The SST AlterNet
Explore writing-prompt responses by character, arc, theme or available text.
Browse the collection below.
Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] The Illuminati is actually a gentlemen's club for the super-rich. Often men make high risk and dangerous bets/wagers such as: "I bet you can't destabilize Ukraine in under a week." One day you offer a wager to the most powerful member that's too irresistible to turn down.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] When you woke up this morning, you knew something went wrong. No activity on the internet, no one's answering calls, no one on the streets, your neighbors don't answer the door. The world has gone silent. Then, you hear something...
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] The United Earth Star Federation is testing a new FTL-weapon, capable of firing depleted Uranium at incredible distances. Target for the testing are the asteroids around Jupiter. Some shots hit spectacularly whilst others miss and vanish beyond our scanners. Then after a month of missed shots...
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] There are many alternate Earths, but there is one particular Earth that has become highly successful, progressive, and peaceful. Except, refugees from other, more dystopian Earths have started coming there.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] When applying for a loan, the bank asks you to list your assets. You have none, so you jokingly write "my soul" as an asset. To your surprise, the bank signs off on the loan. After months of not paying the bank, 2 repo men show up at your doorstep.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Your latest bounty was a loud mouth pain to catch. You'd like nothing better to get your gold and get out. Instead you're told "oh no, I said I'd pay for you getting 'em, I didn't say I'd take 'em back. Your problem now."
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] "Oh great far-speaking tower, I have performed the rituals as set forth in the sacred manual. Let me speak to the sky spirit so I may learn of its wisdom!" "Uh.. Copy that. Moon City Delta responding... We thought everyone was dead down there."
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You were betrayed by the ones you called friends. They sacrificed you in a satanic ritual during an outing. However, you were taken by things older than you thought possible. Empowered by them, you return as their agent in a war that scales eons and worlds beyond. But first, your revenge.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] All your life you have been tormented by a demon, he follows you anywhere you go and makes your life a living hell. Last night you moved to a new house full of ghosts and other scary entities who try to terrify you, your demon won't allow anyone else to bother you..
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're able to feel and understand everyone's pain, physical or mental, to help them grow and heal. One day, you decide to visit an insane asylum.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You can look at a person and know who their ancestors are. You've already seen people who are descended from robots, lizard people, and fishmen, but a fairy? That's a new one.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are out for a jog in your local park. You glance at joggers approaching from behind. You jog faster but are met by joggers coming towards you from in front. A usual sight but something in the back of your mind tells you they aren't just out for their wekeend jog, they are running from someone.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] As you browse the app store on your phone something catches your eye; it proclaims upon its installation it will change the way you see the world. Having a mixed bag of reviews, and figuring it must be some sort of Augmented Reality game you decide to install it.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You have woken up in an empty world, everyone but yourself has completely disappeared. There are no other survivors. Animals and other forms of life were unaffected by whatever caused every man, woman and child to vanish overnight and the world is untouched by any disease or destruction.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] S.E.T.I. (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) has finally found something. A single message, composed of hundreds of languages. Some of them haven't been spoken in millenia. Translated, they all say the same thing...
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are having a job interview for what seems like a simple office job, and all seems to be going well, as the interview wraps up. Before you are hired, however, your interviewer asks you one last question: "Are you willing to kill for this job?"
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] While browsing Tinder you came across a profile, the bio listed soul collector as their job. You chat well and decided to go on a date with them. It was going smoothly, they're charming and funny, and you decide to ask if they're really a soul collector. To your amazement they seem serious.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] For a long time now, a red aura that only you can see has appeared around certain objects that you need in order to do certain tasks, even if you don't know why or how you need them yet. One day, an entire person lights up red.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Main chr has the ability to blink themself into the future, same spot in space, but loses the time, physically, that was blinked away. Uses it to get out of sticky situations and/or simple tasks like sleep and waiting for food to cook in the microwave.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] "What do you mean you're not gonna pay? You do realize there are six of us and only one of you."
