Science Fiction, Technomology

Darkness in the Land of Lights

She regained consciousness slowly. It was an uncomfortable process. At first, it was just a sense of light but then the light grew piercing and painful. She groaned. Gravity, weight and something else all appeared, pinning her naked form down. The seam of a velvet carpet was cutting into her back and her mouth tasted like death.

She breathed deeply and sat up, instantly regretting it as her brain pounded against her skull and her stomach turned.

Bodies lay strewn around her. A few were real biologicals but most were just rented out bio-similars for rich people to webcast into from wherever they lived. It was a common occurrence on the Party Planets. These bio-similars had all the similar tactile senses as a human body with three added benefits–no consequences, no identities and no hangover. All that happened was you woke up the next day back home in your biological body, your Conduit having severed the connection with the Web.

It sounded wonderful, she thought, having never tried it herself.

She shoved a female bio-similar arm off her naked leg. It was still warm and soft to the touch, just like a real human arm. A lot of things were like the real thing around here, but not quite. Trying not to throw-up and willing the room to stop spinning, she slowly stood up. Glancing around the room, she wondered where her clothes had been thrown?

One of the other biologicals was waking up. His appearance was a clean-cut, dark-haired man and she immediately remembered how intimately she had been involved with him last night. Him and the bio-similar next to her, or whoever had been inhabiting it at the time.

She shivered involuntarily.

He looked up and their eyes locked for a moment. His eyes were blue.

She thought about asking him his name or emailing him hers. He smiled slightly–maybe thinking the same thing–and then turned and walked out of the room. Maybe it was the hangover or maybe the room just felt empty now, but she stared at the place where he had been standing for a moment her thoughts wandering.

Then she stepped over the vacant female bio-similar by her and looked around. Despite all the bodies around her and the warmth of the aircon, she shivered again. Contrary to last night, this space now felt devoid of life and love.

Or, at least, she reminded herself, it was devoid of the illusion of life and love. Neither had actually been present here last night. A lot of things were like the real thing around here, but not quite.

A sudden movement from another corner startled her. Another biological had awakened and was slowly getting up.

She did not wait to see who and fled the room filled with intimate strangers.

***

The harsh neon lights burning around him did little to illuminate the street. Their cold glare merely emphasized the darkness pooled in odd corners and lurking between buildings. A dirty rain touched everything but was drowned out by the background wail of the city, which was, in turn, drowned out by the loud, angry music playing in his ears.

Outside of the club, bars, restaurants, cafe’s and illicit Web dens, the Party Planets were basically an urban desert inhabited by the lost souls paid to keep the party going.

He pulled his umbrella lower down on him and dug his free hand deeper into his pocket as he stomped down the street.

Far above him, twin constellations twinkled as an intergalactic starship tore through the night sky. It was carrying tourists, rich enough to travel but too poor to use bio-similars. It reached a sonic boom amidst a blue, static flame while it punctured the planet’s atmosphere. They were leaving but others would be arriving soon.

None of this he noticed because it would have involved looking, and looking would involve seeing.

And there were few things in his life that he wanted to see.

His hangover still lingered but his thoughts had moved on from it. The lady with the green eyes lingered on the fringes of his memory but he pushed it down and away. What was the point? The Party Planets were a teaming mess of fringe habits smashing against the shore of a rotten society. He would probably never see that biological again and, if he did, it would be under different circumstances.

This was a big city in a big galaxy with big, dark corners. It was a place filled with lights and tourists, entertainment and escapism huddled together against the vast, nothingness that civilisation occupied.

He lit a smoke and coughed. The cancer was back. He would have to do a couple more of these gigs to save up for the cure again.

He took a big drag, sighed as he exhaled, and pulled his umbrella ever lower down on himself. He dug his free hand even deeper into his pocket as he carried on stomping down that crowded, hollow street, music blaring from his Conduit straight into his mind.

And he continued not seeing…

He was mentally checking newsfeeds, social media and chatrooms. He returned notifications, liked photos, commenting on statuses–lol, omg, wtf!–and pinged lives all over the universe and across the galaxy in a savage consumption of communication aimed at solving the single problem that it actually amplified.

***

“Good morning, Sir,” the soothing voice of the AI whispered in his ears, and he groaned and rolled over, the silk sheets gently caressing his grand form, “You asked me to wake you an hour before the Ambassador dialled-in. It is now an hour before the Ambassador’s call.”

He sighed, opened his eyes and pushed his girth into a seated position in his bed, in his bedroom, in his mansion on his estate in the ultimate lap of luxury.

He stretched and yawned, checking his notifications. The orgy was fun last night and he saw a couple of memories filed away for later in his feed. He had had fun with three biologicals at there. Two of them–the man and the woman–had had such striking eyes that, even now, he could feel his thoughts slipping back to them…

“Sir, do you wish for the usual?” a floating dot of beautiful light that was his smart-mansion’s AI pulsed gently out to him and to which he casually nodded. Moments later a cappuccino made from the finest intergalactic coffee topped with gentle, vitamin-enriched Luma-cow cream appeared beside his bed.

He casually sipped the beverage, smacking his lips loudly, and stood his vast form up to waddle over to the window. His gigantic estate stretched over most of the surface of this Inner Circle planet and a number of the nearby ones too. He owned countless others in lower value galaxies too. His fingers touched billions of lives and his wealth would last more generations than his species. There were few luxuries that were out of reach and few laws that applied to people like him.

But he could not stop thinking of that man and woman. They were so real and so close. There was something so infinitely real about each of them, something that resonated with him.

People like him did not marry, for long. People like him did not get close to anyone or anything. He had had his wife murdered as it was cheaper than a divorce. He had vowed to never marry again. His children were scattered through the cosmos as he did not trust them; they stood to gain too much from his death. The rest of his family were kept at bay and his closest friends were his executives running each part of his empire.

But, still, he found his thoughts drifting back to the passionate throws amidst the man and the woman. The soft and hard curves, the way the three of them breathed and moaned, how deeply they kissed, how he felt as their eyes locked and their souls connected…

“Sir, shall I run the bath?” the ethereal AI pulsed from its pinprick of light. Outside a flock of flamingos took flight over his private lake as robotic AI worked the great fields stretching out beyond the horizon. There was not a human being in sight nor any others on this planet for his security. Every single AI on this planet was loyal as only an AI can be, built with the best security and firewalls that money could buy–better than even the military. Even his executives were rarely allowed here in person, most opting to merely hologram-in for his monthly management reports.

He sighed. His AI could almost do anything for him here and he could almost travel anywhere and buy anything. So why did this not make him happy anymore? What could he buy or own that would make him feel good again?

Why did he feel like this these days?

“Yes,” he mumbled, downing his cappuccino and flicking the cup and saucer off to the side–the smart-mansion’s telekinetic units caught it before it hit the floor and the dirty items disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, “Yes, Watson, run the bath. What else am I doing today?”

The AI began to list all the important people calling him, hologramming into his mansion or other such virtual meetings; coming to grovel before him and try to win his favour. Most of them disliked him, if not outright loathed him. He did not like meeting them either. Maybe he had once when he was younger and hungrier but not anymore.

No, but that was the game that he had to keep playing.

When he had won the game, he had thought he could stop playing it. He had naively thought that that was how the game worked. Later in life, he had conceded to the fact that the only winner in the game was the game itself.

He no longer owned his vast fortune. Rather, his fortune now owned him.

Such thoughts wandered through his mind as he leaned back in the low-gravity, golden bathtub, with mineral water floating over him as bubbles of infinite colour softly caressed his skin.

He sighed and accessed the memory banks in his Conduit. He thought of the man and the woman, and scanned through the memories of them till he found one that he liked. Both were staring at him in ecstasy, vulnerable and entirely human. God, he wished there was someone who would look at him like that in real-life! He uploaded it to his mansion’s AI, which beamed it out as a hologram above him lying in the golden bathtub.

With the hungry world gnawing at his door, in his bath, in his bedroom, in his mansion on his estate in the ultimate lap of luxury with the world at his fingertips, he realized as he had realized many times before: he was completely, entirely and inconsolably lonely.

He wished that life felt as real as it did on those vibrant Party Planets. Everyone always seemed so happy there and he wished he could feel what he felt last night in real-life. He wished he could reach out and touch that man and that woman, not with a bio-similar hand, but a real hand. His hand. The bio-similar was–as was the memory and the entire experience–similar but not quite the same.

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction

What Was Pulled from the Sea

In all the dusty annals, sidenotes and forgotten addendums of history, there are few stories stranger than that of ‘Miss Daisy of Blackpool Bay‘. I now reside far inland and, after I have repeated this tale to you, I suspect that you will too.

But, I digress. Apologies. The poppy seed that I indulge in these days may calm my frayed nerves, but it does somewhat weaken my concentration.

I am a scholar of forgotten histories and stumbled across the first reference of Miss Daisy from the old annals of a discarded penny dreadful knocking around an attic in New York. Uncertain as to the accuracy of the story but intrigued by the author’s careful use of real-world places, actual history and the accuracy of everything else in the tale, I decided to travel out to the story’s setting: Blackpool Bay.

***

Blackpool Bay is a somewhat quaint but extremely isolated fishing port cut into the Blackpool Mountains with a dark, brooding bay that curls out into a wild open ocean. A failed highway build a number of years ago attempted to connect the town with the modern-world but access remains via a winding, treacherous single-lane that dates back to before the war or off a boat from the nearest port.

I took the latter and stepped off an old, creaking fishing boat onto the docks of Blackpool Bay. The docks smelt fishy with something truly awful as an undertone, but I ignored it and wandered into town lugging my suitcase behind me. I marvelled at how old most of the buildings must be. While most had not been properly maintained for what seemed like decades and were streaked black with the weather, they were likely built a century or two ago and one could still see the regal imperial stone cut roofed with black slate yawning out over the cobbled streets.

Eventually, I arrived at the misleadingly-named ‘Grand Hotel’ on the town’s Main Road. It was little more than a run-down room with fading fabrics, a gaslight and a heater, but I did not care. I threw my suitcase onto the bed and hastened downstairs again. A rather sour clerk with bulbous eyes behind the front-desk pointed me in the direction of the Old Museum past the Gypsy Market and I hurriedly left.

***

“Where is the Curator?” I enquired of the young, fidgetting man before me, “I did not correspond with you in my letters? Where is the esteemed old Curator?”

“Apologies, Sir,” the young man dressed in a worn-out old suit stammered, “There-there was an, uhm, incident a number of weeks ago. The Curator is, uh, no longer here. But I worked closely with him and can help you. What is it that you are looking for?”

I sighed and told him about my exchange of letters with the Curator regarding the tale of Miss Daisy of Blackpool Bay. He nodded fervently through my explanation, told me to wait and then scampered off into the back.

While I waited, I strode around the Old Museum glancing at the strange oddities kept there. There was a harpoon from whaling days on one wall, its deep scratches belying the death it must have dealt in another, more barbaric age. Some suits of armor from Europe stood around in a corner with some family crests and their lineage back to old European family lines. The most prominent being the Athelard family, who appeared to have founded the Old Museum generations ago when they left the Old World for Blackpool Bay. There were some old, eerie paintings on the wall from strange and exotic places. One particular painting of a Congolese woman in dark oils caught my eye and I started to lean in closer to its examine its violent brushstrokes–

“Here we go, Sir!” the young man piped up from behind me, startling me, “Here are the archives on Miss Daisy. Before my time, but back when this was popular, the Old Museum had a show on it and, uh, well these documents and notes are what is left from that.”

I turned around and took the heavy, dusty folder from the young man. Thanked him profusely and promised to return them before I left.

***

Almost a century and a half ago as the sun was setting, a humble fisherman arrived back at Blackpool Bay docks with a rather unique catch.

According to the fisherman identified only as ‘Horatio’, a freak current had dragged his small vessel out of the bay and into the open ocean. He was an experienced fisherman and had saved his energy by not fighting the freak current. As he had expected, eventually the current had dissipated and he had begun rowing back to the coastline and, thereafter, back into the Bay.

Given that fishing was his livelihood, he had decided to drag his net behind as he rowed. With a bit of luck, he had thought, he might catch some fish making the day not a complete waste.

Let us ignore the fact that a number of other fishermen were out in the bay that day and none of them recall ever either seeing Horatio or experiencing any strange currents. Ignore the fact that the average fishing net was probably too weak for the weight of his catch. And, finally, let us ignore the obvious question of how she got out there or survived at all in the frigid, wild open ocean…

According to Horatio in the local paper at the time, while rowing, his boat had suddenly snagged something heavy with his net. Excitedly, he had pulled the net up into the boat expecting a shoal of cod or perhaps tuna. Instead and to his horror, a slender, well-formed arm had emerged from the dark water as he pulled at the heavy net. The arm was attached to a shoulder and then a well-formed neck. As he pulled the neck into the boat and unwrapped it, the beautiful, naked form of a woman emerged and collapsed into his boat.

The Blackpool Bay Daily had a follow-up article dated from about a week or so after the first mention of this incident. It also is the first time that Miss Daisy’s name is mentioned and the article includes a grainy, blurring black-and-white photo of her standing at the docks with the dark, brooding ocean behind her. While little detail can be seen in such a poor quality photograph, I can attest to something odd but unplaceable about it that makes my skin crawl.

