RUN

PROMPT: You are at a popular Japanese restaurant, eating alone. The waiter brings a complimentary fortune cookie. You open it and it says "RUN"

“Hey, is this some sort of joke?” Caroline waved the fortune out of her cookie at the waitress, who stopped for a second as she went past. She cocked a hip and read it. “It says to give it back to you,” she said, and gave it back to Caroline.

The fortune said, “Don’t show anybody else.”

As she watched, the letters faded, blurring and spreading out to make the background of the little slip of paper a little less stark white before re-congealing into a single larger, bolder, serifed word: RUN.

She shoved the tiny piece of paper in her jacket pocket and walked out of the restaurant; if they were worried about her not paying the bill, they could take it up with the fortune cookie.

To the stars... and back.

PROMPT: As humankind expanded into space and colonized, they began to notice that something on Earth kept humans alive longer, more than just oxygen. Without it, humans only live to be in their mid 30's. The human race has no idea what this missing key is.

“Maybe it’s love.” She pulled the ridiculous bag down out of the overhead luggage rack, narrowly missing his head.

“Love.” He ducked under the ridiculous bag and pulled his own sensible black bag out from under the seat. People were beginning to move toward the exit in a way that suggested that the door was open.

“Yeah, love. I mean, it’s a fundamental human thing, right? It’s something...”

“I love Mom and Dad, and I’ve never been to Earth.” Not yet. Not for another twenty-three hours, according to the schedule.

“Yeah, but... I mean. What if it’s, like, love of Earth? Like, Earth itself.” The ridiculous bag didn’t have a shoulder strap, just these huge long handles; she had to cock her whole body against its weight to keep it off the floor, so moving down the aisle toward the door was like a weird asynchronous penguin waddle.

Hoodie

A mysterious hooded man hands you a digital watch. The numbers that appear on the watch seem to change at random.

The guy’s hoodie was surprisingly deep. I don’t mean it was intellectually complex or whatever, it just... hid his face really well. It cast shadows in all the right places to make him seem sinister and mysterious. It obscured his features.

When I was a kid, and I got a hoodie for the first time, I imagined the hood covering my face and casting deep shadows like that, like I was a character in a comic book or the grim reaper or something; but really, a hoodie’s hood normally just covers your head, maybe keeps out a little rain, keeps in some body heat.

So the guy caught my attention for the perfection of his hoodie.