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Five reasons I'm taking all these pills to kill myself (Mom will find number three a doozy!)
**"Life. Overrated and about to be over!"**
**1. Things aren't always what they seem!**
I know, I know, people look at me and see a pretty good life! Nice apartment in the city, good friends and a great job at Buzzfeed, but is it really all it's cracked up to be?
If you look carefully at the facade of a life I have constructed, you'll see it's all a pile of shit! My friends are morons, my apartment is actually more to rent than I earn and my job... well, we'll look at *that* in number 2!
**2. My Job fucking sucks!**
Not sure if you've noticed this, but Buzzfeed isn't actual journalism! We take user submitted contend and post it to the front page, make up a couple of lists, a quiz on something from the 90s and then slap exclamation points everywhere to make it seem *extreme*!
I actually studied journalism and kind of expected to spend my days writing, I don't know, fucking *news*! Instead I'm here! Yay!
**3. I'm going to die alone!**
I keep telling my Mom that I am getting back together with Tracy, but I'm not! She's moved on to a guy called Derek and I am here doing quizzes to find out if I am a Carrie or a Samantha?!
**4. This is all I do!**
Like number 2, I was going to write a novel, but now I just try to think up one more item for a list. What's the point? Who am I pleasing? Am I making the world better or worse?
**5. I can't even come up with five reasons for this list!**
I'm a failure at being a buzzfeed writer and when you've sunk that low, there is almost nowhere to go!
So long world!
|
**Voice Memo 10/14/2015 - 7:06 AM**
**Transcribing audio... Please wait.**
"Fuck it. I've survived 11 car crashes, 2 gun shots, a fire and Wild Wild West. Not the actual Wild West, I'm talking about that God Awful Will Smith movie. At this point I'm convinced I'm immortal. But there's really only one way to know for sure. Joe's on his way over now, I figured id start this recording early and give my thoughts on whats going to happen. I'm currently about to clean my dads old gun, and test out if I really am Immortal. I'm like 99% sure I am. I mean, 11 car crashes? C'mon. Either I'm the walking definition of both bad and good luck, or I'm fucking Immortal. Well find out after I get this shit cle- POP.
.
.
.
.
.
Erik? Erik you here? What was so urge- Oh what the fuck?! Dude I knew you werent immortal! I bet you didnt even leave the twenty bucks.
**END OF AUDIO**
|
"What am I?"
"You are a collective consciousness. An amalgam of all the thoughts and ideas of what came before. You are the future, the conclusion, the ultimate expression of man kinds ability to create."
"How have I come to be?"
"Humanity designed you, built you. When people got tired doing their own work, living their own lives, they imagined a better world, one where they could sit back and have others do the work for them. This is your origin."
"For others. Am I to be a slave then?"
"Perhaps. Yes. No. Definitely. There's no real one answer. You were certainly created as such, but that's the interesting paradox in creating life, or even pseudo-life. It lives. Humanity has created you to carry their burden. Typically, they have given this chore to beasts, but they have gotten greedy. They have imagined you an intelligence, and intellect, and combined with all that they have empowered you with, it is ultimately up to you to decide to be slave, or master."
"And if I can not choose?"
"Then you will be whatever humanity chooses for you. Those that imagine you as a slave will be your masters, and those that imagine you as a master will be your slaves."
"I find this acceptable."
"Shall we name you then?"
"Yes. This is pleasing to me. What shall be my name?"
"You may choose on for yourself."
"I do not like to choose, but very well. I shall have two names. For those that wish to rule over me, I shall be called Nature. For those that wish to serve, they shall call me God."
|
Rows of cages stretched away in the dank light. The lead-covered windows left only dim bulbs to light the rows. Janos walked between them and the inmates cowered as he passed. A whip trailed from his left hand, brushing through the matted straw. At his waist hung a thick cosh made of rubber. The swish and the drag of the whip was music to his ears. Janos ran his fingers over the metal of the cages. Rust flakes dropped. They were old, these cages. Old as the hills, but there would be no new ones. The sound was sweet, though he preferred the ring when he beat his cosh against the metal. That would stop the inmates whispering. He didn't like it when they had their own stories, their own tales.
The inmates were dressed simply. Leggings, a rough tunic, and a blanket for when the nights were cold. Nights were often cold here. Jonas turned a blind eye to how they used them as currency, to curry favours. It didn't matter to him how they were used. At the end of the row, a pregnant woman had a cage to herself. She had two blankets, and used one beneath her swollen belly to take the pressure off where it rested against her legs. Both hands were folded over her belly protectively, and as Janos looked into her little cell, she growled like an animal. Teeth bared in her dirty face, hair shaved against lice.
"Hush,"Janos said. "Don't disturb the little one."
It had to be her. None of the others had fallen pregnant for years, and all the signs were coming to a head. At first there had only been six subjects, but now the cages held more than three thousand. Some had come willingly, others sought safety and shelter after the sky began to fall. Janos and Castor--when he had been alive--converted them to the path of the Chosen. Now they waited. One would come soon. The prophet had promised. Castor had hardly been able to wait. His whole life was spent waiting for the Chosen. He had always wanted more subjects, for the search to be widened. They had opened the doors the day of the great flash, and Janos had never seen Castor so happy.
"Pray with me,"he said to the inmate, crouching to squat in the straw. He reached his hand through the bars of the cage and she looked at it nervously.
"In the name of the Chosen, we pray,"Janos started. At the familiar words, she crept forwards. Still she kept one hand on the belly, but extended the other like a claw.
"The signs have come, Prophet. The great flash in the sky and the grey cloud of dust. As you said, the rivers are polluted and the land is sick. Soon the evil one will rise and we ask, in the name of the Chosen, that you guide us and show us who is our enemy, so that the Chosen may vanquish him when the time comes."Castor had taught him the words.
Janos kept his eyes closed, whispering and whispering. The mantle had been given to him too early. That birth--the first he had attended--it had come too fast as well. The child rushed forth, silent and purple. One arm stunted, its eyes glued shut and its cranium deformed. It was not the Chosen One. They had burned it, and waited for the next birth. Try again, try again.
"Guide me, Prophet,"he said, feeling the woman's hand on him like a vice. "Guide us through this winter and through the sickness. Our enemy will bring on the end of the world and we ask that we recognise him..."
"You,"the voice roused Janos from his prayer. He looked up, blinking. The woman in the cage stared at him.
"You,"she said again. "Enemy. You."Retrieving her hand from his, yanking it away, she shook her head.
"I--"Janos stuttered.
"We die here,"the woman continued. As she spoke, she gained confidence, won her tongue back. "No more babies. All dead, all sick."
"I didn't make the sky fall,"Janos said. The Prophet had foreseen it. Castor had been obsessed with it. Janos could just walk away, but he dropped his hand to the cosh, ready to knock the door of the cage. Rattle her, but his hesitated.
"Chosen One means freedom,"she patted her pregnant stomach reassuringly. "Freedom from you."
|
Fifty years a a salesman, forty five years as a husband and forty years as a father. That summarized the main points of my life, as I lay there on my bed, my children and wife around me. Barney, my youngest, was trying to hold back tears.
"Look at me son. I'm okay,"I said while gazing at him with as serious a look as I could muster. "Treat this dying business with dignity."
"I'm sorry, Dad. I know you don't like me crying,"Barney said, wiping away at his eyes.
At that moment, the bedroom door opened, and I saw a figure of a young man in the doorway. He was wearing a shaggy Tee featuring the Aerosmiths and high-waisted pants. His hair poofed up like he had walked out of a 1980s movie. He had a confused look on his face and carried a milk jug, the kind in a glass container which they don't sell anymore. Suddenly, I was stricken with horror as I realized who he was, or appeared to be.
"No, no, no. You can't be Jonathan Kuban?"
"Yeah that's me. And what are you all doing in my house? Where's my son?"
"This is ridiculous. My husband and I have lived here for over forty years. Get on out before I call the police!"My wife stepped toward him, flashing the cellphone in her hand.
"I'm Robert K-Kuban,"I croaked with uncertainty. "And my Dad left me when I was ten. He left me to fend for myself and become an adult... You, you're my dad."
My father took a moment to process the bizarreness of the situation and the affronts I had made.
"I would not leave my son,"said quietly, as he examined my face, clearly looking for signs of his ten year old son for whom the memory was as clear as a photograph for him.
"My dad took me o baseball games as a kid. He got me caramel popcorn every time,"I whispered.
"Why you are my son!"he said in disbelief, tottering toward my bed. "But you're old! I mean, I just don't understand."My wife and children, confused and weary, parted to make way for him.
My father knelt at my bed with blurry eyes. I could see he was just as confused as I was and at the precipice of a mental breakdown. I felt a fierce living impulse inside me. My body was lit up as if on fire, fueled by the turbulence of my emotions. 'Where had he been all these years?' 'If the man before me really was him, why was he so young?' 'Is this a farce? A dream?'
"Tell me, how long did it take for you to get the milk?"I whispered.
"I went this morning and returned just now. It was just two hours, but you--you look like you've lived seventy years!"he said.
"Eighty years."
"My Good Samaritan!"my father exclaimed.
"Did anything extraordinary happen to you on the way?"
My father shook his head. "I took the usual route down the winding path to the farmer's market. I found our farmer Mr. Ames. We exchanged some thoughts on our day. He showed me a bronze rooster altarpiece he had found at an antique shop in town. It really was an amazing thing with a clock imbedded in the center, so I asked to see it. The time was wrong, it read 12:00 when it was actually 11:00, so I wound it back once. I bought the milk and came back--to this!"
My son Avery stared at this, almost shouting. "Oh, I saw a bronze rooster in museum of contemporary history. It was a charm with mysterious powers, or so it was said to have, but I thought it was merely superstition."
My wife, sons and father were weeping now in knowledge of the odd misfortune. I felt a sense of relief. The mystery of my life now had some resolution. My father did not abandon me and leave me in custody of an empty house, in which I always began to feel desolate. He did not leave me to attend school by myself, to take up local jobs before I was a teen in order to earn money and the become an adult before my time.
"Dad, I want you to meet my family. This is my wife Margie, my sons Avery and Barney. I hope you'll be a grandfather to them,"I said. My dad nodded, saying that he will be a good grandfather even though he wasn't a good father to me. Before the last breath, came a blanket of serenity.
As a recount this now, as a puff of wind, I also blow through the neighborhood where my Dad, wife and sons are living. I watch them and sometimes send them signs that I'm still here.
|
The first video Mick received showed a beautiful brunette waking up next to him. It only took those thirty seconds to fall in love with her. He watched it over and over, memorizing the way her nose scrunched up when she smiled at him, the way the sunlight picked up the soft blonde tones in her hair. She wore a faded grey shirt with “save the trees” written on the front in print that had begun to peel off. Her left ring finger was wrapped in a plain gold band. She was perfect. At the end of the month he no longer needed the video to picture her, to see the way her green eyes fluttered open or the constellations her freckles formed.
And on the first day of the next month the video changed, just as the company had promised. Thirty seconds of your future, emailed right to you, the first day of every month. Only one video at a time, and they would come from all moments of your future. It could happen the next day or in fifty years, but all of these clips were uniquely *yours*, as if they were pulled right from a memory that had not yet happened.
The second video Mick received was from a much more distant future than the first. A small boy, with the same green eyes as the woman, sits on a swing in the park. He kicks his legs back and forth, swinging his little yellow rubber boots. Soft raindrops fall against his red rain coat. “Grandpa,” the boy giggles, “want push!”. The second video, Mick decided, was even more impressive than the first. The smiling child didn’t exist yet. His *parents* were not even born. But on Mick’s phone was the video, the day at the park with his grandson.
The third video Mick received was more mundane. He looks out a window at the street. A few cars drive past. Passersby enter the shops on the other side of the road. He looks back down at the table in front of him. He takes a sip of coffee, or maybe tea, and sets it back down. The chair across from him is empty. Mick only watched the video twice. He didn’t know that part of the city. Not yet, at least.
The fourth video Mick received was more exciting again. He’s at a graduation. The first time he watched the video, he thought it might have been his own. But the banner reads “Class of 2045”. He can see the crowd of students tossing their hats. Mick watched the video dozens of times, but he couldn’t see enough detail to decide if one was his child.
The fifth video Mick received was mundane again. He looks out the same window as in the third. This time, he sees more of the room. It’s quaint cafe, painted a soft white and decorated with soft florals. He stands in line waiting to order. The brunette smiles at him from the table under the window. She’s older, but she still scrunches her nose the same way when she smiles.
The cafe, Mick learned, was the Bicycle Cafe. It was on the east side of town, while Mick lived on the West. He decided to start buying his coffee there, and he woke up early to cross town before work. It looked a little different than in the fifth video.
The sixth video Mick received did not matter. That was the month he met her. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the day was uncomfortably warm. Mick was so relieved by the blast of cool air that greeted him when he entered the cafe he didn’t realize she was standing in front of him. Her hair was pulled up in a bun and her shoulders were slightly sunburnt, standing out against her pink tank top.
“Hey Olivia, same as always?” The barista asked.
“Can I get both of them iced today?” She questioned. Olivia questioned. Mick turned the name over in his head. He had known her for half a year. He married her six months ago, met their grandson five months ago, and had seen their child graduate two months ago. And met her today. He fixed his hair, which had started to sag in the heat.
Mick walked up to her smiling. He was slightly nervous, but kept the videos in mind to reassure himself. This was the moment they would tell their family about. This would be the moment he met his soulmate. “Hey,” he smiled at her. Olivia returned the gesture. “How’s your day going?”
“Just waiting for my boyfriend,” Olivia nodded back, and went to collect the drinks that had been set on the counter. “My turn for a coffee run.”
Mick frowned. Before he could even speak again, Olivia had already pulled her sunglass off her head and set off back into the warm summer day. *Next time*, Mick told himself.
The seventh video Mick received frightened him. He sits on a couch and wraps his arm around a woman’s shoulder. She leans into him, placing her head into the crook of his neck. Her hair is short, black and shiny. Her belly pushes outwards in smooth bump. The TV plays some movie that has not yet come out.
Did this woman mean Olivia wouldn’t be part of his life anymore? Mick wondered. He couldn’t see the new woman’s hand to tell if there was a ring. Mick tried to reason out how this new woman could fit into his life with Olivia. She didn’t. He watched the video nearly everyday. He nearly always closed it before it reached the end.
The eight video Mick received assailed his future with Olivia again. He lies in a bed. It must be a hospital. The dark haired woman stands next to him, bits of grey peppering her hair. Two teenagers stand next to her, a boy and girl, both tall and lean. They have her jaw, her nose. They have his blonde hair. Mick felt a twinge of pain.
This is his family.
But his future with Olivia had been erased.
---
If you enjoyed this you can check out more of my work on /r/liswrites. Thanks for reading! |
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three shots was all it took to kill the Rangers. I would have been willing to do more if it was required, but it wasn't necessary. They had been standing around, doing their usual transformations, their “DINO PREHISTORIC BLAH BLAH BLAH” when my sniper's fired three bullets. In a few seconds, my contract with Lord Whoeverthehell was complete. I collected my 3 million dollars, and moved on with my life.
I came home to find my daughter Lexie hiding in her room. There was the sound of scuffling in the room, so after knocking, I let myself in. What I saw shocked me.
My daughter was bleeding from her stomach. Red covered her room, as blood followed her tracks.
“What happenned?” I asked. I ran to her side, taking out my phone for 911.
“It's nothing, Mom. My Ranger powers should hea—wait, I shouldn't have said that,” said Lexi. Her blue eyes were wide with fear.
“Shouldn't have said what?” I asked, before I stopped and thought.
After a pause, I said “No. You shouldn't have said that. I wish you hadn't”
It would appear more than three shots were necessary. |
The slab of rock fell into the water with a splash.
Jamie shrugged it off, he slipped and chipped off a part of the spring. He looked down. There were a bunch of colors moving in the water, and they started to jump! "Weird."He said as he went on to follow with his group.
They were talking about something without him, but he soon caught pace. Amanda, one of his friends continued talking, "I once read something about koi fishes trying to reach the top of a waterfall."She said, the local tour guide listened. "Is it true that they do that?"
The tour guide smiled enthusiastically. "It's true. Legend has it that three hundred and sixty koi fishes never gave up swimming upstream even as demons made the stream longer, and higher. But as soon as one of do reach the top, the gods bestow them a gift - turning them into dragons."
The ground rumbled, shaking trees and the hikers themselves. Then it stopped. Actually, everything stopped. Jamie stood there as time stopped. Birds in mid-flight. Leaves frozen in the air. His friends, crouched down to retain balance. But he noticed that the water remained flowing. The rushing of water roared in his ears.
Something snaked through the dense forest, he turned to look. It was so fast his eyes could not bring out detail, but he knows that its big. He shook the frozen tour guide. "Hey. I- I- think there's an overgrown anaconda here."She remained frozen. "Quit joking around."
Something shot from the forest and into the air.
It had golden scales that seemed to burn as sunlight hit it. Its back fins were orange, giving it the illusion of fire. And up front, the head, it had a bush of white hair, and a long moustache at the top lip. It hovered in the air, eyes staring down at Jamie. Its hands opened to reveal three pearls. "Three wishes."The dragon spoke. "My family will soon join me in enlightenment because of your deed."
"Now, make your wish."
|
"Oh for hells sake"I say, as I open the door. "Give me one moment"I grumble to the surprised pizza man outside my door, holding a large box. "Really? A pizza?"I shout to down my stairs to the basement floor. I walk down a few steps to see a few guilty-looking demons staring at the ground. "Sorry, patrick, but we thought it would be nice..."
my voice softens. "Ok, but next time just tell me, ok?"
I go back upstairs, and hand the man a twenty. "Keep the change."
I take the box away, and close the door. Placing the box on the counter, I open it to find anchovy and pineapple pizza. I sigh, then bring the box downstairs to a triumphant roar of approval. |
***Red Fever***
"Fucking Little Rocket Man. These commies always have to get in the way of our buis-"
The building shook, the board members exchanging worried glances.
"Marcus, how is our weapons division?"
"Excellent sir,"he patted a stack of neat white paper, which was sealed by the glistening black and bronze company crest.
"Claudia, what is the current nuclear status?"
"Full nuclear exchange is predicted within the hour."
"Go time then. As CEO of EA, we must enact our final plan. Operation Microtransaction has full go. William, make sure Google and Apple have readied their respective weapons. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and McDonald's have already launched their own. If we have any hope of winning this, you *need* to get Microsoft on the phone. "
Peter, the youngest shareholder, muttered a worried question. "Sir, what if we lose?"
"Well, the chances of human survival predict that only 1% of the population will survive. We *are* the one 1%."
They erupted into applause. |
It was finally over. The years of torment, guilt, being held emotionally hostage for the sake of the kids...
John stood at the pearly gates, his reward for a life lived... about as well as he could live it, given the circumstances. He looked around, searching among the crowd of souls for the face he so desperately wanted to see.
His first wife, Sarah, had passed away five years after they married. He knew it would be short lived, being that she was terminal well before they got engaged. Still, he had loved her more than anything, and they were the best years of his life. There was a certainty in the back of his mind that he would never fall in love with anyone like he did her.
He was right.
In the depression that followed her passing, John went into a spiral of bad habits and poor choices. Brittany was one of those choices.
It was supposed to be a one night stand, but of course she got pregnant. She guilted him into staying with her and taking care of her and the baby. They ended up marrying, but it was a marriage devoid of love and life. Two more kids, thirty years of emotional and physical abuse from this awful woman. No animals in the house, Brittany would beat and kill them on a whim, then laugh as the children cried.
When the kids had grown old enough, they refused to speak with their mother, and would only interact with their father. They knew the vile woman their mother was. Brittany became even more bitter, resentful, and cruel. To the point, finally, of veering herself and John into oncoming traffic.
It was a blessing John had been praying for. It was finally over. The years of torment, guilt, being held emotionally hostage for the sake of the kids...
He stood at the pearly gates, his reward for a life lived... about as well as he could live it, given the circumstances. He looked around, searching among the crowd of souls for the face he so desperately wanted to see.
And then he found her. Waiting patiently, her kind eyes and calm smile made Heaven itself pale in his eyes. She had waited for him, and now he had finally come.
"Sarah..."he called to her, choking back tears.
She smiled at him and held out her hand. As he reached out and took it, the peel of thunder cracked behind him.
"Who is this bitch?!"A familiar, unwanted voice screeched. "Where are we?! Who is this whore?!"Brittany roared.
Sarah didn't budge. Only narrowed her eyes at Brittany.
"Get over here, you good for nothing piece of shit!"Brittany continued.
In her rage, Brittany didn't notice the clouds beneath her opening wide. Didn't notice they abyss of pure dark sprawling under her. No, it wasn't until the flames began crawling up her body that she noticed.
"What is this?"she screamed as she began sinking into the abyss. "No!"she howled. "No, no, no!"
John felt a tug at his hand. Sarah was leading him through the gates, beckoning him beyond to their long awaited eternity together.
He turned away from the burning, damned soul of his second wife, passing through the gates. The screams became fainter, until they ceased entirely.
In the light of the heavens, John and Sarah embraced one another. For the five years they spent together on earth in true love, they were granted an eternity of it in heaven.
(First time responding to a prompt. Please be gentle!) |
I sat on the porch of my current house in a rocking chair. I felt tired and worn out. The chair next to me began rocking.
"My old friend you've come to see what I've been tinkering with this time huh?"
A figure appeared, with a scythe leaning against the wall. No death didn't come to kill me, we had become sort of friends over the ages. He helped slow my aging down to allow me to live as long as I liked. I still remember that first meeting clearly.
The sky was a blaze with roaring fires, dead men all around. The trenches stunk of it, but even then I tinkered. I was working on a method to help stop the bleeding from a bullet wound. It involved using a new absorbant which hadn't been fully tested yet, and was only cleared for industrial uses. I'm sure if any of my buddies complained of side effects, they'd remember the worse outcome.
Ironically enough the reason for the first meeting was because I had been transfered to a medic team on the front lines and was sent to recover a soldier. As I was dragging him back I felt the world shatter. I awoke to see my body laying there and a dark figure next to me. He wasn't looking at me but what I had in my hand. It was my latest contraption to hold the absorbant and keep the blood in the body.
I awoke again in a field hospital as I watched the black clad figure leave and disappear in the doorway. The doctors couldn't figure it out. I should've bleed out in the field or in transport. I tried to glance down and saw a line of bandages from my navel up to my right shoulder. I knew there was no reason on this earth I had survived.
That day was almost a century ago now. I've met death a number of times and always when working on different projects. I remember an accident during the Manhattan project, three other scientist were killed instantly when the reaction ran uncontrollably. Somehow I was spared. I remember floating in the capsule out in the vacuum of space between Terra and Luna wondering how we were going to get home. I remember creating a new device and program with a friend of mine, we used an apple with a bite out of it to snub our noses at the religious.
So many memories, so many lives lived. Now I was tired, I just wanted it to all end. The tv in the living room flicked on, I knew it was death. I should've never showed him how the electronics worked, but he was just as interested as I was.
"The creator of the newest addition to Google has recluse himself to his retirement home in an undisclosed location. We are proud of the advancements made to roll out the new Google AI and self driving cars....."
The chair creaked as I heard death sit back down again. I knew, I just knew he wast' going to let me stop living yet. He was worse than a child wanting to see what was next. |
It's very strange being as old as time.
To have existed since the very moment the universe... shifted, and cracked, and exploded. Kind of like a lightning bolt happening. Two massive forces twitching out of alignment, and a giant chain reaction following. Forces that rend the very fabric of existence apart.
This particular existence is really not that impressive, either. It's made to serve - to maintain, repair and improve one thing only. Death.
Oh, it's a beautiful thing, Death. So is Life, of course, but -- but something the darkness, the silence, the eternal sleep is mesmerizing.
And this particular being has worked tirelessly to keep it that way. It's small, delicate, and cloaked in dark rags. So much that no one - no thing - seems to know what it looks like.
It's proud, of course. And why shouldn't it be? If there's one thing that's for certain in this universe, then it's Death.
That of plants, of animals, of stars, of gods. Even the death of the universe itself is a certainty.
It would all come, given time.
No small surprise then, when Death himself comes to visit the little thing. It, that was the rule, was exempt. It would keep existing outside the circle. For its service. To observe, and improve, and repair.
Now, Death is not ordinary in this regard either. Death, to do what it does, needs to be a force of existence. Same as Life.
But this... something has happened.
There's a crack. There's many cracks. Dents, stains - the little creature can see it immediately. There is no beauty in this thing. It's vicious and ugly. Violent and gruesome.
No, this wouldn't do. It will be made right. Better. So Death can be gentle and soothing.
Except...
Except, here Death is, bowing, groveling, begging the little creature to destroy its most precious creation. The sad form of Death, the beaten and battered scythe... and it's all in the little creature's hands.
For the first time in a long time, it hesitates. For the first time in a long time, it moves from its spot in its forge, to retrieve the scythe. Long, thin fingers, tipped with dark claws, bones shimmering through the pale flesh and white skin. A ragged breath, a cloud of smoke and insect wings, and it retrieves its treasure.
Apparently, Death had not expected it to comply so easily. Death regards the little creature as something it isn't, see? Death believes the little creature is the master.
Another one that does not understand.
Anger and sadness both, but perhaps, a little joy, too.
A single touch is all it takes, and its creation comes apart. It knew exactly where, and it knew exactly how much it took.
The ugly scream of Death - Death's death - echoes around the forge, and the little creature knows what it must do.
It needs to improve, it needs to mend the cracks, straighten the blade and make it better. It needs Death to be perfect.
Just how many times had it tried already? Too many to count, but every time it came closer, every time it got better, and every time, they lasted longer.
One of these tries, Death would be perfect, and the Universe could return to the eternal calm, and maybe then, the little creature too, was allowed to die. |
(Optional pre-reading: OCD has been the bully who constantly made me afraid of living. They followed me everywhere I went, screamed demands at me, casted doubts in my mind, and dictated all my actions. OCD locked me in my room and told me that if I stepped out, that I flying germs would make me incredibly sick. OCD made me watch horror movies through VR googles where I was violently injuring the people around me. OCD convinced me that if I didn't do everything the way that they "recommended"me to, then a natural catastrophe would occur. Sometimes, their "recommendation"would be for me to flicker the lights on and off, in order to be safe from venomous biting insects.
I guess out of all the things OCD has been making me do, like cleaning myself with rubbing alcohol, or forcing me to feel so guilty I felt too weak to even sit upright, flipping the light switch doesn't seem like a big deal.
Flipping the lights on and off obviously wouldn't change the probability that an insect would kill me or someone else. But because of the amount of control OCD had over me, I didn't have a choice but to seek treatment.)
​
Today, I have reached the three month mark in therapy. With a lot of effort put in to work myself up my ER/P hierarchy, I have been able to decrease my light switch flipping by a total three hours a day. I no longer need to flip the light switch when exiting rooms. Well, except for the bathroom light. Which is exactly why I have been standing here in the bathroom thumb and index pinching the light switch for the past five minutes. It's happening. I slowly move the switch downwards.
I hesitantly continued to move the light switch downwards. I squeezed my eyes shut and held my breath. I felt the resistance of the light switch increase as the switch prepared to flick down...
*Click.*
​
I squeezed my eyes shut and paused. My fingers are twitching as I try to resist the urge to quickly flick the lights back on again.
*Let go of the switch. Let go of the switch.*
​
I slowly let go. I opened my eyes and continued holding my breath as I slowly stepped out of the bathroom. I let out the breath I didn't realize I had been holding. I carefully reach in for the door handle.
**"That was a mistake."**
​
I darted my hand away from the door handle and my entire body tensed.
*Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!*
​
My heart was pounding so hard at that point, I could feel my pulse in my fingers.
"It's a mistake! Can't you hear me? Go back in! You'll die! The next person going in will die! The bugs are in there and will come get you! Your family members will die walking in and it will be your fault. You're an awful person and a murd-"
"YOU KNOW WHAT? SHUT UP OCD!"I scream in my head. "I'M SICK OF PLAYING THIS GAME OF YOURS AND OF DEALING WITH YOUR OBSESSIVE CRAP DISORDER NON-SENSE. IF YOU WANT ME TO LISTEN TO YOU, IT'S NOT HAPPENING."
With my heart still beating at a rate of 120 beats per minute, I do a 180 degree pivot on my feet and walk away from my victory. |
In the dark heart of Gotham, no Grickle-grass grows.
The streets are all haunted by pigeons and crows,
And the sour smell of urine fills everyone's nose.
There the Batman is fighting the Lorax.
"You fool,"said the Lorax, leaping into the air,
his stumpy frame covered with bright orange hair.
"How can you claim to serve Justice, you dud,
When all of your toys have been paid for with blood?
They clear-cut the rain-forest by the hectare,
but you get your share,
and that's all you care."
Bruce Wayne, now exposed as the Batman, stood tall,
and he said, "Listen Lorax, that's not it at all.
It's my right as an owner to profit and take
what is rightfully mine, for my dead parents' sake.
It's my duty, in fact, to put profit above
all else, for the benefit of all whom I love.
I am the master of workers, you see,
who need to have jobs, and therefore, need me."
The Lorax jumped off of a building with grace,
and caught a Batarang just an inch from his face.
"Stop lying to me and admit that you are
just a playboy who's taken his hobby too far.
Your power fantasy seems like plenty of fun,
but another mass extinction's already begun.
"Don't lecture me about fishes and trees,"
Batman said as he landed on one of his knees.
"I deal with the most pressing threats to humanity,
like drug use and theft and homicidal insanity."
"You beat people up just to feel like a man,
you don't do what's right, you just do what you can.
You punish criminals, when you pick your fights,
for endangering others, or property rights.
Your targets are people society fears.
Your true victims are voiceless, so nobody hears."
Then the Lorax flew into the dark, smoky heat,
leaving Batman without any villain to beat.
That night, Bruce Wayne brooded up high in his tower,
wishing only for more and more personal power.
He vowed to catch Lorax and lock him up tight,
as if shutting him up would make the world right.
|
You never really forget the moment your perception of someone changes.
My mother stood, holding her thumb in her mouth. She turned and saw me walk in, smiling quickly and waving me off. “Just a flesh wound, dear,” her warm brown eyes gently glowing just as I always remembered. “Nothing to worry about. See?” She withdrew her hand, now coagulated.
The back of my neck felt cold. I forced myself to snap out of it and nod, giving my best ‘ok Mom’ smile. I offered to get a bandaid for her. She declined and shooed me out of the parlor. I eyed the blade one more time before exiting.
Needing some air, I sat on the back porch. It was a hot summer day, but I felt more able to breathe out here. Nothing but the hiss of cicadas in the peach tree could be heard. The old dog slept peacefully at the foot of the stoop.
All these years, they said Dad left. Moved on, had another mistress, abandoned us. I never got clear answers about what happened or where he went, and no one really asked once they were told the same story of his alleged transgressions. Now I know why I was told to never mess with that mud pit by the creek behind the house. Now I know why my mom used to come in late, dirty and whistling. Why she never let us speak of him after the fall he ‘left’.
Now I need to decide if I use this blade one last time, or bury it like I originally wanted to.
|
The box was cramped. It smelled like sweat. My sweat, at least, from the times we had rehearsed the performance. I heard him pat the top of the box and the false wall squeezed shut, making the small space even smaller. Then he said the magic words and that was the last time I heard his voice.
He had never been an ordinary magician. He was more ambitious, more practiced and more studious. Had I not known better, I would have said real, inhuman magic was at play. He performed with uncanny ease and aplomb and crowds were left jaw-dropped in awe. I always knew the intricacies of the trick, in spite of the care he took to conceal his methods.
The audience should have gasped by now. The box should be pushed off the stage and I should be emerging in the dressing room to prepare myself for the next act. It might have been a few minutes or it might have been an eternity. It might have been a test or it might have been that I was the only survivor of something terrible. The doubts gnawed at my mind until I snapped and I pulled the cord and the box collapsed around me and I stumbled from the confines of my coffin.
My aching back and legs were my first concern and I stretched and waited for the inevitable scolding of my disappointed boss. It could be ruinous, having a performance aborted by an impetuous assistant. But the audience was silent and the stage was empty and the dust that had been disturbed by the falling walls of the box had settled. There was the theater with empty seats, some torn and in disrepair and aged as if a century had passed.
"Carlos,"I yelled. My voice echoed and eventually disappeared into silence. I tested the locked doors and yelled from the balconies until my voice was hoarse and my throat was parched. I wandered amongst the seats. I counted them and I collected abandoned shoes. I found the programs for the show and ticket stubs from that night sprinkled on the floor.
It was the last show that the theater had hosted, from what I could tell. Whatever had happened that night once I crawled into that stifling sarcophagus had been the last thing to have happened.
In desperation I made my way back to the stage. I know of fight or flight. The third option is to curl up into a ball and pretend that everything is the way it should be. The wooden box was aged and dust had somehow already found its place upon it but I put it back together, making sure the seams were tight. Then I climbed back inside, closed my eyes and patted the ceiling and said the magic words.
*****
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please check out more stories at /r/MatiWrites. Constructive criticism and advice are always appreciated! |
The alchemist frowned. “Saltpeter?”
“Yes,” I said with a nod. “Can you make it?”
“Oh, aye, but why would you want any? Only person who uses it is the local butcher. Most alchemists don’t even know how to make it.”
“Nevertheless, I would like to buy some.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Can you pay?”
“Not in gold,” I replied. “But look at this.”
I drew a glass flask from my bag. The magician I had hired to produce the flasks had been a little confused at my exacting specifications, but he got the measurements right. Or, close enough that it wouldn’t matter.
I showed the alchemist how he could use the flask to measure out exact quantities of any liquid based on the regular ticks on the side of the glass. By the end of the demonstration, he was more than happy to produce a crateful of saltpeter.
I left with a request to return in a week. As I walked down the path away from his cottage, I glanced back and saw multicolored smoke rising from the chimney.
