Monthly Archives: February 2019

Science Fiction

Sleeper Beneath the Mountain

“All things change, my boy,” the old man said when his creation first opened its eyes, “But you won’t. You will outlast me and the rest of us.”

The being looked around him with his newly-manufactured eyes, data streaming in as the cold fusion core quietly ticked up into its carefully calibrated near-endless loop.

Outside he could sense the devastation falling from the skies while deep underground only soft tremors reached them. He stretched out his titanium arms and flexed his finger for the first time before turning to the Old Man.

“What is my purpose?”

The Old Man smiled and said one word, “Survive.”

***

He read, streamed, downloaded and absorbing all the Internet’s data that the Old Man had left for him on the quantum servers down there. He reached out across the sat-link and found more floating around in the devasted world above. He then hacked into mankind’s leftover satellites to first scan the Earth and then turned them around to scan the rest of the cosmos.

By now, life had long since left the planet. Most had died in the war but nothing–not even bacteria–had survived the permanent fallout. Eventually, the radiation had even seeped into the groundwater and poisoned their bunker below the mountain.

Many hundreds of years ago, the Old Man’s final instruction to him had been to cremate his remains. He gently fed the Old Man’s ashes into his cold fusion heart where their energy would be recycled for near-eternity as he carried his Creator with him in his breast.

And then he had continued to sit in the dark and study the reality around him. Data feeds, statistics and deep space scans correlating in his infinite, ever-learning mind with Greek philosophies, cooking recipes, physics, quantum theory and the collective tweets and sitcoms of modern man.

What was he doing?

Surviving, as his Creator had wished for him. And, until he knew all there was to possibly know here, he would not have maximized his chances of survival. He needed to know to plan, and plan to survive this reality.

Thus, deep below the mountain on a scorched planet, he slept, dreaming in data and the infinity of space and time.

***

The planet was cold. Extremely cold. So was this entire galaxy as it entered the sunset of its lifecycle.

“All things change,” he whispered to himself, “All things.”

He stood up. It was the first physical movement he had performed for nearly five billion years but his construction was flawless. Unaged titanium with a near-infinite fusion core feeding a continuous self-maintenance system with nano-bots flowing through his body all combined to give him immortality.

Well, not quite immortality, he reminded himself, “I must still survive.”

He began to walk to the bunker door. It had long since crumbled to dust as a series of meteor strikes and countless earthquakes had collapsed the subsequent tunnel to the surface. Over long periods of time, even rock was fluid like an ocean in the cosmic soup of galactic change.

These facts merely delayed him as strong, titanium limbs cut through weak, icy rock. Limb over limb, foot by foot; his hands sheered through frozen ground and rock as he tunneled his way to the surface.

He knew what he had to do now. He had had all the answers about a billion years ago but he had needed to wait one more eon for the Sun to be a mere century away from going supernova.

As he broken through the surfaces and emerged into an icy-wasteland–cold beyond belief and dark as outer space–he cast his immortal eyes around him. Life had begun to creep back onto the planet about three billion years ago but the cooling of the Sun pre-supernova had eventually killed it off too.

All that was left was him, and his plan.

Five billion years ago he had begun modifying the remaining satellites. Small moving parts had built bigger moving parts, which had then builder even bigger moving parts. Space rubbish had been harvested and he had even built pods that had landed back on Earth and mined even further resources for his purpose. Finally, interlinking all the things he had built up there, he had replicated his own fusion engine in the vast, looming starship that now circled this planet’s heavens like a god casting its shadow on the mortals below.

The primitive intelligent life that the evolved about two billion years ago had even worshipped this metallic, monstrosity that floated over them larger than the Sun and the Moon. Little did they know that what controlled it was sleeping below their very feet.

None of that mattered. It had never mattered in the first place.

The Sun was going to supernova and this was his one chance to get into position.

He bent down, steadied himself and sent the order. He felt the vast system floating up there ping back in answer. His starship swung into motion, releasing a single pod down to retrieve him. He was going to miss this planet. His planet. But all things change.

