30 Days of Flashfic - Day 17 A character in a foreign land, unable to speak the local language

This a Flashfic based on a prompt from ravenswept's 30 Days of Flash Fiction Meme

My 30 Days of Flashfic Index Page

Day 17 - Write a scene with a character in a foreign land, unable to speak the local language

The foreign language isn't just random text. :) Which is not to say that I made lots on notes on what was supposed to mean what. If I'd had more time I would have broken out my copy of The Language Construction Kit.

Title: First Class Education

( Reason number X+1 why high school sucks )

So-called monsoons and... oh, wait, is that a haboob? Where'd the sun go!?

I have been known to joke that Arizona's claim to have a monsoon season is a joke. Or one of those marketing lies like when early settlers called the not-so-green Greenland, Greenland in order to attract more settlers. "You're going to call this place Barrenland, Carl? Who's going to move to Barrenland to raise a family. Call it... Greenland! No, no it's not a lie Carl, it's spinning the message. Carl, put the ax down Carl..."

( Oh look, a weather rant under the cut )

But you know what? Arizona has borrowed another foreign weather related word. Haboob. It's basically Arabic for, "It's the end of the world! Oh, wait. Never mind, it's just a miles and miles long wall of dust." We got one here in the Phoenix area the other day. Want to see it? Fortunately someone else had a camera and they posted a picture to Flickr. Haboob over Phoenix Arizona. Check that description, "A massive dust storm called a haboob hit Phoenix, AZ in the evening of July 5, 2011. It was over a mile tall and 30-50 miles wide." Forget a mile tall, check out that width. It didn't hit Phoenix. It hit Mesa, and Tempe, and Scottsdale, and Phoenix, and Guadalupe... You know, how about we just say it hit the whole thing. If a city was vaguely in the vicinity of Phoenix, it got hit.

So why write all this?

Guess who was on the road when it hit. Oh. For extra credit, guess who doesn't have functioning windshield wash sprayers. Sure, the dust alone wasn't a big problem (if you don't mind visibility dropping at times to 10-20 feet). But when it first started to rain it was a bare sprinkling that didn't do anything more than make the dust stick.

So yeah. The TL;DR version. Monsoon season in Arizona is a joke, but oh lord are the haboobs real.

30 Days of Flashfic - Day 18 Prompt: The name "Thomas Daniel"

This a Flashfic based on a prompt from ravenswept's 30 Days of Flash Fiction Meme

My 30 Days of Flashfic Index Page

Day 18 - Prompt: the name "Thomas Daniel"

A continuation of Day 17's Galactic Academy scene (click on the link to view that one)

It will be a busy evening, so I'm afraid I'm posting this without much review. On the other hand, depending on how much time I have later tonight I might get a start on a follow up to the Day 16b version of, "A Scene on Horseback" than I posted to my DW account. But for now I post and run.

Title: The Computer is Never Wrong ( Cut to hide alien admission clerk's failure to grasp the concept of T.M.I. )

Setting notes: I'm certainly not the first person to think up the idea of a school in space. There was at least one 80s cartoon, another in the 90s or early 2000s. There are a multitude in anime and written science fiction.

But in the late 90s or early 2000s I started pondering as an RPG setting the idea of a gigantic boarding school in space, sizable enough to be its own large city. Classes ranging from preschool all the way up to college. A huge campus that including the faculty and support staff would result in something that might as well be a large city. I think I was originally inspired in part by the light hearted Teenagers From Outer Space RPG put out by R. Talsorian Games.

I've thought about trying something with it again recently, which is why it was already in my head when today and yesterday's prompts came up. Who knows, maybe this will lead somewhere...