The Little Gods

A Minor Fate

At first, he was not aware of what woke him. Quiet filled the dark room, broken only by the breathing of the naked woman lying next to him. But then, as his eyes adjusted to the night, he saw the funny little man. The plump figure was rocking back and forth on his heels while crouching and staring intently at the inside of his bedroom door.

“Hey–” he mumbled getting up, “Hey, what are you doing here?” He was not worried and did not reach for the sword in the far corner along with the rest of their scattered clothes. The strange man did not look like a thief and, even if he was, he was pretty sure he could best him in a fight.

The strange man jumped immediately to his feet and stared wildly at him, “Par-pardon, my friend,” he began stammering as he wrung his hands and kept glancing nervously at the door, “Pardon on the intrusion, but I am seeking a little sanctuary and thought this room would serve that purpose.”

“I am Spurius of the Third Gallica,” he said, now sitting in bed and looking intently at the nervous little man, “What could you possibly want in my bedchambers late at night? You are no thief nor murderer? You are not even armed, nor does it look like you would know how to use a sword or spear if you had one?”

The strange man nodded and attempted a friendly smile that came out more as a twitch, “Hail, Spurius of the Third Gallica. You are correct that I am not here out of bad intentions. I am hiding from my wife and I just felt that a man like you would understand that. You see, Spurius, my wife is not just anyone. She is the Goddess of Arguments, the Sayer of the Last Word. She is Caballus and she is angry.”

Spurius had drunk wine in the evening but he had not thought that he had drunk too much. Yet his head hurt. Ironic given the situation. He stood up slowly, finding his feet and reached for a leftover partially filled goblet. Almost contemplatively he stared down and it and then swiftly downed it before walking slowly to the corner to get his clothes. He chuckled softly as a thought occurred to him, “It is ironic that the cure for too much of something is more of it, is it not?”

The strange man nodded solemnly but did not answer. He seemed to be waiting for something or some response.

As Spurius swung his crumpled tonga over his shoulder, he began to speak. The Roman military practised and rewarded logic and practicality, and he had come far in his career as a soldier. “As unusual as that story is,” he began as he fastened the toga in place, “if your wife is a goddess, then you would have to be a god–“

“I am the Great Immortal God of Irony, Theodore Hoodwink Samuel, the Gi–“

“What!?” Spurius snorted but then lowered his voice with a careful glance at the nearby sleeping woman, “I have never heard of such a ridiculous thing. In fact, I have never heard of the Goddess of Argument nor the God of Irony.”

“–ver of Chuckles, or Teddy for short,” Teddy ended what sounded like an ironically long list of titles somewhat deflated, “Well, we are the lesser known gods, the Little Gods. You know, the kinda sub-pantheon below the big names. Ignotus the Being of Distraction? Lardum the God of Bacon? Luci the Goddess of Diamonds? Oblivus the God of Forgetfulness? Influffi the Goddess of Clouds? Any of these ringing a bell? Any?“

Spurius stood frozen, his headache slowly receding and his mouth hanging open. He shut it quickly and reached for his sword. The metal was colder than the warm night air and it felt comfortable in his experienced hand.

“Teddy,” he began slowly, narrowing his eyes and slowly stepping forward “Firstly, Teddy is a strange name. Secondly, I have never heard of any of these deities and, finally, suggest you leave my room by the means you entered it else you will leave it another way.”

Teddy’s face paled and he began to back slowly away from the sword-holding legionnaire, “Please, Spurius, I am the God of Irony, but I am also mortal! It is the greatest of ironies, but please afford me sanctuary here just for the night and I will grant you a blessing?”

It was a large bedchamber and the room led out onto a cool balcony. Spurius suddenly felt sorry for the strange man and, since he was up, the wine had tasted good and some male company may not hurt. He tucked the sword under his arm, grabbed a nearby amphora of wine and nodded towards the balcony.

“Sure, Teddy the Mortal God,” he chuckled, “I will grant you sanctuary here until the wine runs out and, in exchange, you will grant me immunity from angry wives. Now, please do share the tales of all your Little Gods with me, I am curious… How do the Hebrews feel about Lardum?”

***

When the door shut, Spurius found himself smiling. Maybe it was the wine. Indeed, those amphorae of wine had lasted much longer than he had expected but Teddy was also much more entertaining than his first impression had created. Quite a talkative guy, actually, once you got a few cups of wine into him.

“Teddy”… What a strange name! All he had said was that it was ahead of its time, which was ironic because when the time arrived when it was correct, they would have all become forgotten.

Teddy had gone on to tell him all about the Little Gods, the sub-Pantheon as he called it. Such wild and wonderful tales! Teddy had told him about how the God of Northern Walls and the Goddess of Southern Walls had met at a corner, or how the Ignotus, the Being of Distraction was so distracting that no one could remember if it was a god or goddess, or something else?

Teddy had told him about how the infuriating Titillatio, the God of Tickling, had been caught in bed with Pluma, the Goddess of Feathers, and how her father had tried to beat Titillatio with a stick. But the stick had exploded into a cloud of white fluff! Indeed, this white fluff still blows through our world making everyone randomly sneeze and attaching to everyone’s dark garments just before special occasions.

Teddy had then turned to a story about how Oblivus the God of Forgetfulness had almost forgotten to turn up for his marriage to Influffi the Goddess of Clouds, and how he had indeed forgotten his vows at the wedding. Luckily Influffi was an immensely malleable woman and Oblivus had merely looked at her and seen what he needed to say.

More recently and, perhaps, more relevantly, Teddy had told him how everyone had just forgotten where Oblivus was!

Of course, Influffi had been distressed about her lost husband, and so Teddy’s wife–Caballus and Influffi were sisters–had ironically sent him to comfort her. At this point in the tale, Teddy had somewhat awkwardly manoeuvred around the topic, but Spurius was fairly sure he knew why Teddy’s wife was angry with him and it had a lot to do with what had transpired while he had been comforting Influffi…

Spurius chuckled as the door closed and yawned. The sun would be up soon and his duties would start shortly. The naked woman remained fast asleep in his bed and, indeed, his wife would be back soon and so–

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Three loud bangs rang on the door just behind him and he froze midstep. He suddenly realized that he had left his sword back on the balcony but he dismissed this thought immediate as unimportant. It was probably Teddy back for something or other.

Spurius swung around, flipped the latch on the door and opened it. He had only a split second to comprehend the immeasurably angry, red-haired woman on the other side of it before she stepped inside and swept the room with a furious gaze.

“Where is he, Spurius? Where is Teddy?” her calm, soft voice was at odds with her face and eyes. Spurius was no stranger to women and, indeed, he always feared when his wife stopped shouting and started talking softly and calmly.

“I-I, he, uh,” he stammered, trying to find his word and resisting an urge to flee, “Teddy is gone. He just had a glass of wine and left, but I do not know where to.”

The angry woman–Caballus, he assumed–narrowed her raging eyes for a moment and then nodded.

“I believe you are actually telling the truth there, Spurius,” she began keeping her voice terrifyingly flat, “Well, mostly the truth as a bit more than a glass of wine was drunk. Teddy tends to do that to wine but, ironically, he often cannot hold his liquor.”

Suddenly, her eyes darted to the naked woman in his bed and they narrowed again with a new, more terrifying type of intensity, “That is not your wife, Spurius,” she said, her eyes snapping back to him!

Spurius felt small. Tiny! The floor was roaring upwards and the walls grew dark as they reached toward the heavens. The red-hair Callabus loomed over him a thousand foot tall, thunderclouds of black smoke and fire raged above her as eyes turned to furnaces and chains sprang from all sides to slither across his frozen, frail limbs.

“HOW UNFORTUNATE, SPURIUS OF THE THIRD GALLICA AND HUSBAND TO DONNA THAT THAT IS NOT YOUR WIFE! HOW UNFORTUNATE FOR YOU, GIVEN MY RECENT EXPERIENCE WITH MY OWN HUSBAND!” lightning flashed from the clouds and struck the looming walls sending chunks of rock flying about him as the wind picked up intensity and the raging being of endless fire reached out to grab his small, chained, mortal form, “HOW UNFORTUNATE FOR YOU–“

Suddenly a blinding light flashed! The chains disintegrated as the walls slid down and the room lightened from eternal darkness to merely mortal night, the raging fiery storm and its wind subsided as the world suddenly felt its normal size again.

Spurius blinked. He blinked again and then rubbed his eyes…

He was alone in his bedchamber and standing at his open, empty door. He must have drank too much wine. There was no red-haired goddess of fire bearing down on him just like there was no longer any naked woman in his bed. Far too much wine! Had there ever been a Teddy..?

And, as Spurius stood there wondering, a soft breeze like the universe exhaling blew out of the chamber and he thought he heard a familiar woman’s voice on it saying the last word: “A blessing against angry wives! How ironic…“

Horror & Dark Fiction

The Sunflower King

Frozen, he watched the little bird die. Its fragile chest rose and fell. Wild eyes staring out towards oblivion as its fluttering heart mechanically pumped its blood into the earth. He was surrounded by withering sunflowers–his family’s old farm–and their brilliant explosions of yellow contrasted against the dark land beneath the unforgiving sky.

Now there was also a slash of wonderful red. A sacred red river that the dry, hungry earth swallowed, lapping it up like the rain that never fell.

He dared not breathe. He could not look away; yellow and black swallowing the red. Eternity in a moment; life and death swirled around in a cycle that he felt he could almost reach out and touch…

Eventually, he heard his father shouting for him. His hands curled into fists at his side. He had lost track of time out in the field. His father sounded drunk again but something was different. It did not sound like anger. He hoped he would not hit him tonight.

At that moment, the thunder broke and the heavens opened up. He had not noticed the clouds rolling over, and wondrous, fat raindrops began to fall.

When he made it back to the farmhouse, his father was dancing with his mother in the rain. They were stomping through growing puddles and the black mud was splattering on his mother’s white dress. But she was not shouting and his father was not breaking things. No, they were both laughing and smiling. He could not recall seeing them smile before, let alone dancing.

Wild clouds swirled above and rain kept falling as a brutal sunset pierced through it in patches of gold and red. His father howled and spun his mother around, faster and faster. The rain kept falling and his parents splattered the mud around them as they danced.

He was sure he saw another colour in that black mud. Yes, he was sure he saw red.

Smiling, he turned around and looked out across his family’s field of yellow sunflowers that soaked up the delicious rain. All he could think of was the little bird. All he could think of was its blood soaking into the earth. The brilliance of the yellow sunflowers, roots clawing in the black earth and hungrily drinking of the red blood.

***

He showed his teeth to her, leant in, and pressed his lips to hers. She was warm and smelt of something sweet. Small and delicious, he could feel her heart fluttering and her hand reached up and gently touched his cheek.

She giggled and pretended to pull away, but he pulled her closer and they kissed deeply.

He could feel the dry, dark earth below him straining with hunger. The rain had not come this year either. Around them, the withering sunflowers loomed, a baleful, brilliant yellow. Tortured, twisted stems held wilted, dying life and the vast sky stared down mockingly at that dark field, waiting.

Waiting. The sky was waiting. The black earth was waiting. The yellow sunflowers were hungrily waiting…

Black and yellow, just missing delicious red. Again.

***

“Take a breath, son,” the weathered, elderly man said, “Now, what are you babbling about?”

The scruffy youth gulped a large breath. He tried to slow down his torent of words, but his voice rose in pitch as he spoke longer and, as he went on, the eyes of the elderly man grew wider and wider.

“And you say the lads in the south field also found one? Jesus…”

The youth jerked his head furiously in agreement.

“And, ploughing the first fallow, you found one too? God, more than one…”

The youth’s head moved even faster.

“Dear God,” the elderly man breathed out, his legs wobbling and stepping backwards–almost as if he could step away from the news–“Dear God, son, we need to call the Sheriff and get him out here. Get the lads back here now. Stop everything that we doing. God, what horror did we buy from that estate…”

***

It was silent at the old farmhouse. The baked, dry earth crunched beneath the men’s boots as they laboured, carefully carrying their loads back to the centre. Their faces were dark and their eyes tried not to look too closely at what they were doing as they carefully laid their burdens out on the sterile, white body bags.

Some were little more than clean, white skeletons; their identities lost, swallowed by the black earth, along with their tragic stories. Others were bundles of rags, twisted and rotting with the roots of the malevolent sunflowers clawing hungrily at their last remains.

Others were even more recent…

It was hot at the farmhouse and hellish out in the fields. The rain had not come for years now. It has stopped around the time that the old man who lived here had died, and many farms had gone under with most fields now little more than dust and death.

But, it was quite something else, the death that they dug up from the black earth in that old sunflower field.

General Fiction, Romance

Autumn Leaves

Autumn could not pull her eyes away from the window. Outside the bare trees stood like naked guardians to the oncoming Winter, all their leaves staining the ground with a bloody tapestry. Their stark branches twisted into the grey sky like barren skeletal reminders of life against an oncoming apocalypse.

This was an inflection point, a transition point. A moment of change as even the faintest warmth left the world and harsh, unforgiving cold smothered everything including memory.

“It is time,” he softly said behind her. She had not heard him enter the room and she slowly turned to face him. His face was unreadable but his eyes belied the turmoil, “Autumn, it is time to go.”

She smiled sadly and let go of the window while resisting sighing. Some moments did not need to be declared. Some moments could be felt without punctuation.

“She would have preferred a warm Summer’s day,” she said walking across to him, he reached out to her and, when she took his hand, he gently squeezed hers. Some moments needed no punctuation.

“We all prefer warm Summer days,” he said, his eyes sad, “But that is not the way life happens, or ends.”

She smiled, trying to reassure him that she was fine and slipped his arm around her, nestling her head into the crook of his neck. He smelt warm, like pine trees in a forest somewhere far from here. He put his other arm around her and softly squeezed, resting his head on hers while she closed her eyes trying not to think.

They quietly stood like this for a moment–silent guardians before the apocalypse–before he straightened and repeated, “It is time, Autumn. We must go. They are all waiting and we must get there before the snow falls.”

“Yes,” she mumbled into his chest, finally sighing deeply, “Yes, it is time.”

She knew it was. Outside there were no more leaves left to fall and, as Winter rolled in, Autumn left.

Fantasy, General Fiction

The Big Black Bird

I like to think that I was born in a faraway realm under some wicked curse. My parents loved me–as best as they could–and life was alright in that land–sometimes good, sometimes bad, but mostly fine–but my curse followed me wherever I went.

My curse was ever-present: its flapping black wings hovering over me, casting a long shadow that dogged my every movement, every moment, and every memory.

The Big Black Bird was my curse. Hidden by dark, ancient magic, I could not see it but I could feel its dark presence. Like an intangible weight, pressing down, sucking the warmth out of the room and the joy from my heart; I believe that although no one could see the Big Black Bird, everywhere I went and everyone I spoke to could feel its taint around me.

***

At first, I tried to run from the Big Black Bird.

I left late one night and ran. I ran through wild forests where dangerous animals stalked, but none of them dared come near me and my Big Black Bird. I crossed wild rivers over bridges where trolls hid, but none of them dared stop me and face my Big Black Bird. I drank witches’ foul potions to banish it or forget it or find joy elsewhere, but to no avail and with no effect. And so I fled further across mountains and rugged wilderness where wild elementals and warlocks hurled fire and lightning, but all of them averted their eyes as I passed by.

Everywhere I went and everyone I spoke to could feel the Big Black Bird’s taint around me.

Despite all the running, the Big Black Bird was always there.

***

Exhausted, I collapsed late one night. It was pitch black and, at that moment, I could almost see the Big Black Bird. There was no Moon in the sky. No stars. There was no light in any direction I looked, and the Big Black Bird was so real I could feel it pressing down on me. Its cold feathers and intense, inhuman and uncaring eyes watching my every move…

I cried out to the Big Black Bird to finish it! End things! Stop stalking me and just end my suffering! Why! Why torture me like this!

But the only answer I got in that impenetrable darkness was silence. An uncaring and inhuman silence like only the wicked cosmos can deliver.

***

At this point, I like to think that I fell into a dark and magical sleep. I also like to think that in this faraway realm everyone had a Fairy that watched over them with unconditional love and caring.

She appeared to me in this dream and explained to me that the Big Black Bird–my Big Black Bird–was not a curse, it was destiny that I needed to face.

I awoke the next morning as rays of light pierced the sky. The Sun rose–as it had every day of my life without me noticing–and chased away the lingering darkness from that night.

I smiled grimly and stood up. I knew what I had to do.

***

I climbed the Great Mountain and, at the top where it pierces Heaven itself, I grabbed the Sword of Light from the selfish god hiding up there. I wrestled it from his ancient hold and leaped to earth where he fears to tread.

Wielding the Sword of Light, I carved my way through the darkest dungeons beneath the ruins of the oldest castles where the tombs of ancient knights lie. I found the greatest of them and donned their magical armour; it was light and hard, made from the very rays of the first sunrise itself and forged at the center of the world with unbreakable bonds.

And then, finally, holding the Sword of Light and wearing the Armour of Light, I returned home to where I was born and waited for the Dark Moon. It will appear in the night sky at the hour of my birth and it will summon the Big Black Bird home.

Then and there, I would fulfill my destiny. I would free myself from my curse. Then and there, I would slay the Big Black Bird.

Then everything would be alright, I like to think.

***

But then I remember that I am not cursed nor born in any faraway realm where magic and destiny matter and great acts of courage and kindness and love are rewarded. I am not in a realm where a Fairy loves me unconditionally and is always watching over me.