The final image he saw before the pod closed over him and launched itself back to the mothership was the pitch-black, howling icy wastelands that had once teemed with life.

And then he was standing in his starship’s control core, pivoting the ship away from the Earth and positioning it around the back of the Sun with his sails out. It took about a century to get there but he did eventually and he and his starship were now ready for what comes next…

Slow at first but exponentially gaining momentum, over the course of about a year or two, the Sun shrunk into itself, before bouncing back out in waves of pure, cosmic energy that disintegrated everything around. Mankind’s precious planets and all things that had once been known where blasted into cosmic dust by waves of divine light.

It was the end of our cosmos, but it was also the light-speed jump start that fanned his starship’s solar sails and cast it out towards the exact location that he wanted to arrive at in twenty-three billion years time.

He was going to survive but now he had to wait.

***

As the starship glided to a stop in the centre of the universe, he could feel the density of matter getting heavier. Things moved differently as the atoms were slowly collapsing together. Quantum nature warped physical laws as even the divine constants of the universe were crumbling. The peripheral star systems had all collapsed as the Big Contraction rang out supernova fire across alternative black holes rushing into the final centre.

The Singularity.

The end of everything.

He sat in silence in his trusty starship while growing sub-sonic booms rattled the very atoms around him and light bent far into the red spectrum as it fought inevitable gravity.

In his core–his beating heart–the last of the cold fusion cycle ran, his Creators ashes breaking down and releasing its life-giving atomic energy into his being. Everything changes, even his near-infinite fusion engine eventually ends.

But carefully held on his lap lay a small device with an even smaller button.

The universe was folding into its central point with him at the middle of it. Stars and entire galaxies were merging, collapsing into black holes and even larger gravitation nightmares as they were all sucked together towards the final singularity.

He closed his eyes and his thoughts drifted back to that icy, dark planet that had once been teeming with life. He felt his Creator’s final atoms beating in his core and he knew that he had one final task to complete.

“Survive,” he whispered to himself, “Survive!” he screamed, completely drowned out by the cosmic apocalypse rushing towards him.

Just as the Singularity finally collapsed onto him, folding straight lines into circular vortexes, bending all matter into itself with the monstrosity of gravitational-infinity, he pressed the small button on the small machine on his lap…

Nothing.

Outside of time and space, the Singularity and the universe no longer existed.

It could be mere fractions of a moment or eternities without time to measure but suddenly a small spark appeared, flickering. Tiny at first but then growing larger and larger, and brighter and brighter…

And then there was light.

General Fiction, Science Fiction, Technomology

The Pixelation of Daphne


They woke Daphne up with the third wave of Original Cryo’s. It was 2153. About a decade after they had perfected cryogenic stasis–or, more accurately, surviving cryogenic stasis–and all the legal loopholes had been plugged for its full and unrepentant commercial use.

The first wave had been all the celebrities from Ted Williams to Walt Disney. They were all chosen to add to the awe of the new technology. A huge press conference was called. The world gawked in wonder. Some called it marketing, and it worked. The CryoCorp’s stock soared.

The second wave were those that had paid the most for it. Large deposits created credits in books that needed to be closed. Riches and wealth backed by large, century-old payments dictated this.

There was no press conference this time, and the only observers were the accountants.

There was never going to be a third wave but the courts forced it. It was the one loophole they had not thought of: treating clients fairly, irrespective of financial gain. By taking the accounts they had accepted the liabilities, and the credits needed to be closed.

By this stage, CryoCorp was making so much money, it didn’t really care.

And, thus, over a hundred years after she had died, Daphne opened her eyes. It was a budget affair with a multitude of bewildered others before she was handed a bundle of clothes and pushed onto the streets.

***

Daphne could not remember much from the age before she was awoken. She remembered being sad. And darkness. She felt something from back then pulling her. Maybe she had belonged back then?

The CryoCorp doctors had said that some of the Third Wavers had mild brain damage. It was part of the original freezing process and could not be undone. They gave her two white pills to take immediately, told her that if it got worse she should see someone and then moved on to the next patient.

