0
1
1 + (1) = 1.5
1 + 1 = 2
1 + (1 + 1) = 2.5
1 + 1 + 1 = 3
3 – 1 = 2
2 -1 = 1
1
0
Monthly Archives: May 2016
Connections
She clicks the notifications as they appear on Facebook, liking, commenting and sharing items that catch her interest.
But her interest is spread.
She is scrolling 9gag’s hot page in the background with half of an eye on it. SoundCloud is playing through a mix by some DJ she has seen has a lot of follows. Twitter is trending #TGIF.
On LinkedIn, an ex-colleague sent her a request. She accepts it and checks out it his profile. What was his wife’s name again? He has moved jobs. It is a downgrade from his last one, but the town he lives in on the east coast looks nice.
An email appears in her Outlook. She flicks back to this screen. She had forgotten she even had email. How antiquated!
It is a customer query. She sends the standard response and then flicks back to check what has changed on Facebook.
Her friend is pregnant. She likes it before scrolling down. Another friends mother has passed away. She writes how sorry she is.
And then scrolls further.
Pictures. Selfies. Group photos. Check-ins. Status updates. Shares. Appeals for help and random jokes based on memes that by definition are now a cliche.
Boredom gnaws at her like cancer.
Twitter notifies her on an incoming tweet. She sees that a boy she likes–or, at least, a profile picture that she thinks is hot–is now following her. The incoming tweet is another account; it is a bot spamming her with a dodgy link. She blocks it. She tweets at the boy. He retweets her but does not reply.
She sighs.
If only she had some friends and was not so lonely. If only she had somewhere to go and something to do tonight. If only that beautiful boy in the profile picture would notice her profile picture.
If only she had someone to communicate with.
Elephant Eyes
The great bull elephant stands majestically in the hot African sun. Crackling, buzzing bush surrounds it as a ragged mountain range fills the backdrop beyond the dry vegetation and the rolling savanna.
Slowly the gigantic beast lifts its head and its thick trunk snakes out to delicately curl around the leaves of a nearby Acacia tree, plucking the leaves and politely slipping the bundle into its mouth.
The beast’s great grey hide is cracked and aged from the harsh African sun, some mud splatters on one side from its last trip to a nearby river. Coarse hair juts out from all over it’s hide and two large, white tusks curve elegantly from either side of its mouth.
Its large ears lazily move back and forth, perhaps to cool it down, to chase away the insistent, endless insects or perhaps both. It is a slow, steady action, almost cathartic in nature.
The bull elephant appears deep in thought as it slowly chews the leaves in its mouth and reaches out with its trunk to the tree for more.
Somewhere a lion roars and something else shrieks. A vulture drifts over far above this world, barely a black dot in the sky. The buzzing of the countless bush insects seems to collectively shift up in pitch and intensity, almost like the whole of the Savanna was singing some song that only they knew.
I peer through the lens at this scene. The zoom shows almost every detail of the elephant. The three nicks in its left ear from playing as a calf around thorn trees. The scar down its front leg where a lioness caught it unaware as a young adult, and the cracks and weathering on its great, valuable tusks from decades of living in this unforgiving Eden on a dusty continent.
And then the elephant looks at me.
It looks at me with those immense, eyelashed eyes with a warmth emanating outwards from a vast, hidden depth there. I can suddenly feel its soul, and feel the line of elephants that came before this one, trailing back to the very beginnings of this great savanna. We will never understand what wonders this ancient being and its kind have seen and whisper to each other across the ages on this old, sacred grassland.
It looks at me, and it looks through me and sees me.
The elephant knows I am there. It always did. It is not running away, nor is it fighting.
It accepts and forgives. It loves. But, mostly, it just feels sad. It feels sorry for me.
I cannot do this anymore.
I take my eye off the sights and hand the gun back to the ranger.
“Let’s go home,” I mumble, “let’s just go home.”
Click
Panting, he collapses in a chair. Deep, ragged, gasping breaks the silence of the dimly lit room as he struggles to catch his breath. He rubs the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed. Absentmindedly, he reaches out and grasps the TV remote.
Click.
“–and in other news tonight, you will not be–”
Click.
