Next confession: I actually wrote like three prompts last weekend and am just barely getting around to putting them all up. So have another.
Magazine
Q hasn't subscribed to anything in years. If there was anything we wanted to read, he could access it easily online. To be quite honest, though, there wasn't anything in those tech magazines that interested him. They were usually behind the times, now that Q was heading up Q-branch.
In this instance, Q just needed something to read for ten minutes that wasn't paperwork. So he pulled up the latest issue of Technically Speaking and started skimming through article titles. Something about the new iPhone, graphics on a new video game, automated drones leading the conflict in the Middle East… Q pursed his lips. Half of this was exaggerated, and the other half was just wrong.
Wait, hold on. His mouse paused over a link. It was an article on using intelligent circuitry in automated transportation, which was his current pet project. He was going to be extremely vexed if some technician with a nine-to-five job solved the inherent difficulties before he did.
He pulled up the article and set in on it, absorbing it at impossible speed. The basic premise was exactly what he had been working with, then the next step of integrating bio-gel packs…
The process that this writer was describing was exactly the process he'd been using. Down to the letter. Q had no delusions about his genius. What he was doing was revolutionary. It was impossible. And it was damn well not acceptable for someone to copy it.
With a quick flick of a button, Q clouded the glass of his office walls. People could still get in if there was an emergency, of course, but everyone in Q-branch would know that he was involved in a personal project, and to leave well enough alone until he was finished.
It didn't take long. A few well-placed viruses, and not only did everyone at Technically Speaking know that one of their writers was a thief, but they also had much bigger problems to deal with. Five minutes after that, and one of Q-branch's new employees found himself in need of a new job, and probably a new identity.
Q un-fogged the walls and went back to work, feeling much better about his life.
Next up will be Letters.