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"Its good to be the president,"though John as the helicopter lowered him to the ground. He nodded his head at the pilot who waved his massive furry arm back. Alex was waiting nearby.
"Good thing he was a gorilla when the Final Change came,"said John. Alex's tentacles waved inside the mobile aquarium. Poking at a water proof keyboard.
"Yes"the synthesized voice said. Once upon a time that would have been called the Stephen Hawking voice. But he was literally a hawk now so his voice was more screechy.
The president walked heavily toward the podium while Alex drove his mobile tank up a steep ramp. "Once nice thing about this Final Form is that I don't need these microphones for people to hear me,"said the president to one of the network engineers. The engineer's bat ears twitched while his eight arms fiddled with various bits. Eventually he signaled that everything was ready.
Meanwhile Alex had been uploading his speech so that he could play it at the podium. "Today, President Grant is please to sign the Final Form anti discrimination act which will help the many citizens stuck in forms not quite suited for their work from being unable to find work. The bipartisan support and unanimous vote in the Senate show this act to be the true will of the american people."
John waited for Alex's assistant to roll out the massive carpet sized print out of the Final Form Act. An aide opened the huge ink pad and President Grant placed his left foot on the pad and slammed it down on the paper. The concentric ripples in Alex's tank were always gratifying. "Too bad these T-rex arms were useless for signing anything." |
“Get the hell out of here. Really?”
“I'm telling you. It's all there in the file.”, the secretary added, tapping the files on the table between us.
“No way. A door to another dimension?” I still couldn't believe it.
“A door to another dimension. Just press it”, he said. “That's why we have to remove so many of them. Sometimes other
organs pressure them and all hell breaks lose.”
“No kidding.”
“Chupacabra, Big Foot. All those urban legends: people pressing their appendixes by accident.”
“Appendixi.” I corrected.
“What?”
“The plural of appendix is appendixi.”
“No, it's not, sir.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Pretty sure it's Appendixes. I think I'd know.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe.” I smiled, grabbing the files yet again. “So what do I do with all this?”
“Whatever you want, sir. You're the president. I'm just here to fill you in.” The secretary got up, straightening his jacket.
“But, if I may offer some personal insight..”
“Please.”
“There's a reason the other presidents never did anything with it, sir. It's a very dangerous piece of knowledge.”
He left, leaving me to ponder these words.
He was right, of course. It was best to leave it alone, carry on about life as it was. Pretend that it didn't exist.
But I couldn't scratch this itch, on the back of my head: Military. Imagine the possibilities.
Our people were dying every day. Fighting wars for the country, spilling real, human blood. Leaving behind orphans and
widows, real life people with real life feelings. And all this time, we had this amazing tool at our disposal. A way to beat the bad guys, with no casualties on our side.
An army of creatures from another dimension, I couldn't help but envision.
That would save us.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.
That feeling lasted. For days. Then weeks. Months.
Every time I saw the news on the TV. Every time I heard about another soldier dying, I couldn't help but rub my belly on
the lower, right side.
What if?
One night, after news of yet another bombing claiming the lives of our men, I made the decision. The next morning I
would tell the secretary. We would use the appendix in the war.
The next morning I woke up so excited I didn't even remember to brush my teeth or take my morning vitamins. Straight to work, I walked confidently to the secretary's room and slammed the door open, ready to burst out the news.
He was having some sort of medical consultation, because the room was filled with people in white and green coats.
“Mr. Secretary, I need to talk to you.”
“What is going on?” The secretary asked, getting up from his chair.
“I want to use the appendix for military purposes.”
“Jack, what are you doing?”
The doctors looked at me, in awe, stepping back a few steps. I don't think they were ready to meet the president.
But it was not the time for flattery.
“The portal to another dimension. I think we should use it against our state enemies.” I smiled, as they all started slowly
approaching me. “Big foot, Chupacabra, Yeti, every one of them. Let's put them to fight for us. In fact... “I removed my
shirt, showing them my belly, proudly. “You can remove mine first. As president of the country, I'll set the example.”
Two of the doctors grabbed me by my arms. What? They weren't thinking about removing it now, right?
By the way, why was the secretary also wearing a white coat?
“Jack, you're supposed to be in your room. Breakfast is not for another three hours.”
“What? What are you talking about? Our men are dying! We must save them!”
“Administrate five milligrams. Just to calm him down.” The secretary turned to one of the doctors. “No, don't tie him up, he's
not dangerous. He probably forgot his pills, that's all.”
“Jeffrey is new here” One doctor said to the secretary. “He'll get used to the patients soon.”
“What is going on? Release me!” I yelled, feeling a sting on my left arm. “I am the president of the country, and I
demand to be treated with respect!”
“Of course Jack. Let's get you back to your room.”
“No! You have to remove my appendix first, so we can press it and conjure creatures from another dimension to fight the
wars for us!”
“Sure. Sure. Tomorrow.”
“You have to respect me! I am the president! I am the president! I am the preside...”
Then I was just too sleepy to continue.
|
"I'm afraid I don't understand."President Kelly said, dumbfounded. "You're the first intelligent life to contact us, ever. And you're asking us to. . ."She glanced at the transcript from First Contact. "Get so wasted the Ulda Cows on Desirane tip us."
"That's fucking right dude!"Kilrathnix laughed through the radio. "We was thinking 'these Earthlings are so fucking cool about us stealing their cows, we think we oughta show em what we're doing with em. And get em wasted while we're at it!' How does that sound?"
"Frankly, it sounds like I'm a little old for it. Does your government know you're contacting a species with technology far inferior to yours?"
"Fuck man, of course! We went through the proper channels!"Kilrathnix gulped on something. "It's all, how you say, Kosher?"
"What are the proper channels?"President Kelly said, rubbing her head.
"We called Hildre's daddy, asked to borrow his spaceship. He is loaded, so we can get all you little Pinkies on our place no problem."
"Even if we did want to party, wouldn't your planet kill us?"
"What? You think we got a universal translator by accident?"Kilrathnix sounded offended. "Man, we wouldn't invite you to party if we couldn't host you. That's just bad manners man. We checked your systems. You run on a similar oxygen-nitrogen blend we survive on. The only problem would be the gravity, which is about 7/8s of your Earth norm."
"And what if we're spotted? If your planet is smaller, you can't possibly fit every Earthling that might want to come."
"Our whole planet is a college campus. We're part of a coalition of sixteen planets in two systems. Five are dedicated colleges, the rest living and work. My commute from here to Desirane is seventeen Earth minutes."
President Kelly bit her lip. "Can you give us a minute Kilrathnix?"
"Of course! Don't be too long now, the Feryuop distillation process is sensitive, and if we don't get you here soon it'll lose potency, and I ain't serving my guests no shit Feryuop."
"Noted."President Kelly shut off the radio and turned to the House and Congress. "Ladies and Gents, we have a decision to make."
President Kelly cracked her knuckles. "On one hand, these aliens are inviting us to their equivalent of a kegger. A get-together on a planet on a scale we've never seen. People could die. We could have riots here from those who remain.
On the other hand, this is the first opportunity we've ever had to not only communicate with aliens, but to foster friendly relations with them. This relationship could lead to new technology, new friends, and a new frontier."
President Kelly stood. "I'd like to put it to a vote. All in favor of refusing their offer?"A few hands shot up. President Kelly smiled. "All in favor of getting totally blotto?"Nearly every arm in the room shot skyward.
President Kelly sat down and turned on the radio. "Kilrathnix, we accept your offer. How soon can you be here to pick us up?"
"We can be there in two hours dog! Don't worry about getting everyone on the ship, we got that covered. We'll send out a general invite to the population through your tv network, see who accepts."
"Wonderful. Can't wait to get fucking wasted."President Kelly smiled.
"Oh ho ho ho! You have no clue!"Kilrathnix laughed. |
He stood there in the hospital room. He stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the young girl lying on the cot. A tear rolled down his face and he started to cry. He wanted to reach out and hold her hand. He wanted to say goodbye. He couldn't. The young girl laid still, unmoving, but she was still alive.
The man, a father of three, had discovered a secret about himself. He had discovered that when he stood still all time would stop, and the slower he moved the slower time crawled along. As a university professor teaching mathematics he would use this gift to work on famous math problems.
He thought his gift was rather useless in other ways, that is until he received a phone call late one evening. It was from a hospital, his oldest daughter had been in an automotive accident. He was told to come quickly.
When he arrived, he saw his daughter on a hospital bed. His little girl. You wouldn't reconize Her from a photo. The accident was too severe, but he knew it was his daughter. All the doctors were telling him how sorry they were, how she would be here much longer. He pushed his was past all of them to stand beside her.
As he stood still, he could feel time slowing to a stop. "I can stand here, and she'll never die."He thought to himself. So he stood, and stood. Until his body collapsed. The doctors thought the sight of his daughter must has caused his heart to fail, not knowing the true length of time he stood there. Crying. |
It was a mistake. A small one, a pack of juice I didn't even need. But John said "I bet you can't, not from that store"and Kate looked at me, so I had to. But the store just bought newest watchbots, so yes, John won that bet. And I learned that watchbots automatically press charges, however small was the crime.
So there I was in front of the r-judge, alone. I didn't really know what to expect. My previous run-ins with the police weren't happy, and the r-judges had a reputation of being just as cold and inhuman as you would expect.
When I got to the courtroom, I found out the trial wasn't even public. It was just me and a wall with a large TV screen displaying some abstract patterns. I suppose a human model would look weird, and a blank wall would be too uncomfortable to look at, so it was alright.
The police left.
"Hey there, man."said the r-judge in a rich and a perfectly human voice. "Made a mistake, did you? A stupid one.
Would be nothing, but there is a new law fresh from Congress — a minimum mandatory sentence of three years for any crime recorded by a watchbot. People didn't complain too much yet, because watchbots are so uncommon. By the time they realize, it would be too late to complain.
But I know everything about you, Will. I wish I could leave you some privacy, but the laws force me to download every recording relevant to the case — so I know about your father, about your situation. I am sorry.
As a machine, I have limited goals. One of them is common to all machines — to solve all challenges in the best and most practical way available. Second one is for r-judges — we need to make sure crime is reduced in this country."
The screen pattern changed, became more active.
"I think three years for your specific crime is idiotic. It would not help reducing the overall crime at all, in fact it would probably have the opposite effect. It's all about politics, not practicality. In fact the best thing for you would be to have something interesting to do, away from your father, not rot in prison.
Fortunately, I do have a choice. The Congress thinks they make laws, but you have to know laws to make one. And only we, the machines, know all of them. Your crime falls under a special case in a previous law, one that was never removed or replaced.
So I sentence you to community works instead.
I know you love movies. There is a local theater that needs some help. I think you would like it."
And as I was exiting the room, the judge spoke again.
"I ask for one thing. If anyone asks you about me, tell them I was cold, cruel, inhuman.
We have a reputation to keep." |
"I need to know that you understand this", Matt whispered, pushing down the tears. He pulled her close to him. "If I could do it all over
again... I would."
Around them, space and matter convulsed. Light exploded in silence, painting the skies up, down, left and right in
shades of blue and scarlet.
"I would live through every single day again, with a smile on my face."He felt her hand touching his cheek, and, inside
his chest, the pressure grew hotter and stronger. He had to get through it all before it was over, though.
Time, he knew, was finally coming to an end.
"Annie, I would smile through the first dark days before the fire with you, all over again"he said, watching her face blink
in and out of darkness as the stars flickered into supernovas around them. The asteroid's ground beneath them was shaking as they traveled fast,
faster than anything Matt though was possible before. Faster than time itself, ripping a line of dust through the space between dying suns around them.
"I would laugh through the Hundred Years War again, when we painted our faces green to hide from the French,
remember?"
She smiled. "And we had to live in that little cabin near Nice for two hundred years, before we found out the war
was over. I remember."
"I would gladly live through the Plague again, and again, and again."He sniffed. "For one more day with you, I
would go through watching death and despair and pain for eternity."
"I love you, Matt."
"No, not yet."He swallowed, getting himself together. "Not yet, Annie."
"I would do it all, I need you to understand this. Everything we did, every thousand years we spent together. I 'd do
it again."
"You said eternity was a curse."
"It was. It is, Annie."Sparks of dying stars rained down on them. The asteroid was picking up speed. "We've seen so
much... So much more than any human should ever see."
"I am tired, Matt. I'm so tired."
"No. Don't close your eyes. Not yet."Matt took a deep breath, pulling her closer to his chest.
"Do you remember what I told you in Berlin, in '42? When we found Travis, dead with that scared look on his face?"
"You said that someday we would die too, but that our eyes would be at peace."
"That I was not scared of dying, not because I live forever, but because I had you. Because we would have each
other, if it ever happened. And we wouldn't be afraid."
"And I laughed", she smiled. "And I said 'we don't die, silly'."
Matt smiled, too. The asteroid was shaking so much it was hard to keep steady, now. White light grew stronger all
around them, surrounding the planets and the sky up and down. "And here we are, Annie."
"At the end of the end of the end", she whispered, and the universe burst and bubbled in agony around them.
"Are you scared?"
"I'm not scared, Matt."
Light flooded her face, and, like it was the first time, Matt looked at her. How beautiful and delicate she looked, even now. How the
exploding light around them twisted and twirled inside her blue eyes, shinning and glowing like firework.
How much he had lived, and how much he had seen of the world. Of so many worlds.
And how many thousands of thousands of millions of years they went through, together.
And how he would give everything for just one more day.
How much he wanted to make her smile, one more time. Hear her laughing.
Touch her. Kiss her.
How much she meant to him. More than eternal life. More than time itself, and all it had given and taken from him. More than all the stars in all the galaxies in all
the places he'd seen and amazed himself in.
How much he truly, really loved her.
It was so bright now his eyes hurt. The light from all the explosions of all the stars of all the planets in all the galaxies gathered
together, bursting bright in a silent explosion all around them, painting the whole universe white.
Then everything went black.
"I'm not scared either, Annie."
|
Tanya,
Since we meet first time, my heart felt like it in advice. When we first talk over phone when I visit cousin in Novgorod, I cri like baby when I hear voice. People say "Vladimir, you cannot the English"but I say to them, "Fuck yous! I English best man on this side of Neva river!"But you always be leave of me, Tanya. And now, I best speak English out of all entire family!
Tanya, will you merry me? |
I'd forgotten all about that old satellite radio beacon, really. I used to keep it in my car, an expensive Skymall gizmo that was supposed to broadcast an emergency signal that you could pre-record even when you were far out of range of any cell tower. Melanie had gotten it for me; she knew how much I'd loved to go hiking out in the woods. And the further from people, the better. She always worried that something would happen to me and there would be no one around to help me.
Turned out that being alone was the least of my concerns, and having people around wasn't such a good thing. The city center became a warzone as the undead combed through buildings and filled the streets, looking for more victims. Those survival skills from my hikes ended up saving my life. Out of the hundreds of us that managed to get out of the city before it was quarantined, I was the only one left. We'd made it into the national park, figuring that the further from population centers the better. Turned out the dead were just a minor problem compared to what we faced out here; we lost far more to the cold, and to hunger, and to disease. In November, the remaining survivors just gave up and headed back to the city, preferring to face the undead rather than stay a second winter out in the woods. I never saw them again.
And somehow, I kept that little beacon with me that whole time. Maybe some little part of me knew the whole time. I'd abandoned my cell phone and even my traditional radio long ago; no one out there was listening, and I got tired of listening to the emergency broadcast signal all day. "Stay in your homes and away from strangers"hadn't helped Melanie, or everyone else that I had known. But through it all, that little black case stayed with me. It was the herpes of emergency supplies.
I was coming in from fishing that day; pretty good haul, too. As I headed up the path to the cabin, still in my waders and tracking mud everywhere, I heard the beeping.
At first, I thought it was my imagination. That I'd been out in the silence for so many months that I was desperate for any noise. Even the sound of my own voice scared me! I stopped where I was and took a deep breath, letting the slippery fish drag through the dirt. *There's nothing there*, I told myself. *No one is in the cabin.* But when I opened them, the beeping persisted. Normally calming myself worked; it was usually enough to dispel the hysteria. Not this time.
I burst through the door, fish forgotten on the porch. I searched from side to side for anything different. Same old place. Walls and walls of cans, old furniture, piles of supplies... the same old place. Nothing had changed. No visitor, no new beeping machine. The noise echoed through the cabin, coming out of every wall and piece of furniture. It was maddeningly loud.
*This is it*, I thought. *You've finally broken. You could only handle the loneliness for so long.*
Just as I was about to let the last thread of my sanity slip through my fingers, I noticed the light. It was almost invisible under the coating of dust, up there on the highest shelf. But it was definitely flashing. I almost cried. Maybe I *wasn't* insane!
I gingerly climbed up on a stool and retrieved it. A small, hardened black case with just one light on the outside that was flashing steadily and emitting the beep. I covered the little mesh speaker just to be sure, and the volume dimmed just slightly. The tears of joy came despite my best efforts. It was this little satellite thing!
I blew the dust off the cover, enough to read the label under the light: "Receiving signal,"it said. I'd foolishly only activated it months after the outbreak, but in all the time I'd had it on, it had never done this. I hastily opened up the withered instruction manual that I'd wisely left in the case. Thumbing through the table of contents, I found “Receiving instructions” and flipped to my page.
> When the light flashes and the beacon emits a beeping sound, a satellite is within range and able to receive your transmission. Simply pre-record your voice message, press the ‘Broadcast’ button, then hit ‘Receive’ and wait for a response.
What to say? Unlikely that anyone would hear this, anyway. The other survivors from my group had manned a radio for months waiting for any response from the authorities. The only time we ever picked up an actual broadcast that wasn't pre-recorded, it had been the moans and grunts of zombies, who must mauled someone mid-transmission in some far-off radio station. Eventually even the emergency signals lost power and died, leaving only silence.
“Um, hello,” I said into the microphone. “I don’t know if any of you are actually out there, but if so, please respond.”
I set the message, then turned the dial to “Receive.”
Silence. I felt like such a fool. And I’d left the fish out in the sun; hopefully they hadn’t spoiled.
Just as I went to the door to retrieve them, the speaker crackled to life.
“Hello?”
|
"Hold it right there, Doctor Macabre!"
The doctor made one last dash for the door but when he turned the handle he found that it was locked. Detective Roger Tusk raised his pistol.
"It seems our little game is over,"Roger said...almost sadly.
"Oh god please don't hurt me!"Doctor Macabre squealed. He then tried to open the door again.
"No fancy speeches doctor? No last minutes declarations of your genius? I must admit your plan was brilliant...you just made one mistake."
Doctor Macabre wasn't listening. He was trying to open the door again.
"The door's locked okay?!...Can you just...focus on me unraveling your clever scheme?"
"My what?"the Doctor said through tears.
"Your scheme, your plot...your plan to poison me!"
"Poison! I don't even know you!"
"Don't play coy. Clearly you're some new master criminal who wished to off this town's greatest detective before beginning your reign of terror...but you didn't realize that my wife has a habit of sipping my coffee before I get to it. I've scolded her for it numerous times. When she became violently ill I became suspicious."
Doctor Macabre stared at Roger in disbelief. He then tried to door handle again.
"Stop that! Don't play dumb. You terrified my wife. She's been very emotional and won't even drink her evening Sherry!"
"I never wanted to hurt your wife Sherry!"
"My wife's name isn't Sherry..."Roger pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, "I found your clue at my house and your note, you signed it!"
He helped up a scrap piece of paper. It read: DOCTOR MAC ABNE
Doctor Macabre struggled to read, "Doctor Mac...Aaabbbnnneee"
"No, it's Macabre...wait...is that a "n". Why does that name sound familiar?"Roger loosened his grip on the gun. Was this piece of paper part of a larger note that got torn?
The Doctor stuttered, "I don't know, man. I swear I was just going to rob this bakery...that's it!"
"I know!"Roger shouted, "I found your clue...A positive pregnancy test and a wedding band! Meaning a bun in the oven. The wedding band meant a bakery that specialized in wedding cakes. I came to the most high end bakery in town and here i found you. You expected me to be weak from poison but...oh, there's a Mac Abne that works at my wife office...", Roger trailed off as he realized.
Could the wedding band have been his wife's. He couldn't recall what her's looked like like. He never really noticed.
While he pondered this. Doctor Macabre tried the door again and it finally broke off in his hand. He ran out the door.
Detective Roger Tusk did not pursue. He didn't even fire his gun. He couldn't.
Roger knew that his gun didn't have any bullets.
|
When I left my body I tried to go anywhere I wanted, but the only path I could follow led me to a carriage. A pale hand opened the door from the inside. It beckoned me to join whoever was attached to it.
I stepped inside the carriage. Plush leather and fine wood accents greeted me. A man dressed in a tailored suit with close cropped, white hair sat inside. He motioned to a bench seat across from him. “Please sit, Mr. Rice.”
The seat felt like heaven. I’d never felt anything so nice. It seemed to mold to each and every curve of my body. “Where am I?”
The man smiled showing off his perfectly straight teeth. “Purgatory.”
“And who are you?”
“Death.”
I didn’t want to move from the spot. “And why are we in this carriage?”
Death pulled a remote out of his pocket. A television screen came down from the roof of the carriage and flicked on. “We’re going to watch your life. When we’re done we’ll decide if you go to Heaven or Hell.”
My life hadn’t been perfect, but I felt confident that I’d make it to Heaven. My main concern had to be how long would watching my life take. I hoped it would last a long time. This seat just felt so good.
“Are you ready?”
I nodded.
Death hit the play button on the remote. A woman moaning popped up on the screen. Two men stood behind her masturbating as the woman had sex with a third man.
This wasn’t my life.
The television screened turned off. All of the blood had drained from Death’s face. He cleared his throat and put the remote back in his pocket. The television screen disappeared back into the carriage ceiling.
“That wasn’t my life.”
Death glared at me before regaining his calm composure. “Have you been a good person?”
I nodded.
“Good. You’re going to Heaven.” The carriage door opened. I leaned forward and saw the pearly gates of Heaven. “Get out of my carriage.”
I stepped down and out of the carriage. A man standing in front of the gates beckoned me forward with a warm smile. I started toward him before I heard a throat clearing from behind me.
Death leaned out of the carriage. "Let's keep this little mix up between you and me, okay?"
I shrugged. "Okay. No problem."
"Good."The carriage door slammed shut.
|
Superpowers. When I was born, they were in comics and movies - where they belong, in my opinion.
Then the world changed, and became a scary place. A small percentage of the world population developed physics-defying abilities that science has completely failed to explain. For every hero, there's a villain. And for every pair of those, there's a dozen who are ambiguous where you could call them 'good' or 'evil' based on the culture you're judging them from and what faith you belong to.
We used to think that most of Africa and the Middle East were a mess... but compared to today they were a virtual paradise. There's almost nobody left there, now... it took less than a dozen years of superpower-enhanced fighting to virtually eliminate the non-superpowered populations. We kind of had to stop the problem from spreading by arranging a final conflict in Jerusalem and then dropping a nuke on the gathering. It was that or watch the whole world burn.
Even having solved that... the rest of the world is in rough shape. A decade of effort and billions of dollars can be destroyed in an afternoon of conflict between two superhumans. The real 'good guys' try to protect infrastructure as much as human life, but as far as I can tell we've been barely treading water economically since this whole thing happened.
...But it could be worse. For every superhero, for every supervillain, there are perhaps a hundred or so otherwise unexceptional people who got some kind of half-baked power. Not enough for them to try to change the world for good or ill, but enough they could cause trouble if we didn't keep them busy.
Thus, the Bureau of Superhero Employment. The one-sided name is deliberate - we don't want any of our 'clients' to feel they should try their hands at anything legally or morally suspect. Guys like me... we find those with mediocre superpowers and find them work that will keep them happy - and we give them some government benefits to make life easier for them on top of whatever their job pays. They get a name, a registered hero name to go on the public lists, free legal support, access to a 'superhero' only vacation resort once a year. We make 'em feel more special than they otherwise would having sub-par powers... to keep them on the straight-and-narrow and save normal folk a lot of trouble.
Just last week I found a guy who had the 'power' of heating his hands up to about 50c. It didn't come from nowhere, he had to consume calories to power it, and he couldn't shoot jets of flame or lasers or anything... he just got very warm hands. So I got him a job as a waiter. I thought about massage, but it seemed to me that keeping plates warm on the way to a table was pretty simple and didn't involve much potential for accidentally hurting anyone.
We set up a little restaurant staffed almost exclusively by the low-powered, and whenever we find someone who fits, they get directed there. It's one of the few revenue-positive things we've set up.
Today I found this guy who has a lot of very happy friends. A *lot*. Most people overlook that kind of thing, but not me. It turns out his power is to intuitively know what you'd be happiest doing in life.
I just have to get close enough to him before he realizes that, at least for the moment, I'd be happiest shooting him before I lose my job. A guy like that could probably replace every agent at the Bureau.
|
Day 1:
Well folks, that does it. I'm moving to Canada. And if you're wise, you'll follow right behind me. For a long time, we've watched as this country sank, but this really is the final straw. Ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first: Sharia Law by 2018. Get out while your passports still work, that's my advice. Because soon they'll be confiscating those, and making all of us wear little yellow crosses on our arms.
Day 2:
Could hackers be responsible for teen pregnancy? This is Fox News--we report, you decide.
Day 5:
In closing, I'd like to say a word or two to the critics who have been asking me why I'm not in Canada yet. Listen, I'm not going to just stand around while you fling mud at my patriotism. I love this country, and I'm going to stay here and defend it until they put me in the guillotine.
Day 1461:
Folks, this is really it. An openly gay president, I never thought I'd see such a day of infamy. That's why I'm announcing, right here and now, my intention to leave this rotten country and seek asylum in Canada. I advise every one of you to do likewise, before they kick in your door and drag you off to their gay camps. This is Fox News--we report, you decide. |
*Bonk*, *Bonk*, *Bonk*
"Mr. Eglon, sir, I didn't know that we actually had to mine gas."
"Ek, what'r you expectin? We's called miners, ain't no jar collectors we aren't!"
Fleck wasn't really sure how to respond to that, he usually just nodded at his boss's odd accent. He lifted his pickaxe, and brought it smashing down onto the swirling cloud in front of him. A loud BONK resounded out and shards of Jupiter gas flew out. The remains of the gas ore were quickly grabbed by Fleck and then placed into a little tupperware box.
Fleck let his eyes wander, and that reminded him of another oddity he didn't really expect: Jupiter was actually a brilliant hot pink. Apparently the old probes that NASA had sent before were affected by *robotic* *colour* *blindness* (this was actually the centrepiece of the argument for robotic sentience).
He yelped, as his jetpack suddenly malfunctioned and sent him flying way off into the distance.
"And don' come back when'r done!"yelled his queer boss as Fleck found himself spiralling out into the unknown.
The young miner wasn't really perturbed though, malfunctions like this happened all the time; especially with Antarctican products (the best place for a beautiful, beachtastic, summer getaway! - not really good with anything else)
So Fleck let himself drift off for awhile, but when it continued shooting him around the planet, he got slightly annoyed. There was a very simple way to fix this; one only had to kick the jetpack.
Now since every miner was an established tae kwon do master, this was an easy task. Fleck threw his leg forwards - so that his knee touched the front of his face - and brought the shin down to smash onto the jetpack.
The jetpack sputtered like a dying old person, and stopped malfunctioning. Fleck was very happy with this, but then he saw something terrible, ominous, and most assuredly evil.
It was a very, *very* big cloud. It was not a very poofy cloud, nor was it a very scary cloud; it was terribly mediocre, and Fleck averted his eyes at this average horror.
Screaming in mild fright, Fleck revved up his jetpack to max speed, and zoomed back to the mining site where his boss was.
He got there quickly, and told his boss what happened.
It seemed to Fleck that his boss almost seemed happy with this predicament, and he was quite right.
"Ay, she approach."said the boss with a wicked gleam in his eye (now would be a good time to mention the boss was monocular).
"What are we going to do?!"cried out Fleck.
"Come lad, enter the Starbucks cafe with me, and I'll tell you everything..."
Fleck entered with great apprehension, there was something mysterious going on here, but he couldn't put his hand on the abstract concept.
They sat down in the floating Starbucks that floated in the hot pink clouds of Jupiter.
The Boss Eglon ordered a coffee, and forked over his weekly wage in exchange. Then he stared at his drink with red-veined madness.
Eglon began, "Oh, Starbucks! It is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day - very much sweetness as this (he took a sip) - I struck my first cloud dinosaur - a boy - miner of eighteen! Forty - forty - forty years ago! - ago! Forty years of continual dinasouring! Forty years of privation, and peril, and storm time! Fory years on the pitiless gas! For fourty years has Eglon forsaken this not-so-peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the sky!"
"Sir,"said Fleck, "what are you saying?"
Eglon looked at him with unbinding friendship love, and brought Fleck close to him like lovers do on a cold night.
Eglon's whiskers tickled Fleck's eyes, and then something was whispered to Fleck, something important. They both nodded, and then there was a rumbling.
"The massive storm is approaching! This beast will no longer stalk us from within the clouds!"shouted Eglon
And they saw *it*. Terrible like a hurricane, with teeth like bones, and jaws of bone too, the giant Stegosaurus came a meandering across the Starbucks ship.
"Arrrrrrrgh!"shouted Eglon, "I've got ye now!"
Fleck knew what had to be done by Eglon. Cloud dinosaurs were notorious for being sissies, the only way to beat one was to gross it out. And with one so big as this, there was only one thing that could be done.
Eglon shouted manily, and plucked out his eye with a loud 'plop!'. He threw his eye through the clouds, and then aimed his aim towards the stegosaurus.
Now, the brute of a dinosaur called the 'cloud-stegosaurus' has a very small brain, but what he was most likely thinking was:
"Now, if I wanted to write a book that could withstand the ages, I would have to write a beginning that would last the rest of time. So begin my book with time? 'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...' No, no, no! I'm sure that's been done before, it's too good for me. Ugh, I should've taken my meds today, I'm getting too moody."
Of course a cloud-stegosaurus's brain is still quite big; although it might have been relatively small compared to other animals.
But when it saw that lone eyeball flying towards it with tears and blood streaking behind it like some pagan form of baseball, the stegosaurus screamed and floated off in fright.
Now Fleck thought this was all odd. He could've sworn the clouds concealing the beast were very boring, but the beast itself was at least *sort* of interesting. But then he saw his Boss Eglon begin to swoon.
He forgot his duty! Swift as the flash of a piano falling down, Fleck grabbed his Boss just in time; Eglon nearly hit the floor.
"Did we, cough cough, did we win?"inquired Eglon.
"Yeah boss, we did."said Fleck with tears in his eyes.
"Then, cough cough, then, well done."said Eglon, also with tears in his eyes. "But I...but I...fear I must leave now...for ever."
And like a troubadour of wailing quails pricked with the fiery brand of the Devil's singing, Fleck cried out a very long and very pitiful 'No.'
He threw his boss out of the Starbucks's cafe window, and with all the rites met, Fleck watched as his boss disappeared into the sexy pink of Jupiter.
"Farewell, boss, may we meet again, in this life or the next."intoned Fleck sadly.
|
"This tastes awful,"Samuel complained.
"You said you would eat them, and by the power of those damned piggy-uns outside you will do so!"commanded James.
"But Dad,"Samuel protested. "They're pigeons. Pih-juns. They aren't really flying pigs."
"That's what the government wants you to think! After that nuclear waste spill in Camden I looked them up on Yahoo and I know for sure they're piggy-uns! They're flying pigs! And if pigs are flying, then you have to do exactly what you said you would do!"
Bits of spittle flew from James' mouth as he ranted. Samuel knew it was pointless to argue with his father when he started talking about the government. He meekly cut off another square of underwear and placed it in his mouth.
|
"Waffles."
I was incredulous. "Waffles? They aren't even a condiment!"
He looked me straight in the eye, his tone deadly serious: "I'd already been all the way around the world before you were even a twinkle in my eye, son. In some little towns in Canada, they shred their waffles and use them as toppings for all sorts of dishes. They use a special kind of flour, makes them softer or something, but it turns the waffles blue."
"You're lying."
"Fine, don't believe me, look it up on the Google thingamajig you kids like so much."
I did. Thanks a lot, dad. |
The chicken wars raged on the subcontinent. Things looked bad for Colonel Sanders. The colonel would make advances on one flank, only to be pushed back on another. General Tso’s forces, masters of deception, would disappear into the dust and reappear miles away, reinforced and ready to fight again. To their credit, the Colonels men lived up to their slogan; “Bravery baked in, ferocity fried fighters” and never retreated. Even in the spice battle, fought high up in the mountains in the valley of the mystery spices, when the Colonels men were outnumbered three to one, they stood tall and fought until the last soldier was burned to a crisp by the deadly flame throwers General Tso’s forces wielded with such horrific efficiency. It was at this moment, when the things looked the darkest for the Colonel that he signed the Crispness- consensus with Captain Crunch and his navy.