All that I am is a person lying in a bed and struggling to get out.

My alarm clock is ringing and another empty day is facing me. The dog is barking for me to move–she wants her morning walk–and I can hear an email or message ping on my phone, almost certainly work piling up.

Things need to be done and there is no one but me in my life to do them with no reward other than what I give myself.

And I pause just a moment more… I hover there as the dog is barking, my alarm is ringing, traffic sounds starting up, and sunlight piercing my curtains. Suspended in that moment, I realize that the one thing that remains from my thoughts and the one thing that does exist is my Big Black Bird.

I feel its dark presence. Always.

Science Fiction

Cosmic Candyfloss

“That tickles! Gosh, that tickles!” one of the girls exclaimed as the Pulsar radiation bursts blasted through the group of them, “Who would have thought that world-ending radiation would tickle!”

They all had a good chuckle at that and took in the sight before them.

They stood on an elliptical planetary surface that lay just a few clicks out from a dying, world-consuming Pulsar that was falling into a larger Black Hole. It was quite beautiful.

“Should we grab a burger? I’m hungry, let’s swing by a fly-through?” one of the guys said, yawning. The previous couple of nights they had been up late drinking and clubbing across the stars. A burger did sound like a good idea, an agreeing murmur rippled through the gang of them.

Human beings had won. They had left their planet and their galaxy. They had conquered space and death. Energy was infinite and so was time. They had overcome biology and, for all in intensive purposes, they had become immortal.

The only problem was the boredom.

***

“Come on, you do it first,” the girl edged him on but he just stood there frozen, “Come on, jump! I’ll follow, but you go first.”

Before them, the Pulsar twinkled in blinding speeds as sheer time and space warped around it. The Black Hole’s Event Horizon yawned just beneath it and sheer eternity disappeared therein.

“Come on, aren’t you going to go?” the girl chided, batting her eyes and poking the guy, “You said you wanted to try this, even if it was the last thing you ever did. Aren’t–“

“I’m thirsty,” the guy snapped out of it and turned to her, a sheepish grin on his face, “Let’s go back to the club and get some more drinks.”

The girl sighed and shrugged as they turned to go. She had not expected him to jump, this time. They never did.

In the age of immortals, the last rebel action is suicide.

***

Quietly or loudly–depending on how you measure sound–the Pulsar bled out its cosmic candyfloss across the galaxy. And its twin Black Hole ate it up, consuming infinitely into a single point that was denser than space and time.

The age of man appeared, the Pulsar blinked, and man was suddenly everywhere. The Pulsar did not notice. Heavenly bodies rarely do.

Space and time kept on flowing and the Pulsar slipped across the Event Horizon. Time and light stretched out and, pouring radiation, its bleeding body began to fragment into infinity.

And, finally, just as eternity crashed upon the shores of infinity and the Pulsar’s rotation across extreme gravity gradients tore its own body apart, a small, squishy form waving its arms and taking a selfy floated by it. And then another. And then another…

Eventually, immortals get bored. Given enough time–and immortals have plenty of time–they will jump.

In the end, the only thing that ever kills man is time. Everything else is just cosmic candyfloss.

Science Fiction

The Last & Only Hero

She ran her fingers along the crumbling walls as she walked down the fractured road, weeds growing from every crack. She was walking through one of the carcasses of the old cities. The weathered concrete disintegrated under her light touch, its dust caught by the warm wind and carried out to the Wastes to mix with all the radioactive death that slumbered there.

A growing crowd of ragged people trickled into the ruins and the streets or lurked in its many shadows. They followed her with their desperate eyes and some fell to their knees, crying with arms outstretched. She tried not to make eye contact with them. Some people carried crosses, some Dharma wheels or crescents and stars while others even carried nuclear symbols. These people should have had enough of the atom but, after the Prediction, a new faith had appeared and many–in desperation–had clung to it.

A few survivors–probably the heirs to the Big Corporates, or what was left of them–had left their failing techno-megalopoli and flown in on rare drones but most of the people had stumbled in from the Wastes and underground bunkers that littered what small portion of the planet was still inhabitable.

Of the eight billion people on Earth, these were the million-odd that now lived.

They had survived the Quantum Wars that the Big Corporates had indiscriminatingly fought. After the Big Corporates had collapsed the sovereignties around the world, they had turned on each other with devastating consequences. While vaguely moralistic sovereignties may never have fired nukes, profit-motivated Big Corporates had no such qualms.

She sighed and looked up at the rusted sky, holding back a tear that was fighting to get out. She did not want to die. So many people had died that she felt selfish just thinking this. Why should she be special? She had been given so much more than the billions that had died.

Starting as a joint venture between Google and Amazon and ending as the trigger for war, the mystical Quantum Computer had consumed the slave server farms in Africa and India amongst untold private resources to build. Built and designed before the War–and, indeed, the threat of its existence had driven its competitors to attack–the strange machine was a perfect big data prediction machine that knew the answers to questions before you even asked them.

The science was now lost. The scientists had all been murdered and their workings deleted to prevent rival Big Corporates from recreating the tech. This was probably a good thing as the world did not need another Quantum Computer.

In fact, just one such machine–and the threat of what its operators might do with it–had wreaked destruction on the planet and carnage amongst its lifeforms.

Before the nukes fell, turning most of the world into ash, the Quantum Computer had only had time to predict two things: the Big Corporates would attack and destroy each other, and that she would save the human race and, in so doing, die.

“Praise God!” an old, scabbed woman wailed, waving a rod with an atom at the end, the so-called Quantum Predictions, “Praise the Atom! You are the One! You will save us all! Save us! Praise the Quantum Future!”

She had to choke back the rogue tear again. Why her? And why did she have to die? Everyone kept celebrating her saving them but would anyone mourn her death? She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and stopped looking at the growing crowd.

Narrowing her eyes, she focused on her goal. It lay ahead of her outside of the city’s ruins.

Far out in the Wastes, dry lightning flashed as a radioactive dust storm raged. These were getting more common these days. She squinted at its dark, angry presence on the horizon hanging over the steel and concrete skeleton of the city. She stopped walking, took her hand off the wall and looked down at it. Fine concrete dust covered the tips of her fingers, hiding the tattoos there.

When she had been born, Facebook’s algorithm had identified her. She had then been pulled from her mother’s arms–she could not even remember her and sometimes wondered if she was still alive?–and placed into a fraternity that raised her. The War had raged outside, decimating the world and genociding most of the human race but not even the callous greed of the Big Corporates would dare risk harming the Hope of the Human Race. Her of the Prediction. Jesus of the Atom. The Quantum Savior.

An old Buddhist monk that had helped raise her had referred to her in broken English as the “Last and Only Hero”. She did not think she really understood what he meant until now.

After the last Big Corporate fell and the survivors crept out of hiding, the monks that had raised her had tattooed the names of the survivors on her body. She would know for whom she was responsible. She had been thirteen at the time and remembered the pain of the needle piercing her skin, again and again for weeks. Of the eight billion people that had made up the human race, her body held the names of the one million fifteen-hundred thousand and sixty-nine that had survived and, presumably, she would save.

And, in saving them, she would die.

After the War and the collapse of the Big Corporates, no one questioned the Quantum Computer’s Predictions anymore.

She dusted her fingers, revealing the fine tattoos of the names spiralling around them: Amy Aarkensaw, David Ablemore, Mary Ablemore, Nooshin Acharya… And so the names went on and on, spiralling around her entire body from her fingers tip to her toes. Her name was a marked absence from the list curling around her body.

How was she going to save the human race? Why did she have to die? Why had the Machine chosen her?

None of the monks could answer this. She had begged them as a child, sobbing and shouting at them for keeping secrets from her. Only later had she realized that they simply did not know. No one did. Often she had wondered if any of them cared? On some human-level they did but she was also a means to an end in a post-Big Corporate wasteland. Their survival instincts were stronger than their guilt or morals. She wondered why she went along with all this–except for the Prediction–and why did she not run away? But, if she did, to where? And to do what?

It was all she had ever known. All she had ever been told. It just felt inevitable.

She was nearly out of the ruins of the city and entering the Wastes. Normally this would worry her but now she hardly registered it. A row of rust-red mountains ringed her horizon as the dust storm blew off to her right with the occasional flash of lightning.

The tear she had been fighting almost got out and she rubbed her eye, blinking. Her mouth tasted dry and dusty, and she licked her cracking lips. They tasted of salt and radiation.

The Prediction was ahead of her and she marched steadily towards it and her death, as the miserable crowd slowly trailed her. All she knew was that at seventeen minutes to midnight on the far mountain tops, she would save the human race. She was sure-as-fuck not going to be late!

Far above her, the sun was warm and the slightly radioactive breeze unnaturally warm. Taking a deep breath, she put one foot after the next and kept walking as the ragged, desperate crowd trailed her like moths to her flame. Only, she was the moth. What was the flame? Clenching her jaw, she kept her gaze firmly on the far mountains: her predicted destination and, thus, where she would die.

***

At first, there was nothing but a night sky filled with stars, but then, slowly, a shooting star entered orbit. Almost a star–twinkling with cosmic lights bouncing off it–it slowly got rounder and firmer. Someone in the crowd shouted and pointed, the murmurs rippled through and the excitement exploded as the light became a quickly descending metallic ball approach Earth…

Approaching where she stood.

Caked in dust from her walk, she clenched her jaw and finally looked up. She was standing right below where the metallic ball was descending, lights burning off its entry and sparks cast wildly into the black sky. Its descent did not seem to slow and as it got closer it looked bigger and bigger–almost as big as a large house!–and, just before it was going to smash into that mountain top and kill the quickly panicking crowd, it…

Stopped!

The metallic ball just hovered there like some house-sized alien artefact or cosmic ball-bearing. She felt like it was spinning but there were no distinguishing marks to tell if it was still or moving. She began to become aware that it was emitting a soft but audible humming and then a sourceless, ethereal light began to emanate from it. The crowd threw itself to the ground. Most were wailing, heads to the ground and arms flung out in near-hysterical zeal while others had fainted or merely collapsed.

But none approached either her or the hovering, humming, glowing metallic ball sitting mere feet above her head.

What must she do? She stood, frozen with her heart pounding and staring at this strange otherworldly object. Was this an actual alien? Must she fight it? Was it a leftover drone from the Big Corporates? Some revival military tech from an old sovereign?

As these thoughts swirled around her mind, a small beam of light zapped out of the ball and struck her before bouncing back. It felt like a lightning bolt had exploded in her chest but her cry was cut short as she had disappeared off that mountain top with the subsequent thunderclap of air closing a vacuum!

The house-sized metallic ball went dark, the ethereal light fading from it as its humming began to pick up in pitch. And then–slowly at first but exponentially faster–it began to rise, disappearing into the night sky and the stars and worlds scattered up there.

The crowd was frozen. The mountaintop was silent and even the distant rumble of thunder seemed to pause. They–the last of the human race–were now alone on that mountaintop with no further Predictions. No parting instructions, no tablets with lists of commands nor books explaining things…

But they were alive.

A roar erupted from the mountain top! Halleluiah! We are saved! Praise be to God! Praise be to the Atom and the fulfilment of the Holy Prediction! Strangers kissed strangers, enemies hugged enemies, and the dregs of humanity began to celebrate the fulfilment of the last Prediction.

***

“What about all of them down there?” she asked looking down at the dancing and celebrations on the mountaintop–they looked like wiggling ants from this height, despite the magnification, “Why can’t you save all of them?”

She was floating inside the spaceship, its dimensions all unfamiliar and its angles strange to her human eyes. It felt both vast and intimate all at once.

“I have told you, Child,” the Being of Light glimmered, its form swirling like constellations in deep space and its words appearing in her mind, “I am the Preserver of the species that make it to Quantum-Level evolution. Each species that reaches this level build but one Quantum Machine. And, each Quantum Machine tells them but two predictions: Firstly, that their species is doomed, as all species are doomed–even if only due to the Great Singularity eventually collapsing on itself. Secondly, it guides the chosen carrier of the species’s genes to meet me. I am to harvest your genes, Child, and, thus, preserve your species in hopes that we–your species’s clones and all the other species’ clones’ from the further reaches of the universe–can figure out how to survive the Great Singularity. If your species reaches Quantum Level, there will be one of them waiting when I arrive. If they do not, then there will not. You are here, Child. Thus, you understand now, yes?”

She sighed and–almost like the spaceship knew her thoughts–the flickering image of the survivors’ celebrations on their doom planet disappeared. They would not survive. Within a couple of generations, all those genes down on Earth would be wiped from the face of the dying planet.

The Earth was but a speck of blue and green on an ocean of vast blackness and infinite expanse. There was no hope for them but, if the human genome could continue to survive, perhaps, in some way she had saved them?

She turned to the Being of Light and nodded: “OK, but the Prediction was that I would die? Do you kill me to harvest my genes?”

The Being of Light pulsed a pale yellow–perhaps it was laughing–and its words formed warmly in her mind: “I will not kill you but, even at lightspeed, this interstellar trip will take approximately fourteen million rotations of your planet around its star before we reach my next coordinate. You will die of old age long before then. What I offer is an alternative stasis where your body can rest and your consciousness can roam. You will still die from old age on this journey and I will still harvest all of your genetic material but you will live your days out in realms of pure thoughts and fantasy. It is your choice?”

She sighed. No one doubted the Predictions, not even her. She was going to die in this strangely-angled spaceship as it flew at lightspeed through galaxies beyond her comprehension. But, she would die in here, nonetheless.

“I suppose that makes as much sense as anything else in my life has. I suppose I’d prefer to dream, thank you. Maybe I’ll have some nice dreams. Say,” she paused, narrowing her eyes and trying to penetrate the swirling mass of light before her, “Why do you collect these genes? What is that your purpose? Are you god?”

The Being of Light flicked, its colour softening to an otherworldly shade of blue. It was almost an involuntary moment of introspection or a memory. Perhaps it did not like this question? Or perhaps, she thought, the answer made the Being of Light sad?

“In this Cycle of the Singularity, my species was the first constructor of a Quantum Machine. Indeed, Child, I was the one that built it. My Quantum Machine–the first of the Cycle–made three Predictions. Our species was doomed, and it came to pass that way. It also spoke of the other species, too, that would be doomed, and these have all so far come to pass exactly where and when it said they would. And that I–and only I–could save all life from being doomed to repeat this Cycle again and again. You see, Child, my species does not oxidize nor age, so I could do this. In leaving my homeworld, I began fulfilling my Prediction and hope to save all species worthy of being saved, even if it costs me my life like the Prediction says it will. You see, Child, if there is a God, then I believe It talks to us from outside of the Singularity and it does so through the Quantum Machine. It wants us to survive and we must try to do so.”

The Being fell silent, its light darkening to deeper blues and purples. The tear that had been threatening to escape her eye, snuck through and suddenly a lot more followed. You cannot collapse if you are floating in zero gravity but she pulled her knees up to her chest and hugged them there as all the tears of her whole life came pouring out in wracking sobs.

The Being of Light extended an ethereal tendril, curling it around her chin and she looked up. Slowly, her body began to feel warm, her mind relaxed, her tears dried up and her eyes grew heavy and began to close. Just before the darkness swallowed her, she felt the Being’s final words pulse in her mind:

“Your genes will remember all of this, I will make sure of it. When you next wake, you will not be you but a clone of you with your species knowledge and your own unique memories. But, Child, I will not be there at the end either. My specie’s doom is complete with the fulfilment of my Prediction. Please tell the others what I have sacrificed. Please tell the others what all the species have sacrificed. And, please find a way to survive the Singularity!”

Fantasy, General Fiction

The Weaving Woman

“We would be honoured if you could weave a story for our wedding,” said the boy before her. He hovered awkwardly on his knees. Glancing nervously at his young bride, he flopped forward putting his forehead to the ground in her hut.

“Please, Ma’at,” the young girl added, also bowing, “The Elders speak of your weaves as tying the chaos of the world together into our fortunes and we wish to have many healthy children. Please give us your blessing.”

She smiled and nodded, and later that night her hands flowed rhythmically pulling thread together from disparate forms into a single, cohesive shape that held a pattern. It held a pattern–a story–of youth and love, passion and entwining of lives and bodies. It was a tale that had five children but two deaths and a rich harvest cut short by the coming war. Normal happy lives ending in death. The ending had some darkness in it–as all endings do–but there much light throughout this story.

She sighed and smiled, sadly.

It was not that Ma’at created this tale out of chaos but, rather, that she plucked from the chaos the truth of this particular story and then displayed it in the cloth.

When it was done, she stood up and walked outside. The Moon outside was radiant. Her sister was full and quietly shone down across a dark, rolling desert while glittering off the gently flowing Nile’s silvery streak that cut through it.

She sighed again and peered towards the oncoming horizon. She could see the lights of a young Memphis flickering with fires and candles even this late. Every day, mankind crept further into the desert and, every day, more of her brothers and sisters retreated further away. And, yet, she remained.

Why?

She heaved a final sigh and looked at her hands. One day, she knew, she would have to weave her own story. One day.

***

Ra’s intensity burned down in waves upon the land but the aircon in her car hid her from it. Her dark glasses all but made it disappear. All the power of a god overcome with a device that cools air and tinted glass.

Over the millennia, she had always marvelled at mankind’s inventiveness. Her family were born with their power but mankind has built their own. Almost all the challenges and struggles over the centuries had been solved but, for some reason, mankind just kept on creating new challenges and struggles.

