How We Write – Life Savings
Our prompts were: A new kind of murder, Wells Fargo, That’s it then.
No, don’t ask me where our collective writers’ minds go when making up these prompts! Sometimes, we just look around the food court where we meet for the Kickstart Writers bi-weekly meetups. Sometimes the prompts come from our own writing. I think that’s what happened here. Kyros connected the concept of a bank with a new kind of murder and immediately thought of a killer bank vault. The question was, how was it killing people? Rogue AI, of course. It’s always a rogue AI. Ever since the HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The rest of the story followed quickly from there. But, because of what happens in the story, we thought we’d best alter the name of the bank. Don’t want any lawyers to send us unhappy letters, after all.
LIFE SAVINGS
The archeologist carefully brushed away the last of the dust and dirt covering the monolith. He sat back with a gasp.
“Look! That logo! I remember it from several other digs. It’s…uh,” The man pondered for a moment. “Bells Wargo, that was the name. It represented a…a currency place of some kind. They didn’t have universal credit implants like we do.”
His partner leaned closer, a frown of distaste on her face as she looked at the mummified body half in and half out of the closed door.
“Well, I think it’s my turn to ‘dig’ into this mystery.” She pulled off the heavy gloves she always wore and extended one bare finger to touch the huge square shape. “As the team psychometrist, it’s time I earned my pay.”
The world dissolved around her.