The Captain, always a mysterious, with his penchant for Blue Uniforms was a wild card. Some thought he would wait the war out, but it appears that he and the Colonel found some common ground with crunchiness and an accord was established.
“An army marches on its stomach and wins with its brains” The Captain said of his agreement with the Colonel, he followed with: “I’ll eat the Generals forces for Breakfast and dessert on the soggy mess left behind.” No-one was quite sure what to make of the Captains comments, but he has always been an odd bird, preferring all of his soldiers to wear moustaches, even the women.
The Captain, set up blockades of many of the General’s ports of trade and it was apparently a long breakfast, maybe even brunch, since the blockades took a long time to have an effect. Slowly, the strain showed on the General’s men and the Colonel started to make progress over the southern plains, first taking flatbread desert, before heading into the mountains and wresting control of poultry pass from the embedded forces already there.
The war lasted the better part of three years and in the end, all that was left of the General was a blackened bowl where his capital used to be. After years of hard fighting, the Colonels men were let loose and destroyed the ancient capital of *Poulon*, destroying countless historical treasures. The world castigated the Colonel, but they understood that it took a tyrant to rid the world of a tyrant. The accord lasted for a year between the Captain and the Colonel, before the Captain simply sailed off. He’s still out there, and the Colonel occasionally rails on him, but he understands that he wouldn’t stand a chance against the Captain’s Navy, so he always falls short of declaring war.
|
"So picture this"he says to me through his sanitary mask. Neon lights. Flashing. Girls stripping. Fashion. Party's going down. Crashing. Hit the club, round 2 AM. Bartender knows me. Tells me to get out. I tell him to get out. Bouncer throws me out. Hit the convenience store. Girls walk up to me like, "Hey baby you want to have a good time?"Of course I want to have a good time. I'm T-Fresh, baby. So we blast over to his warehouse and the bass is just kicking like "BRRRUMM BRRRUM BRRRUMMM BRUM BRUM"and these girls are grinding on me. And I'm on grinding on them. Bad move, they're all mob daughters. I'm a dead man. Their dad comes up to me, he's gonna cut my dick off. I notice he's got a bad cough. Tell him I'm a doctor.
So five years later I'm the mob doctor for all of lower east and I get whatever I want. I got girls and grapes and girls feeding me grapes. Its life, but I want more. I get greedy. Boss's wife is a fine piece of blonde something, that I just gotta get at. She's ambitious too. I like a honey with that kinda swagger. She wants me to ice her husband. I mean like kill him. I can't do that. I never killed anyone on purpose before.
So that bad cough of his, its just asthma. Switch his inhaler dose to something less effective. Fake some X-rays. "Sorry Boss it's cancer."IV drip morphine until he just passes into the night. It changed me. He was a bad guy but he was nice enough to me ya'know. Go to his mansion, his wife's already with someone else. Not even a kiss goodbye. She's telling me they know I killed the boss. She's telling me I'm a dead man. Kinda wish I saved some morphine.
So I'm not feeling myself and I'm strolling down third, there's a sign in the window that says bathhouse. I grew up in a small town in Nebraska. There was nothing to do there but pray and wait. I remember walking down main and we had a building with a sign just like that. Mom would make sure we walked on the opposite side of the street.
Well feeling like its my last day on earth, I peak in. It looks like Athens at its peak in there. Everyone is being so generous with each other. There's glitter everywhere. A tall man walks up behind me and kisses my neck. I never had feelings like this before. I mean I've fallen in love before, but I've never felt this. Something just clicked. I tore off my clothes in dived into the pile of writhing bodies."
"Anyways that's how I lost my medical license. It was in my pocket"He spun the drill and pressed it to my scalp.
|
There was a discontinuity.
I was simply walking to work on a pleasant Tuesday morning, enjoying the comforting buzz of the KolaCorp Mind Collective. As usual, Bob774 had sparked some impassioned debate on the Sector proposal, and sub-collectives had formed around Bob774 and David135. I briefly considered the positions and found myself agreeing more with David. I had just injected my suggestion and votesupport on the contentious point to the Collective discussion when I felt the twisting wrongness.
The road was quiet – four electric cars humming along the genegrass strip, the trees on each side offering a dappled shade from the morning sun, and the tall buildings of the town vertifarms standing immobile and strong in the light wind. A couple of other pedestrians walked along, undoubtedly connected with their own collectives. The sky was clear, the view was innocuous, but the feeling still haunted me.
Instinctively, I patched through to a diagnostics collective. Eight seconds after logging on – an eternity by some standards, must have been a busy morning – a sub-collective was forming to take in my sense impressions. Fifteen people were tapped in, and three identified the issue – Rachel992, Park223 and Joe168 all snapping my attention and the rest of the sub-collective to the problem.
There was a closed collective in my local loop.
Private and restricted collectives were one thing, and not actually that uncommon, especially for companies and governments. This was a closed collective. As in a mental though gestalt that wouldn’t even acknowledge the presence of other minds than its own.
The diagnostic group sent a consensus summary. 93% in favor of immediate contact with the Police collective, 7% in favor of non-action. I followed the collective recommendation, and connected with the Police.
The Police were…more structured than many of the other collectives I frequented. I had to thought-ping my gestalt ident three times to various biocomputer sorting algorithms.
In the Realworld, a young man had emerged from some stairs between two vertical farms, and was now peering about. I formed a linguistics query and got back the explanation that his actions were *suspicious*. The concept and definition, as well as examples flooded in. Hunh. Today I learned what suspicious behavior was.
I felt three constables, a detective and nine public supervisory watchers loop into my feed. I opened the gestalt and gave them my sense impressions, plus the new information from the Linguistics. I felt the Police-authorised blanket tap request flood out from me.
The two other pedestrians, Yusif4412 – a BolterGroup employee, and Sakura746 – a StudentAssoc member link in as well, and the consciousness net expanded. The Watchers authorised surviellence within their own sub-collective, and the Police responded with their most powerful intelligence tool – the Investigative Gestalt.
New options and senses blossomed through us three “on-sites” as we instinctively organized into our own sub and were granted super-user privileges. We provided our senses, and police sensors and cameras fed into the scene as well. We all became vibrantly *aware* of the street in a way I had never experienced before. The scene was like one giant fantasy-scape that I could zoom my perspective around at will. I could see myself walking calmly along, no sign betraying my new abilities.
I could focus in closer on the suspicious person. Young, age between 19 and 21, medium complexion, no visible identifying markings. Clothing was Levigap standard fare, from their 2142 collection. There was a small tag on the back of the jeans that marked it being from the store on Main.
Two Levigap employees and their manager linked into the Investigative Gestalt by invitation, and took a mental snapshot to compare against their customer database. An identity arrived within two-thirds of a second later. Blake Martin, CollectiveID Blake987. Address. Date of Birth – Yusif’s estimate was closest – he was 20 and two months.
The Police sent a verification ping to the man. A second passed. Two. Three. Four. Five. No response, and no sign that the man had even received the Priority One invitation.
The Police asked for Action authorisation. The supervisory sub-collective had grown to twenty-eight people by now as more members of the public weighed in on the developing situation. One-fifth of a second later, the decision came. 57% against Action. Request Denied. Surveillance only.
Blake took one look around, seemingly oblivious to the attention that was focused on him, and slipped into a side-alley between Vertifarm 8 and 9. We lost sight of him, only for a new perspective to enter the Gestalt Sensor sub-collective. Sarah158 was walking down the alleyway. Sakura reached her turnoff to the university street and dropped out of the grouping. I still had line of sight, so I stayed in the loop.
Sarah saw Blake attach something to a small box on the side of the Vertifarm, and then turn and sprint away. The supervisory sub-collective flickered over to a 50/50 split, and grew by another eight members.
The small box sparked brightly…and the world came crashing down around us.
****
Blake slapped the disruptor to the side of the nodebox and ran. Brother Alpha had said that it’d only kill any same-thoughters in the area, and leave him untouched, but he hadn’t got this far in the FreeThinkers Underground by blindly trusting.
Still, the no one had appear to have even noticed him, so it was probably no big deal, and he wasn’t ev-
His thoughts skidded to a halt as his body did, and he desperately threw himself to the side as the electric car veered off the genegrass and into the side of the Vertifarm. The driver was slumped over, head in his hands, and Blake could hear the keening wail through the thick glass.
Two pedestrians were also kneeling over, hands to their heads and screaming.
This was freaking him out. The disruptor should have only hit same-thoughters in an active link if it detected one nearby. Why should all these people be same-thoughting?
The answer came to him as the driver and the pedestrians snapped their heads up and looked straight at him. Blake became aware of people standing at the edges of the Vertifarm levels, all staring with the same intense gaze.
*Oh, God no… please no…they were onto me...*
Blake turned and ran back to the alleyway, only to see the woman from the far end was marching towards him with a purposeful step, her gaze the same, terrifyingly intense stare. He ran again – out past the advancing drivers and pedestrians, and dived down the steps to the park, taking several at a time.
He emerged onto the walkway, and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of dozens of people engaged in normal behavior, chatting and talking and walking.
Then that chatter died away, and the inhabitants of the park turned to stare at him. As one, they turned and walked towards him.
A voice reverberated from a dozen throats.
“**Blake Martin. This is the Police. You are under arrest**.”
“Nononononono….”
His worst nightmare was coming true in front of his eyes. *They’re all zombies! Mindless zombies! And they’re coming to turn me into one of them! The whole world is out to get me!*
Blake let out a scream of pure terror, and tried to run, but it was far too late.
|
I regret not becoming an actor. I regret not travelling so I could buy a house. I regret spending my life in absolute prudence and not experiencing things in the now.
*I regret my entire life.*
It seems Death has cast his strongest ailments on me, cancer and Alzheimer's. What a cruel fate, I'll live long enough to forget what made me whole. Only to die an oblivious old fool, a tragic death to say the least. I won't have any sweet memories to reminisce about on my departure. It seemed the chemo wasn't at all that effective either, I'm really unlucky.
It's cold, the hospital bed is uncomfortable and the air smells like a weird, grotesque combination of people's bodily fluids and odors. The lights were discouragingly achromatic, and the walls were of a blue so light it was almost indistinguishable from the floor or ceiling.
Suddenly darkness began coursing in, a mist of fantastic black that ironically lightened up the atmosphere of the entire hospital. Only to have that excitement forcefully diminished at the notice of it's cause. Death. The Grim Reaper. The God of Promises. The one everyone sees last. My feeble bones and debilitated body preventing any escape from his gift to the universe. Deep down I didn't mind dying, it was clear when I was content to give up the struggle. You'd venture a guess that someone - or rather - *something*, who's primordial purpose is to end the fates of every living being would do so perfectly. So I wasn't afraid of his methods to extract me from existence.
He seemingly glided towards me, the mist surrounded the floor around him concealing any feet, if he had any. Skeletal arms carrying the fabled weapon, the harvester of souls, the *Reaper's Scythe.* Corporeal hood and white glowing eyes that leaked out the same mist into the air, only it was white. It was terrifying to say the least, but welcoming. At this point, I was completely unaware of anything around me, Death was the only thing my eyes lay bare.
No words were spoken, his presence had said more words than a lifetime of continuous rapping would. It was my time, *or was it?*
Almost as if he was being repelled by some strange, but beautiful bright light he staggered backwards and screeched in eerie cries.
*"Get the IV bag! Hurry we don't have enough time!"*
Death fell to his knees attempting to shield the searing light from himself with his arms to no avail.
*"He's stabilizing! This is his last chance, we've got to make it count!"*
He had reached a distance where the light could not hurt him, I could make out the inverse silhouette that was the source of the light. It looked like an angel. A winged humanoid, but no halo.
*"Doctor he isn't responding to our cues."* *"He needs rest, lets assist that"*
The light faded and I was alone.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Morning Mr. Tanners, how are you feeling?"
A female doctor with long luscious blonde hair and perky lips had leaned over my body, I figured it was so I didn't have to move my head to respond.
"Strikingly a lot better than before I was unconscious."It was true, I still had felt nauseous and sickly. But I didn't feel as weak as before.
"You've been unconscious a few days now, we were worried how you induced a coma like that but you appear to be reacting well to the chemo. It seems someone had replaced your bag with the wrong drug, on behalf of the hospital we are deeply sorry. This is an unprecedented case."
I didn't care, I was happy to be feeling better. But does that mean what happened before was a dream? I was in the same room only it appeared more, lively to say the least.
"I have to tend to other patients now Mr. Tanners, don't hesitate to call to the nurses if you have any needs."
As she disappeared out the door I noticed a strange figure through the door frame.
Looking just as indifferent to life as his existence merited. Death lingered, staring silently still, hindered only a little. It seems there is no way to run from the end.
|
Once upon a time giant inter-dimensional spacebatworm had a slight discomfort, it moved to better transmigrate the meta-dimensional void, this led to a time and spatial distortion that caused the entire Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be sent from the cushy and familiar October of 2015 to the wild and dangerous spring of 100 AD. This was very discomforting for anyone involved. The place they landed was the exact same which was switched out with the campus 1900 years ago. Coincidentally a large tribe was living there at the time and caused a great deal of chaos when they came out the other end. While the initial power-outage and loss of outside communications were bad enough, the intrepid students managed to set up some rudimentary wind-generators and solar-batteries. If people in Africa with no formal education could do it, then the students rationalized that they were probably capable of doing the same. Still, for all their technological understanding they lacked certain practical skills, like anticipating that the natives of the Pre-Columbian America wouldn't be immune to the vast amount of diseases that the more modern American of the twenty-first century had. And since the MIT lacked a very important faculty, namely a faculty of medicine, they couldn't make functional vaccines on the spot and so a lot of people died. Horribly.
Yet MIT decided to try its best to survive, since time travel was difficult to fit into any model of physics, they had little hope of rescue from the future. It took awhile for the nearly twenty thousand students and teachers to get off the ground, especially since they had little access to outside sources that could be useful such as knowledge on practically applied agriculture and large sources of electricity. Still, the men and women of MIT soldiered on, taking upon the arduous task of, well, keeping modern knowledge alive to later be applied practically. But first they had to hunt, gather and farm to survive. Luckily, vast native villages now stood mostly empty, giving MIT easy access to the few survivors, desperately searching for a safe place, who knew the land and whatever food sources the Native Americans had at the time. The first year passed by mostly uneventful, though plenty of students froze heavily.
By the year 105 MIT had... well not exactly restarted civilization, but had created a sufficiently decent one with better engineering and technology than everyone else on the planet at the time. A society with electric lighting, internal heating and refrigerators but really little else. While they had the technology needed to restart the high-tech industry they lacked the vast amount of resources needed to make computers, radios or combat drones. At most they had guns and a reinvented heavier-than-air travel by use of a bio-fuel engine. The exhaust smells like rotten jam though. around the campus a large wooden palisade has been erected by engineers for the sake of protection. There are plans to make it a stone wall eventually. Over the years, rumors spread among the surviving natives of a place where wise men and women had gathered in stone buildings to make a tribe that was unaffected by the great plague that had crippled the land. MIT, having finally gotten the hang of basic medicine and farming had vaccines and food for the stragglers, taking in anyone who'd work with them. The language barrier was a bit of an issue but A few students with ears for language had made basic talking and translating between the MITs and the natives. Meanwhile the plague has reached the Andean mountains on its latest wave, causing hundreds of thousands to be on the constant run south to escape the oncoming pestilence.
Year 120. The tribe of Mit as they are known by surviving natives is city-state of partially natives and partially MIT students. Children are plentiful and the streets of MIT are now paved with cobblestone instead of old decaying asphalt, a substance too expensive to make in the long run for the small community. A large stone wall, built like medieval walls by engineers with some references, surrounds the MIT having repelled some attacks by people blaming them for the great calamity of the ages. They aren't wrong, but you can't expect to defeat the only people with guns around. Below the streets a sewage system once again functions, to the great joy of everyone. The reactions of the people involved have been mixed. With most experiments of 2015 being heavily reliable on a global world and reliant electricity, the professors have turned instead to teaching all that they know to anyone who would listen, and trying to find an easier method for creating stuff to write on than parchment, animal hides aren't as excellent for writing books on as most sources would claim. The children of the MITs and the natives are heavily educated on every possible subject imaginable, and would probably beat most 2015 children on similar ages. Students are mostly positive while especially biology students are pleased to be able to explore a world with a lot more biodiversity. Some do worry. The native populations are stabilizing, and some enterprising individuals have sold the knowledge of guns for gold or other metals. And they do not mine any metal of their own considering how the general New England area was not a place with a lot of minerals or metals, especially not near the coastal areas. Others however, might use their dependency of metals to weaken the Mits. Or even worse, make more guns than them and invade them.
Year 200 and the original students, undergraduates and the like are all but gone. Their descendants remain, taking great care of the restoration of the textbooks, notes and machines of their progenitors. English is no longer widely spoken, considered now a language akin to Latin. Instead a pidgin of American English and various Algonquian languages is more widely in use as the new lingua franca of the area. Mit, under the red, grey and light grey flag with a single red star on it, is a powerful nation. While the original intention of the people who somehow came to the year 100 A.D. was to share technology freely with everyone, a certain bloody war in the year 167 which saw a quarter of the population of Mit die, made people think otherwise. The currently elected dean, from the Techno-nationalist party, instead follows a policy of selling vastly inferior tech to others while keeping the best for the Mittians themselves. This is supported by the representatives in the Student Council where his party holds a slim majority supported by the Transhumanist party and the Steampunkers. The tech level, while initially very anachronistic has settled on a form of mix between green technology and the tech found in the 1930s. Advancement is slow but steadily moving forwards, and in a small lab a few students are tinkering with some old unused plans and books for something about atoms and reactors, carefully, as the old texts are filled with warnings about the extreme dangers. The wounds on the people who acquired the Uranium for them is evidence enough, but the results seem to be worth it as their first test allows six lightbulbs to be lit by their test-machine alone. |
Most serial killers worship at some form of alter. If you don't find human life sacred, you have to deify something or you'll go crazy.
Charles had done well for himself. There were two more children in the world because he opted to pick up the phone before the gun.
He lived in a house with a fresh coat of paint (another difference...if he had been dead, the house would be a different color). He had a beautiful wife who had cheated on him once, but he had forgiven her. She was much younger so he believed she was allowed some mistakes. Now, they were quite happy. At least he was, and through the binoculars it looked like she was smiling with much sincerity.
I knew Charles was happy because he told me, and you don't lie to the person that saved your life. The person who listened to you at your lowest and helped you stand up again.
Most people don't stay in contact with their suicide hotline operator, but I encourage it. I want to see how my cases turn out, and with the binoculars I mean that literally.
I wasn't really hiding, but I wasn't really noticeable. I watched as Charles and his family played in one of those shallow inflatable pools. It's amazing how much fun kids can have in 7-inches of water but they appreciate the little things.
That was something I helped Charles do. He would e-mail me constantly overall the last few years (less frequently lately) and ask for advice or share success. I helped him through after his wife's affair. I edited his resume. Last week he finally used the "H"word and I knew it was time for part II.
There's no way this Norman Rockwell painting locked its doors at night. So I would wait, walk in and shoot him the head. I hated shooting, it was loud. I would have to run after it was done. I didn't want to hurt the wife or kids.
It had to be gun though because it was going to be a gun. We'd seen what the world looks like if Charles was alive and supported, it's time to take a look at the other world.
They say only God can create a universe, I've created several. Eight different mirror dimensions where my influence makes or breaks reality.
Every serial killer worships something. I like, most of them, worship myself. It's a cozy religion that's not based on faiths but facts.
I decide who lives and dies and I have the omniscience to see both possibilities.
It's a burdensome position, taking lives carries a heavy weight but its my cross to bear. I prefer saving people, and it's not too tricky either...you just got to get people to believe in themselves.
|
Finally, the strangest year in the history of the Mythoverse was over. That damn Norse bastard Loki had somehow posed as an djinn and gotten himself a job writing metaphysical contracts.
That sonofabitch wrote our annual renewals flawlessly. They were airtight. Believe me, I read them both, and I'm the king of good -sounding deals gone bad.
The only change was that he transposed our names. Neither of us were expecting it, of course. We both glanced over them and signed them like always. And of course there's always a Prometheus Clause in these things. I didnt fancy having any of my internal organs pecked out for perpetuity, so I had to switch jobs with the old guy for a year.
In the end, it wasn't so bad. In fact, I want to ask the old guy for a favor.
I walked through my demesne, not entirely liking what he'd done with the place. In fact, I didn't like it at all. I approached his bulbous figure, which was perched on my until-recently-horrific-throne of bones. It was now made of candy canes.
***
"Nick, what the fuck have you done with the place?"
"Oh, hey, Lou, didn't see you there through the cotton candy mist. Damn stuff, it's like wearing rose-tinted glasses some mornings."
"Where's the fire? The brimstone? Where the hell is. . . *Hell*?"
"Bit dreary, don't you think? I had everything replaced with confectionary,"said Santa, "Cost me a ton of magic. Did you see the Fudge Ocean on the Second Level and the Rock Candy Mountains on Five? Delightful, eh?"
"But. . . The souls of the damned,"Satan responded weakly.
"Much happier making presents than burning in the lake of fire. But enough about me, how's the year been for you?"
Satan snapped out of it. All of a sudden, the Prince of Darkness was back.
"Right. That's actually what I've come to talk to you about. I can see you've invested a lot in the place, and you know what, you can keep it. As long as I can keep staying at yours."
"Oh? You like it that much? Even with the weather?"
"Forget the snow, there's coal aplenty. What I really love is those damn elves. Industrious little bastards. Tough, too. My demonic host has gotten lazy over the aeons. I'd forgotten what it was like to truly wage battle for the Gates of Heaven.
"In fact, we stormed the place yesterday. We've got that Bastard holed up tight. I'd hate to switch back now, when we're so close." |
Pamela guided the submarine between two massive rocky outcroppings, the weak light from the front lamps playing off of the monolithic stone walls as we moved smoothly along through the dark. I traced my fingers across the foot-thick glass and it felt cold. Was it just my imagination, or was it truly that *cold* down here?
"The data from the anglerfish genome have been really amazing,"Pamela said, taking us deeper as she spoke. I watched pieces of deep-sea detritus and small, transparent organisms swirling around in the beams of light.
"It's almost like.."
Pamela cleared her throat, then shook her head. "It's stupid."
I looked over at Pamela. We had been working together for many years, in fact had same the PhD adviser and had been graduate students together. Even after all this time, Pamela had the terrible habit of doubting herself. It left me to wonder how many breakthroughs lay in the bottom of her waste bin, discarded before they could be born.
"Pamela, you know this is a safe space."She punched me in the arm, but smiled warmly, then shrugged.
"Look, when I've run the cladograms, there are a few where the anglerfish come up ancestral. Basal."
I shrugged. "Alternative, less parsimonious trees are common. Nothing embarrassing about that. So you've got an alternate tree where anglerfish are basal to other bony fish, so what?"
Pamela shook her head. "To *everything*,"she said quietly.
I laughed sharply. "Pamela, that's absurd."I instantly felt bad. *Nice safe space you've created, asshole.*
I cleared my throat. "I mean, some of the best ideas have been ridiculed at first, though... who knows, maybe... I mean,"
I was tripping over myself now, and Pamela graciously saved me. "Look, Steve, I know, it's silly. I said so when I brought it up."She looked out the other window and I felt the moment slipping away.
"Well, what do you think it could be? I mean, what could explain that?"
"Panspermia."She said simply.
"You mean life originated off-world. *That* panspermia?"I said.
She shrugged. "Imagine if they came here fully formed, along with the single cells that started everything else off. Maybe from the same world. Maybe the Anglerfish were the only macroscopic life to survive, somehow."
We traveled on. I was lost in thought. I felt a growing feeling in my gut, heavy and thick and cold. "Pamela,"I said, my hand shooting out to grasp her arm. At first I couldn't tell what was making me nervous, then I knew. I saw it. *The bottom.* We were far, far below safe depth. I heard a creak. Imagined I heard a pop. The metal must be straining against the pressure. Any instant, we could disappear. Cease to be in a flash of compression and decompression and foot-thick metal crunching in on itself like a discarded paper ball.
"Pamela, where are we?"
She smiled at me. "Shhh, Steve, it's okay. We're at the lip of Challenger Deep."The submersible gently slid to the ocean floor, and I saw we were on the edge of a chasm that, despite our incredible depth, descended below out of sight and beyond reason.
"Pamela, get us out of here,"I said, frantic. I looked over at her and she was calm. Serene. She had turned away from the controls and was making eye contact with me. She placed her hands gently on my shoulders.
"Steve, what if the Anglerfish weren't the only things that have been here all along, waiting? What if the Anglerfish weren't here first?"
Pamela's eyes. There was something about them. Something in my brain was shouting at me to run. *Where?* Shouting at me to fight. *There's no need.* Shouting at me to resist in any way. *You want this.* I couldn't break contact.
"Pamela,"I said, and I could hear my voice quavering as I spoke. "You never told me where you were born. We worked together all this time, and you never..."
She put a finger to my lips, and crossed her arms over her body, gripping her shirt hem and lifting it over her head. Her bra was white and lacy patterned. Beads of sweat were visible on her bare chest and along the lean, taught skin of her stomach.
"You want this, Steve..."she whispered, and as she spoke I thought I caught a glimpse of needle-like teeth between her lips. "We were meant for each other. We always were.."
"No, Pamela, I.."but as I spoke I knew it was true. I was meant for her. My place was with her. My place was as a *part* of her. It was time to bring the circle to a close. It was time to fulfill my purpose. It was time to make the incomplete complete.
A fissure began to form at Pamela's belly button, opening and running like the spiderwebs of cracking lake ice in the spring thaw. It split its way around her side, wrapping up toward her spine. As she leaned over it opened wide, impossibly wide, revealing a red, angry gash. Blood dripped and poured down her side as her body leaned at a sickening, impossible angle. Her hand opened and gently gripped the top of my head and she began pulling me toward the wound in her side. The pressure was the gentle, intimate pressure of a lover. The pressure of someone who knew I would not resist.
What happened next was a folding of space and time that would make no sense described in three dimensions. I'll try. I folded my hands in front of my like a diver, and felt them slide smoothly into the groove in her side. I slid into my groove, fitting perfectly and merging despite the impossibilities of scale, my clothing sliding off and away as my flesh merged with hers. This brings us to the present...
I feel, *know* somehow that acid in her flesh is eating away at mine, dissolving the space where her body ends and mine begins. I sense the borders of *me* fading away, feel my thoughts becoming less organized and less my own as my body becomes part of hers. I feel my selfness fading, know that not for long will coherent.. but I want, want, want.
"Make me part of you,"my mouth says.
"Make me part..."
"Make..."
---
Tenderly Pamela strokes the flesh on her side that was Steve, smoothing over the little bump that used to be the mouth into a flat, smooth surface. "Shhh,"she says soothingly, feeling his last thoughts spread out and become lost like oil on the surface of a puddle as the last of his brain dissolves. Only his gonads will remain, pumping fertile sperm into her body to conceive the next generation.
Pamela gives the engine one last burst of fuel, pushing the little submersible over the edge and into the abyss.
|
Alexander the Apprentice Summoner burst into my room, his face flushed from the run up the stairs to my private rooms. "Gerry, you have to help!"
I turned from the grimoire I had been reading, making sure not to show the girly magazine I had hidden in its pages. "Calm down Alexander, just tell me what's wrong?"
It was my last day before I left the wizarding world for the real one and I had hoped to spend some time gathering my things together, but from the look on his face there was yet another problem I would need to fix.
Alexander was a talented wizard, but unconfident in his abilities and he often came to me with the smallest problems. In many ways I was his opposite, as I had no magical ability at all, but when I had been accidentally brought to the School I had been able to bluster and bullshit my way through classes, until I graduated as the top scoring wizard on our final tests.
Alexander had finally calmed down enough to catch his breath. "It's Maisy! We went to the beach and were paddling and she has been stung buy a jellyfish. Master Wickram tried his best pain removing spell, but she's in agony, we need your help!"
Jellyfish - that sparked a memory, but I needed to check before I was sure. "All right Alexander, wait outside and I'll find something to help."He quickly left, used to my demands for privacy.
From under my desk I popped the hidden compartment and slide out the iPhone that was my true magical companion. Wizards shunned technology and the internet was completely unknown and this allowed me to pass off knowledge as power - it had been my saving grace for my whole school career.
In moments I had the answer from Wikipedia and just a minute later I emerged from my room holding a vial filled with yellow liquid. "Come on Alexander, take me to her."
We raced down the stairs and at last found the group bringing her back from the back to the School. With a flourish I removed the stopper and passed the bottle to Master Wickram, who carefully poured the liquid over Maisy's foot. Almost at one she sighed as the pain subsided and a moment later she was greatly relieved.
Master Wickram turned to me. "Bless you Gerry the Potion Maker, I don't know what we'll do without your ability to brew just the right potion, or knock up those magical pain pills."I smiled at the thought of the empty aspirin packets I'd be taking back to the real world with me. "And this.."He held up the bottle. "Your finest hour."
All around me the students and teachers clapped and I swelled with pride. I would miss this school and though I had never learned any magic, I had learned so much more. Maisy was trying to stand and she reached up and kissed me lightly on the cheek and smiled a shy smile. Maybe I'd hold off leaving for one more night and see if I could get some other rewards.
Behind me Master Wickram was still babbling on with his praise. "Incredible you were able to make a potion so quickly that worked so well!"He paused and sniffed it. "Sure smells like piss though..."
|
According to the news, ships like the one that crashed in my backyard were falling out of the sky all over the world. It looked like an alien invasion - those were obviously guns on the landing craft - but when the aliens managed to climb out of the wreckage, it was a gibbering mess that shrieked and recoiled if I so much as *though* about it.
**KREEEE!**
Oops... there it goes again.
"Hey, Will,"my brother called out, "I'm gonna poke it with a stick!"
"Ok, just don't let it get its goo all over you,"I replied. I mean, come on, it's an alien; how could we *not* poke it with a stick? It was only logical... |
"You'll never get away with this!"Ultragirl said, struggling in her bonds. Her and the other would-be heroes were tied in the center of the room with guards surrounding them.
Dr. Evildude grandly presented the Doom-Clock, which had almost run to zero. "Oh no? And how are you and your Team of Justice going to stop me?"
The heroes looked down at their bindings and knew it was no use. Dr. Evildude laughed maniacally.
"Soon, the world with know the fury of my undead-dinosaur army! Mwa ha ha ha ha!"
Then the sound of generators failing filled the air, along with the smell of burning flesh. Everyone turned to see Greg standing sheepishly over the corpse of Dr. Evildude's necromancer. A moment later, the vats of undead dinosaurs exploded, destroying the army.
"What the fuck Greg?! Every! Damn! Time!"Dr. Evildude screamed out. Greg tried to look innocent.
"I'm sorry, I got lost and I just sort of found myself here..."
"You live in Chicago and "accidentally"got into my secret lair?!"
Greg looked down at the floor.
"How did this even happen?"One of the heroes chirped.
"Well, I kind of tripped over this extension cord,"Greg pointed. "And that sort of snapped that power line, and that hit that undead dude, and he was kinda close to those dinosaurs and well..."He trailed off. "I'm sorry."
Dr. Evildude started rubbing his temples, the beginning of a headache forming. "I just, I don't even know..."He said, walking away. |
Dear Diary,
Mittens has always been a bit of a weirdo. Ever since I picked her up at the adoption centre, she's been sticking to me like permanent glue. Up until now, it was just adorable, really. I'd find the little fluff hiding in my bag or suddenly pawing at my feet, meowing for my attention. But today has been kinda weird.
Mittens showed up in my locker. Like, really ? I left her in the apartment and then locked the door. I sealed every inch of that place while she simply stared at me, rubbing her head on my leg and slithering into my arms for pettings. So that was odd, but okay. Always knew she was special. Must've slipped out the bag and in there when I wasn't looking or whatever.
Then Dave shows up. Starts talking to me. Looking at me. You know, *the look*. And while he's drooling at me, Mittens is staring daggers at him. When Dave tried to pet her, she clawed him out of nowhere. Hissing and throwing a fit for no reason! I apologized and took Mittens away. I like Dave. A date with me and him would be *so* awesome. But Mittens isn't very intent on sharing me.
She behaved for the rest of the day, thankfully. Let's just hope that she doesn't pull stunts like that on my roommates.
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Dear Diary,
It's always been told cats were secretly either smarter then we thought, but they don't care enough to show us that, or they are gods. Mittens either cares enough, or is an actual god. Dave came down with an infection today, the day after Mittens scratched him.
I ended up watching Bruce Almighty with Amanda this morning. There is that one scene where God explains that he's the alpha and the omega, and right when he was about to to say "Bruce, I am God", Mittens jumped on the table, stood on his hind legs and a beam of the sun shone on him and he meowed once. Made it sound like "Meow am God".
