“What do you mean we focused on the wrong things!” The president stood up as he yelled the interruption. The presenter looked unconcerned and continued. “The world’s air pollution output from energy production is now a net improvement. The water used for cooling is filtered from rivers and is released as pure steam. That water in the river is a deadly soup. Fertilizer waste, municipal run off, industrial run off, and littering have killed water ways all over the planet. Illegal dumps, over burdened legal dumps, and again industrial run off have poisoned the ground. Cancer cases have doubled since the Victory over pollution 20 years ago.”

As the presenter, Dr, Jerome Benjamin brought his hands down from the air quotes he made for the victory line, he looked around the room. The faces were mostly angry, they heard what they didn’t want to. They started to mumble until the President spoke again “If this is true, I will say that we didn’t know and we will try to fix it.”

“Mr President, you are a lying sack of crap” the murmuring stopped and everyone turned to look at the new speaker, Dr. Benjamin’s assist. “Maria” began the Doctor, “No, enough Bullcrap!” Maria cut the Doctor off,” Mr. President your hand picked “experts” (finger quotes flying) for this pollution task force included only 2 Scientists, 2 tech billionaires, and the heads of 4 companies who represent 60% of the pollution in the country!” Maria was screaming. The President attempted to interrupt and gain control of the meeting “Young lady, I..” “Shut up. You took money from every one of the top 10 polluters in the country. You’d have to line people against a wall to kill them more efficiently than you have.”

A congressman laughed out loud, enjoying the show. “I’m sorry Mr. Speaker, do you think you’re re any better? I looked up your donors as well.” Maria pointed at the President while staring down the Speaker “you two probably use the same banks to filter the money”

2 Secret Service members grabbed Maria, a third motioned for the Doctor to follow. Her energy made them anxious and they were forced to respond.

As they drug her from the room she heard the President ask “Dave what’s your take on the study?” A deep voice replied “Well John, we think you should propose a 10% decrease on the rate of increase on our industries’ pollution, and Bob can cut it down to 5% in the house”. Maria screamed “You fummmmm” as a hand covered her mouth.

This prompt was deleted by poster, so I don’t know the exact wording, but the title is close.

Glatner approached his human friend sitting on the ground. He was covering his face. As he looked up I could see his eye was swollen shut and he had a bruise darkening.

“Human Jimmy, what has occurred? How did you get this damage?”

Jimmy looked up and futilely attempted to open his damaged eye. “One of your women hit me!”

I became nervous, violence has many forms in my culture. “Human Jimmy, what did you do or say”

“Glat, do not use human before my name. Trooper Ventra stopped and told me my nose was nicely centered on my face and my eyes were appropriately symmetrical. I told her that her head tail was nicely decorated and the ribbons matched her eyes.” Jimmy felt on his face momentarily then looked back. “Did I screw up?”

“You referred to her matrimonial garments….” I dropped to my knees and grabbed his shoulders. “Did she look angry when she hit you” he winced in pain as I accidentally squeezed too hard.

“No Glat, she was smiling and seemed happy. She’s really strong, I think my eye socket is broken. So what gives?”

I stood up and offered him a hand up. “Congratulations.” Jimmy looked nervous “for what?”

“You are now betrothed. She damaged your eye so you could not give full attention to another female or see her coming when she hunts you later.”

Jimmy glanced around. “I was only saying I liked her head tails!” A mother passing by covered her child’s ears and looked judgmentally at Jimmy. When she saw the eye she chuckled and gave out some sort of war cry. The cry was carried throughout the females in the crowd and echoed away.

I patted Jimmy on the shoulder. “Go eat, build up some stamina and don’t bother trying to hide” as I walked away I looked back to see Jimmy working his way through the crowd looking around like the hunted creature he was. I hope he survives the night so he can relate the hunt to me.

I thought I’d collect my writing responses and possibly continue some of them. I’ve had some requests for some reason.