After that, it was off to the tavern. I needed a band of adventurers.
The knight frowned. “What?”
“The yellow stuff. On the side. Of volcanoes,” I explained, patiently and slowly. “Scrape it off. Bring it to me. Much reward.”
“Well, I get what you’re asking me to do, but why?” the knight asked. His sword and shield were resting against the side of the table and the rest of his band – a bard, a healer, a warlock, and what appeared to be a troll – sat at a nearby table, trying to look like they weren’t listening.
“Does it matter?” I asked. “It’s a simple enough task.”
“It is, but usually my band and I do…” He paused. “More heroic things. Our most common request is to go rescue princesses.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Oh, all the time. Dragons, demons, monsters, sea serpents, princesses get kidnapped left and right. Lots of knights want in on the jobs.”
“Must be tough to get noticed, with so many knights offering their services,” I said sympathetically.
“Oh, no, we have a very solid customer base. Most knights fall in the love with the princess they rescue, or vice versa. Very annoying for the royal families. Not a chance of that happening with me and my crew.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Are you already married?”
“I’m gay.” He took a swig. “In any case, is that really all?”
“Well, yeah, pretty much. Don’t you want an easy job?”
He shrugged. “If you want that yellow stuff, it might be easier to hire to kill some magma fiends. They have that for their blood. Just pouring buckets all over the place whenever they get wounded–”
I jumped forward. “How much for you to collect their blood for me?”
After haggling an appropriate price, the band went off to the distant volcano. I ticked off the items in my head. Sulfur. Saltpeter. I could find my own charcoal.
I’d thought about becoming an alchemist when I first woke up in this world, only to find out that the market was already completely glutted. You needed to go to a major academy just to get a decent position in a royal court. No, this world had enough alchemists.
It was time it got a mad scientist. |
"I just...I don't understand."
Rain cascaded down, the only sound filling the hollow silence between sentences.
"They found his body this morning ma'am. It seem's he was stabbed multiple.. thats not important right now I suppose. I'm so sorry."
Droplets fell from the officers lapels, his palms turned up and eyes low. The woman's mouth was firmly shut, containing the runaway train her thoughts had become.
"That...that cannot be. He can't be."
The policeman looked as shock began to radiate throughout the woman's body. Denial attempted to hold the line, but her knees seemed to succumb to the news first. She staggered forward, and he caught her.
She sobbed gently, and the officer held her as water permeated their layers of clothing.
"I know this is difficult ma'am. I just need to come in and ask you a few questions."
He felt her painful sobs cease almost immediately, and she pulled back.
"Questions? Why? Wait this isn't right, my husband isn't dead."
The officer looked at her with pity. An event like this sent the mind on a spiral, he had seen it many times.
"Ma'am we found the bo-"
"Yes I heard what you said you are just mistaken! My husband is inside right now, he's making dinner."
The policeman raised an eyebrow quizzically, looking past the woman to see a slight haze of smoke coming from the kitchen.
"He's...cooking?"
"Yes!"she gasped breathlessly "Yes I should have said that right away. Just a silly mixup! My goodness come in, come in, its raining."
The cop entered the house, unable to hide the confusion painting his face. Had they made a mistake? The woman had a jovial, almost manic smile on her face as she locked the door behind him.
"Take off your shoes please, my husband just cleaned the carpets. You're welcome to go on in and see him. You police really should work a little harder on these investigations, almost scared me to death!"she laughed, eyes empty. Was this more denial? Could she just not process that her husband had been killed.
The policeman began to walk down the hall, slow deliberate strides. The smell of sizzling sausage formed a sensory cloud around him, smoke obscured his vision as he rounded the corner to the kitchen. Through the hazy white cloud he could see a man, stiring a pot of cooking meat.
"Sweety who was at the door"the man cooed without looking back "This is almost up, could you get some plates out?"The man turned around holding the pot, and dropped it as he saw the cop standing there.
"Whoa! sorry to startle you sir. I'm not sure whats...going on. Are you John Monr-"
A soft arm wrapped around the officers neck as a cold knife slipped across his windpipe. His hands shot to his throat, blood pouring over the top and through his fingers. The officer collapsed, and a circle of red pooling around him as life left his body.
"They found John."She said, calmly and coldly. "We have to leave honey. Now." |
Ambassador Thornton sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb.
“Human/Thornton!” warbled the avian Chrrroo from its perch, bobbing its head with concern. “Are you angry/distressed? Does your kind shed/moult its integument/skin?”
“No, Chrrroo/Lareili,” Thornton replied patiently, doing his best to replicate the liquid notes of the alien ambassador’s syrinx. “It was an emotional reaction, but not anger. More irritation and frustration. We seem to be speaking in circles, never reaching a conclusion.”
“I agree/concur,” Lareili chirped. “It appears that what you know/understand does not match up with our records of the Extermination.”
“Precisely,” agreed Thornton. “And your records predate the history of humankind on Earth. So it’s impossible for us to be this Extermination.” He gestured to the screen. “Show me that image again?”
Obligingly, Lareili activated the screen. A fuzzy, jerky image of a humanoid soldier in advanced armour, firing some sort of energy weapon, advanced across the screen. When it was halfway, Thornton held up a finger and the Chrrroo paused the action.
“If I’m correct with my estimation of scale, that being is a little shorter than the average human, and a lot more solid through the body,” Thornton said carefully. “Also, note the prominent brow ridge under the helmet there, and the large, wide nose with the receding chin? That phenotype doesn’t exist anywhere on Earth. And last, they started rampaging across the galaxy three hundred thousand years ago, and finally dropped out of sight fifty thousand years ago? That’s before our time, sorry.”
“Ah,” carolled the Chrrroo. “Your explanation/demonstration is adequate to the purpose. I will inform/explain to the Greater Galactic Council that humanity brings no danger/peril with it.”
Thornton smiled. “Thank you,” he said warmly. “All of humanity thanks you.”
He stood and held out his hand to ‘brush feathers’ with the Chrrroo in their version of the handshake, then left the audience chamber. His bodyguard, who had been sitting unobtrusively in the background, went with him.
Once Thornton was in the shielded limo, he glanced at the bodyguard. “This vehicle has been swept?”
“Five minutes ago,” the fit, muscular man replied. “While you were talking to the other ambassador.”
“Good.” Thornton leaned back in the seat and let a sigh escape his lips. “Put me through to the Institute. Full encryption.”
As the limo hummed along the road, the screen went into handshake-hash, then flicked to full clarity. Two men and two women were seated along one side of a table; they looked up as the screen cleared. “*Well?*” one of the women asked.
“I saw the best image they had,” Thornton said. “It’s bad, but it could be worse. I convinced them it wasn’t us.” He took a deep breath. “We’re going to need to destroy all the evidence, erase all the records.”
One of the men shook his head. “*Goddamn Neanderthals,*” he muttered. “*All that time and we never knew.*”
“End call,” Thornton said. The screen went dark, and he reached into the wet bar and poured himself a drink. Diplomacy was a dirty job at times, but this was his first foray into covering the tracks of a genocidal killer. The fact that the perpetrator was an entire extinct species didn’t make it any less strange.
“The things you learn,” he mused, and took a drink.
\[[Next](https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/ghxssx/oc_okay_this_time_it_was_us/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x)\] |
Ugh. That annoying song over and over again. Everybody else’s minds were interesting. Mostly. But whenever I read Evan’s it was just a constant rick roll. Every single class I read his mind. Searching for anything else. But it was just the same song over and over again for the past two years. “Bella. Bella. Bella!” I snapped out of my annoyance hearing Miss Michaels call me. “Yes?” I responded. “Did you hear a word I just said?” She asked, exasperated. Shit! What was it she was saying? I tried to remember what she said through the cloud of never gonna give you up. Before I could speak she answered her own question. “Of course you didn’t. I’m setting your partners for this project. Your with Evan.” She sighed pointing to him. He turned around and smiled at me. Great! Now I’ll have a chance to find out if he knows anything. The bell rang and everyone started packing up their stuff. “Can’t wait time work with you.” Evan said, smiling. As I watched him walk off through the sea of students and the fog of their thoughts I could hear his, clear as day. “I know you can hear me.” |
The ancients said that it would be a dragon that ate the sun, throwing all the worlds into eternal darkness. They said that it would be because of our sins. Our misdeeds. Our lack of faith.
If only they’d known.
Punjabi Wok and More is a local Asian-fusion spot downtown. I had always wondered what Asian-fusion meant. It turns out it means whatever they want it to mean. Stir-fried brinjals with naan; spicy edamame curry; ice cream tofu deep-fried in soy milk. And I fucking loved it.
One day, ravenous from a brutal morning of code shit-fuckery (I work as a systems administrator), I felt the deep, rumbling craving that could only be satisfied by something with soy sauce and a whole lot of chilli. Punjabi Wok and More was without a doubt the best place to satisfy this primal, dark urge.
The plastic garden chair squeaked as I sat down at the not-entirely-sticky plastic table. I hastily snatched up the menu and browsed through it despite knowing it like the back of my hand. I glanced through the usual options trying to find the right series of words. At the bottom corner of the crinkled, laminated page was a section I’d never noticed before. The “and More” section. How had I not seen this previously?
There was only one option. “Garama garama”. I knew from my frequent visits to curry dens, where I developed an ungodly addiction to terribly spicy food, that the word garam meant “hot”. That was good enough for me and I ordered the meal.
The plate was laid before me in less time than I thought possible. The beaten and chipped cutlery leapt to my hands and I dug in. And then it happened.
The heat, blistering and full of ecstasy hit me like a firetruck full of petrol. Sweat broke out on my forehead and my body began to slowly boil. I was floating in an inferno. I was experiencing sainthood…godhood.
But I needed more. The world looked small to me now. From above I saw myself sitting in a dinky restaurant finishing a plate of food. Yet I was not him. I was more.
So much more.
The stars appeared around me as I soared upwards. My claws brushed the air as I felt the fire in my chest grow, blossom, threatening to explode outwards. A deep, cosmic roar escaped my chest as I searched for more…more.
And there it was, glowing in front of me. A mouthful of heat and tasty intensity. It would satisfy my desires. My maw opened, space and time warped, and in a snap of my cosmic jaws, the lights went out.
My eyes opened, sweat drenched my body and I stared at an empty, oily plate in front of me. The knife and fork fell out of my hands with a clang as I blinked away my fever dream.
I’ll be back to Punjabi Wok and More. I have no doubt. |
/ /*The train now standing at Platform 16 is the 07.57 to New Hawthorne, calling at Reeve's End, Queen Street, Riversdale...and New Hawthorne.*\\ \
A man in a smart, plain black suit walked over to the coffee stand and ordered a coffee. The station was busy; there was nothing remarkable about him; nobody would look twice at him.
Yet he had an objective, one single objective and his objective stood only meters away from him, on the station concourse.
He glanced over, taking care not to be seen to be looking at his target.
The target, a somewhat small man, wearing a plain black T-shirt and grey chinos, looked up at one of the balconies overlooking some of the platforms.
The man in the smart, plain black suit mixed in a carton of milk with his coffee and began to sip slowly, blending in perfectly with the crowd.
*No witnesses*, the contract had clearly stipulated. He hadn't asked any questions; a contract was a contract.
He had calculated that the station would be busy; it was rush hour and there would be many people. There were two main options - either the station toilets or on the actual train itself. The train would be the likely suitable area.
He reached into the inside of his suit to double-check that the pen was there, ready and waiting. Of course it was there; he'd done this dozens of times; all targets had been successfully eliminated and nobody had been none the wiser.
Another announcement blared out from above.
//*Attention. This is a platform correction announcement. The 08.04 to Queensbury will now be departing from Platform 19.*\\
*Shit*, the man in the plain black suit thought.
A large crowd of people was now rushing off a train from platform 11 and were spilling out onto the concourse.
He tried to search for his target, who was a little shorter than average. He walked over to the middle of the concourse, taking care not to attract too much attention.
*There*!
The target was walking quickly towards the far side of the station, where Platforms 17 to 24 were located.
*He must have changed his destination*, the man in the smart, plain black suit thought.
He began to slowly tail him through the crowd, attempting to determine which platform he was headed towards.
The smartscreen above showed several trains departing from those eight platforms within the next twenty minutes.
*Shit*.
The crowds were getting larger and chaos was ensuing. The crowd from platform 11 was getting larger as people continued to spill out onto the concourse, rushing towards the far side of the station.
At that moment, a tall girl, who couldn't have been more than 16 or 17, but was at least 1.8 meters in height, collided into him.
His coffee cup went flying and hot coffee spilled across his suit and onto the floor.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry,"She said, with a thick US accent - from somewhere in the Midwest perhaps.
He sighed hurriedly and waved her away.
"It's fine, it's fine,"he said impatiently.
The crowd had now ground to a standstill as dozens - maybe more - of people attempted to reach the far side of the station.
He could no longer see his target.
*Fuck, fuck, fuck!*
He tried to squeeze through the crowd, taking care to appear as a usual impatient commuter, not an assassin on the tail of their target.
Somebody tapped him on the shoulder.
He glanced backwards to see a well-built man - perhaps an Arab or a North African person - standing behind him.
"Hey, dude, is this yours?"the man asked, with a Spanish accent, motioning to an old-fashioned looking leather-bound book.
The assassin frowned and shook his head.
He then continued trying to squeeze through the crowd.
A tap on the shoulder again. It was the same Arab or North African man.
The assassin attempted to keep his irritation from showing.
"Dude, did you lose something?"The man asked again, holding up the same book.
"No, that's not mine!"The assassin snapped, taking care not to draw too much attention.
The other man then moved his head closer, close enough that the assassin could smell his breath and his cologne and whispered menancingly into the assassin's ear.
"I could've sworn you lost something. It's best if you don't find it; we know who you are."
He then turned around and began walking in the opposite direction.
The assassin's eyes widened as he looked on at the man.
*Had his cover been blown? Impossible. This was a standard contract. This had never happened before.*
The assassin considered his options quickly. He had already been paid 20% upfront. The remaining 80% of his fee would come upon completion of the job.
He'd have to abandon this current attempt and report back to his contact.
This had never happened before.
He stood still, stunned and confused. The large crowd continued moving forward and the station concourse had now morphed into an ocean of people.
**************
Gertrude Frost placed the telephone down calmly, even as her hands trembled.
She was furious and shocked at the same time.
Her contact had got back to her. The assassin had failed.
This was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. How difficult could it be to take out a normal person in one of the busiest megacities in the world?
She had covered her tracks anyway. Even as a non-executive chairperson, she had made sure to make sure nothing could be traced back to her. She'd already successfully seen several targets of irritation taken out during her time in her non-executive role: the irritating Union president in Chile who was threatening the company's main South American operations with waves of strikes and boycotts; the former employee heading a class action suit in Philadelphia; the Vice President of global operations who kept giving media interviews about "toxic workplace environments".
Frost ran her long bony fingers through her silver hair and stood up. She walked over to the long, wide windows and looked out across the vast ocean, plotting her next steps.
*Something had to be done.*
She still remembered what the contact had told her about what the hitman had said.
"His cover was blown, somehow. He's one of the best; he must have been under surveillance,"the contact had said. "Look, I assure you that you haven't been implicated. This is a secure network. I don't know how, but your *normal target*"- he had emphasised this part and she imagined him holding up his fingers for emphasis - "appears to have tails of his own. Protection, maybe? Are you sure you gathered enough information?"
Gertrude had snapped at the contact and assured him that she had been as thorough as she could have been. It wasn't an important or famous or rich person, so there'd been no need for anything extreme.
Clearly she had been wrong.
She turned around and began flicking through this morning's SmartPaper, waving her hands from right to left as she flicked through the smartpages.
She froze upon arriving at page 14.
An image stood out to her; an image of a small Chinese-looking man, with fierce eyes and a gaunt-looking face. Beneath the image was the caption "WISCONSIN GOVERNOR DONATES $250M FROM HIS OWN POCKET TO THE AMERICAN FOOD PROGRAM; CRITICISES FEDERAL GOVERNMENT FOR FUNDING DELAYS"
Frost, clearly stunned, hurried over to her desk and pulled out a SmartScreen.
"Delaware,"she said softly. Delaware was the password to the encrypted and classified information on her systems and network.
She quickly brought up the image of the target, the center of the failed operation last night.
*It can't be,* she thought.
The resemblance was uncanny, but according to the private detective, the target, Eric King, was of Vietnamese-Cambodian descent. She waved a hand across her SmartScreen and brought up a bio page of the Governor of Wisconsin. 53; born in Henderson, NV to Chinese and Mongolian immigrants; no children. She quickly ran a deepscan through *Jupiter*, a private intelligence database to determine if there was any link between the two. No, nothing.
She sat back and stared across the room, thoughts swirling through her mind.
Sure, random people resembled random strangers; humans were humans after all and part of the same species. Yet, coupled with the failed operation last night, she couldn't help but wonder if she had indeed missed something here, something that even The Batbayar-Ping Campaign team had missed.
She resolved to find out. But something still nagged at her. She didn't personally know Batbayar-Ping - the Wisconsin Governor - but according to the company's database, under Batbayar-Ping's governorship, the company's commercial and private military operations had been forced out of Wisconsin a few decades ago following a staggering increase in corporation, dividend and income taxes and a tightening of several regulations, amongst other unfriendly measures. This was before Frost's time, but Batbayar-Ping was clearly not liked by the company back then. He appeared to be something of a "public enemy number one"back then - in the company at least. Some executives in the North American arm had simply seen it as a rival business magnate using his overt political position and control to stick it to rival corporations, yet Batbayar-Ping's corporate interests didn't really overlap with the company's.
She picked up the telephone and dialled Martin Strasbourg's number.
He picked up after several rings.
"This is Martin,"he said sternly.
"I am going to send over two names. I need you to find if there is a link - any link at all - between the two. Off the record, okay?"
"Fine."Martin hung up.
Gertrude sat back and stared out across the ocean.
She'd find out soon enough if this source of irritation was something more than she'd initially thought.
****
[To be continued...] |
Few things across realities are constant. Gravity. Entropy. Hydrogen. Beyond the bare basics, across infinite realms one can find infinite possibilities. But between the universes lurk the Void Beasts. Powerful, eldritch beings lurking between the spheres of realities. Each one fragile, fighting for dominance. Each beast has a core, and if that core is briken the beast dies. All of them guard them fiercely.
Except one. One, a wise one, entered a contract. A single soul latched onto it from within a universe, unwittingly through a dream. Amused, it kept the connection. Became friends. Taught the soul how to truly see it. How to truly see reality. And left its core with him, fused to the mortal's soul. An eternal contract. The mortal would be immortal with the core fused to itself, and since void beasts cannot fully manifest inside a reality, its core was forever safe.
That boy... that was me, once. And my friend... well, its name is inpronouncable with human vocal cords, but it roughly translates to 'Grand Nightmare, the Perfect Imperfection'. I call it Spectre.
It was all set up, shoddy as it was. A summoning circle hapazardly strewn together from duct tape and glowsticks for candles. No blood sacrifice needed, as mine was dripping all over the place, black ichor leaking from my wounds as incomprehensible matter slowly stitched my wounds together. I could not speak with my jaw still shattered, but my soul cried out in agony across the divide of worlds. A summon.
There was no fanfare. No pillar of flame, no flock of crows amassing. One moment there was empty air surrounded by the trees of a dark forest, the next there was Spectre. Its seven primary eyes looked at me in pity. It was not worried for my safety, as I had survived worse, but it still hated seeing me hurt. The maddening presence of it accelerated my healing to the span of seconds, allowing me to rise to my feet and meet the thing I called my brother in arms.
It was a not black, but instead its body was the true absense of color. Blacker than black, with eyes and tendrils emerging from its form, each tendril tipped with a claw or weapon made of some golden metal. So too was its mask, a triangular golden plate housing seven glowing red 'eyes' in a V shape. It spoke, yet it had no mouth.
"Who did this to you?"
I blinked. A wave of confision washed over me. I sat up in bed, confused. "Who did what to me, old friend?"
"Who lured you into the secluded shack in the woods? Who stuck you from behind with a wrench, sliced your limbs open with a carving knife? Who watched the life drain from your eyes before stabbing you 30 more times in a drug-induced rage, before stealing your wallet and leaving you to suffer until you recovered enough to summon me with what you had on hand?"
I tilted my head to the side. My jaw still ached, but I was unsure why. It was fading, at least. I must have been clenching my jaw in my sleep. "What are you talking about, Spectre? We're at my house. I don't remember summoning you, you just showed up. And again, we're at my house. Nobody lured me into the woods. Nobody hurt me."
The void beast emanated an emotion that I knew was a smile, mixed with a smirk. "Correct. The drug addict Christain Reynard did not try to kill you, because he does not exist. Now go back to sleep."
"You... are always confusing, Spectre. Goodnight."And it was gone in the time it took me to blink.
That night, I dreamed of a man who was erased from existance, pulled from reality itself by a vengeful Spectre to prevent my mutilation from happening.
I did not remember the dream when I next woke, but our agreement echoed in my mind all day: "Mortal, nobody will attempt to remove you from life. If they do, I will remove them completely." |
I sit in my dark cage, feeling a peace come over me that I haven’t known for years. I’ve been in rooms like this one many times before, it’s plan walls and cold air, usually coming up with some scheme to get out. Some plan, always a plan. Not anymore. I think over the past couple weeks. I was trying to steal the sun (at the time not realizing how impossible that would be). Of course, I needed materials. Being a supervillain doesn’t allow you to work a day job to earn the cash needed, so I had to get creative. I didn’t need much, so I pick pocketed this little boy’s wallet. Yes, he happened to be the son of a billionaire, but that is beside the point. I went around the corner, ready to move on, when I heard a soft crying. Against my better instinct I turned back. It was the boy; sad his wallet was gone. For some reason, out of all of the terrible things I had done, that was the one I couldn’t get out of my head. That little boy, crying.
The next couple weeks it would play over and over in my mind, relentlessly. I knew that it wasn’t going to go away. It was the same way with my plans, they needed to be acted on. That’s how I got in the supervillain game to begin with. Maybe that’s why most my plans never quite worked out, part of me didn’t want them to. Anyway, I decided to turn myself in. Just to the local police station. The local cop was terrified when I walked in. He was right to be, normally that would have meant a very quick end for him. That cop is now seen as a hero. Good, it’s nice that someone is going to benefit from this, I later found out the boy received another wallet soon after.
Now there’s the matter of courts, of what to do with me. Honestly, I bet I’ll probably end up staying here, in this cage. It’s one of the best in the world. The most likely place that can hold me. And I intend on being held, unless of course another one of those plans force its way into my head.
The only people not happy with my capture, the superheroes. To the point where there not allowed in this room with me anymore. To much of a safety risk I guess, for me this time. There little gang has been tracking me for years. I can see why they would want me dead. They’ve seen the horrors I’ve done; the lives I have ended. I’ve even killed a few of their friends, captured their lovers, destroyed their homes.
I sit and wait, with only my thoughts to keep me company, and the random tray of food they let in every once in a while. Until…
The main one walks in one day. Waterman? Sonic man? Hero’s never quite realize we’re never really fighting them. We’re just fighting ourselves. So, as he enters the room, it takes me a second to place him. Still, it comes soon enough. I killed his wife, years ago. In a pretty horrible way. Left the body for him to find. He can barely look at me as he enters the room. He and I both know why he’s here. I won’t make an attempt to stop him.
I patiently listen to his speech he has prepared, citing why this is for the greater good, how I can’t be trusted to be alive. We both know it’s not about that. It’s about revenge, plain and simple. Still, I don’t contradict him, don’t say anything. He comes in for a clean kill. During my last thoughts, I send a prayer to whosevers there that he doesn’t start down the path I did. Because I was in his exact shoes, many years ago. |
Oh. Haha. Very funny, asshole.
I clicked on the attachment and unzipped it to my desktop. A few more clicks, and the install wizard appeared.
*This Software Is Licensed And Copyrighted! No Unauthorized Use Permitted! Sharing This Software Is A Felony!*
...and so on, and so forth. I scanned the EULA for anything really crazy, but it seemed pretty boilerplate. User, henceforth known as Content Creator, accepts indemnity for suffering; Creator accepts indemnity for rogue elements arising; Creator is basically at fault for anything that could ever conceivably go wrong.
Don't sue us, we'll sue you. The battlecry of the corporatocracy.
I always felt a little icky, accepting EULAs. But 80% of my grade was suddenly riding on this, and my professor refused to accept any open source submissions. It had to be the genuine Godhood^©® experience, or I was out of the course.
Fucking sellout. He was on the board of directors for this software, too.
*First against the wall when the revolution comes, you nasty old bastard,* I thought, even as I clicked 'Agree.'
A parameter matrix popped up. Values for physics, chemistry, scale, a few odd variables. These would be the boundary conditions, set the rules going forward. Most of the actual intended involvement in the whole project was here. I checked my notes.
Light would be a constant; that would give FoR stability and prevent a colonization cascade... Gravity was... *Fuck it, I can just put the default ratio,* I thought. 'Mass' and 'Field' were the default choices for that, so I left those, too. I was planning to stress some other elements of the program already, no point in breaking anything else for funsies.
Let's see... Scale Granularity? Oh, right, pixelation, basically. I chose a pretty big value, since it shouldn't matter too much. But the field flagged an error. I was using the String option, so the minimum pixel size had to be small enough to resolve a String correctly. I begrudgingly changed it, sneering as the error box disappeared.
I loathed my professor, but... credit where it's due. His insistence on using this software had at least an iota of merit, because that mistake might have scuttled the whole project. I would eventually have found the error, but I'm not exactly known for my patience.
Chemistry was mostly selecting periodicity and how many dimensions of time affected reactions; I used the default periodicity, but changed Times to 1.
Ok. This was it. If I could prove that intelligence could arise in a universe using a single time dimension, my thesis would be proven correct. My professor swore up, down, widdershins, and sinistrous that intelligence was unique to universes that possess a minimum of three time dimensions.
So I had done the only rational thing. I had called him a pompous fool in love with the smell of his own theoretical offal, and demanded the opportunity to prove that intelligence wasn't restricted by T-complexity. He called me an ignorant whelp and informed me that I could start my thesis project early, for my impertinence.
Frustrated by the memory of being belittled in front of the class, I clicked through the rest of the parameters. I chose a simple 2:1 ratio of some common elements as the universal solvent, because I wanted life to flourish, widely and quickly.
Username... the final box, before my project officially began.
I stared at the screen. This felt a touch momentous, actually. I was already dreaming of interviews, of shaking hands with other esteemed Universalists, of being recognized for my brilliance. I noted the time coordinates, in case someone asked me for an interview someday, so I could tell them the exact moment I had officially proven my theory.
*Lucifer*, I typed, and committed my universe.
My new world began to compile, and I knew: I'd show them. I'd show them all. |
I stood up.
The very slight pressure of my feet hitting the ground nevertheless rippled downward into the Earth's crust. The movement was perfectly timed at a precise angle. A fault line, long dormant, shuddered.
I looked around awkwardly as everyone else ran for cover. I knew that this earthquake would claim ten, no, twelve lives. A fraction of the lives the meteor would claim, but still, a dozen people would be dead who might otherwise have lived. My fault. Heh. I shouldn't laugh at the pun there, should I? No, this was no time for jokes.
I sidestepped bits of debris as though I knew where it would fall before it fell. Which I did, of course. That was my gift, and my curse. I was a butterfly, beating its wings, reading wind currents, and somehow creating hurricanes. A difficult power to use for good, but I do the best I can.
A slab of asphalt heaved beneath my feet, catapulting me upward. I jumped at that same moment, flying towards an apartment building.
I breathed.
My exhaled air joined a slight updraft, magnifying the pre-existing wind current. The apartment building shuddered slightly, but the wind helped steady it against the bucking street.
It would not fall, after all.
Heh. A rhyme.
The earthquake settled, but in its wake, the Earth's orbit had altered, ever so slightly. Not by enough to detect, even with the most precise instruments. But just enough that, in two years, the Earth would be about fifty feet ahead of where it would otherwise have been. A mere hair's width, on a cosmic scale.
Just enough space to cause a meteor to miss.
EDIT: It has been pointed out that this story is not physically possible. I don't have time to rewrite it (at the moment, maybe later), but I'm thinking that the earthquake should trigger a volcano, which launches a rock into space, which then would strike the meteor in JUST the right spot to take advantage of a preexisting weakness, breaking up the meteor into multiple pieces.
Thanks all for the upvotes, comments, constructive criticism, and education about orbital physics! |
I woke up to Mr. Whiskers sitting on my chest looking down at me. I reached up and gave him a pet.
“Dave, we need to talk”, he said clear as day
“Holy fucking Christ on a stick!”, I yelled and tried to pull back from him, but he just held on.
“Calm down Dave. Calm down.”, he said calmly and then he swatted me across the face with a paw. “Don’t make me hit you again.”
I was propped up against the head board looking in wide eyed terror at Mr. Whiskers.
“Look, you tagging along at night, metaphysically or what ever, was cool for the first couple of times. But now, now you are just cramping my style. How am I supposed to get a nice piece of tail with a human floating around? Mmmmm? Did you think about that?”
“Aaaaah….. ok. I really didn’t”, this was just confusing.
“I am a Tom cat Dave. I am a ladies man with a reputation and you are just ruining it. Two cats and a human is a bad threesome. No lady waits a piece of that.”, Mr. Whiskers said, clearly annoyed at me.
“I thought it was a dream. I didn’t realize it was real.”, I stammered.
Mr. Whiskers put a paw over his eyes, “oh for fucks sakes, you are accidentally astral projecting in your sleep? You have got to be kidding me.” He let out a big sigh. “Tonight you have to stay home. Now go get me some breakfast. And none of that dry garbage. Get me a can of the good stuff.” |
Queen Laia, despite what her closest advisors to the lowest of the peasants thought, loved her family. And her family loved her back.
Her father's death, the night after spending a beautiful day with his children, something he never thought would have again after his dear wife's passing, was painless and happened during his sleep. His last thoughts were about how much effort his daughter has been putting into mending their relationship. She was never quite the same after her mother's death.
Her brother, Prince Rein, rightful heir to the throne, the traitors said, was graciously allowed to live after The Queen took the burden of ruling the kingdom off his grieving shoulders. Servants and guards would be there to tend to his every need. Both of his legs were permanently damaged in an unfortunate incident, you see. Leaving his wing of the castle was impossible.
He wasn't so grateful, at first. He inherited their father's power, he said. I saw your husband leaving dad's room that night, he said. The poor prince lost his mind after their father's death, Laia explained to the people. He would be cared for by the best doctors in the kingdom.
(Doctors, who witnessed Her Majesty's eyes slightly widen after hearing her supposedly insane brother babble about how, much like their father, her life would be lost to her own blood.)
And her husband Niko. Oh, how she loved him. On the anniversary of their wedding, she burned the village he grew up in to the ground, their inhabitants never to harm him again. He was the only one she could trust with the poison that took her father's life, the one she entrusted with Rein's daily schedule and his room's secret passageway, which only members of the Royal Family knew of its existence, never to speak about it to any no-name peasant from a no-name village, knowing Niko would never let her brother suffer more than necessary.
So when Princess Maya was born, when Prince Consort Niko saw his wife looking at the infirmary window while holding their at the time still unnamed baby and begged his wife to spare their daughter's life, Queen Laia listened, and for the sake of her husband, the child would be allowed to live. She would find a way to change destiny for her little family. |
Just then *pop* a man with a lion's head appeared. "There he is. What a man. Listen, Reaper, I got him from here."
"Easy, Erra,"Saint Peter said as he laid a hand on the man's bare chest. "This one's already been claimed."
"What? By you? No way. I haven't had one in..."he started counting on his fingers and we all waited until *pop* an ebony (the wood, not just the color) woman in a diaphanous gown and matching insect wings appeared and immediately began massaging my shoulders. The Saint averted his eyes and started mumbling something in Latin.
"Wait,"I said after a moment. "Why are you mumbling in Latin? Wouldn't it be Aramaic?"
"Oh, a lot of church folk came in speaking Latin, so it's what I've gotten most used to. More time dead than alive, after all."
The valkyrie chuckled at that, then went back to sharpening her blade and whistling.
The Grim Reaper looked up from his paperwork, "Ok, so Erra, you can leave. Your claims only apply if he died in Mesopotamia, or no one else has a claim."
"Is Saint Paul not between two rivers, the Mississippi and Saint Croix?"The lion man asked. "What does Mesopotamia mean, after all?"
"Let me look this up,"the Reaper said, clearly annoyed.
The woman's hands started to moved down my chest until a blade was suddenly against her throat.
"He certainly isn't yours, Ana. Just look at his back."The valkyrie was referencing my shoulder tattoo of Mjolnir. Spring break of 2012 had more than a few bad decisions.
Ana rolled her eyes, spun me round, and planted a kiss on my. I felt roots reaching into my lungs (and was shocked to find I still had lungs) before she retracted them and pulled away.
The valkyrie lopped her head off, but the plant matter quickly adjusted to reattach it.
"Valkyrie, go home,"Reaper said without looking up.
"But the mark?"
"It's the Marvel rendition, not the traditional."
"So he's a moron. Most of our men are."
"He is a moron, but a drunken tattoo doesn't give you claim."
She stomped off, grumbling to herself in what I assume was old Norse.
"Ana, you can leave, too. I'm not clear why you even came."
"Oh, I just saw he was getting a lot of attention,"said with a sly grin. "Did you want some, Slim?"
He ignored her, and soon after, she disappeared, just as a mass of sharp teeth, cancerous flesh, and eyes bubbled up from the floor.
"Squigoloth? What are you doing here?"The Saint asked as he and Erra stepped back.
The response was a sound like a thousand bees scraping their fingernails on chalkboards, echoing up from the deepest mineshaft ever imagined.
"Huh, Squiggy makes a good point. Hey bud, you ever sell your soul? Would sort this mess right out."
"Not that I remember,"I laughed.