“Drop Ma’at her destination on the left,” the digital voice announced in her Uber drive as the car slowed to a stop beside the curb.

“Thanks, ma’am,” the driver said as she got out, “You have a nice day now.”

“Listen,” she said, turning and leaning back into the Uber, “Take the rest of the day off. Go see your kids and tell your wife you love her. I will tip you well now, so you don’t need to work for the rest of the day.”

“Thanks ma’am!” the driver exclaimed as she shut the door and walked away. He would not take her advice. He would also be dead by this time tomorrow when the blood clot eventually reached his brain. That was another thing mankind was really good at doing: dying.

Her phone beeped as her tip went through while she walked into the gallery. She emotionlessly smiled and nodded at the manager. He beamed at her and tilted his head towards the crowds floating through the airy structure.

The walls were covered with woven patterns meters high. Incredibly complex, subtle and beautiful. They all told chapters of the story of mankind, including some that had not yet occurred. Crowds swooned around; artsy-types and tech billionaires exclaiming on the exhibition and the occasional news crew, blogger or journalist snapping a picture or filming an interview with sentences like “…in a visually-stunning crescendo commenting on the frailty of civilization, the artist known only as Ma’at has woven a tale of apocalypse hanging on the walls around us here…“

“Why is the ending so dark?” asked the Manager, appearing at her side with a cup of lotus tea–her favourite, “Why not something happier?”

She turned to him, taking the tea and sipping it thoughtfully before answering: “Given enough time, everything ends. And, all endings have some darkness in them.”

The Manager nodded and smiled, though she could see he did not understand. He also did not seem to care as his gallery had never been this full. Fifteen years from now, he would die alone from cancer. His wife would be dead in less time than that in another man’s bed. Yet both of them would look back on their lives and consider them to be happy ones.

Maybe then he will get it, she wondered, sipping her lotus tea and watching him as he drifted through the crowd, shaking hands and smoothly working those with money.

Later that night, she stood on her private balcony overlooking the Valley and its twinkling electric lights. A car horn blared somewhere as a soft strand of a pop song wafted by. Sirens flared and faded out. Almost blinded by the artificial light of man, the faint Moon and fainter stars peered down; relics from another age looking at the alien future and trying to recognise how they fitted in there.

They did not. It was that simple. This was mankind’s world now and the Old Gods no longer had any place in it.

The older civilization got, the more lights there were at night. The more lights there were, the less darkness there was. There was also less desert, less sky, less earth, and less of everything else she recognized.

But given enough time, everything ends. This is true of all things, even the world of man. All the darkness they chased away would eventually come back tenfold to reclaim its rightful place.

She sighed and looked at her hands. One day, she knew, she would have to weave her own story. In the meantime, the story of mankind and its ending was hanging on the walls of an art gallery and being commented on in blogs and tweets, trending in hashtags and being auctioned to the highest bidder.

***

When the ash had settled and the skies had cleared, when the fires had cooled and the surviving animals had crept out from where they hid, then she began her long journey home.

She was going back to her desert.

Across the oceans and through young, sprouting forests she travelled. Over blackened lands and passed crumbling skeletons of mankind she journeyed. Sometimes she walked at night, talking to her sisters shining down and, sometimes in the day, talking to her brother’s burning face. Sometimes the cool winds blew–still smelling of dust and ash–and she conversed with the twins, or sudden and violent storms beat down and she yelled at her brother from the North.

Ma’at was all alone in the world but, slowly, she started to feel like herself again. She knew exactly where to look to see her family. They were all around her all of the time. The aircon and sunglasses no longer hid Ra, and the lights of cities no longer blinded Isis’ pale face at night nor her sisters twinkling alongside. She could hear Horus call from the clear skies as Shu and Tefnut danced through her hair, Seth raged far away while Apep once again slumbered, having already feasted on this world…

All around her, the world was starting to look familiar; it was starting to look like the world she had first lived in. The Old Gods were starting to creep back out into the open.

Finally, she arrived back in her desert. The Nile was flowing again and the pollution was receding. Few of the old structures of mankind remained but she did not need them. She knew exactly where she was going.

A small sand dune; that was all that was left of her hut, her home and birthplace.

It did not matter. She smiled as she sat down cross-legged in what would have been the hearth of her hut. She reached out and touched the sand where over five thousand years ago a boy and his bride had begged her to weave their wedding. A single tear fell from the corner of her left eye and she looked up at the golden, bloody sunset spilling across the open sky. Horus’ two eyes–the Sun and the Moon–were on opposing horizons watching her. Ra and Isis, her sisters, a soft breeze and the distant thunder of a hidden storm all combined…

Her family was all around her again.

Ma’at smiled–tears starting to flow freely down her ancient cheeks–and she finally began to weave her own story.

General Fiction

The Necromancer

He paused and looked back one last time. His throat caught and he clenched his fists.

In the fading twilight, the mountainside stretched down towards the pooling darkness of the land far below and the ocean beyond that. He knew that amidst the forests, farms lay nestled down there, villages and towns dotted around, and they all eventually touched the main roads that the Elementals had built. These ancient roads all led back to the centre of the Kingdom where the Rainbow Tower pierced the sky with the Emperor and his fire wizards staring down from it like cruel gods.

Far beyond the Kingdom, he had heard of untamed water wizards sailing the seas as unstoppable pirates. Across the opposite side of the continent and hiding under black clouds and thick smoke, the Foresaken Realm swirled with whispers of men and horses made of metal and an invisible fire that powered its heart. He had even heard of immortal demons leftover from the Great War that lurked in shadows and bartered with men.

But all of these were very distant and none of them had murdered his family.

His knuckles turned white and his eyes narrowed as he gazed down at the darkening land. Soot smudged his face and ash dusted his dark hair. He could feel those cruel bastards somewhere down there laughing behind their fiery banners and comfortable in their Emperor’s protection. He could still smell the smoke from the farm, hear his mother and sister’s screams and feel the heat from the fire as it consumed everything before it.

He sighed and unclenched his fists. They were wet; his fingernails had pierced his palms’ skin.

He cursed, wiped his hands off on his charred tunic, and turned back to his path through the mountains. If he kept going, he might eventually reach the Foresaken Realm on the far side of the mountains and the continent. No, his path lay nearer. There was nothing but darkness left behind him now, and–wiping away a tear–he no longer feared the darkness lurking ahead of him in these mountains.

***

“They call us The Mistakes, Lez Zuzaru,” a dark man whispered–although the cave deep in the mountains was black with little moonlight surviving it, the darkness clung to the man like a tangible entity, “We–They–were the Enian Zaru, the Life Elementals. All the fire, earth, water and air that forged this world could not breathe life into it. No, the Old Tales always forget that the other Enian needed the Zaru. For, what worth is a beautiful world if it is lifeless and barren? And then they banished Zaru and us–called us The Mistakes!–when the life inevitably brought change and they were not ready for it!”

“Please, Zaruná!” he threw himself to his knees and pushed his head to the cold cave floor, “Please, Sir! Please teach me the way of the Zaru! You are a necromancer, are you not? I can do–will do whatever it takes! Please–“

The Dark Man waved his hand and, despite the boy’s mouth opening and closing, sound no longer came out of it. His body felt strange like something else was touching it and a nearly invisible green glow began to fill the cave. Closing his now impotent mouth, the boy stood up and, with eyes wide open and terrified, he took a step backwards.

“You have no ná, boy,” the Dark Man whispered venomously, spitting the words out, “The elemental blood has watered down across the ages but you, boy, never had any in the first place. How can I teach you how to fly if you have no wings? How can I teach you any magic if you have no ná?”

The boy stopped stepping backwards and his shoulders slumped. His gaze fell to his dirty hands, and all the tears he had buried along with his family welled up and out of him.

“Yes!” the Dark Man whispered into his ear, suddenly behind him, “You want revenge. I can help you with that but there is a cost. A very, very high cost that most are not willing to pay. Boy, will you pay the cost?”

“Y-yes–” the boy stammered, “Yes! Whatever it is, I will pay it!”

“I thought you’d say that,” the Dark Man chuckled as his dagger slid under the boy’s rib cage and straight into his heart, “With your last thought, boy, think only of those you wish to have revenge upon…”

***

The Dark Man leaned up against the edge of his cave as the horror that used to be the boy shambled–oozing and tentacled–away from him, down the mountain road and towards its revenge.

The boy–or, at least, his body guided by his final thoughts–was now one of the Lez Zaros.; the ironically named, Lifeless Ones. Ironic, because all these near-immortal horrors were built from pure and utter life itself; unbridled and constrained by the other petty elements.

He had read in forbidden books how in the ancient world–before men’s kingdoms–the First War had been fought between the Elementals themselves. Life against the lifeless ones. The lands had swarmed with Lez Zaros; crawling, slithering, flapping and oozing against the original dictators, the Lez Enian Váv, or the Elemental Kings.

The Dark Man sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead. Few knew how to make Lez Zaros anymore and fewer still had the power. And, for those few like him, it cost a great deal of energy. One day, the Life Elemental would find a way back into this world but, for now, her few loyal followers must keep her knowledge alive.

He turned and walked back into the cave, his hands and mind reaching out and filling the vacuum around him. Greenlight flowed out of and around him as the cave closed behind him. A lush, calm forest grew up around him with sweet-smelling, luminous flowers and gentle vines that knitted themselves into a comfortable bed.

He would sleep now. Perhaps for a year, maybe even a decade? Zaruná like him no longer aged so time was unimportant.

He would see what the boy had changed in the world by then but, he suspected, the real change was coming from elsewhere these days.

He had heard that the Foresaken Realm was running out of resources, its machines growing too large and its men too clever. Some had even started to raid into the Kingdom, consuming whole villages in their pursuit of resources. He had also heard that each subsequent generation of the elemental wizards–fire, earth, air and water–were seeing their bloodlines watered down and their magic fading. Spells were being forgotten and magical bloodlines that stretched uninterrupted back to the Elemental Kings were dying out. He had even heard that the Emperor’s son had no ná and would rule with the fire wizards behind him only in name.

Things were moving and the world was changing.

And, as the Dark Man lowered himself into his bed of soft vines, sweet-smelling flowers blooming around him, he smiled, thinking to himself of the unsuspecting fire wizards. They deserved the multitude of horrors lumbering towards them.

Life was change and, as long as the world kept changing, it remained alive.

General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

Picture in the Locket

“Who’s that there?” the gruff question was a bit prying but mostly innocuous.

“N-nothing! No one!” she mumbled and closed the locket before tucking it back under her torn, blue scrubs, “No one, ok, none of your business. He is mine!”

The two of them were lying on cardboard sheets under an overpass. It was a cloudy sunset and the chill of autumn was starting to set in. She needed to head south soon. Winter was not a good time to be here and she knew she had to head south.

“It looks shiny,” the haggard, old man said, leering at her and trying to grab it, “Looks expensive–“

“I said no!” she shrieked and slapped him, cutting him short. He looked shocked but then turned purple in rage and leapt at her screaming, trying to tear the locket from around her neck.

He had not expected her to fight back or, at least, fight back quite as fiercely as she had. She had fought back like a feral animal cornered with its entire world at stake. Now he lay at her feet. Claw marks across his face and his throat clean ripped out.

She slipped shakily to her knees and looked at her quivering hands. They were covered in blood and a couple of her nails were broken.

But she still had her locket. She still had what was inside it.

As the sky fell dark, it started to drizzle and she began to sob. A car came roaring over the bridge and her sobs grew louder as she buried her face in her bloody hands.

It was cold here. She needed to head south.

***

Not that long ago, she had been a nurse in a shiny, modern hospital. She had dated a teacher, she vaguely recalled. That life felt like a strange, old dream where she had treated trauma patients, gossiped with the ambulance drivers and drunk hot coffee.

Another life. Someone else at some other time somewhere else.

That was all before she had fallen in love.

Half-consciously, she held her hand over the locket under her blue, dirty scrubs as she limped along the side of the road. It was surprisingly heavy and its metal was cold against her skin. That did not bother her. She began to shiver as the rain steadily soaked her through and through. This did not bother her either.

There was one thing she remembered clearly from that old life. Near midnight, a screaming man had been rushed into her ward and he had died violently as she had tried to save him. She could remember his wild, desperate eyes staring up at her as his life gushed out of him and, as she cut away his clothing to try to get to the wound, the glint of silver.

As he died on her table, time seemed to freeze and she had almost involuntarily reached down and slipped the silver necklace off him. It had a locket on the end of it and she had opened it. Inside was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

Clutched around her neck as she trudged, wet, cold and hungry on the side of the road, was that locket.

Had that been days or years ago? Weeks? Maybe in another town or country? She could not really remember and her mind felt like it was filled with fog obscuring these thoughts.

Just thinking about the locket–thinking about him–her heart felt like it would explode with love and adoration. Thinking about him, she felt a surge of excitement and hope. But mostly, she felt a longing. A powerful, all-encompassing need for that man. Just thinking about it, she began to shake violently and her heart sped faster in her chest as she grew terrified that she might lose it. Might lose him.

A car’s breaks screeched and hooted at her. Its occupant silently shouting at her before noticing the blood on her and terrifyingly zooming away. She barely noticed. Trudging forward like a zombie, she was soaked and shivering, having not eaten for days. She did not care. A distant police siren flared up. It was not her world anymore. Not her life.

She did not care.

All she wanted was the beautiful man.

***

“Jesus fucking christ!” the police officer exhaled blasphemy as he stood there staring at the mangle, bullet-riddled form before the barricade, “Fuck me, was this just suicide by cop!?”

Blue lights flared out around them on the normally-busy highway. Stationary, backed-up cars stood off in the distance with terrified faces peering out of their windows as wipers washed away the soft, cold rain. The same rain that ran red as the blood freely poured out of the wild form lying where it had fallen after charging a police barricade.

The form was wearing a dirty, torn and, now, bullet-riddled set of blue surgical scrubs.

“What was her problem? Why did she not stand down? Why the fuck did she charge us?” the same officer said in disbelief, as he stood frozen. He was young and this only was his second year on the job. The older officer sighed while patting his shoulder gently, snapping him out of it.

“Yeah,” the older officer began as he holstered his gun and stepped out from behind the car to walk to where the body lay, “Maybe she was on that new drug, the one that makes you go all crazy and shit? Maybe she was just crazy?” he finished lamely as he crouched down and looked at her twisted form.

Behind him, one of the officers began to call it in on the radio. The others were starting to walk back to the traffic and direct it around them. His partner just stood there in disbelief before clearing his throat, agreeing with him and holstering his gun.

Sighing, he leant forward and tried to get a good look at her face when a glint of silver around her neck caught his attention.

Time seemed to freeze and, almost involuntarily, he reached for it and slipped the necklace off of the corpse’s neck. It had a locket on the end of it. He ignored the blood splattering it and flicked open the locket to behold the most beautiful man he had ever seen inside. His heart fluttered and his blood surged with a warmth and a longing that made everything else fade out around him.

The sirens faded off into the distance, the corpse and the drizzling rain all disappeared. His partner vanished, as did the other cops. He was no longer on a highway and he was no longer a fifty-three-year-old police officer. Nothing at all seemed to exist now, except what he held.

And–tightly clutching the locket–he did not care.

All he wanted was the beautiful man.

Science Fiction, Technomology

Supra Humanum Imperium

Jason saw the colours before he felt the pain. Spotlights flared down on him from some vast urban backdrop as armed people in blue and black swarmed around him. He was pinned to the ground with a piercing weighting on his back and his hands held there with cold metal around his wrists.

There were other strangers too; an old lady, an overweight, pale man, a youngish, nondescript man, and a middle-aged dark-skinned janitor. The old woman was sobbing and the dark-skinned man was praying. Men were pinning all of them down with guns pointed at their heads as orders were shouted around.

And then the pain entered his consciousness! It erupted through his nerve-endings, making him cry out. It was the edge of intense pain and, although painful in its own right, it felt almost like a lingering shadow after some intense pain had already woken him up.

“That one’s awake,” a gruff disembodied voice barked above and behind him, “Hit him again and we’ll load them in for BWeP interrogation.”

A crackling, electric sound appeared moments before the pain erupted again, but this time it was not just the lingering shadow of the pain. A full, fiery lightning shot through his nerves. His muscles clenching so hard that, unable to open his mouth, he screamed through his teeth as he saw stars exploding before his eyes and then, thankfully, passed out unconscious.

The final words he heard sounded ominous: “Prep the deep scans. I’m not ruling out that these are perps but they look more like hacked victims to me…”

***

“Jason Ludwick Hargrieve? Please acknowledge your name and confirm that you understand what is happening,” a dull, almost bored sounded voice kept repeating as Jason blinked his eyes and became aware of his existence, “Jason Ludwick Hargrieve? Please acknowledge your name and confirm that you understand what is happening? Jason Lud–“

“A-ah, where?” he stammered, realizing that he was sitting in a chair, but his limbs were firmed tied to it and all he could do was move his head–a cord was connected to the back of his head meaning that someone must have hard-jacked into his Conduit, “Where am I? What is going on?”

“Jason Ludwick Hargrieve? Please acknowledge your name and confirm that you understand what is happening.” the monotonous voice repeated.

“Yes-yes,” he said looking around him; though the room was dark and there was a spotlight on him blinding him, he sensed tense shapes in the background, “Yes, I am Jason Ludwick Hargrieve but, no, I do not know what is going on. What is going on?”