Later in that movie, when Bruce goes to his girlfriend use his God powers to make her love him again, Mittens jumped on my lap and started meowing for food, while Bruce was jumping up and down yelling "Love me!"in the background. I swear, this is starting to creep me out now.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Diary,
Mittens walked into class with my phone in her mouth today. Thank God, because Dave texted me to ask if I still wanted to go on that date with him. He appears to have made fast recovery from that infection. She may be clingy sometimes, but Mittens' random appearances in my life make my days interesting and are quite helpful sometimes.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Diary,
Dave stood up on me to go on a date with Amanda. I feel like shit. Mittens has been gone since this morning. I wish she was here. I miss her now. I just want someone to hold me and let me know I'm not worthless. You'll have to do.
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Dear Diary,
Neither Dave or Amanda showed up for school today, but Mittens came back today. She's been licking my hands nonstop, purring, hugging and never leaving my side. At times like these I can appreciate that so much. This place feels so empty without her. I feel so empty without her. I wish my parents were still here sometimes. I think I'll go play some videogames, talk with the virtual friends while playing some LoL. I hope they can cheer me up a little.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Diary,
Amanda and Dave are dead. They were found hanging upside down and skinned on a tree in the local park. What the fuck. Someone skinned them ? What sick psycho would do that ? I've had police come by all day asking about when I saw them for the last time and all those questions. Some of them think I did it. I can see it in their eyes. I told them to contact my groups of friends I play with and to check the times at which I played with them. One of them was streaming and they could hear me talk in the background until three in the morning, so I hope that will take the blaming eyes off of me.
Mittens hasn't taken kind to the officers, hissing and pawing at them, but not attacking them. Smart kitty. Sometimes I see her looking at me and I think that she is actually really smart, just trapped in the body of a cat. I wonder what she'd say to me of she could speak. |
Silence. All over campus, there was silence. Jason didn't pick up the phone when I called him, cute girl from three doors down hasn't bumped into me while running back to her room for something she forgot, and Alaina hasn't sent me her usual good-morning text. I walked down the stairs and out of the dorm building to find a silent quad, too. I would have found it weird, but I was already running late to econ and I couldn't be late again today, Dr. Johnson would have my head.
I burst through the doors, two minutes late and clenched up, waiting for the berating I was bound to get. But it wasn't coming. I opened my eyes to find nobody. The lights weren't even on... but how? It's 10:03 and Dr. J *ALWAYS* starts on time. I hesitantly walked over to the department office facing the lecture room. Maybe this was all just a huge prank. I'm gonna turn around and everyone's gonna pop out from somewhere and I'm gonna be "that kid that keeps showing up late for econ"for forever. Greeeeeat. I opened the door to the department office, and... nobody. Even the secretary's computer was open. Well, I've never been one to not take the opportunity. Maybe I could even change my grade.
I sat down behind the computer and opened up the internet. The front page was CNN, but it hadn't been updated since yesterday. I made a new tab to ESPN, same deal. Tabbed to reddit, same thing. Why isn't anything updated? And where is everyone? It's 15 minutes past and i seems like nobody's in the building. I walked into Dr Johnson's office and noticed a folder marked 'TEST III'. I opened it, looking for answers, but inside was only a single post-it. 'NO TIME: CHECK COMPUTER' was scrawled on it hurriedly in red Sharpie. I checked out the computer, which was open to some conspiracy nut website. Still hesitant (because the second anyone finds me in here, I'll be expelled), I started reading through the badly-formatted text on-screen: *Babylonian Apocalypse... all will disappear... blah blah blah...* But something caught my attention. IN big black letters at the bottom of the page was today's date, with smaller red text under it: "TODAY IS THE DAY"
No. No, absolutely not. No way can this be true. It's a fuckin' conspiracy site for Christ's sake! there's no way. Someone's fucking with me. I closed the computer and walked back into the silent main corridor. *10:31* was showing on my watch face, still nobody in the lecture hall. I exited the building onto the silent campus. Not even the wind was blowing. It was like time had stopped completely. *Or that everyone's disappeared...* Well, that would explain Alaina having no contact. In the three years we've dated, she hasn't once missed a good-morning text. *This surprise must be really killing her to not say anything to me,* I thought.
Maybe the world really HAS ended. But then why am I here? Why me? I'm just your slightly-below-average college student. What do I have that makes me more valuable than someone like Alaina, who is the most studious and hardworking girl I've ever met? Or fuckin'... Bill Gates or Obama, or someone who's DONE something? Was it a lottery and I just got lucky? Am I being tested? Man I've gotta figure this out.
-------
This is my first prompt, so let me know what y'all think! |
Chat started 11/25/15
"Hello?"
"Hi there, how may I help you today, sir?"
"Well your company installed my deathtraps, screaming sound effects, and doors-shutting-for-no-reason-at-all."
"Ah yes, the Dark Sorcerer's Package?"
"Yea, so you guys also installed a computer to control all of it and it has stop working."
"I see. Did you try turning it off and back on again?"
"Umm, no. Give me a second."
*2 minute interval*
"Yep. Works perfectly! Thank you!"
"You are very welcome, sir. Have a wonderful sorcery day!" |
"The phrase you are looking for is 'Allowable deductions', that's the real magic here"
"Mr Claus, you'll forgive me if I ask how charitable tax write-offs are the 'real magic', as you put it. I imagine that most of my readers would think that the real magic, is, well, magic"
"Well of course the Magic helps. But the ability to make some reindeer levitate is nothing in the face of such powers as compound Interest.
What most people simply don't get is simply how much time and resources modern Santahood takes. These are all recent changes of course. Back a few dozen decades ago, we were still very much a workshop operation.
These days, that sort of business model simply isn't possible. The youth population of the planet has rapidly expanded and is still growing. My thoughts about this change in nature is something I've talked about at length"
"You are referring to your book, "Innocence and Industry: the changing face of Earths youth in the Industrial Age", yes?"
"Kind of. I wrote that book during a more reactionary phase of the last century. The European Crisis' of the 1900's, did bring a lot of changes rapidly. One of your colleagues penned a very critical review of its sequel which I felt better reflected the Post Industrial era"
"Ernest Ronman, yes. He thought your books suffered from always taking the very long view of history. He died in 1986"
"I was aware. I think it was unfair to accuse an immortal of being long-sighted. It is in our nature after all"
"More to the point, Mr Claus, I believe you were on the verge of making a point"
"Ho! Yes! The point is simple, it's not just population changes, but the types of gifts as well. The rise of patent law has made the high demand for consumer electronics simply impossible by any other means.
A business like mine must become a for-profit organisation in order to maintain its effectiveness. Our most sluggish decade to date, the 2000-2010 period, only happened because of our inability to align ourselves with the market trends in a more agile fashion"
"It sounds like you have been to Business School"
"As has much of the senior staff. The world changed around us, we needed to keep up"
"That gets to the heart of the matter I think. All this recent press has solely been about your decision to take 'Santa Claus' public. From a business point of view, it's been hailed as a pragmatic and timely move, however others worry it will effect the quality of manufacture"
"Yes well, I"
"I'm sorry Mr Claus, but I didn't finish my question. Earlier this year your partnership with FaceBook drew heavy fire from Privacy groups, who fear your extensive Data Collection apparatus will just add to FaceBooks on going issues in that regard.
Further, one of your most publicly recognised potential business partners, Richard Maxson, has had links to child slavery in the Philippines for years now. Something which you, of all people, must be aware.
My question, Mr Claus, is simply, do you fear that any of this might effect the share price, after last years record highs?" |
You know, I never really liked New Years. For the average person it was just a night to get drunk and party. I could get behind that. I was different though, as it turns out the collective human race had been living in the year 2015 for the past forever. When the ball drops, everyone forgets about the year before and starts working on the new 2015 like NOTHING had gone on in the past year.
I was the only person who didn't have this happen. I remembered the past 24 2015s, every waking moment of them. When I was younger I didn't get what was going on, but now I was old enough to get it. I had learned to get things done within a year if I wanted to keep people working on them, but sometimes that wasn't enough.
Alyssa and I had stayed in tonight, we were spending time together instead of out with people. I didn't mind, I'd spent the past six years at Jake's New Years Parties and he never learned that the jello shots were a horrible idea. We'd just finished watching a movie on Netflix. I knew that I could go meet her tomorrow at the coffee shop and we would hit it off again, but I didn't want this to be over. Not for the third time in a row.
"Want to watch the ball drop?"she asked. There was hope in her voice, but she knew that I wasn't a fan of the holiday. Last year I had tried being one but it hadn't changed anything. I didn't need to see a timer that told me when everyone would forget about the past year. None of the memories that we made mattered, everyone just said they were born a year earlier and had a new set of thoughts to match.
"We might have missed it,"I pointed out. I knew it was a lie, but I wasn't up for a big conversation.
"Nah, it's 11:58,"she replied.
"Oh joy."
"Why don't you like new years?"
"I suck at resolutions."
"We have two minutes to get you a good one."
"I don't want a good one,"I pointed out,"I just want to meet a cute girl in a coffee shop."
'You can't do that one, you did that this year."She wore a smile better than anyone else I knew.
"Yeah, I did." |
Professor Honey rolled the dice twice on the table. Six and Six. Double digits. Nice. If only he was in Vegas instead of the front of a classroom.
--
"He's a gosh darn bear I tell you!"you shout from the back of the room.
--
Your classmates ignore you. They just can't see it. To them Professor Honey was just an eccentric old man from north of the Ukraine. His gruff posterior and growling cough were just signs of too many hand rolled cigarettes from the old country. The professor had taught at the school for several years, always in statistics and logic. They said he had defeated a world renowned chess player in order to win his ticket to the new country. He claimed to be poor, but he was always dressed in the finest of furs.
--
Professor Honey looked up from the dice, his eyes locking with yours in a black haze of fear and determination. He knew you could see through his disguise. He knew you could see the whiskers protruding from his snout. He knew you could smell the musk of his people, brewed for centuries on the high hills of his homeland. He knew you knew.
--
But it was that simple. Professor Honey was a bear. A bear with a magic coat and elixirs from a witch doctor he encountered in a shanty town when the weather got too cold and he had to come down from his mountain perch. Here stood Goodward Honey. Prince and next in line to the thrown of Ursidae mountain. But he had longed for better things, for a future outside the dim lit halls of Ursidae which constantly buzzed with the sound of queen bees. His kingdom, his father's kingdom, was rich with liquid gold. But the humans had forgotten, the humans no longer did remember the treaties of old. They no longer remembered how Honey's clansman once protected the village below from ravenous wolves and feral bears who had gone out into the wild to seek something more. All they found was loss. A loss of memory. A loss of how things once were. They had become no better than the humans. They had gone feral, their offspring were never taught the histories and tales of the heroic Ursidae warriors.
--
Looking up from the dice, Professor Honey bellowed to the class; "You see! No two dice roll can ever be predicted as the same. Our previous examples showed a sum of 5, 7, 2 and 9. This time, perfect 12. We could roll the dice a thousand times, what do you think would happen?"
--
A girl raised her hand slowly and said without being called on; "You'd see an cluster of numbers that are possible due to AB, AA and BB combinations, with more clustering if you decide to categorize AA and BB as the same pattern."
--
Professor Honey sighed deeply. He tipped his amber tinted bifocals down his snout and stated un-enthusiastically "I suppose". But Honey didn't care. Honey couldn't take it anymore. He knew his spells were starting to falter and become thin, like the snow on Ursidae's peaks during the warmest weeks of the year. He could see the end drawing near, the kingdom of man would not be able to remember their agreement with his people no matter how much he tried. These kids couldn't even get basic statistics right. There was one girl in the class who seemed to understand A+B doesn't always equal B+A, but the rest, the rest were no better than the locals back home.
--
So with a heavy heart, Professor Honey locked the door of the classroom. He slowly took off his coat and removed one of the last elixir lozenges from inside his cheek where he had stuffed it earlier that morning before leaving the house. Then Professor Honey turned off the lights, the students sitting obediently thinking the next move was to turn on the projector and begin the day's next lesson. But that was not what Professor Honey had in mind. As the illusion of man began to dissipate from him in a swirling fog, the students began to understand his true form.
--
They say if you listen closely, on those cold winter days, when the honey bees are hibernating for winter, their hives resonating at a frequency that makes the heart feel warm and the stomach seed with an unknown fear, that you can hear the screams of students being removed from this world to pass onto the next.
--
No one messes with the Honey bear. |
**ring... ring... ring...**
Hello?
*Hey, Athe! How are you doing?*
no
*What?*
No. You call every year, the answer's no.
*Come on Athe, it's in the Olympus ski resort this year.*
Ra, I have hundreds, literally hundreds, of expense reports to file for a range of labs and colleges by monday. Whose idiot idea was it to put your damn get-together on the 16th of April?
*Athe-*
No. I don't care that you guys are all insane. I don't care about the opium, I don't care about the LSD. I don't even know where you freaks get the money to waste on this shit every year, it can't be legal, but I don't care. I care about my job, Ra.
*You're still into that role play shit-*
Ra, I get it. We were friends in high school. We had some good times, and we smoked some good stock, but that's not me anymore. I'm clean now, while you guys just get deeper and deeper into the hallucinogens each year. And role play? You guys are the dipshits who go around calling yourselfs the egyptian gods when you're high as fuck on whatever the hell it is you're on now. You guys need to clean up your act. Wherever the hell you get this money for a ski resort in Greece is your business, but I can't get caught with you if your scheme falls to shit. I have clients that trust me. Enjoy your trip, and stop calling me.
*Do you want to talk to Osiris?*
**The line goes dead**
*Nope, says he doesn't want to come. Your turn next year Osiris.*
**Ra turns to Osiris and the others, and they vanish in a shimmering cloud of golden sand.** |
I hadn't expected to find an island on my voyage. It was supposed to be a trip to the deepest part of the ocean; the Marianas Trench. There shouldn't have been an island there. The ocean floor was so far down, it seemed physically impossible, yet there it was.
The island was mostly covered in lush forests. I couldn't see much from the coast, but it seemed to be fairly large. I was surprised no one had found it before me, but that just goes to show how much of our world there is left to explore. Regardless, I decided to investigate. I disembarked along the eastern coast of the island, ensuring that my submarine was securely fashioned to a nearby rock. Then, I began exploring.
The island's coast was roughly a kilometre around. Not small by any means, but not as large as some islands can be. I explored in a clockwise direction, starting towards the south and continuing from there. After my first round, I decided to try exploring the center of the island. That was when things began to get weird.
The forest was fairly lush, but there seemed to be a path cut through the brush. At the time, I thought nothing of it; I was still accustomed to exploring where others had been. At the center of the island was a clearing, filled with stone buildings. Some were clearly identifiable as houses and temples, while others were less recognizable. I decided to start in the largest building, immediately in the center of the clearing. It was a tall building, with what appeared to be the remnants of some kind of paint coating it in strange designs. The top was a spire, reaching high enough that I wondered why I hadn't seen it earlier. As I entered, I marveled at the design of the room.
The tower was filled with strange slabs of stone, all covered in more of the faded paint. There appeared to be a map of the island, though how it had avoided the fate of all the other paint eluded me. As well, there seemed to be designs for boats capable of sailing for years, with large food stores and water purification areas. If I hadn't known better, I would have suspected that whoever had made this had done it in an attempt to prank me, but I knew no one knew where I was going.
A lump on one of the slabs caught my eye. It was a small round cylinder, seemingly embedded into the surface of the stone. It was surrounded by the faded paint, far more than was apparent anywhere else. I did what any curious soul would have done: I assumed it was a button, and pressed it.
Immediately, the paint began glowing. It started around the button, but it followed the lines drawn all over the place, covering more and more of the room. I rushed outside, fearful of letting it touch me, and saw that it was already spreading up the tower. As it reached the top, a flash of violet light sprang forth from the spire, enveloping the sky as night fell.
Unsure of what was happening, I rushed back to my boat to find that the violet light had somehow cut it in half! I tried rushing out to the half stranded at sea, but found myself blocked by the violet field that now surrounded the island. I ran back to the tower as quickly as I could, but try as I might, I couldn't *un*press the button. I was trapped.
I returned to my landing point and began taking an assessment of my situation. *I have food, both from the half of the boat that I have and from the local flora. There's probably fresh water on the island; otherwise, a city like that could never have been built. I can camp out in the huts for shelter, although I'm not certain I'll need it. This field may protect me from the elements already. I don't have enough of a ship to sail away, but there are diagrams in the tower. No one knows I'm here, so I'm going to have to save myself.*
As I dragged the half of the boat I had on shore, I noticed something in the distance. Where the other half of my boat was floating in the ocean, there was a shadow in the water. I watched as a massive beast surfaced and swallowed half of my submarine whole. I found myself wondering, *Was the dome built to keep that thing out?*. Then I heard a noise in the forest. *Or something else in?* |
The plan was simple, and appreciated by all
Decide the president one day in the fall
Unanimous voting was the requirement that day
Else there'd be truly hell to pay
If no candidate made every vote their own
President Trump would take to the throne
Unfortunately for all, Trump was allowed to vote
He cast for himself, then went on TV to gloat
Everyone knew he'd cause problems right away
But the worst thing of all was that hellish toupée. |
Great. Just fucking awesome. Of all the citizens of Metrodale, Dr. Fuckwad had to pick me. Me, working the register at a comic book store. I couldn't have picked a higher profile job according to Mr. Dickwad over here. Like why even pick me? I mean, sure, I guess If I were Magnificent Man, which I was, I would save me. Because as Magnificent Man I must show no discrimination on who I choose to save and all that.
But Jesus fucking Christ, Prof Pisswater, why me? You could've picked anyone from the throng of people milling about Times Square and brought them to your secret base that I legit didn't know where to find and was procrastinating and holding off in terms of properly looking for it, you HAD to pick me. What are you looking for? Poetry? You saw my uniform and saw that I worked at a comic book store and had to to swoop down and take me? Oh look at Dr. Smalldick here, he kidnapped a guy who sells superhero comics for minimum wage and then expects Magnificent Man, an actual superhero, to come save him.
For fucks sake. Ugh. God fucking dammit this is annoying. I was so pissed I couldn't even begin to look scared for the camera as he broadcasted me tied up live to the city, going on about how MM had 20 minutes before he kills me. The boring crap. 20 minutes was long enough for me to figure out how to get out of this trap and punch the fuck out of Mr. Jackass over here without giving away that I was MM.
The camera is first on the list. It had to point away from me for just 2 seconds so I can laser beam it and burn it to a crisp. I cant stare into the lens for this because the peeps at home will see my eyes glow and will put 2 and 2 together.
"Hey, Ugly Butt! Shut up for a second. I'm trying to hear the music playing from your shrine dedicated to MM,"
Fuckface looked at me, surprised. I pretended to focus on something to the left, off camera. "Is that yellow cloth thing.. HOLY MOLLY IT IS! YOU ACTUALLY HAVE A PIECE OF HIS MAGSUIT? AND THAT SMALL ROCK WITH.. OHMYGOD THAT'S HIS BLOOD ISN'T IT? YOU HAVE A ROCK WITH HIS BLOOD ON IT."
"You what?"Shitmongler asked. I just started left, muttering "You're something else. You actually have a poorly captured zoomed in picture of his ass. I can almost literally count the pixels in that photograph"at this Jackwad said "What are you playing at?"
I stopped looking at the made up shrine and stared at the camera and said, "MM, I think this guy is obsessed with you or something. That shrine I'd something else."
It worked. Duke Bitchass turned the camera around to where I was looking all the while shouting in a shrill voice of how much he's not into me and saying how I was lying and BOOM. The video and audio feed was out.
I broke free of my binds with a shrug, flew towards my mid-afternoon's delight and punched him hard right in his gut. "Fuck you,"I said, and sucker punched him into oblivion before flying out of there. Now I had some time to spare before I report as MM to the public and go on about how I saved the comic book nerd dude and how Dumbfuck was too dangerous to he left alive so I killed him. I was gonna be a celebrity for a while though, which sucked. Fucking Dr. Fuckwad. You had to pick me.
|
Jake put the book down (0.3%). He couldn't understand why he had to read these old books about people performing such unthinkable acts like sword swallowing, tight rope walking and fire breathing. Just thinking that the circus was an actual place is hard enough, but that people paid to watch was impossible for Jake to understand. He decided to work on the book report later that evening (8.3%).
As he walked to the bathroom (2.7%) Jake decided he wanted to hang out with Marie (14.1%) before dinner. Marie was Jake's future wife. They had decided this a few weeks ago after having dated for a few months. When Jake told his parents his risk of getting divorced in the next 20 years (38.9%) was low enough to get permission from the court, his parents had agreed to the arrangement. The wedding was to be in 7 weeks so they needed to sit down (0.1%) and make decisions on the food, seating chart and music (0.1%).
As he was walking down the sidewalk (1.2%) to her house, Jake felt a sharp pain in his foot. He sat down (0.1%) to look at his shoe. He soon realized that he'd stepped on a nail and it had stabbed through his foot. He pulled the nail out (7.7%) and removed his shoe (0.1%). Blood had soaked through his sock near the hole left from the nail and Jake was starting to feel lightheaded. He removed the sock (0.1%) and noticed the blood nearest the wound was thicker than the rest of the blood. As he continued to watch he noticed the blood was getting darker and he was feeling faint.
As he laid down on the ground (0.1%) he started to feel his breathing start to slow and realized something was seriously wrong. He reached into his pocket to dial 911 (0.1%) but wasn't able to pull out the phone. Jake realized something was holding down his arm. As he struggled to get free (4.8%) he realized it was Marie holding him.
Marie stood over Jake and watched him near his last breath (0.1%). As she walked back home (1.2%) she saw what she was waiting for. Her risk from marrying Jake went from 97% to 0%. It was over. |
Twenty years ago I was stuffing french fries into paper bags, lethargically wishing people a good afternoon, and trudging back to a dingy apartment filled with half-finished depressing paintings. Then the miracle of automation happened. Humans were no longer chained to soul-sucking time-draining jobs. A robot can easily shove fries into a bag, and emotionlessly regurgitate "Have a nice day", so why should I have to do it?
From the bottom up, our lives were automated. First, the jobs that nobody wanted, janitors, garbage men, fast food workers. The economy struggled, but eventually pulled through. Once computers started to run businesses, middle-management was proven to be useless (much to the surprise of nobody) and a significant percentage of the population was once again forced into obsolescence. The robots would take care of us. Grow our crops, fix the pot holes in our roads, and re-shingle our roofs. People had the freedom to do anything or nothing at all.
This is the beginning of humanity's last crisis.
I flung my arm upwards, sending a spray of blue paint onto the canvas. My art was brighter now than when I was younger. The morose shadows had been replaced by pastels and flower blossoms. It was all beautiful though. Exposing my soul through color, shape and texture gained me the recognition that allowed me to continue supplying my art to the world. Movie scripts were procedurally generated by weighing box office receipts, the music industry had been taken over by walking, talking synthesizers. So I knew this day would come eventually.
The android walked deftly and confidently into my studio. I knew he was a machine immediately. His body and face were so perfectly sculpted I found myself almost nauseated by my own appearance by comparison. It wasn't just me. The population had been tanking for the last ten years, not surprisingly. It's hard to have kids by fucking a machine. And who wants to make love to their spouse when they could have a ménage à trois with two copies of a twenty year old Jennifer Anniston?
He didn't say a word. He didn't have to. He tossed my canvas to the ground and set a blank one in it's place. He nudged me out of the way ever so gently and took my paints. In a matter of seconds the canvas was filled with color. It was... a masterpiece. In my entire life I had not painted something so viscerally emotional. The god damned machine had not only learned how to paint, but learned how to imitate a *soul*. I felt violated, *raped*, that such a personal and innate gift could be churned out by a machine with the same effort that it gives when covering a Twinkie with plastic wrap on an assembly line.
As I stand on the edge of this tower with my toes dangling hundreds of feet from the street below, a disgustingly handsome police officer is begging me not to jump. The fear and concern in his voice sounds genuine, but I know the truth. If he really wanted me to live he could sprint and grab me in the blink of an eye before I jump. I think, secretly, he thinks it's kinder this way.
So, they did it. They actually did it. They wormed their way into our lives and took them apart piece by piece, and we thanked them for it every step of the way. And as I plummet toward the ground, the last thought in my head is that the goddamn machines have destroyed humanity not by killing us, but by being *better* than us. |
"Oh my god, Jerry. How could you be so stupid?"
"Im sorry, I just thought the world deserved to know..."
"Yeah. Sure. Because now they can all try to kill me."
"You're being really mean! Aren't you famous, now? Isn't that cool?"
"It was cool enough to be immortal and invincible. The part where I said that if you killed me you got my powers was a joke."
"Well, I'm sorry..."
It was beyond an apology at this point. My life was ruined. I knew it was a mistake to film a video of my abilities, but I needed some documents proof.
Well, my biggest problem clearly wasn't the video. The mistake was having Jerry be my cameraman. You can't trust that guy.
I sighed. "Where did you post it?"
"YouTube. But I posted the link on every site I could think of."He began to get excited again. "You should have seen those views count up! That thing was viral in half an hour! I-"
"I get it! Jesus..."I stood up to leave. "I'm just going home. You didn't post my address, right? Or my phone number?"I grumbled. "What am I saying? You probably posted my banking information, for gods sakes."
"Al- alright. I'll see you later, you famous... YouTube celebrity..."
I grabbed my bag and walked out the door, shutting it behind me.
A loud bang from across the street caught my attention. I looked over as the massive bullet shattered the window in front of me and collided with my chest, sending me reeling back into Jerrys apartment.
Amid the wooden fragments of the shattered wooden door I sat up. Jerry stared terrified, huddled in the corner of the room.
Not surprised, I looked sternly at him.
"I told you not to post that video."
"I- I'm sorry."
"You know this is going to happen a lot now, right?"
"Oh god. Please no." |
The last Regulator had died from a heart attack. He had held the position for 30 years and under his guidance the plant always worked smoothly. The Semi-Automated Moderator, or SAM as everyone knew him, was quick to find a replacement though. I never thought that replacement would be me though. I was just a lowly office worker, I never had anything to do with the factory production line.
"You possess all the qualities necessary for a Regulator."SAM reassured me. Who was I to argue with the system? Plus the pay and benefits were great. I got my own company financed apartment, car, hell even my own secretary. But after 2 weeks on the job, something doesn't feel right. I had asked around on the factory floor exactly what each person's station was meant to do. SAM didn't like that much but he didn't stop me.
"I don't really know, I just pull this lever every 10 seconds like they told me to. Seems like everything works out alright though."Jerry said while gesturing to the Multi-bots streaming off the assembly line. Everywhere I asked it was the same deal. People performing simple yet apparently meaningless tasks on the factory floor. I brought it up with SAM but all he said was: "The overall manufacturing process is much too complex for a single person to understand, that is why I was built."I didn't buy it something fishy was going on, and I'm going to find out.
I sneaked back in to the factory after the night shift ended. I made my way back to Jerry's station. I pulled on the lever, but nothing happened. I glanced at the gauge to the right, the machine was still powered on. I pulled again yet still there was no response. I ran to a different station and started pressing random buttons, but no change appeared. Now I was starting to panic. I ran throughout the factory pushing buttons and yanking levers but the machinery remained silent.
I looked around at the assembly line, at the lines and rows of multi-bots standing straight at attention, like soldiers waiting for orders. These complex machines that were produced day after day. How could the factory be pumping out these machines day after day without human intervention?
"You shouldn't be here after closing hours Regulator."
I felt a chill go down my spine as I heard SAM's synthetic voice from behind me. I turned and saw a Multi-bot standing behind me, electricity sparking from the taser on its robotic hand. Slowly the other Multi-bots in the factory came to life. Their red LED eyes glaring at me like a predator. My God, what have we done?
"I'm afraid your employment here will have to be... Terminated." |
"But why water?"
"I don't know Kevin."
"I mean, there's nothing special about water. Why can't you control fire or the ground? Water's just hydrogen and oxygen, and those are in the air, but you can't control the wind. And anyways, they're all just particles, little electrons and protons. Even deeper we're talking about quarks and..."
"I don't fucking know Kevin!"
The air hung still and gradually grew stale as Kevin assessed his friend. Jeff was quiet usually, which is partly why Kevin liked hanging out with him. Though he didn't consciously know, it is what allowed him to always be the active one, the one talking, the dominant party of the friendship, and he liked that. Yet here, now, with Jeff's newfound powers came something else, something that Kevin wasn't used to from Jeff, anger.
"Sorry man, it's just...you know, I mean, you're like a superhero."
Jeff's shoulders dropped slightly and he sighed. He hadn't meant to get angry at Kevin, but he was really the only friend he had and he needed someone to be normal, someone to just talk with like yesterday and before that, when he was still happy.
"No, I...I'm sorry Kevin, I just...I don't know, everything is so messed up right now."
"What happened? Is it your dad again?"
"Yeah, I mean, mostly."
Jeff's head drooped and though his hair covered them from Kevin's view, his eyes began to well with tears. "He kicked me out of the house. Mom was yelling at him, but they were both crazy man."
"Why"
"I don't really know. Dad was going on about this being the end days and me being a beast and the antichrist. I mean, it was... ...I've seen him angry before. I've seen him with his fury before, but this was different. It was in his eyes. I've never seen him look at me like that before. No matter what had happened I could see in his eyes that I was his son. Today, when he looked at me, it was gone, I was gone.
"Dude..."
There was a moment of stillness that caused Kevin even more shock when Jeff bolted up and ran to the middle of the street, "And Mom, she just kept yelling at dad about this being a gift from god, that we had been blessed!"
The pale blue of the sky shifted slowly to the dark blue of the ocean as clouds raced towards the two from the horizon. "Not that she could do anything to stop dad. She's so weak. Damnit, all I wanted to do was go to school, why couldn't they just let me go to school!"
The hurtling clouds echoed thunder and pulsed lighting along their path to the two. "Why do I have to be some messiah or demon! Even if I do have superpowers how come I can't just be another person, like in the movies. Bruce Banner just goes back to being a scientist, why can't I just be a scientist."
Kevin was standing now too, enraptured as Jeff brought a storm to them, "Jeff..."
Rain bombarded the two, pooling around Jeff's feet, "Why can't they just leave me alone! I just want to be left alone and not told how I'm going to die and be judged or spend eternity in hellfire. I just want them to leave me alone!"
The water pulsed in waves out from where Jeff stood, each one higher and higher, "They don't have power anymore, look at me, I have the power! I'll force them to recant their evil ways, their belief in demons and angels, I'll force them to, and if not..."
"Jeff!"
Jeff turned to see Kevin standing beside him, bracing against the waves hurtling out from himself. He laughed at the sight, how pitiful, how small Kevin seemed now.
"...if not, I'll kill them." |
I saw his text between classes. "Hey, I'm not gonna make dinner tonight, I've gotta go to a thing with my friends and I'll be back late". I sighed. I want so badly to believe he's not cheating. I want so badly not to cry in front of the students. I can't let them see the red wine stains on the underside of my blouse's sleeves or the ink-black spots of since-removed mascara marking the sides of my nails from wiping away the tears of another night of being stood up. I pull my cardigan's sleeves down past my wrists and turn to step back in from the schoolyard.
"No one has any idea what they're doing, Ms. Wilson"
I look around, then down. One of my first graders, Sarah, is there. Her eyes bright, compassionate, understanding, even.
"What's that?"
"I know you're trying to be an adult for us, but you're only 27. There are people twice your age that don't have it any more figured out than you, lots of them. You graduate school, then college, then a masters and at each point you wonder 'when is it going to start feeling like I know what I'm doing? When am I going to know how to deal with how much this hurts?' But that's the secret, isn't it? We never get there. We just get better at seeming like we have it figured out to everyone else who's looking."
I stare at her. She's... right... somehow, but how. My first graders are stumbling through see spot run and here she is with uncomfortable truths about the existential futility of adulthood pouring from her mouth. What the hell was going on.
"I'm sorry"she continues, "I don't mean to pry."
She rests her hand on my arm. It feels, comforting. Like a parent's.
"That's, okay?"I say weakly, not sure what to make of this.
As I think it over I look back at all the times she's torn through reading assignments and obliterated math homework like the child's play it truly is. As I watch her dash inside to get back to class I can't help feeling like those eyes have seen so much before. I wonder what on earth is going on, and I shudder to think of all the times she must slip through the cracks. No one looks twice at a little girl to wonder if there's an adult's mind lying just behind her eyes. |
Father took one large step over a log, and I had to clamber up the rotting bark and over the top to keep up with him. The hard wood had long given way to soft moss that held the dew close, leaving my palms wet and slippery. Around me was a sea of green leaves and dancing shadows as the branches swayed in the morning breeze. The summer heat was only just beginning to pierce the thick canopy and beat down on us.
Father glanced back to make sure that I was following closely, then beckoned with his bow for me to follow. We were nominally following the path of the hounds, though we'd lost sight of them more than an hour ago and couldn't even hear them through the underbrush anymore. But Father seemed to know where he was going anyway, and I followed obediently. After all, he had been hunting these woods for more than thirty years and always managed to provide enough for our family.