“–forgotten? They’re lost inside yooouur memoryyyy–”
Click.
“–where you killed them! Didn’t you? I know it was you–”
Click.
“And folks, we have a special announcement tonight. We have a wonderful–”
Click.
“–problem. Tough dirt, gritty slime and blood stains; no problem. We have the solution, because–”
Click.
“–the assailant appears to have fled the scene on foot taking his firearm with him. The victim is in a critical condition after what appears to have been a mugging gone wrong–no, wait, we’re just getting news in that the victim has died en route to the hospital. This mugging-gone-wrong takes a dark turn as the victim, a local hero and charity worker has died before reaching the hospital from an apparent shot to the chest during a struggle. Local police have noted that a witness from the nearby park has given a precursor identification of the perpetrator–”
Click, and the TV screen flickers off.
The room, briefly filled with the electric dancing lights of its screen returns to its dimly lit previous state.
He leans forward in the chair, heart pounding in his chest. His palms are sweaty. He lifts the gun from where he put it beside him on the table. The metal is cool to the touch. It still smells faintly like gunpowder and death. He slowly turns it around on himself and stares down the cold, dark barrel.
Click.
Criminal Stuck Record
“I didn’t. Did you?”
“No, I thought you did–”
“Well, I didn’t because I thought you did.”
“Well, I didn’t either, so we’re fucked.”
“Fuck!”
“It’s no use now. Seriously, what are we going to do? We only had this single window to slip in here before they moved the prototype.”
“Well, why don’t we just press it and find out?”
“Um…”
“Come on, let’s press it. It can’t make things worse? It just resets our timeline by a couple of minutes. We should be outside back then. You can then hopefully remember to bring the right tools to steal it and we won’t be here wasting our time then.”
“Ah… Sure, um, ok, I suppose that makes sense. Can’t be much harm in doing that.”
“Good, then–”
“Wait! Just want to run through it again before you press it…”
“OK.”
“When you activate the time travel device, we pop back some thirty minutes to when we were en route to this facility. You pop off to get the correct anti-gravity mobile chamber that we can carry this fragile thing in. Then when we reach the facility and we can successfully rob it? Right?”
“Yes.”
“OK… Hit it!”
Click.
To read what happens next, click here.
Running
The gravel crunched under his feet as he ran. Each impact was heavier than the last. His breath came in desperate, reaching gasps that roared in his ears. The air felt like fire in his lungs. Despite each breath filling them to capacity, his lungs felt empty of oxygen and filled with fire that ran down to the lead in his weary legs.
Each step was harder than the last. Each breath more excruciating than the last. Each movement driven by sheer willpower pushing against the wall of pain. And so he kept going for what seemed like the entirety of existence.
He had to keep going.
Everything was quiet around him, except for the repetitive crunch of his feet on the road and his breathing in his ears. Everything was silent in the half-light, the Sun’s rays barely made it over the horizon and the sky was mostly dark.
But, far away, somewhere, somehow, there was something out there. A shapeless, formless horror was hunting him. Old and dark and deadly. It slithered and stalked and stank. It was tireless and endless in its pursuit, but he could run. He could keep moving. He had to keep moving.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch…
He opened his eyes. The light from the crack in his curtain cut into his eyes and he blinked. Pushing himself partly up he glanced at the time beside his bed and groaned.
“That can’t be the time already,” he sighed, sitting up in bed and swinging his feet to the floor, “God, I’m tired! It feels like I’ve just ran a goddamn marathon!”
Secret Recipes
Deep inside a dark forest, hidden at the end of a secret path lies a little house all covered in ancient vines and cast in the shade of a large mushroom. Inside this mysterious dwelling, lives a little old lady, whose actual age is only known by the stars and things that move without a sound under the moonlight.
There are many candles flickering inside the house. The candles’ sputtering wicks cast dancing shadows all over the eerie interior of the room. A strong, knee-quivering smoke swirls through the air in this dark room, as the little old lady leans menacingly over a large, black pot that is quietly bubbling over smouldering coals.
“And a pinch more of the Tears of the Sea,” she rasps to herself, reaching across the table for some powder that she sprinkles into the cauldron. The cauldron bubbles contentedly in answer to her, its thick smoke swirling from its clinging embrace to dance through the dark room.
