Here's another one from here: At least 600 words. Include peanut butter, a male cheerleader, spongebob squarepants, and a rubberduck keychain.
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Fourth Planet From Deneb
"Your driving sucks!" Leona yelled at her cousin over the roar of the hover-jeep.
"What?"
Freddie took a sharp turn over a rocky embankment making her stomach lurch. If he went any faster, she would probably end up decorating his dashboard with the peanut butter sandwich she had eaten for lunch. The magnetized container on the dashboard managed to flip onto its side, spilling out replicas of twentieth and twenty-first century toys. Leona dumped a slinky, a strange yellow anthropomorphized thing called SpongeBob Squarepants, and a rubber duck keychain back into the box.
"For an anthropologist, you have an abominable taste in fake artifacts. And the fakes aren't even that good either." She was afraid that her remark was lost to the wind. The top of the hover-jeep was down and the cool air ripped at her hair. Her eyes watered and she wished for the climate controlled interior of her space vessel.
But this time, he heard her. A cocky smile slashed across his face. "I like collecting things no one else will collect. Everyone's into the Valians these days. If I see another malachite-encrusted vase, I'm going to puke."
She moaned and clutched her middle. "You're evil. Remind me again why I'm wasting my shore leave with you?"
"You said you wanted to get away from it all. Something about small minded bureaucrats?"
Leona thought about the smarmy border guard who had insisted on inspecting all her cargo before she was allowed to unload it on Signus IV. And then there were the quota enforcers on Eridanus. And the permit checkers at the edge of the Zorkian Neutral Zone. She ground her teeth just thinking about it. "Those idiotic, asinine, f--"
The hover-jeep ground to a halt with a loud whine.
"--wits. If I had a subatomic particle for every moron who asked for my ship's designation when they could have just as easily scanned its signature, I'd be able to--"
"--build your own neutron star," Freddie finished for her. "I know, I know. You really should get out of cargo transport and do something with your degree on terraforming."
"I was temporarily insane when I got that degree," she replied. She looked up as her cousin got out of the hover-jeep. He had parked in a clearing that was already half full with animal-drawn carts. The clearing itself was surrounded by rocky hills. A small path led from the clearing and through a narrow pass between two of the hills. "Where is this place?"
"Come on, you'll see. The natives of this planet are absolute fanatics about it."
"Somehow, that does not reassure me." She hopped out of the hover-jeep and felt her stomach twinge and then reluctantly settle down. She let out a small huff as they headed toward the path. "I mean, these colonists have practically reverted to the Stone Age!"
"There's a reason for that," said Freddie. "The original colonists were technophobes who wanted to create a utopia."
Leona snorted. "Like that ever works. I mean, just look at Gentia III. What used to be a homey little place is now just a toxic ball of goo."
Her cousin just shook his head at her pessimism.
After the pass, the path widened out into a bowl-shaped valley that had been terraced on the sides with stone benches like an amphitheater. Leona and Freddie made their way down the steps, past the natives in their naturally dyed, hand-woven clothes. She was acutely aware of the curious stares that they were drawing, but Freddie, as usual, seemed oblivious. Finally, they found seats close to the arena where tall, muscular women in jumpsuits were doing warm-ups on a field marked regularly with white lines.
"Is this football?" she asked as the women did some practice throws with an ovoid object.
He nodded. "It's a variation of the old Terran game."
The referee made an announcement on a megaphone in the natives' language and the audience wildly cheered and whistled. After a minute, the women began lining up for the opening play. A group of men with nothing on except colored paint and some pom-poms in strategic places trotted out to lead the crowd in chants.
"Are they who I think they are?" asked Leona, appalled.