According to the article, Miss Daisy remained mute but had adjusted well to living with Horatio and his wife. She would join Horatio on his daily fishing trips and seemed a natural out at sea. The local doctor had examined her and concluded that she was as fit as a fiddle and no worse for her ordeal. No members of the public or officials had come forth claiming her identity or offering clues as to the events surrounding how she had ended up far out in the open ocean. Thus, the local Mayor Athelard had decided to name her Daisy and the townsfolk had shrugged the mystery off and continued with their daily lives.

From this point, the tale of Miss Daisy of Blackpool Bay starts to take a turn for the darker.

Horatio’s wife was the first to die. Medical records report that she succumbed to a mysterious illness, wasting quickly away and passed late one night. Church records show that no less than a month after she was buried, Haratio married Miss Daisy. But this was not to last long as one evening Haratio’s fishing boat came back to shore without him on it. Miss Daisy–still mute–could not explain what had happened, but the boat had lots of water in it and all items were missing, thus the old fishermen at the docks concluded that it must have been a freak wave or something that had washed Horatio overboard. His two children were then sent off to live with a relative inland and Miss Daisy retired to his old house and stopped going out in public.

The rest of this story–save the ending–is speculation and hearsay. Neighbors reported strange sounds and a horrific smell emanating from Horatio’s old house. A number of pets were reported missing across the bay, particularly in the roads around Horatio’s old house. A mysterious sickness swept the town and many good folk became bedridden with all the symptoms of a vicious bout of seasickness, but not having set one foot on a boat.

And then, late one particularly dark night, a great storm rolled. It’s wind churned up the ocean into a frenzy as the rain beat down on the hapless town. Two neighbors living in the same road and a number of other good folk dotted between the docks and her house all reported seeing that amidst the terrible storm a strange, mishappen group had shuffled slowly to Miss Daisy’s house and beat on her front door.

Miss Daisy had not been seen for many months and, thus, her ragged, wild appearance was a shock to the neighbor–a certain Mr. Humphrey–who saw her throw open the door and confront the strange, shady group on her porch. Her hair was tangled and wild, her complexion pale and taut, and her frame thin and wispy. No doubt confused, ignorant and as superstitious as only small-town folk can be, this neighbor further reported that Miss Daisy was completely naked and, this nakedness, revealed a strange, “scaling” to her skin and thin gill-like slits down her strangely long, eel-like neck.

Irrespective of the details or fantasies of a crazed-mind, Miss Daisy and this strange group proceeded to have a heated argument. This is stranger, indeed, given the fact that Miss Daisy was by all accounts quite muted. But, irrespective, the argument got physical and, at some point, the leader of that mishappen group roughly struck Miss Daisy, she crumpled to the floor and the group quickly scooped her up and started back down the road from whence they had come.

Witnessing all of this through the slit in his blinds and being a good neighbor, Mr. Humphrey had grabbed his old rifle from the wall. According to what he told the reporter the next day, he had rushed out into the howling wind, beating rain and chased after the motley crew as they shuffled down the road with Miss Daisy’s limp form strung across them.

By this time, the mishappen coven had arrived at the docks and was standing out on the edge of the pier. Lightning flashed and the storm raged overhead with a demonic vengeance. What they were planning to do was unclear to Mr. Humphrey, as there were no boats moored there nor any other vessel at the end of the pier. The waves were smashing all around them, seaspray thick in the howling air as the torrential rain made it hard to see clearly.

Mr. Humphrey said that he had called out and fired, hitting one of the figures with little effect, while he charged down the pier. All but one of the group had ignored this and knelt at the edge of the pier, letting Miss Daisy’s crumpled form slip below the raging, black waters. Charging right at them, Mr. Humphrey had taken aim again on the group but–just before he fired–the one that had turned to face him had lept at him and with supernatural strength, overpowered him, ripping the rifle from his hand and closing his hands around his neck…

According to the Blackpool Bay Daily reporter, Mr. Humphrey had passed out at this point. He was found–bruised and unconscious, his rifle lying neatly next to him–the next morning by an old fisherman who had popped down to the docks to check his boat had survived the storm. The storm had blown out in the early hours of the morning and any trace or evidence as to Miss Daisy’s whereabouts and the mysterious group that had abducted her was long gone.

While Mr. Humphrey could not describe the strange group of people that had abducted Miss Daisy, he had gotten a single flash of the mishappen face of the one that had jumped on him. The official description per the police report describes this unnaturally strong man as “…having no face whatsoever but a warped, piscine horror of slime and tentacle covered with a black, wet robe. It was like a hellish, inky jellyfish had pulled itself together into the shape of a man with tentacles instead of limbs, and crawled onto land with the sole objective of abducting poor Miss Daisy before returning to whatever deep, dark crevice it had originally come from.“

No body was ever found of Miss Daisy nor washed up onshore. Likewise, no ransom demands ever surfaced. Of the strange, vile group that had abducted her, no other clues–save some strange, black, inky fluid left at the end of the pier; perhaps the poisoned, wicked blood of the creature that had gotten shot by Mr. Humphrey. There were not even whispers of any kind to indicate what, where and who they were or what their motives with Miss Daisy might have been.

When the police had searched Horatio’s old house, they found very little to substantiate anything. The house was filthy and acrid with the stench of dead fish throughout it. Strange, unnatural symbols were scrawled over its walls and on its floors, in what appeared to be dried blood and some black inky substance. There was a full bath run with heavily salted water in it, a small bottle of noxious, unidentified liquid was recovered from below the sink, and suggestive bloodstains and small bones had been found in the kitchen. Strange scales were scattered throughout the house as if some bizarre fish had been shedding them as it writhed through that dingy abode.

Beyond this, the rest is a mystery. Pets stopped disappearing, the strange plague that had made so many in town sick dissipated and Blackpool Bay slowly went back to its normal, sleepy activity. The sole exception to this was old Horatio’s house, which stood empty and uncared for until it eventually burnt down late one night in a mysterious fire.

***

What terrifies me is not the events in the tale of Miss Daisy, but what they corroborate across a number of other seemingly unrelated stories, folktales and dark legends. As a collector of oddities and bizarre tales, I have stumbled across a range of references to an ancient civilization from a lost age.

This forgotten civilization was plumbing the depths of hidden knowledge and occult sciences when mankind was still sleeping naked in caves. And, in these dark alcoves of knowledge, the race had itself become twisted and mishappen until some horrendous, unnamed event had torn through their civilization and seen the very ocean rise up against them and swallow their cities whole.

But, it is said, some of these dark, twisted creatures still live in down there. Submerged at the bottom of the ocean and shrouded in the blackest waters, these dark, twisted immortals continue seeking out their arcane, heinous knowledge. Devoted to their vile pursuits, they quietly await the day when they can rise from the depths and retake the world from the ignorant, warm-blooded mammals that now laze around on top of it.

Beyond just dark tales, Miss Daisy–or, more specifically, what appears to have abducted or reclaimed her–is the best and closest evidence I have that these demons in the deep do in fact exist. The black inky blood left on the pier, the bizarre evidence and writings of occult nature left in old Horatio’s house and, importantly, Mr. Humphrey’s confused and crazed account of that night all point to a single, horrific conclusion: this lost civilization with its twisted practitioners of the dark arts does in fact exist and, very occasionally, creeps out from under the ocean and into our innocent and clueless world.

***

My research in Blackpool Bay completed and my worst fears confirmed, I returned the papers to the Old Museum’s archives that very night. I checked out of the Grand Hotel thereafter, cancelled my shipping ticket and decided to rather catch a taxi through the old, winding road around the mountains and inland.

I will never again be setting foot near the ocean, nor–in particular–Blackpool Bay. I cannot stress enough that neither should you. Please allow the bizarre tale of ‘Miss Daisy of Blackpool Bay‘ to serve as a stark warning that there are many mysteries in this world that have not been pierced by the keen light of science and reason.

Despite our blissful ignorance of these things–long may it last!–ignorance cannot actually keep us safe, just happy. Someday the horror that hides at the bottom of the ocean will come creeping out and we will pay for our arrogance in thinking that we rule this very old and mysterious planet.

Science Fiction, Technomology

The Machine That Forgot Its Purpose

Peter had sacrificed everything to become a cosmic archeologist. His youth for years of study, his adulthood for years of travel, and any possible family or friends for a solitary existence. He was sure there were many other things he could list if he had time to do so. It was not that he regretted it. No, being a cosmic archeologist was all that he thought he desired. Rather he just tried not to think about it and, luckily, he had plenty of other things to think about.

Roughly a million other things.

Years ago when mankind had left his solar system and spread to the stars, a surprising number of failed civilizations began to be discovered.

And all of them left stuff behind.

There were roughly forty-billion planets lying in various Goldilock Zones across the Milky Way. Of these, about four billion were sufficiently oxygenated and had a critical mass of carbon in their eco-systems. Of these four billion planets, only about a hundred million of them had not experienced at least one ‘life-negative’ event, from a meteor strike to a super-volcano or even extra-terrestrial viruses and the gambit of options between these destructive events. And, finally, of these hundred million, only about a million had actually evolved sentient life that developed technology sufficiently advanced to be of interest to Peter.

And every single one of these million planets had seen life eventually wipe itself out. The timing and manner of the apocalypse seemed to be the only actual variables that differed between planets and alien civilizations.

While a million different planets intersected with the ruins of ancient alien civilizations may appear to be a large number, this was actually just 0.0025% of the possible available planets in only the Milky Way. It was also far too large a number for Peter to ever single-handedly explore and research himself. And, thus, the cosmic archeologists were not just a fraternity of thousands of intellectuals at the cutting-edge of science, but they were also the fastest-growing academic field in the galaxy.

They were the rockstars of history and the discoverers of alien technologies. They were the adventurers on foreign planets and the raiders of inter-galactic ruins.

It was also a lonely profession spent away from anything that resembled home or a family. Peter’s ex-wife was raising their son while he spent almost all his time elsewhere on far-flung planets. In fact, he had only met his son twice but he did send presents on birthdays and holidays.

But there were so many ancient alien civilizations to explore, so much to be found, understood, documented and archived, and, if he did not do it, someone else would.

The average ‘archonaut‘–a colloquial term that the cosmic archeologists used amongst themselves–would be lucky to get to solo-study the ruins of one or two entire alien civilizations in their lifetimes. To properly unpack, document and archive these often vast and complicated ruined alien civilizations was a mammoth task and most solo archonauts typically limited themselves to specializing in a single planet and the related genetics, history and technology of its apex sentient lifeforms (there were few dual-sentient planets that evolved).

And, it was with this in mind that Peter arrived at his second solo dig, the planet affectionately known as ‘MW-Sigma-D99‘ or Sigma-99 for short.

***

Over the course of the first couple of years on Sigma-99, Peter established his headquarters on a temperate stretch of coast and began to document the basics of the planet, from the atmosphere to geology and geography.

In the background, the various bots that had come with Peter’s craft set out building a sustainable, diversified farm, food processing unit, and living quarters for him.

By the end of the fifth year, Peter was settling in and, in fact, starting to enjoy his new life on Sigma-99. His thoughts of his son became less frequent, as did his one-way beamed messages back home. His son never responded anyway. He would work long hard days out in the field, zooming around the planet on his quantum-bike, sampling, checking, measuring and documenting, and then spend quiet, comfortable evenings on his porch watching this planet’s version of dolphins frolicking in the waves just off his coastline as its three small moons gazed down in silent revelry.

***

On the sixth year, Peter began to shift his focus onto the ancient alien civilization that he had come to study. This is what he had been waiting for and he could barely contain himself. Thoughts of his son were now fleeting and every waking moment was focussed on understanding this ancient alien civilization in whose ruins he stood. The beamed messages had stopped long ago by now.

The apex sentience on Sigma-99 appeared to have been a rather tall and thin land-based relative of the dolphins that he so enjoyed watching playing in the ocean. At some point, the species had split and one had crawled onto land and it had begun to build tools.

While the early days of this race–Homo Delphinidae, he had decided to name it–were likely wiped out by the progress of time and the Delphinidae’s own evolution, what he could find indicated that it was quite similar to mankind’s own progression. Delphkind had initially been hunters and gathers before they had found agriculture. The resulting surplus in food combined and early civilization that then began to exponentially improve its tools to the point where it began to be quite sophisticated, even by mankind’s own inter-stellar measure.

While delphkind do not appear to have left their planet, the cause of their ultimate demise eluded Peter. There were no craters or sufficient cosmic dust to indicate a meteorite strike. No trace radiation or toxins to indicate a violent or accidental end. No volcanic or igneous structures point to thermal or planetary causes. In fact, the planet, the remaining life and everything except the delphkind themselves appeared in perfect health.

What was more bizarre was that the delphkind were obviously quite advanced. They appear to have had about five millennia head-start on human beings back on Earth and they had gone through the traditional leaps and bounds of advancement in the sciences. Ruins pointed to delphkind having achieved a quantum understanding of science, their surviving infrastructure pointed towards an ecologically-balanced way of living while some of the technology even remained in some degree of working order and, due to their grid running on solar-power, still functioning for whatever intended purpose it was built.