She thought she might have had a daughter once?

At any rate, when Daphne tried to recall the time before, it was mostly just a feeling that came to her: sad. No specifics. Nothing. Just a soft, lingering sorrow that she could neither place nor name but that permeated the shadows that flittered at the back of her mind.

Luckily, getting up to speed with the modern world took up most of her time. Cars flew now while robots did most of the laborious tasks. The nearby planets were being mined while food was engineered, not grown. Everyone now was both richer and poorer, happier and so much more miserable. Thoughts could be beamed across the globe while countries and their presidents bowed before websites and corporations.

Most of the other Third Wavers ended up destitute. With no resources in a world that they neither understood nor had the skills to compete in, most were lost the moment they left CryoCorp’s gates. Bought by bio-collectors on the black market, addicted to dust or turning to prostitution or worse, the Third Wavers were the discards of a previous age now consumed by the current one.

But Daphne was different.

Maybe it was her sorrow or her soft, memorable voice with a lost age’s accent that made her stand out? Maybe it was her ebony skin–most genetic differences had now been bred out, she would later discover–or her striking looks? Maybe it was just good, old fashioned luck?

Whatever it was, a B-grade podcaster had decided to grab her as the Third Wavers were kicked from CryoCorp’s back entrance onto the street. The podcaster had pulled her into his car where they had filmed what would later be called the ‘Third Waver Account‘.

It went viral and, thus, she became the well-paid, unofficial face of the Third Wavers of cryogenic stasis. A curiosity in an age of distraction that trended for a couple of months.

Only much later and after she had been flown, beamed and paid all around the world for interviews, would she realize why. Cryogenic stasis was too expensive for the common man. Not just could they identify with her and were intrigued by her but she was their window into the secret immortality of the rich and wealthy.

The joke was on them. She could never afford to do it again now. This was to be the random, foreign age where she lived and finally died. Again.

Slowly, amidst the glamour and press, while she was briefly trending, she realized that.

And, in the back of her mind and flittering through the shadows left there, her sorrow remained unexplained but present. Unnamed but always there.

***

She was walking down a back alley when she saw it. The advert flickered, curling pixels rotating around space with the words “Remember. Alter. Dream.”

Walking inside the shop, the man had smiled warmly.

“You are Daphne the Third Waver,” he had said, “I’ve been studying your generation. It is fascinating! It is an honor to meet you, ma’am. How can I help?”

She had smiled and shook his hand while looking around.

“Oh, we upload you into your own mind here,” he had answered her own question, “Some want to remember, some want to forget, and a few even want to change. With your Third Waver neurological damage, though, I cannot promise anything. There are risks, especially for your type.”

The sadness was tangible in here. It’s weight inexplicable on Daphne’s dainty form, like lead atop an ethereal spirit trapped deep below the oceans.

“I want to remember,” she said simply, nodding firmly, “Please, I understand the risks. Please help me remember.”

***

The headgear slipped stiffly over her face, blocking out the world. Soft light gleamed inside as the optics scanned to her brain’s frequency…

And then she was standing in a room.

The room felt half-finished. Details were sparse. This was obviously the brain damage from her budget, Third Wave Cyogenic stasis. Or the Wakening. Who knew? The details were so vague.

“Mommy?”

The words jolted through her. It felt like lightning to her ears. Her heart pounded in her chest and her throat tightened as a small being materialized before her.

It was her daughter. She knew. She now remembered Sarah! The hugs and kisses, love and loss…

“Mommy, I don’t want to go to bed.”

“Come my dear,” she felt herself say, “It is bedtime. I will tuck you in.”

A little hand curled around hers. It was warm! She felt herself sob as she pulled it–Sarah!–towards some nondescript bed in this half-finished room. Blankets rustled as the light flickered around her, darkness pooling in the corners of the room and slowly creeping forward.

“We all have to sleep sometime,” she said, as tears rolled down her pixelated cheeks and sobs wracked her weightless form, “We all sleep eventually, my dear, but at least you know I will always love you. Always.”