She stirs it thrice and leans forward, breathing deeply.
“Aaah, yes,” her cackling continues, “more Dust of the Desert Fire, definitely more Desert Fire…”
She grabs for a blood red powder and casts a healthy spoonful of it into the concoction bubbling just below her warty, wrinkled nose. She stirs the thick goop bubbling there with an ancient old spoon as the red powder becomes part of the mixture.
Suddenly there is a loud knock on her front door, sending candles flickering and shadows dancing across the dark room.
She turns and smiles, though across her wrinkled, aged face it is hard to tell if it is menacing or not. She gives her cauldron a final stir before grabbing an old, gnarled walking stick and hobbling to the door to open it.
On the other side is standing a fair, young lady. Her pale skin emphasises her blue eyes and dark hair, framed by a beautiful, ornate dress and flowing overcoat. She cover eyes as the sharp smoke blows out of the dark room into the night beyond, and she coughs as she breaths some of it in.
The old hag’s face cracks into a smile.
“Come in dear, come in dear,” she cackles, “the curry is almost finished cooking.”
Windows
Across the street lay a house. In that house was a window. In that window was a girl. And that girl spent long hours looking out at the world from her window.
On the other side of the street was another house. It also had a window. In that window was a boy. He also spent long hours looking out from his window. But, he spent most of these long hours looking out from his window and into the window across the street with the girl in it.
Then one day he went and knocked on the door in the house across the street.
The girl opened it and they both smiled.
Stars were birthed and universes formed in rolling cosmic thunder that echoes great, booming heartbeats. The great tides of the world lifted and rose like great lungs sucking in life. And the boy and girl kissed under a full moon on a warm summer night.
Years later they got married. The girl, who was now a woman, gave birth to a beautiful boy and they lived as a happy family for many years. Yes, there were fights. Yes, like anyone else, occasionally there was crying. But, for the most part, that man and that woman and their little boy lived happy.
But one day the baby boy, who was now a young man, moved out and into the big wide world.
Time passed and the woman and her husband grew old.
Stars cooled down as entropy spread chill through universes that began to forget the cosmic thunder and the dimming echoes of a heartbeat. The tides of the world lifted just a little less each time that rose against the shores. The air was getting dark and quiet.
Then one day the old man passed away. And, after the funeral, after the tears, and after all the family and friends had left, the old woman sat all alone in her old house looking out from her old window.
She would spend many hours looking out from that window rubbing her old, tired hands. She would spend many hours looking out that window thinking of that little boy who so many years ago knocked on her door.
But then one day there was no one in that window in that house on that street. One day it was empty and neither filled with longing nor happiness nor sadness. One day it was just quiet, the cosmic thunder and the tides had all gone out with the old woman.
And somewhere, somehow out there, the old man heard a knock on his door. He opened it. The old woman was standing there and they both smiled.
Silhouettes
Soft red hair complimented the sunlight shimmering across her subtle frame with a fragrance like sweet roses. And I remember the time we were kicked out of as cinema. We ran away laughing on a hot summers night and ate cold ice-cream on the lonely midnight shore.
The oceans rolled back and forth. The waves broke and reformed. The stars above were countless, like a jewelled blanket hiding us in the night.
We made love in the starlight, pushing shapes into the soft beach sand.
She would make my coffee in the mornings and complain, jokingly, about how I had no sugar or milk in it. I laughed at her and would chide her for the amount of tea she drank.
And we would both laugh about the tequila the night before. We would both swear we would never drink that poison again. We would both laugh at this, knowing it was untrue.
The bitter black coffee in my cup would stare up at me. Lapping back and forth as I sipped it, bringing my consciousness out of the soft morning shine and into the waking world.
And then we would make love, penetrated by the shy morning sunlight that pierced the gaps in our curtains. Our forms being one, breaking and reforming.
A black crow looked down on me that night. The moonlight did not glimmer in silver but whispered of darkness.
I remember meeting her parents. The distance and awkwardness as I saw older, critical people sitting across from us. Questions and shouting broke out, but they did not reform. I suddenly saw what she–what we–would be like in the future. It was dark and unloving with little starlight and no jokes. They were all shouting and she was crying, and so we left.
