I wrote this bit of blurb as the theme to a "contest" I was planning to sponsor. I modeled some props and with the help of my partner, chemicalbrother, got them into Poser. This story was meant to be a character portrait contest, where the artist who created the best visuals won the entire pack. Here's a link to an early WIP image by chemicalbrother - http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=255110 Not quite where I wanted the story to be. The balance is way off... I was hoping for casual rambling that gave an off hand sort of backgrounder without committing to a particular set of images. Yet at the same time gave enough for a Poser artist to start working on. I've also deliberately omitted reference to gender so that it works both ways. Please bash away so that I can get this right. Many thanks! - M - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bounty Hunter Remember how they used to say, "only the good die young"? Well, it doesn't happen like that anymore. At least it shouldn't. Several generations ago society figured out a way to keep track of the good things people do. I don't know how they did it, how accurate it was, or how they even tallied the scores. Gifted ancients used to be able to read the aura of some people, and that usually said more about people then they were willing to admit. Scientists took that bit of mumbo-jumbo, tweaked it and brought it to a whole new way of keeping score on goodness. Santa Claus used to do it. So some sick bureaucrat decided to name the central database and tracking system, "Santa". The more positive contributions you make to society, the more points you gain. You make an investment on your future by being one of the good guys. Farmers and doctors seem to rake up the most points. As you get older, start falling apart and can no longer make positive contributions, that's when they start making withdrawals. Eventually, your account goes dry and Santa goes and deletes that entry. It tends to work pretty well over all. A single harvest year for a farmer will usually translate to about four or five years of retirement life. You live your life normally, without doing a single bad thing in a single day... you usually get a couple of days ret-time in exchange. When people start doing bad things, that poses a bit of a problem. That's where I come in. Santa usually gives us a call down at the Lot. He posts notice that some quick accounting needs to be done, and we bounty hunters go out and help straighten the books for him. It's a nasty line of work that not too many people like doing. You do a proper accounting for Santa and you get ten to twenty years added on. You make a mistake on his books, even if you're on the job, and you lose about fifty years. If you're good, you get to hang around for a long time. I've been around the Lot since the beginning and I don't plan to cash in just yet.

Mind Over Matter
"If you don't mind, then it don't matter."