reddit<\/a>. \u00a0The prompt is:<\/p>\nOne day everyone notices the words “Human Update 1.1 progress 1%” in the corner of their eye.<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
Daniel awoke slowly, the blare of the alarm clock loud in his ears. He lay on his back several moments, staring at the ceiling. He was having trouble finding the willpower to pull himself out of bed.<\/p>\n
His bare feet touched the hardwood floor, and the chill of morning bit into his legs. He cursed, rubbing his eyes as he shambled across the room towards the alarm clock. His hand hovered over the snooze button before falling on the off switch. Silence replaced the cacophony. Daniel sighed and rubbed his eyes again.<\/p>\n
As he teetered towards the bathroom, he raised his fists to rub his eyes yet again. He stopped, blinking. It wasn\u2019t an eyelash or eye snot in his field of vision. White text in a tightly kerned font floated in the lower right corner of his field of vision.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuman Update 1.1. Progress\u2026 1%.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniel blinked several times. The words were only visible while his eyes were open. He fidgeted with his hands. He pinched his forearm hard enough, and winced.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this some kind of trick?\u201d he said. He smiled and waited a moment before saying, \u201cOkay, you\u2019ve got me. I don\u2019t know how you\u2019re doing this, but it\u2019s pretty clever!\u201d<\/p>\n
When no one responded, he hurried out to his living room and turned on the television. A man and a woman sitting behind a desk with a cityscape behind faced the camera. On the bottom of the screen, the same words floated in a banner.<\/p>\n
\u201c-not sure what it means,\u201d the man was saying. Both reporters were frowning. The man gripped his papers in a white knuckled grip that he didn\u2019t seem aware of. The woman sat with her hands clasped in front of her, as though to trap them in one place.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoctor Parks, a biology professor with the University of Illinois is on line one,\u201d the male reporter said. \u201cDoctor, you\u2019re on the air.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d a phone voice said. \u201cWhile we still do not know the exact cause of the visual phenomena, the two prevailing theories are mass hallucination, and spontaneous genetic mutation. Indeed, the latter<\/p>\n
\n <\/p>\n
And that’s all I have time for tonight.<\/p>\n
The writing prompt made me think of Daneel Olivaw, for some reason, so I named the protagonist Daniel.<\/p>\n
I’m not sure exactly where I was going to go with the story. \u00a0This was purely seat-of-the-pants writing. \u00a0There were a number of directions I could go. \u00a0I actually like the prompt for that reason, though it didn’t really fit with a 10 to 15 minute exercise. \u00a0I could probably spend a couple of days with that and write a full short story.<\/p>\n
Before I could finish it, I would need to look at the human condition and determine the one thing I would change to make the race better. \u00a0Remove violence? \u00a0Replace selfishness with altruism? \u00a0I’m not sure.<\/p>\n
Anyway, that was an enjoyable exercise. \u00a0If you liked it, let me know, and I’ll do it again. \u00a0If you hated it, let me know that as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m trying something different with the beginning of my writing session tonight. \u00a0Tonight, to get the juices flowing, I’m going to grab a writing prompt,\u00a0and write using that prompt for ten to fifteen minutes. Tonight’s prompt comes reddit. \u00a0The prompt is: One day everyone notices the words “Human Update 1.1 progress 1%” in the corner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":516,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515\/revisions\/516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}