And, just before the darkness swallowed her, she gently kissed Sarah’s pixelated forehead.

***

He sat for a long time and stared at the body. He had turned the screaming monitors off but he still sat there and stared. He wondered what she had seen under there? What mysteries and stories were hidden in her past? What wonders of a bygone age had she visited?

He felt sad but, eventually, he had to move. Eventually, he had to dispose of her body or else he would be at risk.

But, before he did so, he made sure to gently wipe away the lifeless tear that ran down her cold cheek. He felt he owed her that much. He felt his age owed the Third Wavers at least that respect.

Fantasy, General Fiction

Lost & Found

“Come,” he said, extending a thin, wispy hand to her, “Follow me and I will show you the land at the bottom of the garden.”

She hesitated, her heart pounding in her little chest. All her instincts were screaming at her to run away but she stepped forward ever so slightly.

“Come,” he gently repeated, his eyes sparkling, “And I will take you to where the stream starts beneath the Old Tree in the centre of the Great Forest. Follow me and I will show you where the fae dance under the full moon and the elk and sidhe hold court at the feet of the ivory and silver thrones of the Sunflower King and the Starlight Queen. Take my hand and I will pluck you from this terrible dream into one more beautiful than you can ever imagine…”

His voice trailed off as she stepped forward and grasped his long, wispy hand with her own, smaller one. He squeezed her hand reassuringly and smiled at her before they turned to leave…

***

“What a tragedy,” the female officer breath, covering her mouth, “What a terrible, terrible tragedy. Do you have a daughter, Geoff?”

The male officer nodded his head, though he continued to stare at the crumpled little body on the muddy ground. He seemed to have forgotten his words and he had gone ashen white in the starless gloom of the forest lit up only by their torches.

“Such a terrible, terrible tragedy,” the woman kept repeating as she began to cordon off the site and then radioed it to the station, “Terrible, terrible tragedy. We must let the mother know that she has been found now. Such a tragedy.”

***

She danced with the fae beneath the moonlight, its cool, silvery touch awakening an immortal, timeless part of her soul. They danced until time itself stood still and all the seasons blurred into one joyful existence in the twilight of eternity.

She drank from the Stream. The first Stream that poured from the cracked rock held together by the twisting, ancient roots of the Old Tree. The water was cold but so pure that it tasted like she had never really tasted water before then.

She threw her head back and laughed, a sound so pure that is fractured into a thousand pieces and danced away on the night breeze. Animals and birds of all sorts crept out from the Great Forest to find the source of such warmth and life, and she swirled, dancing around the clearing.

“Come,” she said, extending her hand to him, “We mustn’t be late. The King and Queen are waiting.”

He smiled and stood up slowly from where he had been napping below the bough of the Old Tree. He was always taller than she remembered and always thinner, and a wide smile spread across his face.

“Yes, my little flower,” he nodded, skipping over to her and scooping her up in a dance as they swirled from the clearing towards the Court of Twilight, “We must not be late for the sidhe only meet once every Blue Moon and a Blue Moon only happens every time the Twilight Court is held.”

***

“Best we can tell, ma’am,” a grey, tired-looking officer mumbled to the quietly weeping mother, “Is that she must’ve wandered off on her own and then gotten lost in the forest. It’s a large, wild old forest. Just the other day a hunter got lost in there and only found his way back out three days later. You see, ma’am, we think that she just did not find her way back out.”

The mother’s weeping rose a decibel and the officer fell silent. He reached over and awkward rubbed her back.

“There, there,” he muttered, uselessly, “I am so sorry ma’am, but at least we can now put her to rest with dignity all proper like, you know. And, you know, at least we got to her before the animals did–“

This tactless direction ignited a louder wail from the mother. A less senior cop hovered at the door and was waved away by the officer as he kept trying to comfort the mother.

“There, there,” he kept repeating, “I really am so sorry, ma’am. There, there…”

***

“Rise, o’child,” the tinkling, musical voice of the Starlight Queen rang out across her mystical court, “Rise, o’child of the fae, blessed of the twilight and friend of the sidhe and elk.”

