About the challenge: Each Tuesday I will provide a photo prompt. Your mission, if you choose to accept the challenge, is to tell a story in 280 characters or less. When you write your tale, be sure to let me know in the comments with a link to your tale. This is important as I have noticed that some of the ping backs have not been working. If you would prefer to post your tale in the comments (some people have very specific blog themes but still want to participate), I am happy to post a link to your site when I post your tale in the Round Up.

A final note: if you need help tracking the number of characters in your story, there is a nifty online tool that will count for you at charactercountonline.com.

I will do a roundup each Tuesday, along with providing a new prompt. And if for some reason I missed your entry in the Roundup, as I have occasionally done, please let me know. I want to be sure to include your tale.

Finally, have fun!

This Week’s Twittering Tales #153 – 10 September 2019 – Photo Prompt

Photo by Nadiya Ploschenko at Unsplash.com

My take…

The Visitors

The ufo was back, but Jules was ready. They would not take him aboard the craft tonight! He chained himself to the floor eventually falling asleep when the lights from the ship went dark.

Earthlog-Humanoid #469: Specimen set up defenses after only 3 days. Test brain matter.

~kat

275 Characters

Last Week’s Twittering Tale #152 – The Roundup

Photo by Geralt at Pixabay.com

Starting us off…
Wish You Were Here…
When Agent Smith mysteriously disappeared, he left a coded message. Authorities knew his daughter had learned to read code. Agents brought her in.
After a few moments, Hanna burst into laughter.
“What does it say?”
“Dad’s on vacation. He’ll see you in a month…’bout time dad!”
~kat
278 Characters

By The Dark Netizen:
DATA
She read the data.
It had taken hours to upload it all. After the main servers were systematically taken out one by one, it was up to her to safeguard the backup data. She could not trust other agents and so she had stored the data in the most secure location:
Her android brain…
Character Count: 280

By Lisa at Tao Talk:
Fried
Gynoid X loaded data by reading through screens at a nanosecond a page – until she got to the screen full of blue zeros and ones. In robotspeak zero is off and one is on. X went into “robot seizure,” turning off and on over and over again. When they found her, she was fried.
[278 characters]

By Reena at ReInventions:
Spaces in Between
What I want?
What I don’t?
What can I change?
What I can’t?
What do I do, and how?
What should I refrain from, and why?
Life happens, or falls between the crevices of Os and 1s
A lifetime is not enough to write and manage an ever-changing code.
(237 characters)

By Willow at WillowDot21:
Error 444.
Zeros and ones, they were her friends they guided her through life. She only saw in binary it was her norm. Beautiful colours blue, green and red were her comfort zones.
So it came as a real shock when suddenly she saw something emerging in black and white. Did she need a reboot?
(279 Characters)

By Lorraine at Lorraine’s Frilly Freudian Slip:
Code-X
Eyes closed, she streams the code.
Randomly selects ones and zeroes.
Translates into humaneze.
“I’ll take Kat’s Twittering Tales for a thousand, Alex.”
(148 characters)

By Milly at Truly Milly:
Hacking A Hacker
The FBI has hired her to hack a hacker’s account. “Help us catch this anonymous criminal,” the FBI said.
She started typing the code, thinking to herself, “They still don’t know it’s me they’re after. I should find another hacker to blame.”
(241 Characters)

By Mike at The Bookish, Recovering Know-It-All:
Fluid Reality
So many lines. So many colors. Anna looked deeply into the stream to ferret out the meanings and connections represented in the code, but all she got was “All is One and One is All”. In the end she saw that, as if in a dream, a pre-programmed Matrix, “Individuality is Illusion”.
-279 characters

By Fandango at This, That, and the Other:
Her Biggest Payday
She goes by }{4/V/V4, which is Leet Speak for Hanna. She’s the most accomplished hacker on the globe. She never fails and she is in high demand for both legitimate purposes as well as nefarious ones.
But her biggest payday came when she hacked the IRS for Trump’s tax returns.
(275 characters)

By Shweta at My Random Ramblings:
Amy’s Mischief
Amy’s mama had always told her to stay away from the “thing”.
It was her father’s last invention… before he disappeared.
That fateful day, she disobeyed her mama and twiddled with the “thing”.
All of a sudden, the “thing” sprung to life.
Amy was stunned to see her long-lost father!
(280 characters)

By Di at Pensitivity101:
It was in here somewhere, the secret to Gram’s apple cider cake.
Smart old bird was ahead of her time.
101 characters