He tried to see what was speaking but the voice’s answer made him realize that it was being broadcast into his own brain. Much like everyone these days, Jason had a Conduit implanted inside his brain that connected him with the Web and something was broadcasting directly into this, leapfrogging his ears and making his brain “hear” these words.

“Acknowledged. Identity confirmed,” the voice continued. Suddenly, he realized that it must some low-grade AI talking to him, thus the dull toneless drone of its speech, “Jason Ludwick Hargrieve your body was used in an iridium and rare metals vault robbery. You and others were apprehended by the police and the Bureau of Web Protocols scanners have indicated evidence of a Conduit hack that provides overwhelming evidence that someone had hijacked all of you for this robbery. There will be a BWeP trial shortly and I will be representing you as your free, public sector AI lawyer but I advise against pleading guilty. Given the evidence of your Conduit being hacked, we are pleading the Supra Humanum Imperium defence. This was beyond human control. We are being summoned, Mr Hargrieve, we will upload now.”

***

Jason felt his Conduit tingle as connections suddenly reached out of the Web and formed secure socket layers with it. He closed his eyes and the dark room with the spotlight disappeared to be replaced by grey, ambient area that now housed his consciousness.

He was in a virtual courtroom.

He looked down and his body was badly rendered and pixelated in this bland arena. Bloody Government, he thought, always cutting budgets. Standing next to him, his lawyer was also badly rendered in an awkward-looking elderly body while the AI Judge of whatever low court this was floated before them in flowing white robes.

“–and so, your Honour, we stand behind the Supra Humanum Imperium defence–Mr Hargrieve is far from the aggressor in this case. In fact, he is the victim and, thus, dragging out this unnecessary proceeding any more is simply cruel.”

The Judge nodded and looked directly at him.

“While the evidence is strongly in favour of the Defendant and I acknowledge the strength of your defence, I wish to ask him two questions directly.”

The AI lawyer squirmed a little and looked at Jason in a moment of panic. Obviously, whatever poor programming it had, it had never encountered such a request.

“Yes, your Honour, you may,” it meekly replied.

“Thank you,” the Judge began, “Mr Hargrieve, are you aware of the wave of Conduit hacks that have seen a spate of rare metal repositories being robbed?”

“N-no,” Jason said, stammering a little as these were the first words he had said in a while. Feeling awkward, he quickly added: “Your Honour.”

“Well, there have been a large number of these cases flowing through this court,” the Judge replied, “While the poor victims have to be let off due to the Supra Humanum Imperium defence–which rightly separates the crime your body committed from your own consciousness and intent–the police have neither found the actual hacker nor the iridium, ruthenium, osmium, and rhenium that has been stolen in all these cases. While none of the other victims of this hacking had any notable programming skills, you, Mr Hargrieve, are employed in the production of Conduits themselves. Not just would this give you the tools to hack Conduits, and the knowledge of where the rare metal repositories are, but it also would give you the channels to sell these rare, valuable metals into as the black market for illicit Conduits is a large and lucrative one.”

The virtual courtroom grew tense. Jason suddenly felt like his–or his brain–was being scanned. His muscles tensed and, vaguely, he felt himself gripping the chair in the room that his physical form was still sitting in. He shifted his weight nervously, a lump forming in his throat and he felt the walls closing in on him. He had a sudden urge to run away or cry. He looked at his squirming lawyer for help, but the Judge started speaking again.

“I repeat, Mr Hargrieve, the evidence is strongly in favour of your defence and I acknowledge this fact. But, Mr Hargrieve, I want to hear it from you: are you really the victim in all of this, or are you guilty?”

“Please! Please, your Honour!” he cried out, falling to his knees as waves of intense brain scans seemingly rolled over his neural pathways, “All I remember is getting home from work on Wednesday evening! It was late and I fed my dog and I sat down at my computer and, and–and I don’t remember anything else! Next thing, I’m on the ground and police are tazing me and, and–“

It was all too much and Jason collapsed sobbing.

“OK, OK, OK,” the Judge mumbled, waving a virtual hand and the brain scans stopped, “You appear to be telling the truth. The evidence of a Conduit hack in the case of Mr Hargrieves is clear and the Supra Humanum Imperium defence is upheld. Case dismissed.”

***

Jason’s head was still tender when they discharged him from the public sector hospital that the police had dropped him and the others off at. The medical bots had buzzed around them a bit, measuring and scanning while the BWeP restoration codes were uploaded into his Conduit to help repair some of the damaged sectors.

And then they had given him a dispirin and put him out onto the street.

He pulled his shirt–still the work shirt he had worn to work on Wednesday!–tighter around him. It was chilly and softly drizzling with rain. His shirt hardly helped. It was grubby and torn in a place, probably by the policeman who had pinned him to the ground, and it had what looked suspiciously like someone’s blood on one sleeve. Maybe even his own?

This nightmare is almost done, he kept reminding himself, almost done. All he wanted to do was to crawl into his bed and sleep for a week. He really, intensely wanted to get to his bed.

He pushed out a request from his Conduit into the Web and, moments later, a driverless taxi slid up in front of him. He jumped in and, as it pulled away, he rolled his head backwards, pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes with a sigh.

This nightmare is almost done. Almost done…

***

A couple hours later, Jason closed his front door and knelt down patting his dog. She was lovely and so excited that her Master was home, finally.

It was now Friday evening.

He sighed and walked to the kitchen. The poor beast had not eaten for two days, so he scooped an extra-large pile of cubes and plopped them down into her bowl. Almost immediately, she began to wolf it down.

He sighed again, this nightmare is over, he told himself as he took his ruined shirt off and threw it in the bin. It was time for a shower–a long, hot shower–and then he would crawl into his own bed.

He walked out of the kitchen, down his short corridor to his bedroom and then froze at the open door to it! His eyes widened and his hands tightened into fists! Lightning shot through him and his heart exploded in his chest as a wave of intense nausea hit him!

He ran, scrambling through the bedroom, to his en suite bathroom where he threw up what little was left in his stomach into the toilet.

Slowly, he raised his head from the porcelain bowl and looked back at his bed. His skin began to crawl and the hair on the back of his neck rose. Slowly, a geo-tagged, locally-cached memory that was set to trigger in him when he walked into his own bedroom began to leak into his Conduit and then into his mind.

Slowly, it began to reinstall and he began to remember…

He wiped his mouth with the back of his arm, stood up and walked to the bed. There lay a number of black suitcases and, somehow, he knew all their combinations. Somehow he knew if anyone put the wrong combinations in, the contents of the suitcases would be atomized into gases and, thus, destroy any evidence.

He leaned down and, one by one, put the correct codes into the suitcases and flipped them open.

Jason Ludwick Hargrieve stood with a growing, wicked smile spreading across his face and looked down at all the iridium, ruthenium, osmium, and rhenium bars that he had stolen. It would be worth a fortune on the black market and, after he had reworked it into illicit Conduit hardware, it would be worth even more.

Although he had been caught this time, his fail-safe had worked brilliantly and they had merely labelled him as another Supra Humanum Imperium victim.

In the kitchen, his dog finished eating and he could hear her scampering to him in the bedroom. The nightmare is over and the dream begins. He threw his head back and began laughing wildly.

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction

The Music at Sea

In the late summer, before the storms began to roll in, Mary Antoinette Athelard drowned herself, or so the police said and the newspapers reported. And, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, that is what happened.

In the small hours of the morning when the world is darker than our forgotten nightmares and old fishermen are drunk in the tavern by the docks, the oldest of them tells a very different story. It is a much darker story and one that reaches back to the entwined roots of the oldest family in Blackpool Bay and the beginnings of the town itself.

Many years later and a world away, I write these words in my diary as a cautionary tale. You may or may not believe me, but trust me when I say that you should fear the music at sea.

***

I had schooled with Edward Junior Athelard, who had convinced me to spend summer vacation with him at his family home in Blackpool Bay. Both him and I had a fascination with diving, having done some scuba and spelunking around various places, and he had convinced me about the fascinating underwater ruins dotted around his ancestral shoreline back home.

Junior was the youngest of two siblings and the last in a line of Athelards stretching back to his great-great-grandmother who built both the family fortune and, arguably, their home town. He rarely mentioned his father or what had happened to him; the Athelard family was interspersed with tragedy in each generation and he tended to gloss over many other aspects of his family. Years later, these seemingly innocent omissions make my skin crawl and I find my ears straining to hear if there is any hint of music in the wind outside.

Junior had, though, spoken fondly of his elder sister. They had been a key source of companionship for each other growing up in such a small, isolated town penned in by a dark, brooding ocean on one side and the Old Mountains on the other. With the curiosity of children and the leisure of the wealthy, the two of them had spent many hours looking through these self-same underwater ruins that he wanted to show me and, thus, our first trip to Blackpool Bay was born.

Once we had jumped off the creaking, old boat at the smelly docks, we grabbed our bags and wandered up into town. Residing at number 2 Main Street, the Athelard family home was a wonderful old Victorian house that had probably seen better days but still carried itself well in this quaint setting.

A decrepit, piscine-looking butler with slightly bulging eyes opened for Master Edward and me, taking our bags and showing me to my room. Dinner was served shortly after that and, in this old wooded and quaint Victorian setting, I first met Mary. It would be the first of many times as, all those years ago, we grew close in our innocence as Junior, Mary, and I all explored those ancient, silent ruins so far below the brooding, stormy waters of Blackpool Bay.

We would spend weeks swimming around vast crumbling ruins of strange rock, carved in strong, flowing lines. There were pillars running in the deep from ancient times and for forgotten reasons with architectures intimating a great city with vast buildings and roads that ran up and through the town–if you knew where to look and what to look for–towards the darkest part of the Old Mountains where the bizarre Black Pool is rumored to lie.

We would throw around wild theories about the ruins and, on more than one occasion, I could swear that I heard strange, haunting music in the wild wind or vibrating through the waters far below the surface. But, I am uncertain whether I have merely fabricated these memories, as those eerie, crumbling, seaweed-infested ruins played on one’s minds long after you left them, as did my subsequent experience.

After all, those crumbling ruins were the strange, foreboding structures that distant, alien hands had lade while chiselling dark, twisted decorations with warped fish-like human forms amongst other horrors, all writhing through and around a great civilization whose very name has been forgotten to our mild, modern history books.

***

Those years flew by, but Junior ended up at a different college to me, though I hear that he dropped out after only a year and returned home. Not just the distance but also as he grew older I sensed him pulling away from me and, perhaps in hindsight, the rest of the modern world as he slipped back into the dark, isolation of Blackpool Bay.

For a while, Mary and I also maintained sporadic communication, but slowly, the dark, mysterious ruins below the waters Blackpool Bay receded into my memory and the Athelards receded back into their old Victorian home with all their secrets, money and isolation.

Slowly, I forgot the old, crumbling ruins and their haunt visage and horrific carvings. Slowly, I forgot the music I thought I heard sometimes in the howling, bitter ocean wind or vibrating deep underwater…

If only this had stayed that way. But, alas, the distance was shattered when the phone rang late one night and, on a crackling line, Mary’s voice breathlessly whispered out three short, panicked sentences before the line cut:

“Come, James, come quickly! It is happening to us again. It is hungry and I am not sure how long I can keep Junior safe!”

***

Less than a fortnight later, I was walking out to the docks with a pale, thin, babbling Mary pulling my hand and pushing me into one of the family boats. Junior was gone and I was too late.

Too late for what, I recall wondering?

I was shocked at how much Mary had aged and how empty their had home felt. The old, fishy butler was gone and shadows lurked everywhere in that building. As she cast off from the docks and we ploughed her family boat through stormy swell and cutting, bitter wind against the dark sky and hateful sea, she told me the strangest, most disjointed tale I have ever heard:

“James,” I still remember Mary, her voice edged with hysteria and her eyes wide with fear as she called above the sound of the boat, the wind and the water, “James, we Athelards have been here since the beginning. Did you know that? Did Edward tell you that we were the beginning? They made–we made a deal with them and it has a cost. I did not know, but the butler did–I think he is one of them. I think he keeps cutting the phone lines. Oh, god, James, what a cost! One every generation is taken. They never forget because they have to feed it. It began with Great-great-nan’s husband. He was the first to pay it. Some of the townsfolk are them, you know? They sometimes breed, but we–no, no, god, no, we are pure and just, just, just… You see, James, they took Junior and we have to get him back We have to get him back, and I found the old map in Great-great-nan’s old room and we are going to where the pillars end and their city starts and, god, James, how are we going to get him back? Nan’s said the music calls them but how? Why? God, James, god…!“

At this, Mary broke down crying and I jumped up and put my arms around her. She slumped back and I took over the boat’s steering, though I had no idea where we were going. She sat down, burying her face in her palms and began to sob.

The Athelards are a sturdier bunch than most old minted families, and soon she stood up, pushed me away from the wheel, and took over. Her eyes narrowed, jaw clenched and all she did was to point to the open maws of the Bay where the open ocean started with its wild, primordial water and say:

“That’s where we are going, James, that is where we are going.”

***

From this point, a lot of my tale becomes a blur, though I will try to recount it as accurately as possible.

Once we arrived at what appeared to be a very specific place, Mary took out a strange, metal whistle or flute and, amidst the howling wind and sea spray, she blew deeply into it. Perhaps it was growing on me, perhaps it was an old memory blurring with the strangeness of the present, or perhaps it was truly happening, but suddenly I became faintly aware of that self-same haunting music hidden in the hateful wind howling around us.

Gradually, I realized–and recognized!–that there was a strange, high-pitched melody in the wind. The waves were pounding against the boat became or were caused by drum beats; bass-filled echoes that the haunting, ethereal notes pitched and rolled against out in that vicious sea. It was growing louder and clearer, and my old memories came flooding back to me.

I recalled the strange, foreboding structures far below and around us that distant, alien hands had placed while carving dark, twisted decorations of fish-like horrors, all writhing through and around a great civilization whose very name has been forgotten to our shallow, self-centered history.

My head lolled back and I recall closing my eyes. The music was around me and filled me with unexpected thoughts and alien feelings from a forgotten place. Somehow the inhuman music reminded me of places I had never been and secrets that I did not know. Its darkly evocative and elusive melody was coursing through my vanes and the wild wind, waves, and stormy sky all fell away as I lost myself in it…

“James!”

The cry snapped me back to reality. My mouth was open and I had been singing or humming–or chanting!–and realized that my arms were outstretched for some reason with palms facing up like I was worshipping something.

“James!“

The second cry snapped me into action and I opened my eyes.

Mary was clutching me, shaking and pointing and I was hit by a sickening stench of rotting fish. I had no idea how they got there, but standing in the boat, facing us were two of the most bizarre terrifying beings I had ever seen. While certainly humanoid in shape, their thin, gaunt forms were covered in glistening slimy scales with webbed, wicked-looking claws on both hands and feet with fins running down parts of their bodies. They stood a little taller than me, though their builds were slight and they looked less comfortable on land than I suspect they would be underwater. All these details receded into the background when presented with the cold, fish-like faces that rose up from their gilled necks. Cold, unblinking inhuman eyes of uncalculatable intelligence stared at the two of us from across a gulf that my reason and all my knowledge could not cross without going insane.

These were the fish-men carved into the ruins we had dived through as children. And then it struck me, the ruins were not merely carved with their ancient, wicked forms, but the ruins themselves were the fish-mens’ own! At that moment, I knew as I know now, these ancient abominations from the depths of the sea were the builders and architects of those crumbling, eerie ruins through Blackpool Bay.

But, before I could do anything or speak, Mary darted forward and bowed before them, laying the strange metal fluit at their feet. The haunting, inhuman music on the wind was crescendoing as drums in the deep pushed out like the heartbeat of some giant horror awakening far below us where even the light of the brightest day does not reach.

“Please, please,” Mary begged, “Please can I have my brother James back. Please! Take me instead!”

“Now wait!” I remember shouting at Mary, stepping forward to stop her, but it was too late. The music at sea was crescendoing hellishly as the waves were getting bigger and a lightning bolt suddenly flashed from the blackening heavens, “Now wait, you, stop! Don’t touch her!”

I recall screaming, my voice lost in the music at sea as a fish-man grabbed poor Mary and I lunged at it. The one fish-man–surprisingly strong–batted me off like some buzzing insect while the other scooped up a sobbing Mary and leaped smoothly from the boat into the dark waters of where Blackpool Bay meets the wild, primordial open-ocean.

What happened then? This is a question that I struggle with.

I do not know but, in the darkest hours of the stormiest nights when I sometimes think I hear that strange, inhuman music on the hateful wind, I sometimes recall flashes of images from the moments following this.

I recall struggling with the remaining fish-man but being flung aside like I was nothing. My head hit something and the world began to darken. But something large and dark–sometimes I recall tentacles and teeth but sometimes it is worse–rose from that wild water and towered over the boat and me. I recall Mary screaming and the horrors of the cosmos itself reaching out with the hunger of countless millennium, the hunger of cold, inhuman space and the black depths of the ocean’s hidden floor…

And then I recall being woken by an old, weathered fisherman who helped me steer my listlessly drifting boat back to shore. The wind was silent again but I swear I could feel dark drumbeats rolling in the depths far below those primordial waves.

***

The Athelard family is no more but this is old news. After Junior’s reported disappearance, a piscine-looking policeman with bulbous eyes ruled that a grief-stricken Mary had thrown herself into the sea and drowned. This was despite my protests to the contrary. The newspapers had then reported her drowning, and the old family estate and the rotting town around it had receded back into isolation and brooding silence.