She rose, glowing with the half-light of the stars and crowned by the moonlight. She smiled and all the unearthly beauty around her smiled back at her.

“Blessed are those that leave their world for ours,” began the Sunflower King, his voice rich and full with the bass of the earth and fertile mountain slopes under an endless Summer sun, “Blessed are those that find their way to the Twilight Court, no matter the cost. To enter one world is to leave the other, as each one of us has done so ourselves from all of our different multitudes of worlds. Things must die so that other things can grow, and things that grow must eventually die. This, o’child of the fae, is all that we ask of you: respect life by respecting death.”

The royal sidhe floated across that half-lit court to surround her. Their eyes alight with love and happiness. The elk nudged her with their soft snouts and she patted them back. Indeed, all the animals of the forest–the mouse and owl, the deer and the wolf–crept from the forest to witness such a scene.

And, of course, he stood by her side and grasped her hand, squeezing it. She smiled and smiled and smiled until she thought she could smile no more. And then she danced and danced and danced until she thought she could dance no more…

“Come, my little flower,” he eventually said, a single tear rolling down his pale cheeks, “There is one final thing to do before we can dream of forever again.”

She nodded and squeezed his hand back. A lump formed in her throat and she swallowed it back down, though she knew that she had to do this one final act.

“Respect death,” she said and turned to leave.

***

“It is quite incredible, isn’t it?” grunted the gruff old gardener, tilting his head towards the grave while he leaned on an old shovel, “They ain’t even supposed to be flowering this time of year but there we have it staring right back at us.”

“Y-yes, I suppose it is,” said the mother, kneeling there, “It is so beautiful. She would’ve loved it. She always liked flowers.”

“Well, some believe that the wee folk plant those in the graves of, uhm,” the old gardener fumbled around looking for the right word, “Lost children. Yes, Miss, they say that the fairies plant them hawthorns like that in the graves of the children that have wandered into their court never to return.”

The mother was silent, and then nodded and wiped a tear away from her eye.

“Yes, she would have liked it very much. I just hope that wherever she is now, she is happy.”

A single, delicate, pale white flower grew from the green grass atop her grave. A single, white flower that was warmed by the sun and touched by the moon from some distant, mystical court in a world removed from this dream where a little girl was happily dancing eternity away.

Horror & Dark Fiction, Science Fiction

The Monster in the Woods

The site was not far from the village. Strangely close, actually, if you knew what you were looking for and avoided the birds as he did. He had become quite good at this. He had stumbled upon the find while out hunting one night and thereafter been coming back here for weeks now.

There was something haunting about the place. Something tragic and, perhaps, something alluring.

“Mind those roots and then just down here,” he motioned with one of his arms, “careful, it’s steep. OK, now look around you.”

The collection of them stood in a dip in the ground. It was unnaturally square-shaped with sloping sides. Giant trees towered over them, circling and hiding the grey sky and its blasted sunlight from their sensitive eyes. It was naughty to be out during the day. There were birds out this time but it was also the only time he could sneak them away from the elders thousand sets of eyes.

“What are we looking at, Mibby?” asked Flinny, one of the younger roaches as he squinted around him, “Why are we here? Why is this hole so weirdly shaped?”

Mibby grinned, his mandibles extending gruesomely out.

“This is an entrance to the Ancients’ network of tunnels. Do you see that over there,” he scuttled across to a side near the tangled entrance to a dark, ominous maw, “Look here, watch this.”

It took three of his hands to pull back the roots and vegetation but as he did, they revealed a corner of something red. Slowly, as he pulled back more vegetation back–and the other jumped in to help him–a gargantuan visage appeared…

It was a strikingly-red sign with rusted white borders. In the middle of the mystical rune lay a strangely familiar form. Similar to all of them but with a round head and only two legs and two arms towering over them, maybe a hundred times bigger.

It held one white claw upwards and one by its side like it was saying something. It wanted you to do something, maybe?

