow sandstorm! Windy sandstorm! Piercing the eyes sandstorm! Inevitable sandstorm. Global sandstorm! Too hot to breathe sandstorm! Sandstorm! You say sandstorm. |
Granules of grit thrummed through the gate. Only the field mice heard the Aeolian harp hum. |
Deep heating spread on the shoulders, long long ago. |
Listeners, I submit to the court of the ears the following: we are going to produce 100 Words of Astounding Beauty for you, today, in about twenty minutes or so. I will start the process by playing an audio prompt, a sound you need not fully recognise, and you will then have five minutes to write a first draft. As this is an Homages episode, there’s an extra step in the dance, but let’s get prompted first before we get into that.
Listeners - you can write along with us. We will turn harmlessly into steam when we receive any of your own 100 words of Astounding Beauty. Send them as text or a sound file and let us know if you’d like us to read them out or play them in the next episode.
Writers, I’m about to play the prompt for your 100 words.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I7i_vqr6Wkio-IU93pIQm3NbdwkDT6VT/view?usp=sharing
Writers, sally forth and tally ho with your prompt in your knapsack, off to write your 100 words. Listeners, if you’re writing along with us at home, pause here and time yourself for five minutes because we’re going to skip ahead.
Amelia Armande first draft |
From the Margins |
The creatures of Brother Just's marginalia were all real. The two headed llama beast. The cannon-turkey chimera, spewing poisonous clouds from its rectum. The phoenix bishop. The phallus bat. The many, many murdering rabbits. Here they came, oozing and scrawling their way out of the forest thickets as the mad saint chimed the monastery bells. The Abbot could only watch helplessly. There were no words - they had uncoupled from his mind, flaking away like gold leaf copperplate into the wind. He watched as the gargantuan fire breathing battle snail dribbled across the landscape, defying proportion, defying reality, engulfing the monastery. |
Word count: 100 |
Genesis |
All hail the Great Just! All hail He who had known them and seen them and made them be! At last the Time was come, the Time for their Ascension! Come to Be were the Rabbits of Judgement. Come to Be was the Twice-Oriented Llama, Amall Who Seeth Both Ways. Come to Be was Fledermaus Erectus, and the Glorious Vapours of the Ballistic Chimera. And from the Flames, the Bishop, he too has Come to Be. But the One who was to Come After Us, he Came last. The Great Snail Confundamubulus, slowly he Came. Wait for it. He’s Coming. |
Wordcount: 100 |
Confundamubulus approaches |
The comet was sighted at a distance of two light years. It was named in good humour after the snail of Christian legend for its slow but inexorable progress towards Sol. |
Wordcount: 100 |
Joshua Crisp first draft |
Dies Iudicii |
The bells of heaven rang for him. Christ the resurrector. Corpses, Carcasses and Cadavers splintered themselves against rotten coffinwood and gravedirt. Fingers clutched at earth and air and lolling tongues and yellowed, dead jaws praised his name. Every edifice of temporal earthly power was torn down. Temples and toilet-stalls. Prophets, failed and false and fallen. Every zombie became a fresh acolyte. To spread the word. To give the gift of life eternal. To save people. The screams of the living were drowned out in the droning, danse macabre. The christchild had arisen, and all the angels sang for him. Rejoice. Rejoice. |
Word count: 101 |
414 parts per million |
Saul of Tarsus rose from his grave to take his place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jeshua welcomed them, thanked everybody for their faith, and outlined the plan for an Earth without money, without borders, without pain, without death. |
Wordcount: 101 |
Archaeotheologists |
The Archaeotheologists rested a moment to take stock. B7119 pondered the readings, and rechecked them.”This is before ‘The Return’,” he said, “just slightly. Carbodating confirms it. And these bodies appear to have passed concurrently. Their orientations suggest that they were alive and co-present at death, aware of what was happening. We saw it at Pompeii.” A4765 concurred. “So this wasn’t a mass grave. Poisoning?” “Mass hallucination perhaps. Psychosis. Suicide pact?” “Religions tended to do this,” reflected D221B. “A sorry confusion the humans indulged in.” “I hope their fantasies were at least of some comfort to them,” said B7119, finally. |
Wordcount: 100 |
Paul Davies first draft |
Crabalocker |
Gfeldt clattered sideways under the carapace of leaves. She wished to see the ceremonies, for the first time, even though she was not of age. It was forbidden to look up, or to be seen, when the chantlings entered. She poked an eyestalk up and around to sneak a view. There they were! The rising, orange-yellow walls, the chiming nooks! She had heard about them, but never thought they would look quite so splendid. What was it that they did in the chambers? What was it that she was not permitted to see? She gingerly extruded another stalk. She felt a pincer clasp around it. “Gfeldt,” said her father sadly. “Enjoy your final look.” |
Word count: 114 |
My child, Gfeldt |