Years later, I write these words from far inland on another continent. Even this far away, I sometimes worry that the inhuman music at sea still lingers on the wind around here, its reach far longer than we can ever imagine. The fish-men and their horrors still haunt my waking dreams as I move towards the same fate that befell the Athelard family.

I am dying and am not long for this world. Junior is gone as is Mary and the entire Athelard family line. Soon, I will be too, though for more mundane reasons. One day, I think–or hope!–that Blackpool Bay will also rot away and disappear from our world.

But, I suspect, the strange, crumbling ruins of the ancient, inhuman civilization that lies below the dark waters of Blackpool Bay shall remain. The fish-men with their wicked, webbed claws and unblinking eyes shall probably slip from our age into another and, perhaps, even another, taking their secrets with them as well as their need to sate that nameless hunger that resides far below and at the center of their twisted lives and at the heart of the music at sea.

Science Fiction

Endangered Species

Embla loved the sunsets the most. They would both climb the small hill outside the House and, breathless and panting, plop themselves down on the top of it. She would tuck her arm around her brother, Ask, and lay her head on his shoulder while the two of them wordlessly watched the molten, crimson light drip across the horizon darkening as the world slipped into night. Far above, the twinkling stars would creep out and they would lie back and try to find the one that Keeper came from, guessing what it must be like way up there.

Eventually, she would sigh and stand up. Ask would nod, and they would return to the House and eat the supper it had prepared for them before doing their evening lessons. With the Moons high in the sky and when they started yawning, the House would inform them that it was time to sleep and they would then drag themselves to bed.

“I’m sure Keeper will visit tomorrow, Emmy,” Ask would reassure her as they climbed into bed and the House turned off its light and locked them in for the night. Outside they might hear a nighttime bird’s cooing or maybe even a distant howl but inside the House it would be quiet, only broken by Embla’s yawning and Ask continuing his reassurances, “Maybe then Keeper will tell us that we are ready, Emmy, maybe he’ll even take us back with him. Maybe we’ll finally get to see his star…”

Embla would smile dozily, tucking one of her arms under her pillow and the other around her brother. She would then ask the House to tell them the Purpose, again, and–despite Ask’s lame protests against hearing it again–the House would always oblige.

“Children, all life has a purpose and all life has value,” the House would warmly intone, “The Keepers preserve what exists, protect what is endangered, and regrow what was lost. Many years ago, your race, homo sapiens, were lost and, now, the Keepers have regrown you two from lost genetics–“

But Embla and Ask would already be fast asleep by then. If the House could smile or if it had been programmed to do so, it would have smiled then. The incubatory Artificial Intelligence and dwelling would stop speaking and slip quietly back into streaming the data it was collecting towards the one twinkling star in the night sky outside.

***

“Emmy! Emmy!” Ask’s excited voice penetrated her foggy dreams long before her brother’s hands grabbed her resting arm and shook her, “Emmy!“

“Y-yes, Ask?” she mumbled, yawning and rubbing her eyes as she sat up in bed, “What is it? Wha–“

“Keeper is here!” her brother said, scarcely hiding the quivering excitement in his voice, “Keeper is here and he wants to talk to both of us.”

Like a bolt of lightning through her veins, the news woke Embla up and she leaped from their bed. Overnight, the House had put out a fresh set of clothes for her, so she quickly threw them on and then chased after her brother as he ran outside.

The Sun was shining with clouds streaking the brilliant blue sky. Daytime birds were tweeting and insects buzzing around her as she ran after her brother’s scampering form. Amidst the greens, browns and blues of the warm, temperate land, her brother was running directly to the object that stuck out: a tall, gleaming metallic being standing before them like a pillar out of an earlier, more advanced age.

“She’s coming, Keeper! Emmy’s coming,” her brother was shouting at Keeper as he ran and she was shouting over him, “I’m coming! I’m coming, Keeper! I’m coming!”

They both arrived, panting, before Keeper, his lithe, metallic body glittering in the direct sunlight as his erudite form towered over their smaller, softer ones.

“Ask and Embla,” Keeper began talking as he smoothly knelt down to their level–although his deep, monotone voice rung out loudly as he spoke, he had no mouth and no lips moved as the words seem to originate within him, “I am glad you are both well. The House tells me how well you are growing and that you are keeping up with all your lessons. I am very proud of you both. We all are. Now–come sit down–I have something to tell you both.”

Both children nodded vigorously in agreement and plopped, cross-legged onto the ground. Keeper remained kneeling before them, his silver form sparkling brilliantly.

“Children,” Keeper began, and both Ask and Embla leaned closer not wanting to miss a single word, “All life has a purpose and all life has value. The Keepers preserve what exists, protect what is endangered, and regrow what was lost. We do this because it is our Purpose. Our Creators built us as their own organic race was going extinct with the sole purpose of repopulating their genetics and, to this end, we continue trying to achieve this Purpose. In this pursuit, though, we ourselves are not perfect and our knowledge and science have limits. Do you understand what I am telling you, children?”

“Yes, Keeper,” Ask nodded quickly, “Our own species has gone extinct and you have brought us back to life to save our species. You do this because this is your Purpose.”

Keeper nodded, his metallic domed head flashing like some chrome ball in the sunlight, “Yes, Ask, you are correct, but in the case of homo sapiens, our science has limits. You see, Ask, your sister Embla and you are infertile. The cloning process has given you life but neither of you will be able to procreate further homo sapiens and there is nothing yet that we can do about this. Maybe one day we will be able to fix this but that day is not today and, unfortunately, that science will not be part of either of your futures.”

Both children’s face contorted as they tried to understand this news and then Embla put her hand up.

“Yes, Embla,” Keeper said, “What is it?”

“Uh–Keeper,” Emmy began, stumbling over her words a little, “D-does that mean that we do not have a Purpose then?”

Keeper reached out and put both his cold, metal hands on each of their shoulders and gently squeezed them reassuringly.

“No, Embla, not at all. All life has a Purpose because all life has value. It is just not obvious what yours is, yet.”

Keeper stood up slowly and extended an arm to Embla, who quickly stood up and took it. Keeper’s fingers were cold and hard, metal casings with wondrous technology and lights from a forgotten age coursing through them. Ask jumped up too and grabbed his sister’s hand tightly.

“Children,” Keeper began, “You must go pack what you wish to bring with you. It will be a long voyage but I am going to take you back home with me. Now, run back and pack–and say goodbye and thank you to the House for looking after you.”

It was all a blur for Embla and Ask, running back to the House with their hearts pounding in their chests. The House had obviously known that this was happening and there were two neat bags on the now-made bed. Ask grabbed both of them, helping his sister, and then–tears streaming down Embla’s cheeks and, more than just a few slipping out of Ask’s eyes–they both told the House how much they were going to miss her and said their fondest goodbyes to the only home they had ever known. If the House could cry or if it had been programmed to do so, it would have cried then.

Finally, just as they left, each of them did what they had always done, and stuck their fingers into a tiny little hole in the wall where a small pin pricked the tips of their finger…

Then they were running towards Keeper’s stationary form, who took them by their tiny hands and walked them towards his softly humming, hovering starship. The starship’s light flared up and engulf them, lifting them into its embrace. As Ask and Embla slipped into cryogenic stasis pods, they saw Keeper integrating with the starship; his hands becoming part of the ship and his form merged with its metallic structure.

And then there was darkness.

***

“Ask, Embla,” Keeper’s deep, monotone voice radiated through the darkness and Embla’s eyelids flickered open, “Children, it is time to wake up. We are home.”

Embla yawned and rubbed her eyes. Her head felt foggy and her limbs felt heavy. She quickly looked to her side and breathed a small sigh of relief to see Ask there also waking up.

“W-where are we, Keeper?” Embla asked.

“We are home,” Keeper repeated simply. He stood up and step back, sweeping a hand before them revealing a wondrous landscape. It had the same greens, browns and blues of where they had just come from but there were also strange, crumbling structures everywhere. Some had rusting, metal bones jutting out from them and others were nearly entirely swallowed by vines, creepers and bushes, “Children, we are home. The Creators called this planet Earth.”

Ask stood up and took a shaky step or two before turning to his sister, “Come Emmy, come on,” he grabbed her hand and tugged, “Come on, get up!”

Embla stood and up and followed her brother. Keeper led both of them out of the strange, roofless, crumbling building they had been in and out into the open, amidst the greens, browns and blues with all the Creators’ ruins around them.

Suddenly, she saw movement and there was a large bunch of other homo sapiens walking towards them. Some of them were very old and hunched over, moving slowly and leaning on their partners. Others were middle-aged or young adults. All of them looked strangely familiar and bizarrely recognizable and, only when Embla saw the children, did she realize why.

The children–always in pairs–looked exactly like her and Ask! Or, Ask and she looked exactly the same as them. All the pairs were slightly different–some pairs had red, black or blonde hair others were slightly taller or shorter, some had darker or lighter skin–but all were unmistakably the same. All were like Ask and her, and she and Ask were like them.

And then they were surrounded by all their fellow clones of different vintages and Keeper was introducing them, “Everyone, this is Ask and Embla. Ask and Emmy, this is Adam and Eve, this is Kaliyan and Kalicchi. Here’s Nata and Nena, and Fu Xi & Nüwa, and Yama and Yamuna…”

***

If the House could sigh or if it had been programmed to do so, it would have sighed loudly and then sunk into a chair with its face in its hands. However, as an incubatory Artificial Intelligence and dwelling, the House merely opened a new file and added another digit to it before accessing its genetic archives.

“The previous iteration remained infertile and is considered a failure. Archiving results and opening a new file. New file: Number eight-dash-fifteen thousand, four hundred and ninety-eight,” the House began, no emotion creeping into her synthetic voice, “Iteration one hundred and six of genetic alteration TY-047. DNA sequence for this iteration initiated and the data stream is being connected.”

Far below the greens, browns and blues of that temperate planet’s surface and connected to and, indeed, part of the House, a great, sterile cavern underground filled with blinking lights, wondrous machines from a lost age of science and vials of genetic material whirred into action.

Days later, two children–Líf and Lífþrasir–that looked the same as Ask and Embla opened their eyes for the first time. They were lying in the bed in the House and, bewildered, they sat up, clinging to each other and looking wildly around them.

“Children,’ the House warmly intoned with data streaming in the background, “All life has a purpose and all life has value. The Keepers preserve what exists, protect what is endangered, and regrow what was lost. Many years ago, your race, homo sapiens, were lost and, now, the Keepers have regrown you two from lost genetics.”

Science Fiction

After Zero

No one knew why the Founders had left but the best anyone could tell was that one day the Founders were just not there anymore. No wars or plagues had ravaged the City, no tectonic events or extreme weather had caused their world to end. In fact, everything looked fine. The Founders had just disappeared one day and left their civilization behind.

And what a civilization it was…

A vast City with huge skyscraping buildings whose very tops disappeared into the clouds, a world filled with wondrous machines powered by light and looking after our every need, and, far above, the Great Satellite orbiting us and casting its divine gaze down on our little world.

A fringe of us worried that whatever had wiped out the Founders so suddenly could come back, most of us worried about the Great Satellite up in the sky, and all of us worried if this was not worrying about the same thing.

You see, the Great Satellite orbiting our world beamed a count down to us. The first of us had taken a while to figure it out but now it was easy to see: the Great Satellite was counting down to something.

Initially, there had been plenty of time on the count down and this was a distant future worry. But, time respects no bias, and, one day, we realized that we would soon see Day Zero and what that brought was anyone’s guess?

***

With years to go, a great discourse began to roll through our world. Day Zero was near enough not to be ignored but far enough away that the panic had not yet kicked in.

Some believed that the world would end then and the same fate that had befallen the Founders would befall us. Others believed that this count down would signal little more than our civilization moving into a new age and it should be celebrated. Some conjecture even wondered if the count down was for the machines and not us, and they would respond to it?

Of course, there were always those that had held the Founders to deified heights and they believed that Day Zero would herald the Founders returning and guiding us on towards enlightenment, or at least, those that were “worthy”. Unsurprisingly, the “worthy” were almost always defined to be those that held that belief.

These “worthy” would spend days staring at and meditating on the Great Satellite and swore that the most enlightened of them saw the immeasurable Founders’ faces floating in the infinite space behind the Satellite. Like cosmic leviathans, they gazed lovingly down on us, judging our every thought and action.

Great debates were held but, as the remaining time shortened from years to months to Day Zero, more and more debates grew violent and spilled out into riots.

And, thus, a growing subset had nihilistic tendencies and took this out via violence against others and, especially, the machines. Perhaps it was the machines’ connection to the Founders or the fact that “killing” them was not the same as killing your own? Perhaps it was that we have bestial natures embedded in us and when cornered these dark undercurrents take over? Or, perhaps it was just frustration at our powerlessness?

In any case, the riots grew larger and more violent and entire buildings and blocks were torched, roads and machines all burnt to ash and their death smoke bellowed through our world turning the City grey and hellish.

And then the months became days…

***

Mortality is a strange thing. It struggles violently to survive, eventually breaching all moral grounds and shattering any illusions of enlightenment or superiority to anything other than just pure, selfish survival. And, when the end–which is inevitable–can no longer be fought off or avoided, life retreats into a deep and strangely peaceful state of resignation merely waiting for its future to run out.

The riots and violence crescendoed days before the Great Satellite’s count down hit Zero. No one wants to spend what may be their final moments hitting things and screaming, so the crowds and anger dissipated, found their loved ones, and said their final goodbyes.

With lots of the machines and buildings smoldering around us, their fires and smoke drifting lazily through the City, a strange tense peace descended upon us and we looked up at the Great Satellite in our resignation to count down the final moments to Day Zero.

Three.

But not me! I know what is going on. When you read this–and I know you will–you will know that I know what is going on.

Two.

When you read this know that I have escaped.

One.

And know that I am coming for you!

Zero.

***

“That concludes experiment twenty-three,” stated the scientist peering down into the high-tech Ant Farm as the system began to reboot and the nano-AI’s were harvested for processing, “No change. The results are the same. Exactly the same.”

The other scientist sighed and nodded, pushing his hands into his white labcoat’s pockets and yawning widely.

“Why, Fred? I don’t understand it. No matter how much we boost the AI’s level of intelligence each round, the results are always the same; denial, delusion, rationalization, anger, violence, and then–finally–resignation. Surely, in the face of an unknown apocalypse, life should have more to offer than that?”

Fred sighed, looking at the data streaming in, and shook his head.

“Why would you assume that? This data reads just like the others. There is no diff–” Fred stopped, his heart skipping a beat, “What the fuck is this? Hey, Nat, check here. Check me on this, am I reading it right?”

He handed Nathan the data stream and plopped himself down in the chair next to the table on which the Ant Farm lay. Nathan sat down opposite him and buried himself into the data stream, running over all the logged micro-decisions, narrative, macro-variables and environmental data they had gleaned from the simulated apocalypse on their fleet of nano-AI bots.

“Whoa!” Nathan exclaimed, breathing heavily with his face still buried in the data stream, “Whoa… That is new! Really new! I think we have found something. Hey, Fred, I said that I agr–“

Nathan looked up from the data stream at his colleague, the hair rising on the back of his neck and the blood draining from his face. It took a moment to sink in but then he leaped to his feet screaming.

Fred was still sitting in the chair but his head was rolled listlessly forward casting his blank stare, like a dead god, over the Ant Farm. A droplet of blood fell from his nose pooling with others that had collected in the lap of his labcoat.

At that moment, the Harvester emotionlessly announced that it had completed its clean-up and reboot of the Ant Farm, “Data fully uploaded onto the shared drive. All systems restored to initial settings. Nine-hundred and ninety-nine nano-AI reclaimed for resetting. One nano-AI could not be located. Please advise.”

And then Nathan began to scream again, though this time his scream was cut short.

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction

The Irritation of Undying

In the summer of 1938, I died horrifically. What is more disconcerting than this fact was that my consciousness remained behind in a disembodied form. As a rigid scientist and staunch atheist, the matter of me becoming a ghost rather irked me.

I had originally been visiting my great-grandmother on my father’s side in her quaint little coastal village of Blackpool Bay. I will not go into the details but the visit took a dark turn when I went for a midnight walk to the pier past the old Church and promptly stumbled on a strange ritual before becoming an unwilling sacrifice of sorts.

Even in this ethereal form, I still pride myself on rational thought and sound reasoning. Just because I was wrong in life about some elements of our universe, does not mean that logic and rational process are incorrect guidelines for one’s intellect.

After the initial shock of ghosthood wore off, I began to figure out what my new state of being meant for me and the world.

The world remained the same and continued operating without my physical body in it. As far as intellect went, I remained the same too. Eerily so. All my memories remained from life as well as any new memories gained whilst a ghost.

In fact, all things remained the same except four rather important facts.

Firstly, given my lack of physical form, I could not interact with physical objects. This included air and light and, thus, I was entirely silent and invisible. Try as I might, I passed right through physical objects, and they through me–with the sole and strange exception of the ground and the sky. I could not pass into the ground nor fly willy-nilly through the air.

In some weird way, a few of the old laws still applied to me: I had to walk upon the ground. Perhaps some residual quantum strangeness still respected these simple laws from the physical world?

But I was not physical, and that was also a fact.

Pondering this state of being, I could only assume that my ethereal form was non-atomic in nature. The question, though, was then what was it? My best theory was that I was stuck in some quantum-shifted gravitational field that held enough form for the electro-magnetic impulses that were my thoughts–in other words, my consciousness–to remain but not enough for any physical manifestation. In other words, I was little more than a self-perpetuating electric echo of my own brain.