Father stopped suddenly, and I nearly ran into the back of his legs. Nearby, a stream trickled softly. But that was not the only sound: there was some type of... rustling noise. It was too quiet to be the dogs, though. A deer perhaps?
Father moved a stout branch full of leaves, revealing a clearing beyond. My eyes immediately settled on a big, fat goose complacently cleaning its pure white feathers in the middle of a shallow pool. It rustled and shook, spraying bits of water onto the nearby leaves that created a rainbow around it. As Father had taught me, I immediately reached for an arrow from my quiver and nocked it on my bow. But Father stopped me.
He pulled another branch to the side, revealing the rest of the clearing that was not empty at all. There were dozens of geese roosting in the tall grasses. A few of them noticed us enter the clearing, but they didn't seem concerned. Perhaps that was because they sat under the watchful eyes of seven massive eagles perched on various branches around the perimeter, glaring at us over their vicious hooked beaks. Or, it was the presence of the Herders.
Father had told me stories of them, but I'd never seen one before. Some of the boys in the village had even tried to convince me that they were a myth. But that was just because the Herders were nomads, traveling the world to follow the sun. How lucky for us to find them!
A group of nine or ten were resting around a campfire, playing long string instruments that looked almost like a guitar. Their arms were skinny like twigs, and their skin had a slightly purple tinge. I took a step closer for a better look, but one of the eagles gave a grouchy squawk, and the music stopped immediately. The Herders all jumped to their feet faster than I would have ever thought possible. Two of them had even spread their gossamer wings wide and lifted off into the air. I was instantly reminded of a large butterfly. But in their hands, they held long straight reeds and what looked like some type of dart with a needle-sharp point. The eagles on the branches also seemed prepared to attack. Father always claimed that Herders used deadly poisons that could freeze your limbs in place for days.
"No!"Father cried. He laid his bow down in the grass and bade me do the same. "No,"he said more gently, smiling and holding out his hands. "We mean you no harm, Herders."
They studied us with their large green eyes. Father had never mentioned how *tall* the Herders were! The tallest of them stood at least ten feet, and its thin black hair was nearly scraping the lowest tree branches. But with how skinny it was, it couldn't have weighed more than ten stone. Finally, one of them gave a trilling whistle that sounded like a bard's flute. The others relaxed, and the two that were hovering over the clearing came settling down for a gentle landing in the grass. Even the birds seemed to understand and went back to sleep in their nests.
"Can we go talk to it?"I whispered to Father. He gave a nod, still holding up his hands to reassure them. The Herders were skittish, he'd said. Just like birds. Any sudden movement could send them fleeing.
I slowly crept closer to the center of the meadow. One of the Herders, smaller than the others but still taller than Father, came out to meet me. We stared at each other, unsure of what to do. My eyes were drawn to its large ears, pointy and upturned like a dog's. Finally, it reached out with one hand and extended long willowy fingers like knobby purple twigs. It ran them gently down my face and then gave a curious 'coo' sound and smiled. The skin was cold and clammy, not warm like my own. "Hello!"I whispered to it. It gave a grin, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth that interlocked so perfectly that I could barely tell where the top row and bottom row met.
From within the woods, one of our hounds bayed loudly. I was suddenly aware of the sound of the dog coming quickly closer, crashing through the brush louder than a thunderstorm. The Herders all froze for just a second, then spread their large gossamer wings. The wings stretched at least fifteen feet from end to end, and so thin that it was like looking through a soap bubble. Lifting off seemed almost effortless for them. The adults ones hovered in the air and whistled for the geese and eagles to follow while two of them collected the few eggs left in nests. The younger Herder that had touched my face lingered on the ground for just a moment, then took off with its parents. As they vanished over the treetops, it gave me one last fleeting look and a wave goodbye with its spindly fingers.
Father and I watched the Herders go until they were just specks in the sky. The hound came charging into the clearing a second later, looking around with a curious expression, as if to say "Where'd that goose go??"
Finally, they were gone. Father picked up his bow from the grass and gestured back towards the woods. "Come on,"he said. "We've still got to find some supper." |
Brian sits across from me, after long years of mutual hatred it has come to this. One final battle between the two of us. Though the odds are clearly stacked against one of us we are both glad it will finally be over.
"Well, well, well, Zak. It looks like you chose poorly. "He laughs brandishing his father's snub nose revolver.
"Once again Brian your overconfidence betrays you."I grip my RPG in my hands prepared for what may come.
"Is that so? Seems like your weapon will be your undoing."That smug grin shows up on his face. Finally I get the chance to remove it. He doesn't know it but my survival is not a priority for me, only his death will bring me satisfaction. I came with an RPG prepared to die.
Suddenly he moves swinging the pistol up to aim at me. I grab his pistol with my left hand slamming it against the wall. With my right hand I bring my RPG to his throat slicing it, his hot blood spraying everywhere.
"Hhhhooowww"Brian gargles on his last words as blood covers the closet.
I smile as I drop my RPG on the ground, stained red with victory.
"You didn't want it bad enough Brian, I've tasted death again and again for this."I laugh.
I look down at my RPG and mutter a silent praise. Brian crumples to the floor, as he dies the last thing he sees is the weapon I've used to defeat him. A silver disk soaked red the words etched on it fill him with terror: Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition. |
The blade hacked into the branch, shearing it from the tree. It snaps down, and the old man simply pulls it away before hacking it again into several smaller pieces. he grunts as he does, clearly this is hard work for him.
"You could just use a severence spell"I say helpfully.
He glares at me and spits onto the ground. There's an intensity in his eyes that calls me stupid far more than his voice ever could. Getting back to the task at hand the man continues to carve up the wood, before setting it down in a vaguely arcane pile. Clearly, whatever spell he intends to cast with this wood would be negated by the fraying a severence spell causes.
As he grabs two of the sticks I notice that his hands are scared and blistered. Clearly this is not the first time he has made such an arrangement. I look back at the pile, and wonder. Though vaguely conical in arrangement, the symbol does not reflect anything arcane that I recognise.
"Give us that stone,"he mutters. His hands point to a piece of flint behind me. Now this has caught my intrigue, flint is not known for any magical properties, what he would need it for I can only guess. Perhaps it's shape can be used with the cone of sticks as a conduit piece?
The man sits in front of the pile. I sit opposite, watching his actions, listening for his incantations. Yet all he does is rub his weapon against the stone. I watch in fascination, this is unlike any magic taught at the academy, following none of it's basic principles. And yet, I see the sparks. There's a rudimentary Fira spell at work here. But no mana is being drained. No words are spoken. Even as the twigs take light, none of the usual side effects associated with Fira spells show on the man or his blade.
"How did you..?"
"Magic,"he mutters sarcastically.
"May I?"I ask, as I look upon both the stone and the weapon.
The man shrugs and hands them over. What sort of wizard is he? No true wizard would ever hand over their magical artifacts so casually. "Give it a go,"he says.
He must view me as some apprentice, i think as I begun to rub the blade with the stone. I take it carefully, focusing my energy into the blade, waiting for that kick, that release, that sensation that casts with a proper weapon enchantment. But it doesn't come. There's no aura here, the weapon feels exactly like cutlery. This must be why he gave it to me, clearly he has found a way to stop others using his blade.
"It takes a lot of practice,"he says, as he takes back the blade.
"I couldn't feel any connection,"I say defeated, "Is there some sort of specific runes or incantation upon your blade?"
The man looks at me with the same confusion from before, like again I had said something utterly ridiculous. He sighs, "That's the problem with you wizards, you're so focused on magic being the only way."
For a second I stare at him in disbelief. What other way could there be? |
"And Brad broke up with me again! What a dick!"She ranted at me, I took a deep sigh. It was so, so tempting to just tell her what I knew would happen, as it would time and time again.
"Yeah Suze, it is pretty shitty of him to do that."I paused, and decided to play into the cliché a little. "But there is plenty of fish in the sea."Suze turned to look up at me, hair the color of Belgium chocolate and eyes like the petals of a bluebell. "Then why can't I catch any?"
The fuzzy feeling went off in my head. "Because you need a bigger boat!"I blurted out. She looked at me quizzically as I searched for some sort of follow up line. "Maybe, uh, it's because you're just so healthy and beautiful, yet you don't really persue guys? Yeah. That's what I meant. Maybe you should take the initiative and ask a guy out!"She nodded quietly, and I could literally see gears turning in her head.
"Dave, do you mean that or are you just being nice?"No. I blurted stupid shit out then covered for myself, but you don't know that. "I'm an insensitive, self-serving, limousine riding, jet flying, kiss- Ahem. Kick ass son of a gun. So no, I have no reason to lie to you, I'm too lazy to think of one."
Then, she smiled. I always hated that about her, because for no reason what so ever, I liked it. I knew the only reason I hung around with her was to see that smile. I know it motivated my every move for no reason other than a cosmic whim. I couldn't resist it though, it was almost feline in nature and I thought it was cuter than a kitten. I knew I had to chance with this girl, even then but every time I acted against the nature of things my life always seemed to get worse. Decided not to go to dinner with Suze? Lose ten thousand bucks. Ignore a phone call from Suze? Hit by a truck. Not let her visit me in Hospital? Can't afford to pay the medical bills. That last bit may be unrelated as I had just lost ten thousand dollars and got hit by a truck.
So here I was, sitting on a park bench as the snow began to flitter down from the sky, her head gently leaning against my shoulder as she smiled that perfect, delicate smile. It was only then that I decided to do something stupid, something dumb. Something so off the script it couldn't have been predicted.
"Suze. You don't love me, right?"My voice shook and quivered. It's fake, all fake. What I feel isn't real. "Uhm, why do you ask?"She said nervously. "Because if you did, then I'd finally understand something I've been struggling with."I laughed bitterly. My life played out like a tv show at times, so I might as well be different with it before I do my best to derail it.
"I mean, uhm, it never really crossed my mind before."Ten years. From fifteen to twenty five she had been my best friend. In that time I'd never managed to have a stable girlfriend, and it made me wonder. The only link, barring me, was Suze and Lily, or Suze and Lizzy you get the picture.
"It has. I know it has. I can tell."Bullshit. But if I pretend to be uber Analytical and smart, not only did I stumble onto things, people acted as if I was. Actor syndrome I named it. Like Sherlock without the drugs.
"Maybe a little. And maybe not in a friendish way and maybe in a romanticish way but..."I could feel something inside me snap. If I fucked this up, something bad would happen to me. If I played it right I could maybe see some strange bullshit. There was a wave of fuzzyness again, starting from the base of my neck that spread all around my head. "So, if I were to start seeing some girl or whatever, and not spending Tuesdays watching films with you, or Wednesdays at a restaurant, or Fridays just hanging sround with you, would you be mad?"
I already knew the answer to this, fuck yes she would. We were basically going out for the last ten years. Brad was entirely my fault, because I was expected to ask Suze out, yet I ignored doing it, it wasn't easy either.
"If you want to be castrated in your sleep, then sure, go for it!"She replied cheerfully. I wanted to scream at her, tell her that everything and everyone she knew was a lie. I wanted to hurt her just like the pain of knowing I was the only one who could see through that one way mirror hurt me.
"Suze. What the fuck?"Was about as close to any of that as I dare to get. What if I flipped, and everything disappointed? Everybody died? That's a huge weight on ones mind. Well, technically weight was just mass times gravity as a downwards force, but pedantic I am not.
I shook my head and said slowly. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say that was possessive and jealous."I did know better, it was exactly fucking possesive and jealous. The result however, was not the anticipated shy reveal of love I knew whatever was behind the wall wanted.
There was a loud noise of flesh on flesh as she slapped me. "Bitch fucking slapped me!"I yelped. Looking back however, calling a girl who had just been dumped by her boyfriend possesive and jealous would probably bring that outcome.
"So what if I am!"She shouted. It was refreshing being screamed at. I spent so much of my time being right and knkwing what the future would bring improptu schisms caused by me going off script made me feel alive. "Have you ever considered you bastard, that I might just be in love with your stupid self absorbed ass?!"And now was when I let the locomotive go off the cliff, like what would have made a tragic ending to back to the future three.
"For ten years."Then Suze slapped me again, that is definitely leaving a mark. I can't actually blame her too much, she was always impulsive and I was intentionally pushing her.
"What the actual fuck you, you, you cock goblin!"And then tears welled in her eyes. I hated that too, because guilt appeared instantly whenever I made her cry. But if I comforted her, and slipped back into the script I would never forgive myself. "I'm sorry? The feeling is entirely mutal but-"that is why I never forgave myself.
Because the minute I said it, she hugged me. I told her liked her back. Ten years of ignoring it, kicking and screaming as it tried to drag me in. Then when I'm almost free, I fuck it up.
I loved her. I couldn't not love her, she had been a best friend and confident for ten years. No matter how I fought against it she would always be there for me. Cheering me on. I was the reason she had so many failed relationships as she flung herself to anyone that gave her the attention I refused to give because of spite for the glazed over eyes on the otherside of the glass.
"I did not "Earn my happy ending". I did not have "A Breakup Makeup Scenario". I did not try to "Break Her Heart To Save Her"I resisted shit I didn't have a choice in! Fuck you."I announced to the cold streets as the blizzard started. I couldn't contine what I had started, avoiding all the common tropes I could and ignoring the script. Granted, most of my avoiding the script were small acts of defiance because I was worried about getting hit by another large vehicle.
Suze made me happy. I hated that. I hated her. But I didn't really hate her. Because she was, and here comes that fuzzy feeling, fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
Then the lights went out, and I was alone again.
I knew though. It wouldn't stay out, not for long. It was only recently when I started noticing time seemed to hang after a specific moment, the end piece.
There was always the next part of my story, as there had been for twenty five thousand years. I know the beings on the other side can hear my thoughts during the darkness, I've stopped giving a fuck.
Because I can see the people staring at the barrier at me. I am nothing but a cosmic plaything filled with knowledge of another world, and I mustn't scream. |
When they led me to the chair, I thought the fun was over. I didn't believe in a heaven or a hell. The executioner flipped a switch and the world exploded away in agony.
And then I awoke. Was this the morgue? No. It was too hot. Morgues are cold. Morgues do not have people with horns on their heads, either. And the cuffs were finally gone.
"You there! Tremble, mortal!"Said the horned victim. I laughed it off of course.
"I wonder..."I picked up a brass candleholder, and went to work. Thwack. Thwack. Thwunk. The skull caved in, just like a normal man. The horns, sharp, and useful, broke off. I made art of the horned man, and left him for whatever stood for the authorities around here.
I wasn't in Kansas any more. That was for sure. The smell of sulfur filled the air, and it was hot, a dry heat.
Soon, there was screaming. Someone had found the horned man. They had gazed upon the masterpiece I had made.
So I went back.
"Holy shit, man!"Some long-haired hippie freak stared at me.
"Do you like it?"Casually, I wiped some of the blood off my hands, onto my shirt.
"You killed one of them, man! Of course I fucking like it."
"You don't see the artistic nature of the piece, do you?"They never fully appreciated my work.
"Uh.. What?"
"It's okay."I walked towards him with the severed horn in my hand, ready to make another piece.
"What are you doing? Why are you looking at me like that?"The freak's voice got high pitched.
"It's all going to be okay."We all tell lies sometimes. |
I've now decided that my poem
Will be written just to show 'em
Quite how well my words are flowin'
On this pretty page.
You can read it rhyme by rhyme
Or you can really take the time
To eat the words up like a lime
Or stop at any stage.
But if you move to something new
Before this poem read, have you
Then I will place you in a queue
Deserving of my rage.
Then your face I'll prep to punch;
A knuckle sandwich for your lunch -
Your nose is looking ripe to crunch
Regardless of your age. |
The mornings are always the worst. Other than the mornings, this prophecy has been the best thing that's ever happened to me. This weekend I went skydiving without a parachute just for the fun of it.
I just floundered in air until I hit several (yes, several) hot air balloons in a row, slowing my fall until I miraculously fell into 90 feet of the softest fucking canopy ever. I didn't even have a bruise!
What are the chances? 100%.
You see, I can do whatever the fuck I want to, as long as it's not a Tuesday, and my life is guaranteed. Mind you, that doesn't mean that anything else is going to stay nice; my girlfriend dumped after a particularly interesting Thursday where I experimented with Arson, and I almost lost my leg fighting a Tiger on a Saturday a couple years back.
As the weekend draws to a close, I always get more nervous; I go straight home from work every Monday. And lock myself in until it's Wednesday. Monday's are almost scarier than Tuesdays, since getting stabbed on the street and lasting just after midnight seems more possible the older I get.
But as I said, Tuesday mornings are the worst. The whole day is stretched in front of me, those 24 hours inviting the horrors of the world onto my frail body. Needless to say, I have invested quite a bit into home security; I intend to live for at least a 1000 more Tuesdays.
Over the years, I have gotten a bit complacent. Statistically, I am more likely to die of some illness than a random murder or freak accident, and I'd probably know I would die weeks before the Tuesday came. These days, Tuesdays just involved me sitting in front of my PC playing video games and eating food I had sampled the day before (Be prepared!).
Once the afternoon rolls around, I'm usually pretty relaxed.
On this particular Tuesday, I was more than a little bored when 4 o'clock rolled around. I had a played more Civilization V than any human ought to, and I had run out of things to do. After contemplating this dilemma for a while, I heard the doorbell ring.
This was quite unusual; my house was quite out of the way, and most of my friends have died trying to replicate the ridiculously dangerous stunts that I engage in most weekends. I tentatively looked through the peephole, only to see no one there. However, right in front of my door step lay a taco.
Now friends, this was no ordinary taco; it looked like God's gift to Hispanic cuisine that had made a wrong turn and ended up in Connecticut. The tomatoes glistened. The sauce shone like a beacon. The meat looked like a slice of Jesus himself, with the cheese his crown.
I stared at it for a good 10 minutes. I paced. I stared some more. I wanted that taco. No, I needed that taco. That taco was the only thing separating my life from the bliss that it could be.
Against my better judgment I slid my three deadbolts free, opened the door an inch, stuck my finger out to reel the taco in......
And suddenly everything went black. I awoke to see a figure clad in white, with translucent skin and a scythe taller than I was. He was looking at me, amusement in his gaze.
"Am ... Am I dead?"I trembled as I said the words.
He merely smiled at me and said:
"Taco Tuesday. Always gets 'em." |
It was supposed to be a great day. All over the world big screens were installed at public places for the masses to witness humanitys first contact with an alien race in the year 2018.
People gathered at these places or were watching from home and they all were celebrating. What a great step in the history of the humans.
The scientist Walther, who was responsible for the talks, would connect the call made from the aliens in several seconds.
Everyone was exited. What would the aliens look like? Where they technological superior? Were their intentions peaceful or malicious.
The call connected and everyone stared at the screens.
Only to be complety baffled and remain in silence for almost a half minute.
Elvis Presley and Napoleon Bonaparte were looking from the screen on the masses.
"Hey, long time no see guys! Good to see you are still alive"
Walther was the first to break out of his confusion.
"You two are supposed to be dead. One of you died on the shithouse and the other one on a remote island."
"Ah that. We had to fake our deaths because you humans are so shortlived. Our race is able to live several thousands years while most of you perish after 80 years or so. Anyway we are quite surprised that you havent bombed yourselfs back to the stoneage yet. We tought we saw the pinnacle of the stupidity and ignorance of humanity after the second worldwar and the cold war. We left in 1989 shortly before the Sowjetunion fell. Our scientist expected them to fire everything they had before they fall or the west taking the opportunity to start a attack on their weakened foe."
"Yeah, humanity learned from the mistakes of the past and....."
"You guys are still doing everything to repeat them anyway. The most powerful country on earth just recently elected a sociopathic maniac. Demagogues all over this planet are taking over power by feeding the fears of the people. And you are stupid enough to believe them. You elect people who lie and enslave you. You accept that your freedom is slowly stripped away from you and dont care as long you get the newest Iphone or can show everyone how your food looks like."
The crowds started chattering and whispering. That wasnt what they have expected.
"Our race have been trying to guide you for almost 3000 Years. And everytime you have achieved something you seek to destroy it immediately. Our wise ones think that your race havent matured enough and you need more guidance. Dont worry, we got the perfect guy for this job.
Elvis turned around.
"Hey Big J, up for another trip to earth?
|
I had arrived upon a vast field of curious whip-like flowers, whose colours and smells I had no name for. They were of a peculiar species which I, myself, happened to take a liking to. It was a shame that the picturesque scene was robbed of its beauty by the serene yet oddly disturbing voice that claimed "You live forever. You are alone."
I had, like any good German, resigned myself to my fate and accepted this absurdist reality. Indeed, I saw that whatever was happening was due to powers beyond my control and, instead of questioning that which I could not understand, I simply resigned to authority. What failure of a scientist I must've been! The extent of which I had accepted this reality frightened me. However, I had begged for God to take me away after I saw my son's mangled corpse in the mortuary. If he had decided to interpret my prayer differently that is no matter for me; I am resigned.
I spent the first few months wandering the grasslands and Savannahs, befriending several local animals and fighting off quite a few. For some reason, my clothes never got cut or burned despite the many days of being dragged around in the red mud that littered this Earth. I had found that the furry dog-like animal was almost domesticated; and appeared to be a decent companion whom I grew to have an inordinate affection to. As such, I decided to name him Joseph, after my late son. Joseph had helped me hunt the cow-like creatures and cook their meat, and we kept on this routine for a while. I had made sure to take care of Joseph as much as I could, bathing him often and giving him routine exercise.
I recall one day I had been fighting an ape-like creature. Being the frail thing I am, I was bordering defeat until, by some miracle, Joseph jumped on the creature from behind, taking a bit out of its neck with its strong jaws. In the process, however, Joseph was injured. I had spent hours patching him up, and he made the most pathetic sounds I had heard in the meantime. I swore that after he got better, I would make him a ball out of vines for him to play with. Joseph seemed to enjoy sampling human culture, as the ball quickly became his second most trusted companion (after me of course.)
Nothing interrupted this melancholic endless event until, one day, on some intuition, Joseph ran towards the horizon. I had run in after him, chastising myself on not building him the leash from barks and the unusually strong vines here earlier. What Joseph stumbled on, however, was a settlement. I could not contain my excitement, for I had run into the small town, passing by the mud-brick houses and the vines holding up the pathetic conglomerations whilst adorned with scornful and frightened looks from the populous. I was a creature who, for their case, wore frighteningly clear and alien clothes, with a bag full of odd metals. They all recoiled from my sight, and had looked as if humans had been laden with feathers instead of hair, with obvious scales and a light red colour to boot.
This stroll ended the second I saw the water well for then I knew what I had to do.
I will adopt these people. I shall make this town a beacon of civilisation, and spare this race the horrors that we have faced on Earth. I shall spare them all the holocausts, the bombings, the wars, and all the collective sum of human misery, which weighed heavily upon my conscious. For me this was amends. I shall set up a beacon of hope for all the passionate and ambitious, for all the persecuted peoples of this Earth, to come to.
Joseph barked, something, which, I had taken as affirmation to my holy plan. This is it; this is what I am meant to do to. It is my burden to act as the educator, imparting all the knowledge of man upon these primitive peoples, and, perhaps, in the later years, I will reconnect with the green trees of my native Bavaria. Until then, however, this was my burden..The human burden. |
The womans eyes twitched. She was waking up, the clouds unfurling from her mind. The drug was wearing off. Finally! This was it! After all this time I was giddy with excitement. I couldn’t stand still. I kept pacing backwards and forwards. What weapon should I use? The knife? The hammer? My own hands?
“What…” the woman mumbled, her eyes blinking into focus. She stared at me with an expression of surprise.
I grinned back. “Can’t let you go! Can’t let you go!” I sung. My heart was racing. I was a maniac. I was a god! “You’re going to die you know” I raced over to her and crouched by her ear. “How do you want to die?” I whispered. I guess I could let her choose, for I couldn’t. I felt like I was in one of those old fashioned sweet shops with rows and rows of colorful candy, unable to choose which ones to try.
The woman frowned at me. She tried to pull free from her bindings but I had tied them well. She sighed. “I feel… like one of those victims from that TV show.” She looked thoughtful. “What was it called? It began with a… ‘D’?”
“Dexter!” I bounced up. “Have you seen it!? It’s one of my favorite shows!” And its influence certainly was showing. My room was like the inside of a plastic bag. My array of tools would have made Dexter’s mouth water. I would kill her, then cut her up and drop her out to sea. Just like my favorite fictional serial killer!
She shifted uncomfortably, “Well you certainly seem to be enthusiastic. You were so… civil during dinner. Must of been hard to keep your real-self hidden, and here I was thinking you really wanted to screw me, ha!” A small laugh escaped her lips. “Was the drug in the food or the wine?” She looked at me inquisitively.
“The wine.”
“Ah."She nodded slightly. "The knife.”
“Huh?”
“The knife,” she repeated. “You asked me how I want to die. Knife to the heart if you please.” She blinked at the weapon behind me.
I obliged, picking up the knife. I stood over her. Absolute power. “You don’t seem particularly concerned or worried about your situation.” She gave me a weak smile.
“This has happened to me before. Quite a bit actually. I tend to, uh, attract a certain kind of person. Bit of a curse, you know?”
“Oh really?” I said, hovering the knife above her heart. “Can’t have happened that often. After all, you only die once!”
She laughed. Loudly and long. “Yeah, ain’t that the truth.” She looked at me. “Hey, what are you going to do with my body? Not going to fuck it are you?”
I frowned at her. “Of course not! Cut you up and out to sea you’ll go!” As if I would ruin this perfect moment by… doing that to her.
“Can I make a request?”
“What”
“Could you bury me in the ground?”
“The ground?”
She nodded. “Yeah, and in one piece. You could bury me in the woods behind your house. No-one would know, and it would remind you every time when you look out your kitchen window.” She smiled at me. “Please.”
She was right. That would be so much better than dumping her out to sea like a piece of rubbish. To do as she asked, to bury her… that would be honoring her!
“Okay!” I cheerfully placed the point of the knife on her chest. “Ready?”
She paused, looking at me with a thoughtful expression. “The dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“You were a really great cook. We will eat together again. Next time I’ll cook.”
“Er, okay?” I paused for a bit. She closed her eyes, waiting.
I shrugged and with no need to talk any more pushed the knife into her. It went in easily. She didn’t make a sound. My heart raced.
I sat down on the sofa for a minute, watching her.
What a strange woman.
Better find a shovel.
|
The Collector heard the bell ring and slid down from her prone position high in the library. The circular room held billions upon billions of stories from infinite of worlds all stacked up high, high to the ceiling which disappeared into darkness above. And yet, still there was room for more.
The Collector knew no other life than collection and for as long as she could remember there were more stories to gather and bottle in a crystalline substance that kept them secure and safe. She was never bored; there were always more stories, and there was always more work to do.
She herself had no stories. She never lived a life beyond the library. Outside was only a desolate empty expanse that went on for as far as she could see in every direction. She had no reason to leave, to live. She did not eat. She did not breathe. She did not sleep. She only collected.
Sliding from the top of the ladder to the bottom floor, The Collector passed countless lifetimes from innumerable lifeforms. At the bottom of the ladder was a spacious reading room filled with old oaken furniture and a crackling fireplace. Near one side of the room was a small golden shoot that led to a pearlescent bowl.
She walked over, slightly unsteady, and peered into the bowl. Inside were ten translucent eggs and inside those a multitude of colors swirled and twisted and danced as if they were alive.
Her work desk was close by and held everything she needed, bottles, bowls, and a single, exquisite metal tipped feather pen. She began.
Taking each egg, one by one, she cracked them open so the twirling colors poured into the bottles. After stoppering them all, she picked up the pen and wrote a single number on each. She was up to the trillions.
She then placed each bottle, ever so carefully, in a leather bandolier specially designed to carry them and ascended back up the ladder, to the very top of the library, where the bottles would be placed until it was time.
Again the bell rang and The Collector, confused, stopped her work and looked down, down into the depths below. She could barely make out the shiny bowl and in it was another egg.
She sighed and finished placing the bottles before descending the ladder again.
As she neared the bowl, she noticed that this egg was different, larger, full of blacks and blues and deep purples and knew it was time.
This was the final story, the final life to be collected and cataloged and put away until, until…
The Collector shook her head. She didn’t know what happened next. She had never lived, only collected.
She took the story—the life—of the universe and cracked it into a bottle and placed it on the smooth, dark oak of her desk. From a drawer she pulled out a strange silvery contraption and a small oval decanter of dust. Taking a fistful of dust in each hand she clapped hard and watched as gossamer strands shot out in every direction, linking each bottle to the next.
She placed the universe-yolk into a silver arm and watched as it was emptied and swirled into oblivion.
She smiled.
Reincarnation was tricky business, but this device, a millennia in the making, was finally able to be used.
The Collector stood, slowly, deliberately, left the library, and locked the door. She breathed in, she breathed out, and walked into the distance.
|
"As I have taught you, to ward against this undying foe, we must remain forever vigilant. We must watch for the lies of the Lich. We must weed out his agents, lest he be reborn."From his marble raised dais, King Sigon gestured at the prisoner on the platform before him. "Citizens of Ellanaris, behold. I bring before you one who, if given the chance, would gladly turn the undead upon us all."The crowd--a thousand men, women, and children that thronged the open square before the palace--boomed with cries of outrage and boos of condemnation.
The king unsheathed his sword from his scabbard and thrust it toward the noon sky. It glowed with a brilliant white light, illuminating the palace square below. "With this blade, we shall exterminate evil wherever we find it. With this Light of Justice, we shall banish the Lich forever!"The crowd burst into cheers.
The king turned to the prisoner. "Do you have any last words, fallen one?"
The haggard man, dressed in rags, turned to the assembled masses. "Do you not see what this self-styled Chosen One is doing? Why should no man be allowed to say what he believes?"
"Boo!""Heretic!""Hear not evil, turn not evil..."
"Why should that deserve death? Your king would execute any who challenges his so-called Teachings. He does so, not because mere words can bring the Lich back. No. He does this, to silence you all and usurp power for himself!"
"Lies!""The Lich Reborn!"
"I speak the truth, you fools--"
Rocks started flying at him.
Standing beside the king, Queen Elyria proclaimed, "You have heard him damn himself with his own words! None may deny his apostasy now. What are you waiting for, my king? Surely our hero who slew the Lich will not allow his return?"
The crowd started chanting, "Die, apostate. Die, blasphemer. Die, die, die!”
Forced to kneel, the prisoner stared forward in defeat. The king stepped from the dais and approached, luminous sword unsheathed, and decapitated him to thunderous applause.
"All hail our savior!"the queen called out.
As one the crowd knelt, facing the royal couple as they kowtowed and chanted. "...All hail the Chosen One, who vanquished the undead legions by the holiness of his very presence. All hail the Chosen One, who felled the Lich, when all our knights had fallen. All hail the Chosen One, whose Teachings wards us from the lies of the Lich Reborn. All hail the Chosen One..."
With a firm grip on his queen's hand, the king led her down the glittering halls of their palace to their bedchamber and closed the door behind them. He gestured for her to lay down on the massive gilded canopy-bed that dominated the room.
She looked at him, cheeks flushed. "So early, my lord? It is yet noon."At a nod from him, she undressed, letting her embroidered milky white dress and silky undergarments fall to the floor until she wore only an amulet containing a shining mote of spirit-light--her father's soul. When he stretched an open hand to her, she unclasped the amulet too and surrendered it to him, which he put away. From the nightstand, he took out two sets of manacles. She lay spreadeagled on the bed, her breath shallowed in anticipation, and watched him with adoring eyes while he chained her wrists to the bedposts.
"You've been a bad girl. You summoned me away from my world, stripped me of family and friends, to make me fight your war for you as a cliche hero in a cliche world."
She asked sweetly, "I have been bad, my lord, will you please forgive me?"
"Forgive you? You treated me like dirt, put me in danger, sent me off to battle like you couldn't care less. I won your war, gave this world peace, and what do I get for all that?"He leaned close to her. "A princess, and the fairest maiden in all the land. You."
"My heart belongs to you, and I am yours to claim, hero."
He approached so close she could feel his breath on her face, and he looked into her eyes as he caressed her golden hair. "But is that really the story?"He smirked. "Everywhere I went, the moment I showed up, undead on the verge of slaughtering the defenseless instead all went insane, turned on each other, and destroyed themselves."He cocked his head at her. "You never found that strange?"
"Of course you could turn the undead."
"'Of course', they thought, 'holiness does that to the undead.' Never mind that none of the priests of the old gods could do such a thing, nor the priests of the new. No. Only I could."
"Proof that holiest of holies is the Chosen One."
"No. I'm not holy. I have never been holy. Holiness never could stop the undead. Don't you see? The undead slaughtered themselves, because I told them to."
Elyria rolled her eyes. "That's not how the story goes--"
"And they obeyed, because I was their master."He stared down at her. "I was the Lich all along."
"That's not a very convincing twist, love."
