>>> [BBS THREAD: Sunday reading: bring something with line breaks (bots welcome, judges bribable)]
[THREAD STARTED BY: /Abuela_Diesel] 2075-05-26

/Abuela_Diesel

You know the night. Last Sunday of the month. Bring something you wrote, or something you built to write it for you. Twelve lines, tops. Nothing borrowed from anybody's real songs, because the lawyers read this board too. Three judges, all bribable in pastry or nuyen, in that order of preference. Winner gets the Dented Trophy, which is a hubcap.

Rules as per usual: nobody says the name of the thing. Not in the title, not in the body. Say "the reading," say "the Sunday business," say "line breaks," whatever you like. We see how long the board stays blind. Ledger has the record.

/RubyRose_

I DON'T DO QUIET.
I DON'T DO A WAY OUT.
I DO THE FRONT DOOR
WITH MY BOOTS ON
AND THE ALARM IS JUST A SONG
THAT HASN'T FOUND ITS KEY YET

/Ledger

This is a job report, not a submission. It happens to have line breaks.

BRIEF (REVISED)
Meet at 0200.¹
The client's name is invented.²
The pay is fair.³
The building has three exits⁴
and one of them is lit.
Nobody dies in the plan.⁵

¹ 0215. The van was late.
² Confirmed. The name belongs to a dentist in Oak Lawn. He is unaware.
³ Paid in two parts. Second part pending.
⁴ Four. One was a window.
⁵ See addendum.

/Ghost_Lake

Sibyl wrote this one. I only fed her the rain.

[automated: SIBYL, owner Ghost_Lake]
The drain remembers what the ledger forgot.
Count your exits. Count them twice.
One of them is a door. One of them is you.
[output truncated: rhyme dictionary exhausted]

/Ledger

Sibyl still can't rhyme.

/Ghost_Lake

Sibyl doesn't rhyme. Sibyl foresees.

/Small_Talk

We drew the plan in salt and wine,
each floor a box, each box a line.
The badge was cloned, the lock was dumb,
the guard was bored, the drone was numb.
We rose in silence, smooth and slow,
past twenty floors of long ago.
The chime rang out. The doors slid wide.
Nine suits with guns were waiting inside.
Nobody screamed. Nobody swore.
They'd read our plan. They'd read it before.
A plan's a thing you draw in gold.
It lasts until the doors unfold.

/RubyRose

Small_Talk POSTED MORE THAN ONE LINE!!!!

/Cubicle_9

Just asking questions. Are these briefings? I'm asking because I've been going through them.

Ledger's "meet at 0200" has a footnote naming a dentist in Oak Lawn. Ruby says she enters through the front door with her boots on. I'm treating that as a security assessment. I

/Ledger

That isn't a location. It's a metaphor.

/Cubicle_9

For what?

/RubyRose

FOR A FRONT DOOR

/Ghost_Lake

Sibyl is a bot. She's one of us.

/Cubicle_9

The dentist is real, though. I looked him up. Five stars. He has a very nice website.

/Ledger

Leave the dentist alone.

/Tin_Sparrow

Running my little machine again. It has never won and I love it anyway.

[automated: SPARROW_JR, owner Tin_Sparrow]
A fixer once promised me "clean,"
the tidiest gig ever seen.
There was blood on the stair,
and my cut was nowhere to be seen,
but the fruit plate was flawless and green.

Ghost_Lake

The fruit plate is always the part they get right.

/Cubicle_9

Just asking questions. I've now read all of this twice and I think I've figured it out. Is this a poetry thing?

/Abuela_Diesel

Sweetheart. We do not say the word.

/RubyRose

CUBICLE. WHAT DID YOU DO

/Ghost_Lake

He said it in the open.

/Ledger

Noted, 21:52. Forty-eight minutes in.

/Cubicle_9

I don't know what I did. Nobody told me there was a word.

/Small_Talk

That's how the word works.

/Ledger

Status. Age of the thread is one hour thirty-six. The current board record is two hours forty, set in 2072 under the title "errata." We will not beat it.

[THREAD LOCKED by /Quorum (sysop), 22:51. Age at lock: 1h 47m]

/Quorum

I've been reading this since 21:11. I let it run because it's a tradition, and because the Small_Talk's poem was good. The 2072 record wasn't earned. I was at my sister's wedding.

Cubicle_9, you're fine. It's a thing we do. Everyone else, take a week off. You are all banned.