The ceremonies would be held without any younglings in attendance. It was forbidden. Her father saw Gfeldt clatter in sideways under a carapace of leaves. He saw her eyestalk poke up and around to sneak a view, and his heart sank. She had seen the rising orange-yellow walls and the chiming nooks. She had seen the chambers. Her claw life would be forfeit. He scuttled over to her hiding place. “Enjoy your final look”, he said sadly, and clasped her pincer tightly. He heard a crack, and looked away. He heard another, then another. After a pause, the ceremony continued. |
Wordcount: 100 |
The Crab King |
The royal family process in their ceremonial armour. Their spikes gleam bronze and gold and amber in the autumn dawn. Six with tridents - one in chains. The dias is set at the top of the cliffs - a vast clam shell, silvered and pearlescent. The king guides his youngest to the cliff edge. "You have seen what you should not," he proclaims. "And to protect our people from the power within you, the penalty is death." Her eyes burn and glow brighter than the sunrise. "Best be sure to destroy me completely, father," she says. "I don't take kindly to half-deaths." |
Wordcount: 100 |
Claudia Treacher first draft |
Old medicine |
The bark of the yew tree was stripped back by the scientist as the church bells peeled. In concord with the graveyard’s melody, the yew crinkled and yawned, pushing its way out of the earth into the scientist’s welcoming grasp. This happened, accelerated, for the purposes of medicine, and the scientist thought about the people waiting anxiously in the hospital for the yew’s nurturing properties. The tree was a gift from centuries past, and bore its drug out along with the stones of flint and worms from the ground so that people would not join them from where they came. |
Word count: 100 |
Medicine |
I take the transporter to visit the herbalist. They are based at the ground level of the city - sunlight can be simulated, but there's nothing like a good solid connection to the soil, they say. It's breathtaking, stepping into their forest glade - proper bark, gnarled trunks. Lichen, fungus. Really ugly plants. It's a refreshing change from the pristine ferns and palms of the higher levels. They encourage me to take off my shoes, put my feet into the cool stream running through the space. They'll harvest me something soon, but this is just as important a part of the healing. |
Wordcount: 100 |
Happiness is Just A Warpway Away |
The warpway bells glowed, and images of beautiful people telling me to buy things were tolled into my head as I stepped onto the teleporter. Thirty seconds of mental advertising later, after I’d spoken todays free passphrase “Good citizens brush their teeth with Hydrawhite” the pad activated and I was beamed down to level seven where the farmers and the poor-by-choice lived. My implants barely worked in the oxygen-rich air and I actually had to walk to the herbalist. But they sold drugs that worked, and beckoned me inside. I took off my shoes and started chewing the bitter bark. |
Wordcount: 100 |
Tom McNally’s first draft |
The last steak bake on the hot plate |
The lizards always jump the queue at the Westminster Greggs. I keep saying we should just have a separate queue, one for the reptiloids and one for the earthmen but no one listens to me. I’m used to that since I lost the election. You’ve got to look after the new blood though. Bless, once a junior jumped in front of a Sauropsid and ordered a pie and he changed right there at the counter. White as a sheet she was. |
Word count: 100 |
The lizardman who worked at Greggs |
Gulliver stared at his clock, unblinking. 3.19 am. Today was a thursday, which meant laundry day, which meant an early start, but he hadn’t slept at all. He pressed his ear-hole into the pillow in a desperate attempt to summon Morpheus, but resigned himself to another sleepless night and got up. He left in a big hoodie and baggy trousers at four am, and was ready to greet Carla as she was opening the laundrette at 5. He hurried over to the back room, ignoring Carla’s questioning gaze and put his laundry on next to the loud industrial machines. His unblinking eyes flickered between the door and the drum. He licked them nervously. Washed, Tumble-dryed. Cleaned. With the final beep and hiss of steam as the door opened, Culliver pulled on his crisp human skinsuit with relief, and left in time to make his morning shift at Greggs. |
Wordcount: 149 |
Saurian Wash |
I always start the day with the dawn chorus and a cup of tea before turning on the lights at the laundrette. Pink light filters through the window and the last clubbers of the night stagger past, disturbing the street-sleepers and the seagulls who pull chip-packets from the bin. At five, Gulliver arrives. My first customer of the day. I don’t ask him about his job at Greggs, nor about the pink fleshy suit he brings along to dry, but I can’t help looking askance at his scales as he scrabbles around for a quid to put in the machine. |
Wordcount: 100 |
Stop writing everyone, it’s Homaging time. That means that the first draft, the one you have in front of you now, goes to another writer. They will use your story as a prompt to write an entirely new piece. It can be in a different style, a different voice, an addition, a subversion, an angry response, a gender-swapped highschool AU fic, anything you like.