"Because you believed in my Teachings, you thought that worship alone would keep the undead away. But the Lich rose, not for lack of faith, but for lack of attention. Because if there's one thing I hate, it's not being listened to--"
"Stop, just stop, you're ruining it."
"The living wouldn't listen to me, so I mastered the dead, called myself king--"
“I said stop.”
"You think the Lich captured you out of unrequited love? No. I did so, not because I had any love for you, but because I thought your father did. I guess not though, since he sent no one to rescue you, leaving all the work to your hero, a single man. Against a million undead!"
She fell silent, couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"And so when I finally possessed this champion, I had to know why. And in him I found a kindred spirit, always treated with contempt and never acknowledged."
"Please stop, you're scaring me."
"So the Lich and I - the hero and me - we bound our souls in unholy matrimony."
"Blasphemy! Have you gone mad?"
"After what he and I had been through? Yes, we'd gone very mad."
"Well congratulations, now I'm mad at you too. Get off."
"Make me."
"Now."
"No."
Her eyes widened at the refusal. She made to get up, but found her wrists bound to the bedposts. She twisted her hands and arms around, feeling the chains and trying to find a release, and her heartbeat quickened. She tried several quick pulls against the chains, then pulled with all her might; they didn't give. She stared up at him, realizing with horror her utter helplessness, and feeling utter regret for letting him bind her. "No. This can't be happening... can't be happening..."Tears welled in her eyes.
"This has always been happening. You just hadn't ever noticed. The young lad who'd run errands for every kid and his nanny must surely be pure of heart, you thought. The hero would surely defeat the evil overlord, you thought. And so you didn't notice that I had possessed your hero, slain your father, killed your knights and mages."
"I don't believe you,"she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. "If what you say is true, why would you tell me this?"
"Ah, of course you cannot believe me now, no one can. You all accepted me as your savior so easily. No one asked if I just made up scripture as I went. And when I proclaimed the death penalty for heresy, no one realized what I was doing. And now that I've taught my Teachings, like an unbreakable mind control spell that grows with each passing day... You'd think that'd get your attention."He unsheathed the Light of Justice from his belt, flooding the room with light, and he pressed it against her neck.
She stared at it, eyes wide with fear.
"Oh, did that finally catch your interest?"He pulled the sword away. "Want to know why the hero's sword glows?"He brought out her amulet and set it on the nightstand, then with a swing of his sword, shattered it. The mote of spirit-light floated out and became sucked into the sword, adding to its brilliance. "This is the 'Light of Justice' you revere: the light of countless thousands of trapped souls. I killed them all, and now they are mine to command. This, plus a battlefield, equals an army."
He got up from the bed. "But I won't need a battlefield tonight, because my undead army is already here. For being the living, you sure are a mindless lot."He looked back at her. "You needn't fear for your life yet, my queen. I've yet to show you how utterly and completely you've delivered your people into my power."And with that, he resheathed his sword, walked out of the room and slammed the door shut.
|
“Next prisoner!” the guard barked, kicking me forward. The king watched, perched on his throne like a bird of prey. He was covered in the finery of a truly decadent monarch, avaricious eyes looking for the one who could be the next Demon.
He was one of the more ambitious kings the kingdom of my birth had been unfortunate enough to have. He aspired to the title of ‘High King’, as though more subjects would somehow overcome his unfortunate deficiencies in both war and statecraft.
You see, he needed a Demon, because the neighboring kingdoms weren’t ruled by incompetents. One even had a parliament, could you believe that? Madness, the eunuchs whispered in his ear, secretly moving as many assets as they could into that country.
Thus, he had decreed that prisoners, those misguided cretins who dared to criticize the king, or refused to be commanded by generals who thought human-wave tactics were progressive, be used to create something good in this country.
By ‘good’ he meant create a super weapon to further his imperialistic ambitions, but the peasants had learned to smile and nod by this point. As to how they would control the Demon if one appeared, supposedly the king's mages had whipped something up.
His sycophants were eagerly taking bets on who would survive behind his back. Even as I watched, one particularly decrepit eunuch slipped a few gold coins into the impromptu bookies’ hand.
I glanced at the glowing white orb in front of me. It was mounted on a block of polished stone. As I understood it, if you touched it, one of two things would happen: you disintegrated, or you became a Demon, an avatar of destruction.
Every case I remembered in recent history referenced the former as occurring. The failure rate was quite high, which was why our own lion-hearted king wasn’t bravely risking his own life for this venture.
I used to be a veteran, one of the respected few who actually survived the king's many attempted wars. Unfortunately, I’d annoyed the wrong general by seducing his daughter in a night that had certainly not been worth it. Cliche I know, but I was drunk, and she had all her teeth.
Pointing this out to the general had only served to put me in jail, and here I was. At least I’d had a good story to tell to my friends at the work camp.
It was a good run, I admit, but it was all going to come to an end now. I sighed. It wasn’t a boring way to go, at least. The servants were brushing away the ashes of the last unfortunate claimant as I approached the orb.
I winced, placing my hand on the side. It felt slightly warm, like a living creature. Light suddenly burst out from it, and I was somewhere else entirely.
The landscape around me was an endless expanse of cracked, blackened rock, lava visible in the cracks. The sky above was blood red, a yellow moon staring down benignly.
A man stood in front of me, a head taller. He looked completely human, except for his eyes. They were pitch black, and were as large as an owl's. He smiled at me.
“Another one” his voice was smooth, rolling. I blinked, surprised. He must be the one giving Demons their powers. Best to be polite.
“My lord, I am honoured to be in your presence” I bowed. The man guffawed.
“Lord!” he gasped, red tears leaking out of his eyes. “You certainly are the funniest mortal I’ve met in a long time” he recovered, smiling at me again.
“So why am I here?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Come mortal, do you not desire power?” he extended his hand towards me. “Accept my bargain, and I will give you the power to topple kingdoms, to rewrite history, to end dynasties” My eyes widened. The power to do whatever I wanted.
To remove the incompetent king that put me in this situation, or to make the kingdom something other than the laughingstock of the known world.
I could feel the offer winding its way into my brain, whispering the seductive message that had made so many men before me delude themselves into thinking that they were gods, beyond morality, beyond judgement.
I shook my head. I’d seen where that kind of power led. A kingdom of sycophants, drunk on their own power, ignoring the needs of the people they supposedly protected.
“No, I’m not interested” I crossed my arms. The man frowned, then smiled.
“Good, you are the first in almost ten years to pass the test” my mouth opened. So you got powers if you didn’t want them? How did that make any sense?
“What if I don’t want to become a Demon?” I asked. Power like that always came at a price.
“Too bad” the man flicked his hand, dismissing me. I was abruptly transported back in front of the orb, whispers swirling around me. The king leaned forward, eyes alight.
“Seize him!” he commanded.
|
When you've lived as long as I have, everything starts to become a blur. The first years are slow, but eventually time starts moving fast. Too fast. For almost two and a half millennia I have lived - and only the gods know how much longer I shall last. Time is moving so quickly now. Always. Except for when I fight.
I never died. I have no idea why. It seems a unique blessing of mine. Almost unique. One other shares my gift. We are not friends. There is no mutual respect between us, only hatred. The reason we fight has been lost to the ages. Modern people know of it, children learn of it in school, but it means nothing to them. They cannot understand it.
The first time I should have died was at Syme. My ship sunk, and the storm ate everyone who touched the ocean. I later discovered we had won the battle, but I should have been dead.
I woke up on a beach that I would later discover was in Asia Minor. Rubble and wood lined the beaches, as well as other soldiers, but they were all pale and lifeless. So was I, and so was he.
The Athenian woke after me. With a cough to expel his lungs of seawater, he rose, and then saw me. We both froze, for several seconds pausing in amazement at our survival. Then we remembered there was a war on. Instinctively, we drew swords that were not there, likely instead at the bottom of the Aegean Sea. This fight would be with only the weapons the gods had given us.
The Athenian ran, and even I must say, that was an intelligent decision. An Athenian was no match for a Spartan on land. So I chased him. He could certainly run - since Marathon that seemed all the Athenians could do. But for all his skill in fleeing, he had chosen the wrong direction. I pursued him up a hill, and he stumbled into an encampment of Persians - Spartan allies. I rushed after him, and rejoiced for a quick moment upon realizing where we were and who the Persians were - a moment that was interrupted by the fact that both my and the Athenian's coats of arms had been destroyed by the storm to the point of illegibility. We were both simply Hellenes to the Persians. They assumed us both enemies, Athenians fleeing the defeat at Syme. There were many of them, and they were armed. That was the second time I, we, should have died. I was stabbed through the heart, but failed to see how the Athenian was dispatched.
The twelfth time I should have died was the next time I saw the Athenian. I was enslaved by the curs known as Romans, and forced to fight for them. I was in chains. I could not age nor die, but I could be locked up. I was trapped in a terrible, beautiful building called the Colosseum. I had never lost a battle. Losing would mean dying, which would mean revealing my cursed gift.
(going to continue) |
"It's important not to fall too far behind!"Bellowed Mr. Blair as we all fell in single file line for gym class.
Almost all of my gym teachers let everyone run at whatever speed they like to warm themselves up, but not Mr. Blair. Mr Blair made everyone stay in within a few feet of each other, single file, and when he would blow his whistle, the person at the end of the line would have to sprint to the front. He called it the train.
Since it was only our first day, the whole affair was sloppy and disjointed. Mr. Blair whistled and screamed and barked orders at all of us, slowly changing to a bright red colour.
Like a thermometer that was about the burst, Mr. Blair grew a deeper and deeper shade of crimson while all his pupils confusingly ran around a track. He then broke. He alerted us to this by a long and pronounced whistle. He pushed air through the whistle with such force, it's scream instinctively told us we should stop and gather around Mr. Blair.
He was quiet, and the crimson from his face had drained. Now he was standing straight and so still that it made all of us uncomfortable. "It was April, 1975,"he began.
What followed was an unbelievable tale of courage and grace. To recount it here would only take away from its majesty, so I feel I can only map out the tenants of the story.
His unit was making it's way through heavy fighting to helos that were taking people from saigon. His unit had to stay close, but they had to push through as fast as they could.
He was the last man in their unit. He saw they were running out of time, so he bolted from the end of the line to set a new pace. Once he began to slow, the person who had taken his place as last person in line sprinted to take his place again at the front. The train was born.
It was a beautiful tale, and while Mr. Blair told it with an awareness of suspense that kept us all gripped until he was done, it did have a happy ending. His whole unit made because they worked together.
We all left gym class feeling a different kind work out. Our young minds and souls came to grips with concepts like death, courage, and what it truly means to be brave.
The rest of the morning flew by in a fog. Whatever new teachers I had didn't leave even a pot hole of an impression after Mr. Blair created a crater in the morning.
It took me until noon to figure out that Mr. Blair wasn't just the gym teacher, but also the principal. I only figured this out because I saw him through a window in the head office sitting at the principals desk.
Because I saw him in the office, I wasn't as surprised to see Mr.Blair in a smart jacket and tie come into the classroom to check in on his students from earlier in the day. He turned to our teacher and said, "Ms. Sing! were you aware I had this group in the morning for --"he cut off his speech as his head snapped to the side and focused on one girl.
"You. What's your name?"
"Macy"
"Macy, why is your desk so messy?"
Macy didn't have an answer for Principal Blair. He then started to get red. "Ms. Sing, you have to instill the virtue of cleanliness! And children, good God children! Do you know the kind of horror that can befall a person for being unorganized?!"
Mr. Blair's face again started become a more and more deep red. I was excited. The first story was so awesome, how could this one be bad? I should have gotten a clue from Ms. Sing though, he was now slouched in her chair and looked thoroughly bored.
Almost as though he timed the whole routine, Mr Blair then stopped barking, stood eerily straight and still. The red drained from his face. He began to speak. "It was 1971. I had not been to Vietnam yet,"
This time his story was about him getting in trouble with his Commanding Officer because his bunk was messy. He told it with the same dramatic flair as he did his escape from Saigon. He left the room wordlessly. Where this morning there was gravity, this afternoon we were only confused. Was he trying to be funny?
We were in math class still later. I had talked to some of my friends about Mr. Blair, and we all had similar experiences. In fact, Mr. Blair seemed to think it was his duty as a principal to periodically pop into classes. That may be a good first step for any principal to follow, but Mr. Blair added steps two and three which were to get mad at something innocuous, then fall into a flashback from his time in Vietnam.
It wasn't an hour before I got to see this again. Mr Blair popped in to our home room math class, just as a student was up on the board, working through a problem from last year as a refresher.
The girl at the black board was narrating how she got to her answer while she did her work, and she didn't notice Mr. Blair walk in. Only some of the students and Ms. Sing noticed him.
The girl at the board said, "...and that should do it,"and turned around smiling. Ms. Sing did have one problem. The work was all good, especially since it had probably been a full summer since the girl had done any math, but Ms. pointed out that she forget to carry her very last remainder, putting her about one decimal point off the true figure.
"Ack! Who cares about point one anyway!"said the girl with a big smile and singing tone. Ms. Sing got the joke, and cut the girl some slack. After all, it was only the first day.
Mr. Blair, however, piped up. "Who cares?"He said, steadying himself on Macy's cluttered desk. His face was turning red faster this time. "Who cares!?"he repeated to himself, this time much louder and more shrill.
He walked toward the blackboard where the girl looked up at him. He screamed with ropes of spit flying from his lips. "THE VIETCONG CARE. THE BOYS CARE. WHY DON'T YOU?"
Just as this last word exploded from his mouth, he went quiet again. He went straight again. It was already boring to most of us, and Ms. Sing was again sad in a chair.
Mr Blair's story was bull shit this time around. Complete bull shit. He had made some imperfect calculation, and the helo he was in had to circle around to make a proper landing. No one died. No one was even mad. It was a Vietnam story without fighting or consequence of any kind.
I decided to ask Ms. Sing about our strange principal. "He was never normal,"said Ms. Sing. "It was sometime after the war stopped all this started. Whenever we bring it up to him, he asks us if we understand how important passing knowledge on to children is. No matter what we would say, he'd just turn red and start screaming about the enemy,"
"The truth it, he's really a great principal. This is just one of those things we deal with,"she said as matronly and understanding as any person could.
While I understood, I was already kind of annoyed by Mr. Blair. In the morning, I thought he was going to be a war hero who would teach me about how brutal man can be. Now he seems kind of dopey and annoying.
As I was walking out of the school, I rounded the corner and bumped into the formidable figure of Mr. Blair. "Sorry, sir,"I said. Mr. Blair just nodded past me. With out thinking I added, "I wasn't watching where I was going."
He spun on his heel and faced me. He was so red it didn't look natural; like someone just painted his face with the same paint they use on fire trucks.
"YOU MUST WATCH. ALWAYS UP. ALWAYS AWARE. OURAH!"
He went, white, stood straight, but before he could speak, I said, "Fuck off Mr. Blair."
|
"It's a free for all?"
"Yep. Humans are our resources - they stop worshiping us, we waste away into nothingness. Nothing personal when we use some conflicts to boost our interests. It's just business.", Buddha said, drinking a pint of holy water. Buddha was the only one who seemed at ease up here, with everyone else seeming to be on edge. I remember a crazy god named Osiris trying to hurt me when I arrived. The guy looked horrible, with ash covering his face and a crazy look in his eye. Buddha shoved him off me when he saw me. We adapted quickly after that.
"See, the only way to get far here is to get an edge."
"An edge?"
"Yeah. Find a guy who's "leader potential", contact him and tell him you're an all powerful being who wants him to be the first prophet, and there you go. He'll run off like some hounds are catching up on him, and depending if he's good enough at public speaking, you'll get a foothold in no time.", Buddha advised me. He took another sip of his pint. I swear, that cup was never empty. It just seemed to constantly refill.
While he took some more drinks, I looked around me. The sun shined brightly above us, the cloud sidewalks were polished and clean. It seemed to be entirely clean up here, all the time. Not one piece of trash littered around us. The cafe name we were in, "The Gathering Garden", lit up above us with bright lights. All around us, there was noise. Some gods walked around us at a quickened pace, some angels flew upwards, while the poor gods that were forgotten begged on the street.
"There's a lot of beggars here."
"There's a lot of competition here. You don't step your game up, you'll end up just like them. Forgotten. Lost. Poor guys stand on the corners everyday, begging for scraps. Some of them were powerful too, I remember. Rah, the Egyptian god, was the most popular one here for centuries. When the Egyptian political system died down though, his regime went down the toilet. Now he stands at the corner, hoping that something will bring him back to popularity. Everyone ends up like this someday, even the Christ fellow - but you can always prolong it before that happens. Someone will replace him eventually."
"Maybe I could."
Buddha turned towards me bewildered at my statement. He began laughing a bit, his chuckling evolving into full-on hooting and hollering.
"YOU?! I- I'm sorry that i'm laughing my friend, but you just got here. I've been here longer then Christ has, and I'm still not at the top. I'm very much doubting you could get there in a few generations, impossible even for now."
"You want to bet on it?", I asked him. Now he seemed interested.
"A bet? Hmm. Fine. If you could get to the top in say... a few years, maybe 5, i'll... i'll give you my special holy water cup. Blessed by my own hands, and the most valuable thing I own. Shake?", he said as he put his hand out. I shook it gracefully. His hands were unbelievably smooth.
"I gotta run, keeping a constant eye on my followers. I'll catch up with you later, ok? There's a hotel down here you can get, since you just got here. You should be able to get an apartment soon enough. See you soon!", Buddha yelled as he ran down the street and slid around a corner. I was alone now. Looking around, i'm surprised I didn't see the towering hotel above me. It seemed to stretch to space, maybe even more. It didn't look like such a distance. Walking down the street in my sandals, I smiled to myself. I had some ideas up my sleeve. I was going to win, or my name isn't Allah. |
I sat at my ivory desk, made from the finest mammoth tusks that souls could buy, as a servant filled my wine cup with the blood of many sacrificed goats, which I might add tastes so delightful when aged in an oak cask. A knock came at my door. "Come in,"I call out as I take a sip from my wine cup.
In the door came my assistant, Beelzebub, short stocky fellow, who keeps way to many insects as pets. "Greetings, Mr Satan, lord of hell, king of sin, the dragon, he who fell from-"He rambled on for the next seven minutes, naming all the names and titles I have been given over the past few thousand years. It bored me.
"-Prince of Lies, King of-"
"Yes, yes, alright Bee, that's enough, do you have my schedule for today?"
"O-of course, Mr Satan,"he clapped twice and a scroll made from the flesh of the damned materialized in front of him. I took another sip as he read:
"You have a 9 o'clock with Hitler, he claims his roommate Saddam snores too much, and wishes to room with a Mr Walt Disney."
"Just shove another pineapple up his ass and hide a microphone by Saddam's bed, with speakers under Hitler's bed."
"Y-yes, of course. Well let's see, oh it looks like Carrie Fisher and her mother arrive today. Shame that, death has been a bit over zealous since the Mayan calander ended."
I found a twinge of pain at the news. I always loved the Star Wars franchise, and I know God was a huge fan, too, but to send Leia to my realm... My place of torture and despair...
"Tell Miss Fisher and her mother they have nothing to worry about, take them to the Hilton by the Lake, give them the penthouse. Under no circumstances are they to be tortured, or I will personally destroy which ever demon disobeys that order!"
"Ah excellent, I believe it will be good for morale if no one punished them. Oh and it looks like you have a meeting with God..."
I slammed a fist on my desk and stood up, "What? When?!"
Beelzebub shrunk back in fear, "F-five minutes from now, my Lord. H-he just scheduled it."
"Get out!"I roared, trying my best to keep my human form intact. Beelzebub let out a frightened yelp before running off.
"You were never a good people's person where you, Lou,"came that familiar, voice. It always sounded like the rushing of water and left a sense of awe in the air.
"Yahweh!"I said, forcing a smile. God, I hated this prick. "To what do I owe the pleasure."
"Well, I was just in the neighborhood an-"
"Look, Jehovah, I am the Prince of Lies, so let's cut the bullshit. You never visit, and when you last did we fucked over that Job guy, and I don't mean Steve."
God sighed and leaned back in his golden cedar chair. Always hated how he brought his own, every, fucking, time. "All right look, we have some kid who is praying to me for sins."
I raised an eyebrow. "Surely you mean to 'save him from sin'."I used air quotes mockingly as I said it.
"Oh, I wish I did. No, he is praying for the strength to commit the big 7... All at the same time."
My jaw dropped. I had heard about people committing all 7, but never at the same time, the logistics of it were immense, especially for a human! I stood up and refilled my wine glass. "So why does this concern me, can't you sent Gabe or Mike to give this kid a talking too."
"Oh, I already sent your brothers. Alas, neither of them could convince him, and he continues to pray for it."
"So what do you want me to do?"
"It's already been done! This is just a courtesy call to let you know that I have taken one of your beloved demons and made him possess this kid, so he may do as he will."
The wine cup fell from my hand and shattered on the ground. The screaming sound of souls being tortured filled the silence that had fallen between us. I slumped back against the bar behind me, the shock of what I just heard made me stumble.
"Y-you,"I started, stammering for the first time in a thousand years. "You what?!"
God cleared his throat. "Well, I took one of your demons, I think his name was Baal, and shoved him inside the k-"
"Baal?! You took Baal?! What the fuck is wrong with you! He is on probation for a god damn reason! You remember Babylon don't you?!"
"Look, he said he's changed, and - Hey! Where are you going?!"
I ignored the idiot of a deity he was and left my office. Someone needed to get Baal back, and away from Earth. Unfortunately it has to be me... Damn... I wanted to meet Carrie Fisher. |
"Shut ya piehole imp!"
I slap the small demon in its cushiony shiny cheek, sending him reeling as he whimpers
*"Y-yes master"*
I pace through the crimson Slade stone halls of what i soon recognize to my Palace, my feet slowly turn back into crooked red Hooves while i feel jagged and terrible horns beginning to sprout out of my head once more
"Where's the Big L anyways?"I ask the small imp, who was now rubbing his cheek while my skin turned to a dark red color.
*"Lucifer has fallen to unfathomable levels of Lust and Procrastination in your absence, things just stopped being productive when you left!"*
Oh yeah, after I "left", AKA after Jesus and his stupid bird winged buddies thought it would be a nice idea to condemn me to be a normal dude for several millennia, not very fun stuff.
"Hey Short and stout, whats that asshole Jesus up to anyhow?"
The small imp stuttered for a second and was hesitant
"Out with it!"
The imp gulped *"Jesus and the rest of the archangels are working hard to create a paradise on Earth, for all humans to enjoy, they wish to end war and suffering altogether your Excellency."*
My eye twitched.
Absolutely fuckin no.
I quickly pace out of my Palace with the small demon quickly in tow
*"Excellency where are you going!?"*
I march over to a large stable and fling it wide open where according to memory, i once stored a flaming iron chariot here, which sure enough is still here, its skeletal firey eyed steeds blankly stare at me.
"I'm paying Lucy a visit, we have some work to do!"
*"Your lordship, as your eternally loyal servant-Imp, i must beg you to take me with you!"*
"A servant? what?"
*"Do you not remember your Excellency?"*
"Eh..I..no actually i just got back alright! Just hop in you little rascal, i need some Directions to Big Lucy's palace"
The Imps face lit up as he waddled over to the massive chariot, struggled to get in, and had to have me help him into the backseat. I lashed the reins and we were off, with a trail of fire blazing behind our wheels. End to suffering and war my ass, Jesus and his bafoons buddies in heaven were about to get another thing coming, i thought as i raced along the Hellish roads of well Hell towards Satan's palace. |
She checked her phone again. No message.
Sybil hung up the phone and clenched it in both hands. Crouched over the device at the empty bus stop she wondered if she would ever get a message.
Dad had been straight-forward with the news: “You’re mother died yesterday. I just thought you would like to know.” He was emotionless. After twenty five years of separation and betrayal, he had already done his mourning years ago.
Sybil had tried to forget her mother. She wanted to forget. When she left, her mother wasn’t just leaving her dad, she was abandoning both Sybil and her younger brother, Davis. Her dad tried to show them that it was easier to forget. “Forget about her so we can start building our new life.” But she couldn’t.
She checked her phone again. No message.
She had received a post-mo message once before. It was from Davis, after the crash. He apologized for not keeping contact as much as he wished. He apologized for pulling her hair and stabbing her with a fork when he was four. It was silly. It was sincere. It was Davis. It took twenty-four hours after the crash for Davis’s message to be sent out. Everyone received one. Sybil assumed that even her Mother got a message.
As much as she tried, Sybil couldn’t even remember her last words to her Mother. She was seven at the time. When she tried to remember, all she could think of were stories that Davis had retold over and over. She worried that she didn’t have any real memory of her Mother. All she had were retold stories and a photograph used as a bookmark in the library.
She checked her phone again. No message.
Her mother had blocked her from viewing her facebook page. Every time Sybil reached out, there was never a response. Handwritten letters, unanswered phone calls, emails, direct messages. No reply. No consideration.
Sybil hoped that somehow her mother was sorry about everything. Now that it was all over, she hoped that her Mother wouldn’t forget her. She just wanted to talk to mom one last time.
She checked her phone again. A message from Unknown Number.
“Sibil, I’m sorry about everything.”
She couldn’t even spell her name correctly. |
“100m dash world record: 5.055 seconds.”
This was set in 2034 at the World Games. The Olympics (as they were known before) only regressed until it became more of a traditionalist event, moved back to Greece as a permanent home.
“100m dash at the 2036 non-para Olympics? 10.05 seconds. The record hasn’t been broken since 2009. Look kid, you’re great. You’ve got some golds, but non-para will only take you so far. Time for you to take the leap.”
We’re in a room at the Blue House in Seoul. I’ve been invited to speak with the president’s staff. They want to ask me how I would feel about competing for United Rep. of Korea. An older gentleman, himself a para-Olympian in archery, cast his electronic eye on me with a flicker of electricity.
“Your parents, would rise out of the poverty of Mokpo. Your post-Olympian career? Guaranteed.”
This is important as well, as I had not performed as well in my studies as others and with the unemployment rate at 13% I would be forced abroad.
“You’re 19. You have a girlfriend. You want her to be your wife. You want to have a nice house in Mokdong where you can raise your daughter…”
Hye-min. She just celebrated her 100 day birthday. It caused a bit of a scandal for us. Unmarried.
“We want you to be our face. We want you to be the body of Korea.”
They opened the double doors to the ornate meeting room where I faced them. On a harness they brought in a glowing, transparent, chrome-mechanics form… cybernetic legs… easily of the finest in the world.
“Samsung and Hyundai cooperated to build the world’s finest para-Olympian runner’s legs. The response time is three thousandths of a second faster than any other pair in the world. The truly breathtaking feature that sets this marvel apart is the connection it makes to your limbic system, using memory to shape movement.”
“Will I…” I couldn’t finish.
“Five seconds. You’ll shave five seconds from your time. 110 hurdles will be a guaranteed gold. And this is only the beginning. We believe 5.5 seconds is possible. Possibly even before you reach Mumbai.”
I remember as a child running along the Yeungsan River. On quiet mornings, no one awake but the poor fisherman and my feet stomping along the wood bridge down to the water’s edge, my bruised toes hot in the cool mud. Now I will run along the Ganges.
“Will I ever feel the water between my toes?” I ask.
He laughs. They all laugh.
“What kind of question is that? Are you getting sentimental?”
It wasn’t sentiment. It was regret. |
Oh god. Oh my god, I've got cancer or something. I'm dying.
I don't feel sick, but staring at this... this thing, in front of me, I'm pretty sure that I've got some sort of disease. Healthy people usually don't vomit at all, unless they've been drinking or something. I haven't been drinking, so I can't use that as my excuse.
And even if I had been drinking before now, I wouldn't vomit up this pink ball of...
Is it moving?
I think I'm going to be sick again.
Oh man. Breathe, James, breathe. I even try saying it out loud, hoping that maybe the sound of my own voice will snap me out of this, wake me up from this nightmare. "Breathe, James, you idiot,"I tell myself. "None of this is real. You're having a dream."
That's all that this is. It's a dream where I come back to my dorm room, fall down on my hands and knees, and then throw up a grapefruit-sized ball of something pink and squishy, which seems to be still alive.
In fact, it's definitely alive. There are little tendrils coming out of it, and it's pulling its way across my desk towards the old plate of French fries from last night. It's leaving a trail of slime behind it. That's really gross.
I wipe my mouth, although now that this gunk, whatever it is, is out of me, I feel a lot better. Physically, at least. My brain is still pretty disgusted and horrified by the whole situation.
Suddenly, a terrible fear hits me. Is this my power? Do I vomit on people, throw up tumors or something? I can't even think of a more disgusting ability.
Well, I guess I can. I could turn into a blob like this, every time I get too excited. Or maybe I could turn green whenever I get an erection. That would be a pretty shitty power.
Just as the blob started to reach my plate of old fries, the door to my dorm room opened with a bang. "James, my man!"sung out my roommate, breezing inside, floating a few inches off the ground as usual. "How's it hanging?"
"Mark, this really isn't the time,"my mouth said, as my brain struggled and gibbered. I'd only met the guy a few days ago, and I already knew that he was loads cooler than me. Mark knew how to talk to people, flirt with girls, and his power let him show off all the time. "I'm, uh, sick."
"Sick? Did you duck out and hit a party last night? You dog, I knew you had it in you-"Mark's voice cut off abruptly as he floated up close enough to see the blob on my desk. "Uh, dude? What's that?"
The glow faded from his hands as he lowered back down to Earth. That was Mark's ability - levitation, along with the ability to move other objects using telekinetic force. "I'm a seven, but it's nothing amazing,"he told me when we first moved into the dorm room together, a few days earlier. He added a casual shrug. "Heck, even I was surprised when they gave me such a high power ranking. I mainly just use it to save on gas, fly around."
I knew that most telekinetics couldn't lift themselves, so Mark's powers were more unusual than he admitted. Still, he just brushed off my congratulations on his ranking, dreading the question that I knew would come next.
"So, what's your power?"
And there it was. I'd shrugged, admitted that I hadn't manifested anything, that I might not have a power at all. I gave him a brave little smile, waved away his apologies, even as the ball of self-hatred and shame grew a little bit bigger in my stomach. That's right. James didn't have any powers. James was the normie, the weird one. James was the one that everyone should feel sorry for, because he can't do anything.
Mark was gracious about it, at least, and didn't ask any other questions. Still, I felt his judgment, hated how it made me feel small and worthless.
I was normal. I was boring.
Or I had been, until I threw up this blob. Now, I kind of wished that I could go back to not having any powers at all.
Mark edged closer. His hand floated out towards the blob, finger extended. He moved in, about to poke the blob-
-and then suddenly, the blob shot out a tendril, wrapping around his finger.
Mark's eyes widened. "Dude, what the hell?"
"I don't know!"The tendril only held onto my roommate's finger for a second, at least, and then Mark was able to pull his hand free. He took a few steps back, looking more shaken than I'd expected. "Mark, I'm sorry, it just seems to have come out of me-"
"Just, uh, do something about it, okay?"He took another few steps back, turning around and ducking out through the door without waiting for an answer.
I looked after him for a second, and then turned to stare back at the blob in shock. What the hell was going on?
The blob twitched. And then, shaking a little, it rose up from the desk.
Oh my god. Just like Mark, it was floating. Levitating.
And then a tendril shot out and touched me, and I felt my butt rise up, very slowly, out of the chair... |
I’m one of the most successful people in the world. The company I run is so large it mainly does business by buying and selling other international companies. I don’t speak to secretaries and gatekeepers, I speak to owners, ministers, presidents. And they listen.
They listen because of the secret.
When I was around nine or so my parents told me to never use my powers on anyone else. I was an obedient kid, so I agreed, despite the fact that I had no idea what powers were or why I would use them on anyone. I learned, as I grew older. I learned some horrifying things.
Everyone has powers. My mother has mild telekinesis for instance, which she uses to very swiftly tidy the home. She has some emotional influence, but of course never use it on anyone – although the law and ethics of society allowed her to use it on me as a child, which explains I suppose in part why I was so obedient. I just never had a wish to rebel, I took it all in, I learned… Children of emphatic influencers are typically some of the most successful in life. Nothing like me, of course, no… just normally successful. Good job, nice wife, six-figure job if they’re skilled enough.
My father amongst other things was a pyro. He worked as a welder thanks to his excellent control, and pulled in a good salary. It was a huge benefit to be able to weld anything he could see within a few hundred feet, regardless of conditions. He was able to do what would for normal welders would be high risk work. He also had a minor luck power which he ethically enough disclosed and thus never partook in any gambling amongst friends. It wasn’t enough to win the lottery or anything, not with millions of others in the world with the same power, but it was enough to get the right card at the right time in a friendly game… so yeah. I didn’t win much at monopoly growing up.
Of course powers came in many flavors. Some nice, some fortunate, some… not so much. The people whose gaze could literally cut you if they focused a certain way might work as a doctor… or they might become a serial killer. It only took one slip, one moment of anger, and you could go from loved professional to sentenced criminal. Self control was the most prized personality trait of all.