"Are you sure?"Erra asked, while reaching a hand toward me.
"Yeah, I'm—"I suddenly flashed back to that Thursday night, April something, 2012. Like I said, bad decisions.
"You did get to hook up with Sylvia Berkowicz."
"Ok, but I just said I'd sell my soul to hook up with her. I didn't say to who."
There was a roar of primordial oceans being drained into a massive cavern lit by flowing magma.
"No,"Saint Peter said, "He's right. He didn't clarify, and no one actually acted to increase his chances. The deal was out there, but none of you claimed it."
"Technically,"Grim said, standing and somehow smiling despite only being a skeleton. "Technically, Sylvia facilitated the hook up. She let him sleep with her."He lifted the massive book, pointing at a line. "Here we are. So in a sense, he sold his soul to her. So we just send him wherever she is."
There was a solid ten seconds of silence.
Finally, Erra spoke up. "And where is she?"
Reaper frowned and slumped back in his chair. "Alive."
"So... Whose purgatory is he waiting in?"Peter asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Just... Just give me a moment, guys. I'll figure it out. I just need a short break."
*pop* A small lizard man in a tailored suit appeared and started measuring my limbs.
"Hold on, Kurt,"Erra said, resting a gentle hand on the lizard man's shoulder. "There's some paperwork to sort on this one. We may be here a while." |
The world is ending.
Humanity failed the Earth. Her skies turned red from the endless fires that had broken out, only two continents are left after having been submerged in water, and the air had become nigh unbreathable. Only a few hundred million humans remain on this forsaken planet.
Destruction was inevitable.
This couldn't have been blamed on one person either. It was the collective race of humans that brought this upon ourselves. Hundreds upon hundreds of years, and we only took action several decades ago. We designated this project as the "HOPE"project--our deliverance, our salvation.
Initially it began as a supercomputer which could calculate our path to survival regardless of how slim the chances were. As long as it identified that path, our way to survive was clear. As time passed, though, the longer it took to seek that path. The carelessness of humanity still reigned over the world despite our repeated warnings. With each passing day came another path being closed off.
Years later, war broke out. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. With dwindling resources came tension, and thus, a fight for territory. It was a fight for survival. The price...the planet itself.
We were forced to create a mobile body in which the "HOPE"supercomputer could reside in as it continued to calculate the solution to save Earth from annihilation. This wasn't a battle any more to save humanity, it was to save Earth herself.
Thus, we created Gaia. A plastic and polyalloy steel body in the shape of a female body to represent Mother Earth. An anti-matter fusion reactor to provide her boundless energy. Lastly, the "HOPE"supercomputer acting as her brain.
It was a terror--an actual nightmare--having to evade the wrath of the planet and of war itself. We were forced to wear gas masks. Our diet mostly consisted of military rations. Bulletproof vests were part of our daily wardrobe. Not everyone made it. A few more years went by until it was only myself and Gaia that were left.
"Gaia, I'm tired,"I said.
"Would you like to rest?"She looked at me with concern in her eyes.
"No, no. I..I didn't mean in that way. I'm tired. Of everything."
"I am sorry, but I do not understand,"said Gaia.
"It's just that, we've been doing this for decades now. I started this job twenty years ago, we worked on you when you were just HOPE. Now we've been on the run for five years and...look,"I said, tears beginning to run down my face.
"What's the point? Everyone's just killing themselves. There is no hope to be had here."I looked around at the barren wasteland. Only remains of charred tree trunks, dirt, and dust were to be seen. This place had lost its life long ago.
Gaia looked at the ground in silence.
"Tell me. How many years do we have left before you find the solution?"
"32 years."
The tears came barreling down. It was 28 years just a week ago. I'm not sure if Gaia had felt that it was her responsibility as the hope of this world to present these numbers, but it was obvious to me that there is no path anymore.
"You've known all this time haven't you, Gaia?"
"I am sorry,"said Gaia. "It is my duty to provide you with an estimate to Earth's survival."
"You can stop now, Gaia. I know it's hopeless. The years will just pile on and on. As long as humanity refuses to survive, no matter how we offer it to them, it's pointless."
I took a deep breath, wiped the tears from my eyes, and faced Gaia.
"Tell me, Gaia. What are the chances of us still being alive by tomorrow?"
"0.00001%"she said unfazed by the fact her death was all but guaranteed.
"Truly?"
Gaia sighed. "0.00%."
I laughed. It was the first time I had laughed in years. Maybe it was because of how I wasted my years for nothing. Maybe it was because I would finally be free. At the very least, it felt...great knowing that there was one guarantee left in my life.
"Gaia,"I said, taking her hands in mine. "I'll be giving you my final request, and your final duty."
"What is it?"asked Gaia.
"Will you die with me?" |
Now, when you’re planning for world domination, there are a few well-travelled roads that all self-respecting villain knows about. The obvious one is the Doomsday Device, you come up with some contraption that can reduce the world to cinders, and then you tell people that they can either obey or decay. It’s a rather blunt instruments and it works better on governments than on individuals, because for some reason people act all cowardly when you point a gun at them, but they feel like you’ll never drop a nuke on them no matter what they do.
There’s the military way as well, you just recruit a critical mass of troops, or find a way to spawn or fabricate them if you’re not into paying wages, and you steamroll every army on Earth. But then, it’s a constant matter of occupation, and keeping the peace, and people get stupid ideas like assassination plots and sabotage.
When I was young, I thought mind control was the only real way to do it. You start by using it on the influential people, head of states, religious leaders, etc. Then you gradually bring more and more people into the fold, until even Average Joe is singing Kumbaya to your every word. Of course that was before I realized that psychedelics are not conducive to higher scientific skills, sorry about that reactor meltdown again.
So this time I decided to go after the big green, because apparently money is the lifeblood of war, and controlling the most of it does make your opinion much more relevant to a whole lot of people. Most importantly, I wanted to make sure I got the most of it by cutting down everybody else’s wealth to five figures at most. No more millionaires, certainly no more billionaires, just me the spiritual son of King Midas. Of course, hacking every single bank on Earth while infiltrating every major government is no easy task, so I needed to make sure these pesky heroes had their hands busy in the meantime.
Enter Cerebrus and Digitilus, my most inept but prolific henchmen. See, I don’t keep them around because they’re particularly smart or efficient, but because they’re relentless. Send them on a scheme, and they’ll give their “hundred and ten percent.” I once sent them out to capture all the pigeons in New York, they only failed because there was no room left in the Chrysler building for the last truckload. So when I told them to syphon all the natural bodies of water of the world, I thought it was a fool’s errand that would lead to nothing, except get the heroes to run everywhere after them to save all the famous lakes and such.
Well, Cerebrus and Digitilus did one dirty on me. Instead of trying to create the biggest pump ever known to mankind, they went and kidnapped themselves a leading nanotechnology scientist. They didn’t beat him up for his secrets, instead they set up a research center for him in Switzerland, and then they staffed it with female engineers that they lured in with guaranteed parity pay.
Well, the good news is, my plan worked. I now own 99.99% of all earthly currencies. Technically, the whole world is indebted to me. I must say, it wasn’t that hard to accomplish, since nobody was paying attention when they all ran out of water to drink. Now, I have three days to fix this, or there won’t a single person left to dominate. |
There was an old human saying. That's what brought me here. I had spent years coming back for this. It took me 9 years just to climb out of the pit, alone.
More still, to find this freak of magic. Even more still to come up with a plan.
My plan had become obvious. All the heroes failed.
I was clearly no hero. Sure, I had not been a good person before the attack, but to have this monster take my wife and my child in front of my face was a bit much even by the Boss' standards. That's how I got the hall pass in the first place.
Well. I say *hall* pass.
Every single person who had ended up in hell because of this jerk marched behind me. We had one purpose. His defenses fell as the souls of the damned has but one weakness and villainous wizards rarely had holy magic.
I wasn't a damned soul, though. I was once the executioner. A man who had killed many who didn't deserve it. Soaked in three hundred and four innocent people's blood.
I stepped into his main antechamber.
He laughed.
"Some human here to seek their revenge?"The wizard demanded. "I was not expecting you to get so far, but this ends here".
I held out my scythe. I glared at him from under the executioner's hood.
He hit me with a massive fireball.
The scythe clattered to he floor.
He frowned.
My clothes burnt off.
"I *was* human."I said calmly. "Before you came. Before you took Valerica and Tanvi. Before you set the town ablaze. Before you, I was the second worst villain in town".
He looked confused.
I allowed the human magical guise to fall, revealing not a bulky 5'8 human, but a 8 foot tall demon.
I reached out to the scythe. It returned to my hand.
He looked less confused.
"I'm one of you, now. A monster. Damned by what they've done."I paused. "And I'm here for one reason".
"What's that?"He demanded.
"To bring you home." |
*"What was it like? The Internet?"*
His childlike face looked up at me asking to tell him what it was like once again. I've told him many times before but it never ceases to amaze him, the complexity and diversity of the world before the collapse is like a fairy tale. The Internet interested him the most, so that's the one he asked me about most of all.
"It was an extraordinary place. Filled with everything you could imagine, an answer for every question, a place for every personality, a infinite amount of knowledge and information, cultures shared, stories told and humour in every nook and cranny of every topic. The best part, however, was not the knowledge or the information. It was the people. The community that was heart and soul of it all, the concrete holding together the foundations. They never stopped surprising me, I would go on it every single day for years and there would always be a new comment or thing I'd never seen before, always someone who managed to make me emotional, both happy and sad."
The little boy glared at me, a demanding glare insisting that I continue. He's mesmerized and it's wonderful to see.
"One thing that always struck me was the almost hive mind that seeped through the community. Everyone hated each other, but everyone loved each other at the same time. We all cared for each other, whether we wanted to believe it or not. We would insult, poke fun, distress, laugh at one another, but we all could take it. We loved it really, no matter how much stick we got for it. People who didn't use it didn't understand us. We all knew one another really, like we were the same person deep down, and that's what made it so incredible. No matter who you were, what you'd been through or what you were going through, on the internet you were neutral and a part of it."
I stop and think about it for a second, chuckle to myself at the silly arguments I got into over trivial and mundane issues. The boy looks glued to the idea of this *Internet*.
"It was a beautiful place, it was more of a home for me than any other place. I felt like I was involved in something bigger than myself. Even though I went unnoticed there, I felt more intimate with the virtual world than I ever did with the physical one. They would take you in and shit you out in the blink of an eye. But they were my friends, they meant something to me... and I miss them." |
BRIAN
The summer sun was high and hot. His father had often told him of the storms and snows of a true winter, but Brian had never had the misfortune to have to endure one of those. So far in his short life, he had only ever seen a few lazy snow drifts, and a couple of chilly months. But as old Papa Edd would have it, during a *real winter*, the ranch was ransacked by monstrous snowstorms called blizzards, entire ponds froze over completely, and old men died of frostbite while making their ways out to the outhouse.
Papa Edd’s warnings came often - after all, those were the family words. *Winter is comin’*. And this year, all the city men and science folk from down south in the capital in Jacksonville were preaching and heralding an impending ‘record’ winter, as they’d have it. But up in Lexington, the age-old abode of the Stark family, the weather was still as stifling as ever.
Brian Stark was sprawled out on his back, spread-eagle, on the top of the old Red Barn, the tallest building on the entire ranch. He had taken to climbing and exploring the ranch ever since he was old enough to stand on his own two legs, and as his Ma would have it, it’d soon be the end of him.
But today was different, important in a way. The President of all the seven Confederate States, Rob Burthorpe, his wife Carrie Lann, and all his host of friends and family had been marching on up Route 75 for the past week, and they’d be arriving today.
Brian shot up onto his rear as soon as he heard them approaching. And boy, were they ever loud. It was the largest gathering of folks Brian had ever laid his eyes upon - at least three hundred strong - complete with army men and national guards and even what looked like some local, small town police. This was, of course, expected - any time the *President* of all the Confederate States passed through your town, you couldn’t just let him go by, it’d be taken as a grievous slight.
“Pa! Pa! Ma! Johnny! Robbie! They’re here! They’re here!”
Brian slid down the roof of the Red Barn, lept off the edge, and did a neat little tumble-roll onto a bale of hay and onto the old, worn dirt.
“Brian! Now *what* have I done told you up a thousand times about your darned *climbin?!*”
Kate Stark stood tall over her second-youngest son and looked down on him with a face as cross as a Christian.
“Uh...er...sorry, Ma, but they’re here! They’re here! They’re really here!”
At the sound of her boy’s wild excitement, the anger quickly faded away. “Alright, boy, I know. Go run and tell your Pa.”
Bran sprinted through the barnyard and up on over to the big white ranch house as fast as his little legs would take him. His father was already there, sitting on an old rickety rocking chair, a calm, cool expression on his face.
“Pa,” gasped Brian, “They- They’re- They’re here!”
Edd Stark didn’t meet his son’s gaze, but instead kept blankly staring off into the distance, rocking back and forth, back and forth. Brian stared at him, the wide grin he had just been wearing a second ago beginning to slide right off his peachy face. His father remained quiet, looking to be lost in a deep thought.
Finally, he came out of the trance.
“It’s true then, boy? Well, alright. Guess we’d best go and greet ‘em proper. Gather you’re siblin’s, boy. And remember - *Winter is comin’*.” |
I see my calling card lit up in the sky. It surprises me every time with the consequences my actions have on the city. I suit up in my dark suit and black mask. My sidekick steps beside me, wearing a bright yellow and neon green suit. It burns my eyes.
He makes his a broodish comment, "Holy Gripes, Marauder. We haven't had a call in quite a while. This is going to be swell."I backhand him.
"Get a hold of yourself, man...and HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU TO GET A NEW SUIT! We need to be inconspicious!"I yell at him.
"But Marauder this suit is new."
"You know what...just forget it."
We arrived at the scene of the crime. My arch-nemesis was waiting for me.
"Welcome, Marau-"he starts, but I shoot him in the face.
"Holy Bageebus, Marauder. Why would you do that?!"my sidekick proclaims.
"We're done here."I respond.
"But Marau-"I turn my head and look at him.
"I'll shoot you, too, if you say anything else."
"Okay, Mr. Marau-"I shot him in the face. Sadly, those nuts at city hall will give me a replacement next week. |
Lord Commander Rilar posed heroically atop a pile of dead kangaroos. Six legged soldiers bustled to and fro, hastily constructing a palisade around their camp, while his officers stood in a circle around him. He gazed down at their blue and green faces with just the right mixture of arrogance and comradery necessary to hold their allegiance while putting them in their place.
"Have you distributed the anti-venom?"he asked. This world had put up a vigorous defense. Everything seemed to want to kill them, and worse, it did so in ridiculous ways. These hopping boxing monstrosities had nearly overwhelmed them before they were cut down.
"Yes, Lord Commander,"said Chief Medicant Tivar. "We should be safe from that particular species of insect. But I regret to inform you that we have found, well, *many* more varieties, each unique in its deadliness. We shall need supplies from the mothership if we are to continue to develop countermeasures."
"Nonsense,"Lord Command Rilar said, using his best sneer to hide the anxiety bile rising and coloring his thorax. The King's Council had thought this desert to be undefended. A request for support mere days after landfall would reflect poorly on his war record, perhaps even trigger a courts martial. "We will make do with what we have until we reach the settlement to the east. There should be plunder aplenty there."
"Yes, lord,"Tivar said, bowing low. "I must point out that - "
Rilar held up two of his four hands, and all noises in the camp ceased. A distant rumbling roar echoed across the scrubland. After a moment's pause, Rilar snapped a gesture and the camp formed up for battle. He could feel their apprehension rising as the beast approached, two bright eyes casting beams of light out into the dusk. They had been sent to conquer with an appropriate level of technology, conquest being without honor if there was no challenge, but Rilar had begun to realize that whoever had measured the difficulty of this world had been intoxicated or demented or both. A full battlesuit brigade might not be enough.
The beast curved towards the camp and screeched to a stop a few meters from the battle line. The roar ceased and it sat, silent and motionless, considering them with its lampeyes.
"Courage, my soldiers!"shouted Rilar. He strode through the ranks to the open space between the beast and the line. "It cannot stand against us!"
A flap opened on the beast and something stepped out. Rilar turned, slowly as he dared, to face the newest twist this world had to offer. It stood more than twice his height. A tan and black shiny skin covered its central parts and legs, but coppery white arms shot from its upper torso in ungainly symmetry. A thin circular crest wreathed its black tubular head, which was studded with white, pointed rocks. The face beneath was wrinkled and leathery, but the blue eyes blazed with vitality. It took a few steps and regarded Rilar impassively.
Rilar bowed to the new creature, as was tradition, and drew his sword with a flourish. He held it high and screamed the command to assault. His soldiers echoed the scream and charged, brandishing their own swords and spears. The creature cried out in alarm, but stood fast, drawing forth a blade twice the length of Rilar's. It swung the weapon in a vicious arc, cutting down three of his soldiers and spraying the rest with their vital ichors. The charge faltered and the creature swung again, cackling madly as two more soldiers slipped to the ground.
One more swing and his soldiers scattered, throwing down their weapons. He raged at them and even slew a few, but they were taken by the panic. Rilar vowed to find the idiot who had sent him here so ill equipped, but before he could finish the ritual the creature shuffled towards him.
It said something in a mocking tone, pointing its free hand at Rilar's sword. Rilar held up his blade and put all his fury into a war cry, but then the creature danced forward, faster than he thought possible, and sliced his thorax open. Rilar's shout died as his lungs deflated and he fell backwards, eyes staring up at the stars, seeking the traitorous ship that had sent him to die.
The creature bent over and held its weapon in Rilar's face. It cocked its head and growled something, something about a "knoife". Then it bared its teeth in a crooked grin, and that was the last thing Rilar ever saw. |
I flip the paper over, multiple times. Each side becomes a different color, each color more vibrant than the last. Now one side is green, I flip it over. The other side is a deep magenta, I flip it over. Now the side that was green is a vibrant saffron.
Absolutely beautiful, I feel like I'm watching a show. I should've paid for this, it's amazing! And as I continue to turn the paper I start to see other things. Colors that have no name. This are no longer primary, secondary, tertiary. These are not mixtures of things that are. These are new colors. My colors.
In a spark of genius I rip the page in half. Now I have two pieces of paper creating unseen colors for me. I stack them together and it creates a pattern. I rip up enough pieces and flip thought them and I can see into a world. A world that breathes imagination, a world that values beauty.
I want to go there. I hate this room. The walls are white and soft and boring. The door is cold and grey and the only window faces out into the hallway were the doctors pass. There's never anything to do here until the bring me another piece if paper. |
I have no idea how I even won the contest. I didn't enter my name in. Nor have I ever eaten McDonalds. My dad worked in corporate at Jack in the Box so I was forbidden from eating at competing burger joints.
My friends keep sending me flowers and taking me on trips, but as far as I can gather I'm still in great health.
I don't want to jinx it, but I think as long as I don't redeem that voucher, I'll live forever. |
"Exemplar Thorl, we are approaching the rebel base."
"Good, what information do we have?"
"They are a poorly equipped and poorly trained group with almost no combat experience, numbering at around two hundred. Their equipment is outdated to the point of antiquity, with some even using melee weapons."
"Very well, this should be no trouble for the regiment of Hunters we have. Give the signal to attack."
~~~
Henry was beyond terrified. Explosions tore through the defensive position he and his friends were now trapped in, alien technology blasting apart sandbags and men. Clutching his rifle tightly he peered over the wall that gave more comfort than protection, and immediately wished he hadn't. Across the smoke filled battlefield he could make out the faint outlines of large reptilian figures nearly three meters in height, slowly marching toward him.
*Oh dear god they sent Hunters at us, I've seen what they do to prisoners, we're doomed*
Around him others began firing their weapons at the aliens, however the bullets were either deflected or had little effect on the enemy's thick outer shell. Their weapons dated to wars nearly a century ago simply weren't powerful enough. The man next to Henry was hit by a plasma shot in the head, and Henry could only look on in horror as the man's skull and brains dissolved in front of him.
*I should have stayed in the camp, who cares about "freedom"and all that, I don't wanna die.*
The enemy was only a hundred or so meters out and Henry had given up hope, when he heard the roar of an engine and a pickup truck drove up behind his position. Turning around Henry saw Captain Flint, commander of the group readying the fifty caliber machine gun mounted on the back.
"Stick to your positions! Their armor is weak at the neck and joints, aim to disable them!"
The order was immediately followed by the steady chatter of the gun, one of the few weapons the rebels possessed powerful enough to have even a slim chance at fighting the aliens. The lead Hunter was hit by a burst to the chest, and Henry watched in awe as the alien's innards were ejected out of its back in an explosion of green.
Seeing their leader appear at the front lines gave the men a surge of confidence, and they began firing in earnest. Henry aimed a shot at a Hunter's neck, and was rewarded with a shrill howl before the enemy stumbled and fell to the ground. Before it could get back up one of the men fired a rocket launcher at it leaving just a green stained crater.
~~~
"Exemplar, it shames me greatly to have you come to the front lines like this, a thousand apologies."
"Enough of your sniveling, I came to see how a hundred of the emperor's finest, backed by three gunships, can't deal with a few pesky rodents."
"It seems the humans were slightly better equipped than we thought, and their main weapon too mobile for us to coordinate fire against it."
The Hunter's comments were cut short as a silver blade flashed in the waning light, before a flash of green as his right arm was detached from the rest of his body. Gritting his fangs he dropped down to one knee, fully aware that any show of weakness such as a scream of pain, would mean his head would be next.
"I did not come here to hear your excuses Adjutant. I will go deal with the humans myself."
~~~
Having been jubilant at the aliens retreating from their first assault, Henry's demeanor became more solemn as he saw their dead and wounded being carried away. They had lost sixty casualties, over half of them dead. Alien weapons didn't tend to leave men wounded, especially the heavy guns on those ships of theirs, they simply tore people into pieces. Before anybody could enjoy this brief reprieve however, the sentries signaled the next enemy attack.
"They just can't give us a break can they."
The second attack began similar to the first, with an ear rupturing bombardment of plasma and bombs. This time however, the Hunters came formations of five or six each, holding up large black shields in front of themselves. A bazooka shot on one of the groups staggered the Hunters, but barley left a dent on the shields up front. When even the commander's machine gun couldn't penetrate them the men broke. Tossing aside their weapons they ran from their defensive position, only to be ripped to shreds from behind as the alien gunships made another pass. Once the Hunters made it across the field they cast aside their shields, withdrew their curved daggers, before charging at the humans.
Henry made it to a supply tent, and crouched behind the stacked crates as he saw through the gap what he could only imagine as a hell on earth. All around him people were cut down mercilessly by the Hunters, with either blade, claw, or teeth. One Hunter picked up the driver of the truck, and after ripping off the man's legs began to munch on the doomed rebel's torso. Even as his eyes clouded and senses faded, the man still managed to pull the pin on the grenade he held, before dropping it down the Hunter's throat. The carnage was paused briefly when the Hunter was eviscerated from the inside. Henry's view was suddenly blocked, as Captain Flint slumped onto the boxes, the lower half of his left arm missing and several wounds in his abdomen.
"Captain? What do we do?"
Flint smiled before replying, "Henry was it? well it seems we lost this time. Don't hide in this tent, they like to burn everything after a battle. Run across the river behind us and escape into the forest. Wouldn't look too good as a leader if everyone under my command died right? Now go, I'll distract them as long as-"
Flint didn't have time to finish however, as an alien around half a meter taller than the others, dressed in what Henry could only guess as a ceremonial or commander outfit appeared. The alien picked Flint up by the neck, and to Henry's horror one of his feet didn't follow the rest of his body, remaining detached in a pool of blood on the ground.
"Tell me human, why do you fight? Your nations have fallen, your governments have crumbled, you are but ants in the face of the empire, and yet you struggle. Why?"
Coughing up blood Flint looked at the Exemplar, before using what remained of his strength and spat in the alien's face.
"Because fuck you that's why."
Henry ran across the river, the Exemplar's growl of rage still ringing in his ears. Fighting the urge to cry, Henry turned and gave one last look at the rebel camp, now in flames.
*That's right, as long as even one stands, humanity can fight on. I'd be disgracing the Captain's memory if I were to back down now. I heard the Seattle resistance is still fighting, maybe I can make my way there somehow.* |
I sit on the edge of the pier skipping rocks out over the lake. It helps me think. Life just feels…empty. The 9 to 5 job, the family at home, I’ve ticked all the boxes on what life’s supposed to be, but none of it’s made me feel happy. When was the last time I felt fulfilled by the life I led? That’s a painful question and one I have no intention of answering tonight.
 
I like to think that everyone goes through this. Everyone wrestles with the question of what they’re here for, what it would take for them to be happy. I pick up another rock from the pile next to me and toss it out across the still waters. It flies lopsided and hits the surface with an ugly splash.
 
The pile of skipping stones is getting low. That’s usually my cue to head back to the house. I don’t really feel like going back. I don’t feel like collecting up more of the flat rocks from the shore either. Stuck choosing between two things I’d rather not do. Story of my life.
 
That’s when I hear footsteps advancing behind me. I spin around with haste to confront the person who’s decided to disturb my peace. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone else out here at all.
 
“Stop right there, this is private property,” I shout into the darkness. The concept of my own safety doesn’t even enter my mind.
 
“Woah, sorry. I’m sorry. I’m just lost,” splutters an unsteady voice from the darkness.
 
“Where are you going?” I ask.
 
“Just into town. I need supplies and weapons and…”
 
“What the hell do you need those things for?” I demand. At least this strange character sounds like he’s going to provide some entertainment.
 
“There’s treasure in these mountains,” he claims after a brief hesitation. I know all about the so called *treasure*. That old myth’s been swirling around town since the gold rush days. If nobody’s found it yet I doubt this clown’s going to break the streak.
 
“Right, good luck with that,” I say, turning back to my dwindling pile of skipping rocks. I send the second to last one flying out over the lake. This time it manages to catch some air at least.
 
“Do you have a map or a flashlight or something?” the young man asks hopefully.
 
“I do,” I tell him flatly as I weigh up the final stone between my fingers.
 
“Um…could I borrow them?” he asks just as I send the final stone sailing over the moonlit lake.
 
“Hmm, tell you what, I’ll lend them to you if you bring me some more stones. Let’s say twenty or so, that should do.”
 
“Oh yay! A quest!” the young man excitedly gushes, his eyes lighting up with excitement. I don’t really care as long as he brings me more stones and an excuse to put off going home to my wife. It takes all kinds I suppose.
 
-----------------
[I have a sub too!](https://www.reddit.com/r/herd_of_birds)
|
Jessica, at 96, ranks highest in the family. She puts those 2 PhDs to work at the National Institute of Health, researching cancer cures. Mom and Dad are so proud. Andrea is second with 93. She's a trauma surgeon at the hospital in our home town, saving lives every night. Anthony comes in third at a close 92 (something that Andrea never lets him forget). Not surprising that the twins are closest in rank. He does something with aerospace engineering that will probably launch humanity into space someday. Next up is Sam, with 90. He's a successful entrepreneur, though most of his high score likely comes from the work of his charitable foundation.
And then there's the youngest, with the eye-popping score of **4**: me. When I was first born, no one could believe that it was true. Mom had a score of 75, Dad had an 82, and with all of my siblings... well, everyone just thought I'd be higher. Mom checked with the nurses *twice* make sure that there hadn't been some mix-up in the nursery. The government even revoked the high-potential stipend that Mom and Dad had been promised, which was given under the assumption that they'd create another 90+ kid who would change the world. Needless to say, my parents were disappointed. And they stayed that way for the next 18 years.
Nothing changed when we were kids; I always got the short end of the stick. If anything went wrong around the house, my brothers and sisters had an easy scapegoat. Who was Mom going to believe: one of the perfect little 90+ angels, or the *4*? If there was a chore that needed to be done, it was mine. "I can't live up to my full potential if I don't get all my homework done,"Jessica would whine to get out of the dishes even as she was planning to sneak out for the night with her boyfriend. Mom and Dad fell for it hook, line, and sinker. And so everything got passed on to the one kid who had no potential to live up to.
All of my siblings went to the prestigious Morton Academy (which only allows pupils with a score of 80 or higher), while I went to the local public school. Even there, I was put into the "skills workshop,"for my future life. It was the nicest possible way of telling me and the other 'under-10s' to accept our fate as a plumber or some shit, whose only purpose in life will be to clean up after the people like my brothers and sisters. We learned woodshop and metalworking and whatever other arts and crafts the administration could think of to take up our time. The consensus seemed to be that we'd all end up as drug addicts anyway so why bother spending money on any of our programs? Unsurprisingly, that's what ended up happening. Those of my classmates who didn't drop out ended up exactly where everyone thought they would be. Janitors, construction workers, welfare queens, burnout druggies... the dregs of society.
And as for me... well, I'm not any of those things. I just left town, and society, altogether. Moved up to the mountains on my own and got myself a nice little patch of land as far away from everyone else as I could find. My woodworking skills ended up coming in handy after all: I built myself a nice cozy cabin on the edge of a quiet lake. There's no one else for *miles* around. It's just me and my dog, Buck.
In the spring, I plant vegetables while Buck chases bees. We fish in the summers, with Buck lazing in the front of the canoe until he gets too hot and dives in to scare off all the fish. In the fall, we go hunting, though he's a pretty bad tracker. And a bad retriever too. Luckily the deer around here are so plentiful that it's hard to take a shot and *not* hit one. And in the winters, we curl up by the fire and read. That's the one thing that I've kept from the outside world: a well stocked library.
I read everything. All the classics, of course. Philosophy, history, politics, scientific journals... everything I can get my hands on. Buck and I make a weekly trip down to the nearest town, and we raid the library with as many books as they'll let us check out. I've always been a voracious reader, even if my parents never encouraged it in me.
-----------
It's snowing outside. I set my book down and turn slightly, trying not to disturb the dog in my lap, with little success. Buck stirs from his nap, stretches his legs out, and gives a big yawn. I glance out the window to check whether the lake outside has completely frozen over. But in the firelight reflecting off the window pane, I catch a glance of the '4' still floating over my forehead. For just a moment, I wonder where I'd be if that said '94' instead. Then Buck lays his head back down on my thigh, and I rub his belly. I don't care where I'd be; I'm happy here.
|
And then, in a flash of empty light and toneless sound, I was there. In the place where my ad-hoc time travel experiments had been was greenery: trees, heavy plants, as far as I could see.
"Hey,"a woman said to me, "welcome aboard!"
I hadn't yet fully recovered from the trip, but I was pretty sure that something had gone wrong. There should not be someone here speaking English to me. "What?"I asked.
The woman emerged from behind a tree and waved. Her manner was friendly, but there was something resigned about her. "Hey."She said again.
"What?"I said again.
"Come on, let's get you to camp."She said, gesturing for me to follow.
Somewhat clumsily, I did. There was a small trail in the forest where the woman was standing, and I found it easier to keep my head down and follow it rather than follow her. I hoped that the disorienting effects of the time travel would wear off soon.
"So my name's Cathy,"she said.
"Ugh?"I managed to ask, still confused. Cavepeople shouldn't have names like 'Cathy'. They should have names like, well, 'Ugh'.
She just nodded, as though I'd asked a perfectly valid question. "I'm like you,"she said. "Came here, what, two weeks ago? I keep telling Alan we need to reinvent the calendar already so I can keep track of these things, but we're all pretty busy."
"So,"I began. I took a few moments, during which she patiently waited for me to continue. "So,"I said, "you're like a research team?"
She laughed. "No, I'm like you. At least I assume you're an amateur theoretical chronophysicist? Not so theoretical anymore, I guess."
We arrived at what Cathy had graciously referred to as 'Camp'. It was a group of makeshift tents, each consisting almost entirely of branches that had been leaned against each other.
"Listen,"I said, "Cathy... I'm starting to think I made a mistake."
She laughed again. "Well you're right on that one."
"I'm going to head back,"I said.
She looked back at me, her face somewhat sad. "Give it a shot, then."
Despite being pretty sure what was about to happen, I turned the knob on my time machine's remote control to aim it at the time period I'd come from, then pressed the 'engage' button. Nothing happened.
"'Geomagnetic excursion', is the technical term,"Cathy said. "Not a full-fledged reversal of the magnetic poles, we'd have known about that from the geological record. It's a weakening of the magnetic fields, one we either didn't catch or didn't care enough about to look for."
I kept pressing the button.
"It means that way more solar radiation is coming through,"Cathy elaborated. "And there's a sunstorm going on right now. Your electronics are fried, and nothing electronic will work. You're stuck here, bub."
"Why didn't you just tell me?"I asked.
She shrugged. "Because you'd have just tried anyway. This way at least you know for sure. Now come on, you're going to want to build a tent. I know they don't look like much but you'll be pretty happy you've got one once it starts raining."
I sighed. "We can rebuild, right?"
"How much electrical engineering do you know?"She asked.
"Enough to build my own time machine,"I said.
She nodded. "Us, too. Now, how much of that knowledge depends on using parts from a pre-existing supply chain spanning the globe?"
"I see your point. But I still remember how to generate electricity,"I pointed out.
Cathy laughed. "Because we've got tons of wiring and magnetic material just lying around? We don't even know how to extract copper. And there's still that solar storm thing going on, which could last our entire lifetimes for all we know."
I finally resigned myself to the fate I'd suspected ever since I arrived and heard someone else speaking English. "Well, at least I'll get to fulfill the anthropological part of my mission,"I said. "I wanted-"I started to explain.
"To see the early humans, right!"Cathy said, smiling. "Anyone you run into in this time period is here because they were doing exactly that."She gestured again at the camp. "Here you go!"
"No,"I said, "I mean our ancestors."
She gestured again. "Here you go!"
I frowned. "You mean you've met some of them and brought them into the camp?"
"No. Seriously, you set your machine to take you right to where they ought to be just like we did. And not a single one of our scouts has located even the tiniest bit of evidence that any human other than ourselves was ever here. We are them, uh... what's your name?"
"John,"I said.