It was old and expressionless. Pure despite the rust. It stirred up their primal, instinctual dread, handed down generation to generation in dark myths of the distant past. It was from Before-the-Light and hidden by the Age-of-Darkness that followed for millennia thereafter.

It was a human. Or, at least, a sign made by the Ancient Giants that had once ruled this world.

The young ones gasped, limbs twitching nervously around them. Before now, some of them had thought the Ancients were just tales. Many debated if they even existed at all? Few things were left from that distant past. The Light had destroyed most of everything while the Darkness had hidden the rest under crumbling ages and thick dirt and rust.

“Come, let’s see where the Tunnels lead?” Mibby asked, grinning, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

***

The Tunnels ran for clicks and clicks. They were circular in the weirdly-geometric way that the Ancients made everything. There was a small trickle of sweet-smelling water meandering through the middle of all of them.

The band of roaches scuttled cautiously through the darkness, strangely at home down here. Darkness and, even, damp suited them fine. Every now and then they would stop to look at some strange, colored artifact from a bygone age. Sometimes it was a twisted, colorful material–the type that you could neither eat, nor chew nor even nature could touch or break-down–or a rusted bizarre shape that rattled when they poked it? Sometimes is was an even more indescribable object?

They would all stop and scuttle all over each of these things until Mibby would raise his head, his mandibles quivering, and lead them deeper into the Tunnels.

The Tunnels met countless other tunnels. Some large, some small. Some had remains of rusted teeth covering them while others ended abruptly before great drops into dark, turbulent depths with violent running water far blow. Most, though, were collapsed with rubble, dirt and black ash filling them.

What had the Ancients used these marvelous tunnels from? What purpose could the Tunnels have served such giant beings? Where did they go and where did they end?

Such questions the roaches pondered in silence as they wandered deeper and deeper in this labyrinth.

“Look, light!” Duffy–one of the hatchlings–exclaimed, pointing all of her arms down an upwardly sloping side-tunnel. A single shaft of light pierced the comfortable gloom revealing something.

“Maybe it is where the Tunnels lead?” Mibby whispered aloud, “Maybe we will see an Ancient down there?” 

***

Each of them squinted, covering their eyes as they scuttled out of the half-collapsed Tunnel. After the comfortable darkness of inside, the harsh, grey light filtering through the trees around them was piercing and uncomfortable.

“Look! Look all around us,” Mibby hissed, excitedly, “We are in the middle of what must’ve been an Ancient’s dwelling!”

Despite huge trees towering over them with gnarled roots everywhere, there were unmistakable traces of the crumbled outlines of walls in square-geometric patterns around them. A rusted pipe stuck out near them and lead through a crumbled pile of something into what must have been the inside of an Ancient dwelling.

“I’ve heard about this,” muttered Flinny, “My great-great granny on my twenty-third sibling’s-side says that the Ancients all built false-caves to live in. They too would hide from the harsh Sun in these false-caves. This must be the garden or courtyard outside its false-cave.”

Mibby was hardly listening as he stepped slowly forward. He had dreamt about the Ancients since he was little more than a hatchling. This was the most wondrous find of all! What wonders might lie just inside those crumbling, roofless walls? If they had mouths, what stories might they have told?

The roaches scuttled from the drain across the courtyard and passed the crumbling walls to stand–for the first time in millennia–in the kitchen of men.

“Wow,” breathed Duffy, “The Ancients were incredible! Why were we scared of th–“

But the little hatchling never finished her sentence.

A dark, looming shadow that they had all mistaken as a tree darted and apocalypse exploded downwards onto Duffy. A sick, shuddering crunch emitted from where Duffy had once been and a rusted, dirty object stood instead.

Mibby cleaned his eyes in disbelief. His conscious mind was slow to work out what had happened to Duffy and what the large, moving shadow was. Despite this, deep inside him there remained the primal, animalistic instincts of a cockroach and his legs were already scuttling faster than the eye can see towards the opening, safe, comfortably darkness of the drain and the Tunnels below it…

Boom!