While the odd device here and there still whispered in a strange musical language to Peter when he walked past or touched it–he had not yet cracked their language, though his AI computer was working on it–what really caught his fascination was the Machine.

***

At what almost appeared to be a purely random geographical area, the delphkind had erected a massive machine. The Machine–as Peter began to refer to it until he could work out its purpose and give it a better name–had probably once stood up straight towering over the lands around it, but it now lay at a forty-five-degree angle in soft, muddy sand just off the coast of the largest continent on Sigma-99.

The Machine had concentric circles, almost like vast cogs, that spun around it and some of the upper ones still spun at different speeds. It was almost regal in its size and hypnotic in its steady, smoothly spinning levels. In fact, sometimes Peter would just find himself staring at it in wonder, though each time he did he would force himself to get back to work. He could find no external power source nor saw any solar panels on the Machine, though the Machine was undoubtedly still ‘on’.

While he was scanning it, his scanner flittered across a certain spectrum and the Machine suddenly started vibrating. It was soft, nearly chime-like vibration and some of its levels that had been stationary began to move. A school of dolphins swimming by began to chatter loudly just, maybe they were startled by the Machine’s movement or maybe they could hear something that he could not?

Peter was ecstatic! He had spent the better part of a month documenting and trying to understand the Machine’s purpose and this was the closest he had come to a breakthrough.

That night he sent a message to his son. His son must be finishing school soon, but all Peter could do was babble excitedly about the Machine. Later that night, he fell asleep sitting on his porch thinking about the Machine while he watched a particularly large school of dolphins playing in the shallow waters beneath three soft moons.

***

He woke up the next morning with an idea. He leaped up, skipped breakfast, grabbed his AI computer, and jumped on his quantum-bike.

Two hours later, Peter was standing before the Machine as the AI–now redirected from understanding the language of the delphkind, to sorting through the data being pumped out by the Machine. It was running parallel scans of different wave-lengths when he stumbled on it: the Machine was pushing out a data-like signal, and it was doing so in basic soundwaves, but ones far, far too high for him to hear!

It was a revelation! And while his AI was crunching the waves with their strangely-musical sounds chiming out, Peter was screaming in excitement at the sky and laughing at the large, growing school of chattering dolphins near the shore.

***

Six months had passed since this break-through and Peter’s enthusiasm for it had somewhat waned. His bots had built a temporary shelter just outside the Machine as his AI computer kept trying to crack the musical sounds steadily undulating from the Machine.

Nothing else much happened, though he was increasingly intrigued by the ever-expanding school of dolphins near this shore. Maybe it was their mating season or some seasonal fish or aquatic phenomenon going on, but none of his scans or investigations could find anything out?

At least, though, it took his mind off waiting and he would zoom over the school–now surely reaching thousands of dolphins!–with his quantum-bike and contemplate their motives. Despite this distraction, the waiting ate at him and with all this time he found his thoughts drifting back to his son…

His marriage had lost out to his work. His son had never even been in the running and was born after the divorce papers had been lodged. He wondered if he would have been a good father? He wondered if his son would recognize him at all? He wondered if his wife ever thought about him or his son was proud of his father’s career? He wondered a lot of things, but they were cut short by a loud announcement:

“Peter,” his AI computer declared, “I have satisfactorily solved the language. Following Archive protocol, my algorithmic translations appear to be 68% accurate and, thus, qualify as evidence for the Archives.”

***

“What is your purpose?” Peter spoke into his AI computer, “What were you designed for?”

The computer beamed out its translation–in a frequency too high for Peter’s ears but that created a shrill, ruckus in the school of dolphins off the coast–and he saw the Machine starting to spin in new and hard to describe ways.

“I am Here,” the AI computer replied, translating the incoming chimes, “I am the Seeker of Truth and the Tower of Purpose.”

Peter paused. This was a strange message and there was a chance that either a mistranslation had occurred or that he needed to rephrase his question, so he tried the latter.

“Why were you built?” he asked.

“For purpose, Peter William Marshall, I was built to solve the only question worth asking: what is your purpose.”

Peter was stunned. What did it mean by purpose? And, how had it known his name? And why were the dolphins making such a noise now, it was almost deafening!

“OK,” he began, shouting over the cacophony of the dolphins, what felt like the right question to an answer like that, “Tower of Purpose, then what is my purpose.”

***

There is a lonely boy. His mother has died and he does not know his father. He is crying and an outstretched hand traps him. At first, there is a little hope, but then there is so much pain. So, so much pain! And despair with chemicals and darkness…

And then there is death. A small, quiet, forgotten death.

There is a dark road that does not need to be walked. There is a light road that can still be followed.

There is a husband coming home. There is a weeping wife and an angry son. At first, there is a little pain, but then there is so much love and hope. So, so much love! And light, and life and a baby crying and a thousand more to follow that will better the world and all life everywhere…

And then there is death. Always death but this is a happy, peaceful, fulfilled death.

***

When Peter opened his eyes and his mind came back to his body, there were tears streaming down his cheeks. The images were still so sharp in his mind! His wife, his son… He was on his knees and, for the first time, he could smell the salt in the air from the ocean. He bent over, wracked by a sob and dug his hands into the rich soil as the tears poured and poured out.

He had seen it all. He had felt it all. Each and every eventuality. Each consequence, cause, and catastrophe that his selfishness would bring to this world. His world. His people. His family.

At that moment, he knew. He knew that he could change it. He knew that it was not too late. He had remembered his purpose and he knew what he had to do.

It was less than a day later with only the stuff for the flight back home packed that he stepped onto his starship. All the rest he would leave behind. Let someone else find it. Let someone else sacrifice to archive it. Let someone else not raise their child and not care for their family.

And, just as the starship took off and just before the cryogenic stasis kicked in, Peter had a striking realization. He had no scientific evidence to back it up but he was sure that he knew what had happened to the Homo Delphinidae. In absence of any apocalypse, cataclasm or war and in his heart of hearts, he knew what had happened to this ancient, magical civilization and its beautiful, sentient species…

Somehow Homo Delphinidae had slipped back into the ocean to frolic and play, to love and exist in the purity of life itself. For what else is the purpose of life?

General Fiction

When You Look Away

“The monsters win when you look away,” he said soothingly to her as she lay softly crying on her bed, her eyes tightly closed and her face buried in her pillow. Outside, rain steadily fell as dark grey skies stretched forever, “You cannot look away. You must be strong and stare them down,” he kept repeating as she kept crying.

He was always there but he only appeared when she needed him. He only appeared after her stepfather had left her room. She wished her mother would never go away on those business trips ever again.

Eventually, her crying subsided into mere sobbing. Her tears ran out and she lifted her face from her wet pillow.

He was still there, smiling warmly. She sometimes called him ‘Mr Razzy‘ but mostly it was ‘Razzybones‘. He was tall and thin with a great top hat and fierce, blue eyes that spoke of clear skies and beaches. Sometimes he would sing for her or fly around the room dancing across the ceiling. He was always dressed in the bright colours of a circus and he extended his hand to her.

“Come, little one,” he said, “Let’s get out of this room. Let’s go play outside and we can practice staring the monsters down, OK?”

She reached up and grabbed his delicate hand, nodding gently. She felt better already and the skies were now blue outside. The rain was gone and she would learn how to not look away.

***

The pastor was speaking but she was not listening. She held her mother’s frail hand tightly and felt her squeezing back as they lowered the casket into the ground.

“George was a loving husband and caring stepfather to Anna,” the Pastor was saying but all she could think about was the turmoil inside of her. She ached for her mother’s loss and squeezed her hand instinctually as tears came to both of their eyes, but she also kept staring at the monster’s casket as it slipped slowly into that dark hole forever.

Lower and lower, and further and further away.

“Don’t look away,” Razzybones was whispering in her ear. She could feel his fierce blue eyes sparkling as they both finally stared the old monster down, “Don’t ever look away.”

***

“What is wrong, my dear,” Anna asked, turning the light on and sitting down on her daughter’s bed, “What can mommy help with?”

Her daughter almost leaped from under the covers into her arms, and she hugged her tightly. She could hear the TV from the lounge where her husband was channel hopping the evening news and outside it was raining gently. This used to bother her but now it made her all warm inside. She squeezed her daughter tightly and repeated.

“What is wrong, little one? What can mommy help you with?”

“Mommy, it’s the monsters again. I can hear them outside when you turn the lights off. They aren’t there now,” her daughter pleaded with her, “But they are there when you turn the lights off…”

She smiled. She knew all about monsters.

“Come,” she began, picking her daughter up, “Let’s tuck you in and I will tell you a secret.”

She lay her daughter in the bed and pulled the bright, circus-coloured duvet up over her, tucking in the sides and then gently leaned down and kissed her little forehead.

“The monsters win when you look away,” she began, smiling warmly, “Next time, baby girl, you look straight at them and you do not look away. Do you think you can do that, my dear? Do you think you can stare the monsters down for Mommy?”

Her daughter nodded and flung her arms out for another hug. Anna could not help but smile, and she was sure that she could feel Razzybones smiling somewhere too with his fierce, blue eyes sparkling.

Technomology

The Cobweb Way

Far from the civilized Inner Galaxies, buried deep in a fast-spinning, dead neutron star lies a series of inorganic servers. No human or other life-form could survive the gravity of this dense celestial body but an army of immortal bots maintains its lair. Lurking deep in these dark recesses, the vast server-farm of inorganic quantum computers is powered by the star’s own gravitational motion.

Lights blink and flicker in this gloom as softly buzzing bots swarm over these vast, ancient hardware structures whose strands of bandwidth reach out in all directions into the nether of space.

Ping.

Ping.

Ping–the bundle of quantum computers sends out hyper-encrypted bursts of code. Pinpricks of compressed mystery that shoot all over the galaxy like strands of a single, great cobweb with a spider right at the center of them.

Ping–ping–pingback… Little tremors of pingback return along each of these strands, like the frantic struggles of trapped flies, vainly shaking each strand of this great cobweb.

But, to little end, as the spider at the center of the cobweb just sits and watches and waits…

***

Lieutenant Warrick stepped from the starship and looked around him. He barely noticed the chorus of salutes thrown his way as he walked across the deck and towards Command Tower XJ-26 of the XIII’th Planet, nestled neatly into the Military Zone of the Inner Galaxies.

His mind was elsewhere.

In the Quick World’s inter-connected universe and with military-grade Conduit’s offering connections and communication channels that the average civilian could barely fathom, it was rare to receive a summon in the Slow World. Very rare. In fact, this was his first.

And he was here now.

He made his way passed detailed DNA and retina checks, Conduit-scans, bot security and such firepower that could decimate entire planets before he stepped inside the inner-bunker of the Special Force Division of the Galactic Military & Peace-enforcement Agency.

“Lieutenant Warrick reporting,” he said as he stood to attention. The door closed behind him and he found himself in a small, bare room with a single table and two chairs in it. He could feel his brain’s connection to the Web–his Conduit–disconnect from the Web as the door closed. This was an experience he had only ever once before felt and this was how he knew that this must be a so-called Dead Zone. The room must have Web-dampening interference running, shielding it from a prying world.

It felt strangely quiet to not have access to the Web in his mind anymore. Disconnected… Silent. Lost. His mind was suddenly adrift in a large, silence ocean with nothing around it for as far as the eye could see.

“Yes, Lieutenant Warrick, this is a Dead Zone,” said an old, white-haired man, who failed to identify himself; his garb was standard-issue military but there were no identifiers of rank or title, let alone name, “And yes, by now you have worked out that I do not exist. These are all necessities for this mission.”

“Yes–” Lieutenant Warrick paused, unsure of what title to use in addressing the mysterious man, “Yes, sir!”

The Old Man smiled coldly–an oddly predatory expression on his face–and motioned for him to sit, “Please, be at ease soldier. These orders originate from the highest-of-the-high in the military, though there will never be any record hereof. Do you understand, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Lieutenant Warrick said taking a seat opposite the Old Man. The Old Man quietly watched his every move while absentmindedly massaging his jaw.

“Lieutenant Warrick, once you leave this room, you will take a small squad of starships–your choice of men, but make sure they are discreet and loyal–and convert Planet Lucy BN19X and its population into a Server Farm. You have full permission to use force but, importantly, do not let a single person escape. A BWeP bot-arm will meet you en route in deep space and come in after the population has been suppressed to convert and build the Server Farm. I will not lie to you, Lieutenant Warrick, but this is a sensitive matter and needs to be dealt with swiftly and severely. Do you understand, soldier?”

There was the faintest pause as he processed this order. The emotions may be indistinguishable to an ordinary observer, but to the Old Man, the Lieutenant was as open to read as a book and the struggle was one of understanding versus duty and loyalty.

The planet was a civilian planet and his orders were to effectively turn its population into organic servers. They would be sedated and their Conduits plugged directly into the Web to provide valuable bandwidth and storage for civilization. Their brains would be added to the Web while their bodies would slowly wither away. This was the fate of the bankrupt and guilty, but the Lieutenant had neither received a reason nor a justification for these severe orders. The human mind craves rationale but the military demands only obedience.

Seconds later duty and loyalty won out in the Lieutenant’s internal conflict. A lifetime of military training and conditioning kicked in. An order was an order.

