vignettes

[marycatelli]

This week's prompt is:
precede 👦

Anyone can join, with a 50-word creative fiction vignette in the comments. Your vignette does not have to include the prompt term. Any (G or PG) definition of the word can be used.

Comments

[marycatelli]

If he did not go before her, she would have to go on her own. Even with Helena firmly by her elbow, that did not feel safe.
All the more when a hiss sounded, louder than before. Her gaze flitted over to the pavement.
A snake with four heads hissed.

[marycatelli]

She eyed the clouds against. So, so, so wrong. There was something -- she scowled.
"Watch the birds!" she said. "They are doing something!"
"What nonsense are you up to this time, woman?" snarled Olivia. "Haven't you caused enough trouble? Do you have to cry wolf?"
Someone screamed. A mass of birds flew toward them, so many and so thick they looked like a cloud.
"Get back, get back!" Susan grabbed her arm and pulled her back. Honor staggered and tried to see somewhere, anywhere, to take shelter. All about her warriors were blazing with fire or sparkling with lightning.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

"Actually the AXIL scandal preceded the first Farside observatories by several decades." Tara spoke with firm confidence. "Dr. Doorne was talking about it yesterday in our statistics class, when she was discussing methods for recognizing bad data. Apparently everyone was using the fine-grained tests without first running some basic checks that would've caught the issue with the two satellites' station-keeping systems."

[marycatelli]

Very silly of them. You need to do regression testing.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, this sort of error is not unknown -- here in the Armstrong timeline, the problem with the Hubble Space Telescope mirror was detected by basic testing tools, but was ignored because the finer-grain testing tool was assumed to be more accurate (in fact the latter tool was miscalibrated, and in such a fine-tolerance tool, that tiny error threw off its ability to detect the problem).

[marycatelli]

Yeah, I can tell a story or two about failure to perform regression tests.