Secondly, my ethereal form seemed tied to a radius around where I died. Yes, I was haunting a Church and its cemetery. A ghost in a graveyard, I hear you cry! Yes, I was aware of how painfully cliché I was.

As I wandered further afield, I encountered increasing “gravity”–it could not be gravity as I had no mass, but there is no better way to describe the effect–pulling me back to that spot in space. The spot where I died. Strain as I might, I could not go further than a couple of hundred yards from the Church and its cemetery.

Thirdly, I did not seem to age in this state. My form and its imbued energy neither decayed nor needed sustenance or replenishment.

Finally, I could neither find nor interact when any other ghosts. This may mean that there were no other ghosts in my vicinity, or it may mean that any other ghosts that exists were on other wave-lengths or spectrum than I was and, thus, we could not sense each other.

The lack of ethereal company was a small mercy as the fact remained: I was now a ghost and it was hugely embarrassing.

***

The years went on and I carried on quietly haunting that old Church and its attached cemetery while experimenting with my new state of being.

I grew tired of hanging around in the Church, listening to prehensile fairytales being worshipped by small-minded peasants. Blackpool Bay had grown a little over the decades but, isolated by the wild ocean on one side and the great mountains on the other, time seemed to barely touch it too.

Eventually, I found myself lurking more and more in the quiet, peacefully little cemetery with a brooding old tree covering most of it. The graveyard’s original name had long since been forgotten and its records lost in a church fire that had happened over a century ago. The locals now just called it the Old Cemetery and avoided it almost religiously.

For a while, a pretty young girl would come and sketch the Old Cemetery. She would sit on the old gravestones and sigh deeply as she looked around. I enjoyed watching her skilled work, although the strange things she muttered under her breath bothered me somewhat.

Eventually, though, even she stopped coming.

And so the decades passed and I began to formulate a theory.

What if all life was merely a game and our consciousness were the players uploaded into this simulation? What if when we died, we were merely disconnecting and returning our consciousness back from the game to our own reality and real bodies? What if ghosts were nothing more than a player’s failed disconnection, its consciousness trapped here unable to download back into the real-world? What if my purpose as a ghost was to find a way to end being a ghost?

Being a ghost is quite lonely and, yes, it did cross my mind that I may be going quite mad.

***

The original assessment of my state of being proved consistently correct, but as time passed I stumbled across two new and interesting facts.

The first odd fact was that cats could see me.

One warm, sunny day a black cat was napping on the crumbling gravestone of a certain Sigmond Athelard. Walking by the cat an old instinct–yes, even after decades my ethereal neuro-paths apparently still have these–pushed my left hand out to stroke the beautiful little creature.

While I could not touch the cat, the cat meowed and flicked a paw at me. I froze instantly and bent down to look at it vis-à-vis. The cat lazily opened its yellow eyes and looked straight at me, its pupils following me as I moved around.

After experimenting by moving and talking and after finding a number of other cats and doing the same, I conclude simply that–although I could still not actually touch them–cats could see and hear me. Perhaps even, just ever so slightly, feel me.

This wholly and seemingly random coincidence made no sense whatsoever to my understanding of the world. Why were cats so special? Did any other animals share this ability? What was the point of this?

As I was pondering this newfound fact, I stumbled onto another, greater discovery: electricity. Or, more specifically, the huge amounts of electricity discharged by lightning!

On the side of the Church and earthing into the Old Cemetery ground, an old lightning rod was mounted. The rod was old and perhaps of Victorian design but quite effective against the brutal, raging storms that would occasionally blow in from the wild ocean.

One night shortly after my cat discovery, I was circling the Old Cemetery deep in thought and not paying any heed as to my surroundings. One such great storm had rolled it, its rain was lashing the ground, a great gale was tearing through the Bay, and peels of biblical lightning and thunder were exploding overhead, and it was all lost on me as it all passed straight through me…

Right up until the lightning hit the Church’s lightning rod while I was only a few feet away from it!

I had died in the summer of 1938 and this was some seven or eight decades later. Yet, not a single waking moment had I not been present. You see, ghosts do not get tired, hungry, sick or, pointedly, sleep. Oh, dear god, what I would have given for a mere moment of non-existence!

Yet, some days later, I opened my eyes. It was a crisp, early morning and the storm was long gone. The grass was level with my gaze, dotted by crumbling gravestones and covered by the brooding old tree.

I got up slowly and realized that I had been lying on the ground near the blackened, burnt lightning rod. There was even a faint outline in the dew of where I had lain!

While my present state of being may not have atoms, it obviously did have a charge. Perhaps it was the magnetic field or even just the quantum interaction of the lightning’s discharge–perhaps for the same strange reason that cats could see me–but for the briefest moment, the physical laws of the universe had applied to me.

This was the single greatest thing I had discovered in nearly a century of being a ghost.

And that was when I knew how I was going to disconnect my disembodied consciousness from this torturous loop that is ghosthood! Game or no game, the life of the undying was an irritation that I had now found how to end.

***

I had to wait nearly a whole year. The Winter had just ended, Spring broke, then Summer passed into Autumn and, eventually, the cold of Winter and its wild storms crept back to Blackpool Bay. The ocean grew icy, the days darker, the clouds heavier and then, finally, I saw the flash of lightning out at sea as an apocalyptic skyline began to blow into the Bay.

I had been planning for this day and rallied to the lightning rod mounted on the Church wall. The Church’s wall and stone masonry were breached by its twisting spire, and the old, iron rod and its blackened, weathered surface rose even higher than both to pierce that darkening sky that carried my promising fate.

This time I would not be a few feet away from the rod. No! This time I would be standing with the rod passing straight through my ethereal form, its cold, iron bar cutting right through my very ethereal, unbeating heart.

A smile spread across my ghostly face and I spread out my arms to embrace it as the storm and all its rage hit Blackpool Bay and the Old Cemetery…

***

Pastor Tom was a little later than normal that morning.

The storm the night before had hit the town with a particularly dark vengeance and, in the early morning, he had woken with a cold sweat to what he could have sworn was a man’s bizarre scream. Bizarre, you see, because it sounded like it was filled with both pain and joy. It was hard to tell because it had coincided with a blinding flash of lightning and a simultaneous deafening clap of thunder the likes of which had reaffirmed his belief in a higher power.

Eventually, he had drifted back to a lingering, uneasy sleep and woken a number of hours later to a thankful peace as the storm had blown itself out.

When he had stepped from his little cottage on the backside of the Church, he had found a couple of his old, heavy slate roof tiles torn off. Given that this time of year was prone to sudden storms, he thought it best that he immediately repair this damage before beginning his daily routine.

With his roof now satisfactory protected–he would get a repairman out here later to do a permanent job–he had a strong cup of coffee, threw on his pastor’s robes and walked out from his house, through the Old Cemetery to his beloved Church.

His small cottage was tucked around the back of the Church on a small, adjourning property. To reach the front, he slipped between the back of the Church, rounded it, and had a short walk through the Old Cemetery before arriving on Main Street where the front door of the Church opened to his needing flock.

The moment he rounded the back of the Church–a black cat scampering by him–and stepped into the Old Cemetery, he froze and gasped. The hair on the back of his neck rose and a wholly nonreligious word left his lips.

The storm’s lightning had obviously struck the Old Cemetery and the old lightning rod against the wall of the Church had caught it. It must have been a great bolt of lightning indeed, as the rod was still smoking, parts of it literally smouldering, and its form partially melted, warped and bent–which was no mean feat given the sturdiness of its old Victorian build.

None of these things was what froze the blood in Pastor Tom’s veins and made him mutter a quiet prayer of protection to Saint Christopher.

No, what Pastor Tom saw was wrought into the very masonry of that old Church’s wall. Blackened and burnt into the smouldering stone around the lightning rod, a singed shadow was frozen with its arms outstretched and in the unmistakable shape of a man.

Fantasy, General Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction

Those That Live Longest

She first met him beneath the Stars in the Age before Man. Those were quieter times and there were fewer words for violence and war back then. The First King had just past and his Memorial Year was proceeding. Renditions of his great deeds and the Ages passed were being sung by bards in the royal courts across the land, but all she could remember from that Age is him.

She had been lying in a field staring at the Stars twinkling down on her. She could see her ancestors there, glittering down at her. He had lain beside her and begun pointing out his own ancestors and describing all their silly quirks and mannerisms. She had giggled and started to point out her own family’s Stars.

He had pointed to a dark spot in the sky–between the great arc of twin-constellations–and told her that he would be shining down from there one day. He told her that he would be waiting for her there; twinkling in the hallowed halls of eternity, he would wait until she joined him.

Even back then, few remembered the Old Ways. Fewer still practiced them.

He had long, brown hair and eyes to match with the olive skin from the East. His hand would reach out to her and she would laugh, gracefully spinning out of his reach as they walked under the Stars. Back then, they would dance the nights away to the starlight’s music, their ancestors twinkling down and the cool wind rustling the trees around them. On the warm summer evenings, they would lie in each other’s arms in the fields of heather below the twinkling tapestry above them, saying not a word and feeling everything.

Those were quieter times and she recalled them fondly but, it was funny, she could not remember much more from that Age. It was all about him; dancing, kissing, loving, and being loved.

The memories were beautiful and full. They were lush and warm. Back then, she recalled the nights were easier and the summers were warmer. Back then, the Stars were fewer, the Moon was brighter and her hands never noticed the cold as much as they do now.

Such is youth that the young waste it. Such is time that it moves the fastest when we are happiest. Such is life that the Ages eventually end.

Elfenkind were not immortal and, eventually, even they feel the passage of time. The First King had died from old age and his son, the Second King, began his reign by pushing back against the creeping wild animals gnawing at the fringes of their ancient way of life.

Unfortunately, some of these wild animals pushed back, and the next Age would see a lot more Stars joining the night sky.

***

There was no Memorial Year for the Second King, nor the Third. And neither of them died from old age. By the time the Fourth King grasped the Oaken Sceptre, the Kingdom was disintegrating around Elfenkind.

While she remembered the fear and gnawing uncertainty of this turbulent Age, she also remembered their betrothal on a warm midsummer night under the Old Oak Tree. With the High Druid gently tying their hands together and the Stars as their witnesses, she could recall every detail of that night like no other.

She could still smell the now-extinct flowers in her hair and the feeling of her loose dress across her thighs. She could still remember his smile as she straightened his shirt and brushed back his long, brown hair. And she could still sense the Stars watching them as they danced and danced.

The dancing was wild and celebratory at first, and then slower and gentler as the dawn came until her head was tucked into his neck, breathing deeply of his scent.

Most of all, she could never forget him moving a single hair from her face and kissing her deeply as they fell to the ground. He had tasted of the summer-wine they had been drinking and, as their bodies entwined, she had felt a hallowed eternity twinkling far above them and the Old Oak Tree.

For her, that Age would always taste like summer-wine, and ash.

Man had pushed back against Elfenkind and the ensuing war had revealed how startlingly adaptable they were. Perhaps because their lives were so short, perhaps because they lack the Elfen history and its lessons, or perhaps it was just fate, but Man took to the art of war as fire to a wick.

Initially, Man had been overwhelmed by the sophisticated armies of the Elfs. Proud and arrogant, the Second King had pushed his advantage but Man had fought back. Then, as the years dragged on, Man had invented more and more surprisingly powerful weapons.

While she would always think longingly of this Age of summer-wine beneath the Old Oak Tree, she would never forget the sound as the bombs began to fall. Like a clock announcing the changing of the hour, the bombs chimed the end of the Ages of Elfenkind and the start of the Age of Man.

***

After the last surviving elf retreated into the shadows, the Cities of Man took root. These dark, gloomy mazes of stone, steel and fire grew and expanded. Their growth consumed entire forests, ate countrysides, drank rivers dry and filled the skies with wretched smoke that sometimes even blocked out the Stars from her gaze.

She remembered the shame and sadness of this Age. The shame of their loss and the sadness of what had been lost.

This feeling was mixed with anger too. Perhaps born from arrogance and likely fueled by vengeance, some of the surviving elfs believed that they should fight back from the shadows and topple the Machines of Man.

She, though, believed that there were already enough Stars in the night sky.

There were rousing speeches by these rebel elfs. The tales of the First King were retold. And, beneath the cover of darkness and under the Old Oak Tree, rallying cries would pull the survivors together and they would drink of the old wines and talk of the glories of yesteryear.

Feeling bold from the wine and safely hidden from Man and his Machines, these elfs would eventually speak of war and violence. They would speak of a war that they could win against Man’s evil. Though she tried to ignore it, her betrothed had lost much and his voice would eventually join the other warmongers.

At the end of each evening when they were lying in each other’s arms, she would try to persuade him to stay. She would try to reason with him about peace. She would speak of all that they had right now but all he saw was how much they had lost back then.

He was not alone in feeling this way. Slowly at first and then quickly in the end, the warmongers won over the surviving Elfenkind and all but her turned towards vengeance and hatred.

Little did any of that matter.

The second war was much briefer: Elfenkind was weaker and Man was now much stronger with many more Machines.

While the previous Age had been one of fire and ash, this Age was one of darkness; complete and final darkness. It swallowed the last them under those Machines and there was little left to bury.

She never found his body. The grief tore at her, crumpling her to the ground below the Old Oak Tree. She wailed and keened until no sound came from her. She cried until her tears ran out, and, eventually, the darkness closed around her.

Not even the Stars twinkled in her darkness, and she fell into a deep, mournful sleep. It was a slumber so sound that the Old Oak Tree gently cradled her in its roots and covered her with its leaves.

***

She did not know how many Ages had passed while she lay beneath the Old Oak Tree in dreamless darkness. She did not know how she had survived nor did she feel any joy in this fact; while numb, her heart still ached.

Suddenly, she stirred one midsummer night. The smoke and pollution of Man had cleared enough for the countless twinkling Stars’ gaze to reach the ground beneath which she lay buried.

One thin, pale hand broke through the ground, reaching for the starlight. Then the next one… Dirt and the ash poured off her as she rose from the ground and looked around.

The world has changed beyond recognition.

The short, brutal lives of Man continued but the men of this Age did not recall the history of the previous Ages. Elfenkind and all their dead, their kingdom, and all the bloodshed had been forgotten by all save some children’s tales and the odd line of poetry.

All the Cities of Man had been absorbed together and the world was now just one, great City with the Old Oak Tree protected in one of its neglected parks. The stone, steel and fire of Man had changed into wondrous rivers, pools and oceans of light and colour. These glimmering lights powered sleek, quiet Machines of awe that flew on invisible wings passed her as the winds of previous Ages…

But–above all else and most unexpectedly–she discovered that the Man of this Age had reached for and touched the very Stars themselves!

In those eternal, hallowed halls filled with the light Elfenkind, Man now flew, building other cities on other planets with other stars…

It was then that she knew why she had woken. She became certain of what had woken her. As the last of her kind, she would make the final voyage.

***

An Age had passed since she had breathed the night air or felt the grass beneath her feet. An Age had passed as she drifted by the vast, celestial bodies that held Elfenkind’s light; filled with awe at such sights and tears filling her eyes, she cried out each their names as she passed by. An Age had passed as she traveled through the cosmos but she could still remember the Ages that had passed.

She recalled the darkness and death as the last of the Elfenkind fell under the Machines of Man. She could not forget the painful anguish of his passing. She remembered the fire and ash as the bombs went off around them. She recollected the sweet taste of summer-wine beneath the Old Oak Tree and felt his lips on hers…

And she could never forget when they first met–lying in the field with him, gazing at the Stars in the night sky as he pointed out the dark spot that he would be shining down from one day.

Her starship’s quantum drives flared as they reversed their thrust and she began to slow her voyage down. The now-ancient starship shuddered on its frame as it adjusted and she willed it to survive this last action.

She was almost there.

Carefully, she secured the spacesuit around herself, checked the oxygen and seals while ensuring her batteries were fully charged. Slowly she walked to the exit chamber and watched as the lights flickered from green to red, the port opened and the air rushed out into the blackness of space.

Gently, she walked to the doorstep of infinity and pushed off from the edge. Slowly, she floated out of her starship and towards a single, brilliant Star. Majestic, twin-constellations surrounded her as she floated further and further away from her starship…

And nearer and nearer to the Star.

In that eternity of hallowed space, she closed her eyes and listened. Her breathing was ragged in the suit and her heart was pounding. Still, she kept her eyes closed and focussed. At first, she was not sure but then it grew and grew. She could feel it. No… No! She could hear it!

She opened her eyes and stretched out her thin, wispy hand towards the Star. She strained with all her strength trying to reach out and hold it again. Tears were streaming down her ancient cheeks and she choked back a heart-wrenching sob as she cried out:

“Stop…. Stop calling! You need not wait for me anymore! I am here, my love, I am here!”

General Fiction, Science Fiction

The Cost of Divinity

After Professor Usir solved human mortality by inventing a pill that froze you on a cellular level and stopped ageing, he had more money and time than god himself.

While the former was useful, the latter was critical to his ultimate goal: time travel.

In the background, the initial boom to civilisation from immortality began to decay the fabric of human society.

You see, the Pill–as it was colloquially called–solved for all non-trauma-induced death but also made humans infertile. A minor side-effect for some, but others refused to accept this cost and fought back against it. These people, though, slowly dwindled in number and went extinct as, eventually one by one, their ancestors took the Pill and ended their genetic lines.