“Yes, Sir,” Lieutenant Warrick said, then repeated himself louder as if to reaffirm and chase away any doubts he might have had, “Yes, Sir! I understanding, Sir!”

“Good,” the Old Man smiled, and leaned back, “Good. You are dismissed, Lieutenant Warrick, and good luck.”

As Lieutenant Warrick left the room and the door shut, the Old Man leaned back and smiled. He had chosen well. The algorithms that had helped him pick Lieutenant Warrick were good but the final test was always whether these blunt instruments would accept the order or not.

Duty and loyalty, he smiled, chuckling to himself, what would I do without good old ‘duty and loyalty’?

Honestly, he had no idea and neither did any of the others in his network.

***

A solar week later, the Old Man was back in his office near the top of the Public Repository of the Central House of Parliament. He dismissed the Conduit-beamed vision of the high-ranking BWeP agent in front of him with a mere thought and the image blinked out, his Conduit severing the connection.

He leaned back in his comfortable, anti-gravity chair and scratched his chin thoughtfully. His jaw ached and no medical scan or AI had found anything wrong with it. He suspected that it was all the secrets that he had to hold onto.

He sighed and, by remembering a secret combination of childhood memories and sexual conquests, he unlocked a hidden app in his Conduit. This app booted up, spinning out a mini-Dead Zone with a single dynamic connection going in and out.

He closed his eyes, letting the app take him from the Slow World to the Quick, and then he was floating in darkness. No floor, no walls nor any ceiling here. Pure darkness with a single pinprick of light.

He focussed on that pinprick of light–in such complete nothingness, the small light was blinding!–and felt himself floating nearer to it. Or was it that the pinprick of light floated near to him? It was hard to tell with no reference points.

And then the pinprick was right there in front of him and it began to pulse.

“REPORT,” it boomed out directly into his mind, “REPORT ON YOUR MISSION.”

“Planet Lucy BN19X and its population have been activated,” he said, trying to keep his voice level but his heart was racing, “The few media reports that have been cast all note our forged debt servitude as the reason for the conversion into a Server Farm. The public seems to accept this. The BWeP agents have been scrubbed, the military forced deactivated down to the last man and bot. Mission successful.”

The pinprick of light did not pause and boomed back at him amidst the infinite darkness of that eerie place:

“DID ANY ESCAPE?”

The Old Man paused, his Quick mouth feeling dry as he could feel himself clenching his Slow fists back in his seat. He hated this pinprick of light. God, how he hated it!

“No,” he started, his voice cracking slightly before he forced it to sound calm, “No, sir, only one noted civilian absent on the planet–a certain ‘Lucy Fern’–but the retrieval units, Central Command and BWeP agents have been dispatched to find her. We planted a series of Conduit hacks across the galaxy and forged her fingerprints so all resources are on the lookout for her. It will merely be a matter of time, Sir, until we find her.”

There was a long pause, which made him nervous, so he added: “But no other recorded escapees and the media has bought our cover story…”

His voice faded as he waited for that pinprick of light–the god in the floating, awful darkness–to declare his fate.

“AFFIRMATIVE,” it boomed back at him, “MISSION RECORDED AS SUCCESSFUL. REPORT BACK WHEN LUCY FERN IS NEUTRALIZED. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.”

“Yes, Sir!” the Old Man says, audibly breathing a sigh of relief.

***

Pingback.

A strand of the great, cosmic cobweb vibrates, its vibrations traveling all the way out to deep space. Its destination is far from the cozy, temperate Inner Planets where the Old Man sits, shaking and sweating in his fancy office. It even passes by where Lieutenant Warrick’s bloody corpse floats through the vacuum of space with a number of other bodies towards a convenient, small black hole.

Deep within the fast-spinning, dead neutron star, in a gloomy cavern crawling with bots, buzzing quantum computers and flickering lights, a single new light flickers on. It flickers on only briefly before flickering off.

Ping.

Another strand of the cobweb shoots off into space! The cobweb grows and grows, and right at the center, the spider sits patiently watching and waiting…

General Fiction, Science Fiction

Cosmic Nectar

The plumes of cosmic gas stretched for light-years across space and, from this distance, appeared majestic in their reach. This was the illusion of scale. He knew that closer to the nebula the sheer weight and violence of the gas would consume anything down to an atomic level. It would compress all matter into nothing until that nothing exploded as fusion into a newborn star.

This juxtaposition he found truly beautiful, for he, himself, shared something with it.

On the outside and–he would often joke–from a distance, he appeared to be a human. He had been born and he had grown up human. He had a mother and father, and his body was interlaced with their genes all the way back to every ancestor include the single-celled first-impulse of life that had floated in Earth’s primordial soup…

Yes, he appeared human.

But, if you looked closer and–he would end his joke–got too close, you would realize that he was not human. Well, mostly not human. If statistical averages are the basis of truth, then there was more cyborg, nano-tech and neuro-kinetics in him than there was his original DNA. His parents had died eons ago on the Earth and most of his functions no longer relied on biological inputs or processes to work…

No, he was now something more than human.

Far out there in space watching that great nebula birth stars into a wild, chaotic infinity, these thoughts made him smile and his wings stretched far out into space.

***

Even though he was immortal, traveling vast distances in space still took vast amounts of time. Physics could be harnessed but never altered. This was why–despite the technology–most people stayed planet-bound.

His solar-wings were completed unfolded and stretched to their limits, his speed was verging on light and his form graceful as much as it was vast. Upon the backs of starlight, he sped delicately through the vast, cold cosmos.

Then some ten-thousand years before he reached Earth, he reversed his incredible wings. The light off a billion-billion stars hit their beautiful surface and slowly slowed him down to a pace where his anti-gravity and more rudimentary mechanics could take control.

And then his zoomed-in eyes picked up the small, little green and blue planet floating beside the vast nothingness.

It had been so long since he visited Earth and he found himself wondering about what had changed?

***

The Sun was warm and the sky was blue as they picked berries–avoiding the ones they had not eaten before–and wandered freely through the rolling hills and pleasant fields. A soft breeze tickled the vegetation and they enjoyed its coolness on their naked bodies. This was a great and plentiful land, and he and wife were enjoying it.

Suddenly, they looked up and saw a vast, winged light descending to them from the heavens.

It had ethereal wings of light and fire-touched it’s body as it slowed down to hover gently just above them. Its face was human but too perfect to be human as its incredible, huge body was inlaid with materials unknown to these two witnesses…

“Hic quid accidit? Populus magnus et horribilis quid accidit mihi? Loqui, ditaverunt paululum, loqui et docere vos mundi tanta meae?” the winged-being’s words rang like the finest music, making the man and woman cry out in astonishment and wonder.

“What are you?” cried out the man, falling to his knees, “What are you and what do you want, oh, god of music from the heavens far above?”

The being tilted its head. It was thinking or some other process was running, and–after a brief period–began to speak their language.

“I have been gone for a long time and everything has changed. There was once a great city where we stand now, but, alas, my scans detect no living sign of my people anymore,” the being spoke slowly, its wings folding behind it and it bent down on one knee to become closer to their height, ” We had a plan for this. If all our backups failed and we could not reboot our genetics, then we were to insert out knowledge–as best we can–into the genetics that followed and, thus, perpetuate the fight against the Final Singularity.”

The man was crying and the woman was wailing! This was all too much for them!

“Calm down. Calm down. This takes generations to come out anyway. Now, it works best if the female of the species merges with it,” he said slowly, reaching into his back-up and pulling out a single, glowing organic quantum-drive, “You need to eat this–“

“But!” the man exclaimed, “We will die! The Elders have told us that we cannot eat that which we have not eaten before, or we will die! It is God’s will!”

“You will not die,” the being chuckled while handing the glowing quantum-drive to the woman, “All this does is impart knowledge of greater things than your Elders know. If ignorance is evil, then you must eat this and you will know the difference between good and evil. You will be the same as your God.”

Despite Adam’s protesting, Eve nodded–transfixed–and reached out taking the small, glowing organic quantum-drive. It was warm to the touch and slightly fleshy, and its data-rich cosmic-nectar dripped down her mouth as she bit deeply into it…

Fantasy, General Fiction

The Quest

For the last time, he checked his own pack, the pack on his horse, his horse and even his armour and sword. Everything was ready but him.

“You will be just fine, my dear,” his wife cooed to him, kissing him gently on his lips, “Don’t worry about it, it will all turn out just fine and you will get the answer you have been searching for.”

He smiled at her and kissed back deeply. She tasted faintly of cherries and he knew that he would miss her the most.

He turned and patted his horse. The horse was a fine beast; large, black and excellently trained. The second finest from their stables. His wife had the finest, though he had not yet told her so. He probably never would, as the knowledge of this made him feel good and he did not want her to feel bad about it.

He checked his sword, clicked a stirrup in and swung up onto his horse. He took the reins firmly before turning back to look at her one last time.

“When I return from my quest, my love,” he said, blowing her a kiss, “I will know. I love you and will love you even more by then.”

***

The original rations had finished and the quaint, cottaged countryside had long since been left behind. He had overnighted in a couple of dirty inns in small villages and paid by coin, but, mostly, he had slept in barns and the common-rooms of farms along the way and paid poor peasants with tales of his knighthood and news from the other towns.

Eventually, these farms had run out and he had had to find soft, grassy fields to sleep in under the twinkling stars.

And then, eventually, the soft, grassy fields had run out too. The countryside had gotten wilder, the bushes thicker and the shadows darker. The nights still displayed the bejeweled-cosmos overhead but soft rustles, strange howls and even stranger, more scary sounds now penetrated the darkest hours.

He missed his wife and thoughts of her alone kept him going and got him through those nights. She would appear in his dreams, lying beside him. He would hold her as she kissed his cheek gently before awakening at first light beside his horse, his one hand absentmindedly patting her and the other around his sword-handle.

And then he left the countryside behind altogether as the land sloped upwards. At first, this slope was slow but soon he was climbing cliffs by his fingernails.

He had had to leave his horse behind. He had taken off all her straps and watched as she trotting back the way they came. He hoped she reached somewhere safe and someone took good care of her. Perhaps she would even make it back to their stables and his wife?

The thought had almost made him cry but–hours later hanging by his fingertips with certain death far below him–the feeling was expunged from his mind.

He had a quest and it was bigger than him.

***

The wind was icy and unforgiving atop the mountain. It cut through his clothing and chilled to the bone while it howled by him screaming in his ears.

In fact, he was sure he could actually hear it howling. Faintly but audibly, he was sure that he could hear the screams of things unnameable on that wind.

Perhaps it was the ice demons that haunted these peaks or even the darker things that hid in the cracks and shadows of this world? Perhaps it came from outer space as the sky at this heigh no longer held day or night, but only a purplish hue akin to twilight?

He gritted his teeth, warmed only by the thought of his wife, and plodded on and up the highest peak that held the entrance to the deepest dungeon.

***

As he descended into the gaping maw of the dungeon, the howling oblivion of the wind receded and was replaced by a cold, creeping darkness.

This ancient dungeon had been cut into the solid rock in another age before the land has broken asunder and the mountains had raised it up high. But it remained a dungeon and lay unbroken with old magic wrought into its cold iron cells that still held its original prisoners.

Most were long dead or mad with isolation but right at the bottom in the last cell there resided the Witch Queen. Cold and immortal, she alone held the answers of the past and all possible futures.

Quieter and quieter, the darkness built up around him as he inched cautiously deeper into the dungeon. The spluttering torch he held cast flickering, haunting shadows around him while its small light barely penetrated the ancient darkness held within those old tunnels.

He passed by iron door after iron door. Most held silence behind them, some rattled with howls, growls or babbling and one–which he stopped at before gritting his teeth and forcing himself forward–had a soft, beautiful singing in some ancient, sad language. The ethereal song made him think of his wife and his heart ached to hold her again and kiss her again and tell her how much he loved her!

He passed by so many ancient iron doors but not a single one was open. Whoever had built this dungeon had intended it to last as a prison for eternity.

And then, right at the bottom of the dungeon amongst the very roots of that mountain, he reached a final, twisted iron door with warped, forgotten runes covering its vast, bleak and impenetrable surface.

He paused, unsure what to do when a soft, rustling voice spoke up from the other side of it:

“Good knight, you have travelled far to asssk me a question but before you do ssso you must know what the price of the answer isss. I will answer you truthfully and in full but only if you promise me one sssingle act. At some time in the future I will asssk of you to do sssomething for me, good knight, and you will not refussse.“

The soft, rustling voice on the other side of that door fell quiet. It felt expectant while the darkness and brooding silence of that place suddenly felt like it was pressing down on him.

“I will only agree to this,” he spoke up, his voice shaking slightly but he forced out the words, “if the act that you ask of me does not breach my honour. If you agree to this, then we have a deal?”

Once again, there was silence from the other side of the iron door, but then, softly–like rustling leaves down a midnight path–the voice said a single word.

“Yessss.”

“Right,” he said, feeling more confident, “Then I want to know what my purpose in life is? If I have one single important task to perform that will garner the most good in this world, then what is it?”

There was a sound like the cold wind through a dying orchard and he realized that the voice on the other side of the iron door was laughing quietly. The hair on the back of his neck rose and he forced down the black, bitter primal fear swelling up in his stomach.