Your time to write your homage starts now.
Writers. You’ve done well. But now is the time to do it all over again. The daisy chain of culture is quite clear on what happens next: your homage is to be itself homaged by another writer. They are ignorant of the original source and will read your mutated strain as if it was the ancestral population.
When this is complete, we will read the original piece, and the second homage. The first homage was of course lost in a shipwreck on the Black Sea. We will then attempt to figure out the missing link in the creative discourse ourselves.
Guest | Title of original | Homage 1 | Homage 2 | Title of Homage 2 |
Amelia Armande | From the margins | Paul Davies | Tom McNally | Confundamubulus approaches |
Joshua Crisp | Dies Iudicii | Tom McNally | Paul Davies | Archaeotheologists |
Paul Davies | Crabalocker | Claudia Treacher | Amelia Armande | The Crab King |
Claudia Treacher | Old medicine | Amelia Armande | Joshua Crisp | Happiness is Just A Warpway Away |
Tom McNally | The last steak bake on the hot plate | Joshua Crisp | Claudia Treacher | Saurian Wash |
véttr
by Noah Bradbury
Johan laid flat and still in the wet brown leaves and dirt. He did not lift his head. He tried not to breathe. He had told the others at the camp that he had heard it while gathering wood. He told them it would come as a friend. A familar voice, a child, someone in need of help. They laughed, or ignored him. The officers had hardened them against their fear. They did not know that here, fear was to be trusted. Johan laid flat and still and heard what it did to the brave men as the fire crackled.
THE LAST BASTION OF CREATIVITY
by Christopher T. Dabrowski
Poor those who never dream. Or those with insomnia.
AI does everything for us. Even music, books, and films are created by algorithms. We have nothing to do.
We reproduce, and to prevent overpopulation, many of us are sent to terraformed planets.
The rest get water, food, and energy rations and can do whatever they want as long as they follow orders.
If you want to earn money for holidays or other luxuries, you can sell dreamvizions on your channel - broadcasts of our dreams.
They're so absurd and unpredictable that AI cannot imitate them - that's why they are so popular.
And by now we should all be thoroughly homaged. We hope you’ve enjoyed our stories, and perhaps written one of your own. Joining me with their 100 words tonight has been:
Amelia Armande with The Crab King, an homage to Crabalocker by Paul Davies
Joshua Crisp with Happiness is Just A Warpway Away, an homage to Old Medicine by Claudia Treacher
Paul Davies with Archaeotheologists, an homage to Dies Iudicii by Joshua Crisp
Claudia Treacher with Saurian Wash, an homage to The last steak bake on the hot plate by Tom McNally
Tom McNally with Confundamubulus approaches, an homage to From the margins by Amelia Armande
Goodnight everybody!
That was 100 Words of Astounding Beauty, which is a production of Red Button Audio and was edited by myself, Tom McNally. The theme tune is 'Music for Jellyfish' and was composed by Bell Lungs. The story music was used with MIDIs taken from Disklavier World.
Give us feedback on 100words@redbuttonaudio.org or tweeting us on @RedBAudio. Please also send us any 100 Words of Astounding Beauty you have made while listening along, and let us know if you’d like them to be included in a future episode.
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Good citizens brush their teeth with Hydrawhite.