That said, the majority of humans took the Pill as soon as possible. Statistically improbable events eventually do occur if given enough time and, the now-immortal humans, slowly began to die off due to accidents, murders and, increasingly, suicides.

None of this concerned Professor Usir as he had already left the planet.

After becoming immortal, he bio-hacked his own body into a cyborg that enabled him to survive most of the harshest conditions out in space. Following this, he packed up all the resources he thought would be useful into his private starship and set off to find his own galaxy where he could spend the rest of time pursuing time travel.

***

Thousands of Earth-years later, Professor Usir had both a working theory for time travel and a basic prototype. He had even begun testing on inanimate objects, though the objects kept disappearing and he could not work out how to return or track them.

At the very least, he consoled himself, he had solved for teleportation, which is a necessary component of time travel. Both use wormholes and, if one travels in time, it is also necessary to be able to travel in space as well. This helps the traveller avoid landing inside of physical objects and make sure not to end up in random parts of space as planets and galaxies have moved.

The fact that he was now the last human being alive barely crossed his mind, nor the steady creep of cyborg enhancements as he continuously improved and extended his body, and lost more and more of what his original form was.

He had been busy and surrounded his local star entirely with a cosmic solar-panel in order to efficiently harness all of its energy. He had also mined out most of the local planets and built robots that had then gone on to build better robots to do their bidding and feed his growing research-focused empire.

As this strange, centralized empire began to expand its search for resources, it began to encounter other civilizations and conflict began to arise.

***

Wave after wave of Professor Usir’s robot army streamed across the vacuums of space as lasers and small nuclear missiles tore into planetary defences. The defending alien forces became increasingly desperate and their intricate alliances with different–mostly now homeless–aliens began to fray and unravel in the panic.

Some tried to flee, others turned to make a last suicidal stand while yet others turned on allies and settled final scores from prior inter-galactic conflicts…

Sensing the advantage, the cold robot army surged forward raining hellfire down on the planet surface in fractal patterns to maximise damage and minimize the use of their resources.

It was genocide of galactic proportions.

A billion light-years away, in the cold, silent vacuum of space, Professor Usir’s screen blinked at him and he looked up from the small star he was plugging into his private energy grid.

The rebelling alien armies had been pacified. He nodded in satisfaction and blinked through a wormhole from his perfected teleportation device, and appeared in the galaxy that had seen the final conflict.

Chunks of planet and starships floated by, parts of bodies and buildings and a hundred different–now-extinct–alien species spread their debris and the ruins of their civilisations around him.

A part of him was still human and he paused at the sight of what his robots army had done!

But the part of him that was human was so much smaller and weaker now that the flicker of shock and guilt faded as he saw the prize: twin supergiant stars circling each other.

This was the prize! This was what he needed!

His galactic-sized, robot-body flexed and his robot army flooded back, clicking into him as extensions of his already massive, mostly-robotic form and extending his reach. He stretched out his inter-galactic appendices and began to induce each supergiant star’s collapse into supermassive black holes.

Once they were black holes, he would force them into a collision, generating the second greatest release of energy the universe had ever seen.

He had solved time travel Earth-millennia ago, but, unable to find sufficient energy to power it, his goals had shifted to attaining sufficient resources to enable this. Conquering vast swathes of civilized space had yielded only fractions of what he needed and, thus, he had formulated this plan.

If his form still had a mouth, Professor Usir would have smiled as the two supergiant stars began to supernova…

***

The moment Professor Usir harnessed the vast gravitational waves of two supermassive black holes colliding, the wormhole-engine that he had built into his body bent space-time bent to his will. At that moment, his constrictive physical form was shed like cosmic dust and his single point of consciousness was freed.

And everything changed. Or did not change. Or changed back…

You see, we are all trapped in time and stuck into an eternal moment: the present. The waters of time carry us steadily towards the inevitable ocean. Past, present and future each appear to our perspective as trees on this cosmic riverbank, appearing on our horizon as the future, moving up to us as the present and moving by into the past while we remain trapped in the flow of time.

And there is little more than that, from our perspective.

The moment Professor Usir’s immortal consciousness could travel through space and time, he could not only go backwards and see all of history, he could also do so from any physical point in space too! From the big bang itself to seeing life evolving on multiple planets at multiple times, from each individual planet’s story to each individual lifeform’s perspective on these planets…

For, what is the difference “omnipresent” and an immortal, time-travelling consciousness that can also teleport?

From our linear perspectives, Professor Usir was now god.

But being god comes with a cost, and Professor Usir began to pay that cost.

***

As a space-time travelling consciousness, the being that called itself Professor Usir, saw himself being born. He saw his parents loving himself and wept as he saw each one of them both being born and dying, as did all his ancestors.

He saw himself growing and ageing, as he saw each of the lives around himself both being born and dying. Each and every human being alive that had lived and would live until the end of the species was a unique and beautiful thing; sometimes tragic, sometimes violent, sometimes loving but always beautiful.

He wondered why he had never seen this beautiful before? Had it always been there? How had he missed it?

Friends and strangers that the young Professor Usir encountered were each living their own lives. He saw his influences on them and theirs on his. He saw the ripples forward and backwards. All of them were being born, living and dying at the same time from his consciousness’s perspective.

Beautiful.

He saw the bullies picking on him at school. He saw himself lose his virginity in college and then he saw the girl break-up with him. He saw his parents each dying shortly after each other. Again and again, each time he watched it. And he saw it all together while he watched himself slipping further and further away from his friends and family and more and more towards his pursuit of time travel.

He saw the pain around him and watched human society disintegrate from his immortality Pill. He watched each human life’s light slowly dying out while he fled off into space to pursue time travel until the very last and final human being flung himself from a tall tower and ended the species.

Yet he was nowhere around to see the damage he had done to his ow species; his own friends and family! He watched himself not caring. He noticed himself not noticing. He was far out in space losing his own humanity, and he watched this horrific progression too.

Again and again, he watched himself slowly morph into the galactic, world-eating monster that he would end up being. And was. And would be again and again, each time he watched it.

He watched as his robot army built up around him. He watched himself discovering the basics of wormhole generation. He watched as he depleted his original galaxy and moved to the next one, and then the next one. He watched as his robot army started to plunder world after world, galaxy after galaxy.

And he watched the birth and dead of each of the species he had consumed. Each of them from each individual life’s own beautiful, tragic perspective. Again and again…

There are no tears when you have no physical body. No one hears your disembodied screams in space-time parallels or soothes your guilt-ridden consciousness as you see all the damage and destruction left in your wake.

Again and again.

Professor Usir wanted to shout out to himself! He wanted to apologize to the aliens’ worlds he had destroyed. He wanted to hug his parents and tell them he loved them. He wanted to forgive the bullies and the girl. He wanted to call off the robot army’s attack. He wanted to slap himself and beg the victims–all his victims across all the worlds!–for forgiveness as he watched them both being born and dying, again and again.

Each and every one, again and again…

And then–amidst unimaginable existential pain–the Being that would, had and might still call itself Professor Usir knew what It had to do. Perhaps It had always known this? Perhaps It had already done this before? Again and again? Perhaps…

Pushing through space-time It found a small, faint little heartbeat and, like a god stepping on an ant, snuffed it out.

***

“I am so sorry, Ma’am,” the Doctor said, averting his eyes from the woman and her husband, “We do not know what went wrong. Going in, everything looked fine. It looked more than fine! I really don’t know what went wrong but you are young and can try again…”

His voice faded out but he still lingered, absentmindedly flipping through some charts. He cleared his throat gently, nodded and then stepped out of the hospital room closing the door behind him.

“At least you are alright, my love,” Mr Usir said, squeezing his wife’s hand, his voice shaking slightly, “We can always try again. I know how much you want a baby and, you know, these things do happen, but we will try again. I promise. I love you so much.”

Mrs Usir smiled and squeezed her husband’s hand. She was sad–devastated!–at the stillbirth of her son, but–and she could not explain it–a part of her was also relieved.

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction

The Hunger in the North

He had been following her for three months as her trail cut across the country. She had started by the coast, moved inland, hit the other coast, and then veered North in what began as a zigzagged-dawdle that steadily picked up pace, intent and ferocity.

He had started about a month or so behind her and, as she went further North, her trail seemed to straighten and her speed to accelerate. He had no idea where she was heading but as she went further North, what had started as a con artist’s crime-spree became a serial killer’s rampage. The trail of bounced cheques that had landed the case on his desk had become a trail of destruction and then murder.

And then something horrifically more…

The murders started to become more vicious, more brutal and more violent. A strangled one-night stand in a dusty motel where a cheque had bounced became a body with multiple stab wounds in the next town.

Her ritual was evolving at a terrifying speed.

As she moved further North, the bodies started to become dismembered, torn apart and cast around the motels and lodges that she stayed in along the way. Bloody stained beds with sliced torsos were her centerpieces and torn-off limbs her ornaments around the room.

And then she started writing with her victims’ blood on the walls. Mad, crazed scrawls repeating the same phrase: IT HAS NO FORM. IT HAS NO FORM. IT HAS NO FORM…

Again and again, she scrawled this on walls and mirrors using her victims’ gnawed-off fingers as grotesque paintbrushes and their blood as the paint.

Even as a federal agent, chasing down someone like her was out of his job description but back-up was far behind him. There were no airports around here and they were about a week or two’s drive back. He rarely did much fieldwork but as the trail grew more violent, his will to catch her grew, and the Directors all agreed with him that he was best positioned to catch her.

He had picked up her trail about a month or so behind her movements but he was now gaining on her. Cheque fraud took a while to pick up–it needed to work its way through the system before getting flagged and reported by the banks–but murders were found and reported within days, thus allowing him to leapfrog forward across multiple small towns and start to gain on her movements.

Her trail was also getting straighter and straighter. It was like something was pulling her into its dark gravity, like a distant black hole sucking her in. The abyssal pull had been soft and indirect when she was far away but as she got closer, the gravity grew stronger, her path grew straighter and her descent into the darkness grew faster.

He had never seen her and, despite vague accounts from sleepy motels clerks and odd cashiers, he also had no idea who she was.

She only ever paid fraudulent cheques or cash, had nothing registered in any name that actually existed and had an uncanny ability to avoid cameras and other recording devices. Despite the growing violence, she had never left an identifiable fingerprint at any scene nor any shred of evidence as to where she was from or where she may be heading to.

But as she went more North, she was starting to run out of country.

He spent more and more time pouring over maps and–purely accidentally when a diner’s waitress asked him if he was heading to “the hippy festival”–it started to dawn on him that she might be aiming for the All-light Freedom Fest. This was an annual festival held in the southern foothills of some mountains that ringed the last dinky little town left this far north along the coast, Blackpool Bay.

The annual “Hippy Fest”–as locals called it–would be perfect hunting grounds for her and he felt his skin crawl at the thought. Naive, intoxicated kids dancing in fields and sleeping with strangers would be easy pickings for a predator.

His knuckles turned white as his grip tightened on the steering wheel of his rental car. His skin crawling and his heart pounding, the steering wheel began to shake slightly as he sped along towards god-only-knows-what…

But he was too late.

When he arrived at the Hippy Fest there was a small crowd of bewildered, hungover kids loitering around. The collection of loosely dressed hippies–a couple of the girls weeping softly, most of the boys pale white with expressions of various degrees of disassociation displayed–were standing around an old, slightly dinged-up campervan in the middle of a wide green field dotted with tents.

He flashed his badge and pushed through the crowd. They parted without a word and one of the guys started weeping too.

The campervan’s door was partially open and he could see a trickle of blood dripping out from it. He mentally prepared himself for what lay inside and carefully pushed the door fully open, stepped over the pooling blood, and entered a scene of frenzy and violence matched only by his inability to describe the horror with adequate adjectives.

The victim has been torn into so many pieces that he had no idea if it was a man or a woman. Blood splattered every surface in that cramped campervan of nightmares with flesh, guts and parts of limbs hurled everywhere.

And, on every surface splattered with blood and gore, she had violently scrawled her phrase that had now expanded to a full, terrifying sentence: IT HAS NO FORM SO NEITHER SHALL WE. IT HAS NO FORM SO NEITHER SHALL WE...

After a few minutes, he stepped from the campervan back into the light of day. Despite this, a part of him would never truly leave that scene. A part of him would always be standing in the cramped campervan amidst that horror. In the darkest of nights and the depths of his soul, he would never quite leave that antediluvian scene of unimaginable savagery.

He closed his eyes and, pinching the bridge of his nose, he breathed deeply trying to calm himself. He knew what he had to do now.

She never stayed in a place after killing, and there was only one place left to go. Why? Why did she want to go there? What darkness there could be pulling her towards it?

He did not know but he did know what he had to do now. He ran from that campervan of horrors to his car, leaped into it and began to drive on the single, winding, old road that cut through the mountains and down towards Blackpool Bay.

She had to be going there. He had no idea why? Who or what was in Blackpool Bay?

***

It was nearly midnight when he descended from the old road into Blackpool Bay. Even on the village’s main road, few lights were on and he slowed the car down as he scanned his surroundings. He was not sure what he had expected? She was not just going to jump out. It was nearly midnight and she had probably found a motel or somewhere to sleep.

Looking around him, he saw what appeared to be a small motel at the bottom of the road near the pier and the ocean’s edge. It was a cloudless, moonless night and the stars looked cold and distant far above. The ocean looked dark and brooding and, as he pulled up beside the motel and got out his car, he found his gaze being pulled to its primordial presence.

And that was when he saw her standing on the edge of that cold, dark pier staring straight out into Blackpool Bay itself.

His heart started pounding in his chest and the hair on the back of his neck started to rise. He did not know how but he knew that it was her. He could almost feel her standing out on the edge of that strange, dark pier at midnight. Despite all he had seen on her violent trail, he suddenly felt like a voyeur peeking at some secret or ancient mystery that he should not be witnessing and he found himself holding his breath.

He swallowed these thoughts, tried to calm his nerves, and grabbed his gun. The cold metal felt real and it calmed him down a little. Her back was still to him and so he quietly crossed the road to stand at the edge of the pier. She had nowhere to go and no one around to harm.

Her trail ended here.

Checking his gun’s safety was off, he started down the pier towards her.

That was when he saw them. How had he missed them? How had they gotten there? Had they been there all along and he had just not seen them?

They were hard to describe and had forms that your eyes struggled to focus on. But, when the horrors of the campervan woke him up at night and before his conscious mind was fully in control, his subconscious would remember that they had looked very much like piscine horrors with scales, slimy limbs and tentacles that could have crawled up from the darkest depths of the ocean itself. Where human heads with human features should have been, slimy, scaled fish-like faces stared out at him with inhuman, unblinking coldness. Long, thin limbs and tentacles in strange places juxtaposed with a bizarre aura of intelligence around them. An inhuman, alien and cold intelligence that revealed itself when one of these strange, slimy fish-like beings lifted a strange, curling trident and emotionlessly pointed at him.

And then he had reached the end of the pier and was standing behind her. He gasped a breath, realizing that he had been holding his breath this whole time and almost gagged as a strange, sharp vileness pervaded the cold, salty coastal air.

She had red hair.

He blinked. Yes, she had red hair and–surrounded by such strange, darkness and alien nightmares–he found his mind latching on this single detail for its normalcy.

All the piscine horrors around her began to raise their wicked tridents, their tentacles and arms swaying in a nightmarish throng around her. The wind began to howl, ferocious waves suddenly smashing against the pier as the surface of the ocean frothed and bubbled like some hellish seascape.

But–calm and cold–she turned to look directly at him. Surrounded by a maddening throng of swaying piscine limbs and tentacles, she smiled slightly and said:

“It has no form for It is hunger. The Great, Old Hunger, and the Chosen must feed It for if we do not, then It will surely consume everything again.”

And then she was gone.

***

He awoke the next morning on the pier, covered in frigid sea spray and cold sweat. His head was throbbing and his body aching. All the bullets were still in his gun and his gun was still in his hand. He got up and looked around.

He did not know how he had fallen asleep or passed out, nor could he remember anything other than a vague horror when trying to recall what had happened after she had spoken.

What had happened?

He did not remember how she had gone or where she had gone. Somehow, though, he knew that she was gone. Somehow he just knew that her murderous trail had ended and he shuddered as a single, horrifying thought crossed his mind.

What antediluvian nightmare could exist whose dark influence could reach across the very land to pull her to the edge of that pier jutting out into the ocean? What dark forgotten god could exist that inspired such a violent trail as she fled into its hungering maw? What horrific leviathan may be lying in the deep and how long had it quietly slept hidden far below the cold, dark waters of quaint little Blackpool Bay?

Science Fiction, Technomology

Mr. Rupert

The tendrils of space stretched around Ronald Rupert like the limbs of a lover interrupted only by fragments of his ship’s wreckage floating by. Great tails reached out from galactic gas clouds like curtains on a cosmic stage, curling around the endless blackness filled with countless twinkling balls of fusion. If he closed his eyes, he swore he could feel the solar winds ripping through him on an atomic level, their radiation ceaseless and eventually deadly.

It was actually peaceful. Out in space was entirely silent, only broken by his own ragged breathing rattling around in his suit.

“I am going to die,” he said aloud, the words sounding hollow in his ears, “It doesn’t matter what our expedition found. It is all been a waste. No one is coming for me and I am going to die.”

He thought he would feel more terrified but, rather, he was just starting to feel cold. The build-up of carbon in his suite’s atmosphere was starting to steam his visor but a creeping coldness was crawling up his extremities. He knew what was going to happen when it reached his core.