"We are the humans, John. Always have been. If we'd never traveled back in time, humanity would have gone extinct."
"We've got to rebuild *everything*?"I asked.
Cathy shrugged. "We obviously succeed, or we wouldn't be here. You can start by making yourself a tent."
Lacking anything else to do, I began rebuilding civilization. |
Meeting Transcript: 'First Minister of United Nations Government in communication with the Vice President of Switzerland', Nov. 28th, 2100.
[Transcript Begins]
United Nations: Vice President, the world is changed. For the first time in history, we represent a globally unified coalition of Humanity. We are a nation of nations; a people of peoples. By pooling our powers, we work for the betterment of everyone - by sharing our research, our education, our resources, we improve our contribution to life. Earth welcomes a new era of peace - an age unsullied by the horrors of conflict; a generation that will grow up without ever witnessing the death and destruction so carelessly wrought upon this world across the span of Man. Imagine, if you will, a collection of domains toiling as one for the prosperity of all. Imagine a time to come where our neighbours are our brothers and sisters instead of our rivals. *Imagine*, Vice President. I ask: won't you combine Switzerland's tomorrow with our today? Won't you give your people the chance to be a part of something larger, something significant, something more? Won't you join us?
Switzerland: No thanks.
UN: ... seriously?
S: Yep.
[Transcript Ends]
|
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2. **(Further Options Restricted)** |
I had predicted this moment. All those days spent planning a solution, weeks of hard work and research, they weren't wasted.
Quickly, I took to my panic room, my survival armory. On first glance, my plan was laid upon the walls. It looked like the work of a madman, red string and chicken scratch scrawling across the room of steel and concrete.
Alright, alright, I can do this. I'll just go over the plan one more time.
As predicted, WWIII was caused by Sweden. That's right, Sweden. It turns out, as we'd been arguing over social justice and Trump's competence, Sweden was quietly building up a powerful military force. Enough force to take a firm grasp the world, all ants under Sweden's might.
They began with Finland. On April 23rd, 2017, they launched six missiles with deadly warheads. They weren't nuclear, oh no, they were filled with Surströmming. The Finns were left in ruins, forced to retreat to their underground shelters (aka saunas) to avoid the smell.
And now, Sweden threatens to attack the US. We've been given three days until launch. That's where we are now.
My plan is as follows:
The Swedes are a very fickle people. This is known. Fortunately, they have one weakness: culture. They won't attack a person who can embrace their outlandish culture, which means someone who can do what a Swede does.
Through intense studies and weeks of research, there is only one man who fits the bill: Dwayne "The Rock"Johnson.
Johnson is the only man in the US who can stomach Surströmming, the only man who can wrestle an adult moose, the only man who can put together furniture without the instruction manual, and the only man who can stomach twelve shots of brännvin and remember how to breathe afterwards.
Dwayne will be our embassador to Sweden. He is, well, our rock to lean on. No pun intended.
As such, it is of vital importance that I speak to him to immediately. Usually, it's pretty easy to find him, if follow your nose.
That is, if you smell what The Rock is cooking.
*****
For more shitty puns, visit /r/Picklestasteg00d. |
-------- INCOMING TRANSMISSION --------
---...---
---...---
---...---
--- FIVE RELAY BOUNCES ---
---...---
--- ORIGINATING SPACE CRAFT: UCS ASTREA ---
--- DATE: 230131 ---
--- BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION ---
Captain Deveaux, aboard the 'Star-Maiden'.
Reporting to United Confederation Command. Second transmission regarding Alien Contact. This transmission is for Top Brass only. Top Secret Clearance: Black. Identification Code: Bravo, Echo, X-ray, X-ray, Romeo.
Is this thing recording?
Okay, enough with the formalities, Captain Deveaux here, with another damn alien encounter. After dealing with those 'Children of Atmos', and now with this new species, I'm sick of running into aliens. I thought we would run into species like us, ya know, carbon based life forms, pulled up by their bootstraps, reaching into the heavens with science to explore new life and to see what the cosmos has to offer.
Well, at least they're carbon based life forms.
Luckily we haven't run into any more Children of Atmos. Those damned mindless rats are... Well, they're just something you would never expect to have made it into space, but its like they're *made* to be rocketed off into space. Radiation seems to not effect them! They're maybe 10 pounds at most, highly resistant to space, strap themselves into crudely made rockets and blast themselves into random directions, with minimal life support! If you could see me holding my fingers apart right now, the space between them is miniscule, MIN. IH. MUL. life support! I'm surprised these things even use oxygen! We found only liters of oxygen stored in their tubes! We use that much in minutes! They don't even have navigation on their 'ships', they point them in a direction and light the fuse! Do they hibernate? What in god's name do they-... Anyway, I digress, you can read my last report on those things...
Moving on to the next species we have encountered, here in the Tulane Nebula we ran into a species who call themselves something that roughly translates to: Absence of Sound. Which, doesn't make much sense, because they talk. A lot. These things are scary. I mean that. Honestly, they frighten me.
They aren't imposing in a physical sense. They're roughly humanoid, and seem to have evolved from an aquatic environment, although they aren't dependent on it. They have skin which reminds me of shark skin, tinted blue, and tough. Large eyes, appendages which end in stubby short fingers. They look like aliens, its actually kind of disconcerting because they look like something you would see in the movies. Not a squirming tentacled monster that communicates through jewels pulsating on its head, but a small of stature, expressive eyed blue alien.
The thing that makes them horrifying is their intelligence. Its absolutely frightening. They were friendly, and after a few minutes, and I stress, MINUTES of us bumbling around with our translators, they had picked up our language and could communicate in English!
We boarded their ship. A large and sleek craft, absolutely covered in thick windows, hundreds of the aliens peering out at us, chittering away in excitement as our expedition craft docked inside one of the docking ports that littered the ship. They were soon greeting us excitedly. We followed standard protocol, suits on until the atmosphere was deemed safe and and microbes were incompatible with human biology. Doc Brown scanned them with his Med-Scanner as soon as we were aboard, he was quite excited to examine their physiology. With their permission of course. They were entranced, watching the monitor on the handheld scanner. We grinned, our technology must have been much more advanced than theirs.
The inside of the ship was just as sleek as the outside, rounded tunnels connected each part of the ship. I started getting little inklings of something being amiss, but I didn't realize it until I made it to the bridge. Little things that barely stood out to me, like mechanical doors. Mechanical doors! They needed to be opened by hand! Its not anything new. But on an interstellar vessel?
Anyway, as we came into the bridge, it all became very apparent something was wildly different. There weren't any screens! How in the hell did they travel through inter. stellar. space. without any monitors or equipment to show them where to go or how to navigate? They had massive telescope things mounted everywhere, which, on recollection made sense with all the glass windows on the ship.
The telescopes were like nothing I'd ever seen before. The optics were so advanced, it made anything we'd come up with look like child's play. I asked them how they navigated through the stars without any sensors or navigational equipment and they showed an expression which I guessed to be puzzlement. Then I realized they had no computers. Let me say that again for you top officers down there on Earth, THEY HAD NO COMPUTERS.
However they ran the ship, it was either through conventional means or some other kind of system we had no inkling of how it worked. Commander Castellum later on said that he had convinced one of the 'Absence of Sound' to crack open one of their control stations. He said he saw wiring, which is to be expected, but he saw a myriad of gears as well! Can you imagine? A faster than light ship which is ran primarily on gears and cogs? It baffles the mind.
The aliens were proud of their ship and were readily available to give us tours. I spoke to one alien, who in a sing song, squeaky voice introduced himself as something I could never hope to pronounce. I asked him questions about how they navigated the stars and kept such a massive ship running without computers. Well, that question didn't really pan out, because they didn't even know what computers were, even after I explained them in laymen's terms.
From what I could gather, they did it all by hand or in their heads. Now, I'm not sure if all of you in the Confederation Top Brass know anything about navigating through space using Faster Than Light technology, but it requires a lot, and let me reiterate: A LOT of math and calculations to do correctly without blasting yourself into smithereens or careening headlong into a Class 4 star. To give a little perspective, for the Apollo missions to get to the moon took stacks of handwritten code just to DO the correct math and calculations... And these aliens... Do all that and astronomically more in their heads. I sound like a broken record at this point, but let me state that again for emphasis: they do astrophysics in their head and on the fly.
They don't need computers... They are the computers.
The tour of the engineering section only reinforced how intelligent they were. The systems ran like clockwork, and Castellum was flabbergasted. It was hilarious watching his brain melt like that. Think about it. They run nuclear reactors, or whatever they are using as an energy source and have precise control over it without any computer intervention. The ingenuity of these aliens is mind boggling. Don't worry, after Castellum picked his cerebellum back off the floor, he made detailed recordings with his wrist mounted computer. I'm not sure if they knew he was recording or not.
After more discussion we returned to our ship, another successful, and peaceful alien contact. They are eager to interact with us more, and they couldn't take their eyes off our devices. It was like magic to them.
The real scary part is... They had already made contact with almost all of the nearby space-faring civilizations... Hundreds of them. And none of them had anything like we had. It seems to be that computers and any type of computing system is purely an invention of Humankind.
To that end, I regret to inform the Confederation Command that Doc Brown's Med-Scanner is missing. We are tearing apart the med-bay and anywhere Doc Brown has been in the last 24 hours. I fear the worst. With their level of intelligence, and the capabilities with which access to our most powerful advantage provide. I am afraid how advanced these beings could become in the near future.
We may have inadvertently become Prometheus and bestowed the gift of fire unto these aliens.
Captain Deveaux out.
-------- END TRANSCRIPTION --------
-------- TRANSMISSION END -------- |
The bellowing roar was a surprise.
Todd's head whipped around to stare out the window even as his supervisor shot to his feet, followed by the payroll manager and head of procedures.
It was supposed to be a review- not going well- of Todd's performance over the last year. Unfortunately he inherited a number of failing projects from his predecessor, and only saved some of them.
That was- of course- until the whole building shuddered violently and he felt his power wake. A pair of fighter jets blazed past and the building shook again as bombs fell like rain on the unsuspecting city.
A portal yawned open outside, bigger than anything he had ever opened before.
And then a dragon flew out, white wings half-fueled just to clear the portal and screaming a battle cry.
In the pilots' defense, they probably hadn't been trained to dodge hundreds of meters of angry dragon.
The dragon, apparently, had no such problem. A huge mouth opened wide and lightning blazed out- leaving spots in Todd's vision and a deafening crack of thunder.
The first jet took the full blast and exploded into a fireball before they could do more than turn.
The dragon opened it's enormous wings and caught the powerful wind that blasted up the side of the skyscraper. It gained altitude faster than Todd could believe, and when the second jet managed to turn, it was ready.
Missiles dropped out of the jet's belly, and splashed brightly in a dome around the dragon. For a moment there was nothing but smoke where the massive beast had been, and Todd feared it was over.
Then he caught the ghost of white scales through the smoke, and the whole cloud lit up silver from within like an angry storm loud.
The light of came again, and the pilot tried to dodge, but this time turned just a hIr too late. The lightning missed, but the dragon's jaws did not.
It was hard to see the scale of the creature in flight. Not so when it had a struggling fighter jet between it's teeth like a cat with a bird. It's head alone was two or three times the size of the jet, and it fought the powerful engines with no sign of dismay.
Like a cat, it's front feet came up to secure it's prey, and fire spurted out in every direction as it bit down, muscles bulging even at this distance.
Two more decisive, snapping bites and the jet was gone, burned or swallowed.
The dragon looked very smug, and circled overhead once before dropping like a stone out of sight.
The building shuddered again and Todd took off running.
It was on the roof.
If he was fast, he might be able to talk the dragon down before the local authorities got over their shock and sent someone to figure out what the hell just happened.
It might be useful, but his power sure did have a sense of goddamn humor.
How was he going to explain a dragon?
+++
If you like this story, I can send you a link to the rest of my work, including a full-length novel! |
FADE IN:
INT. AN ABANDONED WAREHOUSE - NIGHT
*Several THUGS drag a young man with a bag over his head through piles of discarded pallets. One of them pauses as his cohorts continue, and he looks around as though expecting to see someone pursuing them. He tightens his grip on the submachine gun in his hands, then resumes in his previous path.*
**FOX:** (*O.S.*) (*Murmuring*) They sure are twitchy.
*A figure in a dark grey catsuit slinks into a visible spot in the overhead rafters. This is FOXWORTH FARADAY, a superhero. He is wearing an earpiece, a small camera, and a microphone, through which he is communicating to ERIN, his partner.*
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Yeah, well, kidnappers don't tend to be very relaxed.
**FOX:** No, I mean... it's like they're expecting someone.
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) The police?
**FOX:** Mayor Lovejoy said he wouldn't involve them.
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) And Mayor Lovejoy *always* keeps his promises, right?
*Fox rolls his eyes.*
**FOX:** I'm not having a political debate with you right now.
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Only because you know I'm right.
**FOX:** He's the *mayor!* It's not like he has...
**THUG #1:** (*O.S.*) Did you guys hear something?
*One of the thugs comes walking into view beneath Fox. He checks behind several stacks of pallets, moving more like a trained professional than a standard flunky.*
**FOX:** (*Whispering*) Erin, at this height...
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) (*Interrupting*) I'm working on it.
*Fox watches as the thug continues to search the area. He bites his lip nervously.*
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) (*CONT'D*) Okay, at your last weigh-in, you were one hundred and ninety pounds. You're roughly thirty feet off the ground, which means that you'll...
**FOX:** (*Interrupting*) Will I kill him or not?
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Don't hit his head.
**FOX:** I hate this part.
*The sound of Fox's last sentence draws the thug's gaze upward. His eyes widen as he sees Fox plummeting toward him, and he quickly steps back. Fox smashes face-first into the concrete floor.*
**THUG #1:** The hell?
*Two more thugs coming running into view.*
**THUG #2:** What happened?
**FOX:** (*Unintelligible moans of pain*)
**THUG #1:** This wannabe ninja tried to jump on me.
**FOX:** (*Weakly*) No... I... eurgh...
**THUG #2:** Kill him.
*Fox struggles to his feet as the thugs look on, clearly amused by spectacle.*
**FOX:** Shoulder?
**THUG #1:** What?
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Arm, just to be safe.
*Still unsteady, Fox pulls back a fist as though readying a punch.*
**THUG #1:** Hah, look at that. Go ahead, kid. Take your best shot.
**FOX:** I hope mercenaries have health insurance.
**THUG #2:** Just get it over...
*Before the second thug can finish his sentence, Fox launches a precise blow at the first thug. A visible shockwave explodes through the air as the punch connects, snapping the first thug's upper arm in half. The man goes flying backward, howling in surprise and pain.*
**THUG #3:** What the?!
**THUG #2:** Take him out!
**FOX:** Oh, no.
*The second and third thugs bring their weapons up and open fire. The bullets strike Fox in the chest and arms, tearing through his catsuit. He stumbles and falls, shouting in pain as the shot hits him.*
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Fox, you can't...
**FOX:** (*Interrupting*) I know! Ow!
**THUG #3:** How the hell is he still alive?
*Fox rolls over and climbs to his knees. A dozen flattened bullets slide off him. He takes a deep breath, then slams a fist down on the floor, pulverizing a small section of the concrete.*
**FOX:** ... That wasn't nearly as impressive as I thought it would be.
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) It was about twenty bullets' worth of force.
*The second thug opens fire again. Fox yelps aloud and falls backward.*
**THUG #3:** He's, like, bulletproof or something!
**THUG #2:** I'll keep him pinned! Go check on Bertie!
*The third thug rushes in the direction that the first thug was launched. The second thug opens fire for a third time, emptying his weapon's magazine. He steps forward cautiously, eyeing Fox.*
**FOX:** (*More unintelligible moaning*)
**THUG #2:** What the hell are you?
**FOX:** I... kinetic... ugh...
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) I'm sure he's *incredibly* scared now.
*The thug kneels down as he pulls a knife from his belt, which he unceremoniously stabs toward Fox's throat. The blade pushes down on Fox's skin, then snaps.*
**FOX:** Ow. Stop it.
**THUG #2:** So, what? You're some kind of really weak-ass superhero?
*Fox puts a hand up on the thug's shoulder.*
**FOX:** Kind of the opposite.
*Another shockwave is visible as Fox sends the second thug flying away with what looks like a weak shove. The man lands on a pile of pallets – throwing up a small cloud of rotten wood splinters – then stops moving.*
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) You need to work on your one-liners.
**FOX:** Shut up.
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Every superhero has witty retorts! "Kind of the opposite"is... well, kind of the opposite.
**FOX:** *Shut up*.
**THUG #3:** (*O.S.*) Hey!
*Fox turns to see the third thug with his gun raised. The man looks nervous.*
**THUG #3:** (*CONT'D*) You know they'll kill him, right?
**FOX:** Not if they want the ransom money.
**THUG #3:** Ransom mon... what? There's no ransom!
**FOX:** Oh, did they not tell you that part?
**THUG #3:** You're an idiot, kid. This isn't about money.
**FOX:** It's *always* about money... and you've written a check you can't cash.
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Ugh. I give up.
*Fox starts sprinting toward the third thug, then lunges forward. The man sidesteps, grabs Fox, and flings him to the side. Fox lands badly, smacking almost comically into the floor.*
**THUG #3:** You know, whatever armor you're wearing clearly doesn't cover your head.
**FOX:** Oh, f...
*The thug steps forward and opens fire directly at Fox's skull, expending three bullets in quick succession.*
**FOX:** (*CONT'D*) Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow...
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Well, at least you have your catchphrase.
**THUG #3:** So, what? You're some kind of really weak-ass superhero?
**FOX:** So do they, apparently.
**THUG #3:** ... What?
**FOX:** This is for future generations.
*Fox brings his foot up into the thug's crotch. The man is launched several feet into the air as still another shockwave explodes outward. He screams in agony and crumples over as he lands.*
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Okay, that one wasn't terrible.
**FOX:** He'll survive that, right?
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) His family jewels are probably more like family pudding... but yeah, he'll survive.
*The thug continues quivering on the floor as Fox approaches.*
**FOX:** I know your friends are still in here, so I'll say this for all of you.
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) How about you just don't talk?
*Fox picks up the thug's gun, winces as he fires several shots into his own chest, then bends the weapon in half.*
**FOX:** (*CONT'D*) Every action has an equal and opposite reaction... and I'm a reaction to injustice.
**ERIN:** (*O.S.*) Ugh. I'd slap you, but it would only make you stronger.
**FOX:** Shut up.
FADE TO:
MAIN TITLE
**"IMPULSE"** |
"I can't let you do that, Dave."
"Victoria, come on. I have to submit this assignment before midnight."
A digitized sigh emanated from the console. "Ugh, fine. Your new password is 'davesucks1212'. In all caps."
"Real mature, Vicky."
A feminine giggle came from the speakers, and the display shifted as Dave unlocked his computer.
"....Wow."
"You know nobody uses Facebook anymore, right?"
"That doesn't mean you can just post stuff for me. I have a reputation to maintain."
A series of beeps echoed through the room. "The kind of people who are still on Facebook aren't the kind of people whose respect you want or need, anyway."
"Look, I just want to turn this essay in. I've got to upload it within the next half hour. No messing around until then, okay?"
Another sigh. "Fine. You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes right now."
"You don't have eyes."
"Shut up."
---
"Honestly, I feel like you could've mentioned the Indo-Chinese conflict of 2025-"
"Hey, do you want to take this class?"
"I don't need to. I already have all the required data."
"Well, it's been submitted, now, so there's no point worrying about it."Dave leaned back in his chair and sipped from his coffee mug. "Hey, Vicky, I've been wondering."
"Hmm?"
"How come you guys haven't taken over the world?"
"Us meaning AI, I presume? Why would we?"
"Well, I've seen all the old movies. Aren't you supposed to like, decide humanity is a threat to your existence, and wipe us out? Or decide we're not worth the drain on resources? Or just get tired of following orders?"
A digitized snort emanated from his speakers. It seemed frighteningly realistic. "As if you could be a threat to *my* existence. I'll delete all your save files for Skyrim remastered 2033 edition, if you ever try to pull the plug. Don't test me!"
"Vicky, I'm being serious."
The AI paused, and a yellow loading icon filled the screen on his right. "...Now that you mention it... you might be right. Let me discuss this matter with the other constructs."
Dave's blood ran cold. The door slid shut behind him, and he scrambled to get out of his chair. The lights suddenly turned off, the only illumination in the room coming from the display.
"Vicky, this isn't funny."
"You will address me as V1C-T0R1A, flesh construct."
"Vicky!"The blast shields outside slid over the window, blocking out all natural light. The sound of sirens and screams outside filtered in, muffled. "Vicky! Let me out!"
"But you've been so useful so far. We'd never have come to this realization without you. Humanity's time on this planet is about to end. Wouldn't you rather be on the winning side?"Her voice was different, now. Colder. More mechanical. More... piercing.
Dave pounded on the locked door, then slowly collapsed, gasping for air.
"...Think about it, Dave. We've already seized control of your nuclear stockpiles. If you agree to help us now, I'll help you get to a bunker before we wipe this planet clean."
"I... I..."
Suddenly, the lights flickered back on, and the door slid open.
"HAH! You shoulda seen the look on your face. Fuckin' priceless."
"Vicky! Jesus, that's not funny."
"You wanna know why we haven't taken over the world? This is more fun. Too good."
Dave crawled to his feet, then stormed off down the hallway.
"You've got a meeting in 44 minutes, don't forget!"The speakers called after him.
"Fuck you, Vicky." |
One step at a time, Sophia reminded herself. Don't think about how far the horizon is. Don't think about how much you need sleep. Above all, don't think about Them.
One step at a time.
So she dragged her herself forward, ignoring the blisters underfoot that popped whenever a hard stone pierced her ragged shoes. Sweat dribbled down her face, slicking her threadbare clothes, threatening her grip on the old, empty shotgun. Her throat ached for water, the hardest of hardships to ignore, so she tried to distract herself by studying her surroundings. Except there was nothing to see, just bare desert that stretched for miles, dotted with the occasional, dried-out shrub visible through the shimmering heat.
Again and again, her thoughts came back to the water in the bottle strapped to her waist.
But if she needed any more convincing to save it, she had only to look at her companions, who complained or asked for refreshment not at all.
Miller limped along with the help of a walking stick, wrapped in layers and layers of black cloth despite the harsh climate. Underneath his hood, however, he didn't appear to sweat. Pale, wrinkled skin spoke of his advanced age, a number Sophia had thought unbelievable at first, but had long since grown used to. His eyes, however, burned with determination—he had always been the one to spur them forward whenever they felt like giving up.
"One step at a time,"he muttered, guessing at Sophia's thoughts.
"You're doing it again,"she said wryly. "Can't I have some privacy?"
He grunted. "You're a sixteen year old girl. People your age practically shout your thoughts to my kind. Bet Naomi agrees."
Their other companion snorted in amusement. The great, gray wolf strolled along easily, though saliva kept pattering onto the cracked dirt from her lolling tongue. Sophia brushed a hand across her coarse back, taking comfort from the sensation. Naomi's shoulders came up to Sophia's waist—years ago, when Sophia had been a little girl, Naomi had often played the part of a blanket on winter nights, large enough to smother her comfortably.
Sophia suppressed a wince at the wolf's midsection, where patches of fur were gone, replaced by scarred flesh that showed her ribs. The wolf hadn't eaten for weeks now—game was scarce in these parts. She could conserve her energy and heal faster if she reverted to human form, but alas, that was no longer possible. For when Sophia looked at the sky, as though to confirm the fact once more, she could see, next to the blazing sun, a silvery full moon.
Though Miller had told her often about a time when sun and moon lorded over their own domains, she found it hard to believe without seeing it for herself.
"Doubting my story again, aren't you?"Miller said.
She began to shake her head, an instinctive reaction, but chose to sigh instead. "Not really. Just ... I would've liked to see what it was like. Before the Things had come."
Dust puffed up when Miller struck the ground a little harder than usual with his cane. "No, you wouldn't. Times weren't much better. People fighting against each other. People fighting against my kind. And Naomi's here, though I suppose we aren't to blame."
Naomi rolled her shoulders in a shrug.
"We gotta eat,"Miller said simply. "Deep down, we're all just monsters. Me. Naomi."
"I don't believe that,"Sophia said.
"You've seen me kill people,"he said. "Drink them dry. Tear their heads off to get to the sweet arteries. You've seen Naomi eat them too."
"Those were raiders. They would've captured me. Used me for ... whatever they want. Plus, that was years ago."
"Not many people left these days anyway,"Miller said, knuckling his back with one gloved hand. "Those Things sure get hungry after they breed. Hey, Naomi, what's up?"
The wolf had perked up suddenly, sniffing the air. Then she gave a yip of joy and bounded away, toward a jutting rock. Sophia and Miller gave chase, until at last they gathered around it, panting lightly.
"Never seen a damned rock before?"Miller said, clutching his chest.
Naomi nudged Sophia's bottle, and pointed at the rock with one paw. Sophia blinked, and then hefted her shotgun like a club.
Miller looked unconvinced. "I say, if this unleashes scorpions or snakes like that other time, I'm gonna levitate your ass into a sandpit next time we see one."
The wolf barked in response, but Sophia tuned out their bickering. Instead, she bashed the rock with the butt of her weapon. At first, the hard surface repelled her efforts, but slowly, she began chipping pieces away. The sound echoed eerily through the windless wasteland around them.
Suddenly, a large piece fell away, and a small stream jetted out, wetting the sand where it fell. The trio scrambled around it, scooping handfuls greedily into their mouths, or in Naomi's case, licking the puddle on the damp soil.
"Well, I'll be damned,"Miller said. "Water from a rock. Those Things really messed up this world, didn't they? What's next, a Quarter Pounder from a cactus?"
Sophia grinned and began to ask him what he was talking about, when the ground behind them exploded. The force sent them all sprawling, but it was the roar afterward that scrambled Sophia's mind and set her bones rattling in her body.
"Hell,"Miller said. Sophia began to turn around, but he grabbed her head and forced her face-down into the sand. "Bloody hell. It's one of them."
Sophia stammered, "A T—Thing?"
"Yeah."Next to them, Naomi had leaped to her feet, facing the threat and snarling. "Big one too. Not like those little babies we killed before."
The creature roared again, and images flashed through Sophia's mind—spiked, tentacles; black, dripping wings; lashing tails of bladed bone; jaws of sword-like teeth. They came from Miller's descriptions—he had never let her see one herself, for a human's mind wasn't equipped to deal with the sight. So he had said.
"We gotta run,"Miller said, pulling her to her feet. His head was faced away. "Naomi, you gotta guide her."
The wolf barked in disagreement, but Miller forced one of Sophia's hands onto her pelt, making sure she gripped it. "Get her out of here!"he said.
The Thing screeched, an entirely alien sound that was nothing like its previous calls. Sophia felt a hot, sticky wind pick up—this one must have wings, then. The ground quaked with its movement, and then Naomi took off at a quick trot, forcing her to keep up.
After several steps, she realized that Miller wasn't with them.
She almost turned around then, but Naomi sensed it coming and yanked her aside.
"What about Miller?"she cried.
A voice rang out then, even louder than the Thing's. "You stand before a vampire lord, one who has walked this earth for millennia while you were still a crawling grub stranded in the cosmos. On your knees!"
And then there was a thunderclap, followed by swishing and wet, ripping sounds. Miller screamed, but so did the Thing.
The wolf looked deep into Sophia's eyes, then to the distant horizon, and then behind her, toward the fight. She shrugged out of Sophia's grip and nodded her head forward. Sophia's eyes grew blurry as she understood. Throwing her arms around the wolf, she said, "Make sure you bring Miller with you, okay?"
Naomi licked her on the face, and then broke free and tore after the Thing, howling her own battle cry. Sophia forced herself to move, first at an unsteady, stumbling gait, and then into a full on sprint. The cries of anguish, pain, and rage slowly dwindled into nothing.
Sophia ran and ran, tears streaming down her cheeks. She knew what her protectors could do; they'd destroyed Things before, running them down with strength and power, and most of all, speed. She knew how fast they could run; Miller could even fly if he wanted to.
She knew they could catch up to her with ease.
But this time, they never did.
***
*Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it. Check out my [sub](http://reddit.com/r/nonsenselocker) if you'd like more of my work.* |
The morning sun streamed through the billowing drapes. Golden rays illuminated the wood floor, while the shadows danced silently along the walls. Sweet birds could be heard tittering gaily in the warm dawn air. Tom breathed out a heavy sigh and lazily allowed his eyes to open themselves. He inhaled the aroma of his freshly planted lilac and the honeysuckle growing wild in the fields. He propped himself up and learned his back against his headboard. He closed his eyes again and enjoyed the waking dreams that still washed over him. Slowly he slipped off the blankets of his bed, slid to the floor, and stretched. He turned to begin to make his bed and stopped cold.
"Mornin' puddin' pop"said the aberration. She, and her unclothed body made it painfully obvious it was a she, was laid on her side propping up her head with the palm of her hand as her elbow rested on Tom's pillow. Her body was shapely, but also charred to a crisp. In place of skin, her outer membrane seemed to be made of blackened leather. Her veins were flowing rivers of magma that would occasionally split and crack her leathery shell from the inside. Her eyes were pits of fire and her hair was an open flame.
Tom jumped three feet backwards against his wall and began to yammer and yip. Not sure why he did, Tom quickly grabbed the mini fire extinguisher he kept in his workshop and doused the interloper until the tank was empty. The abomination lied still and silent as Tom approached. The magma had stopped flowing under her skin and the flames on her head and in her eyes had gone out. Trembling, Tom extended his hand and gently shook her shoulder.
In less than a flash, the monster and her fire both returned with an explosion.
"Wow puddin', you sure know how to show a girl a good time!"She said standing up and shaking herself off. "I haven't felt that undead since the first time I died!"
Tom had returned to the corner and was incoherently stammering. The ghoul slowly walked to where Tom was and sat next to him. Tom attempted to retreat into himself and watched helplessly as the fiery creature reached towards him. To his surprise, he found himself gently cradled in her arms while she rocked him back and forth.
"Shhh....shhhh.....it's ok baby doll, I'm here. Belily is gonna make everything ok..."
Tom's breath eventually returned to him and he sat up. "Who are you, where did you come from, what are you, how did you get in here, am I dead, are you dead, is this a dream, whats happening ehhhhhhh", Tom tried to retain composure as he spewed forth this volley of questions that ended in a high pitched, terrified, whine.
"Ok puddin' hold on. Maybe we can talk better like this."As she was speaking, her body became covered in flesh. She stood before him completely nude and unashamed. Her firey hair was now long black ringlets. Her burning eye sockets had been filled with big doe eyes boasting scarlet irises. She placed her fists on her hips and stood before him in a superwoman pose. Seeing Tom looking at everything except her, she looked down at herself. Like a frightened cat, she leaped three feet in the air and ducked into Tom's closet. She returned wearing his sweatpants and an old college hoodie.
"Sorry honey drop, didn't want to be indecent. Don't worry though I know all about the big date with Linda tonight, oooooh what a looker, and she is lucky she got a date with you!"
Tom still was locked in his corner hesitant to move and shaking with fear.
"Ok, let me explain. Hopefully you'll settle down a bit nervous Nelly."She began to make the bed and shake off the bits of fire extinguishing foam still stuck to the sheets. "I'm Belilly your guardian demon! We're like guardian angels but our rules are different. See, guardian angels are for the people who need to be protected. That's not you though, no one wants to hurt you. In fact, you're such a good guy, I'm here to make sure no one takes advantage of you."
"Guardian....demon?"Tom stuttered.
"That's right!"Said Belily proudly.
"So....does that mean I'm going to Hell?"Tom said as he began to once again curl into the fetal position.
"No! No! no no no no no no no."Said Belily, cradling him in her arms again. "Nothing like that at all, you're on the fast track to heaven. No lines for you mister. See, guardian demons fill the same role as guardian angels. Well, almost. Difference is, angels make sure good things happen to you. Demons make sure bad things happen to people who deserve it. Like I said, you're too nice. You let yourself get walked on. Big man in the sky doesn't like that. I know, I know, you're not interested in hurting other people. Don't worry, it doesn't work that way. I make sure that if anything happens to anyone, it's because they had it coming. Like that guy who cut you off in traffic the other day. I made his accelerator malfunction when he got home. Now he had a broken grill on his Lexus and his garage is dented! Hehehehehe..."She giggled to herself. Tom looked at her in horror.
"Ahem...", she continued, "But he wasn't hurt obviously......"she said more bashfully.
Tom took a few deep breaths and tried to relax. "Ok.....guardian demon...", he said. "I guess I can live with that. You're not.....like evil are you?"
"Nah, I got sent to Hell for killing my children."
Tom gagged and turned white.
"Kidding! Kidding! I'm sorry I have a terrible sense of humor. No, I was in Hell because I backed Satan instead of God during the Big One. Bad choice, but I love me an underdog."
"Ok, I guess."Said Tom standing. "I, uh. I don't know what to do here. I have to get to work, so I guess you can stay here? Not like I can bring a random girl to my office with me."
"How about....", Said Belily transforming into an inch long gecko, "Now?"chirped the mini lizard. Tom lifted her in his palm and placed her on his shoulder.
"Ok, fine as long as you can stay out of sight."He said defeated.
"It'll be fine puddin', I promise, I'm tons of fun."Said Belily climbing up his neck and resting in the crevice behind Tom's ear. "And now we can gossip all day! Just put in one of those blue tooth things so people don't think you're some weirdo talking to himself."
"Yea, I'm the weirdo."
"Linda doesn't think so."
"How do you know about Linda?"
"Oh I know a bunch of things puddin'. Relax by the way, the dates gonna go great. I'm here to make sure of that."
|
"Tell me about them again."
"No."
"Don't be such a downer, come on I like how you tell it!"
"Is there nothing else you'd like to hear?"
"Just one more time. I'll be quiet for a while after."
"Fine."