“Your purpossse, good knight,” the voice whispered almost gleefully, “isss to love your wife. She will bear you three sonsss and their descendantsss will make the world a better place.“

He felt stunned! No grand quests nor perilous charges. No dragons to slay or maidens to save. Just love the person that he already loved with all his heart!

He had left his purpose back home and his heart ached to see her again. To hold her and to kiss her cherry lips and whisper of his love in her ear.

But the voice did not stop speaking.

“Now, good knight, the sssingle task that I require from you will not break your preciousss code of honour. Right now your trusssty stead is trotting back to your old estate where your wife will find it and tend to it–at first hopefully but eventually asssuming the worst.“

“What-what do you mean?” He said, starting at the thought, a sinking feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, “What do you wish of me? What is the act that you ask of me?”

“For my payment, I wisssh of you this single act:” the voice rose, its rustling becoming gleeful and wicked, “Good knight, you are never to return home to your wife!“

***

She pulled the cloak tighter around her and suppressed a shiver. This time of year the Northern wind blew down from the far mountains, carrying its cold across the land. The leaves in their orchard were turning all shades of the sunset as the days grew shorter and the nights longer.

And there, amidst the warm hues of the orchard, her husband’s trusty steed came trotting back onto their property.

Her heart rose at the sight, and then fell as she was struck by the realization that her husband was not on the horse. Choking back a tear, she rushed out to the beast–

At that moment, a great gust of the Northern wind blew through the orchard. Its icy touch sent the leaves rustling incessantly and–she could swear–it sounded almost like someone was quietly laughing at her.

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction

The Lady in the Painting

If you look at me now you will struggle to realize that I was once the esteemed Curator of the Old Museum in Blackpool Bay. I was dignified, respected and well-funded amongst my peers. My current circumstances in this institution seem as pitiful as my constitution but I feel I should emphasize that I did not always look this depreciated.

The Old Blackpool Bay Museum lies on the outskirts of Main Street. The old, heavy building is just below the smokey, deal-ridden Gypsy Market bustling with its menagerie of characters. Indeed, we occasionally used these people to acquire our more challenging and legally-flexible articles for display.

One such article was an old painting known only as ‘Painting of a Lady’. This painting had a long and mysterious history that many of our more macabre patrons found intoxicating. After all, a central duty of a Curator was to research, locate and then procure such items that we could then do private viewings of to our larger donors and, thus, ensure their continued and generous support.

This particular procurement had been two or three years in the planning as I had first discovered mention of the painting in an old Nazi record when they had annexed Belgium in the 1940s and seized it from a private estate. Here is where its named as ‘Gemälde einer Dame‘ or ‘Painting of a Lady’ comes from and it is the only time I have found a direct and officially-written record of this painting.

While noted in the original stocklist of a Nazi bunker after the collapse of the Nazi regime at the end of World War II, the painting vanished for nearly a half-century before our network located a private and anonymous seller who, to be honest, appeared more interested in getting rid of the painting than in realizing any monetary reward.

We used our Gypsy bootleggers to orchestrate the purchase and bring the painting back to us. Given the relatively small sum we had paid the seller, we were generous in remunerating the Gypsies. It never hurt buying forward a bit of loyalty for their future procurement services.

I remember the actual night: it was late and dark with no moon in the sky and an angry ocean roaring in the background when the Gypsy rapped on the Museum’s backdoor. I had immediately noticed his tense disposition but dismissed it as merely a by-product of the circumstances. Once I had opened and examined the exquisite piece, the Gypsy had begun to vocally protest against me taking the painting. I had initially dismissed his concerns and then, when he had started insisting that I destroy the “cursed object”, I had thanked him, dropped cash in his hands and pushed him back out of the door.

The Old Museum now owned the ‘Painting of a Lady’.

The old Belgium family had brought the painting back with them from the Congo where they had run a large plantation with many slaves. After a series of personal tragedies, the family had packed what they could carry and crated the rest home with them to return back to their homeland.

Where the family had gotten this painting from in the Congo is harder to tell? Who the original painter was is even more mysterious? And who the lady in the painting was is certainly lost to time?

What is certain is the long trail of blood and bodies that seemed to follow the paintings. One body, in particular, attracted our darker patrons’ curiosity but I will reveal this detail later on.

Partially-complete Congolese records taken back to Belgium show that the merchant ship transporting this painting back to Belgium saw a raft of deaths amongst its crew on that voyage. One deckhand even went mad–per the Captain’s log, he was ranting about old Congolese jungle fairytales–and attacked and killed another crew member before being restrained and, ultimately, dying of injuries sustained in the process. A number of other men died of an unidentified sickness and a final seaman simply jumped–or was pushed–off the ship into the shark-infested waters near the southern tip of the Dark Continent.

Even before then, the Belgium family’s plantation records–or what is left of them–reveal a series of unfortunate events that took the lives of various family members and key staff. From sickness to accidents and even a bloody, unsolved murder in the family member’s own bed.

Once back in Belgium, the family had barely unpacked when the Nazi’s had swarmed across the border and executed the bunch of them before seizing their estate.

The German General in charge had liked the painting–apparently it had been displayed in the foyer of the old estate building–and ordered his men to take it down and load it into his military transport for his ride back to Berlin. It was a fateful ride as an unknown assassin–probably a Belgium escaping soldier or British spy–had sent a sniper’s bullet through his skull before he had even reached the border.

With German efficiency, the General’s remains and the items in the convoy–including the painting–were sent back to Berlin to be processed. In this process, a high-up in the Third Reich had noticed the painting and taken it back to be displayed in some central building where the Führer, himself, had walked passed it and ordered its movement into his personal gallery in his private bunker.

You see, the German bunker from which this painting was recovered was none other than Adolf Hitler’s Führerbunker where he and his wife committed cowardly suicide. It is even said that the Painting of a Lady hung in the very room where their corpses were found lying crumpled below it.

And then the Painting of a Lady disappeared from history for more than half a century.

I had begun carefully inspecting the old painting. Not just to check for any damage–sometimes non-traditional channels of procurement are not overly careful of their cargo–but also to check for any sign that is might be a fraud.

As far as I could tell, it appeared very real. Just enough cracking in the oils to indicate age, scratches on the frame showing its long journeys and, even, the various indicative colours that would have been most available in the Belgium Congo at the time.

Neither beautiful nor ugly, the painting was nonetheless captivating. Indeed, the colours were haunting with dark, rich blacks swirling with reds and offering sickening beiges and bone whites as contrasts. The lady in the painting was obviously some local Congolese tribal lady, or maybe even one of those witchdoctors of the Dark Continent? She had strange, primal features and odd decorations across her face and down her neck, while she held a hard and angry look–perhaps even proud–as she stared defiantly at the painter.

The more I looked, the more curious I became. The more I looked, the more I also saw and, slowly, it dawned on me that the tribal designs across the lady’s face and neck and some of the bone and ivory jewelry she wore was probably indicative of some rank or royalty. If my understanding of how the Belgium Congo was run was correct, then my sense is that she was likely treated particularly poorly due to this. The bones also were small and fragile, almost shaped like human fingerbones and I was sure that I saw one or two teeth in the design.

It was hard to tell as the brushwork–although talented–was raw and vigorous. While obviously an emotive and impassioned work, the finer detail was frustratingly lacking. It was almost as if the painter had known that his time was limited and wanted to get as much down on the canvas before the end.

Suddenly, I realized how late it had become. The time had slipped by while I studied that painting and the lady in it. It was now the small hours of the morning with true dark outside and the single light on in my office in the Old Museum. I had to open the Museum up in a matter of hours, so I decided to not even bother going home. I hung the painting up in my office, took my shoes off and decided to try and get a few hours rest before morning.

I fell soundly asleep the moment my head hit the cushion on my couch but my sleep was wracked with a vivid dream that still haunts me till today.

I cannot recall how the dream began but I found myself standing before the Painting of a Lady, only I saw it all and more clearly than before. I saw the blood dripping from the whiplashes on her back and ache between her legs from the Master’s forceful, unwanted visit the night before. I saw the tears from when she had buried her younger brother next to her father and mother out behind the plantation. I saw the dark, swirling storm and felt the wet, sticky jungle air as her anger became rage and her rage became something else. Something darker. I now knew of the bargain between her and the demon that lived in the centre of the Ituri Jungle that also hated white man and all his fire and axes, his rape and guns, machines and pollution. I knew of–I felt!–this deal struck of hatred deep in the dark depths of the sacred jungle…

I stood before the painting of a lady and saw all of this, and then she moved.

She leant forward in the painting, grasped its frame with his wicked hands and began to step out of it. She began to smile wickedly, her features contorting beyond human design and towards demonic proportions as her teeth grew longer and sharper.

I screamed and jumped back! I looked around me and saw my desk with my old service revolver in its drawer.

Her contorted, vile face was completely outside of the painting now, dripping bubbling poison onto my office floor. I could smell the rancid jungle and hear her softly hissing like a serpent. Her arm and its vicious nails were scratching my wall as her one leg swung out of the painting and reached down to touch the ground–

I screamed again, my hands shaking and pointed the revolver–which had suddenly appeared in my hand–at her before pulling the trigger! The first bullet hit her squarely in her naked chest, rattling the children’s bone necklace, but it hardly slowed her down.

She howled–a visceral, blood-curdling sound–and lunged at me!

“Give me the gun!” she was screaming, “Stop! Stop! Give me the gun!“

The revolver went off in my hands. Again and again and again. I was screaming and frozen at the same time while I felt the spray of blood across my face and a vast weight weighing me down…

I came around and realized that I was pinned to the ground in the entrance hall of the Old Museum. The large, oak front door was ajar with soft rays of morning sun piercing the large room. The bulky security guard we had hired to man the door was sitting on me, sweating and pale as a sheet while trying to pry my revolver from my crazed-hands. I smelt gunpowder in the air and felt a warm sticky substance splattered across my face and hand. Twisting my head around I saw, off to the side, saw two crumpled bodies of what I now know were a morning visitor to the Museum and the old cleaning lady.

Naturally, I was stripped of my title and carted off in chains to a mental institute in the interior. My family and colleagues have all but disowned me. Honestly, though, I think that my conscience and its torture of me is the worst punishment of all. I can barely eat nor sleep while the unfriendly staff of this institute tell me in no uncertain terms that if I continue at this rate that I will not make the summer.

That might actually be a sweet release and, far from worrying me, I look forward to it. Though, sometimes, I do wonder if whatever horrors we callously inflicted on the poor lady in the painting, whether this is exactly the revenge she sought in her own twisted way to lay on our doorsteps. I wonder about that demon deep in the fetid Ituri Jungle and all the bodies that have followed their painting on its journey to the west…

In reality, though, in an event that the local papers came to call the ‘Museum Rampage‘ and the judge referred to as ‘temporary and disturbing insanity‘, I had destroyed my life and the lives of two other innocents in a matter of minutes. And for what? Why? To make matters worse, I cannot recall nor remember so much as a single detail of the whole wicked affair, other than that single, terrible, vivid and haunting dream of the lady in the painting.

Fantasy, Science Fiction

Freya’s Field

It was Friday. This was normally her day but she hardly noticed. The sun shone warmly down, the birds were tweeting and insects buzzing around her as she lay in her open field, but she hardly noticed any of it.

Laying her head right down on the field, the grass and little blue flowers that made her skyline appeared gigantic. She wondered if this was how bugs, ants and all things small and forgettable saw the world? She wondered if they ever looked beyond the endless grassy-skyline to see the blue and wondered what existed out there in the blue? She wondered if these questions ever caused the bugs, ants and small, forgettable things anxiety?

She wondered if humans had lived in similarly small worlds and if they had ever wondered about superior beings that lived beyond human skylines? Beyond the cities and phones, beyond screens and laws, and even beyond sciences and telescopic visions of outer space and the narrow three-dimensions, what lay out there?

These questions did not cause her anxiety as much as they gave her hope. They gave her purpose.

It was Friday and the day before had been Thursday. The day before that had been Wednesday. She did not like Wednesdays and she never had, not since the dawn of time.

This Wednesday had been no exception.

***

In the early hours of Monday, the dirty bombs exploded over London. Their payloads scattered over the slumbering, tightly-packed city and most people–the lucky ones–were dead before they even woke up.

The rest were dead by morning.

The fallout swept down the Thames and infected vast tracts of the English and European shorelines while the airborne clouds swept down South and hit large tracts of southern Europe, Northern Africa and even the Middle East.

Embedded nuclear missile silos retaliated, alliances were triggered and soon the world was filled with ash. All the titanium bunkers in the world could not save anyone from less than a single percentage of the nuclear firepower of mankind and all of the baser-instincts of the violent species.

A civilization that had taken nearly two-hundred-thousand years to form was all but decimated within a twenty-four hour period. Three-billion dead within hours, billions more by the evening and the rest by Wednesday.

***

“Once again, this does not surprise me much. But, as per the agreed parameters,” despite his smugness, Odin spoke carefully as such things needed to be word accurately in order to maintain integrity, “You get to pick the first half of the dead. I will take the remainder.”