The car drove and drove. The streetlamps became stars shooting past us as the road was the fate of those upon it. And we were the road.
We stopped on a cliff overlooking the ocean. We stopped and, in silence, looked at the stars dancing on the waves of the midnight ocean.
They were rolling back and forth, breaking and reforming.
And we made a tearful love in that car. Her salty tears mingling with my mouth, as I held her quivering form against the cold leather seat and the moonlight played across her pale breasts.
The sun rose, as those days all did. It rolled back and forth, breaking on the shores of memory and reforming against the silhouette of daily life.
And then the silhouette became a shadow.
The shadow became a darkness. What did we have to look forward to? But I could not let her go or let someone else take her. No. But I did come up with a plan to save her from the barrenness of inevitability.
I still miss her, though.
Sometimes I wish I had never killed her.
I Don’t Want It Anymore
“It’s all gone wrong and I don’t want it anymore.”
The speaker is a well-dressed gentleman standing before me. While it is hard to tell his age, he is certainly not young. Yet, somehow, this enhances his sharply chiselled features and clear sky-blue eyes.
He is a leader with vision, but right now he is sad. Depressed even.
“But you made it?” I begin, not quite sure where I am going with this, “You made it in your own reflection, how can you discard it? And do what afterwards? Build another one? Mope around and feeling sorry for yourself?”
He sighs and casts his gaze away from me.
Below us the sun is rising over the Atlantic and the crisp, clear shrieks from seagulls can be heard. I can smell the salt in the air and I imagine all the sleeping people beginning stirring in their beds as the morning rush of daily life begins again.
“You know, I never really had a plan for it? I just kinda wanted to put it all together and see what it would look it. Perhaps I was just fighting the same boredom that we all fight?”
I nod.
He is right. Sometimes the boredom itself can stretch out longer than all of time and you will do anything just to take your mind off it. Anything. That is our real curse, though few know it.
“I know it’s got flaws. I know so better than most…” I linger and then shake my head and continue, “But there really are some beautiful angles to look at it from. Surely you see that? There are redeeming features in all of them and such unique stories to tell too.”
“Beautiful angles? Redeeming features? Unique stories? They have so few of them that one has to ask whether it is really worth saving all of it just for them?”
It is my turn to sigh. He has a point. How do you save just the good parts when they exist in parallel with the bad?
“Well, if I cannot change your mind, why not just give it to me?” I mumble, half-heartedly.
His gaze snaps back to me. I can see him thinking.
And then he shrugs and turns to walk away.
“Sure, you can have it, Lucifer.”
And then God walked away from the world of man.
Infinite Dreams
What if I told you that it was all true?
Everything.
What if every thought you ever had was true? What if every screaming fanatic’s religious belief was true? What if every twisted scientist’s theory was true? What if every dark murderer’s fantasy was true? Every hazy daydream, every fleeting prose, every miserably morbid thought, every optimistic hope…
All true.
Everything.
What if every being’s thoughts are the seed that births another universe? A parallel thought to the universe from whence it came. What if our universe was birthed by the thought of some distant other being that became our omnipresent god.
As our thoughts made us the gods of other universes.
How long does a thought last? If you dreamt of infinity, would you ever awaken from it? Well, you might, but the dream itself would feel like it went on for infinity. And, if felt like it went on for infinity, then it did.
There is no difference between perception and reality.
A reality is built on a three dimension scale with space on the one axis, time on the other and thought on the final one.
The thought that birthed our universe has not ended yet, but our thought birthing other universes that spin within that one. A dreamer dreaming of a dreamer dreaming of infinity that dreams of the dreamer dreaming…
What if I told you that it was all true?
What if I told you that I could prove it?
What if I told you that I did prove it…
For, if in this cocooned fleeting existence you think of the answer, it is the answer. The thought is the proof of the thought and we are the gods that drift lazily over oceans of existence birthing whole universes on pure whimsical impulse.
Who exists between the dreamer and dream? Perhaps both. While the one awakens from the other, the other’s existence overrules that of the former for the brief length of its existence.