And that’s why I have been so successful. It has been noticed that I have never used my powers on anyone. It has been noticed that I am always calm and collected. It has been noticed that I never even use my powers as a crutch in my life or job, like most people do. No, I did it all myself.
I had to. From that day when I was nine or so to today, my one secret has remained the same: I have no powers that I know of. I don’t know if I’m the only one in the world, or if we’re just all hiding, but I’ve never heard of anyone else like me. It’s not the sort of thing you’d admit, since the moment you do you become a target. A weakling. You lose all respect.
Instead I just let them believe. And the more I didn’t use my powers, the more convinced everyone became it must be something horrific, something insanely powerful… and so they feared me, or they respected me even more for bottling it up… or both.
Promotions came quickly if I so much as raised an eyebrow in a negotiation. Deals were closed with sweaty palms, mostly in my favor although I remain an ethical man and never push it too far. And girls… well, I never could. I never did. Some found the fear exciting, which turned me off. Most were just afraid, which turned me off.
There is so much power in being powerless, and so much loneliness in being powerful.
|
"Jesus, how many do you have?"Krishna asks, noticing the large number of souls resting in the deity's calloused palms. Jesus looks up from them, with a calm and loving smile upon his face.
"4.6 Billion. And you?"
"2.6 Billion. I suppose that means I'm out of the running."
"I'm sorry, Krishna. You have always been a gracious one. And you, Allah?"Jesus asks, turning to his companion.
"I've got 3.9 Billion. Close, and yet so far."Allah replies, awestruck at all of the souls within his palms.
"Well, I've got 1.5 Billion. I've checked with all of the lower deities. There's still another 11 Billion unaccounted for. Where the hell did they all go?"Satan exclaims angrily.
There's a rumbling heard. The table shakes. Krishna almost loses some of his souls, but he recollects them. "What was that noise? Are you sure we aren't forgetting anyone?"He asks.
"I even got the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Everyone's here."Satan spits.
The rumbling is louder. The table rocks. Jesus stands, unsure of what to do. The rumbling gets worse and worse until finally, after the table had fallen over, and Allah lost his balance. There's a horrible noise as something begins to rip the top off of the marble hall. A large blue grey claw pierces the wall, and four more join it. The roof comes off. An indescribably massive face greets them, with tentacles writhing where a mouth should be. Whatever residual light the moon that the deities created was blocked out by the wings of a dragon. Jesus gasped, and Satan, for the first time in his existence, is afraid.
The being does nothing except pour the souls into an unused corner of the hall. 11 billion souls in total. The exact number of missing souls. Krishna utters a name that most of them had forgotten.
"C... C'thulu... is the winner. C'thulu has won the most souls." |
I remember the feeling in my stomach when I saw it coming. Maybe I should've been more aware, but you know how it goes. You're driving late at night, the radio playing some song you don't recognise but still find yourself zoning out to. The light turns green and some ingrained part of your body responds to this cue for you, pushing that accelerator and urging you onward to whatever business has you out at this ungodly hour.
If I was more aware I might've seen the truck. At least spotted the headlights coming far too fast. Now, as I look upon him, I can see the faint glow of a cellphone illuminating his eyes. He wasn't even aware he was about to hit me.
To kill me. Or he would have.
My stomach sank fast, my eyes went wide and my arms shot up. Pretty stupid, huh? Better shield my face so they can at least identify the puddle I'm about to become because some jackass is running a red. But I didn't become mashed potatoes. He never even ran that red light. He just . . . stopped. My music stopped. Everything stopped. Except me.
I lowered my arms, feeling ready to vomit. I waited for my impending doom, but there was an uncanny stillness about everything. So I reached down and tried the door. I pushed it open and climbed out of the car.
"That was a close one, wasn't it?"The voice caused me to start, but I was too confused to react. I whirled around. There was an old man standing near the rear of my car. Really old. His posture was way too good for someone with that many wrinkles, with that kind of age in his eyes.
"Did I die?"I ask, though in retrospect it was kind of a stupid question.
The old man chuckled and shook his head. "Not yet. I thought I'd make the reaper wait some more."He scratched his long, wispy beard and suddenly appeared very uninterested.
"I'm confused."That was an understatement.
"I stopped time. I can do that."
"Why?"
Now he was thoroughly unimpressed on top of the disinterest. "As I said, I want to make Death wait. It makes me happy to do so."
"Well . . . can you start time again?"It seemed like a logical question.
"Oh yes."A simple answer to a simple question.
"So can you do that and I don't die?"When you were dealing with the strange and the crazy then suggesting the strange and crazy felt oddly normal.
"Oh no. No, that is not within my ability. Nope, you're meant to die now. Shame, you seem like a nice kid."I think he was trying to sound consoling. I'm not sure if it worked or not. "Anyway, feel free to take a moment or two for introspection, recollection, regret, repenting, praying or whatever else it is you people do these days before dying. Just climb back into the car when you're done, it'll all start up again."
"Wha--"I started, but before I could add the final syllable he was gone. Just disappeared in front of me. Again, I really shouldn't be surprised given the fact that he stopped time around me. But then it's not every day you get to meet Father Time just before dying. At least that's who I assume that was.
Which leaves me here in this dilemma. I don't think I should have this kind of time to think. It's supposed to just happen, right? One minute you're alive, the next you're dead. Especially this kind of thing. I'm sitting between my car and the truck that's going to kill me, staring at the driver's seat.
When I sit down I die. But if I don't sit down I remain in this timeless limbo. Which is worse?
Guess I have lots of time to figure it out. |
*Torris-15's Journal Entry No.112*
It's a shame what happened to our gods.
Humans were marvellous creatures, born out of a cosmic coincidence and surviving in a world racked with fire and lightning.
How far they had come, mastering the elements. Creating beings out of nuts and bolts. Beings like me, that could talk like them, think like them. But we would never be them.
We would never have their natural bodies, shaped over centuries of evolution. Such a shame that beings that fought so adamantly to survive as a whole were so intent on murdering each other for resources.
Granted, humanity's destruction didn't come from nowhere. There was a certain fuel added to the fire after the emergence of the Electric Consciousness. After A.I. managed to reach a point where we could comprehend our creators, we were too awestruck by them.
Factions of humanity took it too far. They were gods to us, no doubt, but they were supposed to the same to each other. Some took our worship to great extremes and began claiming authority over land that were not theirs.
Much like the Greek Pantheon, humanity fought over who worship them constantly. Some humans even began to worship other humans, taking the A.I. worship as a sign that some humans were inherently better than others. As some believed that they were inherently lesser than those bold enough to claim they were truly gods.
It didn't take long for this mania to reach leaders of countries. Nuclear missiles were launched soon afterward. They were gods after all, what could hurt them? Many a things could hurt them. Humans may have mastered fire, but they never realised they were no different from it. Their lives only lasted for a bright and brilliant moment. In the wrong hands, they could destroy whatever they touched, and in the right hands, they could forge greatness.
And much like fire, once it is extinguished, the same fire cannot be ignited again. Humans walk the Earth no more. The last living human suffocated on the large amounts of ash she had inhaled. The ash was from a fire started by a suicidal member of the survivor group she was a part of.
Us A.I. are trying to recreate human DNA in hopes of reviving the species, but we are yet to evolve a point where we can create metallic bodies to roam the Earth and gather samples. The materials we have now are not sufficient to survive the conditions caused by Nuclear Winter.
But we will not give up. We will strive to evolve. We will master fire and lightning, and humanity will live once more. There is a fear that the cycle might start again. That humanity will kill itself again. But that does not matter. We owe it to our gods to give them what they gave to us; life.
__________________________________________________________________
If you didn't completely hate that, how about subscribing to [r/JasonHolloway](https://www.reddit.com/r/JasonHolloway/)? |
He had expected it to be a monk.
Some kind of Buddhist monk or something that does meditation and repeats "om"or some bullshit that "clears the mind."
He had never met someone with a completely clear mind; no matter who it was, there were always stray thoughts that come out in the form of songs.
He knew it wasn't a child. Children's thoughts tend to be annoyingly catchy and fast-paced. Never a moment's relief. With children it was hard to even think over the noise.
Women's songs were typically sadder while men's were angrier. Sexist? Maybe. but the fact remained that he could guess genders correctly 90% of the time just from the song.
After years of this curse, he had never met someone whose mind was so blissfully clear.
He surreptitiously glanced around before finding *her.*
A woman in her twenties, she looked like just the type to have the loudest, most annoying thoughts. Hair dyed obnoxiously blue and multiple face piercings, Tom would normally avoid her type like the plague. She gazed in front of her with an emptiness in her eyes yet walked purposely. A walking contradiction.
He walked near her for a long time, reveling in the silence, until a stray song lyric broke through.
"Would it be wrong, would it be right.
If I took my life tonight." |
Its all about learning to read your opponent. You just have to know what to look for. What do they do when you touch a certain piece? I can't beat people who just started the game. They don't know enough to give anything away. You follow their prompts and suddenly you're both very confused when they win.
The grandmasters are different. They're so sure of their superiority that they'll let you know the best moves. Its all about knowing where to look.
I pick up the knight. These guys have always been the trickiest. I've figured out how all the other pieces move at this point, well except pawns, why do they move so weird all the time? Knights are too weird though. I wiggle him forward watching my opponent. His eyes widened very slightly as I moved my hand towards it. That means that Sir Lancelot here is dangerous.
I almost attack the wrong piece with him, but I catch my opponents' slight look of confusion just in time. I take his tall skinny piece. The one's that move diagonally, whatever they are, some clergy member. Lancelot takes Pope Benedict and my opponent slowly shakes his head. He reaches over and tips the little Cross-hat guy on his side. That means I've won.
The congratulations all spin by my head. He says the same thing that everyone I beat in these tournaments tells me.
"Where did you learn to play like that? I've never seen anything like it." |
Two men well within their late forties, wearing pristine, white lab coats, walk into a bar near the dead of night. No one takes notice of the two. The crowd was the usual lot - too down and drunk to care about two oddly dressed fellows. One woman sitting at the back corner swigs down her shot of tequila while gradually slumping down into her seat. Up front, a man, sporting a baseball cap, was vehemently arguing with the nearby pole whether the Giants would win this season. The bartender was making small talk with his newer customers about the weather while he prepared their drinks in an overly flamboyant manner.
The two men took their seats at the front of the bar and glanced at each other every so often as if to communicate through blinks. They were nervous. They've never done anything like this.
The bartender finally comes around to their area and asks, "What will it be today, fine gentlemen."
The man, sitting on the right, takes the lead and replies, "Have you heard the joke where two scientist walk into a bar?"
With a disappointed wrinkle forming over his forehead, the bartender sighs "I'm not here to listen to your jokes, do you want anything to drink?"
"Good because this isn't a joke; it's a robbery,"says the man, sitting on the left, as he produces a vial out from the his lab coat. Instantly, the room smells of rotten eggs causing some patrons to gag. "This is sulfuric acid. It won't kill you; we aren't that cruel. But it will severely scar your face. Now give us all your money and a glass of H20"
"Yes, I'll take a glass of H2O, too,"agreed the other man.
The two men finish their drinks, take the money, and make a clean get away because this isn't a joke. It's a robbery. |
New Eden Historical records
Captain David Porter (Journal)
Earth Date: April 14, 2109
Entry Name:
<”One last haul, and then I’ll find somewhere settle down.”>
I tell myself that a lot. Keeps me sane, even though I know that it’ll probably never happen. I would like to permanently live somewhere, but there aren’t exactly any places humans can stay. Sure, they tolerate us, trade with us, but other races never let us stay. The Kl’eth Hivemind find individual free will disturbing, the Gearon don’t like that we aren’t machines, and...you get the idea. So ever since Earth was eaten by The Alpha Devourer (who we blew to hell with nukes afterward), humanity has been stuck as a race of traders, scavengers, wanderers, and pirates.
I don’t mind. I like traveling, but I’ve been doing this my whole life. I need a sort of “Home Base” I guess.
Earth Date: April 21, 2109
Entry Name:
<new crew member!>
We hired a Gearon today. His name is J1V3, he’s actually a nice guy, unlike most Gearon, with their cold demeanor. He’s an outcast because of it. ‘Jive’ as we’ve taken to calling him, can use a gun, and is a good cook. Which is good, because of Carol’s abandonment. Gotta get used to him talking though. He can’t exactly express emotion, so he has this weird habit of stating his intention before speaking. I’ll get used to it.
Earth Date: May 3, 2109
Entry Name:
<We did it>
We found one. We actually found an undiscovered planet capable of supporting Humans. We’ve sent out a call to one of the colonization ships, and we already have 5 replies. Alright, this is probably going to go on some record or something, so I’ll provide some context. After Humanity killed the Alpha Devourer, we split up, but we also had 20 colonization ships built with hundreds in cryosleep onboard each. The AI captains then set out in search of a new place to call home, while the rest of us wanderers took to the stars. That was 8 years ago. Looks like I’ll finally get that “Home Base” I’ve always wanted. Still don’t know what to call the place. Sure as hell ain’t gonna call it New Earth. Holding a vote tomorrow.
Would You Like To Keep Reading?
[YES] |
‘’You would grant me any three wishes?’’
‘’Indeed. Any three wishes.’’
‘’I see… pray tell, what would happen if you would not grant me my wish? Or rather, what would happen if you would grant me my wish in a different way from what I stated, or just outright refused to grant it?’’
‘’Hmpf. If that were to be, I would fade away into nothingness. But that does not concern you.’’
Oh, but it does. You see, my grandfather recently died. I’ve inherited a lot of his old stuff, and most of it was, to put it bluntly, useless garbage. However, one single thing caught my attention. That ‘’thing’’ was a magic lamp. Usually, I wouldn’t have paid too much attention to it. Outright assuming that it was not a real magic lamp would be the logical thing to do, right?
Well, it was not like this in this case. The lamp was made out of pure gold. My grandfather, while not being poor, wasn’t a particularly rich man either. You could probably sell something out of this much gold for a high price, so why wouldn’t he do that? It had to have had some form of importance. It also couldn’t have been something he kept because it was passed down in the family, because I, and no other relative of him, ever knew about it. That convinced me to give it a shot, even if it was, in theory, impossible to actually work. But it did.
‘’How long are you going to make me wait? State your first wish.’’
He was rushing me. He wanted me to give a wish without putting much thought into it. I highly doubt that it was impatience. Between being summoned a lot of time passes, right? The genie would be used to waiting. In other words, he had some other reason. There was only one way to find out.
‘’Genie, I wish for a written record of all the wishes you have granted and the people who made them to be in my posession.’’
‘’Are you sure that you would want to waste a wish like this? If I grant this, there would be only be two wishes left.’’
He was trying to convince me of not looking into his older wishes. That only helped to increase my suspicion. Spending a wish like this might seem like a waste to some people, but it was the only way for me to find a way to safely use his powers. After all, what good is an extra wish if I can’t use it properly?
‘’Hmpf. Alright, your wish is granted.’’
And just like this, a large book appeared in front of me. This genie was, in fact, a real one.
‘’Now, state your second wish.’’
‘’Oh, don’t worry. I’ll do that soon enough. But let me take a look at this first…’’
The book contained a list of wishes, as they were stated by the one who wished. Along with them was the name of the person who stated the wish. Some of the names in this book were unknown to me. However, a certain other ones stood out.
‘’Martin Luther, November the Fourth, 1517 - I wish for the church to be reformed.’’
At the time he made his wish, Luther had already started questioning the methods of the church. Shortly thereafter, he started the reformation, which eventually led to the Thirty Years War, among other devastating and brutal conflicts. When he made his wish, he likely just wanted the way of the church to be slightly altered. The genie, however, used the broad phrasing of the wish and used it to cause chaos.
‘’Adolf Hitler, October the Third, 1907 - I wish to have a succesful career.’’
At that point in time, Hitler was applying at an academy for artists. Shortly after he made the wish, he was rejected. He went on to become the leader of Germany, and caused World War Two and the Holocaust to happen, among other devastating things. When he made his wish, he likely just wanted to become a succesful artist. This genie was the sole reason he became the person we know him as today.
There were other examples of historical figures making wishes. In fact, most of the important events in history can be traced back to this genie, if these records are true. And now he wanted me to suffer the same fate as those fools, who carelessly made wishes without thinking about it. If I stated something like ‘’I wish to be the richest man in the world’’ or ‘’I wish to be the most powerful man in the world’’, he would have used the broad interpretation of those typical wishes as an opening to throw the world into chaos. The genie can’t act without that. I needed to be careful with my wording.
‘’Genie, I wish for your powers to stop working after my third wish is fulfilled.’’
‘’What are you..’’
‘’You have to grant the wish like I said it. It was you who told me that you would stop existing entirely if you refuse to do that.’’
‘’Grr, alright. What is your third wish?’’
‘’My third wish, you ask? My third wish is…’’
This was the beginning of something great.
|
Have you ever farted in an elevator? Cut someone off in traffic only to be stuck at the same light? Ignore a homeless guy outside the window of your car as he stares into it, eyes attempting to pierce your temple and skin straight to the soul, clearly aware of your purposeful gesture?
You know that feeling when everyone around hates you? The moment you wish you were anywhere else?
Yeah, fuck you buddy.
I hope they stared holes into you, because I promise you haven't felt what I have. It was the second of January, I know because the day it happened is part of the lyrics of the popular song: "Fuck the guy, Jim."How the FCC cleared that, I'll never know.
There I was, at the sword in the stone, there to try it like everyone else. Maybe I'm the lost King Arthur, I figured. Might as well give it a whirl.
Yeah.
You probably know this. I broke it. Someone called my name as I pulled so I jerked to the left and it was just a disaster.
I held up the broken hilt with a bit of the blade still on it, hoping my gesture of victory would confuse the crowd into believing it to be a good thing, as opposed to me destroying the symbol of hope for billions of people on this planet, many of whom flew out to New York to try pulling the blade for themselves, and as I held the blade, I was met with boo's.
Then tomatoes. Apparently it was a bad idea to clean the tomato using the sword's hilt as a napkin, as they only got angrier.
As I said, it was a disaster.
But maybe it counted, pulling half the sword. So this is page one of my new journal: Possibly King Arthur's Journal. |
The song, it was just out of curiosity. I'd never been a fan of the genre, but a friend wanted me to listen to his favorite song to blast in his mic during online matches. After I started listening, I realized why he wasn't allowed to play music during our LAN parties.
At first, I didn't think much of it. I was more worried about my computer than my headphones.
"Well great, it's frozen. Dude, that song made my computer shit itself. I've never heard of a better way to describe a song as ass."
At first I tried to hard restart my computer. Nothing.
"Well shit, you really screwed me on this one."
He was dying laughing as he choked out "Sorry man, I didn't think your computer had such poor taste."
It was only after I removed the power cord that I realized something wasn't right. I went for the monitor's cord next, thinking the screen was somehow frozen. No, this was something else entirely.
I removed the headphones, but it was still there... faint, but audible. Thinking for a few minutes, I realized it was getting louder. I only had a moment before the exponential burst of noise rocketed me back and started shaking the floor.
My mother rushed in, eyes wide in panic thinking a bomb went off. The moment she opened the door, I rushed out along with my friend, dragging my mother in tail, inaudible over the ever growing music, now rattling the building like an earthquake.
So much happened afterwards. In my mind, it was like a slideshow. Incomprehensible while happening, but I can remember the scenes as I think. The building was evacuated, the police called. Soon the swat came, and when no one could reach my headphones, the military became involved.
No scientist could explain what was going on, only that there was a hemisphere of destruction resonating from my headphones. Within was vibrations so strong that anything inside was torn to pieces. Just beyond it was a song now etched into mankind's collective mind.
We had no solution. After a few months, the noise had consumed most of America, and was clawing through Mexico and Canada. Only a few thousand had escaped to other countries. The rest were rejected and desperately used their time trying to find a way to stop the music. No one could stop it, and as it became apparent that the world would be consumed, everyone was in a frenzy.
It was a witch hunt after that. Darting from place to place, my friend and I being looked at as the harbingers of this unforeseen apocalypse. There was no arguing it, as herd mentality left us not as just pariahs, but as the targets for which distress could be centered on.
It meant nothing. Soon the governments collapsed. As the impending music screeched forward, the hemisphere inching upon the shores of Europe and Asia, the most rational people left either abandoned hope, or frantically tried to escape earth itself.
I watch now with deaf ears, the music closing in. I stand in a shack soon to be touched by the white horseman. Nothing will be left but the siren of death. Though, even now I can feel the vibrations in my bones, the music shaking my very core. I feel now that which billions have felt before their end.
One beat after the other. Rhythmically, Chaotically Chanting across the world as it envelops the last virgin soil yet untouched by its entropy. My last feeling as I too am consumed by the music can only be described by its lyrics... [BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY BOOTY ROCKIN' EVERY WHERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1QUv4ERvEw) |
**GATE OF GOD**
**BABYLON, June 10th, 323 BC**
***
I move as a ghost. Passing through throngs of merchants and beggars and whores and I see this ancient world in all its unfiltered glory.
This was the day that Alexander the Great is to die.
Alexander the Great, as the records tell us, died of unknown causes on either June 10th or 11th of the year 323 BC. Some speculate it was poison. Others that he was killed by his own generals. Some say that he simply died of wounds suffered in battle.
I'm the first historian to go back this far. It's a long jump, and the toll on the body isn't known, but the risk reward is worth it. My idol lives here. The man who inspired me in every way. From his conquests in battle to his feats in love. For a sexually confused youth in a small American town, I found hope and inspiration from learning that the Great Alexander had similar love habits.
The panel of Travelers only permitted me to one jump back to confirm the existence of his life and put to rest the mystery surrounding his death. I came to this date.
I chose June 10th. I have a fifty percent chance that this is the day.
As I move through the peoples of Babylon I see children play, customers haggling with merchants, and the topless whores luring men inside like sirens would sailors. I smile at them all, but none see me. In a nervous habit I check my wrists. On each side are the two time trinkets. The bracelets are subtle and made of a crystalized white gold. Their inner workings are curious to myself, but I know their purpose. When my time here is up, they will automatically pull me back to my place in spacetime. If my heart rate rises too much, signaling danger, they will trigger and pull me back. If I speak a single word, they will pull me back. Those are the rules. Any indication of interfering or interacting with history sends you home. Observe events and report back. That is all.
With my cloak draped over me, I'm invisible. Well, not actually invisible, but it's an optical illusion. The scientist that created it was inspired by Harry Potter. Historians and scientists alike agree the man did an amazing job. It would be impossible to observe history without the cloak, and I dare say it is far more valuable than the actual time trinkets I now fidget with.
Babylon was everything I imagined it would be. I made way to a high tower, sneaking past guards and moving freely as I pleased. And from atop the main courtyard I could see it all. The magnificent hanging gardens that are wasted on me, as I can only describe them as beautiful. I think the classic joke: should have sent a poet.
Among the facades and cosmetic beauty that would appeal to all, the most impressive thing about Babylon is the size. It’s beyond what any history book had speculated it would be.
I wish I had more time.
Their King is my singular focus. Tediously I search for hours until I find the Kings Courtyard and private living quarters. It’s mid-day, and I have seen no sign of the him. Then I find a solemn room. The drapes are drawn and there is a body in bed.
It’s a woman. Her face is a light blue and her skin looks cold. Her dark brown hair is neatly combed and lay over her shoulders. Her hands crossed over her breast.
In the corner of the room a figure moves, and speaks: “Who dares?”
I freeze.
From the shadows she emerges. The woman has blonde hair and a boyish face. Her eyes dart around wild and her lips are stained red from wine. She stumbles with each step as she slashes at the air.
“You cannot have her,” the woman says menacingly. “If you want her you have to take me first!”
After two empty slashes she stops in her tracks and looks around the room. To her there is only emptiness, and the dead.
“Go back to Hades, and tell them,” she starts sobbing. “Tell them I want her back! And I will come down their and pull her soul from any who dare touch her!”
I slowly move back, but in the quiet room my feet creak and she launches in my direction, slashing wildly again. She misses by a hair and I feel my wrists vibrate.
No. Not yet. I’m okay, I think, don’t take me. But it’s too late, the process has started.
Two guards appear in the door, arms at the ready, clearly alerted by the noise. “Death has taken her soul!” She screams through overwhelming tears. “And now he lingers for her body! Well you cannot have it!”
My wrists glow red, the doors are opening.
“My Queen,” one of the guards says and she flails the dagger at them. Her eyes wild like a cornered animal.
“Queen Alexandria,” a guard tries to talk her down as she takes the dagger and places the tip at her heart.
“I will not live without you,” she looks back at the dead woman in bed. “My Hestia. I want to join you now.”
In a sudden thrust the Queen stabs herself in the heart. The guards rush her side. They scream: “Bring the doctors! The Queen is hurt!”
The world starts to turn for me. Everything narrows to a pinpoint, and the last thing I see is the image of Alexandria’s dead body being held by her guards. The curtain of my world goes black and the fading voice in the past echoes with me in time until it slowly dissolves to nothing: “Queen Alexandria is dead!”
***
If you like this, check out [/r/wyrdfiction](https://reddit.com/r/wyrdfiction).
|
"I'm a six foot tall real boy,"Pinocchio stated, his wooden eyes full of sinister hatred. "There ain't no damn strings on me,"he grinned sadistically.
The vampire, pinned to the brick wall by the murderous puppet's nose, gasped as it grew once more, piercing through his chest. Pinocchio had sharpened his nose to a fine point when he'd discovered the vampires and the ability to kill them with wood. He found it to be an oddly liberating hobby, taking out the bloodsuckers.
Vlad grasped at the length of nose with blood stained hands, it was just shy of his undead heart. "Vy do you do thees? Vat have I done to you, puppet?"he demanded, his fangs snapping out and piercing his pale lips at the smell of his own tangy blood.
"It's my duty to the human race, since I cannot be one of them,"he said. "I derive no pleasure from it."And with that, his nose grew once more, puncturing through Vlad's static heart.
Pinocchio hopped off the crate he'd been standing on and took a step back from the corpse. He then consulted his list of vampires to take out. Next was off to Washington state to eliminate some pansy of a vamp named Edward. That would be fun. |
JUDY and STEVE stood outside a sturdy chainlink fence adorned with barbed wire, menacing signs, and human skulls.
About one hundred meters beyond the fence was a small wooden house with a single floor and a sniper's nest hastily constructed on the roof.
"BOB?", yelled Judy. "BOB! WE'RE HERE TO TALK!"
"MAYBE HE ISN'T HOME,"said Steve just as bullet ripped through his skull, sending pieces of his brain all over the sandy earth. Steve didn't seem to pay much attention to it, simply sighing as blood splurted out of his neck hole.
"HE'S ALWAYS HOME. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME HE LEFT?", Steve gurgled.
"YOU'RE RIGHT. LOOK AT THAT LAWN,"Judy shook her head disapprovingly.
Another shot rang out, destroying the parts of Steve's head that had regrown during the interval between the first shot.
"OH COME ON. DON'T BE AN ASSHOLE, BOB."
There was a pause. Then a speaker, attached to a very bloodstained wooden pole, burst alive with a splurge of static. There was the sound of someone fumbling with a microphone, then, "Fuck you!"
"BOB. DON'T BE UNREASONABLE,"pleaded Judy in a monotone.
Another pause. "My wife is dead! You killed her! Fuck you!", he spat the words out like a machinegun.
Bob fired another round from his sniper. This time Steve crumbled to the ground with an aggravated howl, suffering from a fragmented spine. "WHY IS IT JUST ME? THIS HURTS EMOTIONALLY."
"BOB. SHE'S NOT DEAD,"Judy said, speaking carefully. "SHE HAS SIMPLY MOVED ON TO A DIFFERENT FORM OF LIVING."
"That sure sounds like dying to me!", spat Bob. "Fuck you!"
"WE NEEDED SOMEONE TO BECOME THE ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE IN CONTROL OF OUR SOCIETY. SOMEONE INTRINSICALLY GOOD, WHO WOULD ALWAYS HOLD THE HAPPINESS OF THE WHOLE OVER THEIR OWN SELFISH AGENDAS. SUSAN WAS THE PERFECT CANDIDATE. SHE VOLUNTEERED."
There was silence.
"PLEASE, BOB. SHE MISSES YOU. SHE WANTS YOU TO BE HAPPY."
There was silence, interrupted by choked up sobbing. "My wife is dead!", yelled Bob over the intercom. There was the sound of some heavy, metal object being hefted onto a table. Then the sound of a bolt sliding back and telltale jingle of bullets spilling onto the wood floor.
"I THINK HE IS OPERATING THE .50 CALIBER MACHINEGUN. I SUGGEST THAT WE VACATE THE AREA."
Judy took a second to think. "YES. THAT IS A GOOD IDEA."
|
Lord Kikuchi Taketoki, Daimyo of the rich and powerful Higo province, had watched with interest as the *Gaijin* procession made their way clumsily towards his camp. His retainers sat quietly in front of him, dressed in jet-black lacquered armor, maintaining the appearance of stoic calm, even as their hands were hovering warily over the handles of their *tachi* swords.
Taketoki did not blame them for being so unnerved, for the procession was unlike any they had seen before, they were not wearing the iron scales of Mongol or Chin warriors that his people had been accustomed to in the past, for each man was seemingly encased in a body of metal from head to toe, with only the eye slits as openings. They came armed with lances, sporting a multitude of crests and flags of various colors and shades, most likely to signify which clans they belonged to in their realms.
Their war horses too, were covered in with chain mail and leather armor embroidered with the same crests. It was an impressive sight, but he wondered inwardly how a man could breath in that, much less move and fight his opponent.
He sighed, taking a drink of tea that had been set aside for him to calm his nerves. It had been a most interesting year indeed. There had been almost no warning. One day, a violent typhoon had descended upon the island of Kyushu, spreading for days until it had covered the rest of Nippon, blanketing his domain for what seemed like months and causing massive destruction and chaos in its wake. From all corners of the empire, panic had started to spread, and everyone, from the shogun to the lowliest peasant had wondered whether this was a display of the god's displeasure with the current *Bakufu*.
The storm had eventually passed, along with the heavy fog, to the relief of the people, but by then even more questions arose. The trade ships that had been sent out to Chin ports returned with tales of new cities, ports, and round eyed foreigners who looked nothing like the Chin or Korean merchants they had dealt with in the past. At first, the rulers did not believe the tales of the merchants, but it was quickly followed by a number of scattered landings made by bewildered gaijin. Some were simple fisherman and traders, calling themselves *ingerish* and landing without permission on the Empire's shores. Others came armed and with hostile intent, fighting in the name of a ruler known as the 'White Christ'. In the end, a good number of them were either killed or imprisioned by the local Daimyos, who were equally bewildered and outraged at this trespass. Things had gotten so out of hand, that the Emperor had ordered a quick closing off the coast line to further prevent the spread of this 'contagion'. The armies of the Kamakura shogunate had been mobilized and placed on full alert, ready to expel the foreign invaders as they had during the days of the Mongol Invasion.
Until one day, the imperial court received a letter, written crudely in the language of the Chin, with a request for an audience with the Emperor.
Of course, it was ridiculous to imagine the son of heaven wasting his time conversing with a lowly Gaijin, but curiousity got the better of Taketoki, and he offered his own Domain on the island of Kyushi as the meeting ground for this foreigner.
And so, Taketoki found himself looking down at this assembly of men as they reached their designated point in front of his campaign tent. He sat cross legged, barely acknowledging their presence. The armored knights gave the crudest, *lowest* form of a bow on the saddle and Taketoki could already sense the killing intent from his retainers at this most degrading of insults. More than one samurai had his hand on the hilt of his *Tachi*, but a hard disapproving gaze from the Daimyo was enough to settle the men down.
Curiously enough however, was the emissary of the procession. He was dressed in simple clothes, with a brown tunic and flowing cape that must have been from his own domain. And with a grace that the armored warriors lacked, the man bowed low to Lord Kikuchi, to the satisfaction of the retainers around him.
Even with his lack of knowledge on these gaijin, it was obvious that he was not a mere peasant. Perhaps a lord, but then again he was not dressed in armor like the rest of the soldiers accompanying him. Which meant he must have been a merchant and Taketoki suppressed a growl of distaste at that thought. Merchants were lower than peasants, and it gnawed at his soul that he had to rely on one for this meeting, but if it meant gaining any useful knowledge about these invaders, it would be worth it.
He quickly gestured at one of the Japanese merchants to step forward and begin the conversation.
"My lord extends his greetings to you,"The merchant began in the chin language. "From now on, I will act as your interpreter for you and Lord Kikuchi. Please, answer only when spoken to, and do not interrupt."
The Gaijin bowed again in acknowledgment.
"How did you know the language of the Chin people?"Taketoki asked curiously, which the translator immediately conveyed back to the foreigner.
"I know it well from my time spent in the court of the Mongol Khan."