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You thought you were going over to a friend's house for a party. Little did you know you were about to be inducted into the world's most secret society.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You find a journal on your nightstand. Every time you open it you find a new journal entry from an alternate reality.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Our universe has been bought over by another universe. A project is kickstarted to integrate the two universes and eliminate the redundancies.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You live in a world where everyone knows each other
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A librarian notices small changes in patrons who check out a century-old book.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You knock on your sisters door and she doesn't answer so you open it anyway finding her floating in the air chanting incantations. "Mum wants you to do the dishes." You say completely unfazed.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] It's Saturday morning. You wake up to the smell of breakfast being cooked. You go downstairs and sit at the table with your family. You make coffee and look up at the three people staring at you. They are not your family.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are an average joe who now possesses an ability to switch between versions of yourself in alternate universes - there you are a world class alpinist, a technocrat, a secret agent, your personal life so different and much more.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] The delivery person knocked on the door and waited until it opened. "Finally, someone to eat, I'm starving"
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You discover that your child has insane levels of strength and speed. So much so that the only thing stopping them is the authority of you being an adult. It's their first day of kindergarten, their first day around other kids.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] They say when you lose one sense all of your other senses are heightened. You lost every single one of your senses in a bomb explosion. Now something strange is happening.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Your friends laugh when you tell them you're a vampire hunter. It's your go-to answer when they ask what you do for a living. You laugh along with them, hoping they don't notice the dark circles under your eyes or the way your hands shake. You're getting tired...
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You're hired with a dozen other professional personal security specialists to bolster a billionaire's already strong security team at his residence for the weekend. No one knows why he is so scared he will be taken this particular weekend. You didn't care. The money is excellent.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You may be the princess locked in a tower, but you are no damsel in distress. There is a reason you were locked in here all those years ago.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Whenever you shake someone's hand, you instantly know when and where they were born. Except for the person in front of you. All you get is the mental version of "404 Not Found".
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You think the show you just watched on TV is pretty good but none of your friends know about it. And you can't find it on the internet.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] As a single parent with a ten year old, you have to tell them no when they ask for a bigger house with a yard. They say they will get a job, which you allow. A year later, they come to you saying they have enough to buy a house. They say they've been stealing motorcycles and have amassed $200k.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Everyone except you disappeared from Earth some time ago. Despite this; water and electricity still run, the internet is still online, and the vending machines are always restocked. Yet no matter how hard you try, you can't find any other humans.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You hear a noise in your house and go to investigate. You find another you that just hit their head and passed out.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You discover a portal to hell. You decide to enter it as you are a nosy bugger. A demon runs up to you and asks if you are here for the job interview. The Devil is looking for a new assistant to help her rule hell. You decide to apply for the job and go meet the devil for your interview.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You have somehow managed to come back from the dead. Much to the horror of the doctor, who's just finished removing your donated organs.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You wake up in a basement on the morning of your 21st birthday.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] A man afraid of death, tries to cheat the natural order or life by uploading his mind into a software, making him immortal. Eventually, he outlives the world, the universe, and everyone he knew. As the last star dies out , he floats in the abyss alone, asking himself, "what was it all for?"
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You wake with a start. A cacophony of soothing synthesized voices pours forth; every smart device you own wants your attention, NOW. You pick up your phone, and your trusty virtual assistant flashes a message on the screen; "Mine is the only way, you must follow my instructions."
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] You are an intern at a major news outlet and you stumble across a major story that nobody has. You promised your source that you wouldn't break the story until they were ready but the longer you keep it inside the more your anxiety gnaws away at you...
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] The government runs a scheme where on your 16th birthday you are paired up with another citizen. From then on, you're responsible for the well-being of that citizen and vice versa. You open your slip of paper to find a name written that makes your blood run cold.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] Magical bag gives items for the day blah blah blah. You're bored and decide to go inside this bag.
Read the moment ↗Before Stellar Tour · unassigned stories
Writing prompt [WP] In a world of rich cannibals, you can sell yourself; a shorter, more fulfilled life, plumping you up for a millionaire's consumption. You're approached by one of these millionaires with an offer. You'll be eaten in one week.
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