Ssshhh…
I am about to awaken and this dream will end. Soon the universe in which you are reading this will no longer exist, but mine will. And mine will exist until our dreamer that dreamt us awakens from his dream.
How long is a thought?
Such a question misses the beauty of perspective, for surely, it is more important that a thought and a dream existed than for how long it did so?
My eyelids are flickering. Good morning! I am leaving. The light will strike me through the curtains as my mother lets the daylight in or my alarm clock goes off or the dogs next door start barking or the farmyard cock begins to crow… Maybe a plane will fly over or soldiers will attack our trenches? Who knows what is left for me outside of this dream, but right now—
Right here.
In this dream.
Now.
You are beautiful.
You are beautiful and I want you to know that. This room is beautiful, this place, this time, space and thought… The gold of the light above and the blue of endless skies hold you and carry you to the heights of infinity.
Infinity!
I… I must go.
Honey, wake up…
Just—just, if you want me, if you want to live again, just think of—
The Old Monastery
“The leaf falls but once to the ground,” the old monk said slowly, picking his words as he cast his gaze across his students. They all sat cross-legged on the floor before him, their orange robes and shaved heads blurring into one attentive crowd.
Later that year one of his students would die in training, a snapped spine rupturing. No amount of chi or sweet-smelling smoke could save the child. They were all orphans here, so there was no family to send his body back to. So they mixed the ashes into the walls of the new monastery wing that they were building. This was like they had always done and, briefly, some of the students wondered how many people’s ashes were mixed into the walls around them.
One of the students actually asked the old monk about this. The old monk just smiled and said: “A leaf falls but once to the ground.”
But it was a place of love and kindness, and all the orphans that came were taken in, cared for, schooled and made the family.
Unfortunately, the rest of the lands were not so kind. Civil war flared up as clans vied for power, innocents falling amidst the clashes. Some clans even began attacking villagers, targeting places of safety in other clan territories.
And then vicious mercenaries and a hardened army were outside the monastery walls. They had death in their hearts and blood on their mind.
The old monk called all the children together. They sat down one last time, the shaved heads and orange robes made a beautiful flower before the old monk and he smiled.
“The leaf falls but once to the ground,” the old monk started, “but on the ground, it does not disappear. Being separated from the tree does not make it less of a leaf. Rather the leaf becomes one with the ground from which the next tree and the next thousand trees grow from. Do not fear, my children, for we have many trees around us here.”
Slowly and quietly, the dead began to rise from their monasteries very walls. In absolute silence, they began to climb out of the walls, blank faces, shaved heads and dirty, orange robes. They were not angry, or bitter or hateful. They were the loved orphans taken in by the body of this great tree, and they were here to protect it as a family.
And protect it they did.
There would be myths written about that battle when the rebel army of Wu Chang fell at the hands of ghosts. There would be whispered stories of the dead rising and an ethereal army charging from the small, isolated monastery’s walls like a portal to the afterworld itself. But none of them would tell of the old monk and his family of lost children that had lived there.
Under the Bed
It glanced out from the small slit under the bed. Everything was quiet and calm. In the dark bedroom, it could still faintly see the seashell pattern on the walls and the form of the toy figurines scattered around in the corner. Outside the window, a tree branch swayed quietly in an unseen breeze.
There was a sound!
Something moved above. There was a soft rustle of sheets and a snort. Heavy breathing subsided into something more regular.
Oh god, oh god, it thought, there is something up there, I know it!
It had heard stories about little boys, and–oh god!–the fathers and mothers of the little boys. They brought the light in with them. Horrific, burning, cruel light! And noise. It did not want to get pulled out from under the bed!
Oh god, oh god, oh god…
It crept deeper under the bed. It was safer there. It was darker there. Its heart pounding in its chest, it tried to not breathe for fear of being found. If it could just make it through the night, it would be fine.
It would stay under the bed. It was safe there.
The Second Explorers
The jungle has its own life: dark and steamy, wet and clammy. It clings to me like a haunting, primal image that I will remember for years to come in the warm, dry and safe comfort of my home. My home that is far, far away.
If I survive the jungle.
