Just a small hippo in a big river

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

Happy Birthday to my very dear friend, @best--dress! She deserves all the fun and joy and good things, and dessert at the end of every day! XD

@dohrnaira! You gave me this prompt for my microfic game ages ago and I found it in my drafts--I think I was intending to make it longer but when I came back to it, I really liked how this felt like a complete tiny story all by itself ! (I was so tempted to try to snowbaz this but mammoths deserve better and I love revisiting the Mars House.)

“What,” says an icy voice, “is a mammoth doing in the Senate, exactly?”

River turns and sparkles at the voice in a way that January knows means trouble. “Are you referring to my intern?”

The senator who objected sputters. “Don’t be ridiculous, an animal can’t be an intern.”

“We’re all animals,” January interjects, which earns him (and his cage) a cold glare.

“This is Gregory,” River says, bowing in Gregory’s direction.

The senator--someone from an old family, and one of the loudest voices in support of forced naturalization--manages to look down their nose at Gregory while also looking up. After a long pause during which they're clearly weighing whether it's worth the risk to anger the Consul, they say patronizingly, "I suppose your family is very proud of you being here?"

We would like to once again apologize to Dr. Jones for last year's mistaken announcement. We should really have double-checked the envelope for this award in particular.

Calibration Nobel [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut