So the latest story ideas are this:
First off is a near future sci-fi adventure short story where an army of robots have invaded earth and destroyed our society. Ragtag bands of freedom fighters continue the fight. The story focuses on a group of three fighters: a young woman, her male friend, and a geeky guy who’s another militant. They’re on a mission and are fighting their way through the machines. The heroine questions their mission and it’s value, her friend eggs her on. The geek brings up the question of whether the machines were sent by a race of beings, or if the machines ARE the aliens, and what exactly separates the machines from man. In the end the mission was to rescue the man she had planned to marry. The local unit had vetoed rescuing him as it was too dangerous, but the three of them went ahead anyways. The moral of the story is that it is the very things like getting married in the face of a global invasion that make humans more compassionate than the machines, and validates that free thinking life has a very real and meaningful distinction between created automatons.
Second is simply the idea of basing something on people who can travel between universes and timelines. The idea is inspired by the GURPS 4E Infinite Worlds setting. But I don’t want to copy that world (well, for copyright reasons for one thing, and another to try to be more original), but it’s the same basic premise, though I don’t know if they can travel through time or not in Infinite Worlds. Such infinite ability to influence so many societies seems daunting to consider (and write about), but I don’t think I want to back away just because of that. Truly awe-inspiring scopes of stories are what grab readers. The plot and characters would have to be just as riveting. The basic premise is there are those who enforce a treaty that was made between the major societies at a point in time in a neutral universe (that has no native life and none is allowed to permanently reside in it) to keep certain things intact in all timelines to ensure things don’t deviate too far from the baseline and risk letting the universes slide into chaos. A nefarious force is at work that is making strange changes to the timelines which don’t seem to make sense. Slowly it would come together that the forces are working to change the treaty in such a way as to benefit the antagonists. The many strange issues are red herrings to hide the real plan as well as lure all these timeline travelers into places where their ability to “slip” can be prevented, locking them away in time and space from the day of the treaty to stop any interventions. Or…something like that!