Good reads, peeps.
@ Stupot
@ Durinde
@ Sinitrena
@ Mandle

@ Stupot
Spoiler
Buwahahaha! Well played, Stupot. My suspicions were aroused by all the secret hidy tags, but I admit I couldn't quite make the connections before the big reveal. All the seeds were well sown, and in retrospect brilliantly placed. My one slight quibble is that the plot and deed were not quite banal - they were actually evil. But I'm a firm believer that rules are for other people, and so voted for you anyway.

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@ Durinde
Spoiler
This was both heart-warming and heart-wrenching at the same time - impressive! The way the Grand Overseer is sucked into the moment of the recital and develops 12 hours of compassion for the other families reveals a degree of... humanity? I liked the unspoken menace of "the harvest", making it feel more evil than anything actually described. Another strong entry and another vote from me.

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@ Sinitrena
Spoiler
I'm not sure if it's the regularity of griping with a spouse after work or the regularity of executing people that is being portrayed as banal, a duality which is truly haunting. I felt there could be more dramatic tension between the couple (one saves people, the other kills them), but that is perhaps an issue for another day when everyone has more energy. A slight typo about social justice "worriers" had me in stitches - probably not the intended effect.

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@ Mandle
Spoiler
This is why the CIA outlawed heroic inventors working in their basements back in 1957. Now all scientific advancements are sensibly made by large corporate laboratories where it would be near impossible to go rogue without tipping off a suspicious colleague. Also, I consider myself very open to gender-fluidity, but your "Gillian" character in the second last sentence basically sealed the fate of the Earth in my opinion.

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