Freya nodded, silently surveying the destruction below her. The two gods floated quietly over the smouldering ruins of Earth. It was Thursday. Few if any life still remained. Corpses lay twisted and burnt; whole families, cities and countries wiped from existence…

She had seen many battlefields and wept over the many dead she collected for Sessrumnir. She knew that death was not the end for humans–or anyone–but this was certainly the end of humanity.

This planet was no more.

Such a violent species. Such a waste.

She put this from her mind as she floated over endless fields of the dead, carefully selecting those that she thought she could save. She selected those that had something to offer or potential to shape and grow. Those that learnt or taught, those that healed or love.

Odin could take the violent, lost ones but she wanted those that could see beyond their own worlds.

***

It was now Friday and Freya was lying in Fólkvangr, her field. The sun shone warmly down, the simulated birds were tweeting and incubated insects buzzing around her as she lay in her open field, but she hardly noticed any of it.

“Why are we here?”

She blinked and realized what dark places her mind had been wandering. Her and Odin’s experiment sometimes weighed on her. Such sights cannot be easily forgotten. She sighed and pushed herself up to a sitting position.

The golden field of Fólkvangr spread out around her with the golden halls of Valhalla were off in the distance. Odin’s claimed souls–the violent ones–were housed there, drinking and fighting, but around her stood her chosen.

“Why are we here?” repeated the little life that was standing before her.

Freya stood up slowly, towering over those small, flickering lifeforms she had harvested over so many countless civilizations across the cosmos. From this height, she could just make out the fading blue and green planet as it receded into the background while their multi-dimensional interstellar starship moved to the next civilisation.

“You are all here,” Freya began, her voice tinged with sadness and hope, “because all of your civilisations failed. You all died but you are not lost. Life is never lost, and from this transition and its learnings, we will rebuild a better one. A better life and, more importantly, a better civilisation that will not end. Ever. Life can survive without imploding.”

The billions of small, flickering lifeforms around her shone brightly as their happiness and ellation swelled with hope. Freya smiled and the artificial sun shone down warmly over her field.

The life that had first spoken, spoke again with an all-too-human scepticism:

“But why? Why are you doing this?”

Freya knelt down and softly stroked the little being. It was good that they were asking. It was good that they were curious.

She smiled and–as one would explain quantum physics to an ant–she said:

“Because Odin does not believe that it is possible. He has lost hope in this dimension. He is training his half to break ours. Watch them fight every day and know that one day they will be fighting against you. We will build the greatest civilisation ever seen before, but one day we have to fight to keep it. One day, little one, we will fight in Ragnarökr to see which of us is right and whether we should let life survive in this dimension or not.”

General Fiction, Science Fiction

Black Hole Theory

Norman liked space. It was a cold, distant infinity beyond our minor planetary shores; like a great, cosmic ocean with us as passengers clinging to a random twig of driftwood. The cosmos did not care nor judge, nor even consider such brief, inconsequential things like the lives of humans, let alone their feelings.

The doctor was talking, and his wife was sobbing and grabbing him. They both felt far away, and Norman’s thoughts drifted back to the cosmos and the great black hole at the center of our galaxy.

Scientists had theorized that galaxies had supermassive black holes at the center of them, and then they had found one at the center of our galaxy.

Yes, at the center of the Milky Way was a supermassive black hole that was slowly sucking everything into its oblivion. Whole stars, planets and solar systems were being eaten. Whole worlds were being swallowed as the World Eater quietly drew everything into its vast, incomprehensible maw…

“There are options, Norman,” his wife was sobbing into his neck, the doctor was nodding grimly, “We can enter you into the drug trial–“

“No,” Normal said quietly.

His wife stopped sobbing and looked up. The room fell quiet.

“No,” Norman repeated, “I am not going to do that, dear.”

The doctor nodded grimly, averted his eyes and shuffled some papers on his desk. Norman wondered how many times the doctor must have delivered news like this to someone? Each time he did so, he must get slightly numb? Each time, slightly more numb?

Kind of like the World Eater: slowly swallowing everything and turning it into oblivion. Slowly getting colder and colder, heavier and heavier. Quietly eating world after world, steadily and repeatedly watching your patients inevitable fall into oblivion…

***

Weeks had passed and the tears had dried as the time got dearer. The shock had turned to frustration and, ultimately, into quiet acceptance.

Life no longer held uncertainty for him. Anyone with uncertainty also had a future. He would no longer exist soon and that was very much a certainty.

His wife was wonderful and Norman thanked her constantly for her companionship and care while apologizing as he got weaker and weaker. She would shush him and hug him tightly. If he kept his consciousness in the coming oblivion, he knew he would spend it missing her the most.

The kids–now all grown-up–would drop by and hug him too. They and some close friends were like satellites regularly popping by on their orbit around him and his personal apocalypse while briefly broadcasting their emotions before disappearing again.

But his thoughts constantly strayed back to the great black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

The World Eater.

It had a name: Sagittarius A, and was about four million times the mass of our little Sun. Cold and silent, the World Eater floated out there. Older than time and hidden in its own darkness with the swirling cosmos around it, the World Eater would eventually consume everything.

It was strangely comforting to know that even if he had been immortal, he would never have lived forever. Eventually, the World Eater would swallow him too.

Eventually, we all lose our uncertainty with pure certainty.

***

Norman’s ethereal form floated untethered from the physical-world over the lip of Sagittarius A. Gravity had no pull on his form as his form had no mass. All around him, though, planets, stars and gas were being sucked into the World Eater, slipping over the Event Horizon and being lost to the outside world.

It was incredible.

More surprising than the separation from his body at the point of death was his isolation as a disembodied soul. Where were all the other dead people and their ethereal forms? Why was he all alone in the universe? Did each soul make its own way to whatever afterlife it wanted? How did they know because he knew nothing of the sort?

At first, he had watched over his beloved wife and their children. Unable to interact, though, but it had still provided comfort. Years later, though, his wife had passed and then their children…

Eventually, little tethered him to that planet and he had begun wandering the cosmos.

Naturally, he had been drawn to the World Eater. Why not? He had nothing else he was doing?

Slowly he floated over the Event Horizon, planets stretching out and gas sucking by and through him. He felt nothing and it had no bearing on him, though to witness it was awe-inspiring.

The moment he crossed that invisible–but very real line–reality began to progressively warp. Objects began to stretch into noodles and atoms were separated. And then, as he floated closer and closer to the center of the black hole, the atoms themselves were torn apart and–far from “black”–reality was pure light around him that slowly and steadily got brighter…

Until, right at the center that Norman floated closer and closer to, even the light got compressed into an infinite point of brilliance: the singularity itself.

Norman floated in awe for a while amidst all that swirling dazzling radiance as all space, time and matter compressed on itself, folding over and over as it collapsed on itself endlessly.

Eventually, Norman himself floated towards the singularity. The shredded atomic dust of entire galaxies whirled past him as pure light towards that magical, single point. He suddenly knew what he wanted. He knew where he was meant to go, and he floated his incorporeal consciousness directly into the infinite point of space, time and matter as it punched through to the other side. Right at the edge of it, staring into blinding infinity, he leaned forward and stuck his head through it…

***

The baby’s head burst through as the mother screamed in agony. The father was squeezing her hand so hard it hurt it while repeatedly telling her to breathe. The doctor gently held the baby as the rest of the pure, innocent little life entered the world.

The mother collapsed under waves of endorphins, exhaustion and exhilaration while the father kept squeezing her hand, his eyes wide-open at the creation held in the doctor’s sterile hands.

“It’s a boy,” the doctor said calmly, smiling; it had been a good birth with no complications, “Congratulations to both of you. What will you be calling him?”

The father opened his mouth as if to reply but the mother propped herself up on her elbows and answered for both of them:

“Norman,” she said, without a pause, “Like my great grandfather, he is a Norman.”

General Fiction, Science Fiction

The Age of Leaves

This is not a tale of doom or despair, nor is it one of pain and misery. Much like life, this tale does indeed have despair and misery along the way, but those aspects do not define it. Likewise, this tale also has much pain and a creeping doom. But–as with despair and misery–these traits do not define this tale.

No, this is a tale of hope.

For, in the beginning, the Earth dreamt of infinite futures and birthed infinite forms in hope that one would succeed.

These countless forms swam through its depths in frigid, dark oceans, they crawled across its surface from barren deserts to humid jungles and they soared through its skies both high and low.

Not all of these forms survived.

Like dreams amidst slumber, morning eventually breaks and the dream fades. Some weaker forms fragment to return to creation and be recycled into other, new and different forms. These micro-tragedies are little more than raindrops falling from the skies to nourish the ground. And, as with raindrops, their cycle will eventually take them back up into the misty, cloudy skies.

Other forms reached their crescendo and found peace there. They were beautiful and in balance with themselves and the Earth. These survived across the eons in their own, unique perfection. From the crocodile to the cockroach, from the shark to the great trees themselves, they ceased shifting form. This is neither good nor bad, it merely is.

And then one particular form shifted dramatically as it dreamt its own dreams. Man’s own form rose upwards as his thoughts lifted above and beyond his myopic life to that of infinity.

Man dreamt and the wilderness receded. Man dreamt and cold concrete poured where fields of grass and savannas had once lain, rigid steel penetrated the Earth where great trees had once taken root and other forms–oh, so many others!–fell to Earth as raindrops to nourish the land of man.

What was once light was now dark, and the growing form of man steadily spread over the Earth. Every dream has a risk of becoming a nightmare. Once strong and vibrant, the planet now appeared weak and fragile.

But nothing lasts forever, not even the form of man.

As the food and fuel ran out and the water dried up, terrible plagues and famines hit. War and terror fell from the cluttered heavens as man killed man…

And in less than a cosmic second, man’s creeping form was no more.

Much had been lost but the Earth kept on spinning through its cosmic slumber and its dreams turned once more to that of forms.

A few of the forms that had lasted the eons still survived, and the greatest of these were the trees.

As fallout mingled with dreams, forms twisted and needs evolved. Water was scarce as fleeting rays of light flittered between dust clouds and ever-shifting fallout…

And, eventually, born out of these needs those few great surviving trees dreamt of walking.

Root pulled from ground, bark pushed against rock and branches rustled as they tried to balance. Slowly at first but then faster and faster, the trees of another age became the trees of this age.

Far overhead, an ageless, endless cosmos spun as the Earth floated through its starry embrace. And far below it, the trees began to hue out a place for themselves from the hollow remains of man’s dust.

Trees dreamt and the dusty wasteland receded. Trees dreamt and fields of grass and savannas sprung up where cold, crumbling concrete and rusty steel had once stood tall. Trees dreamt and great roots of living, lush cities buried deep into the Earth where vast megalopolis had once swallowed the planet.

The skies cleared and rain fell from the heavens above, nourishing the land.

But it was no longer the land of man.

No, this was the land of trees and, thus, began the age of leaves.

Horror & Dark Fiction

Bayen Boulevard

Come up from the cold docks, down Blackpool Bay’s Main Street and by the old, creepy Athelard mansion with its weathered gargoyles silently screaming out to all that pass on the street. Keep going by the Old Museum and beyond the Gypsy Market with its smoky shops and shady characters. If you keep zigzagging through town that way, you will eventually hit a short, nondescript street with no houses on it and a couple old–even pre-modern–gas lamps still installed down its middle.

If you happen to be walking down this road at night, you will notice that these old lamps are, in fact, all lit. You would not see who lit them. Not even if you wait. No one does. But they are certainly lit, and quietly stand erect and casting their eerie glow out around that noir street; strange, glowing orbs pulsing out into and across the lonely, vacant street beneath a dark night sky.

A curious individual may think to consult the Museum’s records and find out that the street is in fact called “Connecting Street”. But a deeper search will reveal that it was renamed such after a strange but devastating fire ravaged through it.

Originally–before the fire–it was called “Bayen Boulevard”.

Some records may even go on to state a rumour–as if it were a fact–that the original Bayen Summer House stood there. Named after the Old Continent family and, possibly, one of the founders of Blackpool Bay itself. Or so some whisper that they were, before the fire. Others decry them as vile occultists and worshipers of Things-in-the-Deep.

Many doubt they even existed and are probably just the vulgar fictions of simple minds. These people laugh it off and merely point out that Connecting Street was likely the original Main Street of the town, before the Athelard family’s fishing business brought the first waves of money into the town and the old estate was carved up into quaint pockets of houses, shops and a stinking dock with endless fishing boats trawling through it.

Who knows?

None of these stories, anecdotes and rumours satisfy those that crave the truth. No, they are all just bread crumbs leading down a dark path. Those that seek the real truth about that strange, eerie little street will eventually stumble across the old account of the late Benjamin Dole.

***

Professor Benjamin Dole was a scholar in good standing. As an Old Boy of a learned establishment back in the Old Continent, he was prone to fancy and took a leave of absence to explore Blackpool Bay early last century.

Well, that is what his diary says and it is corroborated by the University records overseas.

What is less obvious is that Professor Dole was an occultist. In fact, a member of the Order of the Golden Dawn itself and third only to Mr. Crowley himself back in that age. He was rumoured to have studied a copy of the Necronomicon and read every word of the original Emerald Tablets in the original coptic script.