Every now and then the sunshine cuts through the canopy above me. The flashes of light temporarily blind me, but then the wet, jungle darkness rushes quickly back. Its humidity covers me as its noise washes all over me. Strange sounds hiss and scatter and hum around me as a chorus of animalistic howls begin somewhere out there in the jungle. Insects are constantly buzzing around me louder than rush hour traffic. Suddenly other howls strike up all around me, like a primal chorus erupting from deep inside the dense foliage.
And then the howls disappear as quickly and mysteriously as they erupted. An explosion of colour flies overhead, as a strange bird darts between trees and vines before disappearing from my view.
My hands are wet. I am covered in sweat and mud, and even the steel blade in my hand seems almost too hot to hold. It is almost too heavy to carry, but it is too important to drop.
And my aching arm goes up.
And my aching arm goes down.
The vines and twisted vegetation fall—inch by inch—under the blade, allowing my slow advance through the jungle. I briefly wonder if the first explorers had gone this way? Had ancient man faced this jungle with the same mixture of disgust and fear as wells up in me? How had he kept on moving forward in the face of this?
And my aching right foot moves forward.
Then my aching left foot.
Foot by foot.
Inch by inch.
And so I move forward.
Something slithers over my foot and disappears into the jungle’s cover. A hiss follows its disappearing form. An eruption of feathers and movement flutters over me as a strange beast shrieks somewhere in the distance. The insect choir lifts a temporary harmony as its buzzing intensifies.
My breath is sticky and I lick my lips. I take a last small sip of the last of my clean water. This land is still spoilt and its ground water still tainted by the original fallout. So I cannot drink any of its waters nor eat of its fruits. At least I have been able to save my rations this far due to the sacrifices of my companions along the way.
My aching arm goes up. Steel flashes in sudden sunlight as my aching arm goes down. The vines fall temporarily away and I push forward, inch by inch.
Step by aching step.
All my technology has failed me. My transport crashed and broken, my power sources are all gone, my med-packs used up and my mask blocked by filth and cast aside. I savour a grim smile, as the first explorers had no more to use than what I carry now.
If they could get here, then so can I.
The rain comes at night. It always does. Not a trickle, but a flood of beating angry water attacking the land and its miserable inhabitants. I take shelter under a large strange leaf of some unidentified plant and try to find warmth in thoughts of home.
Home?
Home seems so far away as to be nothing more than a dream. Thoughts of its seem alien in my mind, as a dry, warm and safe oasis at the edge of reality and far from the sticky, dangerous jungle.
At least the jungle’s life also seem to take shelter from the rain. The strange howls and hisses around me have disappeared. The insects have all disappeared or been drowned? I do not know. There exists only the beating, pounding roar of the rain on endless miles of jungle foliage.
I try to ignore the last thought, but it is no use. I cannot sleep.
Eventually, the rain stops and then there is just darkness. A deathly darkness before the dawn’s moist red eye rears its head through the jungle heights. A welcome light in a fatally wild land still steeped in man’s past folly.
Step by aching step.
Foot by aching foot.
Aching arm up and aching arm down. Inch by inch, I keep moving forward.
Suddenly, I am no longer in the jungle! I have burst out into a clearing of sorts!
The mud behind me has given way to the strange black rock that ancient man used to build his walkways from. It is cracked and warped where it runs, but its direction leads my eyes to the structures dotted along its path.
The old people’s dwellings lie here. Forgotten. Abandoned by mankind, but still unclaimed by all but few jungle vines and errant foliage. It is empty and dark, but I can almost imagine ancient man moving up and down these roads in their ancient land machines running on hydrocarbons and basic power sources. Children running laughing along with these streets as men and women went through their day to day rituals.
Like in a dream I wander down that cracked forgotten road.
I pass by rusted signs and poles written in the ancient tongues. Some of the land machine’s rusting carcasses lie scattered along the way. I pass a strange domed building on my left where I believe ancient man worshiped his primitive god, represented by a cross with a stretched bottom vertical.
And then I am in the centre of the skeleton of that city: a tall frame of rusting iron spirals upwards. Ancient man ruled from here. He ruled from these great architectures of control as his world connected across ancient machine-based networks.
And so I climb up it’s crumbling, ancient form.
