Thunderdome Week 457: The Frontier Was Everywhere

Humanity has had a lot of frontiers. About 250,000 years ago, that frontier was everywhere. Frontiers and exploration have long fascinated us and shaped how we view the world. Your task will be to write a story in which a frontier and exploration figures prominently. When you sign up, pick past, present, or future. You’ll be assigned a frontier related to that era. What will you get? Well, you’ll just have to explore that by signing up :madmax:.


Shenanigans
-Some frontiers are classic enough that you can just pick them from this list for a -300 word penalty instead of dealing with all the bullshit:[list]
[*]The ocean, boundless and blue
[*]What lies beyond the horizon
[*]Distant lands, places of unknown marvels, strange civilizations, and perhaps magic
[*]The open road
[*]Space, the final frontier[/list]
-If you don’t like your assigned prompt, you may choose to swap prompts with another poster if you both agree, but it comes at a cost! You must both crit a story from a week where you were not a judge. Must be done before the sign-up deadline.
-If you want bonus words, you may post crits of up to 10 stories for 150 words per crit. Again, stories from a week you were not a judge (if you have outstanding crits you should be doing those anyways :Colbert:). Must be posted before the sign-up deadline.
-You can also :toxx: to request hellrules. This confers no benefits, only suffering.

Rules: No erotica, poetry, nonfiction, rants, googledocs, fanfic, etc.
To be clear: If you post “in”, also either post the rule you want or the era you want a random rule from.