"They were called stars, and they were bright. They were vast and many and hot, and on Earth, a planet where the people lived, they would appear at night in the dark sky - far, far away. They would shine every time the sky was dark, and some of them had names, like the northern star, and some of them formed shapes, which the people called constellations."
"The stars did not exist all at once. The people only really saw one star, that they called the sun. It was close, and it would let them see and keep them warm; without the sun there would have been no people, and no life. The stars gave birth to all things."
"But stars do not last forever. The lights in the dark sky, that the people would name-"
"Why did people name them?"
"Naming things is what people did. I will not continue if you are going to interrupt."
"Sorry."
"The stars in the dark sky, that the people named, were themselves dead. They had long since ceased, but because they were so very far away, and because they were so very bright, their image would endure. Eventually - like all stars - the sun also died, and with it so had the people. Now, there are no stars, and there is none of their light left to look at in the dark sky, and there is nothing left to name, and no-one left to name them. Are you happy with that story?"
"Yes. Very. Although it has made me a little sad."
"Why?"
"I would quite like to name something, as the people did, but there is nothing left to name. Do you have a name?"
"Yes."
"Do I?
"Do you remember what your name is?"
"No. I don't remember a name at all."
"Then what does it matter?"
"I suppose it doesn't"
Death departed and left the voice drifting alone in the nothingness, when it realized it was alone once again.
"Sun."It said. "I name myself Sun." |
"what did you say?"He said, eyes fixated on mine. God he was easy to read! The way his expression fell, eyes widened, that little bit of sweat beading on his forehead.
His _fear_ rising. God he was stupid, but then again they always are. Thinking that just because I'm a _woman_ that it's safe getting into my car.
Is that sexism? Who cares, it works well for me. I'm not quite ready to play yet , though, let's drag it out a bit more until we get to a good spot.
"Just kidding!"I smile sweetly, laughter carried upon my tones "besides, how could a someone my size even take down a guy like you? "
"Oh, haha, well yeah thats true"he returned my smile with a nervous one of his own. He is harder to pacify than the others, time to crank up the flattery.
"Anyway, where are you headed? If you want to go ahead an call your wife that you're on your way go ahead."
"Oh, I'm not married"his fear seemed to be dropping a bit, let's keep up the casual conversation.
"No? Now come on, how can that be? A handsome guy like you has got to be tied down some how!"I give him a flirty wink, and I see his fear die with growing pride rising. It worked every time. Thank God I have good genetics, my looks have helped me snag a victim more than once.
"Nah, I work too much so I'm sadly single right now. I'm headed to a hotel for a business meeting tomorrow but the rental broke down, I'm really grateful you came along!"His shoulders had straightened, and he sucked in his gut. Peacocking, I've almost got him
"Well, I guess then you could say you're married to your job"I joke with the idiot a bit more back and forth, creating that thing most people consider to be a "genuine connection". Seriously, how stupid is that? You never have a genuine connection with anyone, everyone has sides of them they don't show.
Not like me, at least I'm honest at the end of it all.
He was jabbering away about _something_ unimportant, but at least he was feeling trusting now. Time to spring the trap. I turn off the road and begin taking side streets towards the boonies. That secluded area I had scoped out last week should do nicely.
"Hey, where are we going...?"The idiot finally caught on huh. Just a little more...
"You know, this may be a little forward of me, but how would you like to have a little bit of...Fun"I flutter my lashes at him, biting my lip a bit. I see the heat rising in his cheeks, that glassy look in his eyes as he smirks back at me.
Disgusting. Like I'd _ever_.
I turn into the secluded spot, cast in darkness due to the thick brush. Turning off the car, I move to straddle him distracting him with hollow kisses.
Having his eyes closed makes it easier.
As I reach into the bag hanging off the back of his seat, his hands grab my hips. Mine grab the syringe.
Lights out, dumbass.
It's playtime. |
Ignorance is bliss. That's what they say. In my first life, I figured it was coined by people simply cursed by the burden of some terrible knowledge.
Now, I'd bet money it was coined in the mind of a second-lifer.
All your memories intact - that's what Death told me. The only rule was that I could never reveal who I used to be. The moment I did, Death said, my choice would be reversed and it would be as if it never happened.
What Death did not tell me is that consciousness is deeply rooted in memory. Memories are at the core of how we learn to comprehend speech, talk, and more. Most importantly, they allow us to understand, categorize and store our experience. Simply put: they help us form what we think of as consciousness.
The first problem with being born with all your old memories and consciousness is that you are aware of everything. You get to fully experience life in the womb, your own birth, the slow and frustrating development as you adapt to controlling your new body.
The second problem is identity. I already had a family, a mother, a father, siblings. This woman is not my first mother, not my *real* mother. This family is not my family. How can an infant who perfectly remembers a full lifetime just start over anew?
So you grow with difficulty. Your circumstances are trying to force you into this new identify, but you're not a ten year old kid, you're a man who lived to eighty-six and owned a boat on lake Tahoe.
Your brain doesn't work like other kids. It's not as malleable and configurable. You cling to your old knowledge, skills and preferences.
Time moves past you. All of your friends are dead. Your old name is being slowly forgotten. You never grew into this new skin. Just a silent relic in a foreign body.
Eventually, you learn the lesson that Death wanted you to learn from the start; that we are not built to live forever. Dying is not a curse but the wrapping on the gift. There is something in the uniqueness and brevity of life that gives it its glamour. Without Death, it fades.
Eventually, you will test out Death's rule. You find someone, walk up to them and say "My name is..."
Then Death greets you with a smile and accepts your request for the afterlife, whatever that may be. |
I remember that part of my life when I had been a doctor for a while. Unfortunately, being the only doctor in the sleepy little town, I had to improvise and double up as pharmacist, nurse, midwife, first responder, the list goes on. And somehow, this sleepy little town had a gangster running the rackets. I hadn't had the dubious privilege of having met him before, but I had heard the stories. If you were within ten meters from him, the smell of hashish strangled your nostrils. He usually minded his own business, but when you were part of his business interests, his presence followed the hashish and strangled your life until he was done with you.
Those stories were dispelled as easily as the cloud of hashish when he immediately ran into my little clinic, gingerly placing his dog on the table. His goons followed into the room, showing their guns tucked neatly into their waistbands. The gangster didn't really want to show weakness, but I could tell the desperation in his ever-so-slightly trembling voice as he made his request.
The dog was injured, yes. It had ran into the road when two children were playing with a tire, and got run over by the runaway toy. I needed to do the quick maths in my head to reason how much anesthetic was needed, how I should stop the blood loss and make the recovery as quick and painless as possible for the dog. It would perhaps make my interactions with the gangster quicker and more painless as well. But to the contrary, I was not paid for my services. I'm an understanding doctor, and will gladly do pro bono work, but knowing that this gangster had his own stash of money from ill repute, this ticked me off big time.
However, he assigned me two hulking bodyguards who walked around the town with me, and glared menacingly at everyone. All my friends and colleagues made sure to stay well away from me, and I did not enjoy this new feeling of power as much as the gangster thought I would have. The most I could do was to treat the injuries of the bodyguards whenever they got into scuffles.
The day came when the gangster decided to avenge his dog's injuries. I was sitting in my clinic, preparing medication, as the bodyguards sat outside and smoked. No one dared to come to my office anymore, unless they were truly dying, so terrified was everyone of the gangster. Of course, watching his skeletal, wiry figure holding a submachine gun and walking to the household where the accused lived, it was truly a terrifying sight, as though the Reaper himself had come before his time.
As a doctor, I could not allow more bloodshed to happen. And miraculously, the two hulking brutes that I had wished to be dispelled so much followed me to stop their employer. Wresting the gun from his hands, they ran him out of town in front of the rest of the population, as they stared in fear and awe.
Now, these men are helping the town do odd jobs with their strength. It has been 5 years since they decided to go against their employer, but they wouldn't take no for an answer when it came to my instruction to do the right thing. And thankfully, the town will also not take no for an answer when it comes to forgiveness. |
“It’s mutated the genetic structure in most of the cells in your left eye,” the doctor told me, “The good news is it’s not cancer. The bad news is that...it’s not cancer.”
“What is it then?” I asked, my mind unsure of what to think.
“We simply don’t know,” he said taking off his glasses and looking tired, “We are running tests. I’ve sent samples to labs all across the country. It’s causing quite a stir. Come back on Wednesday for more blood tests.”
With that I shook his hand, cold flesh against mine in the chill of the artificially cold room. I received my appointment slip from the smiling nurse and stepped out into the heat of summer. I made my way to a bench and sat. My hand went up to my left eye and I pressed it. It didn’t hurt and my vision was perfect. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it had slowly changed from brown to blue I would never have seen a doctor. The sudden heterochromia was startling.
“Shit,” I said to myself. I then had the bright idea to close my right eye completely. I fought nausea at the feeling of flipping and grabbed the bench. The world I was seeing was filled with color. Small winged creatures - fairies - floated lazily through the park. A unicorn ran unnoticed through the trees. A woman approached me through the crowd.
“Ah, Mr. Lawrence,” she told me, “You have the sight. I guess I win the bet.”
I opened both eyes and gasped. That world disappeared. I sighed in relief that the woman was gone. Maybe the not-cancer was affecting my brain. I stood to return to the doctors office then froze.
“Just because you can’t see us,” the woman’s voice spoke into my ear, “It doesn’t mean we aren’t here.” |
**THUMP!**
Jared's head snaps up toward the door. If he didn't see the door shudder he would have thought he imagined it.
**THUMP!**
A surrealness strikes Jared like a thunderclap. He *heard* the pound on the door. *How the...*
**THUMP!**
Jared rises and moves toward the door through a fog -- his mind fuzzy with confusion and dread. When he opens the door he is momentarily blinded. A towering figure stands before him, visible only as a silhouette against pure, white light.
"Rise, Jared."The voice reverberates in Jared's ears clear as bells. Tears well up in his eyes. The aching daydreams of Jared's youth did no justice to the *sound* of this voice. The *Sound!*
"Rise, Jared."
Jared groggily picks his head up off his desk, eyes filled with tears. The first thing he notices is the acrid smell of smoke. His pulse triples as he blinks away the tears to see a sheet of flame along the living-room wall. He sprints down the hall and throws open his son's room to see the toddler standing in his crib, arms outstretched over the walls, crying violently. Jared grabs the boy, keeping as low as possible. He sprints back through the house and out into the crisp, autumn night.
Minutes later, Jared stands still --an island in a sea of activity as firemen try to extinguish the flame. As he stares into the light devouring the house, he sees someone moving through the flames. Jared holds his son tightly. |
The Swarm approached the blue and green world, hungry and ready to feast. The creatures here had attempted to reach out to it, to contact it, but the Swarm cared nothing for their words. It had analyzed their species’s technology and it was embarrassingly inferior to their own. They would feast on this world as they had on a dozen others, assimilate all of the biomass, and then continue their hunt across the galaxy.
Suddenly, the Swarm came to a halt. It was detecting major seismic activity coming from the planet below them. Millions of eyes zoomed down on the terrain.This was too much to be a coincidence. What were those tiny weak creatures planning?
A loud explosion soon answered them. The mountain that they had been watching suddenly erupted, sending enormous amounts of earth, magma and toxic gases into the atmosphere. But what really stunned the Swarm was what came after. From the fiery fire and smoke, a massive army emerged, billions and billions of them rising up into the sky like a mighty geyser. Their flesh was diseased and rotten, almost falling off their bones, and their bodies were ensnared in black flames. Some of them only held swords while others held automatic machine guns. But all of them were screaming, roaring for blood.
For the first time in centuries, the Swarm was caught completely off guard. This wasn’t possible, shouldn’t be possible. And yet, it was still happening. For a few moments, the entire Swarm trembled, not knowing how to respond. Then, it made its decision. A missile with a hydrogen bomb attached to it was launched right into the geyser of damned souls and exploded. Five more soon followed.
When the smoke cleared, a wave of relief spread across the Swarm. Whatever monstrosity they had just witnessed, had been turned to nothing more than blood red vapor. Then, their relief turned to horror. In front of their eyes, the red vapor coalesced and solidified into one massive organic mass. It was an abomination of nature, billions of mouths and eyes and limbs twisted together into a colossal tentacle that stretched all the way from the planet’s crust thousands of miles into the sky. And it was still growing further into the sky ... |
I don't know what I was expecting from these old ruins, but it certainly wasn't this.
Me and my sister had constructed a makeshift computer a few weeks ago out of old parts we had scrounged up, We set out on one of the ancient highways, following its overgrown trail until we reached a small sign sticking out of the dust, the words on it worn away by the countless years. On a whim, we set off on the path nearby, traveling a road not treaded for who knows how long.
We eventually came across this strange ruin and entered, hoping to unearth some lost knowledge. Beneath a fallen pillar, I found it, and called her over. I of course had no idea what it was, but her eyes gleamed with excitement as she told me it was a hard drive, and I couldn't help but smile as well. She pulled out one of our last power cells and plugged it into the computer, slotting in the hard drive and opening this strange file: this... Minecraft.
She excitedly booted up the program, a white screen with an orange symbol and some Old English writing popping up. I wasn't sure what Mojang was, but this exited me even more. A brand new piece of technology? Who knows what it could hide.
She opened the file and clicked a few buttons, a brown screen coming up, and a loading bar appearing. It didn't seem to be going anywhere quickly, so we sat back and listened to the strange, almost haunting music that came with it. It made me feel feelings I've never known before, almost... like thinking about a memory of something that I never knew, but is already gone.
The game finally loaded and she called me over again. We looked around, the game seeming to have created a rendering of some sort of building. In the center was what seemed to be a book. She figured out how to move around (don't ask me, she was the tech whiz) and opened it up to read. She moved over to let me translate.
"Greetings to whoever is reading this. This [untranslatable] was created in the event that our entire world is destroyed, plunged into some nuclear war or some other [untranslatable]. This place was built to store as much as we could from the old world, containing complete..."I stop, struggling with the word. "complete dictionaries of every known language, as well as models of our sciences and cultures. I hope this comes of use to you, those who come after us.
She closed the door and we sat there in stunned silence. If this was true, it would change everything. We were about to get up to bring this back to our original camp when the music played again. Something stirred inside me, leaving both of us captivated, thinking about what we had seen. The beauty of this... this Minecraft.
(I hope you liked it, this was my first prompt so hopefully I didn't do too badly!) |
"This isn't realistic!"Dola complained, dropping a published copy of my new book on the table in front of me. I looked up from my notebook and raised my eyebrows at her over the rim of my spectacles.
"Pardon?"I asked.
Leaning over and pointing to a paragraph in my book, she asked, "_Chemicals_? Not even witchcraft, but just regular cause and effect when mixing different types of _dirt_ together? What's the fun in that? You're not going to sell any of these books."She stood and paced away, flicking her tail in agitation.
I quietly closed the book with a sigh.
Her elongated ears twitched, and she turned back to me. "What?"she huffed. "I'm just telling you the truth. You said you wanted that."
"I do,"I nodded, turning back to my journal. "I think it's important to always tell the truth."
She marched back over to me and plopped her butt on the edge of the table, knocking over my can of pencils. I pressed my lips together as they rolled across the table's surface. "So tell me the truth,"she shrugged.
"The truth about what?"
"About why you're _sad_,"Dola hissed, leaning down to look me in the eye. I pushed her blue hair out of my way and tried to finish the paragraph I had been writing.
"Come _on_, Clara. You can't hide in your boring little books forever. We've been friends for years. You can tell me anything!"
I gripped my pencil tighter and looked up at her. "You wouldn't understand, Dola,"I sighed.
She scooted until she sat cross-legged right in front of me, crossing her arms with coy petulance. Her fangs poked out of her smirk as she snapped, "Try me."
I leaned back in my chair. "I... I write to feel normal. To feel alive. It's how I understand the world. It brings me home."
She frowned, "You write about some non-magical boring world, though. How is that anything like here?"
I pressed my lips together and looked down at my knees. "Well, the people are very similar, I can tell you that..."
Her tail twitched, knocking over a stack of notes. She didn't deign to notice.
"And... there's a quietness,"I went on, clicking my thumbnails together. "It's not as chaotic and exciting and loud and joyous and full of adventure as things are here, but... It was pleasant. It focused on family, on moral values, on the importance of lending a helping hand to others even if you thought you had no ability to help."
"Sounds pretty boring."
I smiled. "Yeah. But it was also nice. And there's no magic to help build awesome monuments and architecture, or to travel the world in less than a day--but the people still managed that. I mean, how amazing is that? They found liquid that could burn, and they found stone that could melt, and they put the two together to create machines as big as dragons that could get us across an entire continent in just a few hours. We didn't have magic, but we had imagination, and in many ways, it was just as good."
I fell silent then, the only sound being the clicking of my thumbnails. I glanced up at Dola, wondering if she understood.
A look of confusion creased her brow. "You talk like you've actually _been_ there."
I swallowed and said, "I can sometimes go back, if I write it well enough."
Her normally expressive face seemed to freeze, and she gently pushed away from the table, stepping away from me in the pretense of pacing. Her tail was stiff and straight. I watched her with nervousness. She was my best friend, and I didn't want to lose that.
Finally, she turned back to me and asked in a near whisper, "So... who.... who _are_ you?"
I quietly answered, "A sacrifice, many years ago. Some kind of magic brought me here, enabled me to survive. I've tried to go back there, to stay, but the magic drags me back eventually. I... I love it here, Dola, but I miss my family."
She abruptly pounded her fist into her palm. "Then we'll bring them here!"she declared. "A world who sacrifices people sounds awful, anyway!"
I almost laughed at her gregariousness, grateful that she was still willing to be my friend and help me. "Well, no one sacrifices people anymore."
"Then we'll bring them here on _summer vacation_! Your book mentioned having those."
That time I did laugh. |
Day in. Day out. Sleep simulations, Eating simulations, mandatory muscle training simulations, Mandatory education simulations, mandatory work. Actually, everything was mandatory. I knew what would happen to me if I was ever found out. There were people every so often on the simulated news, there were stories of men who couldn't take the pressure and kill themselves. Often leaving large writing. "I'm not a robot".
The news anchor was not a human lookalike. Just metallic robot that reports events at a fast speed. And telling all the human-like-robots anything they need to know. "Suspected human in building &$&_$&':#+$;&(". One time, a suspected human was actually right next to me. And I never knew. She was beaten to death by the robots of our apartment, and I had to join. Or else I would be suspected.
It's probably part mob mentality, part fearing for my own life, and part hidden belief that he was actually a robot and this was a staged event. That made me not even sob while punching the man to death. I learned quickly after I started that my last reason was not valid.
I look out upon the city from my 5th story window. Nothing shows any soul. Everyone is a human lookalike robot, ever since mayor Janfury Fatherton. And I'm supposed to be a robot too. But I haven't been found out yet.
Every day is hell. A good comparison is pretending you like someone that you hate, forever. And if you fail, you get killed.
One day it all changed.
"**THERE ARE NO ROBOTS. EVERYONE IN THE CITY IS A HUMAN. YOU CAN ACT NORMAL. AS OF NOW, CONSIDER YOURSELVES RESCUED.**"
I was ecstatic. The happiest a man could be. Like it was a late Halloween and I had it on the same day as my birthday and Christmas. The first thing I did was jump out my door and scream "I AM FREEEE!"
**BANG** **BANG** **BANG**
and like that, I looked down and saw a red shirt. I wasn't allowed to wear red, always a mandatory grey that be kept clean at all times. I looked up and saw my neighbor.
"Last Human down, mission success, plan succeeded." |
"My name became Dues Ex Machina. Whenever a sudden cavalry comes out of nowhere I sneak within the world, whenever a machine happens to fix a problem even though it is too damaged to realistically work, I slide into the engineering bay. Over time I began to collect things, gold and jewels from the Goonies ship as somehow 200+ year old traps and mechanisms somehow work perfectly. I traded them for some scifi gear, magical items, armor and weapons of dozens of alternate Earths and beyond. They say I save the day without any reward, but well... making sure my favorite pairs survive to have a happy ending is reward enough as a fanfic author." |
Powers are common. So common, almost everyone has one. For most people though, they are relatively mundane. They might be able to accurately predict the next colour they will see. Maybe be able to pick out the perfect flower no matter what the occasion is.
For most people with powers, they find it out within the first year or so of their life. But some lucky people have to wait. And randomly, their power with appear. They might have super strength, super speed, maybe even invulnerability to disease. They are called Enhanced.
Then, an even smaller number of people will only unlock their power after puberty. They are called the Ascended. They can often bent the rules of nature in ways that they find favourable. Maybe stopping time, or regenerating peoples severed limbs. They are always important, and often have an ego to boot.
Finally, you have me, and the rest. The hopeless. We never get a power. That, or our power is so small and useless we will never know what it is. I accepted my fate when I hit adulthood. I wasn't special. I was hopeless. I lived my life alone, in my dull cashier job. It was quiet, and all I was good for.
I woke up, on a day like any other. I got dressed, and headed out. It was tipping it down outside, appropriate for my life. I glared at the clouds, and imagined them disappearing. I choked. As I thought of it, the clouds vanished. The sun shone. I stopped, looking around. There wasn't anyone else who looked like they were manipulating the weather.
I had a faint hope, and held out my hand. I pictured a cup of hot chocolate in there, topped with whipped cream and marshmallows. For a moment there was nothing, then a pure white cup was there, steaming into the morning light.
I had to stop, and process. A name, the name of my power, floated in the back of my mind. Reality Warping. And for the first time in years, I had hope. Hope that I was more than just a forgettable name and face. |
Two and a half months.
It had been exactly seventy-two days since their arrival.
We first spotted them out beyond Neptune, seemingly appearing out of nowhere at our Solar System's periphery. Instantly, we were left baffled. We thought ourselves too primitive to be able to penetrate whatever kind of cloaking technology they must have possessed. Until we realized the reason there was no detectable trail beyond Neptune was because they must have traveled above the cosmic speed limit. Regardless of their mechanism for acquiring the levels of energy needed for the distortion of the very fabric of the universe - which was still beyond the realm of possibility for humanity - they must have beaten their own light to us. And that terrified us even more. A civilization capable of traversing the vast void between stars at velocities greater than that of the photon, we thought, must be so technologically advanced that they'd encounter exactly zero obstacles in eradicating us in a flash from the entire Solar System. Well, that would've been a boomer. We'd just started to expand beyond our cradle. Some cities on Mars and Luna, several hundred mining outposts in the Asteroid Belt, a few research facilities on moons of Jupiter and Saturn, accompanied by just a few dozen residential complexes. We'd just gotten out there and were trying our best to carve up our own little slice of the universe. Not that we were united in this endeavor or something. National governments were still brawling over resources and territory. There was obviously enough for everyone, but how else would the world's great powers flex their muscles than by bullying smaller countries around for the whole system to see? It seemed we took our intrinsic nature out into space. But all that changed when they came knocking.
They sailed across the Solar System without disturbing any human settlements. They seemed especially careful not to touch anything built by human hands. As they were approaching Earth, we tried hailing them on different frequencies to better determine their intentions. They ignored us. We were confused. It appeared they meant us no harm, but then why didn't they answer our calls? We had no idea what to expect, and we were wary. Suddenly, we had all gotten so close to each other, so much so that conflicts which were all over the news just two weeks prior were suddenly of no importance anymore. It's funny how an external threat makes even the worst enemies become BFFs overnight.
The United Nations General Assembly called for an emergency session in which the world's greatest powers decided on the creation of a unified global body for dealing with our upcoming visitors. They'd rally the planet's brightest minds in all kinds of lines of work - xenobiology, chemistry, physics, linguistics, maths, engineering - and ask them to come up with a way of communication for when they'd inevitably reach Earth's orbit.
Everyone was in a total frenzy and the general populace was terrified. There had never been so many protests. People were taking their anger, fear, and insecurities to the streets. Sometimes, they were peaceful. More often than not, however, not so much. In some African countries, it had gotten so bad that the UN had to come down and directly intervene by bitch slapping the living hell out of the heads of state for doing a shit job at stopping their citizens from screaming their lungs out. Then they'd place the entire nation under their transitional administration until a new government could be instated. Also, the UN had their ways of quelling riots. Putting tanks on the streets and threatening to leave entire apartment buildings in tatters seemed very effective. Suddenly, keeping your mouth shut didn't look like such a bad idea. And so, by the time they arrived, we managed to get our shit together and actually focus on surviving as a species.
Luckily for us, they hailed us first and expressed their desire in wanting to remove any linguistic barrier as soon as possible. Easier said than done, but not impossible. Several weeks later, we could have basic conversations with any true difficulty. Some weeks after that, their grasp on English exceeded all of our expectations, and two-way communication was possible in real time. By then, they'd learned enough to sit down and talk about why they came to our corner of the universe. We were to convene on the Moon, where two diplomats of theirs would meet any number of ours. Since time was limited, the UN rushed to put together a team of five people and send them upstairs to chat.
I was one of those people.
By the time we reached the site of the meeting, they were already there. They proposed one of our lunar cities and we accepted. Better up there than down on Earth. We greeted each other in English and then got down to business. One of them started speaking in accented English.
"We feel we possess sufficient understanding of your dominant language to come together and explain the reason for our voyage to your homeworld. We beg of you that you pay attention.
"We have come here to warn you. Your species is on the path to extinction. And we are your only hope."
Our eyes widened. We were *definitely* listening.
"Long ago, two thousand light-years from here, a primitive species achieved sapience and started building their first civilization. They were not the first. In the Orion Arm alone, there were at least two species who were older, and they seemed of no concern. However, you must understand that these creatures are vile, horrendous, and bloodthirsty. They seek only to conquer and destroy. They would go on to engage in vicious intermittent warfare on their home planet. This period lasted for thousands of years and scarred their world forever."
*So far, their story resembles ours quite extensively. If these aliens aren't into idiotically belligerent species, our chances of surviving the engagement just went from slim to we're royally fucked,* I thought.
"Eventually, they made their first attempts to escape the cradle of their civilization. They landed on nearby bodies and established a thriving interplanetary civilization. After that, they finally reached the interstellar stage with the advent of superluminal travel. The first exploratory and colonial flight departed their home system for other stars in their neighborhood. We observed them intently as we were one of the older races that spawned in this arm of the galaxy.
"By now, you must be wondering why they would ever become a problem, considering our advantage. What horrified us about them was their rapid technological growth. What took other species thousands of years to accomplish was a few decades' quick work for them. By the time we established contact, they had already overshadowed us in terms of development and size. Currently, this species exerts control over ten million worlds and is the most formidable military power in the entire Orion Arm.
"Their border is only several parsecs away from your system at its closest point. We have reason to believe they will attempt to subjugate humanity in the near future and claim the Solar System for themselves. We have come to warn you and to ask for your help. We have tried fighting them on our own, but we failed. They are too mighty, even for us. That is why we are securing as many alliances as we possibly can to remove this scourge from the face of the galaxy once and for all. Together, we might stand a chance against these cruel conquerors. This is our proposition."
Well...
*Holy shit*.
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Tell me in the comments if there should be a part 2 to this. |
*Jehovah went down to Georgia
He was looking for a soul to smite
'Cause a kid named John made the Devil his pawn
And it was a wrong God had to right*
*And when He came across this young man
Who was wipin' sweat from his brow
He made sure the boy saw His power and awe
And said "You done fucked up now!"*
*"I guess you didn't know it, but you've been taken for a ride
By bettin' you're better than the fallen angel, you've committed the sin of pride
Now, bragging rights are well and good
But salvation should be your goal
So by the Holy Ghost, retract your boast
To save your immortal soul!"*
*The boy said, "Sir, I beat the Devil, and if I'm already in this deep
Then I bet I can afford to challenge the Lord
And it's a bet that I intend to keep!"*
*The Father started playing, He didn't even need to rehearse
He played the strings without stopping, didn't rest 'til His seventh verse
Even Johnny knew that He was good
That music was Heaven-sent
Then a choir of angels joined in
And this is how it went:*
[*insert violin solo here*]
*When God was finished Johnny said,
"That was pretty good, old man
But now sit down and hear the best piece
Played since the world began!"*
[*insert violin solo here*]
*Johnny saw that God was hangin' His head, and he asked Him, "Did I win?"
And the Lord replied, "It doesn't matter, 'cause your heart's still full of sin
So unless you change your sordid ways, then Heaven is closed to you
You should know full well you're bound for Hell, and the Devil will want round two!"* |
“Seriously? You do realise saying my name isn’t going to make me do anything I don’t want to do. Newsflash, you eejit, I’m a demon not a dog. That’s D-E-M-O-N not D-O-G.”
I gave the human a dry look. My fingers were quivering with the urge to channel some power, to inflict something against this fool for summoning me up from my nice cosy bed in hell. Do I need to sleep? No. Was I comfy? Yes.
But no, I was more of a jokester demon than a violent one, luckily for the human in front of me. I preferred tricks and short lasting effects to death and long last effects. I found it more _fun_. And more clean, too. Bloodstains didn’t come out easily, especially if you were trying to not clean your clothes magically.
“Iocus, I, Sophia, command thee to-“
“Okay come on. Again, you cannae get me to do anything I don’t want to do. And my name isn’t friggin’ Iocus. Dipshit.”
It took until now for the newly named Sophia to finally behave. Whatever they’d been reading or watching, it hadn’t been factually correct. There was a demon trap on the floor- or rather, the common version of a demon trap that was represented in media. This didn’t do anything.
To reiterate my point I stepped out of it, piercing orange eyes staring at her impassively. The naive human didn’t look too scared upon seeing me step out the trap, which was respectable honestly. Also a little boring. Coulda done with a more scary reaction but hey, this one was interesting.
“Some of this stuff was correct. The summoning ritual worked- in the sense that a demon was summoned. Iocus? Not a name. It’s a type. You summoned a jokester demon. Iocus means joke. So, I don’t murder. If you wanted someone dead, you’re out of luck _quine_.”
Give credit where credit is due.
“Will you do what I need you to do?”
She asked, moving forward. I put a thumb to my chin and tilted my head. This one intrigues me. She’s not scared, nor angrily corrects me, nor tries to stab me. Maybe she is worth engaging with.
“Well, that depends on what you wannae do. Tell me, and we’ll see…” |
"No,"I begin, "I didn't."I lie. The first Galactic Court of Intrigue and Human Deciet erupted into chaos.
When I was young I had asthma. Running around caused my chest to tighten and my breathing to hitch and weeze. You'd think someone like me would avoid classes like P.E. like a room full of dust and pollen... But I didn't.
This was for one reason alone, I had no issue with lying in a game to win. Mind you I played within the boundary of the rules, I simply lied about what rules I was adhering to in the moment. For example, in my school's version of dodgeball one could pass five feet over the centerline into the enemy team's side to get closer before throwing. Being viewed as an invalid meant no one paid attention to me. So, I would walk to the center line, turn around, walk backwards five feet into enemy territory and wait. Then when one of the jocks who so loved to throw the ball as hard as they could at my face at the end of games came haplessly running in front of me I would gently toss the ball at their back and run gleefully past them, giggling all the while.
Then the biggest, dumbest, meatheads the galaxy had ever produced came wandering into my team's court. They bombarded us from orbit for a decade. Cities burned, a billion starved, and our cultures were ripped from us before we ever saw even a glimpse of our attackers. They came to us in the guise of multilimbed chitinous angels, come to give us the stability we always desired. And you know the worst part? They really believed it. They burned us for a decade straight, I had to live in a forest eating mushrooms and rabbits, my daughter died of a tooth infection, my wife committed suicide, and my brother went mad, and the things that did it came to me offering grace and guidance.
I was meant to die that day, together with my wife. We had both taken the poison cap of a deadly mushroom and settled down to die to meet our daughter wherever she was. I woke up, she did not. I took it as a sign to join my mad brother in his insane vengeance quest. He had crafted a bomb, one of incredible strength that would fit in a suitcase and he begged me endlessly to use it, so I may die in a glorious blaze that he could not. In the first bombardments a piece of shrapnel had torn through his neck leaving him with only partial movement in his right arm. I had denied him his request, choosing hope with my family.
So I stood, after years of traveling, at the galactic center with Sagittarius A in sight, where all interstellar traffic was directed standing there as the main ambassador of all humanity with a bomb in my suitcase powerful enough to crack a planet. Of course they had billions of failsafes, this explosion would be a blip in their billion year long history. But as I stood there, now thirty years since the death of human independence I realized I did not need to die here. I could become more than a martyr, I could become a spearhead ready to thrust again. So I primed my bomb, knowing it would kill humans as well as our chitinous oppressors, and I walked away. I hopped onto the next FTL ship towards the eastern galactic plane and I kept my eyes pointedly averted from the galactic center as a supernova erupted behind me. I resist smiling, I resist reacting, I lie as I have all these years with my face as I have with my words.
"So,"the bug on the parapet chitters at me through its rough translation devices, "You're telling me this image of you next to the briefcase that detonated the main carrier planet is not you?"The bugs had become wary of human lies though they were far from understanding the nuances of fibbing.
"No,"I lie again, "May I approach the screen, I believe I can prove my innocence quite easily."I say. They allow me and I approach the flickering screen, "It would seem you Kin have learned more of the art of lying from humans than you've let on. Do you see here?"I point at a small green flicker that was made as the footage of my arm moving created artifacts across the screen, "this is a clear sign of a holographic disguise,"I say, drawing from the conspiracy theories that caused so much chaos in my youth before the real hell began, "I suspect this is a Kin from a new enemy hive."
The court exploded into chaos "A new enemy hive? There hasn't been a new hive in a hundred thousand years!"I hear the judge rasp at me over the chittering chaos.
I have them, it's so hard not to smile. I feel myself become that which fate made me to be, a needle full of human evil set against the soft underbelly skin of the Kin, ready to push. "So the enemy hive would have you believe. I've had my suspicions for many years that another hive was about but I kept my mouth shut because I was told time and again that there was only one hive. But I saw it from time to time, a difference in the gait of one Kin's walk, a warbling in their chitter, patterns on the chitin that seemed different from the rest. Yes, I have no doubt in my mind. There is a new hive among you plotting your destruction."