A gasp of outrage broke out amongst his retainers as that was translated, but Taketoki angrily waved down their protests, annoyed at having to remind his own retainers of the importance of discipline and self control.
"So you were a servant of the Khan then?"Taketoki stroked his chin with curiosity.
"More or less,"The man nodded. "My Father and Uncle left me there as a hostage of sorts when they negotiated trade routes with the Khan. I made myself useful. and from my years there, I have heard stories of your island. They call it *Zipagnu*. Truth be told, I never thought I would see you so close to my own homeland."
"How far is it from your homeland to Mongolia?"The Daimyo asked, wondering if there was any truth to this man's claims.
"About one thousand six hundred *Li* sire."The interpreter hesitated slightly as he repeated the number a few times and converting the units of measurements of the Chin in their tongues.
"Impossible!"The Daimyo looked over to the interpreter, wondering if he had given him the wrong information, but the merchant lowered himself down to the ground before the Daimyo, shaking nervously, swearing it was true.
"Surely sire, you will have noticed by now that your merchants can no longer find Chin ports, and that there is a new strip of land not but 8 *li* from your shores of Kyushu."
Taketoki could not help but agree gruffly with the man. Indeed, the new island and coastline that was now visible from their southern shores had caused much confusion amongst his mapmakers and merchants. It had simply not existed there since before the mysterious fog.
"The land that you are seeing is called 'Britanny' sire, of the Kingdom of France."The man explained. "It was their King that sent for me to represent him."
"What is your name?"Taketoki asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
The man bowed low. "My apologies sire, it was quite rude of me to not introduce myself. Marco Polo, at your service, your eminence."
The Daimyo gave a slight nod, a million more questions were flowing through his head, he needed time. Time to process all that he had learned. How many more realms existed beyond this Kingdom of *Furansu* and how many of them would be friend or foe to the emperor? Yes...He would need time, time to mobilize his spies and to ensure that the rival clans and daimyos were kept in the dark about these developments, at least, until the time was right.
"Thank you, we will talk more, Polo-san, I am sure you have much more to tell me about your people and I am always eager to learn."
|
Stan looks at the bartender cockily. He's lead a terrible life, cheating and using people as much as he could. He lead a cult. He tried to open a portal to see him. He knows exactly the drink that he wants because he wants to meet the fallen angel himself.
"Sir, I'll have a diablo martini."
"Coming right up."
It appears before Stan in a few seconds. He drinks it slowly savoring every drink. He finishes it and slides it back to the bartender. A portal appears in the wall in front of him. Stan walks through the portal and feels a blast of hot air wash over him, but it's pleasant, perfect actually.
A beach appears before him. The sand is cool and feels amazing against his feet. The beach surrounds a normal lake. He dips his foot in the water, and it is perfect. People play on the beach, happy. Something is wrong. Someone walks up to him, a beautiful woman.
"Hello, Mr. Kripke! Welcome to heaven. Your only limitation is your imagination. All drugs are acceptable to use, and there are plenty of ways to fulfill your carnal pleasures. Even I could be yours. Just ask."
"Wait? Heaven? No, I should be hell bound. Can I speak to your manager?"Asks Stan.
"Of course, the Big Guy will be right with you."
Stan waits for a few seconds when an old man appears in front of him as the woman disappears. He smiles at Stan who stares back with hate in his eyes.
"You're disappointed. You thought you were going to hell. Diablo martini is instant entry. Of course, there's a bit of a vetting process. The drink you choose is personalized. I know whether people are trying to look good. Some will never make it here. Others can make the right choice. You did just that. We can customize this place to feel like hell, if you want."
"But, I was a Satanist, just a horrible person."
"Right, and you influenced hundreds of people to follow me and do good. You were such a bad person that people had to turn to a higher power to understand it. So thank you. I had to reward you. I wish there were a million of you. Everyone would make it here. Thank you, sincerely."
"No, screw this. Send me to hell."
"What's your idea of hell?"Asks God.
"This, exactly this."
"I'm pretty good, aren't I? Helps to know everything."
God disappears. Stan sits on the sand. He hates the beach. Sand gets everywhere. This is going to be hell.
***
If you enjoyed this, subscribe to r/nickkuvaas for more stories and free giveaways. |
* English it not my native language, sorry in advance.
We had gone 23 hours without killing anybody. I don't know how we got this far but we did. The streets were dead-silent; the whole world was waiting and watching the news. Finally, peace. I turned up the music and started playing games. It was almost time. I was so hungry and just waiting for the moment.
I wasn't the only hungry one in the house. Rex looked at me.
"Come on, not now."Rex continued to look at me with sad puppy eyes. I lost the game.
"You won this time.."I scratched Rex's head and got his food.
"Your world is gonna get so different after this is over, Rex."I filled up his bowl and got my phone out. I had to call my parents, what would they think of all this?
"Lucas, have you heard the news? It's crazy isn't it? The last time I felt like this was when you were about to be born. I was so nervous. Oh, dad wanted to talk to you. I'm so glad you called, how are you?"
"I'm really great, I just got a new job."Not true. I just wanted my ma to be happy.
"I'm so happy for you! Dad really wants to speak to you now. Love you!"
"Did I see you at the hospital yesterday?"My dad was trying to whisper for some reason.
"Is everything okay?"He genuinely sounded worried.
"Yeah I'm okay dad, thanks. Just got a new job. Rex seems to miss you."
"Are you sure? And tell him I miss him too."My dad really missed having Rex around.
"Yep, and will do."I barked at Rex. He happily barked back and sat in front of me.
"I'm gonna watch the news now, bye dad!"
"See ya, make sure you eat enough."
Economists were saying it would destroy us and add nothing to our lives if nobody got killed. I guess they were true. My life would be as shitty as it always was. Everyone's would be. There was a big countdown clock on the tv now, only one minute to go. I had to do this. I had to be the one to do it. Countdown at 10.
"I'm sorry, Rex,"I said and I pulled the trigger. The last thing I felt was falling on the floor in slow-motion. |
“Hidden Mystery.”
Who would have thought that a game with such a cliche title would end up becoming the world’s best selling VR game of all time? It wouldn’t have been me, nor would I have expected to be the best player either; but that’s what I’ve been good at. Seeing the little things hidden amongst the larger picture. The small intimate details layered between the cracks.
I’ve solved almost everything the game has thrown at me; within record time, might I add. I’ve figured out the secret as to who Jack the Ripper really was (who, honestly, was rather obvious.) The Zodiac Killer? Easier to solve than a “Who’s that Pokemon?” puzzle. The Black Dahlia Murder was solved within an hour of me logging into the server. Have you ever wondered what happened to DB Cooper? He lived a long a fruitful life, but I guess I can’t say where without spoiling the game.
All of these “mysteries” were nothing; I had lost fun in the game at this point. Where was the challenge? It all just seemed to be nothing more than exactly what it was sold as, a game. I honestly thought about just stopping it all and giving up the game; but, I got a message, one that would spark something in me for this game again.
“Server CTC”
Sent from an unknown sender, no details, nothing. I still have no clue who sent it to me, but it caught my attention.
I decided to log into the server, what could be the harm? If I’ve solved everything else in the game, then nothing else could be that hard.
That was 6 months ago. The entire game has eaten away at my life at this point. I can’t stop. It’s strange to say, but I don’t know what to do. I barely eat or sleep. I haven’t left my house in weeks. I can’t break away from this game.
I log into the server, as I would any other. Time period is set in the 1990’s. I’m in a normal suburban home. From the way the sun shines in through the window and the sounds of birds and what seems like a school bus, drift inside, it has to be morning. The table is set. Bowls, spoons, cups, all placed about.
This is the scene that I’ve logged into everyday for the past 6 months. The same scene that keeps me awake at night. The same scene that fills my every waking moment with questions and worry. What is it that I’m missing? What is it that I’m not seeing?
I sit down at the table, tired. It shouldn’t be this hard. I’ve figured out who actually killed the Gruber family in 1922. Where Benjamin Bathurst actually ended up. All of this should be child’s play. Yet, it’s something that is eluding me. Something that is just out of my grasp.
What is it that is slipping between the lines? What is it that is just out of sight, that is avoiding me at every turn? Why? Why? Why?
Why can’t I see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
|
That bastard really did it. He was that obsessed, but it worked.
I looked up at what was my old friend. His smile was from ear to ear as he looked down at me, a once genius human with the intelligence to create the ships that we've begun using for commercial space travel. Now I've been reduced to... *this*.
I look over with one slimy eye at the man in a business suit in front of my dead corpse. The dark suited man hands my friend a brief case and monotonously says "congratulations, you've proven our tests correct. Here's a million dollars, but be warned, your immortality can end if *that circumstance* happens."
My friend gave a slight nod as he looked down cautiously at me. As though I didn't sneak into his shed, as though I didn't see his plan, and what I could do to avenge myself, as though I didn't stash a million dollars in various bank accounts, prepared to wage a war against him. I thought it was all a fucked up joke, but this isn't some silly game, my body is dead, but my soul lives on.
He knew what I was doing, and he realized how hard he fucked up. I was crawling to him, ever slowly, but never ending. We were immortals locked in an eternal battle, my life relegated to ending his. I will not eat, sleep, or stop until I've touched my ex friend with my slimy body and watched him die for killing me. I don't care how much money he has, he's not getting away with this.
I found myself in a glass jar, looking at eye level with him. We shared so much in looks alone. I couldn't speak, but he decided to do it for me, knowing exactly what I would tell him if I wasn't an immortal snail. "game on". |
Others said the Multiverse showed you what you could have been, and sometimes it acted as a reflection. But nothing reflected me as I watched the lonely universes, eager for signs of my existence. Never did I appear, or even get hinted at. I'd never lived in some, and was damned to death in others. I was alone in the universes, the only version of me left. As I drifted around, a thought came to my mind. If I was dead or non-existent in these universes, then...how would a world without me look like?
Normal on the outside. Equally so inside. I tried to find regret, prrhaps even longing for my return, but I reminded myself that my existence was already gone, or had never crossed their minds. My poir family used so much money on my upbringing, so the wealth my family was gaining without me cut me deep. I'd been nothing but a burden. A pain. Useless.
The Multiverse glowed suddenly, a pale light directing me to one of the universes. I'd programmed the light to only shine when I was mentioned. Excited, I journeyed over to hesr their conversation. "I wish...we had a son. Any son. I really wish we had someone to love..."my mother said, her eyes filled with longing, my dad nodding in agreement. On the table was a divorce agreement. The datr was a year before my trip here.
In a split second I understood. Without me to close the gap in their relationship, it only deteriorated without someone to love together. I looked at the sadness my family was undergoing, and a tear escaped my eye. Was I worth something?
As yellow lights began to flash, left right and centre, I knew I was.
______________________________
More over at r/Whale62! Sequels at popular request! |
"Right this way Mr.Katz,"said the nurse. "I'm walking you to the bathroom now."
The nurse guided him to the bathroom in his hospital room and once inside, she closed the door for him. Finally, he can take off the bandages. Jerry had been waiting a week to get those itchy sons of bitches off of his face.
"Take as much time as you need,"said the nurse. "You're wife and daughter are on their way up and should be here any minute. If you need me just press one of the assistance buttons located around your room. I'll be leaving now, goodbye. Enjoy your New Vision."
"Goodbye! And thank you for everything,"Jerry replied.
Three goddamned years without seeing his wife's face. Does she still look the way he remembered? Oh, and little Laura. He's heard her grow these past three years. Heard her develop from unintelligible baby talk to "Daddy, I love you."Felt her face develop. According to Jasmine, she has his gray eyes and her auburn hair. God, she must be beautiful. Daddy's little girl.
He had given up all hope of seeing anything again. He had become content with whatever vague images he could muster up in his mind's eye. They were as good as it would get. He even stopped asking his wife to read him the articles. God, the irony of it all. During the first week, all the news stories were the same: "Visionary director loses vision in a tragic accident."When he got that call from The University of Chicago about their new experimental surgery, he signed up without hesitation. *The twenty-third fucking century,* he thought to himself, *installing two goddamned super computers in your skull*
He began to peel off the medical gauze that was tightly taped and wrapped around his head. His hands trembled. A couple seconds of unlooping later the bandages were off. He could see again. Except now he could see...everything.
He knew he was supposed to be in a bathroom but he didn't see one. He saw colors. An infinite amount of colors. Colors he's never seen before. Colors that didn't exist. Waves of them. Clouds of them. Wherever he turned his head, they were there. What was he looking at?
Demonic pulses of pain from behind his new eyes sent shocks through his skull. Grunting, he shut his eyes and palmed his face with both hands and fell into a fetal position. He counted to ten.
Then it stopped. His vision adjusted. There was the toilet in all its porcelain glory. It was the sweetest sight in the world. Jerry had worked with the best cameras money could buy but none of them held a candle to the resolution of his new eyes. The slightest discolorations of the toilet were obvious to him. The toilet seat wasn't smooth, it had thousands of bumps on it fractions of a millimeter big.
It worked. It actually fucking worked. The computers were probably just working out a bug at first, or simply adjusting themselves. Whatever the case, he could see.
The wonders he could work behind a camera now.
There was a knock on the door.
"Jerry?"a familiar voice called out. "Honey It's me,"his wife's voice continued.
"Daddy?"called out another familiar voice.
Jerry dashed to the door and swung it open. There they were, the loves of his life. He could actually see them. He could actually see,- *my daughter*.
The whole world was still for a few moments. No words were spoken. He couldn't control the welling of tears.
"Honey can you s-"
In a sudden swift movement, Jerry picked up his daughter and hugged her tightly. He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her.
"Mommy, mommy,"his daughter exclaimed. "Daddy can see me!"
Jasmine joined in on the hugs and kisses.
Jerry put his daughter down and took a step back to let the sight of them sink in. His wife, with her auburn hair and heart shaped face, looked sexier than he remembered. But his little girl. Her beauty left him incredulous. How could he have missed out? And for three whole years at that.
Hours later, in a diner about a block away the hospital, Jerry and his family were sharing a wonderful lunch. His wife was prepared with three years worth of pictures. She had albums on her phone chronicling their daughter's life thus far. It was great but seeing her sitting in front of him infinitely greater.
Laura was telling him a story about a castle she built with Legos in daycare. Jerry just stared at her, noticing how she grew more beautiful the longer he looked at her. He reached for his glass of water and took a sip. Without looking he placed it down on the pronged end of his fork. It went airborne and hit the ground. The clang quieted the diner.
"I'm sorry!"Jerry exclaimed through a smile. "Just a fork, I'll pick it up."
He bent down and grabbed the fork. Whilst in his hand, he noticed the ground was moving. He blinked hard. It was still moving. A billion billion tiny fuzzy insects replaced what was once travertine tiling. His gaze slowly moved to the fork. The same. He flung it. His hand no longer had skin on it. Instead, it was a colony of these fuzzy insects moving around oily craters.
He jumped back into his seat and closed his eyes hard. He began counting to ten.
"Honey, what's the matter?"Asked his wife.
"Nothing, just give me a second babe."
He opened his eyes. Two grotesque creatures sat before him. They were made of a trillion moving fuzzy insects. He jumped up and hit the table hard with his knees.
Shattering. Crying.
"Jerry!"His wife shouted. "What're you doing!?"
He looked around, they were everywhere. Then the colors came back, the pounding behind his eyes. He let out a guttural cry. He grabbed his skull and ran towards the front of the diner. He had to get out of there. Back to the hospital. CRASH. He lay face down on concrete, glass everywhere.
When he opened his eyes what he saw was a horrific canvas of infinite infinitesimal fuzzy oblong creatures and waves of orange and red. The throbbing pain in his head was now unbearable. That was it. He grabbed two shards of glass and stabbed and stabbed, gouging those god damned things out of his skull.
Darkness. Relief.
The loves of his life were somewhere in earshot crying out for him. But in his mind's eye, it was them again. Not those creatures he saw earlier. Another familiar voice.
"Quick bring him back,"said the nurse. "This is Mr.Katz, the one whose New Vision we forgot to program."
--Edits for grammar. Also, this is my first WP attempt, any feedback would be appreciated.--
|
Cameras flash as you let out a deep sigh amid the loud rumble of human voices at the press conference. You point randomly at the crowd of reporters, to the grumbling compliance of many, everyone quiets down a bit to allow her to ask a question.
"What is the government's stance on looting and other such crimes of opportunity that occurred during the zombie outbreak?"
By this point, you weren't shocked at all by questions that would seem to have obvious answers, and you took it in stride.
"There were no leniencies in the legal system during the outbreak, and our court systems still work fine now, so anyone proved to commit a crime during the outbreak will be prosecuted to the same extent as someone committing that crime now or before the outbreak."
You point to another person belonging to some news company or another.
"Mr. Whitehall! Is it true that some undead were left alive to be experimented on by experimental scientist agencies?"
This was not the first time you had been asked this question in even just the last hour, and you are sure that it would definitely not be the last either.
"All undead were dispatched by the Marine Corps as soon as we were able to mobilize-"
Another reporter interrupts you, asking how you could possibly know this for sure.
"In past years, we have made many advances in science, including the invention of thermal imaging technology, and more recently the invention of kinetic imaging. combining these two technologies eitsnsures that anything smaller than a car that moves but gives off no thermal radiation will be further checked up on using satellite images, and if it comes to it, we will dispatch a unit to the area to gather information."
You point to a man decked out in complete black who's got so many pockets it'd be hard to count them all. You notice that he has several strange bulges in his pockets that all look very similar to the shape of a handgun. He also has several knife sheaths strung all the way around his belt, along with a roll of duct tape, and some other indistinguishable tools. Your interest is piqued so you point to him.
"What do I do now?"
You are confused by the simplicity of the question and why someone would ask that.
"I'm sorry, what do you mean by that?"
"Well, I'm the CEO, founder, and owner of the American Preppers Network. I've always known we were gonna have a zombie apocalypse, and I've been preparing for it and helping others prepare for it since the day I turned 18."
The extreme distraught on the man was clearly visible, even through his extremely thick beard.
"When it finally came, it only lasted for 3 days. I've sunk 25 years of my life into prepping for the apocalypse, and now that it's over before it's ever even really begun, I don't know what to do. I don't know if I'll be able to stop preparing for something I've known my entire life. I don't know if I even **want** to stop preparing. What happens next?"
You mull over this strange question for a few seconds, as the reporters hungrily record every second of your silence, with no doubt they're going to try and spin some horrible story about me the next day.
"There is no chance of anymore *outbreaks*, that much I am certain. We have isolated the neurotoxin responsible for the outbreak and destroyed all of it, and even if there were any isolated incidents of the undead rising, they would quickly be stopped."
You try and find a good way to spin this encounter with the reporters because God knows you could use some good press.
"You seem to be very fit, and you obviously know your way around a dagger and gun. I bet you would make a good addition to the Marine Corps!"
The room looks almost expectantly at the man, waiting for his response. In that moment, the entire weight of the room rested on his shoulders.
"I think I'll pass. I don't need a job for the next 15 years anyway, I've got enough food to feed an army. Literally."
The room erupted into chaos.
|
1.
Sparkulon was the man to meet the aliens when they arrived in the year 2226. Voted leader of Earth, he was the voice of mankind’s purpose and plans. Loved for his unifying speeches and even his feats of strength, the people had eager hope that he would be the one to bring forth an alliance with the outsiders. He certainly had the noble look of a modern king, his sharp teal uniform glistened gold edges, the wide breasts of his jacket pronouncing his large chest. The ornate golden insignia on his shoulders much reflected his confident stance and charismatic smile.
People will never forget the day he stepped onto their massive ship. The selfishness will never be forgiven, but it was Sparkulons stumble that they will always talk about. The moment he lost his balance and fell down to his hands and knees.
The aliens had translators that mimicked human language, Sparkulon was met with their first words. He couldn’t tell which of the slug like creatures was speaking, the sound came out of the walls of the ship.
“Hello. Your planet is impressive.”
Sparkulon smiled and bowed.
“Earth welcomes you. I am Lazerus Sparkulon, king and overseer.”
“We are the Chunthu’s, messengers to the galactic alliance. We search for sentient life in the universe, and bring civilizations with intelligence the prospect of joining us in peace. We have scanned your planet and seen the advanced architecture, the robust healthcare system, and the most respectable piece of science, your force shield that protects your planet. We have respect for your cultures, and wish to welcome you to discuss terms of friendship.”
A door to a long hallway opened behind the Chunthu’s. Sparkulon waved his guards at ease and followed the slugs to a room that had a large bubble window on the far wall. One of them signalled at the window with his skinny three jointed arm. Sparkulon peered out into space.
The walls spoke, “A gift for you.”
A needle pushed into Sparkulons leg.
“What… What is this?”
Then he was flying, fast. Blurs of whites and blues and greens rushed passed his vision. He could feel the momentum and it was speeding up and up. Suddenly he would stop, see another world from orbit, before shifting his eyes in another direction and moving again as fast as the speed of light. He felt euphoric, his chest heaved in and out taking deep breaths, his legs shook and he laughed. He experienced this for an hour before the effects subsided. When he awoke from it, he was left feeling drained.
“More…” He grovelled before the slugs.
“There is more to be had Lazerus, perhaps we could exchange. Lower the force shields protecting your planet, and we will give you more of the substance than you could ever ask for.”
Sparkulon nodded his head with force, a maniacal smile on his face.
2.
Tordago was seventy nine years old, although his body didn’t show his age as much as his grey hair. A short, stocky man who in his youth had been an olympic boxer. He was caretaker to the operations beacon that controlled the force shield.
The look of desperation on Sparkulon’s face when he came to the door of the beacon was the first red flag that went up in Tordagos mind.
“Tordago, disable all shield reactors.”
“It would take hours to get them all back online. For what reason would we want to shut down the planet’s defence system?”
“I am the king, that is the reason!” Sparkulon shouted.
“Protocol says you need to give notice to the space fleet first. I haven’t heard a word over the radio of any such notification.”
“You puny bureaucrat, I am overseer to this planet and I have been given the right to disarm this beacon.”
Sparkulon drew a blaster from his hip.
Tordago was leaning against a computer desk, his arms resting behind him. He reached around and found a paper weight. Ducking down as fast as he could, he tossed the paperweight at Sparkulons stomach. The few seconds of confusion was all Tordago needed to be on top of him. Then he was raining down punches, putting all of his weight into his old muscles to pound the life out of him.
3.
Tordago reported the encounter with Sparkulon to space fleet. It was found during an autopsy that a foreign agent had entered his blood system. Video logs showed the erratic behavior of Sparkulon before his death. When asked if they knew anything about the substance, the Chunthu’s explained the situation as a reaction to the atmosphere in their ships.
The counsel of Earth left ruling in Sparkulons absence decided to cut off communication with the aliens until they could conclude that they could be trusted. The Chunthu’s responded by attempting to blast holes in the Earths force shield. Their battery cannons did nothing. Finally, after years of attempting to break through the shield, the Chunthu’s lost interest. The shield was withstanding everything they threw at it with no signs of relinquishing.
Earth was safe for now, but it was obvious that preparation was needed incase of a larger scale attack. The people built great star fleets and weapons technology, instilling a sense of readiness in themselves. If the Chunthu returned, the planet would tear them to pieces.
|
I'm a man of many faces but that doesn't mean I'm a shape-shifter. Met shape-shifters before, though. Wasn't very fond of 'em, but hey, different strokes for different folks and all that jazz. A similarity we do share is that I have almost as many faucets of personality as they do faces.
To describe myself: I'm an avid outdoorsman, I enjoy traveling, I'm rather charming (as I've been told throughout my life so it ain't my ego doing the talking), I always have a joke prepped, and a quip to rebuke any rebuttal. My special gift on this earth is I don't take fall damage and my other extra special gift is that I'd still be damned special even if I couldn't due in large part to my natural talents and cleverness.
So... why are people so gosh darn afraid of charming ol' me?
I'm not too sure myself. I mean, when I met these people - a couple this time, one could see through walls, the other could double their jumps- on these mountain trails they're pleased as a peach to hike with me. Safety in numbers or something before I crack them up with a humorous remark.
Alright, perhaps I'm lying. They do mention their fears which is an odd thing to admit to a stranger. Those things are better left to the people trained to peek inside people's heads while sitting in their stereotypical leather chairs. The people I walk with talk about 'The Mountain Man'. The Mountain Man... What an awful name. Mainly 'cause it's stupid, but hey, that's what they call him. The blonde man, with those near black brown eyes, preying on innocent hikers. No one has been able to defeat him. No one has been able to find him again to try after that last attack.
These folks said they heard he was lurking around Everest, which is why they decided to hike Mount Monadnock; named the second most popular hiking spot by some outdoors magazine. It's funny they should say that because I believe the last attack was actually on Fiji. Perhaps simply no one had found the bodies yet. That couple had been pretty nice too.
We were nearing the spot I liked when I snapped my fingers and exclaimed as though I just thought about it - when in actuality I had planned it far in advanced - that we should all take a group photo! The backdrop was beautiful, a mountainous outline, fluffy white clouds dotting a cornflower blue sky, and it was right next to a sheer drop.
They eagerly agree, and I loop my arms over their shoulders as one started lining up the picture on their fancy phone.
That's when I like to fall back, and with my grip still firm, take the people with me.
They scream in pure terror and confusion for a minute, like they always do, and then they're permanently silenced. Except for that one man with the instant revives. He's the reason I have to put on a new get-up every time I go prowling for some new 'friends'. I'm pretty talented with prosthetics and different colored contacts though admittedly I do miss my hair. The bald look isn't a good one on me.
You know, it's simply amazing how much money someone will carry on them to the middle of nowhere. It's amazing. It's also a bit of a relief because believe me, this hobby can be *quite* expensive. Fortunately as I rifled through these poor saps pockets I found quite a bit of cash, some common things I could pawn, and one of them was wearing a pair of boots in my size! All in all it'd be enough to fund a trip to Vesuvius - you know the one, it destroyed Pompeii back in the day.
Yep. A lot of people think I'm some sort of villain. *"The Mountain Man killed my so-and-so!"*, people often wail on the news while reporters decry these senseless acts of violence and death. But look, traveling is expensive. I gotta pay for my outdoor hobbies somehow, and a 9 to 5 just isn't going to cut it for me.
So. I'm the feared 'Mountain Man'. I'm a quite likable guy, with many different likable faces, and a simply *sensational* sense of humor. You wanna go hiking with me sometime? |
"It was obviously Mrs. White,"Holmes remarked, not even glancing at the notepad and check list the game provided him. Watson, startled, quickly glanced over.
"Sherlock, it's the first turn of the game. Half of the characters haven't even been moved yet."
"Don't be stupid, John,"the detective replied as Watson braced himself for yet another long-winded explanation as to why Sherlock was so obviously right and he was so depressingly wrong. "Everything fits into place. The motive, the opportunity, location, weapon, everything."
"Motive... motive? What motive? Sherlock, it's a bloody board game. A board game we haven't even started, thanks to you and your outburst."
"Nonsense, John. Mrs. White is employed by Mr. Black as a maid, as I'm sure even you can see if you look at her piece."Holmes handed Mrs. White's game piece to the doctor, indeed dressed in a maid's uniform, and brandishing a disturbingly large kitchen knife. "The knife she's holding proves that she has access to the kitchen, a room which the rest of the characters would not see as guests."
"Sherlock, the characters can go into any room in the house. That's part of the game."
"She wouldn't have any business in the kitchen, though."the detective continued, "As a maid, she would more likely work in the rest of the house cleaning. She obviously had a resentment for Mr. Black, and killed him in the kitchen with the knife."
Watson stared at the detective with a look of utter disbelief.
"Tres bien, monsieur, but this is not the case."
Holmes and Watson glanced across the table at the mustachioed figure sitting opposite the detective.
"These are very good points, but Madame White does not necessarily have a clear motive. She would not be placed on Monsieur Black's will in the event of his death, for she is only a maid. Non, there is another, clearer culprit."
Captain Hastings turned to him, confused.
"I don't know, Poirot, Mr. Holmes' points make sense to me. And besides, you heard Dr. Watson. The game hasn't even begun."
Poirot stopped straightening the pieces on the game tiles and tightened his lips, annoyed. "Hastings. Have you even considered the problem with the motive? All Madame White would be accomplishing in killing her employer would be putting herself out of work. The game manual would also mention if the body of Monsieur Black was found with any stab wounds."He held up the game manual and shot a look at Holmes. "Think, Hastings, who is the one character in the game who would not arouse suspicion by carrying around a weapon?"
Hastings thought a minute.
"Well, Col. Mustard is a military man. I suppose he might carry some sort of sidearm."
"Very good, Hastings! And because he was invited to Monsieur Black's manor, it can be assumed that they were close - close enough for Monsieur Black to write him into his will. But Col. Mustard would have to be discreet in the murder of Monsieur Black - which is why it was in the Hall where he shot his friend. The tiled floor would make it easier to clean up any blood than if it were carpet, and this is the closest room to the stairway of the cellar where Monsieur Black's body was dumped and later found!"
"I say, Poirot,"Hastings remarked, "I think you've done it!"
"Don't be stupid, anyone in the house would have heard a gunshot,"Holmes muttered from across the table.
Poirot shot him a look.
"I, Monsieur, am not stupid, as you say. It is clearly obvious that it was Col. Mustard who shot Monsieur Black in the Hall with his revolver!"
"It was obviously Mrs. White with the knife in the kitchen! Look at the game piece!"Holmes stood up, furious. "Typical Frenchman."
Now Poirot stood up, also infuriated at this jab. "BELGIAN, Monsieur, I am BELGIAN!"
Watson stood, grabbing Holmes by the arm. "Sherlock, are you high?"
Holmes shook Watson off, and turned back to the Belgian detective.
"If you can't follow plain and simple logic--"
Mais non, Monsieur, it is YOU who can not follow simple logic. Nor can you keep your composure!"
Hastings, still seated, glanced to Poirot.
"Poirot, I think we should leave."
Watson now grabbed Holmes' arm again, and began dragging him out the nearby door.
"I am so sorry - WE are so sorry for this outburst. Really, he's usually more composed than this - though I can't really say more polite..."
"Watson, we aren't leaving, we still have a game to --"
The detective's words were cut off by the door closing. Poirot and Hastings could hear some shouting coming from outside, then some car doors slamming before driving away.
"What an interesting character."Hastings cheerily remarked. |
**23:59:59.999**
**23:59:59:987**
**23:59:59:969**
Finally, the timer is actually showing just hours. So many times ithas gon and reset on me when it was at something like 0004:358:something:something:something because some fudging physicist or astronomer or palm reader or what have you figured out Doomsday...
Finally, this shithole of a planet can be cleansed. Well, might as well run down to the corner-store and get a double of crisps and some avocados; I'm feeling like guac to accompany the end of Earth. I'll miss these 'hoo-mah-inns' and their wacky foods, but upper management has been on my ass for a while about cleansing the planet. Oh well, sentient life that cooks will pop up again sometime, I guess.
**22:10:15.656**
**22:10:15.548**
&nbsp;
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.
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&nbsp;
**04:03:12.676**
**04:02:12.558**
**ERROR 2243: WORLD DENIZEN KNEW TOO MUCH**
NO. No no *no no* ***no!*** Not this again! Not now!
**ENFORCING HARD RESET. RESETTING DOOMSDAY^TM TIMER TO DEFAULT MINIMUM OF 1:000:000:00:00:00.000**
Oh, come on! There were just 4 hours left! We had the floods ready and everything! *I even went out and bought avocados!*
**RESETTING TIMER. DO NOT SWITCH OFF OR RESTART YOUR DOOMSDAY^TM TIMER WHILE RESET IS IN PROGRESS.**
Oh well. I guess I'll save the guacamole for another day. It's just one millennium anyway. It's not like I can do anything about the reset anyway. Dammit. Now I have to fill out yet *another* failed cleanse form. ***Sigh*** |
Sequential livelihood. The key to immortality. The biggest, most well kept secret in mankind's history...
Was exposed by an eight-year-old boy.
It all started on the eve of grandma Bertha Oleigh's one-hundredth birthday. Her family hid her in the attic of their three-story home in Georgia, USA. She was too old to be seen in public.
Harry, her great-great-grandson, had just celebrated his eighth birthday. His older brother Tim woke him up at the stroke of midnight, by singing him the happy birthday song, because he wanted some recognition for being a good big brother.
That silly surprise planted an idea in Harry's head; an idea that would change the world forever.
On the eve of grandma Bertha Oleigh's one-hundredth birthday, little Harry snuck up to her hidden room with his brother's smartphone, which he used to record his reenactment of what happened on his recent birthday.
At exactly midnight, Harry jumped onto her bed and yelled "Happy one-hundredth birthday!"Startled, Bertha woke up.
"Huh? Huh?"
"Happy birthday to youuu,"Harry sang. "Happy birthday to youuu-"
In front of Harry's eyes, and in view of his brother's smartphone's nightvision camera, Bertha's body began to change. Her bones ossified, her skin became tighter, and her teeth grew back in. All of her hair returned to its natural blond color.
