IDEAS ON TUESDAYS 256

Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration (quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind. These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat, irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if anything comes of them. Regarding Fantasy, this insight was startling: “I see the fantasy genre as an ever-shifting metaphor for life in this world, an innocuous medium that allows the author to examine difficult, even controversial, subjects with impunity. Honor, religion, politics, nobility, integrity, greed—we’ve an endless list of ideals to be dissected and explored. And maybe learned from.” – Melissa McPhail.Fantasy Trope: Magic RealismCurrent Event: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/cent...
Navid Daisuke shook his head, "What do you mean, 'the centaurs are coming'?"
Ngọc Mirjam scowled at him then said, "The centaur objects are sort of a hybrid between an asteroid and a comet -- not all of them are bare rocks like asteroid, not all of them are pure ice like comets. One of them, called Chiron, look like asteroids but have cometary halos. They're strange objects..."
"So then why are we talking about them? We're supposed to be getting ready for the IB Alchemy exam and right now, the only thing I can see that's IB is that 'IB gettin' ready to leave.'"
Ngọc sniffed and took out her wand, tapped it on the edge of the mortar and pestle and said, "Fine then. How about we conjure some of our own centaurs?"
"I can conjure a centaur with some crushed ice, gravel, and a blowtorch."
"Only blowtorch in this room is the one standing next to me." With a flourish, she tapped the edge of the mortar. There was a flash and smoke. When it cleared, nothing had changed.
Navid snorted, "So, where's your centaur?"
"Shut up.""Wasn't this supposed to be our interdisciplinary group 4 project -- you were the Alchemistry person and I was the mythology person."
"I said, 'shut up'. The centaur I was trying for wasn't the half-horse, half-man," she gave him a sidewise glance, "You're the only half-man I want in my life. I don't need one that clomps around not crapping in the restroom. I wanted to create the composition of the Chiron so I could examine its properties pertaining to chrysopoeia, which is..."
"I'm not a moron. I know what changing base metals into gold is all about. My dad majored in transmutational engineering in college."
“So you have a good idea of what I was trying to do. Now if you’ll shut up, I want to figure out where our centaur is…”
Navid turned away in disgust and pulled out his sorcTab and touched it with a finger wand. It expanded and started scrolling through his Favorites. He tapped a screen, scowling. Then his eyes went wide and he said, his voice a whisper, “I found your centaurs.”
“What did you say?” He didn’t say a word. He just turned his sorcTab toward her, tapping it to enlarge the image. Her eyes went wide as Hubble Telescope image drew into a close up: a long asteroid, rimed by a halo of frost was falling toward Earth. Wearing a spacesuit, astride the centaur, was another centaur, this one waving wildly as it plunged toward Earth…
 Names: ♀Vietnam, Estonia; ♂ Arabic, JapanImage: http://www.skyscrapernews.com/images/pics/6255CaernarfonCastle_pic1.jpg