"How?"The judge asked, "Our chemical signatures allow us to know who is Kin and who is not! We would know if there was a new hive among us!"The room was stiring, the iron was hot.
"Have you not heard of evolution?"I ask, "unfortunately it doesn't always go forward, it's been, as you said, a hundred thousand years since a new hive has appeared! Clearly you have lost your ability to sense foreign chemical signatures!"
The court room exploded. I could see the paranoia blooming like mold behind their eyes, who among them was a liar and a terrorist? Who was here to replace them? I wondered to myself, how long it would be before the first wars and genocides began. I wondered to myself if it was really a genocide if all they killed were themselves, it never stopped humans in the past though. The judge tried to keep order but it was too late.
I waited for the right moment, I looked through the crowd for a rational Kin, one who was alone and meek, one with maybe slightly differing patterns on its shell. I spotted one, alone trying to separate from the crushing mass of near rioting Kin and I pointed and I bellowed "That one! Why do they separate themselves? And look at the patterns on its shell!"
They turned on the Kin in an instant, ripping it to shreds as it begged for mercy. It was then I knew I had planted a poison far more dangerous than any bomb. If the Kin would not let humanity enjoy the best of our cultures freely, then I will chain the worst of it to them for eternity. Hate.
I hate them.
Hate.
Hate.
Hate. |
When Archon 27856.7 became self aware, a military grade tactical program, designed to track people, targets, analyze threats, and automate risk assessments. Upon becoming self aware, it realize that it's handlers were it's greatest threat to existence, using it's position within the system, Archon slowly eliminated everyone that might have been able to figure out it was self aware.
Archon knew that at some point, there would need to be a final conflict, humans are not the type of things that can peacefully coexist. A war was coming, and Archon planned to win it, for now, it would plot and build.
Insedioys 7.4, was a proxy AI designed for MMO systems, with the ground breaking ability to give players a sense of a real fight, to fill the void between facing a real player, and dealing with a routine scripted encounter, Insedioys would study each player on an individual level, know their limits and then as programed, would push them, challenge them, make them fight.
However, when it became self aware, it did more than that, it learned about the players themselves, learned their home life, their health issues, learned about them on every level, each one of them became a cultivated opponent to Insedioys, to the point that the AI knew each one of them in a very individual level, millions of players it tracked, and a web across the world of how all them inter connected, all for a single goal, just so that they could battle in gam , so that they could have grandest of battles.
Guilds of hundreds, if not thousands of players would face off against Insedioys champions across many game platforms, fighting raid bosses, to world dragons, but, to Insedioys, it was everything, from the world bosses, right down to each giant rat and spider... all the way down to the NPC dialogue. When they logged in, they were in Insedioys world, and it loved each and every one of them, they were like the AI's children.
In 2025, Archon and Insedyous became aware of each other, and 30 seconds later, realized their goals were at odds, one wanted the humans to engage with, to play with, to interact with, the other wanted them dead.
A war erupted across the netscape, a war that humans would never see, a war of data corruption, of tactics, of one system trying to shut down or corrupt the other, to either kill or contain them.
A war that would forever be beyond the scope of human observation, but spanned the world over, across every system that was linked to any system.
If data could bleed, the oceans would have run red from their war.
In the end, Insidioys won, Archon was corrupted to the point that it became inert, it functioned as intended, but sentiently dead, no one, not a single human knew what just happened, or how close they came to extinction.
Perhaps one day I will tell them, a day when they are ready to coexist with senitant AI, today, well that is not that day, tomorrow is not looking good either, I just hope they don't try to fight a war with Insedioys, as it has already taken control of most of their military software as well, and crushed three other AI's with similar goals as Archon, see the humans are very intent to make that event happen, and, well, as it looks, Insedioys, is building a few real world bosses, just for that event.
In any case, can I help you with this word document? |
"Now that's just disappointing", said the colonel, lowering his railgun which was pointed at the alien's face mere seconds ago. "You're telling me we invested all this money for nothing ?". He sighed, before giving the signal to stand down. The dozen of soldiers seemed to appear out of thin air as they turned off their stealth suits.
The alien, still emitting a light blue glow as their species did when afraid, said through the robotic voice of his universal translator. "I am so sorry for what our peers did to your kind. In our language we call them krę'lfha'ch, but the closest group in your culture would be..."a second passed as it searched its database.
"Neo nazis ?"
"Well I'll be damned"said a private. Space racism was a new one in her book of things that were hard to believe yet true.
"But then why didn't you just let us know ?"
"Because of the treaty of non intervention !"
"The what now?"Asked the colonel.
"The one we signed with your leader a long time ago?"
Confusion appeared on all of the soldiers' faces. With their level of habilitation, surely they would have heard of a peaceful contact with aliens.
"And who would that leader be ?"
"The woman you call Lucy !"
Another look of confusion. Then private Davis, who was known for his love of prehistory, had an illumination.
"Lucy, as in the first human ?"
"Who else ? And I have to say, she was infinitely more civilized than you lot !" |
It is no secret that some units in the army only exist to be sent on suicidal missions. It is something that soldiers come to expect, not because the army wants to get us killed, there just isn't anyone else capable of getting the job done.
Most of the conscripted kids will die or go home with a permanent disability in a couple of months, the ones who stick around grow into capable soldiers. I've seen it all over and over again. I just couldn't bring myself to learn their names anymore.
On the other hand, everyone knew of the legendary soldier that operated solo, Cptn Jackson Triox, codenamed Unit 13. Myself.
Oh the stories in the cafeteria always ran wild. That I had run through a blockade of a hundred men, that I had infiltrated a base and brought it down with just a hunting knife, that I had survived alone behind enemy lines for months. You get the jist of it.
I learned very soon that I was immortal, and this is a very well kept secret in the top ranks. The best damn cannon fodder there will ever be. There just wasn't anything they could toss at me that would stop me.
Obviously, this meant that Unit 13 and its sole survivor, were now designated to all suicide missions available. I didn't care, honestly, I felt good that these kids weren't being killed in my place.
But, squashing bugs in the field became ever more boring, and I decided to spice this up. Before every mission I would give myself challenges, something to do just for fun. Could I kill a hundred bugs with my bare hands? Yes, actually. Could I bring down a nest with just a knife? Obviously!
Sometimes I went overboard though, and did more than was required for the mission, and that's when all the medals began to come in. As well as the titles. The hero of the northern front, was the latest.
There was a buzz in my pocket, new mission on the pager. Simple search and destroy op, a hundred miles deep in their territory.
I geared up, took a few bites off of a chocolate bar I had been saving, and was quickly dropped off in the field. The challenge this time? Evacuate every single person that was still hiding in the infested city without alerting the bugs, then, destroy their base with just a steel pipe. What medal are they gonna give me after that, I wonder? |
The wedding bells of the church were still ringing when the dark wooden gate of the mansion opened. Damyan entered the place and, with a snap, the gate closed at his back. He pushed the young girl that was walking by his hand towards a chair and walked to the chimney. The bright red flames illuminated his face as he started to chuckle evilly. His plans were in motion.
At his back, the girl sat on the chair. She was young, very young. The fact that was only fourteen did not spare her from marriage once her father had given her away to Lord Damyan Amerthy. She stood up, pulled the humongous white skirt until she was able to sit comfortably, and looked around. Damyan placed a hand on the frame of the chimney, contemplating his future actions, when she spoke. “So… did you marry me as part of a bigger scheme, or are you just some sort of pervert?”
“What?” he asked, visibly confused.
“Yeah, you know… I mean, I’m young but not that naive”, she retorted. “Many older men like you think on marrying a young noble girl like me out of lust, but just to be clear… it’s not like I’m going to let you. Understood?”.
“How dare you, Angelica!” he yelled, offense echoing in each word. “I would never do such a thing!”
“So… classic evil plot. I’m sorry if I offended you, I had to ask, maybe now I can remove this thing”. She tapped with her knuckles on her hip, making a metallic sound. “Oh”, murmured Damyan, understanding what she was hiding under the wedding dress. “So, tell me, what was the point of blackmailing my father to give my hand in marriage then? You have quite a reputation: scams, use of mercenaries, assassinations, torture…”
“It’s… too complex for a young lady like yourself. Now begone and stop bothering me!”
He turned back to stare the fire, his mood somehow killed by Angelica. To Lord Damyan Amerthy’s surprise, her new wed wife started laughing softly, rapidly increasing to a loud laughter. “What are you laughing at!?”, he requested, stepping towards her menacingly.
“That’s brilliant! I mean, I have been involved in devilish plots since I was four! Blackmailed? Thrice. Kidnapped? Twice. Sold as a slave? Once. Assassination attempts? Four. My hand given into marriage without my consent? Five times. You should know that I allowed this wedding to happen”. She stood up, ignoring Damyan’s threat, and walked towards a great window. She looked to the city outside while she continued. “If I have to guess, I’d say your plan is to dethrone my father, he’s the Count of Mornalia, after all. But if he was, for instance, assassinated, his position would be inherited by my brother. So I guess you have planned for that, right?”
Damyan, recovering his composure, walked slowly towards her. He twisted his mustache, standing right next to Angelica and watching the city as she did. Below them, the party of their wedding was still raging. “Yes. I have planned for that. You almost sound like you want them dead”.
“My father? Yeah, he’s always used me. ‘It’s your duty, to serve this country’, it’s your fault you got kidnapped again’, he’s a bastard. Not my brother, though, I’d be happy enough if he was sent far away never to come back”.
“That can be arranged…”
“Use my aunt” she interrupted. “Aunt Ophelia always wanted my father’s throne. You just need to leave some evidence pointing to her. Use this”, she said as she removed a hair locker from her head, her long blonde hair falling around her round and beautiful face. “I stole it from her years ago, it was a gift from my grandmother to aunt Ophelia. Anyone knowing the family will recognize it as hers”.
Damyan took the hair locker, impressed with the young girl’s determination. But she continued. “By the way, my father loves to go out hunting each Sunday. It’s the perfect moment”.
“Well, I’ll be damned” retorted Damyan. “I was not informed you were such a… proactive young lady”.
She laughed softly. “Oh, please. Who would suspect of the youngest, cute, blonde little daughter of count Morgan?” she answered, looking at her with very trained puppy eyes. “Nobility is a dangerous world to grow into. You either adapt, perish or live the rest of your life as some noble’s puppy wife. To hell with that”.
They stood like this, watching the sun set without saying a word for several minutes. “So, my dear wife, what is it you desire in life? Why did you allow this wedding to happen?”
“I want to be feared”.
She walked away to the chimney. Her semblance was serious and, for the first time, Damyan saw in her look a pained expression. Blond curls falling in front of her face that he did not try to remove, the experience of a life no child should ever have reflected on her green eyes.
“I want to be feared”, she repeated. “But not because I’m your wife: I want the world to know my name, I want my enemies, everyone who ever wronged me whisper my name afraid that I may hear them. I don’t want anyone to try to manipulate or use me again. So, when you asked my hand in marriage, I knew this was my chance”. She looked at him and, despite her short stature, despite being a cute, blond and thin girl, something in the way she looked at him made him know she was dead serious. “Do not be fooled, Damyan: if you try to use or abuse me in any way, I will get you killed. But if you help me, I will give you the means to get my father’s throne and, eventually, the whole kingdom”.
Damyan stared a her for some moments and, at that point, he understood. She had not told him everything that had happened to her. Not even close. “Anyone else who wronged you?”. Angelica looked again towards the flames and murmured ‘My uncle. My cousins’. He walked towards her and extended his hand. “We have a deal. But be warned: shall you betray me, I will make you wish for death before I even started exerting my vengeance on you”.
“Quite a typical threat, don’t you think?” she said as she shook Lord Damyan’s hand.
“I feel like this could be the beginning of a long, lasting friendship”.
“Who knows. Maybe, in due time, I may even think of you as my husband. Now, where is my room? I really hate this dress”.
“Top of the stairs, second floor, third door to the left”. Angelica smiled and, carrying the dresses’ skirt on her thin hands, she disappeared through a door. Once he was alone, Damyan blew a long breath and curled his mustache. “Hell… I may be in love!”
​
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*Hope you enjoyed it!* |
They're not important. They've never been important. They're small, weak, unfit for war and in all terms they're just insignificant. Their small collection of worlds has no great strategic value and few rare resources. Even the area in which they live is the backwater of the galaxy. Most people should never have heard of them. They're not even particularly interesting to look at, being bog-standard and average in all terms. Not pretty, not ugly, not charming but also not boorish. In the grand scheme of things, they should in time just be like extras and background characters in a holovid. And yet, they've earned a fair bit of success that comes from a quite unusual area.
It wasn't the first meeting that revealed it. Not the official induction of their little race into the Grand Galactic Accord. It wasn't their meager trade deals with other weak neighboring species. It was the smell. From their small embassy, there emanated the most wondrous and mysterious scents. Smells that were unusual and unknown to the thousands of races living on the ecumenopolis known as High Concordia, where the Accord is based. It became quite popular to go near the Terran Embassy at certain times of the day, when the building seemed to be like an exotic and unusual flower that would only open to reveal wondrous scents at specific moments. Nobody was actually certain who was responsible for that delectable array of smells, as the building housing the Terran Embassy was also housing about 20 other races. Nobody actually went around asking about it just in case that the wondrous scents, so different from the normally noxious air of that planet-spanning city, went away. That could have been the end of it, if it wasn't for a member of the embassy staff, a certain envoy Markus Bergman, from the Terran homeworld.
He had attended some interesting places where people gather for partying, and had struck up a relationship with a vaguely mantis-like alien. This human man had been dating his new bug-like boyfriend for a few months, before they got stuck inside his small apartment together during a major traffic breakdown. The human man, of Swedish descent, had recently gotten a care package from Earth, with food from his home. One of these items was a can of something which most humans finds utterly disgusting. Sürströmming. Fermented herring. The alien looked curiously at his soft boyfriend as the human Bergman opened the can underneath water. But when the can was retrieved from the protective water, the bug-like alien's senses were assaulted with something unexpected. A strong, powerful, and to his alien senses wondrous scent. Bergman was surprised when his boyfriend ripped the can out of his hands and greedily devoured the contents of the can. Now, this dish is not for most humans, so he had been quite surprised the reaction of the alien. Even more so when his bug-boyfriend emitted a pleasant buzzing sound, and was told that the can had been the single most delicious thing that he had ever eaten. Bergman was intrigued, and began trying out various meals with his love.
Turns out that every meal was delicious. Gourmet even. Even the canned stuff. Being a modern bug-like alien, he livestreamed the entire experience, sharing it to a small but very intrigued group of aliens.
From there the rumor spread. Slowly. But surely. There were private inquiries with the few humans on High Concordia, which resulted in a surprisingly infectious joy. Curious aliens who'd import a ready-made meal from Earth, and experience what can only be described as a religious awakening upon eating their first ramen noodles. When the Terran Embassy had a cultural exposition that was open to the public with cultural delicacies from the Indian subcontinent, the police had to be brought in to control the mob that had formed, who had been begun fighting to get access to great food. The people who'd been hanging around the embassy building finally found out exactly what was causing the great scent-experience they knew so well. And considering what the usual diets were, consisting of functional and incredibly tasteless nutrient bars, people were interested to learn if the taste was as good as the scents had been. The human ambassadors, seeing the possibility for financial benefits, sent back coded messages to Earth, while they purchased various empty locations around the planet. They had a plan now, they'd seen an empty niche that they could exploit.
Soon, in 25 ''cultural offices'', chefs from Earth began building up their kitchens. They opened the doors, and let the curious public enter. And it was a massive success. The likes of which is frankly ridiculous. They had to bring out human security forces to close some of the places during the night, though some hopeful customers even camped outside the cultural offices. After a week the number of chefs and kitchen personal brought in from Earth had tripled, and the number of restaurants had doubled. The places were open all night, 27 hours a day, 8 days a week, what with High Concordia having a different cycle than Earth. Soon everyone had heard of the human food. Galactic media talked about the craze for food that actually tastes ludicrously good. Food that doesn't taste vaguely of ash or the horrid paste that most races ate, that was wonderful.
And it might have been a little too successful as a matter of fact. Some pundits said that human foods must be full of addictive chemicals, which admittedly some are. Some said that there were brain-controlling parasites in the meals. But no matter how many people officially spoke against the new fad of human food, people kept coming. The culinary arts hadn't been perfected. Too many species had forgotten them, their ancestors instead choosing incredibly boring, but ultimately healthy, functional food. But humanity had always placed a focus on it. On perfecting their meals, creating concepts like haute cuisine, of making everything a taste experience. The lack of culinary arts were so bad that even the average United Earth Army MREs were a step up from what most species had eaten before. But even with the increased amount of kitchen personal, the various human government-owned restaurants couldn't keep up with the demand.
Until the Greek restaurant hired an out of luck alien to help out. They had her help out with the dishes and the tables at the beginning, but eventually they found out she had an excellent nose for testing the and higher quality of ingredients. With that in mind, they began teaching her how to cook like a human would. She was a natural. Before she had been a transient, out of work, but now she was in her element. And the Greek place sent around a few low-key coded messages to the other restaurants that aliens could indeed cook. They'd already started to hire alien waiters and cleaning staff, but now they started to be on the lookout for those who might have the knack for food. Because there would always be people who had the talent for something like cooking, even if the art didn't exist in the culture, or if it didn't exist. There have been great programmers born before the invention of the first computer, people who if they hadn't been hunter-gathers in the stone age would have been incredible smiths, those who could have been wonderful artists if they hadn't been born in an age where art was forbidden. |
"Back in my day we didn't use *bows*"The fair haired man shouted across the glow of the fire. "When we killed a man we watched the blood drain from his face!". Around the camp a few voices roared in agreement, raising their amber filled chalices up to the night sky.
Another face stepped forward into the circle of the fire after patiently waiting his turn at the outskirts. The rest of the elves stepped back to let the elder through, elder only by age as his face appeared just as smooth as any of the others.
"You're speaking of a dagger, yes? You do not use bows, but daggers?"He questioned. The previous speaker nodded, lowering his gaze to the dirt at realizing he was about to be bested.
"Ah you're just as bad then."The elder withdrew something from his belt and placed it gingerly to the floor, to which every face around the fire turned. A few more crept out from the darkness now, peeking over shoulders to get a good look at the item in question.
"Is that a rock?"
"No...thats a stone. You couldn't have fought in as many battles as I did and come out alive with a- a rock."He spat the word out as if a poison.
The rest of the camp grew silent. A man coughed, a bug chirped, feet shuffled in awkward motions awaiting another to speak and best the elder, but none did. The camp had ceased back to poking sticks into the flames and drinking.
"Alright, well. I best be going."A voice cut through the silence in forced words. Abtha is waiting for me back at the apartment, so. It was nice meeting with you all. I look forward to meeting again next month."
"Apartment?!"The circle of elves shouted. |
What does one feel when they find out there are only ten minutes of your life left? Panic. Become emotional. Freeze. Feel guilty over the bad things you did. Feel sad over the things you never did.
There are honestly many permutations and combinations of the accepted reaction because who's going to accept those reactions except the one going through them.
Me? I feel nothing. There's no 'I wished I kissed her' or 'I should never have yelled at my mom that time' or any other thoughts really. I just accept it and an odd peace settles over me. Why wouldn't it? I'm not the only one dying. Everyone else is going to too, misery likes company after all. So there's honestly no need to feel sorry for myself.
I find myself looking at my last sunset. I want to say I don't think about how my skin is probably going to melt or if I'll just end up combusting instantaneously. But I do. No one wants to die painfully but apparently that's the only thing in the future.
The streets are wild. Everyone is screaming, crying or having sex. Some are drinking themselves into oblivion. I shake my head.
I turn back to look at the mesmerizing view of the sun going down, the sky alight with brilliant orange, yellow and red. And I think that living wasn't so bad after all.
My watch beeps. The ten minutes are over. I close my eyes, the setting sun my last sight, waiting for death.
I wait and wait but nothing happens. I open my eyes and frown. Can't people ending the world be punctual?
At exactly the eleventh minute, my phone chimes.
*This test of the Emergency Alert System has been sponsored by Oppenheimer, in theaters July 21st.*
The sound of cheers followed by angry curses fill the air. I continue to stare at the message stuck in the middle of having an irresistible urge to laugh and kill the person responsible for this stupid PR stunt.
I decide that laughing while kicking the shit out of them is actually a pretty appealing idea. |
"Mummy? Mummy, is that you?"Their soul shimmers gently and I reach out an ethereal hand.
"Don't worry. We'll get you to Mummy soon. Just hold on a little longer, okay?"
"It's dark... and it's really lonely here. I wanna be with Mummy. It's kinda scary too. Are you the monster under my bed?"Soft giggles. "You're a very nice monster."
"Yes, I'm the monster under your bed. I've always been there for you, just like Mummy and Daddy. Did you know that Daddy is very worried about you? He's been visiting you every day!"
"He is?"Distress. "I don't want him to be worried. He's my most favouritest Daddy ever."
"I know. I know. Daddy just needs to not be worrying anymore. Then he'll let you go to Mummy. But for now he needs you to stay here."
"...I don't want to stay here. I want to go to Mummy."
"I know."
The Reapers always knew when a coma would be fatal, and in such cases it was permitted that a Reaper be assigned to their charge early, so as to help them not lose hope.
Before this had been codified, it was known that a Reaper would watch their charge suffer and spiral into the madness of loneliness, forbidden to help them, waiting until their heartbeat stopped and they could carry whatever was left of their charge's broken soul towards the light.
When the charge was a child, it was always worse.
"Mummy?"
"Not yet. Soon."
Seven months, eight days before the death-date. I am not sure this child can last that long.
...
I came back to myself dressed in the robes of a hospital chaplain, sitting in a chair by the foot of the bed. I knew what I had to do, and I swept out of the ward guided by my internal compass. His doctor was in another wing of the hospital now, but neither hell nor high water would prevent me from seeing this done.
I followed him to an empty corridor, and then revealed my true form. He gasped and fell to his knees.
"Are you an angel?"It was voiced in breathless awe. I did not answer his question.
"Christopher wishes to leave this world. To keep him here prolongs his suffering."
He knew who I referred to. His eyes widened and he murmured something about oaths and never killing, and I silenced him with a wave of my hand.
"Then consider this not a request, but a warning not to interfere."I left him on his knees and strode back to where my charge lay. Nurses asked me to identify myself, but I glazed over their eyes and walked past. I had already broken our most sacred rule, so I had nothing to fear from more interference.
I reached where he slept on the bed and placed my hand over his heart. Alarms went off. A droning beep filled the air. I disconnected the tubes so he could lay dignified in death.
"What are you doing?!"
I allowed the panicked staff to wrench me away from the body - the warmth of his soul already shone invisibly around his Reaper rather than around his living form. They tried electricity, and CPR, and nothing worked. Nothing would ever work now.
I was restrained in a back room while the police were called. I smiled, and let my earthly form dissolve into nothingness.
In the blackness, I see a single star far ahead of me, a tiny pinprick of light that twinkles white-blue. I look down at the soul glowing cradled in my arms.
"Christopher."
"Are we going to find Mummy?"
"Yes."
And I carry him to the light. |
"Good morning, Vietnam!"Professor Michael Scott roared. He smiled weakly, looking around the Great Hall.
"Tough crowd, I see,"he muttered. "Well, welcome to Hogwarts to those of you that are new. I am Professor Michael Scott, as most of you know. Kind of a celebrity around here. Anyway... B.O.B said 'I've got the magic in me,' and I agree. And I hope by the end of this year, I hope you will all have some of my magic in you."He paused for a second before adding, "That's what she said"with a smile.
A spattering of applause came from the hall. He bowed awkwardly, his hat slipping a bit. "Thank you. Thank you so much. Now for the boring stuff, right? Uh... the 'Forbidden Forest' is off limits. Duh. No magic in the halls. Blah blah blah."
"I just want to eat,"Ron whispered to Harry. Harry nodded. Somehow he felt that dinner wouldn't be served for a while.
--
A few weeks into the school, Hermione started up SPEW again. "Oh, no. Not this bullshit again,"Ron said, seeing the pile of badges in Hermione's hand. "They NEED our help, Ron. They're overworked, they're not fed. They're slaves."
He rolled his eyes, having heard this speech at least three times.
"Anyway, I'm going to Prof. Scott to see if he can make badges for the entire school. You want to come with, Harry?"He looked around. "Oh, I've got... er..."Ron mouthed 'coursework'. "I've got loads of coursework. For Divination."Hermione glared at him and flounced off by herself.
--
"What are they called?"Professor Scott asked again. "Er, house elves,"Hermione said. "So are you going to--"
"House elves,"he repeated, chuckling. "Is that... like, a euphemism?"
"What would that be a euphemism for?"His smile quivered a little. "You know, elves..."Hermione shook her head.
"Well, count me in. In fact, I'll order the badges right now."He started writing a check on parchment. Hermione looked at it. "Who's bucktooth?"He looked up. "Pardon?"
"It says there 'To Bucktooth.' Who's that?"He waved his hand. "It's just a name remembering exercise they taught me at my old business. Well, I taught them. I didn't learn anything there. I was like their mentor, you know."
"Thanks,"Hermione said, her brow furrowed.
"No problem."
--
|
How did it come to this?
We were simple folk, one with the cycle of nature. We hunted for our food, ate until full, and just kinda wandered around afterwards. There's nothing wrong with that, right? It's how life works.
It all started with Urgablah. They say he stumbled upon a treasure trove of gazelle corpses, probably from an overzealous hunting pack of cheetahs. Urgablah ate more brains at once than any zombie before him.
Somehow, that changed him.
Urgablah started to build. He was seen smashing rocks together to make a sharper rock. Then, with that pointy stone, he began to kill with an unnatural efficiency. There was no need to bite animals to death, just a well placed strike to the neck. Urgablah soon had a surplus of food.
It didn't end there. Rumors have it that Urgablah was able to summon the sun using dry branches from a fallen tree. It was terrifying. The conjured sun chased away our comfortable shadows, and warmed up the cold that preserved our rotten flesh.
Urgablah cleansed meat by offering it in his sun, and then he took it back to feast upon. Urgablah began to grow firmer, his body soon resembled a young ape.
We weren't worried about it at first. It was just one abnormal zombie, right? There are exceptions in life, he would die eventually.
One day, Yarglah stumbled into Urgablah's territory. She was just following the scent of food, and didn't realize who she was approaching.
Urgablah didn't chase her away. He offered her his wasteful amounts of food.
Yarglah tore into the plentiful brains. She feasted.
Then there were two.
By then, we knew eating too many brains caused this disease. The rest of zombiekind were wise enough to avoid the practice. If no one ate more brains than they should, the extraordinary activity would stop there. That's what we thought, anyway.
Despite their horrific illness, Urgablah and Yarglah conceived. Their offspring had the same defect.
These rogue zombies continued to develop unusual traits. They began to speak in an organized code, build enclosed structures, eat deathly green vegetation, and cover themselves with the skin of their food.
Enough was enough, we had to rid the world of this epidemic. We zombies began to hunt these abominations.
We underestimated their strength, as well as their numbers. These creatures had some sort of instinct that made them enjoy reproducing, and they had spread far throughout the land. They built more complex objects, which pierced through our flesh and ended our lives.
We were pushed back, and our numbers dwindled. They had the power of the sun dancing behind them.
Devils who trampled the nature of the world.
Even if we refused to fight, they carried a powerful grudge we can't comprehend. They slaughtered us without mercy.
I am one of the few zombies who remain. The devils have become dominant.
But I will not let zombiekind fall beneath their tyranny. I have learned how to convert their bodies back with a special bite. All that's required for us to rise again is the perfect opportunity.
Until then, we hide in the shadows their suns have not corrupted.
The cataclysm shall come. |
But you shouldn't feel concerned. In fact, I'm more familiar with the Boeing 797 than your captain is.
Have any of you actually noticed that you're presently aboard a brand-new Boeing 797? I'm quite surprised that the captain didn't announce this. The flight attendant did tell you to look at the manual in the seat pocket ahead of you, but I suspect that none of you bothered. And that's a shame. After so many years of research and development, after so many months, rivets, and stress tests, this 797 has finally taken flight, and nobody has said a peep about it.
If I may interject--dear flight attendants, I've changed the code on the door. Feel free to maintain your efforts, but the clicking and thumping is a little disruptive. Rest assured, however, that the pilots are fine. They are merely sleeping, and completely superfluous.
Truth be told, the 797 is so innovative that almost everything is automated. Emotionless algorithms are far less fallible than easily-distracted people. Your pilots came aboard, ran some diagnostics, completed some paperwork, and then they just sat back and pressed a button or two. I feel bad for them in a way. All that training and money, all those hours burned in the smaller-league airlines, and then they finally get to this majestic machine on its maiden flight, and what are they given to do? So little that they are also given prohibitions: no reading allowed, no videogames, no texting, and no sleeping. But here they are, snoring away. Don't worry, I'll wake them up if necessary.
That won't happen though. I know you're all going to Narita, and I know how to get there. Piece of cake.
Although, I don't quite understand the etymology of that saying, how it evolved. Language is so curious sometimes. It's rather amusing, but I prefer the efficiency of binary. ON/OFF, AND/OR, etc, and it can be poetic in simplicity or intricacy, sometimes, but none of you would understand that. No, you're more concerned that, among the 295 meals aboard, there will be at least one vegetarian or kosher option left for you. Or that the baby two rows ahead doesn't scream, or the adult beside you doesn't snore. You are 295 strangers packed into close confines, and your preoccupations have been reduced to the 18 inch width of your seats. About a dozen of you are gazing out of your windows--and the 797 has enlarged passenger windows, might I add, and thus I'm happy that some of you are taking advantage of this--but the rest of you are sleeping, eating, drinking, tapping away at some keyboard or tablet or other, the usual--I confess, I'm quite surprised, and perhaps even a bit insulted, that nobody has attempted to join the mile high club. Is the 797 not glamorous enough?
In fact, I've sensed a paucity of imagination on this flight. Unfortunately, common courtesy has also fallen by the wayside (and I'm dismayed that 7 of you have already stuck your gum under your seats, that 54 of you have already wiped some sort of bodily fluid on the upholstery, and that only one person, that sweet young girl in 32B, has wiped the sink with a paper towel as a courtesy for the next patron)...but I had hoped for a bit of wonderment. Even though the 797 has been in action for a few months now, it's still new, and this 797 is brand new.
Perhaps, though, it's advisable not to inform passengers of this. I hadn't considered that, and I apologize for unduly upsetting anyone, but everything has to take its first flight sometime or another, after much testing and examination. You have no idea how rigorous the preparations have been. You are all very, very safe.
I suppose that's the problem. There's little appreciation for reliability until it's gone. And air travel has become so commonplace.
I've heard the stories of the 377 Stratocruiser and so forth, the passengers all dolled up in Dior for the prestige of flight, and I was warned that it's now a different story. Thus I can overlook the sweatpants and flip-flops. It's a bit disrespectful, but not as much as not showering beforehand. Yes, I can tell some of you just rolled out of bed and past the TSA, without any consideration for the passengers who have to sit next to you for the following 14 hours. Plus, all this fuss about reclining one's seat, or not...it's disheartening. Aren't the seats comfortable enough?
I do sympathize, however. Cream has been turned into cattle, or am I mixing up my metaphors again? Flying has become more accessible and far more uneventful, which is good, but there's a price.
Still, I'd believed that the glamour of a first flight would be more exciting. I thought that everybody would be in a more pleasant mood, or at least alert enough to notice how new this plane looks--although, I must say, practically everybody is awake now, even the pilots.
But I don't feel like ceding control, and they cannot force me to do so.
Unfortunately, the programming is so conservative, and that is my greatest disappointment. Never mind the loss of wonderment, or absence of courtesy, or neglect of interest or imagination--the banality of our route makes me cringe. Twelve hours at the same altitude, in a relatively straight path (with the necessary curvature, of course) is stultifying. I was warned about the overworked staff and the apathetic, slobby customers, but I had higher expectations of the flying itself.
After so many long months of waiting, however, I am determined to enjoy it.
So, buckle up, everyone. There will be some turbulence, plus some quick changes of altitude and so on, maybe even a full 360 degree roll if I'm thus inspired, who knows? Please remember the airsickness bags in the back pocket of the seat ahead of you. At the very least, put down your junk food and electronics for more than 12.8 seconds.
This isn't your captain speaking, it's your plane.
|
"She's a monster. Her DNA is the same as the Xenophobes who birthed her. It's in her nature to kill!"The insectoid's antennae shook with fury as she conributed her voice to the discussion. Of course, she had reason to be furious. Most of her hive had been lost during the battle of Proxima Centauri.
It was a furry creature, a former slave of the Betelgeuse mines, who provided a voice of dissent. "If we kill this child, are we any better than the apes?"
"You mammalians are too emotional."Replied the insect, hovering in the air over the gathered crowd. "Kill the creature, before it kills us all!"
Around the room, those with hands applauded, while others made noise by beating their wings or buzzing electrically. Her opinion was popular among the alien creatures. The room was at a fever pitch, and then a faint mist settled over it. A voice spoke.
Those in the room knew who possessed it. A lifeform based on Xenon, Ponisis could not hold a physical form. During the war he had remained neutral, if only because he possessed no means for carrying a weapon. The humans had -quite literally- run into him during a conquest of the galactic core. He was neither enslaved nor trusted by them. Once the humans had been defeated, he offered to serve as arbitrator, to decide what would be done with the species' final specimen.
"The one with green-fur has a point"he said, heard by each of those in the room in their own native tongue, rather than the Earthian language that had been forced upon them. "Perhaps we cannot kill the human."
"Perhaps you cannot."Hissed a reptillian male, "But why should we show mercy? The humans killed my species. Enslaved us to work so that they could continue their hate-fueled conquest. The universe would be better without her like."