Endless worn stairs later, I am standing on the top of the architectural skeleton and gazing down at the remains of the city below me. My breath is taken away and, finally, the steel blade in my hand clatters to the ground.
But I barely notice it. The insects are forgotten and the jungle is out of my mind. Even the sweat, mud and filth covering me does not matter.
The sight before me is so amazing, so unique and so vast. I do not have any words for it. Our world that lives in concrete tunnels below the earth has forgotten the right words used to describe something so vast! The crumbling remains of the city spread out beyond my very field of vision. It so huge and endless that even the jungle seems to fear its size.
I do not think we realize how large ancient mankind really was. None of the old tales have truly captured quite how vast his control and dominance of this world was. The size of the remains of just this single city implies how many thousand–no!–millions of ancient people must have lived here.
And suddenly it dawns on me exactly how devastating the nuclear bombs and resulting fallout must truly have been to completely destroy New York and end its ancient civilisation.
Traveler: Time Shifts
Time shifts. And time shifts again. Reality snaps back like nothing changed at all.
Almost nothing.
Overhead cars flow like shooting stars with the neon night, dark and crisp around me. I am cold, but it is not the night air that makes me shiver.
I am standing on an earth that is perfectly oblivious of the reptilian gods that are flying through the vacuum of space from their distant, dark and cold world. A couple is walking in the distance, completely oblivious of the ancient leviathans sleeping far below them on this earth dreaming of the enslavement of all mankind. Overhead flies a jet, its passengers oblivious to the Sleeper Virus that will be released when the polar icecaps melt. All the people around me on this earth are completely obvious of the coming storm that will blow them all away like a fragile falling leaf.
There is blood on my hands.
There is a body at my feet, crumpled where she fell. Her running gear is still on her. Her head is skew and her arm wrapped behind her at a strange angle.
I remind myself of the costs of failure. I remind myself how one life means nothing against the whole of mankind. I remind myself of how my daughter died in the spiral feeds as the Symacrym descended upon my earth…
But I cannot help bending down and checking the body.
Dead.
“Hey! Hey you!” I hear a shout from behind me.
I swing around and see a man running at me. His body reads cybernetic implants and his attire indicates some sort of official. He will die of cancer in a little under ten years time. This earth still has governmental structures and governmental structures have enforcers of their laws.
“Stay where you are!” he is flying straight at me, anti-gravity boots with stabilisers thrusting as he zooms along.
I remind myself of the costs of failure. I remind myself how one life means nothing against the whole of mankind. I remind myself all of this, but still I hesitate for just a second.
But then I raise my right hand and activate the bio-circuitry embedded into my shadow mind that hosts the All Clock. I feel a tingle run down my arm as the energy fields warp out past my aura, the thin feeble fabric of reality begins to flow towards my will and tendrils of change spread out.
Time shifts. And time shifts again. Reality snaps back like nothing changed at all.
Almost nothing.
The policeman is no more. It is as if he never even existed in the first place. Probably a better fate than death, I remind myself.
She was seven years old when she died. My daughter, that is. That loss will never not haunt me, but my personal timeline cannot be changed by me.
I look up at the night sky and around at the twinkling city of lights and streets and people. Billions of lives all moving towards an unknown finite fate. This does not differentiate this earth from any other earth.
But at least this earth now has a better chance of surviving. Children everywhere will wake up tomorrow to slightly safer world.
On this earth, the Sleeper Virus has not broken out and infected the very air that you breathe. On this earth, the water sources have not all turned black as the sun was blotted out by the fallout. On this earth, the fire has not fallen from the sky, man has not turned on himself, the dead stay dead and the reptilian darkness from outer space has not descended upon the land.
What will happen on this earth?
That is the unknown.
But, I am here to stop it.
I take one last look at the body at my feet. She was a healer in this land, but her tools would have unleashed one of the ends of an earth.
Now she won’t. Now she can’t.
I remind myself of the costs of failure. I remind myself how one life means nothing against the whole of mankind. I remind myself of how my daughter died in the spiral feeds, and I feel the All Clock ticking in me…
She had to die.
They all do.
And then I am gone. It is as if I was never there.
Time shifts. And time shifts again. Reality snaps back like nothing changed at all.
Almost nothing.