By Melanie at Sparks from a Combustible Mind:
Ariel was gifted.   She could ‘see’ the matrix.   It was vastly different from what the movies depicted too.  She lifted the soothing blue lines of the barrier.  Put her hand through.  It was invigorating.  She stepped into the next world and vanished. Nobody even missed her.
(Characters:  276)

By Bear at Jellico’s Writing Nook:
Rough hands grabbed at her. She fought, trying to make contact with anything that lived. Instantly, she felt hot breath on her throat.
‘Shh. Stop fighting.’ A masculine voice hissed into her ear. ‘You’re safe. Stop fighting.’
The voice… it sounded familiar somehow.
cc: 263

By Larry at East Elmhurst A Go Go:
I Told You So
Yolanda had a bad habit of standing close to the screen at movies. Stanley begged her not to, just this once. “If you do,” said he, “You’ll be sucked into the movie and never come out. I hope for your sake you can act.” She wouldn’t listen. Now she’s in France in 1910.
(275 characters)

By Joe at Does Writing Excuse Watching?:
First Contact
We see him standing in front of the US DOD Intergalactic Message Board, which has been designed to facilitate communication between the Free World’s military and whichever extraterrestrials, using binary code. We are told that after studying the board for some minutes, the alien, named by the press “Eric the Blond,” requested that in addition to all the 0s and 1s, we begin using some 2s.

By Tessa at Tessa Can Do It!:
Should We Trust?
“I don’t totally trut him so the product isn’t on me,” Ron said.
“Headquarters is larger than I thought it would be, but is Nator honorable? I am glad that the product isn’t on you. How do we know whether to trust them or not?”
“Good question. Can we access these computers?”
274 characters

By Ron at Read 4 Fun:
Stories of Unicorns, Dragons, Fairies filled my youth. Mom said stories were not real; there were dark forces. Technology developed. New stories became horror stories. If I could communicate, I could help. Now, I can. I cracked the code; I can send a message. “Dear Irthlings ..”
279 characters

By Deb at Twenty Four:
Julie sighed, disappointed that not one person had a single question.
Turning her back on her audience, then frowned. The painting was altering before her eyes and then she had a crazy idea, perhaps she could walk into the other dimension.
That would raise some questions for sure.
(280 characters)

By Peter at Peter’s Pondering:
She was expert in Octal, and knew that octal numerals can be made from binary by grouping consecutive binary digits into groups of three (starting from the right). She was using that to solve the problem that could save Earth.
A pity that her magnetism was distorting the monitor!
(280 characters)

By Rob at Art by Rob Goldstein:
Trina Makes Up Her Mind
Trina learned the power of ones and zeros from the
elephant God, Anjana.
Anjana took ones and zeros to make mice.
He taught Trina to use them to make minds.
Trina studied her mind for flaws; she trimmed it to
perfection.
When she finished, she used it to fly to New York.
239 characters

By John at Broadsides:
“Ohh, I say, your entry phone’s all weird! Beam me up, Scottie!”
“I kana hear ya lassie, wa yer want?
Beam me up! Beam me up!
“I dinna even know ya, I never beamed yer up at all, that’s an awful accusation.”
“No no B.E.A M., ha ha, beam me up, Scottie!
Piss off lassie, leave ma entry phone alone.

By Kitty at Kitty’s Verses:
Ain’t Appetising Enough!
What’s on the menu ?
A fudge?
Seriously !!! Why is work catching up at home too ?
Like the investigation on the company’s messed up accounts wasn’t already enough.
Might as well skip the dessert! Ain’t appetising enough!
219 characters 

By Kristian at Tales from the Mind of Kristian:
A Tech Giant
As Jenny faced a wall of code, her breath quickened in fervid fashion. This was no time for reserve, she knew what to do.
She pushed forward youthful hands and entered the digital world, where she’d be a technological giant.
To become one with technology is to rule the world.
[277 Characters]

By Sadje at Keep It Alive:
She was a bit apprehensive but it could be done now. The future had finally arrived. All you had to do was to put the coordinates and the name and your desired period of time and you would be whisked there by pressing a single button. Nothing complicated. 
Character count: 256

Great Round Up everyone! I hope you will give this week’s prompt a go. As you can see, I changed the format slightly, with last week’s Roundup following the current photo prompt. I hope this makes it easier for those who may be scrolling on their phones. And…if you’ve read this far, THANK YOU! We had some great takes on the photo this week. See you next week!!!