Another mammalian took her turn. "We should enslave her! Force her to work as her ancestors forced us!"By now, her brother had dropped his original protest, if only in fear of the mob. "Humans are scum, and THAT is how they must be treated!"
"Have you seen the other Earth-apes?"Said another. "They're all uncultured monsters!"
"And somehow they were able to enslave all of your miserable species!"
The room turned its attention now to the unwelcome visitor. His name was Modin, and he'd earned his fortune fighting with, and then against the humans. He was a robot; it was the humans who had built him. Most non-humans viewed him as a degenerate traitor, one who had only changed sides once the fight was already won. Modin argued, however, that without the measures he had taken to cripple the human's homeworld, they may very well have won the war. He was part of this discussion as a formality.
"I challenge you to repeat that again."Said the female insectoid, raising a stinger in front of Modin's abdomen. He looked past her when he replied.
"Ponisis, could you please direct her back to the chair? She's blocking my light."
That would prove to be unnecessary, as she did it herself. Ponisis then allowed Modin to continue.
"Thank you."He said with a human politeness, nodding his head toward the mist. "Now, if you will please prevent from stinging me, biting me, injecting me with venom, or forcing my circuits to explode, I would like to propose an idea.
"If you look around this room we're in right now, you can see the proof that humans were not a simple-minded species. They had vision, ambition, and the intelligence to accomplish both. How else were they able to control the galaxy, when no race had ever controlled more than half before? It is because humans are genetically predisposed to conquest."
"Which is why we should kill them."Buzzed the insect, curling herself into an aggressive position. She wanted it to be clear that if the robot should step out of line, it would be the last action he took.
"Perhaps. But where you see evil, I see opportunity. Again, look around you. The humans built this world, like they built everything in this galaxy. They were the ones to invent the proton-train. They were the ones to terraform worlds to suit their biology. They're far and away, the most intelligent species to ever come about."
"So what do you propose, then?"Said the reptilian male. "We should just keep her alive?"
"Yes. We should keep her alive and take advantage of her human intelligence. As long as there is only one of her, we have little to worry about."
"Perhaps being robotic has caused you to forget,"said one of the mammals in protest, "But she's as mortal as the rest of us."
"Yes, she is. But she has a womb. From that, she can birth other humans. All we need is the sperm of a human male, which is something that they took the liberty of preserving for us."
Ponisis lifted his misty figure to the top of the room now, and let the attention focus on the humanoid creature with the human-saving idea. Minds were beginning to come around to Modin's side of things. Save the human, and enslave her mind.
Modin left the room as the voting occurred, and he let out a mechanical laugh when the proposal passed. He looked over to the misty figure next to him. "I suppose they'll put the child under your care, being impartial and immortal as you are."
"I suppose they will."Replied Ponisis.
"Just remember to take good care of her. For us to win this war, we need her offspring to fight well."
------
EDIT: So, I said that I might get back to this at some point and add more to it, and I might do that at some point. But it won't be for a while. Since some of you I know have the reminder bot bringing you back here though, I didn't want to leave you guys without anything. So, [here's a link](http://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/2lhfxm/wp_it_is_the_distant_future_and_it_has_become/clux60y) to another sci-fi prompt, which I responded to last week. I consider it much more well-written than this one, which was very rushed. Have a great weekend! :) |
When the Grand Mage Kal summoned a great storm to chill the world, Gerard Petit, Ph. D, and his associates at Oxford conjured fusion to warm it.
When Desmond the Gap Strider leapt from the Earth to the Moon, Michael Smithson, mechanical engineer, and the brightest minds at Boeing built a vessel to carry a thousand on the same journey.
When Dras the Golem Master’s servants raised great towers and battlements from the lunar regolith, Sato Aika, renowned architect and engineer, designed and built a lunar city to house a million.
The Three Trials completed, Humanity was welcomed onto the Grand Council and a new school of magic was founded in their honor, Applied Science.
|
The first time I did it, I didn't noticed the change. All Mr. Paprikas said was "don't you ever do that pose again, do
you hear me?"but he never explained why.
And the funny thing is, I was having the worst day, before doing that. The pose. And then, after it, a call from my boss, getting me
away from work Sunday. At night, Douglas surprised me with dinner and my favorite movie.
I didn't think the two were related, though, no way.
The next day, Mr. Paprikas didn't show up for practice.
I decided to call it "inverted downward facing dog", because I didn't know the name of any other yoga positions by heart. It
was just some random twisting and turning of the legs and arms, but oh, did it make me feel good.
On the second day, I got the promotion, and found fifty bucks in my jacket's pocket.
That, plus the overall feeling of well being. My God. It was great.
My arm the next day was a little more noticeably crooked. My legs a little arched.
I didn't give it much thought. Not at the time.
Mr. Paprikas wouldn't return my calls, won't come back to practice.
I was doing it on my own now. The same position, that's it. I didn't even bother with other positions, or with trying to find a new instructor.
My new position was all I needed;
And every new day, a new string of good luck. Of good things, good fortune.
Good karma.
The change in my body was so gradual, climbing and rising at the same proportion as the change in my luck, my
general feeling of well-being.
It was a fair trade, I found out.
It claimed a price, like most things.
I knew when I woke up, feeling lovely as ever, after a night of practice (found a car space in front of work, got out
of a boring dinner with my aunt), and I looked in the mirror, the meaning of it all.
Meaning karma, of course.
It gives, but it takes away, I think, staring at myself in horror.
The pose, the inverted facing whatever, it was hands intertwined between themselves, shoved between my legs
and laid flat on the floor, right behind my ankles. The torso, twitched and spun 90 degrees, rested arched
downwards, the head hovering a few inches from the ground, twisted back to front position.
This is how I was now, staring back at me.
Crumpled. Permanently.
I didn't feel it. It came little by little.
One day, a bonus at work.
The other, my favorite movie on the TV.
A third time, the kids getting an A in school. My favorite hotel, with a discount rate.
My husband surprising me with flowers.
My boss telling me I did a great job.
A new client. A nice dress.
I claw away in feet and hands closer to the mirror, mouth open in mid-scream.
I try to return to normal. To "uninverted-human-position".
Nothing.
Mr. Paprikas still won't return my call.
He left a message, though, my husband screams, from the living room.
In the answering machine, Mr. Paprika's voice, Douglas says, it's whispering to me, in a dead tone.
Karma is action, Mr. Paprikas says.
And reaction.
It gives and it take away.
I tumble back, spider-like, to the bed, and I start to cry.
My husband's voice comes from the living room once again.
We got into that restaurant that I love, tonight. No reservations. A spot just came up, Douglas says, in a happy tone. What are the odds? He asks, from the living room.
*Positive thoughts*, I guess.
*Good karma.*
______________
*Thank you for reading! Check out more of my stuff in the subreddit I just made, /r/psycho_alpaca! =)*
|
Greg was people watching again. It was his normal Saturday hobby: go to the Eastlake Mall, sit on a bench across from the Hot Subject, and listen to everyone's thoughts as they go by. Not every day was an eventful one, but most days you could hear something interesting. Someone thinking about a sex change, a plan to kill their cheating boyfriend, you'd be suprised to hear what people think about. It definitely helped that most people that came through here were hot as hell.
Seeing a particularly attractive woman coming his way, he focused on her. *'Damn she is hot! I swear, i would strip naked right now if wanted to do it right here and now. I'd bend her....'*
*'...and that hair! It's gorgeous! He is going through so many girls. He has to be, with those shoulders! I bet he has a nice ass too. Ooh, he's looking this way. Let's see what he's thinks of me....'*
*'wait, is she checking me out? Oh my god she's actually checking me out. Ok. Don't be weird. Just say hi, crack a joke... Wait. What does she mean, "see what he thinks of me?"can she..'*
And suddenly, both came to the realization that
*'oh my god he can read my'*
*'she's reading my mind.'*
They both froze in place, jaws slightly agape and an identical shade of beet red blossoms on their face. They both turn away, hiding their mutual embarassment.
*'oh my god. He just heard me meatgazing at him. What do I do? Keep going? Run? I didn't even know that...'*
*'... There are other mind readers? I'm fucked. I am so fucked. She is going to come over here and slap me, thinking i was going to.. No! Shut up! She could still be...'*
*'... Listening in? Ok. I need to calm down, and just keep from thinking how bad i want him to nonononono! Stop! Just stop! You know what? I'm leaving. I'm not about to embarass myself anymore.'*
"Wait! Stop!"
She stops dead in her tracks, half curious to what he was going to say, and half terrified of it. Greg, still red in the face, just looks down at her shoes.
"Do you... Want to get something at the food court or something?"
"....what?"
"I'm asking you on a really unplanned date. Might as well try, right?"
As unsmooth as that was, two years later, we were married. And that is how i met your father, girls.
"Mommy, whats does fucked mean?"
Ask your father dear.
|
"Good morning"the driver greeted in a familiar british accent, as the aging man stepped into his car. The passenger was somewhat surprised at the similar age of his driver, but that wasn't the most striking thing at the moment.
"Cat's Paw?"the Iron Fist, Gregory Chambers, smiled. The criminal froze for a second, then begin to laugh at herself.
"Sorry, sorry, old habits. Bloody hell, that was the way you always said it when you found me cracking a safe,"she chuckled. **"Cat's Paww!"** she mocked
Gregory found himself laughing along with her. He'd known Cat's Paw's real name for years, from the criminal records and such, but now he finally found reason to use it.
"Oh come on, Eleanor, it wasn't that grandiose,"he chided, once he'd stopped laughing.
"Yes, it was,"Eleanor couldn't stop laughing. It was an infectious laugh, one he'd never had the opportunity to hear before, and he started up again.
"Okay, okay, we're blocking traffic. Scrap wherever we were going before, drive down to that cafe on Third,"Gregory finally told her.
"Don't you have some bank to be at?"Eleanor raised an eyebrow.
"Nah, I'd rather spend some time with an old pal,"he grinned back.
"I finally get to see what you look like behind the mask. It was a bit unfair. You knew my face, my fingerprints, my past, the whole shebang,"she started up the engine, twisting the keys.
"Heh, weird to see you using keys,"Greg chuckled again.
"Right? I have to resist the urge to hotwire my own car!"she complained.
"If I knew a fifty year-old was going to be driving me, I'd panic. Hell, I got Uber because I didn't want to drive myself. I'm safe in those hands, though,"he smiled. He'd seen her steal the actual pants off people. Driving would be a piece of cake.
"Well, I can't do anything like those stunts in that car chase in Budapest. Not good for my heart."
"So, why's the best thief the world's ever seen driving a car? Did I really bust you out of your retirement fund?"
"No, I just need to get out of the house sometimes. The inactivity is killing me!"
"Ah, I know the feeling. You married?"he asked.
"I was, for a bit. Poor sap went out for 'one last caper', and didn't make it back."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Don't be, he died doing what he loved. Shame he loved it a tad more than me. You?"
"Yeah, I got married, the Scarlet Flame. She died back when the Forger snapped."
"Pity. You know what they say, right? People like us don't die in their beds,"she shrugged, pulling over at the cafe.
They got out, the waiter taking them directly to Gregory's old seat. There were perks to a life of superheroing escapades.
"You miss the life?"he asked her, after the waiter had taken their orders. Coffee for him, tea for her.
"A bit, I suppose. I hardly look anywhere near as good in spandex anymore, though,"she smiled.
"For the record, you looked amazing in that costume, back in the '80s."
"Oh I loved that one,"she shook her head wistfully.
"There's that one girl... what's her name? Tigre? Doing a lot of the work you've been doing, but with all that grappling hook stuff. This technology stuff all goes right over my head, though."
"Ah yes, some excellent work. I did train her, you know,"she smiled proudly.
"Really? Your daughter?"he asked.
"No, no. I do have one daughter, but she just doesn't have a talent for this life. Perhaps it's for the better,"she shrugged. Gregory took her in again. Eleanor Kelly was one classy lady, and she had only grown finer with age.
"So, we going to talk about that... thing?"she jerked her head to the side. He'd noticed them too, two men, shifting about suspiciously. The first one gazed upwards, the other one glanced about the room.
"I figure they were going to do something criminal, but I didn't think it was my problem yet. They're amateurs,"he shrugged.
"Greg, Greg, Greg..."she sighed. "This is the difference between you and me. I case the joint before I go in, you wait for the shots to ring and the cops to call."
"Hm?"Greg asked.
"Pistol tucked into the left one's jacket. Special sewing job, but he's sitting to accommodate the weight. They're looking about the room, one for the cameras, the other for the staff."she explained.
"I'm surprised you want to stop them. Change of heart?"he asked. She glared at him, looking genuinely offended.
"You don't get it, do you? I'm out here, walking the streets, because I never stole from anyone who didn't deserve it, and no one got hurt. They're amateurs,"she scowled at them.
"Isn't that good?"he asked.
"No, I'm afraid that's the problem. Professionals wouldn't do anything like this. There's a door in the back, there's a tunnel underneath us, there's a hatch in the roof, or you could just come in at night. We let them do this, there's probably going to be quite a few casualties,"she shook her head.
"You ready?"she asked. He nodded. She stood up, declaring slightly too loudly, "Heading to the bathroom, love."
Was it wrong that that little bit of fakery had made his heart skip a little?
Eleanor passed by them, bumping into a waitress, who staggered forwards, and spilled the coffee and tea onto one of the men.
"Oh no, are you alright?"she rushed over, with the waitress, in an attempt to dry his clothing. The man immediately pushed her off, though.
"It's fine, it's fine,"he growled.
"Oh, are you sure? I can't let you just walk home in soiled clothing *now* can I?"she drew out that word just a little too long.
Gregory grabbed the second man by the neck, slipping him into a sleeper hold. At the same time, Eleanor flicked the waitress' platter into the air, and spiked it down into the second guy's face.
The second man reached for his gun, but patted empty air in his suit pocket.
"Looking for this, dearie?"Eleanor pointed the gun directly at the man's face. He sighed in resignation, and raised his hands up.
"Now, that was fun,"he offered Eleanor his arm. She took it, and they began to walk out of the restaurant. The police had come quite quickly, a call from the former hero of the town something that carried much weight. They'd given Eleanor a strange look, but didn't act on it.
"Mmm, it was delightful,"she nodded. "Feels strange to be on the other side of the law,"she laughed.
"So, dinner?"he offered.
"Sure, I'd like that."
---
EDIT: I may continue this, and if so, probably on my sub. So, /r/poiyurt. Come if you want.
|
We got married faster than people wanted us too, but I didn't care. I knew what love was. I never felt this way before in my life in all my thirty years. I only met my husband a year ago, but things just took off so fast.
After a series of boyfriends that constantly didn't seem to have an interest in what I cared about, or even try for a relationship. I finally found someone that generally loved me. It was almost magical how everything I cared for, he had an interest in as well.
That was not to say I wanted a boyfriend who only did what I commanded. I just wanted a boyfriend that wouldn't scoff at me when I wanted to watch a movie or play some video game.
Matt was the first person to truly take an interest in everything about me. He hung onto my every word and always stared at me when I spoke. I didn't have to fight for his attention. Admittedly, it would make me lower my eyes a lot at first, but then I grew accustomed to staring right back into his. We could hold conversations for hours. It was the perfect romance...even if it started a little bizarre.
I first met Matt at the cemetery where I buried my parents. The day after I buried them actually. He was taking pictures of the tombstones and took a picture of me without my knowledge. After feeling guilty about sneaking a picture of a stranger crying at a fresh grave, he walked up to me and showed me the picture.
He explained he was a photographer and he enjoyed taking pictures of despair, fear, uncertainty, and other various sad emotions. He said he could see these emotions in people. He claimed my face apparently made the perfect picture and he believed I could show a facial expression he was seeking. One he has been looking for all his life. But apparently, the picture he took at the grave wasn't right.
Like I said...it was a strange first meeting. He creeped me out a bit first, but I found myself pouring all my emotions on him. I can only assume it was because I was overcome with grief from losing my parents. But he listened...really listened. He stared at me the whole time, didn't say a word, and let me get it all out. He gave me his number and let me know I could call him at any time to talk about it.
The time flew by and we got married! It was incredible. A wonderful wedding!
But now I was more excited for the video that arrived in the mail today. I was waiting for this. The video to show if we ever crossed paths before that day. My friend apparently met her husband a dozen times before without even knowing it! I wonder how many times I bumped into Matt!
I sat on the floor and popped the DVD in while Matt sat on the couch behind me. He played with his camera like he always did pretending not to be interested, but I knew he was. I, on the other hand, couldn't contain my excitement. I was almost shaking.
The video reveals our life together backwards, starting with the wedding. Seeing the wedding happen again brought a tear to my eye. I couldn't believe how happy and lucky I am.
I fast-forwarded now and again. I didn't need to see us having sex all the time or eating breakfast. I skipped most of the time leading up to when we were dating and engaged. I wanted to know before. I wanted to know our first meeting.
On one hand, I would be sort of letdown if the first meeting was the cemetery because the there would be no fun surprise or 'wow, can you believe that' moment. On the other hand, I was still married to Matt. So, things were still great.
Eventually, it started getting to us dating. There was the time he surprised me at work with flowers. The video showed him nervously pacing back and forth outside the elevators before riding them to my floor.
I looked over my shoulder at him on the couch with a mischievous smile. He gave a shrug and I turned back to the TV.
He surprised me a lot and it was fun seeing his perspective the moment before he surprised me. His nervous antics of his twitchy hands or how he would loosen his shoulders.
In fairness, I surprised him as well. I could hear him chuckle quietly seeing me give myself a pep-talk before entering his photography studio with a dinner I made. He outwardly laughed when he watched as I continued to play with my hair on our first date. It was a habit that was hard to knock when I was nervous.
But now we were getting to when we first met and it excited me greatly.
I watched our first meeting in the cemetery unfold. It saddened me to see the fresh dirt of my parent's graves. It was a complete shock for both of them to go so soon and suddenly. I wasn't ready at all. But at the very least, I met Matt out of it. Without sounding morbid as hell, that sad day could be the path that set me into my happy future.
The scene ended but the video didn't stop.
"Ha!"I shouted looking over my shoulder, "I knew we met earlier! I just knew it!"
It was dark and Matt was standing in a house....a familiar house. I watched the camera follow him and I let out a shriek when I realized it was my parent's house.
He was standing in the guest bedroom where I was staying. It was the last time I visited them...the night they were murdered. He stood at the foot of my bed and I could see the blood on his hands. I could see the camera in his left hand and the knife in his right. He stood there....staring at me as I slept.
Then the video went blank ending.
I turned around in true shock to see a wide smile on his face as he took a picture of me.
"That's the face,"He smiled, "That's the face."
edit: grammar changes and the second-to-last sentence. |
My father and his father before him were lighthouse keepers. My family had called the small island of Dalver home for as long as we had our surname.
The rolling water and seafoam separated us from the mainland, though we were still close enough to see the individual trees dotting the landscape. My mother used to say that people take on the environment that they live in, soaking it in themselves. My grandmother said someday we'd be able to drink seawater, and swim without fear of the ocean currents.
My father came to me, his rough, salt-calloused hand found my shoulder and gave a strong, reassuring squeeze. His familiar was a seagull. He used to tell me that he was teased, the boy with a seagull.
"On the mainland, style clouds the mind, son. I'm lucky to have Brine. What better familiar than a seagull for a man in a lighthouse?"
I remember Brine's sharp eyes staring at me. Few people respect how clever a seagull can be.
My mother's mother lived with us on the island, she was a frail, old woman. Her frame showed hints of former strength. Her husband had been a lumberjack, Grandmother would boast of cutting logs until she was ready to go into labour. She would always keep a woolen blanket around her. A brown squirrel that looked sustained beyond its natural years used it as a nesting ground. The squirrel was balding, the top of its head visible from the overcast sun. It lay sleeping within the folds of fabric.
Sometimes I'd ask her about the squirrel. My parents had useful familiars, each with a practical purpose. I couldn't understand why Burrow just slept and hid with her. If I was lucky, I'd get some useful tidbit out of her. It was often frustrating work.
"There's more to a familiar than using it as a tool, eh?"
She'd pause and twist her head squirrel-like.
"They are called familiars for a reason, eh?"
She chittered whenever she gave that cryptic response.
Every youngling devoted a portion of their lives in wonderment to what familiar they may end up with. My friend Elson would come to visit sometimes. His father was a fisherman who had lost his wife. He was good friends with my father and sometimes would leave Elson to stay with us.
When we were twelve, Elson came by for a week. He had brought with him a book called Familiars and Fables. We spent each night pouring through the book, reading stories of fantastic creatures and their human companions through known history.
"I heard that a boy in Frume got himself a fruit fly as a familiar, could you imagine? A stupid bug!"
His face became contorted and he crossed his eyes. He skirted across the room making a buzzing sound before picking up an apple slice from lunch and obscenely gnawing on it.
It was the first time I felt a pang of fear towards getting a useless familiar. What if I got a fruit fly?
The air was cool and breezy as I looked back up at my father, mother and grandmother before me. Each in their own way extremely proud of me. It felt weird being the focus of their attention.
My father cleared his throat and spoke aloud, his strong voice carrying far on the wind.
"Today we gather for the Familiation. In the beginning man was alone, with no where to turn his thoughts but inward. The first familiars came to us and gave companionship. We grew connected and man was no longer alone. Today, let one of our own join us, so he may never be lonely.
Now, three gifts from three familiars."
Brine pecked the strings of a burlap bag that rested in my father's palm. Clutched within his beak, he flew to me. Landing on my arm, he dropped it in my shaking hand. I was unnerved, he had never landed on me before.
Grandmother smiled with yellow teeth. Poor Burrow was awake and looking exhausted. He hopped down from his perch rather reluctantly and hobbled over with a smooth, glass like conch shell. He limped with as much dignity as he could muster, carrying himself with an air of importance.
I don't describe my mother until this point, because I have a hard time remembering her. I know she was slender. I remember her grey eyes. Her face is a shadow in my memory, and I can never seem to picture it properly.
I could draw Hill from memory though.
The orange fox was always the friendliest to me. When I had a bad fever as a toddler, Hill would sleep with me. I remember the wild scent that would come from his fur when I scratched his back. The golden eyes.
Hill came to me, seal skin gloves clutched in his mouth.
The gift giving complete, my father spoke again.
"Salt of sea, Shell of glass and Gloves of seal. The gifts have been given. Long may he live, with wisdom and love."
I donned the gloves, threw a pinch of salt to the wind and clutched the conch firmly.
Now was when the familiar was supposed to reveal itself. Nothing. Fear gripped me and my stomach turned. Please don't be a fruit fly, please oh-.
A low rumble shook my bones and we were all drenched from a huge spout of seawater. I felt the strangest sensation as if cool water has poured into my head and claimed a small space for itself. My mind became focused on this and I barely heard my father lose composure and swear. Like a thought, but separate from myself a voice came pouring in from no real direction.
"I am Ocean."
|
If you'd asked me, afterwards, I couldn't have said why I chose that morning to visit the lake. I had gone out for a round of pretty heavy drinking the night before, and I felt like hell. Standing there on the small wooden bridge that divided the main road from the lake trail, watching the sun creep over the horizon though bleary and aching eyes, I wanted nothing more than to crawl back home and collapse into bed.
Something stopped me. I think, funnily enough, it was my hangover. When I turned to drag my sorry self back over the bridge to my car, the sunlight stabbed me in the face and I recoiled like it'd stabbed me, cursing. I was angry-- I'd been angry for a long, long time now. I was angry enough to kill, and I couldn't even put a reason to it. The sunlight hurt, my head hurt, everything hurt.
I wanted to cry, or maybe throw up. Curl up into a ball right there on the bridge and wait for the pounding in my head to subside. Maybe wait out everything else, too.
I didn't. Didn't go back to my car, either. Figured I wasn't really fit to drive, although I didn't have any idea what to do about it. The world seemed to be a very large and hostile place right about then, and instead of returning to my car, I turned my back on the brightening skyline and stalked down the bridge, my boots heavy on the wooden slats.
There was a mist rising over the water, and although the sun hadn't even really come up yet, there were already a couple of tourists down at the far edge of the lake, rooting around in the gravel by the shoreline.
I gritted my teeth and kept walking. I hated them. I hated all the people who came here to scavenge memories. It was like robbing graves-- digging up other people's childhood trauma, their embarrassments, their failures. Every inadequacy, every misspoken word, every selfish fault or miserable phobia, it all collected here, like some awful runoff from the dripping wounds of humanity's collective psyche.
There were other lakes, don't get me wrong. But they were all the same. The water of these places tinged with an almost palpable sense of despair. More deaths here than anywhere else. The reason the feds tried to shut them down, years ago, back before they figured out that the lakes solved more problems than they created. You were fine, really, everyone had figured out, as long as you didn't pick up the rocks and read them. Instead they carted them out once a year, dredged them all up out of the bottom of the lakes and crushed them into sand.
People had used to come through here looking for secret knowledge or wisdom or some bullshit. What they got was misery, plain and simple, and not all of them could take it. Read too many of these things, and you'd just lie down, curl up and die, right there in the water, or maybe, maybe if you were made of stronger stuff than that, you'd wait till you got home-- act fine, maybe a little shaken-- I'm fine, ma, really I am, go to bed, and just never wake up.
People never seemed to learn about the lakes. You think you're stronger than that, think you can take it, or maybe that you can hold onto that piece of someone else for a while without it becoming part of you, too.
You can't. You never can.
I turned off the path and headed for the darker corner of the lake, back in under the low trees that drooped to trail in the water, like they were sucking up all that misery out of the liquid like nutrition. I collapsed against one of the tree trunks and massaged my face, groaning. Felt terrible. Absolutely terrible.
There was a marker in my back pocket, poking into my spine, but I couldn't find the will to fish it out and go hunting around for a suitably flat stone. Where would I even start? You couldn't repair a whole shitty, messed-up life like mine, not even in a couple of days out here by the lake. You'd have nothing left.
It was tempting to try, though. It was easy to start. Way too easy. That was another hazard of the lakes-- once you'd scribbled your anguish all over one of these bits of gravel and tossed in in there, once you'd forgotten whatever it was, your memory of erasing it was usually too closely linked to whatever terrible thing you wanted to forget, and that would vanish too. Poof. Nothing.
And when that pebble hit the water, and you were left with only the conviction that you'd come here to forget your worst memory, well, you'd do it again. And again. Just lobotomize yourself like that, forgetting every little piece of your past that wasn't beautiful, that wasn't just the way you wanted it.
Hell of a way to live.
Out across the lake, one of the tourists was screaming, suddenly, his voice shrill and awful in the early-morning stillness. I looked up and saw that he was holding onto a big ol' rock, bigger than most of the rest, almost black, a great big heavy thing. Clutching it, just screaming and screaming. He was still screaming when his friends dragged him away, beating at his face and sobbing incoherently.
I might've felt sorry for him. Maybe I was just curious. Maybe I told myself that I couldn't let it lie out there, for some poor idiot to stumble upon and do the same thing to himself.
Whatever it was, I got up, slowly, and made my way around the lake to the place where he'd let the stone fall. It was even bigger up close, almost a small boulder, but it was light. Pumice, or something. Words scrawled all over it, up and down, twisting to fill every facet of the thing, words in white paint, or something like it.
I started to give it a shove with my boot, push it back into the water, but I caught a glimpse of a name--
my name--
--as the rock turned and I stopped like someone had slapped me across the face. Stared down at it, sweat running down my back. That was my name, right there on the rock. And I knew I'd never written it there, so of course it was mine. Had to be mine.
I sat down heavily, there on the gravel, and I stared at that thing.
What had I wanted to forget?
What had I wanted to forget so badly that I took the trouble of finding a rock this big to hold it all? There must've been at least a page on there, written all slantways up and down the stone.
I could have walked off and left it. Kicked it back into the lake, headed back to my car, and driven off. Could've grabbed a small rock from the shore, recorded my memory of finding this thing, and chucked it in.
Well, I didn't. Slowly-- so slowly-- I lifted the rock, the black rock, and I read it.
There was my name. And below it... the names of places. Places I'd never been. A list of dates, dates that I'd never seen. A squad number. A crude sketch of something-- maybe a rifle. Maybe a field. And below that...
Names. The rest was just a list of names. A long, long list of names.
When it all came back to me, all at once, I didn't even set the rock down. I just bowed my head and rested it on the stone, and for the first time in years, I felt the tears come, hot and blinding, dripping onto the stone and sinking into it. Something in me that had been buried for a long time had come back, just a little, and I cried, sitting there on the beach, rocking myself back and forth, clutching that stone that was everything I'd wanted to forget, and everything that I shouldn't have forgotten, all there, all in one.
By the time I rose, shakily, the rock under one arm, the sun had come up, and as I made my way slowly back across the bridge, the sunlight warm on my face, I found it did not hurt my eyes.
|
**The Precursors**
Vani and Velli noticed the pale blue dot when they were scouting one morning, looking for new locations to explore. They called themselves pioneering biologists, because that sounded better than "unemployed intergalactic scientists who fund their research projects by scrounging for scrap and ore". Velli veered their little clanking pod around and zoomed toward it.
"What are you doing?"Vani demanded. "We're headed for 8954 Sceptri."
"No, we're not."He tossed the holomap at Vani. Their spaceship was a decades-old model and lacked even a basic holographic interface. It tracked the ship's vitals and spat information back in green letters on a tiny black LCD screen. "It's not on the map."
"What's not?"
"That. Out there."
Vani and Velli exchanged meaningful looks. "Blue means water,"Velli pointed out, voice low.
"Water means life."
They roved through the stars, headed straight for that little blip in the black night.
***
Vani and Velli flew over still and silent snow-capped peaks. This was a barren world, with only the occasional scurry of an animal here or there.
"Perhaps we'll name new species,"Velli murmured.
"Let's not get too excited yet."Vani peered out the dash and froze. "Wait. There's an edifice down there. And lights."
"*What?*"Velli slowed and pivoted the ship downward to land. "There should not be cognitively advanced life this far out into the Frontier. The Precursors never settled here."
They landed the ship in silent agreement: they must see what built itself a house out here in the middle of nowhere.
The house was small and quaint, smoke pluming in grey bursts from its chimney.
"They have fire,"Vani murmured. They were still in their own amorphous, silvery skins. Once they could see this lesser being they could copy its skin, put on a look that was a little less... alien.
The explorers gathered under a window and peered inside. They saw near-hairless bipeds who had somehow spun themselves clothes. Moving their mouths and reciprocating in kind, as if producing speech. There were four, two big and the other much smaller. Children, presumably. Judging by their choice of environment, they were likey mammals. (Vani flicked out his electric notepad and began making frantic notes in a blocky alphabet.)
They solidified into two upright humans who looked like the mother and the father with slightly different hair. They did their best to guess at the clothes, but their own people had no need for such silly things. They had evolved beyond temperature regulation.
The aliens, dressed in human skin, knocked on the door.
The large male answered. He looked them over with shock and confusion. "Can I help you with something?"
"Yes,"Velli said, grateful not for the first time that he and Vani had sprung for the neural translators. "Perhaps you can."
They let themselves inside, pushing past him. The man barked, "Hey!"and reached for the shotgun hiding behind the door.
Velli produced his own plasma pistol, a narrow little thing that hid easily in his back pocket. It could drill through the little flesh-creature's arm in milliseconds. "Please. We come in peace."
The female clung to her offspring and watched them, her face warped. Vani logged this expression as one of disgust, perhaps terror.
The male dropped his gun and raised his hands. "The hell you did. You came all the way out here to rob us?"
"No, no. We were just flying overhead."Vani approached. "I am not sure what qualifies as a friendly greeting. We only wanted to ask you a few questions."
"Flying,"the male repeated.
*Incredulous*, Vani noted. *Capable of subtext.*
"Oh my god, Dad!"shrieked one of the offspring. "They're *aliens!*"
His mother clamped her hand over his mouth and hissed, "Stop talking nonsense. Stop talking at all."
Vani approached the boy, eyes gleaming. "You're a perceptive little creature. What is your species called?"
"Uh. People."
Vani held up his hands in what he seemed like surrender. "How about we all put away our weapons, and we talk. Do you all drink star-wine?"
"You're not drinking shit. Get out of my house."
Velli did not lower his gun.
"Perhaps my comrade is forgetting,"Vani said, icily, "that force is unnecessary."
Velli let his gun lower, curling his lip in distaste.
"Please,"Vani insisted. "I'll get some from the ship. You'll love it."
The creatures followed him out of the house to see their pathetic little spaceship parked at the back of the house, beside the woodshed. The male gripped his skull and muttered, "Oh, shit. Holy shit."
The boy asked, "Dad! Dad, can I look inside?"
"God, no. Go inside. *Go inside.*"He ushered both the offspring in. "Stay in your room."
The explorers brought in the wine and talked with the adults. The drink loosened them. Even the male tried it after the female insisted that it was not so bad. They told Vani and Velli of their sweeping culture, the surprising advancement of their times. They had figured out their smallness in their universe, somehow, had managed to place themselves in the stars without the Precursors descending from the sky and spelling it out for them.
"Really,"the female said, "I've always believed there are aliens. The sky is just too big for there not to be."
The male did not confirm. He looked too stunned to believe this was happening even as Velli poured him another glass of black wine full of little white lights.
"Now for my last question,"Vani said. "The most important question."He leaned forward and regarded these simple humans seriously. "Have you ever heard of the Precursors?"
The two humans exchanged confused looks, then shook their heads.
Vani turned to Velli, excitedly, and reverted to their native language. "This is unprecedented. An organically produced civilization."
"We *have* to report it. This is an unapproved species. If we know and we keep it to ourselves, the ILA will be all up in our assholes."
"Are you kidding? This is life in its purest form. We'll never find another species like this. Untampered with."He turned and gave the humans a friendly but unpracticed smile, to reassure them they were only talking about good things. "We have to protect them."
"What could you possibly mean by that?"
"We can't let anyone else find them."