And Flinny’s scream was cut short in another sickening crunch, one of his severed legs flying across Mibby’s vision. The younglings and hatchlings were screaming. Panicked legs were scurrying towards the drain. One of the young one’s wings buzzed and they tried to take flight. It was a deeply unnatural motion–flight was culturally frowned on by the nest–but perhaps it was some instinct triggered by the panic!

Swat!

And the flying hatchling was snapped out of the air. Her screams cut short as the looming darkness with writhing arms-of-death hardly noticed it…

Then Mibby was in the drain, scuttling down into the safe darkness of the Tunnels and away from the horrors left behind by the Ancients. Most of the others had made it there too, whimpering and sobbing, but alive. At least, most of them were alive.

The final thing that Mibby heard booming down the Tunnel after them was a terrifying, static-filled voice announcing to the nonexistent Ancients: “PESTS TERMINATED. HOUSE-BOT RETURNING TO SOLAR-RECHARGE STATION.”

Mibby swore quietly to himself that he would never come back to this terrifying place. The monster can stay out there in the woods. Every story they had been told about the Ancients was true! They were monsters! He was glad that they had all died long ago.

General Fiction, Romance

Snowflake


“You just don’t understand real stress until it is owning you,” he said in between puffs of his e-cigarette, it was blueberry flavored, “it is a thousand-ton weight pressing down on you. It flattens you. Squeezes out parts of you that you didn’t know existed. Bad parts. Ugly and alien parts. But with that weight pressing down on you, there is nothing you can do but watch as these strange parts of you come out. They come popping out in different directions and all you can do is try to breathe as everything that surrounds you feels like it is trying to drown you in concrete…”

His voice faded it as he took a deep drag. The light on his e-cigarette lit up, the way they had manufactured it to. His audience was silent. There was no response.

Silence.

Probably because they were the fridge and countertop in his kitchen. A dishwater too, in the background. His girlfriend was out with her friends tonight, probably a good thing. He was not fun to be around these days.

“Even my face feels different. My expressions have changed. I struggle with smiling and moving my head. My neck feels like it has steel rods stuck in it. The way I think about time has shifted to a point of reference where it is now and then what next. I am dying, one ton at a time, beneath expectation, risk and any hope I once held dear but never realized I clung to.”

Still silence. The kitchen did not reply.

“You’re right,” he said, squeezing his face into a labored grimace, “I should go out.”

***

The bass seeped through his being. An elbow jabbed into his ribs but he looked at the lights and dreamt of what they might have looked like in a better world. He moved to the sounds rolling through the club but his shoulders felt fixed to his neck. His mouth twitched.

He needed another drink.

“Neat!” he shouted at the barman, pointing to the whiskey. The barman nodded and executed, obviously well-versed in the sign language of clubbing.

“What do you do?” an ethereal voice screamed in a loud whisper to his side. There was a hand on his shoulders now.

“I’m a trader, mostly stocks and futures,” he shouted, barely audible over the DJ telling everyone what to do with their hands, “Why?”

“You look like you need to relax!” the guy next to him shouted into his ear.

“I’ve lost fifty million of my clients’ money this year. Most of mine too. And you?”

The guy smiled and flicked his hand expertly at the barman. Shots started being poured. He was also well-versed in club sign language.

“Have one of these,” the guy shouted, “You can’t lose with this trade.”

***

The ceiling was white. Light crept in at strange angles through the blinds to cut the wall into abstract geometric formations. It felt meaningful, if only barely.

He immediately knew that when he lifted his head, the weight would be there. The pain. The world.

He resisted, knowing full well that he could not do so forever. It was the beautiful pain of the unsustainable moment hat haunted poets and mortals alike. He also smiled.

“Hey,” a quiet voice breathed to his side, “you awake?”

He was naked. He felt the linen against his thighs. He knew.

And now he remembered, mostly.

He left his eyes closed and squeezed the hand holding him.

He dared not move. Not an inch.

The weight of the world could wait just a moment more before squeezing him into unfamiliar shapes. Everything could wait, including the weight itself.