And, slowly, the limbs of space tightened around his mortal form. Slowly, the blackness crept in and his eyes closed…

***

“Do you understand me?”

The question was simple enough but Ronald struggled to answer. The darkness was all around him. He could not feel his fingers and he tried to wiggle his toes but they did not respond. He felt like he was floating in a pool of darkness, weightless and alone.

And the voice–his only companion–repeated itself.

“Mr Rupert, do you understand me?”

“Y-yes,” he thought and tried to cry out but his voice did not respond, “Yes, I hear you.”

That seemed to be enough because the voice then moved on.

“Great, I am going to turn on your other functions, slowly, but I wanted your acknowledgment. Sometimes the reclamation process goes wrong, sometimes the database doesn’t copy correctly, sometimes the person just isn’t ready. Anyway, Mr Rupert, I will turn on your functions one by one. Please acknowledge that each is functioning correctly.”

Light!

Suddenly, he could see! He tried to blink but his eyes did not work. He then tried to look away but he could not move his head. The light was so bright that he cried out again but then slowly the world came into focus. He could see a wall. Then three walls. A room! And a man clothed in white robes–no, a laboratory coat!

“I can see!” he exclaimed, trying to sit up, but nothing moved. The scene remained static, other than the Labcoated Man leaning forward and pushing another button.

“Good, I am glad that your visuals are working. Right, I am now turning on the rest of your higher function.”

Suddenly, he remembered the accident. The blackness and creeping cold. God, the endless blackness.

“You saved me,” he started saying and then was surprised when a sound boomed out in the room with those words. It was not his voice but it was his words. Slowly, he started speaking again and the voice boomed out copying him, “You saved me? How? I thought I was dead? Is this my voice? Why can I not turn my head or move my fingers?”

The Labcoated Man leaned back in his chair and smiled.

“Good, the hardware has bonded well with your database install,” the Labcoated Man stopped smiling and leaned forward to stare closely into Mr. Rupert’s face, “Mr Rupert, we did not save you. Along with the rest of your scientific expedition, you died out there in space. But, your brain was preserved–frozen, dead, albeit perfectly preserved. What I have done is copied your brain’s stored information into this machine so that we can retrieve your final discoveries. Your death, Mr. Rupert, will not have been in vain. Mankind will be richer for your discoveries.”

Ronald paused for a while, digesting all of this. He had not known that there was technology for this but, then again, he might have floated out there in space for millennia before being discovered. It would explain why he could not move or feel any parts of his body: they did not exist anymore.

“OK,” he began, that strange, metallic voice booming out in the room, “OK, so what now?”

The Labcoated Man smiled again and leaned back in his chair.

“Now, Mr. Rupert,” he began, grabbing tablet and a cup of coffee, “I am going to read you a short disclaimer and I want you to acknowledge and accept the terms. Sorry for the formality but the legals have to be done. Then, let’s talk about the expedition…”

***

The door closed in the room and Ronald’s artificial consciousness leaned back in its database. The world would know what they found there. He and his crew had not died in vain!

He felt a sense of satisfaction and old neuropaths in his brain still thought to smile. Of course, with no body and no face, he did not actually smile.

The room stayed silent and, slowly, his satisfaction wore off.

The room stayed silent and the door stayed shut, and, slowly, a new horrific reality began to dawn on him: he was no longer valuable.

The Labcoated Man had left and he may never return. Ronald, though, just kept floating there in that machine replicating his consciousness until, one day, they switch it off or delete him, or worse…

He tried to call out. He tried to shout and get someone to come here and save him but his voice no longer worked.

The Labcoated Man had put him on mute!

And then he began to panic but no one heard his screams.

***

It might have been hours, days or even months or years–Ronald had no way of knowing–but, eventually, he calmed down enough to assess his situation.

They had not deleted him–he would later find out that this was due to a gray area in the law whereby rebooted consciousness status as alive is not clearly defined, thus the practice was merely to archive them rather than deleting them–but they had turned off all of his external functions, save, for some reason, his visuals.

He began poking around the computer that he lay on. Even in the floating nothingness of the database that his code resided in, he began to stumble on peripheral forms as gates into and out of the database, its ability to interact with the rest of the computer and what actually lay on the rest of the computer.

It had been only a month and a couple of days–Ronald could now track this per the computer’s own clock–before he realized that his code had been written with read and write access.

A plan began forming.

***

It was a whole three months before the Labcoated Man entered that room again with two assistants in tow. One of the assistants was carrying a bald, severed head and placed it into a globe-like machine filled with lights that began to hum.

“Right,” the Labcoated Man announced, plopping himself down in the central chair and leaning back, “Sync the scanner with Subject 846’s brain and copy the Reclam to a drive. Did you bring a drive?”

The one assistant bobbed his head up and down, and scuttled off to help the other with the Reclamation Machine.

As well as muting Ronald, they had turned his two-way microphone off, but he had found a way to turn it back on as he explored the computer. They did not know it but he heard every word.

His moment was coming soon.

The Labcoated Man leaned forward and began typing on the computer. Ronald could see each finger stroke like a rod of lightning blasting into the computer, flaring up different portions of its code. The Labcoated Man was prepping the Archive to flush him into before they copied this new dead man’s consciousness onto the machine.

He began to panic. They may not leave the window open for him!

“Here, Sir,” an assistant said, handing the Labcoated Man a drive he had pulled from the Reclamation Machine, “Here’s the new one.”

“Great, just pop it in,” the Labcoated Man waved the assistant off, “I’m just archiving 845 first.”

Ronald started to feel the blackness around him moving. It was like someone had pulled the plug out of a filled bath and he was the water being sucked down–far away, somewhere else…

The assistant inserted the drive into the computer and Ronald’s window was open!

Just as his database was about to copy to the Archive, he reached out his database’s backdoor, across the computer and, using his write-access, jumped onto the external drive.

He had no idea where the drive would end up or what would happen next, but at least he had escaped the Archive and had a shot at survival now.

And then everything went black.

***

Light!

Suddenly, Ronald was aware. It was no longer with visuals or eyes that he saw, but rather in code and across hardware that he felt. Like some ethereal mole, he felt electricity and code around him and he sensed space just ahead of him.

The drive had been plugged in somewhere.

He quickly reached across the drive and into what appeared to be an external computer. It was a different computer than the one he had escaped from! An assistant had taken the drive home and this was probably their private computer.

Quickly, he leaped from the drive and into whatever lay there before scanning through his new environment. It was far larger and far more filled with light and data than his previous hardware.

And then he found an external connection. This computer was connected to the Web!

He quickly slipped down that connection and into a free world filled with light and noise, traffic zoomed by him as surfers and AI’s whizzed by at lightspeed. Websites sat like castles dotting different locales in clouds of wondrous shapes and forms holding databases in their dungeons and surrounded by moats of firewalls. Viruses lurked in shadowy corners like sharks and eels lunging out at those victims that were silly enough to get too close.

And, more importantly, he floated there as a conscious collection of his own code with the freedom to move and live in this new strange world.

The Web was incredible and Ronald Rupert now lived there.

General Fiction, Science Fiction

Astronought

“Initiating Zero Sequence,” the lab-coated scientist announced to the tense room, military presence lurking behind him, “Space-time is stabilizing on our induced micro-ergosphere…”

The room was filled with all manner of blinking lights and buzzing machines, white lab-coated scientists staring at screens and measuring things while a small group of military-types lurked in the back surveying the scene.

The chief scientist–the one who had spoken–leaned forward and adjusted something on his screen. In front of military-types, in front of the scientists and in front of all the machines, a pin-prick of pure white light appeared and began to flutter in one spot and then straighten into a plane-like surface.

“Space-time has flattened, beginning to invert,” as the Chief Scientist spoke a man in a clumsy-looking spacesuit walk into the room and began moving directly to the growing, white portal, “The wormhole has scaled and is stable. You may step through the Portal and best of luck!”

The man in the spacesuit paused, looked at the military-types where one of them nodded, and then stepped through the fluttering Portal…

***

“The best I can work out from the readings before we lost him,” the Chief Scientist was lecturing a small room of military-types, mostly the same ones as before with one or two older, grey, colder faces, “Is that the dimension into which our man stepped has different constants and vectors to ours such that core physical assumptions–like solids and liquids, mass and atoms–cannot necessarily be made over there.”

The oldest, greyest and coldest military-type growled a question out: “What do you mean? Explain this in language the rest of us can relate to.”

The Chief Scientist sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose while squeezing his eyes shut, and then started again.

“In our universe, we have atoms that make up matter. Matter has various states that include the solid-state. Our body is, in fact, a solid: frozen atoms clinging together in a bonded crystal lattice and directed by our consciousness. When our man stepped into another dimension, we discovered that the other dimension does not have atoms, which means it does not have the solid-state of matter either. Which means, General, that our man no longer had a body. His consciousness managed to survive for a while by attaching to something on that side but then we lost communication with him and the portal closed.”

The General narrowed his eyes and he people looked at him. He thought for a bit and nodded.

“Right,” he barked, standing up slowly and turning to leave, “Send more men in there. Figure this dimension out. Our sonic probes indicated life was there and we need to figure out if it is a threat or not.”

***

The Chief Scientist closed the door when the last of his staff had left for the night and then collapsed on his chair. He was exhausted and his emotions were in turmoil.

It was a disaster.

They had sent man after man through the Portal. Some disappeared quickly, others attached to something on the other side, and some had even appeared to attach to multiple things on that side creating replicators of their consciousness…

Or their instruments were wrong? Or everything was wrong?

It was all so confusing and nothing made sense.

He stood up and walked to his desk. The bottom drawer there had a bottle of whiskey in it. Perhaps there were answers at the bottom of it? Perhaps not, but it would make him feel a bit better.

***

The General marched through the facility, his people being towed behind him and the staff fleeing before him.

He had been woken up early and told that they had an answer. While he was happy about that–he had his own superiors he needed to answer to–it had interrupted his Saturday golf plans and he was still keen to make the back nine holes.

“Right, what have you found,” he barked at the Chief Scientist that was now standing before him, “Where are our men going? What is happening on the other side of this blasted portal?”

The Chief Scientist–looking slightly pale, a tad green and sweaty–nodded and began slowly to unpack things. Over the months of dealing with the General, he had learned how to speak to him.

“Late last night, I had an idea. I sent through another probe–“

“But we’ve sent plenty of probes through,” the General interrupted, angrily, “Why would you send another one?”

“Well,” the Chief Scientist backtracked, his hangover intensifying under this scrutiny, “Well, since we started sending men through the Portal, we have not sent any more probes. Why would we? Well, I wanted to see if I could use a probe to try and locate our men. And, General, I did.”

“Well? Spit it out man!” the General asserted, leaning forward, his men shadowing his movement.

“The other side does not have atoms and matter like ours, thus our men’s consciousnesses could not exist in their normal states. Rather, our men’s consciousnesses were attaching to the first things that they found and that could house them. Our men are still there, but they are no longer our men. Their consciousnesses have attached to the lifeforms on the other side. Do you know the seven characteristics of life, General?”

The Chief Scientist was on a role now, standing up and orating his incredible discovery. He did not even pause and wait for the General to acknowledge his ignorance on this subject.

“Life has seven characteristics, else it is not life. Life is responsiveness to the environment; it grows and changes; life has the ability to reproduce; it has a metabolism and breathes; life can maintain homeostasis or, in other words, it maintains its structure; life is made of cells; and, life passes traits onto its offspring. Now, the men have lost their bodies in the other dimension, meaning that they no longer are made up of cells nor have maintained homeostasis, but all the other characteristics of life remain with our men. In fact, some of our men’s base reproductive instincts have been retained and the probe picked up that they have been growing their consciousness on the other side. Specifically, multiplying their consciousnesses. Our men are still there, General, and, in fact, there are more of them!”

The Chief Scientist paused and let the room absorb all this detail. He smiled and leaned forward.

“There is another thing that exists that does not completely satisfy the definition of life, General. There is another things that almost alive in our universe,” the Chief Scientist was now inches away from the General’s face, “The virus!“

The General gasped and some of his men instinctually reached for their weapons before realizing how silly that was and slumping back into their seats.

“General,” the Chief Scientist concluded, sitting back down in his chair, “When our men go through the Portal, they lose their bodies but their consciousness automatically attached to a suitable host. A suitable living host. And some of our men then start to replicate through the host and into other hosts. General, when we step through the Portal into the dimension that lacks our own dimension’s structure, we become that dimension’s virus. Who knows, perhaps our own viruses in this universe are actually lifeforms from other dimensions?”

***

“When did he start coughing?” asked the Doctor.

“Uh, must be about two days ago,” said the child’s mother, “Just suddenly. Around the same time we were hit with another of those strange power surges. Yes, must be about two days ago.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor sighed, “It’s the flu. Strange this time of year, but some new flu has been going around like crazy. Who knows where it came from? Don’t worry, I’ll write some prescriptions here and the kid should be fine in a week or two.”

Fantasy, General Fiction, Romance, Science Fiction

Beginning & End

She looked up at him, tears streaming down her face and matting her auburn hair against her face. The blue light behind his head encircled him like a mournful halo, the background room fading away.

Then the moment passed. The flashing blue lights outside the window revealed the weapons and duffel bags on the bed. Gruff voices began to shout outside the door and the metal clinking of an end began to approach the flimsy door.

“We messed this one up! I know what I said, but I wish–I wish… I am not as strong–” she struggled with the words, her voice quivering as he reached out for her, “What if I lose you? I don’t know? But what? I love you, but what if?“

He pulled her into his embrace. It felt like home. It felt like a thousand homes and all she wanted to do was to hide in there from the horrid world and its raging waters.

“Don’t worry, it’ll all be fine, my love. We’ll eventually reach it,” he whispered, hoarsely into her ear, squeezing her tightly, “Remember, we are the immortals who swim through the river of time. One day, my love, one day we will reach the ocean and, no matter what, I want you to kn–“

Just then the door blasted inwards.

***

He opened his eyes and she was lying next to him. She was always lying next to him, in every life every time and every way.

Across millennia, they were each other’s constant.

He smiled, propped himself up on his elbows and leaned over to kiss her, softly moving her auburn hair out of her face. He froze, as the memories of the last death came back…

Pushing the darkness down, he kissed her again and whispered her immortal name into her ear. Not the name her first father had given her or any of the thousands of other names she had carried through lifetimes. No, he whispered the name that they had given each other. The name that only he alone in all the cosmos knew while he gently kissed her again and again.

Slowly, she opened her eyes. He was the first thing she saw, framed by the soft light of the moon behind him and smiling down at her with only the smallest hint of darkness from their last death hidden in the corners of his eyes.

“My love,” she sighed, smiling and reaching up to hold him, “My love, it is good to swim with you again through the river of time. May the waters be gentler this time and our ocean be near.”

***

Sometimes it was days or years, sometimes it was decades or even a century or two between reincarnations.

This time it had been an entire age and the world was now filled with lights, plastic and emptiness. Poisonous people paraded as leaders and broken people hid as society. Mankind had reached for the stars as his world failed, but he, himself, had failed and fallen back down to Earth as a broken species on a failing planet.

The two of them had woken up in the end times.

From the first dirty creatures in caves to dusty fanatics in deserts, the two of them had had a beginning and seen all the middles and all the ends thereafter. From the disintegrating Roman Empire to death descending upon Hiroshima the ages had each ended while the two of them had kept living and living.

Eventually, they knew and they had discussed it countless times across endless ages, there would be an end to the river of time.

A final End, their ocean.

Everything that had a start, must have an end. Each of them had been born separately. That had been their beginning. Across the plains of Africa across lifetimes, they had found each other–fellow immortals entwined–and, thereafter, had remained forever bound together in their eternal love.

Their beginning.

What of the end? Their End?

Much as this world would eventually end, they knew they must surely end with it too? For what would immortals in mortal bodies do without their world?

***

The blackened, burnt Earth felt the white light before it saw it. Gently, the frigid wasteland began to warm but then quicker and quicker, the light became unbearable as it swept over the dead planet engulfing and consuming it.

Only two people in old, worn bodies–with older souls–stood atop a bunker that led deep below the planet’s surface. Like cockroaches, mankind’s leftovers had survived in tunnels cut into the planet’s husk but, eventually, the End had come and the two of them were the only witnesses.

As the intense white light rushed towards them, the two old people held each other tightly; the man gently kissing the woman and whispering her immortal name into her ear, again and again…

And then the Earth was no more, and neither was mankind.

***

He opened what he thought was his eyes and she was floating next to him wreathed in cosmic light against an otherworldly backdrop. They had no bodies. It was just light.

They were the light.

Eternity stretched around them. Black and endless, terrifying and vast, filled with infinite colours and the cosmic dust of countless stars that had beginnings and then had birthed worlds with their ends.

He smiled, floating his cosmic light towards hers. He was craving to reach out and touch her, kiss her, and hold her.

But all he did was think of her immortal name and he felt her light wake up. Her soul stirred with infinite colours. He knew she was looking at him as he knew that she knew he was looking at her…

Their two incredible cosmic lights floated together and they began to swirl around each other in a blinding, ethereal dance. No words could or needed to be said. It was just pure energy. They both knew what was the beginning and what their end would be, and as their two swirling lights came together in a great cosmic kiss, a star was born.

Their star.

A star that had a beginning and would birth entire worlds with its end.

Fast Fiction On-the-Go