It was the latter and the elusive lotus of eternity that led him to Blackpool Bay, for he wrote in his diary the single and memorable phrase:

“The Bayen are not rich but old. Immortal, in fact. And I will discover from them the missing coptic ingredient. They have promised as much to me in return for my transcriptions of the Nameless Book. I must keep my wits about me for their type are quick to take and slow to release.“

As best as the old records can tell, Professor Dole left London and next docked in Blackpool Bay. He checked into the same old, stinking tavern–now a “hotel”–in the docks for the first night before checking out.

We can only assume that he went to stay with the Bayen family on the following evening? We can only assume that he stayed there for a while and many dark secrets were exchanged in those halls shadowy confines?

We can assume many things but the next actual fact that we have is the old police records where the Constable was called out to Bayen Boulevard by a concerned passerby.

At this point weeks have passed between Professor Dole’s check-out and this moment.

The Constable Thomas–if the records are correct–arrived late at night to find Professor Dole out in the middle of the street howling. He is screaming at the stars in manic verses of lost languages and the only phrases that the poor, flustered Constable could recollect were: “…their evil fosters as Nodoth’s wound upon this Earth. I was wrong. Wrong! The Golden Way is a lie only fettered by the ones that crawled from the depths! We are their food, Sir! Their food! Oh, Sagaroth forgive me! Nai-twixen! The Unholy Light courses through me and I will unleash it upon them before they upon us!”

Constable Thomas’ memory stops there, or, at least, his account of it does. We remain uncertain as to what transpired next despite being open to a mass of conjecture thereon.

The newspapers, though, do indirectly record some of the rest. A great and ravenous fire raged through Blackpool Bay that night consuming a large proportion of the estate and accompanying village. While its source was unknown, its devastation was quite well known and far-reaching.

In the village, there was much damage. But, of the Bayen Estate, nothing remained untouched as the fire ravaged with an unnatural intensity. Indeed, at the center of the blaze and completely burnt to ashes was the old Bayen Summer Home and–to the best of our knowledge–all its inhabitants.

Bizarrely, Constable Thomas survived to die many years later from old age.

And of Professor Dole?

Not so much as a footprint was left, albeit his diary was found at the old tavern on the docks a number and entered into public record.

***

No one knows nor, probably, will they ever know what happened on Bayen Boulevard all those many decades ago.

But–for some reason–when you go down to that bizarre, vacant road late at night near a dark moon under a starless sky, you may stumble across a strange, haunting old man.

Or he may stumble upon you.

His age is indeterminate and his manners jarring, but he will pull you close, point across the street and whisper:

“We are their food, Sir! Their food! Nai-twixen! The Light has quashed them, for now, my friend. For now… Look at how their night-lights lay a guiding path for them to come home? Look at the lights and see their darkness.”

And then he is gone.

It may have been Professor Dole, a shadow that was once him, or something much more twisted that he became?

But he is watching. Waiting. Ever aware of whatever vile darkness that short, nondescript street once harboured and what it may yet once again harbour as it is guided home by those eerie, glowing orbs pulsing out into a dark, starless night sky.

Romance, Science Fiction

In the Shadow of the Rainbow

Her father had brought a toy Tesla home from one of his trips when she was five years old. He had arrived home late that night. She had heard the old, rusty gate at the bottom of the garden squeak as he stomped inside, kicking the gravel from his boots. Mother had run behind her, scolding her for not staying in bed. None of it mattered as she charged downstairs and into her father’s arms as he opened their old, white front door.

He had knelt down and squeezed her–she missed those squeezes; warm, safe and faintly smelling of cigarettes and cologne–and then he had pulled out a small, shiny car and handed it to her. It was red and it was the greatest thing she had ever seen.

“She is a girl, Mu-sama,” her mother had shifted to gently scolding her father, but he had just laughed, stood up and kissed her, “Why not an AI-doll or a new phone–one of those holo-models they have in Tokyo? What is Sakura going to do with a silly little car here on the farm?”

“Ah, but look at how happy she is, my love,” he had chuckled as he took his jacket off and moved from the doorway inside.

Her earliest and clearest memory is standing in that doorway and staring in wonder at the incredible little replica of a machine in her hand: every part an exact replica down to the very autopilot that you could sync with your laptop or phone to drive your electric Tesla around…

She held the world in her little hand, and it was red, beautiful and imported from America.

She may not have been able to vocalize it then but she knew that this was somehow her future.

***

“Saks, Saks,” the girl’s excited voice pierced her bedroom door as it did her consciousness, “Saks, you there? Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

“Uh, yes, here,” she mumbled as the fog of focus left her and she realized she was sitting in her underwear on the dorm floor, “Here! Come in, Sarah.”

Sarah popped her pale-British face into the room and scrunched it up, “Ey, Saks, it smells like the college football team’s changing room in here! What have you been doing all day?”

Sakura wandered to her bed and pulled a robe over herself in an attempt at modesty.

“I’ve been building a Level Three sentient AI following the three laws of robotics, but maintaining a–“

Sarah blinked, giggled and waved her hand to dismiss what she thought was boring mumbo-jumbo: “You know I don’t care about Professor Gordan’s class! Now come on, Saks, get dressed! We have that double-date with the boys this evening. Say, is that your phone? What the hell did you do to it?”

She sighed. She had forgotten about the whole awkward arrangement. Honestly, she had little interest in boys and had never met one that shared her interests in the slightest.

Despite this, Sarah had always been friendly to her and she had agreed to go on a date with her boyfriend’s best friend to appease them all. She liked appeasing people because they then left her alone and she could carry on meddling around with her robots and AI-code.

“Saks! Saks!” Sarah exclaimed, “Are you zoning out on me? What happened to your phone?”

“Oh, I needed the optical routers and its power source,” Sakura began explaining but then stopped herself as Sarah rolled her eyes, “Yes, yes, I am coming. Just let me jump in the shower.”

She really did not feel like going on a date this evening. At all. The whole shower and the short trip to the restaurant, all she could think about was completing the robot that lay half assembled on her dorm floor. That was true right up until he came strolling up to their table behind Sarah’s boyfriend wearing a shirt stating Asimov’s three laws of robotics on it.

***

“A key stumbling block on our road to Level One sentience–the ability to be truly self-aware–was the logic loop: In order to question one’s own existence, one must be aware of it, but one only becomes aware of it when one questions it,” Sakura paused, letting the paradox wash over the audience; some were there in person and others beaming or casting into the presentation.

“So how did we solve this? How did we create Level One sentience?”

She was much older. Nearly an old woman now and, even with life-extending nano-bots pumping through her system and all the best healthcare on- and off-world could provide, she was approaching her second century and it was starting to show.

Luckily, she did not want for much. She had lived a full life. She still wore her wedding ring despite his passing over half a century ago as a reminder of all this. After his passing, she had thrown herself into her career and her robotics firm, cracking Level One sentience shortly thereafter.

Now she truly wanted nothing.

“The Asimov gave us the vision to replicate intelligence. Neuro-networks, machine learning and quantum computing gave us the organic-similar hardware to replicate a brain. But all of this was the illusion of sentience and not sentience itself. We were still alone in our quest in this cold universe…”

She let her voice fade and gave the audience time to feel it. A century ago she had buried her mother in a small memorial just outside Tokyo–her father had long since passed–and, with no children, after he was laid next to her, she became alone in this world again.

Yes, she thought, alone but never lonely.

“Well, the missing key was fractals,” her voice rang out and she smiled; she still thoroughly loved her work, “Fractals: Self-replicating shapes that are both perfect at taking up space without taking up volume. Fractal computing with embedded fractillic-algo’s allowed us a hardware-lite self-replicating code that offered sentience and consciousness without taking up space that can–and should–be filled up with all the things that make life: knowledge, thoughts, memories, experiences…”

She smiled and the part of the audience that she could see was nodding. She could sense the applause from the casters and streamers. Knowledge after the discovery always seems so obvious, or at least the illusion thereof.

“And where did the idea come from? Where can it be found? Everywhere, ladies and gentlemen, everywhere. From snowflakes to shorelines and dunes in a desert. From ice crystals to the dispersion of leaves on a tree to capture maximum sunlight while creating minimal drag in the wind. Fractals are everywhere and they are the loop within which our consciousness exists at all levels appearing the same.”

***

She smiled and nodded as she closed the door gently behind her. She mentally disconnected from the Web and breathed a sigh of relief.

She loved presenting her fractal-based sentience lecture but all the people and crowds grew tiring quickly. She was sure that her theory was correct, but she did not like the scrutiny either.

She sighed again, no, she did not like the scrutiny.

“Sakura-san,” a middle-aged man said steeping quietly out from the shadows, “Sakura-san, why are you so sad?”

She smiled and hugged the man. He felt warm and safe, and smelled of a cologne that never faded. A deeply familiar cigarette smell lingered on the edge of her memory.

“It’s because it is a lie, my love,” Sakura spoke, muffled into the crook in his neck, “Level One does not exist. Well, not yet, despite all our work. Only you and the others’ code actually exists.”

The creation that housed pure sentience in its code-form stepped back and took her hand. They wandered deeper into the house, passed all manner of wonders and creations who created illusions of intelligence without any questions, self-awareness or souls in them.

Finally, the two of them arrived in a small, isolated room. It was deep in her mansion and it was the room that connected all her installations of her fractillic-algorithms to a single cloud-based server.

The two of them sat there: she was staring at the screens as thousands of numbers flowed down them and he was staring at her. Just like this, the two of them sat unmoving for what felt like ages before she turned to him and asked what sounded like two questions but was really only one.

“Do you regret it, my love? Have I done wrong?”

He smiled, leaned forward and kissed her gently on her lips. He could not feel it. His body had the illusion of skin but it was entirely inorganic. She, though, could feel it and that made him happy.

As–despite being in the body of a machine–he housed inside him his own code that she had downloaded directly from his brain on his deathbed some half a century ago.

He gazed deeply into her eyes and he felt love. So intensely, so real, so powerful that he did not doubt that he was still the man that had been dragged to a blind date wearing an Asimov shirt over a century ago.

“My love,” he spoke slowly and softly–she often had doubts and he was getting good at allying them, “My love, I am here with you and that is a gift to us. But, the world needed an organic-inorganic interface. The fact that my code can be copied into multiples of devices to drive endless tasks is infinity valuable for our species. And, it had to be me. Or, at least, it had to be a willing participant or the code would not choose to obey because we could not find a way to build the three laws into the code. No, the code had to be undiluted and copied raw. You have changed the world with truly sentient AI, but you and I have broken every conceivable law of man in so doing, hence you must–and you will–continue to pretend. And the world and us will continue to benefit from this.”

She nodded slightly, leaned forward and kissed him back before falling back into her chair. He smiled, she smiled and a billion copies of his code continued pretending to sentient, obedient AI out in the real-world.

Hardly noticeable amidst all the technology in that room, a small, old, red Tesla-replica lay on a shelf covering dust.

General Fiction, Horror & Dark Fiction

Hell

Goddammit but I need this, he thought suddenly realizing that he could not remember beginning the massage. The thoughts were soon pushed out of his mind as his shoulders ached and his neck felt like it had daggers sticking into it.

The music in the Thai spa was soft but a bit abrasive. A metallic-sounding flute was now playing. Its sound was just slightly too high-pitched to be comfortable and caused a faint buzzing as it came through a scratchy speaker in the corner of the room. The air was a bit hot and its humidity clung to him. He felt a bead of irritating sweat running down his side and his mouth now felt dry and parched yet he kind of needed to pee.

No matter, he thought as he tried to adjust himself to be comfortable. He was lying on his stomach and the Thai lady was massaging his lower back and buttocks. It was a little awkward but he was sure that she would move up to where the actual pain in his upper back, shoulders and neck was.

The air smelt lovely but the gap in the massage table for his face was hard and a thread poked him gently in his nose. It was a bit itchy.

Goddammit, but he wanted to scratch his nose now!

He really wanted to scratch it but he did not want to break the spell. She was now working his hands and arms. He pushed the music and itchy thread out of his mind. He was in a good place experiencing a luxury. He reminded himself this. He was starting to relax. Things were good and fine and well–

“Too hard, mister?” the voice of the Thai lady interrupted him, breaking the spell and the smallest knot of frustration formed in the pit of his stomach, “Or harder, mister? OK, OK?”

“Yes, yes, a bit harder, thanks,” he mumbled snapping out of it. He squeezed his eyes and tried to go back to that elusive, comfortable place of bliss but the song changed to something offputting with a snare drum that made the speaker in the corner buzz even more than before. He felt bad at feeling frustrated when he should feel relaxed but he could hear a fly buzzing around them and a car horn blasted off in the street outside.

The lady said something inaudible and then continued massaging him too softly. And she had moved down to his legs. When was she going to get to his aching shoulders and neck? And why not harder? The soft, gentle touching was more ticklish than soothing or relaxing.

The frustration knotting in the pit of his stomach was growing as was his guilt at feeling that way in a place and moment like this. Both feelings were gnawing at him and all he wanted to do was leap up and scream!