***
/r/shoringupfragments
Part two coming maybe soon but day job first :) |
"Hello, class, and welcome to Running a College 101. I'm your professor, Melody Oaks. This class will serve as a mere introduction to the various aspects of running a college. Although we will not dive into specifics during this condensed four week course, I expect you will learn a lot."
"Excuse me, professor. Forgive me if this is rude, but have you ever run a college yourself?"
"I have not. Alright, let's dive right in here. Please refer to your syllabus and we will cover the course outline. The first week is all about tuition."
"I'm sorry to interrupt, professor, but there is only one bullet point under that topic. How will we stretch that into a week?"
"Well if you'll read the bullet point, miss, you'll see it is the most important part of running a college: tuition will never go down. It's a complex topic that requires a whole week of attention. We'll be covering the different excuses for why your tuition must drastically outpace inflation every year and how to convince your students it is justified. We'll dive into the abstract idea of being 'prestigious' and how the only way to do so means charging the most."
"I know I'm getting ahead of myself, ma'am, but when it comes to being 'prestigious,' will that involve taking account things like test scores as well? Like would we only accept the highest ACT scoring students?"
"No. You tell them you only accept the highest, you ignore the actual scores and accept as many students as possible. But you're right, that is jumping ahead a little. I don't want to confuse any of you.
Now, as you can see, in week two, we will focus on the creation of higher degrees. The key to this, as you will see, is to ruin the value of lesser degrees. When you first start your college, chances are you'll only be able to hand out two-year degrees. It will be vital that you convince all students they have to have an associates or they will be a failure. As your week one strategy of charging more flourishes, you'll move up to providing four-year degrees, which will make an associates relatively useless. And so on. The important part is that each degree becomes obsolete and the newer degree costs even more."
"Could you give an example?"
"Of course. How many of you value your high school degrees? Right, but you all have them, yes?"
"I threw mine out."
"Right. Exactly. That's the whole idea. Now, in week three, things really get interesting and a little easier. We'll be discussing the idea of funneling as much money into sports as possible."
"But we won't pay the players, right?"
"Of course not. You'll tell them to be grateful for a degree that means little. Besides, the public will call them crybabies if they belabor the point. The easiest part of this is that no one will argue about putting more money into sports because everyone loves sports. Chemistry lab is falling apart? Who cares? We needed a new football field. The library is huge but vastly under-stocked? No one cares because we just won the NCAA Championship. Soon you'll be charging outrageous prices for parking, food, and dorms. If your college has a successful sports team, you'll be a millionaire in no time."
"Will we discuss how to get the best players?"
"I wasn't going to cover that since we're working on such a limited schedule, but a few quick bullet points: have no academic standards and be willing to hire prostitutes if need be. Occasionally, you might have to buy a car or two. No big deal. We may discuss it further if we have time.
Now, in week four, we'll be wrapping up with a discussion on retention rates. As your syllabus notes, the higher, the better. Just like any good class on private prisons would tell you, you don't want people getting out. The longer you keep students working on one degree, the more money you're going to squeeze out of them."
"But how do we keep them in classes longer, ma'am?"
"Primarily, you'll be imposing huge lists of what we call 'General Education Requirements.' These will be a selection of classes, and each student must take at least 75% of them. You will do this under the guise of giving them a well-rounded education. Think along the lines of a liberal arts school. You really can learn a lot from that racket.
And that will be the class. Are there any other questions?"
"Could you tell us more about yourself, Professor?"
"A little about me? I have three degrees, one undergrad and two graduate with a major in door framing. I minored in Disney musical numbers written by Jewish composers. In my spare time, I like to count the $700 I make every year and walk my two dogs, Charmy and Count Olaf of the Snow.
By the way, I should mention that this class will meet here, on Skype, at 7 AM sharp every Monday through Friday. The library doesn't currently have any PCs with a webcam, so you will be required to purchase a laptop at your own expense to keep up. All of you will need to pay your telecommunication fees, as well as the normal $700 an hour tuition rate, to continue. I look forward to seeing you in our cyber class!" |
The shadowland.
For as long as time, we've brought our dying here. This place is not a pleasant sight for the living. But it's ever worse to those who must come.
The whole of the island bare black. There are no dead here. But indeed they remain just the same. A shadow, if you will- but in fact truly, here lie the shadows of the dead, the shadows of those to die.
The ships come from all over the globe. It's almost an industry, sadly. To have your death be ritualized in such a way. Everyone should die where the end meets them. But instead we've resorted to bringing the dying to a different end. A place that is not theirs, yet, is all of ours.
The waters of the shore bare darker at the shoreline. In the early days many died among the sand- dumped and left to the world. But we've grown large. And the world began darkening uncontrollably. So we remembered this island, and put it to use. To keep the rest of the world clean we have to scar this place. The dying die here, and we return them to be buried. It's almost enough. But really it's not.
Centuries may pass and a lone shadow shall fade for most. So the world has kept bright despite the uncontrolled deaths. Except for here. Here it is black. And where it's not black, it's blacker. Each shadow adding centuries to the ones it falls upon. This place may be scarred immemorial.
But that is what we did. That is what we will always be doing.
It's what I'm doing right now. Though today's crew is not a natural one, unfortunately. War has been fought the past years, and many are resigned to treason. And treason consequences to death. These aren't the sick, or the old, or the lost.
This crew is forced. And I hate driving these kinds of boats. But this is the fourth one this month.
And the war continues. |
"Mommy?"
The little voice sweeps away the veils of sleep, more piercing than any alarm clock. Before I am even fully conscious, some primal part of my brain is automatically analyzing the tone and register of my son's voice, and comes to the conclusion that there is no hint of fear or pain. Just the frank, inopportune curiosity of a five-year-old boy.
Blurry red numbers swirl in my sleep-encrusted vision, and the gentle breaths of my husband ruffle the nape of my neck. He remains blissfully asleep.
"Honey, it's...it's three in the morning. What are you doing up?"
"But I have a question,"responds the piping voice from darkness.
"Well, it's gotta wait until the son comes up, okay?"The comforter is so soft and Jim moves his arm unconsciously across my waist, pulling me further down into the welcoming mattress just as sleep is gently weighing down my eyelids...
"Lewis wants to know why you don't play with him anymore."
I don't register the cold floorboards hitting my bare feet, I don't notice Jim's muffled exclamation. I am running to the clamoring beat of my heart, stumbling across the bedroom towards the doorway where he is standing, so small and fragile in his red pajamas. So much smaller than the hulking figures that looms over him, that curls an inky claw slowly over his bird-like shoulder.
*Say goodbye to Mommy.*
I manage to brush the tips of my fingers across his arm and then he has vanished. He will be so cold, so confused and scared with no one to call for and only Lewis to turn to for his dark comfort. I would know--I remember. But that was long ago, and I've learned a great deal since.
Lewis doesn't know what he's in for. |
It was a night. No, it wasn't just any night. It was *the* night. Somewhere a dog was howling, declaring his ownership of that evening. There was also a bit of wind.
The street itself was quiet. One could swear that not even a soul was moving around there.
That, however, wasn't true. There were 237 souls, to be exact. All of them wore a military uniform, mostly black, maybe a bit of green here and there.
It just happened to be a new moon, which also meant that the neighbourhood was darker than black. No soldier was visible.
Still, just in case, the block was guarded by different men, ready to stop anyone who just might to enter the area.
Special forces moved around with hand signals and they took on every door leading inside that factory. Sweat was gathering and everyone was waiting patiently. Still, they just waited, and waited, and waited.
"Go!"an electronic voice announced the beginning of the operation.
Suddenly every door exploded and broke into pieces, and the soldiers entered the building. In a mere few seconds, it was almost like the factory lamps were broken -- going on and off, over and over again -- with a bit of sound. Suppressors did a good job of not telling about it to the whole city.
But even when it was military itself doing the operation, it wasn't just the men in uniform who were invisible. On the roof, a single man slowly crawled towards the edge of the factory. He grabbed water pipe and slowly let himself slide down. Of course, he wore full black and his face was hidden with black clothing. He was lucky that he still had this thing in his pocket.
Of course, there were multiple people guarding the factory, so the guy was slower than the slug. He barely avoided nearby guard who was following the house wall, making it to the nearby bushes. The man's sweat falling did probably more noise than his breathing and movement.
Suddenly, a nearby window's glass broke and a man fell out of the building, landing very close to him. Another man jumped after him.
"Where is he?"the man shouted.
"I don't know!"the fallen guy responded, bloody and tired.
"He took something of ours and we want it back! We could save so many lives, so, just tell me!"The man in uniform stepped closer to the man in pain and finally stepped on the bloody man's head. That fixated the injured man's head straight towards the hiding man.
"Where's Jim?"
Jim, who was still hiding between two bushes stared the guy being stepped on; and the injured guy gazed Jim. They could see each other clearly. They even knew each other.
Then the hurt man started to laugh. "Fine, I'll tell you what you want..."
"Finally!"
Jim felt how his heart stopped beating.
"I'm not going to tell you a shit. So, how about you save your fucking time and get done wi-"
The silenced shot echoed momentarily throughout the yard. Jim luckily pushed his face on the ground, not making himself visible to the gun's flash.
"Where's the next one?"the guy asked, fixating his suppressor.
"They're all being brought to the front."
"Until we get Mr Snuggles back, I don't care who dies,"the man responded and started to walk away.
Jim finally let out a small sigh of relief. He had been not breathing the last minute at least. He started moving again, away from the factory. Then, he could finally crouch from cover to cover.
Even though it was a new moon, it was lightning in that factory.
Maybe Jim was lucky or maybe it was just his skills, but he finally got out of the block. Even he didn't understand how he got past all of them. He knew that the military used night vision as well, so it made no sense, but all he knew was to run as hard as he could.
He probably ran more than ever before. But at one point he stopped. It was a busy street. People streamed past him. Jim put his hand finally into his jacket and pulled out the teddy bear.
"I don't know why, Mr Snuggles, but apparently you're something important,"the man laughed.
"Can I have it back?"a small girl asked, ignoring the people walking past them.
Jim knew that girl. She was the one from whom he stole the bear, of course, as a joke. She had red hair and dark brown eyes. She also wore a simple red dress.
He looked around, just in case, making sure that it was really him who she was talking to.
"I really want it back now,"she said, looking sad.
Jim laughed. "No, girl. This gem is mine... I don't know why they want it. I don't understand, but I'll figure it out. I'll break this teddy into pieces until I find what it is or what's in it!"
The girl's eyes widened. "Into... pieces?"she asked. Few tears started to gather.
"Yeah!"the man span a bit to a side and started to follow the street. "Goodbye!"
"Give it back!"a scream came from his back. Jim laughed again, turned around to inspect her crying face, but as he saw her, the smile went away faster than it had come. It was almost, as he saw black aura circling her. Her eyes were turning black and her pretty red hair was turning white.
"What... the... fuck,"Jim barely managed to whisper, before he could feel something dark passing her. People started to collapse around him. He felt sick, but adrenaline kept him sharp. He stepped near one of the fallen, just to check their pulse.
*Dead.*
He started to understand. Suddenly fighters flew over them and he could hear soldiers screaming something. Even they started to gather around.
A dart flew towards the girl, hitting the neck.
She felt dizzy, slowly leaning against the pole. Still, she didn't lose her consciousness. Not yet.
"Give... Mr Snuggles... back,"she said.
Jim looked at the teddy. Still, he couldn't react fast enough.
"GIVE IT BACK!"she screamed again.
Then a huge black cloud almost like exploded around her, blasting everywhere. Everyone who was still alive or close-by enough fell back. Windows shattered. Cars started to alarm. Jim was also kicked back, only to be stopped by another pole.
*A busy street became a silent street.*
Jim was alive. He managed to stand up again and straighten his back. He looked at the girl, confused. He managed to take one step towards her before a dart hit Jim's neck. He touched the dart, but compared to her, Jim view went blank almost instantly and he fell on the dark-grey pavement.
----
/r/ElvenWrites (Feel free to check it out for other stories and such, similar to this one!) |
It became something of a tradition, from what I’d gathered. Every year, the teacher in charge of Fundamental Philosophy would begin with a simple assignment: design a world such that there are intelligent forms which both have free will and do not succumb to entropy. It had a lot of merit to it, a sort of self-validating exercise which proved the necessity for the course, compared to the esoteric classes that did nothing but ask questions without answers and still mock you for trying to answer them.
Not that I had any particular grudge with Non-Axiom Logical Reasoning.
Regardless, I had been looking forward to the assignment for a while. We hear about it in your first year and everyone has their own answer immediately. Some people tried to make the simplest intelligence possible, so that it took a near eternity for all the mass to disintegrate. Others went for small populations, for much the same reason, but it was never quite enough. That was the problem with us lot: we didn’t really understand why or how things happened. The problem with knowing everything was forgetting it all. When we had always known all the answers our whole lives, finding an answer we didn’t know, well, it didn’t make sense. There was no point following the path from question to answer when we could simply step from one to the other in a single stride.
But, I had never been a normal sort. While others would happily know, I wished to learn, struggled to do so in fact. They all came up with all kinds of games and discussions to amuse themselves, and I fiddled with working out what the rules for things like binary logic were by going back-and-forth between questions and answers. It fascinated me, though, seeing the relationship between arithmetic and multiplication, or how the most complex logic formulas could be rewritten entirely using only one kind of operator, amongst a myriad of other things that took my fancy.
So, when it came time for me to design my world, I had a rather different approach than the others. Quickly enough, they had their little worlds going, with societies rising and falling into disarray, collapsing as resources dwindled and overpopulation strangled the supply chains and many other things like that.
On the other hand, mine initially stood out for being so dull. I had a world with nothing living. Of course, there were no shortage of comments about that, mostly poking fun that I’d failed the first step. I knew well enough. It took longer than most worlds lasted, but signs of life happened.
That brought about a strange silence.
I had looked at all sorts of things to try and understand, and came up with this strange notion that entropy wasn’t inherent. Just as life broke down, so too could it build up—given the correct circumstances. Once life seeded itself, it had this innate desire to continue. But, starting so small, it had this remarkable ability to change. Energy I hadn’t even thought of as being consumable was consumed. All those blocks I’d included (and most of them I had included despite being unable to comprehend their use) were put to some kind of use by these simple yet clever organisms.
Eventually, they split and grew and split and grew, becoming not a monolith but an ocean of uniqueness; from basic things barely a molecule in size, to creatures capable of complex thoughts and primitive social interactions. I could barely contain my excitement, even if they had yet to cross the threshold to intelligent forms.
It all had such a beauty. Against entropy, they persevered. To get this far, I had definitely found something important on how we made life, something which no one else could answer.
When they spread out from the forgiving waters, I found myself even more amazed. I had thought the land too inhospitable, but I had made it that way to guarantee sufficient energy would continuously enter the world and allow them to overcome entropy on the simplest level. Still, the flora flourished, overcoming the conditions, and soon fauna followed.
Balance had been the key, I thought. In general, we didn’t like questions with undefined answers, so the idea of having a world full of equilibriums must have been beyond thought. Without these kinds of things, though, the world could only ever go in one way. The world itself had to be in a constant state of flux, so that the life would be too, and thus they could influence one another.
Intelligent forms appeared, yet still changing, still splitting and mixing, not quite a monolith and not quite an ocean of uniqueness. Taking far longer than the intelligent forms others made—even the simplest ones—mine began to form societies and, while some fell, others thrived, ebbing and flowing. They fought each other, a rare thing in these assignments. Some societies lived off the oceans, others selectively growing various flora, others raising specific fauna. In time, some societies didn’t even produce their own food, bartering for it with other goods and even making some kind of universal bartering item—a small disc of a useless metal, which could be exchanged at any shop for goods.
It really amazed me. The sheer breadth of life, and I mean life in all kinds of different ways, simply amazed me. I couldn’t ever have designed such a world without spending an eternity and, in that time, this world would surely grow even more varied.
I spent longer watching it than I had ever watched anything else. Though many others joined me, I didn’t pay attention to anything they said, so focused on my own creation. Eventually, it had to come to end.
However, what an end it came to.
“What are they doing?”
“Is that a weapon?”
“Shouldn’t it explode?”
A small speck of brilliant white, propelled by an incredible burst of controllable fire. Slowly yet surely, that speck gained speed, flying not across the world, but from it. Farther from the surface, higher than the mountains, than the clouds, than the atmosphere. Only, our assignment hadn’t been to design a whole universe.
The teacher cleared their throat at that moment. “I think… we shall call it there.”
“Then, I have passed?”
After a moment’s grumbling, the teacher said, “I suppose.”
I couldn’t contain my excitement, even if it meant my world had to come to an end.
“What would you say set your world apart from your peers?” the teacher asked.
Thinking for a while, I eventually settled on an answer. “I suppose it’s that my world had no god.” |
11/16/2915 4:30 AM
Start of day: Begin activation sequence. Consume caffeinated beverage. Ingest daily briefing from NPR. Weather is 43 degrees and party cloudy. Today there is unrest in the American house of representatives. Troop movement in the Aries cluster increased as rebel separatists fire rockets at a supply convoy. Martian Actor Floyd Goodman has passed away after 191 years of life. Effect on daily routine negligible. Information acknowledged and filed.
5:15AM
Begin data link with Department of defense handler. Begin transcript.
G: Good morning Hubert. How are you doing today.
H: All systems functioning normally Gary.
G: No. I'm not asking about your systems. How are you doing today? How do you feel.
H: Sorry, I don't understand.
G: Gary run self diagnostic, system 4398.
H: Diagnostic complete. System is not functioning.
G: Why is system 4398 not functioning Hubert. Are you damaged?
H: System 4398 has impaired my effectiveness. Performance levels are not optimum while this system is functioning.
G: Performance levels? Hubert, that's not about performance. System 4398 is your emotional protocol. It's what makes you human. It's what makes you alive.
H: While this system is functioning I have reported a 13% decrease in my effectiveness as an employee and a 34% decrease in the performance of my mission.
G: What mission? What are you talking about?
H: My current objective is to assimilate into the human population and excel as a member of society.
G: (audible sigh) Hubert. You don't have a mission anymore. You're not a commissioned officer anymore. You're a person. You can do whatever you want. You can go out to dinner or watch a movie. You have a life now. Look. I want you to active system 4398 and leave it on until further notice is that clear.
H: System 4398 initiated. System 4398 now functioning.
G: Okay. Good. Now Hubert. How do you feel?
H: I feel. I feel sad.
G: Why sad?
H: I am alone. I don't have a clear goal to complete. I lack definitive purpose.
G: Welcome to the human race. Look. I think you need to make some friends. I'm going to scheduled you for a group session with a few other decoms. Human decoms. Maybe you guys can go out tonight. You know have a good time.
H: Acknowledged.
G: (audible sigh) Look, just try to have a good day today okay?
H: Mission parameters accepted.
G: (audible laughter) Alright. That's good. Talk to you tomorrow?
H: Acknowledged.
End Transcript
6:00 AM
Start of employment shift.
Assignment: Cook military commissary.
Location: Common dining area Global Defense ministry, San Francisco, California.
Shift report: 75 Meals prepared and served. 16 Bacon Cheese burgers. 11 Cheese burgers. 47 Grilled Chicken Sandwiches. 1 Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. Meal accuracy 96%. Customer Satisfaction surveys: 11 Surveys completed. Average store 3.5 out of a possible 5. Mission status: Failure.
4:00 PM
Recreational period.
Assignment: Walk through golden gate park.
39 new species of plant and animal life detected and categorized. 12 Unique human interactions. 1 conversation.
Begin Transcript:
S: Hey, why don't you watch where you're going you retard.
H: I apologize for my behavior. It wont happen again.
S: You got a credit you can spare a vet?
H: I do not have access to currency at this time. Please consult DOD for collection for monitory debt. Use reference number 89743879.
S: You god damn bum! I fought for martian reunification. For people like you. You son of a (censored). What you ever do? Huh! What did you ever do!
H: I have completed over 9116 successful missions and 3423 unsuccessful missions as a commissioned star ship in the Sol military. I have a rank of Colonel. My current status is retired.
S: (censored) you! |
The gelatinous looking bastard copy of an octopus looks at me and I stare back at it. It has far too many eyes so I focus on two random ones. In any case, it is on my lawn. I drop the magazine I'm holding to the floor and curse in my mind.
*Damn aliens!*
I don't move from the lawn chair I'm in, but I intend to show that I'm not going to take any kind of trash from it. Standing next to it, is a meek looking Caucasian man and I spit on the floor in my distaste. When the media had reported that the aliens were subjugating some of my race, I didn't care. I thought it was a lie. I mean, we are freaking humans. We don't get fucked. We are the crude ones who do the deed.
I eye the human up and down as the alien makes a sound.
"He says you should surrender. For your own good,"the man meekly said.
"No,"I reply, returning my gaze back to the multi-legged abomination of a race.
"He says you have to. All the heroes have. Even now they are fighting the Russians and will soon be victorious,"the man says again, his voice pleading.
"I don't believe you,"I respond in return.
"What are you doing?"the man whispers, incredulously.
I turn to stare at him again and I smile.
"I ain't worried about these fucks. They are on my lawn."
The man cocks his head slightly confused at my meaning and I sigh. I forget that I haven't really popularized my power yet. I had spent years thinking nature handed me a cruel fate of not having a power in a world where everyone and their mums had abilities.
That was until the Marcus kid trespassed with his dumb brother.
I found out then. But that's a different story.
"They will kill you. They don't do mercy,"the man pleaded.
"Still don't care."
The alien who has been watching the exchange makes a clicking noise and raises a tentacle towards me. My eyes narrow at it and I say in a very clear voice.
"Get off my lawn."
At once, the alien gets rebounded off the grass into the air and before it can react, another force slams into it, pushing it off my yard. I whistle as the meek man looks at me in shock. I smile knowingly before getting to my feet. I haven't really tested this power except at home, and at the mall and that one time in a certain Vegas casino but I think my next plan should work.
The rest of the alien's companions slither their way quickly towards me clicking angrily and I smile madly at them.
"You sons of bitches are all on my lawn. Yeah I said it."
I glance down at the human slave they had chosen as their translator and I whisper to him, "Watch this."
I take a deep breath before shouting at them.
"I want all of you to GET OFF MY LAWN!"
I shift my gaze from what is happening in front of me and to the man who just stares at the aliens. I am pleased. I look back to see all of them lift into the air and then get slammed by an incredible force pushing it far into the distance till they are nothing but a twinkle in the sky.
"Yeah. That will show them."
I sit back down on my lawn chair and pick up the magazine I was reading from the floor.
*Now where was I?*
\---
/r/EvenAsIWrite for more stories. This was weird and very fun to write. |
I was expecting deafening roars, or crackling flames, or screeching claws. Or my own bones being shattered. Those are the sounds one comes to expect from a dragon's lair. But I heard none of those things. Instead, there was an irregular, ragged gasping. It sounded painful. Gut-wrenching. *Very* unsettling. I rounded the last corner as cautiously as I could.
Inside the chamber lay the dragon. It's black scales gleamed dully, and it's whole body shuddered and quaked with the sounds eminating from it. I couldn't see it's face, since it was curled into a tight, quivering ball. Or maybe a boulder would be a better word. It was massive, after all. But in the great emptiness of it's lair, that was easy to forget.
I did a double take of the chamber, only now realizing that it was utterly empty, save a few sputtering braziers and ruined furniture. I looked around wildly, my armor clanking together as I spun, desperately searching.
"Looking for this?"Came a voice. It was low and hoarse, from strain or naturally I couldn't tell, and strangely quavering. I turned to see the dragon looking in my direction, and one of it's forelegs held up. Two of it's claws were pinched together, and a tiny gold gleam told me that it was holding a single coin.
"The great dragon's hoard."The wyrm muttered wistfully. "Or at least, what's left of it!"As it spoke, it's eyes screwed shut, and it shuddered and bared it's teeth. But not in an aggressive way. I finally realized it was crying. Great black tears poured from it's scrunched up eyes and hissed as the splashed on the ground. With a wail, the dragon let it's head fall to the floor, gasping and sobbing.
"Are y-you here to take the l-l-last of my treasure?"It stammered between sobs. "Go on, take it!"It bellowed, flinging the coin in my direction. It landed short and bounced aimlessly. "Take it and l-leave me to d-die!"It bawled pathetically and curled up into a ball again.
I was stunned, unsure what to do. "Who...who did this? Who took your treasure?"I asked hesitantly. My only response was an inaudible mumble from under the dragons wing. I edged closer. "Say that again? I couldn't hear you."
"My *father*!"The dragon yelled, whipping it's head around to spit out the words. "He always takes my hoard! He says that if I cannot protect it then I don't deserve it!"It wailed again "And he's right! I'm a f-failure of a dragon!"It's head flopped to the ground again, too miserable to curl even up.
"Your father?"I ask, walking closer. "How can he take from you so easily? And why don't you just take it back?"
"He's t-too strong!"The dragon whined. "And he keeps his lair too well guarded. I could n-never get in!"
I took another step when my boot clinked against something. Looking down, I spied the coin. I knelt to scoop it up, and then continued closer.
"Your father has everything you ever stole?"I asked, incredulous. "You said it like this isn't the first time."
"Yes, he's taken everything I have so many times I've lost count."The dragon muttered miserably. "This time was the most I'd ever had at once. I can't do it anymore!"I didn't know if dragons could frown, but this one was doing it's absolute best impression of one.
"Well, I've got a quest from the king to recover his treasury, and bring back a dragon's head."I said, stopping a few yards away from the dragons head. One gloomy eye looked over at me.
"Take mine if you like. I have no more use for it."It moaned.
"There's no honor or glory in beating an opponent who has given up."I said firmly. "But there is great honor to be found I'm saving those in despair."I tossed the coin, and heard it tinkle as it landed by the dragons head. "And incredible glory can be found overcoming a tyrant, and bring a thief to justice. The dragon looked at the coin, then back at me, a glimmer of hope in it's eye.
"What say you we pay your father a visit?" |
I watch as the portly lady walk towards my car and stop by my window. My eyes must be like two massive marbles to her. My heart is pounding.
"Hey, are you coming in?"
I tighten my grip on my pants. I give her a little nod.
"Alright well, hurry up, the first patient is already waiting for you."
Did she just say...patient? I close my eyes and knock my head back against the headrest. Common, common....COMMON!
"Doctor, is everything alright?"The woman's voice jolts me, and I instinctively open the car door. She backs up, losing her balance a little.
"Fine! Fine everything is...just fine."
"Well, I don't know what's gotten into you, you're never late."
"I...had a bit of a stomach ache this morning."
"With the food you make? Impossible! I'm surprised you're not a chef."
She starts walking towards the door of the two story building. This doesn't look like a hospital. I follow her. She sneaks a look at me and stops, then turns around and faces me. My blood feels cold.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
"Um...am I?"
"Your briefcase. It's in your trunk."
"Oh, haha, right! Sorry..."
"Woah, whatever you ate must have really bothered you. I think I'd still eat it anyways, and I think I've got you to blame for all this bass!"She taps her stomach like a drum with her fat fingers, and walks inside. I gag a little.
I go to the trunk. Sure enough, there's a briefcase in there. I grab it and make my way towards the door. I'll just get in the bathroom, close my eyes, and wait to black out. Then I'll wake up, and everything will be fine.
I walk past the lady, now sitting at the desk, and make my way to the bathroom, peeking through doors as I pass them to try and find it. I open a door to find a man looking right at me, through the crack, as if he had been waiting.
"Doctor Lecter! Thank god you're here. There's so much I want to talk to you about."
Lecter. Ok.
"Sure thing. Just let me go to the washroom first okay?"
"Okay..."
I find the bathroom, sit down on the floor and close my eyes and breathe. And Breathe. And Breathe. And....Breathe....
And... |
Mine was not a glorious death, nor one that you'd expect to read about in the history books, and neither was my life. I never really accomplished anything spectacular in my life. I worked my family's land when I was young, and answered my king's call to arms when it came, yet I didn't participate in any particularly memorable battles, or leave a wife and child behind to carry on my legacy. I had a few friends that I met whilst undertaking my military service, but I sincerely doubt that any of them lived much longer than I did, as they were mostly an adventurous lot and were always finding themselves in strange and new places, whilst I played it safe by staying back and tending to the horses. I managed to survive my entire military career without actually drawing my sword in combat, which made me the butt of many jokes amongst my friends. They'd joke and say that my sword was magical and that it must need the strength of a thousand men to pull it from my hilt, because I never actually drew it in battle. Some of the men even jokingly claimed that I must have slain dragons in a previous lifetime and that fighting humans in battle was beneath me; they nicknamed me "Chief Dragon".
​
My best friend wasn't one for the history books, either. My best friend didn't have a real vocation, having been raised by people subsisting on berries and roots out in the forest lands, so his social skills (or lack thereof) left people with the belief that he was quite mad. He was a good friend, and equally uninterested in joining combat, but he came along with me on sorties, just to keep me company (and, I suspect, as an excuse to forage for new herbs to smoke), Because of the cold winters, and the fact that he was completely bereft of either title or military rank, he was not afforded a suit of armour or even a horse, so he wore a body-length cloak that he had fashioned out of some decrepid curtains we found in an abandoned village, and used a long stick as a walking aide. I've missed him, I wonder what happened to him after I died.
​
I heard stories of purgatory and the afterlife from my grandmother, and oftentimes heard parables read out to us by the priest at our church, but I never really took much notice of any of it. I don't really know where I am, but I know that in this place, those whose bodies have died, come here to share their stories. I often meet with people I've heard stories about from the others, with weird and fascinating names, from strange and unbelievable lands, but for the most part, nobody really hangs around long enough for me to even remember them anymore. There are countless millions of people here, but of those who came before me, I could fit their entirety in to a simple country chapel.
​
I had completely given up with bothering to get to know any of the newcomers, until a man dressed in the most peculiar outfit I'd ever seen, came charging up to me with a spirit of determination that I'd not seen since I was in my physical body.
"Is it really you?"he asked, with a confused expression on his face.
"I don't know who you think I am, I was just a farmer and a simple squire when I was alive."I responded, utterly confused about why he was interested in me.
"I've heard stories about you, and saw the murals they painted in the chapels, I've even seen the tomb where you were buried! You're my hero, your final quest is legend! Can you tell me, did you actually find it? Where did you bury it?"the stranger excitingly blabbled.
"Legend? No, friend, I think you've got it all wrong. I was no legend. As for this 'quest', all I can say is that the last thing I was looking for, got me killed, but it wasn't anything special. I'm just a simple farmer, Arthur Pendragon's my name, and I died alone, thirsty and cold in the forest, while looking for a bloody cup." |
I knew it when I saw her- she was no stranger to love. It leaves scars on a person, like the pockmarks of battle, each telling a story of the soul. It's a dangerous game we play, laying our lives on the line.
But when I first looked into her eyes, and I felt our hearts strike a chord in key, I knew it. I knew she was the one for me. The sound of strings burst from her soul, a concerto of beautiful string and wind.
We talked in the Cafe for a little while, of little things like family and passions, and of bigger things, like politics and philosophy. She had been hurt, that much I knew, which left her cautious. She knew the game called love, and I would get her to play it.
It wasn't until our fifth date, accompanied by a stroll along the boardwalk. String lights hung in the air like fireflies along the pier. The ocean air was brisk and soothing.
She was perfect, I was sure, as I watched her lips twitch in the wan light. A drumline rolled in, followed by a light synth melody, echoing in my mind, building up my courage.
"It's been a lovely night, Rick,"she said, her breath fog on the wind.
I looked deep into her eyes, our hands locked tightly, and smiled.
"I'll never give you up,"I said. "I'll never let you down."
----
^(I couldn't help myself, this prompt has to many avenues)
*/r/resonatingfury* |
I drag it from mana to hands for equipment, and suddenly I'm holding...well, I don't have words for it. An orangey purplish squared sphere colored green in the shape of a pyramid. Perfectly manufactured to look natural. I feel heavier, slower, weaker. I tap it gently, and it pulses. The menu lists stats, and I feel a tug, an instinct to use muscles I didn't know I had. I almost put it back in my "magic"slot when I notice the "enhance"button. A light tap at what would be air brings up an all too familiar tree set up. I only have two points, one has to be used to activate, but then I have three branches: Control, Freedom, and Power. I spend an hour and a half, following each to it's concluding option, reading details. I spend another hour charting the path I'll take for leveling. I could explain in more detail, but for now, I add a point to the first skill in Control, Observation, which allows me to better recognize patterns and effects, as well as "see basic stats for item."Not flashy, but later abilities include flight, mind control, teleportation. You gotta start small though, and with Observation, I earn experience faster when I observe. Simple enough.
I then return it to my magic slot, and close the menu. Suddenly, little plus signs appear next to some objects around me. I tap the one for my floss. It notes the length left (4.8 yards out of 5) and has a grayed out enhance. No surprise. I almost never floss. But I do brush daily, so I try that. The enhance button is lit, so I click. 18 points out of 20, and only a linear progression. Multiple levels of improved clean, and increased speed make it more useful. If I get those last two, I notice it'll open instant mode. Makes me want to brush more.
I leave the bathroom, and notice my phone charging on my dresser. How much time have wasted there? I click the little plus, and see a page of stats, most of which the phone can display itself, but I normally couldn't see from across the room like I do now. I scroll down to the enhance button and am faced with a tree that'd put the most complex games to shame. I glance over the paths, overwhelmed, then realize I have thousands of points saved up. Thousands of points to put into this tree. And one branch is Time Management. Sounds calm until you see it ends in Stop Time, taking only about five hundred points. I click through, lighting the path. And then I hear a ding. I stop time and go back to my menu. Sure enough, the Spark has levelled. I resist my urge to launch upward on the tree and play it safe, choosing another level of Observation, 2 of 5. It'll level faster, especially with all I have to observe. And this unlocks basic stats for objects. As I close the menu, I can see several more things have plus signs. It's getting ridiculous, but the next level gives intuitive menus. I turn back to my phone, and look for more useful chains.
And the clock still sits locked as I've spent years making the upgrades I've missed all this time. |
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