Becky Carlson

Tom Cohlmia

Nathan Bilancio

Rubani Shaw

Ben Syverson

Ross Weijer

Bo Peng

Fra Valsecchi

Ellen Strong

Sam Becker

Benjamin Chandler

English

It was a cold day winter day in the beef box, but Sam was never bothered by the cold, if anything it invigorated him. “Today is the day” he thought “I will refactor brayne.website and finally get it compatible with Opera.”

Sam sat down his steaming coffee mug on his luxurious desk (his secret recipe, with beef bouillon powder sprinkled on top), cracked his knuckles, and began working. brayne.website was a beast of a challenge, but he knew he could wrangle it into submission.

He typed... and typed... coding like magic as his brain buzzed with energy and excitement. Before he knew it, it was already 10pm—Rietje stepped in. "Wow Sam, you're really going hog wild. Why don't you take a break? Minnie, Arthur, and Lottie then busted through screaming.

A few weeks earlier, an app was released into the world called Sweardle. Its popularity both excited and frighted Sam.

Sweardle's success prompted Sam to make a hard pivot with Byline—now users had to decode the previous line by guessing words. But the added friction in Bylirdle caused users to complain. Then, inspiration struck.

"Write better..." said Sam. "All our users need to do is write better!" He began to code, with glee.

Sam didn't trust that people would just "write better" by themselves; that's why he programmed "The Elements of Style" into them. And while he was at it, he also coded in some - rather surprising - elements into their personalities too.

For example, while everyone was programmed to have a contagious laugh (some MUCH louder than others) only some were given the ability to have the perfect pun for every occasion. And now they were all given the same goal to write a story together.

So the friends/colleagues of said loud contagious laugher contemplated the perfect 280 characters to send him off into the corporate abyss. In the end, it wasn’t a perfect story. But it was filled with chonky love.

A Ch0nky Goodbye

C0eJXhps0efE5VOY0j7PoQPE8in2

Victoria Hammel

Ben Healy

Chris Kucharczyk

Jane Zanzig

‚I don’t like purple‘ thinks the art piece to itself as its creator Finn moves the wet brush over the canvas. Besides the disagreement over color, the art piece can’t stand watercolors in the winter, so it dries the color faster than Finn can make use of it.

Finn was tired, so he stepped away from the easel and put the kettle on to boil.

Once the tea had steeped, Finn pulled his kettle out of the campfire and looked over at his sleeping companions. Seems like he would be drinking alone tonight.

What Finn didn't know is that he was anything but alone. Had he looked closely, he might have seen the light from the campfire glint off of the pairs of eyes that were now gathering around their campsite. But he simply finished his tea and went to sleep. The fire slowly died out.

Having exhausted their patience, the pack descended on the tent, salivating and snarling. But as the littlest sidestepped the glowing embers, his flank snagged on a branch and ripped clean open. Beneath the hide lay not flesh, but fleece: he was a sheep in wolf's clothing.

Ben Syverson
@bensyverson1

Lifetime
Lines

Awards
Earned

Member
Since

Awards

Ben's Stories

Ben Syverson@bensyverson1

LifetimeLines