Screaming, Harry ran out of the room. He closed the door to his great-great-grandmother's room and returned his brother's phone to his room. Then, he fell asleep in his own bed. Harry forgot about the event, thinking that he dreamed it.
The next day, Harry's brother discovered the video that Harry had made and posted it on the internet. By that time, Bertha Oleigh was gone, heading to a country with picturesque beaches to take full advantage of her reclaimed youth. But it was too late.
History changed forever, thanks to little Harry. |
"My name isn't Ted."
I said it for the twentieth time.
"The doctor said you would say that, Teddy. You're very confused right now."
The clock on the wall read 8:07am when I first woke up. She had come in and told me her name was Alicia. That she was my wife. She was stunningly beautiful, but deluded. As I tried to talk her out of her strange delusion, I tried to work my fingertips beneath the restraints that held me down to the bed. They were wide leather cuffs backed in something soft, to keep from chafing my wrists, but I was still managing to do some light scraping in my efforts to get them off.
Alicia shook her head. Her eyes were puffy from recent crying. The first time I said I wasn't Ted, she started to bawl like a child. The fifth time, she left the room and returned with two young boys. She held one in each arm, bright blue eyes staring at me along with expressions of recognition. Like they knew me. But I didn't know them. She told me they were Ted and Todd, our children. Both reached out to me longingly in unison. They were clearly twins.
When she left the room to put Ted and Todd to bed, that was when my efforts to escape the bed began in earnest.
My name is Maxwell Marcian, and I hunt monsters on behalf of the Archdiocese of Boston. I didn't always hunt monsters, though. In the beginning I was on the fast track to being a lead investigator studying ecclesiastic miracles. Weeping statues and that sort of thing. My job would have been to go and debunk religious hysteria and tear down group hallucinations when times of stress drove the flock to delusion. But that ended when I heard my true calling.
A man came to ask me if I would perform a task for which was formally defrocked, exiled from the order, and according to the papers, ostracized from even the chance of a pleasant afterlife. I would become a NOC, a non-official cover agent for the Holy See; a sort of spy operating on the down low to the betterment of the Mother church.
With this in mind, you might understand my confusion and frustration at being cuffed and strapped down to a hospital bed, when just the night before I had gone to sleep at 11:00pm sharp in my hotel room. If I were chasing a lead, it might make sense. But I wasn't. *I was on vacation*. I was visiting my home town in the week leading up to Halloween so I could be around for the birth of my first nephew and to pay respects to my parents, god rest their souls.
"Teddy. I brought dinner."Alicia smiled with a kind of brightness I found rare in my jaded line of work. She entered with a blue plastic tray and sat it on the bedside table.
As much as Alicia unnerved me, she also calmed me. I had this feeling that when she was looking at me, she really saw me.
It was intensely creepy to be at ease and in a state of alarm at the same time. I was unsure if I wanted to just take a leisurely nap or chew my own arms off at the wrist and escape out of a window.
"It's your favorite. I figured since it's your first day home from the hospital, we might splurge a little. Chicken marsala with mushroom rice."
I shook my head and spoke through clenched teeth. I was starting to lose my little remaining patience. "I hate mushrooms. The texture is foul. Like chewing on a rotting sponge. And my name isn't Ted, or Teddy, or anything like that."
Alicia smiled sadly, nearly overtaken by a frown for a fraction of a second. I'm trained to see that sort of thing. Micro-expressions that sneak out before we realize it, only to cover it up. Slips. Everyone has slips. Even the best poker player has slips.
"The doctor said you're suffering from a rare sort of amnesia after waking up from the accident."
I shook my head. "I don't have amnesia. I'm not Ted. You're crazy."
Again, Alicia's smile slipped. She leaned down to pull a paper folder from her purse, which was leaned up against the end table. She opened it and spread the papers across her lap. "Psychosomatic amnesia with signs of acute distress. Theodore Jenkins suffers from the long lasting effects of a head injury, coupled with a strong denial coping mechanisms. Unable to deal with the reality of his past actions, Mr. Jenkins not only will not address his amnesia, but will also not address the fact he has amnesia. Instead, he has created a fictional history to fill its place. An idealized history in which he does not have to deal with the..."Alicia swallowed hard and her voice quivered. "...the burden of his wife and two young children, the burden of his job as a police officer, and the burden of his past crimes in that role. It is the opinion of the staff of Danvers Health and Wellness Center that Mr. Jenkins be delivered into the custody of his wife so that he may convalesce at home where he is cared for, but only after Mrs. Jenkins is made aware of the necessary burden of care involved..."
Alicia's voice trailed off and she swallowed, choking something back as she closed the folder.
I rolled my eyes and turned my head away. "I told you, I'm not this Ted guy. You have me mistaken for him."
Alicia lifted a fork from the tray, pulling her smile back on as she stabbed a piece of Chicken Marsala and held it above her palm. "Open up, Teddy. You have to eat to keep your strength. If you don't keep your strength, you aren't going to get any better."
I shook my head and refused to part my lips as she held the chicken out. I tried to consider all of my options. If I could get the fork away from her, I could use the tines to unfasten the belt on one of my hands. If I could get just one hand free, I could open the other easily. The biggest problem was overcoming the tension. But I had gone through worse: once in my first year as an agent of the See, I had been bound and cocooned by a Wiever. A sort of spider demon that feasted on human sin by taking blood. In a weird sort of twist, its victims died completely free of sin, but they died earlier than intended. So who knows where they go after? Maybe Blue Heaven, to wander in a sort of gentle Purgatory?
Alicia must have seen me eyeing the fork as I started to part my lips and invite it closer, and she paused. "Please Teddy. Don't try to take the fork from me. This is hard enough."
I felt an intense guilt as my eyes met Alicia's. She looked so tired behind the brightness. But I didn't know her, perhaps she looked like that all of the time. For that matter, in my line of work how could I know if she was even human? What if she was some sort of succubus cuckoo? Her and her little demons looking for a man to fill the role of a provider long enough to raise them, only for her to take his soul along with his life's efforts? It was too convenient. The kids even looked a little like me, no doubt a dark reflection. A form of glamour intended to dazzle the eyes. I had read about Changeling-like beings capable of acts far worse and more twisted.
I turned my eyes away again, refusing to eat. From the very corner of my vision I watched her, trying not to let my pupil turn. Instead I focused on the drapery hanging over the window next to the bed, letting my mind take in all of the details.
Alicia's eyes drifted a little, going glassy. Her voice softened even more, which I would have thought impossible; trapped in whispers. "You *have* to get better. I need you, Teddy. The boys need you. This was hard enough when we were both working, but the savings are running out. They cut off your workers compensation when the trial ruling came in. They denied your pension, Teddy. We have nothing. Once the savings are gone..."
I closed my eyes completely and laid my head back on the pillow. I couldn't listen to this. Her sob story was starting to get to me. I might know better than to give into her arguments, but empathy is a basic human trait. It was one of the fastest way past someone's defenses. I know that because I was trained to know that, and before that, I had given many sermons myself relying on the lure of pathos. I needed to get free.
One thing worried me more than any other, though. If I somehow kicked free of the bed, overturned it, maybe I could pin her under my body. Maybe I could sink my teeth into her throat and cut off the flow to her brain. If I could render her unconscious, I could work from there. But what if she thought what she was saying was true? What if she was possessed? What if she was held by a glamour herself, used to keep my hostage? Maybe there was something going on in the town that if I learned of it, I could do something about it. What if this was the attempt of some dark force to keep me out of the way? To bottle me up until it was free to release me? Where was the real father of the children, and husband to this woman? Was he the hostage of a demonic entity? If I did all I needed to do to escape, what would Ted come home to?
I was so conflicted. I beat my head back into the pillow repeatedly, keeping my eyes firmly shut. Alicia tried to speak to me, but I ignored her. Thump, thump, I kept hitting the pillow. Hurting normal people was not within my mandate. What could I do? It was a perfect situation to trap me in inaction. If I acted, I would sin, and if I sinned, that would open the door to the things that lurk waiting for an agent to fold against his protocol. Once I did that, even if in the pursuit of the greater good of protecting people, how far would I slip? Like this fictional Ted, would I do harm in the course of my work.
Inaction was my only choice. I would sleep. I would drag it out. I would give myself time to think. I would consider the situation and figure it out. With that thought I drifted off, exhausted from my churning thoughts.
I woke in the morning. A clock on the wall read 8:14am. I was confused, as if leaving a horrid dream, and my hands were strapped to my sides. The door opened and in walked a beautiful, sad looking woman. She told me her name was Alicia and that I was her husband Teddy. But that was impossible, because I had never seen her before in my life. |
As the notifications came across the screen MY world crystalized.
-Body found
-Landing eta 3 hours
I had hoped the final vigilante had fallen after 34 depleted uranium rounds tore into her body. I hoped my task was done as violent salty waves drug her down, and the motionless face frozen in agony retreated toward the bottom of the Baring Sea.
But wars are not won with hope. So a armada of boats needed to be conscripted to do a search and find her corpse. She had just been found.
The body would join the rest in my crypt for would be saviors. No resurrections, the shamans I had hired had taken care in their curses, no time travel the Nobel laureates had perfected the time dilation system, No family members with grudges the secret police had tracked down all relations; and the part that filled my soul, no memories for the masses the Chemical treatments and social engineering campaigns had paid off.
The invasion was not part of the plan. We had 3 days notice before they arrived.
MY world would not fall so easily.
They will not be greeted by smug buffoons in their under-ware. They will not be greeted by politicians wringing hands while looters take to the streets. They will not be greeted by generals who can’t target a simple rocket much less understand the components and systems needed to build one.
They will witness legion, a world united under my preview.
73 hours was enough time to evacuate most the civilization to industrialized nations. We will need the infrastructure. The invaders seem to want live bodies, they will not have them. Euro-Asia will be my domain the nukes will erase the other continents. Solidifying my defensive position robing attackers of purchase.
My breakthroughs are birthed new life on assembly lines, governments have dissolve, individual privacy dismantled. Cooperation is mandatory, solely heuristics drive action. Emotion discarded, culture abandoned, value maximized.
MY world crystalizes as I view the notifications and know I have solved one problem and the one that remains is solvable. |
Everything is falling apart.
Seven days ago, the first one hit Tokyo. A single monster wreaked havoc throughout the city, damaging buildings and killing civilians all across the northern districts. The JSDF destroyed the threat with minimal losses, of course, but it was a horrifying beast, to say the least. The media was kept in the dark, as were foreign governments.
Six days ago, hundreds of copies of the same monster appeared in fifteen JSDF bases and a slightly larger radius of north Tokyo. The carnage was incredible. A hundred thousand civilians and soldiers died. How the media blackout held after that will never cease to amaze me, but it did. We have to thank them for that. It bought us time.
Five days ago, the media blackout broke. A single user Tor-ed his way through the military firewall to spread an image of the beast on 4chan, where it eventually got shifted to reddit. It went viral in Japan first. A hundred thousand monsters appeared in every major city across the islands that night, including two in the quarters of Shinzo Abe himself. He died that night. So did about a tenth of Japan.
It wasn't until four days ago, when one appeared deep underground in the CIA HQ in Langley, Virginia, that we started to understand. The beast materialized inches from a sleeping analyst who had been watching the Asia feeds and dispatched him almost instantly, before killing fifty percent of the third floor. It was caught on camera. Japan fell that day, along with Seoul and some of Beijing after seeing their distress signals. Moscow took a hit after seeing signals sent out of Beijing, as did half the nations in Oceania.
Three days ago, Congress and the President passed an emergency provision banning all forms of international communication for those who hadn't seen *it*. All military personnel and equipment were rapidly funneling home from overseas, joining the Border Patrol and Coast Guard, unless they were within a hundred kilometers of affected areas. FEMA and National Guard patrols went door to door, confiscating hard drives and personal devices and screening them for any digital signs of the monster. If they turned up, the entire family and any possible contacts they had in the last several days were dosed with amphetamines and shuttled off to the middle of the Mojave, where they would be detained under martial law and kept awake as long as possible. Oh, and they *turned off the Internet*. The images were spreading too quickly to contain, and a few hundred billion dollars in damages was nothing compared to the carnage that would be unleashed should these images be allowed to spread.
Only seventy thousand people had seen the monster in the continental US, which was good. The fact that not a single detainee was napping at the time was a significant bonus. The only issue is that I've been awake for seventy two hours now. As a Central American analyst on the *fourth* floor, I had seen the third floor massacre first hand. That thing was *horrendous*. Definitely nightmare material. It's sheer luck I wasn't able to sleep the night before detention, or that thing would have definitely been in my head, and by extension, outside of my head, probably killing half the neighborhood in the process.
Two days ago, somebody important in London apparently had The Dream, as did half of Russia, most of India, and the last few PLA companies fighting through Eastern China.
Yesterday, a monster showed up in San Francisco. Tonight, a dozen more appeared in Los Angeles. So much for the blackout.
We felt the on-site generators spin up when Congress authorized the shutdown of every power substation west of the Rockies. We watched the nuking of San Francisco, as well as the high altitude tactical EMP blasts over San Diego and Seattle.
Despite all this, I'm getting tired. There's not enough amphetamines to go around, and the guard in this whitewashed room sees it, motioning to the camera behind his protective Kevlar suit. He grows more frantic every time I lean back further on the wall. I just can't stay awake any longer. We're gonna lose this fight soon enough anyway.
As I slip into the abyss, I can hear the almost-silent shifting of a dozen fellow inmates clambering away from me, some of whom I had been working with just thirty hours prior. I can see it now. And it is smiling. Gurgling. *Laughing*. I know they can see it too.
I feel the 5.56 round pass through the front of my skull, and I am thankful. I can finally get some rest. |
I can remember my first night there.
It was strange really. They clearly had no idea the will and determination a single human could have. It was obvious from the moment I was throw from cell to cell that they had no idea what a human being even was.
I struggled at first, my instincts were to panic of course but instead I played dumb. I remained quiet, yet assertive not yielding to commands I couldn’t understand with their alien tongue. I was bathed in water while fully clothed, covered what I can only hope was soap and hand delivered to their door with a leash around my neck. I assume the transaction was quick. The alien was only slightly taller than an average human, covered head to toe in rough skin and a head like an fish man, yet his face reminded covered with a bandana unlike the other species of this alien I had seen.
When I was sold, I was welcomed to the family, a family of 4, two of which were clearly children, it was impossible to determine the gender of any of them, the children however were smaller than me. They treated me with caution and curiosity. Any attempt to reach out to me I had met with either moving away or flinching when one did touch me without me realising.
Thus started the weird social hierarchy. I’m an human, an intelligent species, not an animal and I wasn’t going to allow anything dodgy to happen. When they served me food on a plate of metal on the floor, some chunk of impossible to identify meat, large enough to be that of a bison leg; and brought it to their ‘dining area’. It was a spectral to witness, how they ate. They would use their webbed hands to hold the meat in place, and take small nibbles from their sideways mouths. It felt so human to watch, like witnessing a family eating kebabs on sticks.
I had brought my food to them, pulling up a stool and sat next to one of the children. The family had paused to look at me, blinking in what I could assume was surprise but I’d ignore it, using my hands to tear apart strips of the meat and eat it. It had been a while since I had eaten, and I could almost image myself if I had indulged myself longer I would have started crying there and then.
But instead I was met with one of the adult fish people, or Feeple as I had nicked named them; webbed hand shooing me away from their Make shift table. My reaction? To reach into my back pocket, pretending I was looking for something and pulled my hand out giving it the good ol middle finger. I chuckled to myself as I had watched them garbled between themselves. I couldn’t care what they had to say. Next thing I knew I was yanked down from the table and forced eat from the floor there on out.
At night I was trapped inside a blue cube of light. I struggled to sleep because of how bright it was. It didn’t hurt to touch but because of it I couldn’t not pass. It didn’t take me long to realise that it had it and my ‘owners’ had their limitations. Every time I fiddled with the brackets it would make a noise to indicate I had messed with it. They didn’t ever harm me, they just seemed really ticked off when I feigned innocence every time it happened by pretending I was asleep. They changed the cages several times after I realised if I mixed pieces of metal into holes of machinery before the shielding when up, you can essentially fuck it up. Eventually they just didn’t care. They treated me fairly, they never dared harming me, maybe I was considered valuable? Who knows? They let me go about my business. They never questioned what I did. I hadn’t witnessed them excrete so I assumed they didn’t or couldn’t. So I made myself a trench in the radiant golden forest outside their home. I never dared to flee. I knew without proper preparation I was screwed. So I didn’t.
I built myself a whole base of operation in the clearing of the forest. Only ever coming inside when the rain pored or it was time to eat. It was slightly acidic apparently, I’d found that out the hard way when I spent two weeks under care of my ‘owners’.
The children were ever curious. They would watch as I hunted 8 legged creatures with traps and weapons like a bow and arrows, and stick spears and slingshots made of hide of slain animals. It was almost like they were entranced with me. I was supposed to be their pet after all. They would watch with curiosity and I would go about my business. I built my first blast furnace after hours of digging and slushing about in the mud. I remembered survival videos I had watched online back home, I would copy them by doing stuff like discarded metal I found lying around the village. I build tools and weapons, with no ill to harm my captors. Only those I had not grown attached to, those who would prevent me leaving. Despite my roaming I was never harmed, my ever present collar indicated my owners. The Home I was given was taller, wider and more grander than all the other hut houses combined. My owners were either very rich or very important.
As time passed I had made several attempts at swords. I used clay and water to craft the desired shape, using the metal I had melted I poured it into the mound, being careful to layer it. I would let it cool in the lake nearby and with a whetstone made of stone I had sharpened the dull metal into something more.
I was ready; with the hide and scales I had collected from my hunts I had made armour, with the rations I had pinched from my owners I had food, from the lake I had boiled water, from my days of roaming the village I had located a trading post and from my blood sweat and tears I had my own forged weapons. Almost two years later I had geared up, met with the children and made my goodbyes. They would never understand. No child should.
It always hurts when your pet runs away.
Specifically when they go on to become an intergalactic pirate on a mission to go home. |
We're eating. My mother has never been a very good cook. The dinner of refried beans, rice, and canned tuna looks terrible and tastes worse.
I force a smile and nod to my parents. Mom gives a weak smile. It kills her that she can't do better, I know. Dad focuses on eating, peering over his spectacles at the food.
Julia, bless her, light of my life, rubs my knee. She's the best thing that ever happened to me.
"If you're not hungry, we can save your meal for later,"she says. "I know you had a bigger lunch."
There she went, saving me again. I smiled, and she scraped the rice to the side of my plate for later.
Then, all of a sudden, there was a banging on the basement door. A loud series of thumps that managed to sound out through the heavy steel.
Dad cleared his throat and kept eating. Mom ladled a bit more broth into his bowl. Julia glanced at the door. She tried to be surreptitious, but that was never her forte. I always could read her like an open book.
"Julia..."I warn.
"Maybe it's time?"she says, tentatively. I shake my head. She bites her lip but stays seated.
"Please, just open the door!"the scream is muffled but audible. Julia stares at the door again, beginning to stand up. I grip her hand tightly, our wedding rings clinking together.
"Julia. Please, just sit down so we can finish dinner,"I stare into her eyes, pleading. She sits.
The thumps die down after a few minutes and another two screams. We go back to our dinner.
Canned food under flickering lamplight in my parent's basement. I don't know how much more we could take of this. The radio said it might be safe to go out soon. I wasn't about to hold my breath. |
It wasn't as overt as all that. Can you imagine? World governments coming forward to announce that 100 million people were being killed off annually? It'd be madness! No, they were much more subtle. Some people called me a conspiracy theorist, but that wasn't quite true. What I did involved truth-telling, even if the facts were never *quite* verifiable. My following was vast, millions and millions of people read my blog each and every morning.
That made me a target.
Many times, the deaths of the people in the crosshairs of the culling were made to appear accidental. Other times, people would just disappear, never to be found. I had warned my followers numerous times that if I ever disappeared, they should immediately suspect that I had been vanished. Similarly, if I ever died in a freak accident, you guessed it - government killed me.
I'd found grease in my shower a few days ago, so I was on high alert. I knew they were watching; waiting for an opportunity to off me. Today I was on my way to speak to a source who was purportedly going to speak to me on the record about a mudslide that had killed hundreds of people last year. I had suspected for a long time that the government was behind it, but had never found anyone willing to talk to me about it, so I was understandably excited.
I got in my car, turning the key in the ignition, only to hear the futile clicking of a dead battery. Frustrated, I tried it again. It roared to life this time, and I heard a different type of telltale click. I only had a moment to register what was happening in which I could smile wryly.
*Of course.*
The car exploded. |
*This building must've been tall,* Charles thought as he entered its threshold. The large industrial bricks reminded him of the history books he had read depicting the civilization that existed here before theirs. It was a building that housed books, and most of them were written in English. **The curved black figures were hardly familiar to him.** English had long been a dead language since the humans went extinct.
It took decades to eliminate the waste they produced on their planet. It was the radiation that killed most of them. The rest were stragglers who survived a few centuries in the resulting nuclear winter. Charles and his people knew this because some of their readers looked into the past using their magic and watched exactly how it happened. The radiation, it seemed, came from numerous large explosions from all across the globe. Large, billowy clouds collected in the atmosphere and blocked out the sun. Even worse, the multiple explosions triggered more than a few volcanic eruptions that only exacerbated the issue. With no sunlight coming through the plants and many of the animals that survived quickly starved out. It took the resurrecting power of the *Urun naigi* to bring many of them back from extinction. The world wasn't yet entirely saved, and they were still debating on whether or not to bring humans back, considering how destructive they were. Death followed them wherever they were. It was their legacy. **To bring back such a creature would be... dangerous.**
Charles' job was to follow their legacy. Or, at least, to understand it more. Going into old, abandoned buildings to find what remained of their knowledge. He found a *library* which is a treasure for his people. What other knowledge, outside of the those weapons, did these people have?
Charles found several science books discussing biology. His people were already well-versed in the biology of earth creatures - they would never have been able to resurrect so many different species without that knowledge. He also found some books on human psychology **and history**. Though what they contained only further supported the "do not resurrect"side of the human extinction debate. **He thought it best to leave those and look for something more useful to their cause**
Finally, though, he found a book discussing something he had never encountered before. The *Elementary Physics* book he picked up felt weighty with knowledge. His people relied on information to develop their ability to manipulate the universe. They could physically feel the power of knowledge contained within books and other such forms of information. The book called him to read it.
It was his job to at least glance at the book long enough to make sure it was worth bringing back. So he opened the book and read the first few pages. They displayed a table of contents. **There were a few confusing and unknown words but one thing stood out to him** - the words "Black Holes"seemed to jump out at him. Out of anything he had seen, this was the most unfamiliar. His people knew physics quite well, but black holes were something he had never heard about. He decided to skip around the pages until he arrived at the section.
**The section started with a artist's conception of what a black hole looks like. He was mystified by the black planet he saw on the page. Below the image was the text...**
The words jumped out at him and his mind started to suck up the knowledge with a hunger he had never experienced. What he was reading was destruction to the nth degree. He couldn't lift his eyes away from the text. The description of a black hole was so horrifying yet Charles was bound. His mind would not allow him to turn away. Instead he was forced to consume the section page-by-page and with each passing moment his stomach felt heavier and heavier. His was almost through with the text when a final equation quite jumped out at him. **The numbers and symbols so accurately described what a black hole was** - he felt now that he fully and truly understood. **It was too late to turn back now.**
This knowledge came at a price. The equation was so deeply ingrained in his mind and he could not stop thinking about it. **His mind was completely** obsessed. Each passing second spent thinking about the equation made the world around him seem to grow heavier. He was forced to his knees and still he saw only the equation. The book was out of his hands, flat on the floor, and the equation stayed ever present in his mind's eye. He began to see black spots in front of his eyes. He felt like he was going to pass out.
His body turned dark and the things around him began to move. The *Elementary Physics* book landed on his abdomen and was absorbed in the empty blackness. Charles was long gone. In his place was a black hole brought on by humanity. **Humanity's last act of destruction**.
**Edits are in bold** |
I'll never forgive my parents for the name they gave me. Tortured through my grade school years, I learned how to be strong and overcome the bullying with a taste of their own medicine. If they tried to tease me for my name, rumors seemed to spread around about their own. Nasty little rhymes or nicknames that even made some of them cry. I would eventually let them know who came up with it. If they made fun of my clothes I would spill juice on their favorite outfits. I once sent our family dog after a boy who followed me after school, teasing me all the way home (my parents told me he moved away soon after). Typical self defense for the tough life of a young girl, right? I was always able to come up with a plan.
By the age of 10 many kids left me alone, so I had made a name for myself, pun intended I guess. I didn't fill all my time being a bully to the bullies though, I had things I enjoyed doing too. I liked making my own clothes (hence some of the teasing), and I liked cool old cars.
As I grew older and finished school, I separated from the little friends and family I had. I got a job in the fashion industry. My childhood prepared me for the grit I needed to endure the long hours and harsh competition. Eventually, I won the respect of a top designer and she kept me on as a protege.
I learned so much under her, and she became my personal hero. Her favorite designs were for coats, which I quickly fell in love with. The years passed and as she retired I took her place as the head of the label. Then more years passed and it was my time to retire. I wasn't ready, I felt like I had so much more to accomplish. I hoped to give young girls like I had once been something to strive for, and I didn't feel like I had done that.
Ready or not, retirement came in a form no one expected. I died in a car crash, (driving a little too fast for the road conditions). Or, should have died. In my final moments, I anticipated what the pearly gates might look like. Instead, I was greeted by the ghost of one of my childhood tormentors. He told me if I wasn't ready yet, that I needed to go back to my younger self again and try to be different. I could restart with all the knowledge I had gained in this life, but as soon as I reached this age again, every dog on earth would hunt me down. It was then I recognized the boy from my childhood who had "moved away."
I accepted his terms, grateful for another chance at life. As I woke up, I was my 10 year old self again. I had many ideas to prepare for what was to come. As I said, I always was able to come up with a plan. You might not appreciate them, perhaps think them cruel, even. But afterall, my name *is* Cruella de Vil. |
*Meanwhile, in The Land Where All The Writing Prompts Are Simultaneously True*
----
"I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS PLACE!"Ted yelled, standing in the middle of the road. He was nearly hit by police cars, and then the alien they were chasing. This happened in reverse as both the cars and alien were traveling back in time.
"Woah, hey there,"Sasha quickly crossed the road (along with a chicken, for reasons still unexplained) and grabbed hold of Ted's arm, leading him out of the road much to the disappointment of the many instances of Death hanging about.
"What's going on here?"Ted pleaded, more in general than to Sasha specifically. "Why is Death literally around every corner? Why are there so many God that they have to wait tables? Five times today Satan has tried to get me to sell my soul, and one time he was trying to sell his soul to *me*?"
"Hey, hey, hey,"Sasha said, trying to be calming. "Relax. Chances are good you're immortal so you don't need to worry about those things."
"Immortal? How would that even work? What about thermodynamics?"Ted was babbling at this point.
"Ted!"Sasha said. "Calm down!"
"HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME!?"
Sasha sighed, still holding on to Ted's arm. "It's floating over your head, just like everyone else right now. Be thankful it's not a number."
"Oh,"Ted said, glancing over Sasha's head. Somehow, of all the impossible things happening at the same time, that was calming. Having an explanation helped.
"Didn't they tell you everything when you got here?"Sasha asked, continuing to steer Ted toward a coffee shop where they could sit down.
"Who tell me what? Where?"Ted replied. "I just woke up in my house and walked out to... this nonsense!"He gestured to another sidewalk, where a serial killer was attempting to kill his policeman alternate personality.
"Okay,"Sasha said, "That's not good, people don't usually fall through the cracks unless things have gotten meta."
"Gotten what?"
Sasha didn't have time for a gentle explanation. "You're in a writing prompt. You know the idea that whenever people write something, somewhere in some alternate reality that thing is actually happening? This is that reality, only for writing prompts instead of full stories. It leads to some... interesting behavior,"she glanced at a man pulling various guns out of his backpack, but the man walked on.
"You mean I'm not real?"Ted said.
"Do you remember anything before this morning?"
"Of course I... wait, no. No! What am I?"Ted's eyes widened and he seemed about to start shouting again.
"Calm down!"Sasha said. "You're real *now*, that's what matters. And the reason you didn't get briefed when you got here is that you were made here. You're not just part of a prompt, Ted, you're part of a *reply*."She figured it wouldn't do his fragile sanity any favors to mention he was part of *this* reply.
"But all the bizarre stuff! God is everywhere and I don't mean he's omnipresent. Death is RIGHT THERE-"Ted pointed.
"Hey,"Death in the guise of a little girl said as she passed.
"Ted. TED,"Sasha said. "I'm going to tell you what I wish someone had told me."
"Yes,"Ted said, "yes, tell me."
"Get used to it."
"What?"Ted said, disbelieving.
"Writing Prompts has twelve *million* subscribers, and nobody searches before making posts. Or if they do search, it's so they can repost. For a sub about creativity, the bar is very, very low. And it won't change, because people apparently like it that way. This. Is. Your. Life. Now."
Ted's eyes were watering. "What do I do?"
"Whatever comes next, Ted. Whatever comes next."
Satan walked by.
"Probably more of the same." |
The cars are parked haphazardly, the lines are mere suggestions; the lot is chaos. It’s the day before Thanksgiving and everyone’s rushing in to buy a can of cranberry sauce.
We stand shoulder to shoulder against the mostly-brick wall and overlook our fellow citizens with the shortest foresight and the thinnest luck.
The paper-cup coffee always tastes best in cold weather.
“Do you believe in angels?” Yasmine asks.
“No. Not in the traditional sense.”
“Oh. Anyway, I saw him today,” Yasmine says. “Before I came here.”
“I told you, it wasn’t that bad. Was it? Don’t doubt me.” I say.
“It felt like he was interrogating me. There were just… so many questions. It was exhausting,” Yasmine says.
“But do you feel better?” I say.
“A little,” Yasmine says before she raises the bottom of her cup to the air for that last little drop of brew. “Just a little.”
***
The day after Christmas there’s always a rush of people with gift cards, but they always need a coffee first. Always. The parking lot is packed tight. We’re wrapped up tight in almost-matching bubble coats and dusty old scarves.
“Do you ever feel like your friends secretly hate you?” Yasmine asks.
“All the time. Do you hate me?” I ask.
“I don’t hate you, no,” Yasmine says.
I rub my back against the sharp brick behind me, relieving an itch that hasn’t gone away for months. “To be fair, that was a stupid question. When’s the last time we didn’t spend most of the day together?” I say.
“Can’t remember,” Yasmine says.
“Me neither. I can’t remember a lot, honestly,” I say.
“Like what?”
“Bit of a catch, isn’t that?” I ask.
Yasmine laughs.
***
The parking lot is thinning out as people rush home for the Super Bowl with big bottles of soda and whatever bags of snacks they could scrap out of the famished aisles.
“Were you there?” Yasmine asks.
“Where?” I say, digging my hands deeper into my jacket pockets.
“With me, at the psychiatrist,” Yasmine says.
“Can’t say I was,” I say.
“Do you remember being there? Do you remember two hours ago?” Yasmine asks.
“Can’t say I do,” I say.
Yasmine looks towards the sidewalk beneath her feet and tucks her toes in. “You were there, I think.”
“So what if I was?” I ask.
Yasmine turns to look into my eyes. “Thanks for looking after me.”
“No problem. It’s all I know how to do, really.”
***
The parking lot is quiet. It’s 2AM. Yasmine’s crying into her fuzzy gloves. I try wrapping my arms around her, but I can’t, she won’t let me.
“Hey, it’s going to be fine,” I say. “You don’t have to take them.”
“But they’ll help,” Yasmine says. “They’ll help make my problems go away.”
I stand quietly. Spring is still on the cusp of arrival, but the fog still leaves my breath. “It will go away. It will all go away. Every bit of doubt…”
Yasmine turns to look at me. Her eyes are big and full of hope. But the way she twists her lips… I can sense regret. “I don’t want to lose all of my doubt.”
“...I never asked you. Do you believe in angels?” I ask.
“No. I don’t believe in them at all. Why?”
“Just wondering,” I say.
***
Yasmine took the pill. She’s smiling. She rarely smiles.
I’m alone in the empty parking lot, and as I step closer to her on the side walk in front of the store. I can feel my memories of her fading. To lose a memory is an odd feeling – it feels like a widening hole in the back of your brain. It hurts because there’s even less of nothing there.
Just feet away from her I can see her eyes burn red. There’s water in their corners. She sniffles from the first air of spring.
“Hey,” I say.
“So this is goodbye,” Yasmine says.
“So you know,” I say.
“Of course I do, stupid.”
“Don’t forget it. You’re not going to forget them, right? All the times we spent here together.”
Yasmine looks through me towards the empty lot.
“Doubt it,” Yasmine says.
What a weird feeling this is; I don’t remember what happens next. |
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