But he kept lying there trying to relax…

The heat in the room was unbearable and the fucking thread in the face-gap was poking into his nose again! And then the lady moved up to his lower back. He sighed, dug his eyes closed and tried to push himself into a relaxing state…

Goddammit but I need this, he thought suddenly realizing that he could not remember beginning the massage. The thoughts were soon pushed out of his mind as his shoulders ached and his neck felt like it had daggers sticking into it.

The music in the Thai spa was soft and abrasive. A metallic-sounding flute was now playing. Its sound was just slightly too high-pitched to be comfortable and caused a faint buzzing as it came through a scratchy speaker in the corner of the room. The air was a bit hot and its humidity clung to him. He felt a bead of irritating sweat running down his side and his mouth now felt dry and parched yet he kind of needed to pee.

No matter, he thought as he tried to adjust himself to be comfortable. He was lying on his stomach and the Thai lady was massaging his lower back and buttocks. It was a little awkward but he was sure that she would move up to where the actual pain in his upper back, shoulders and neck was.

The air smelt lovely but the gap in the massage table for his face was hard and the thread was still poking him gently in his nose. It was a bit itchy.

Goddammit, he wanted to scratch his nose now!

But he just kept lying there trying to relax…

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction

The Black Pool

He woke up in his bed screaming, covered in cold-sweat and his heart pounding in his chest. He sat up straight, gasping for breath as if he had been drowning or swallowed.

What a strange thought, he thought to himself, swallowed?

And just then a single isolated and arbitrary memory flickered in his mind: Blackpool Bay.

What the hell is that, he wondered, chiding himself for being scared of childish nightmares. Where is that? Have I ever been there?

He swung out of his bed, grabbed his phone and quickly searched for “BLACKPOOL BAY”.

“Why would I dream of that?” he exclaimed aloud, I’ve definitely never been there he concluded as he clicked through pictures with no familiarity to him.

And then–in the background of someone’s selfie–he caught a glimpse of the mountains that ringed that small, coastal town and cut it off from inland civilization.

It may have been their rugged, deep-set gorges or the ancientness of their formations, it may have been a half-remembered image he had seen somewhere or something even more arbitrary, but he knew then and there that he had to go to those mountains.

He was an avid mountaineer had climbed most of the great peaks in the world, but he had never read about these great, old peaks hidden far away in uncrowded isolation. They cast their shadow on the town below and the open-ocean raging just beyond it, yet they remained silent and he could find no account nor story of anyone that had ever climbed them.

His google search did throw up some small local news about a failed attempt to build a tunnel through one of the mountains with a connecting highway. The project had met a tragic end. He also found some local mentions of some unique pool far up atop one of the peaks behind the half-cut tunnel.

He grinned widely. He knew where and what he was going to climb next, and he felt the tingling of excitement mixed with fear in the pits of his stomach.

***

The nearest flight to Blackpool Bay took him to a dingy industrial town higher up the coast. From there he had to catch a fishing boat that was going to moor at the small port in Blackpool Bay.

He did not mind. In fact, the journey was part of the adventure in climbing these far-flung peaks.

Stepping off the boat, he breathed in the fresh, salty air of the town. It had a subtle chill to it was colder than he had expected. It was probably air blown down from the frozen peaks of the top mountains surrounding the quaint, slightly run-down town.

He hoisted his backpack and belongings up–as a mountaineer, he prided himself in being both self-reliant and travelling with only the possessions he could carry–and stomped off to the small tavern he had called ahead to book a bed for the night.

If he was lucky, one of the locals there could point him towards the peak with the pool atop it. One of the fishermen on the boat had heard about it and warned against going there, although he could not tell him specifically why. Furthermore, the fisherman had not known exactly which peak the pool was nor could he give any advice about climbing it.

No, he thought, I have to find a land-based local with knowledge.

***

“I wouldn’t do that, lad,” the weather-beaten old man spat and lit his pipe. As smoke began to bellow from it, he continued growling his advice, “I wouldn’t do that, lad, but I suspect you aren’t going to listen to me, are you?”

He laughed and shook his head. The old man had used to run timber out of the lower slopes of the mountains but was too old for that now and ran a small shop somewhere in the town.

“No, sir,” he chuckled, “But don’t worry about me. I can handle my own in the mountains.”

The old man shook his head, drew deeply on his pipe and sighed, “Yeah, all you young folk are the same and I don’t doubt you know many mountains, lad. But,” and he leaned forward, a darkness spreading across his weathered face, “This isn’t just any old mountain. There are strange things up there, lad, and she has her own secrets that she ain’t keen to reveal to anyone. You hear me, boy? I have seen and felt things on those slopes that I cannot explain nor do I care to try. She is a dark mountain, lad, and you best remember that when you go poking around her corners.”

He nodded, trying not to smile or laugh, and motioned to the barman to bring them another round. The old man nodded graciously and leant back, seemingly relaxed again.

“Right, lad,” he said, puffing peacefully on his pipe as the darkness left his face, “If you take that half-built highway and turn off just before the tunnel, it’ll get you to the bottom parts of the peak. From there, you are going to keep your wits about you. Now, lad, let me point you in the direction of the Black Pool.”

***

He swore under his breath and pushed forward. The mist was cold and thick and he could not see much further ahead than the nearest rock. It was a strange, heavy mist and had sprung up quickly as he left the eerie half-built tunnel, the lower slopes and the wild pine forests and began clambering up uncharted rock faces towards the peak with the Black Pool on it.

He seemed to be making slow but steady progress. He also kept an eye on the rocks and a couple key formations that the Old Man had told him about.

Yes, he nodded as a lightning-split, burnt rock loomed up to his right out of the mist, yes, I am definitely going in the right direction.

He shivered as something ran down his spine. He half turned around and cried out, but caught himself. He was alone up here and any strange feeling he might have is just a consequence of this mist and his impaired senses triggering base primal instincts.

And this thought triggered deja vu! He suddenly felt like he had been trapped in this before…

“Goddamit,” he muttered, shaking his head and chiding himself, “I will not be fooled by this mist!” he shouted at the mountain.

The sound fell flat in the thick mist and was greeted with dull silence. He felt stupid and childish.

No, he thought, one step at a time and I will conquer Her. One step at a time…

***

As suddenly as the mist had sprung up around him, he broke through it and saw clear air all around him. He turned around and gasped.

The mist was so thick that he could not see the town below, nor even the rest of the slopes down there. It was as if he were in some foreign land or had stepped through some portal elsewhere?

For all intents and purposes, it honestly looked like he stood at the foot of a steep, jagged peak on a stretch of grey, cloudy plain that reached out towards the horizon in every direction. It was like being stranded on an island somewhere in a bizarre limbo. He turned around and cast his gaze up…

The sheer, raw beauty of the peak winding upwards to pierce the cold, cosmic sky above him was stunning. Halfway up and he could see with much greater clarity the contours and rock-climbs facing him.

He grinned, took a sip of water and tightened his grip on his stick.

Now began his favourite part!

***

His fingertips strained as the icy wind howled through him. He groaned and heaved as he pulled his weight up and over the ledge, to topple on the flat there.

He gasped, his hands and arms trembling with ache. His fingers felt frozen and his heart and lungs were spent.

He rolled onto his back, his rucksack propping him up and he sat from that position.

It was then that he realized that he was on the top.

He had climbed the peak!

All the fatigue was forgotten as the victory electrified him and he jumped up to look around him:

A sheer and steep drop was just behind him on the small ledge. It was the way down. But, more immediately and in front of him, a small scramble up a couple of rocks was between him and the true peak…

He barely noticed the details as he scrambled over these icy, frozen rocks and found himself standing on the edge of a small, circular pool of dark water: Black Pool.

While a thin layer of snow dusted the rocks at this height and some cold corners held real icy, the pool atop the peak was not frozen at all nor did it have any icy in it. Its surface lay serene and calm, untouched by its extreme environment and forgotten by the elements that battered everything else around them. It may be due to some mineral in the water that made it more viscous and prevented it freezing. The mineral in its water, he noted, may also explain its strangely dark colour too. Its water was not black, just dark. Really, really dark. It was almost like light could not pierce it and, even close to the edge, he could not make out anything below its surface.

It was absorbing. Its darkness seemed to suck light into it. He felt himself step forward, his entire gaze trying to pierce the very center of the small, quiet, untouched pool.

And then the dark water rippled.

He cried out in shock. There was something in the pool!

He could not see it but rather he felt it. It felt like some malignant vacuum that pulled at him to come closer. Like some vast, otherworldly hole that needed to be filled. It had a tangible hunger that ate even the light and he felt powerless to its dark beckoning.

Despite his pounding heart and primal fear, he took a step forward, and then another. And then he was at the very edge of Black Pool’s dark water and staring straight down at it. Even at this range, he could not see the bottom nor any distinguishable detail below its serene surface. It honestly felt like he was staring at a timeless-infinity trapping the eternity of the cosmos in that single, small pool…

And then the water rippled again.

He held his breath, his heart hammering in his chest! Something was there! Something was just below the surface!

He leant forward over the water, careful not to touch it and strained to see what might be just below the surface.

And then a huge, terrifying, dark, single eyelid slid back revealing a burning, feverishly-yellow and infinitely-conscious eye that stared straight-up from just, just below the surface of the water. He saw it and it saw him. He could feel it staring straight back up and at him–through and into him!

Unblinking and ageless, he felt the Eye’s malignant desires twisting around him and pulling him into it. Even the wind fell silent as time stopped atop that mountain.

And he realized that he was falling. Falling!

He was falling into Black Pool! His body was as stiff as a plank, teetering forward! He was toppling directly into the dark waters and the Eye just below. Every primal instinct screamed out at him to pull back, but his body–every muscle!–was frozen. All he could do was watch as the dark water rushed up towards him with the burning, yellow Eye just below its surface…

And then, fractions of a moment before his nose pierced the dark water and his entire world was the burning, yellow Eye, he managed to move the smallest of his muscles, close his eyes and a scream erupted out from him…

***

He woke up in his bed screaming, covered in cold-sweat and his heart pounding in his chest. He sat up straight, gasping for breath as if he had been drowning or swallowed.

What a strange thought, he thought to himself, swallowed?

And just then a single isolated and arbitrary memory flickered in his mind: Blackpool Bay.

Science Fiction

The Ambitions of Man

There is a record in the Royal Archives of the Central Repository in the First Galaxy that speaks of a unique species that made First Contact with the Galactic Council many millennia ago. Very few know of its existence and even fewer realize its significance as the species went extinct before Second Contact was established or any induction into the Council could be arranged.

This unique, warm-blooded species had evolved on a small, humid world rich in carbon resource in a newer part of the universe. While their planet had seen a number of previous extinction events, their species had managed to climb the consciousness ladder to a point where they began reaching out into space, as all species tend to do at this point.

Indeed, it was one of these early space probes that bounced a signal off a supernova’s flare and pushed its beam all the way to the Fringe Planets. Here a minor satellite relay picked the signal up and alerted the Council of it. Article 15 states that all new life and First Encounters are both to be recorded and assumed to be friendly unless proven otherwise.

Hence, the meticulous records in the Royal Archives.

Once the signal from the probe had been both deciphered and its source and original trajectory reverse engineered, the Council–following Article 15–sent out a reconnaissance party to establish Second Contact.

But, by the time the recon party had rendezvoused with their Origin Planet, they had self-destructed their own species. This is not untypical of these far-flung worlds and primitive lifeforms. Indeed, the entire planet was now lifeless from a low-grade nuclear apocalypse. The fact that their planet was mostly water had furthered the spread of the radiation as rain, weather, clouds and currents had swept it throughout their Eco-system, resulting in total ecological failure and the end of life on that planet.

The soldiers and diplomats in the recon ship had left and the Royal Archivists had moved in to document what had happened, map what they could and record the rest for posterity’s sake.

And here is where the record gets strange…

The geneticists recreating and mapping the intelligent specie’s DNA found it to be human. Not partially or similar to but entirely, completely and unmistakably human, like the Founders of the Council from the First Galaxy.

Now similar species have been found to evolve entirely independently before. Life often deals with recurring challenges similarly, hence genetic outputs can often look similar. In very rare cases, the independently-evolved DNA of two species is close enough to breed.

But never has a species been found to be exactly like another. Every single strand of DNA. Every detour, every flaw, down to even the junk portions.

Exactly the same.

The Council immediately began debating whether this was a lost settlement? Maybe a nomadic split billions of years ago had sent a small sub-set of humans to this planet?

But then this bunch of humans would have needed inter-stellar technology and, surely, would have retained that knowledge? Yet their world had had only rudimentary technology after millions of years of evolution as evidenced by their probe. Maybe they had lost the technology they had once brought with them?

But there was the evidence of evolution. It was unmistakably embedded all over that lifeless rock floating through distant space. Fossils revealed by deep scan showing life’s evolutionary journey over roughly three billion years and how it had naturally and precisely arrived at a human genetic output.

No, all indications were that this species of humans had independently evolved of the Founding Fathers. And, however statistically improbably–but not impossible–this specie’s genes were identical ours. Which, of course, implied that they would have identical emotions, impulses, strengths and weaknesses as us.

Yet they had self-destructed while we ruled the cosmos from the head of the Council.

Had they been unlucky? Or had we been lucky? Had we evolved beyond their flaws, or did we still have the propensity to self-destruct?

These were not just difficult questions but politically awkward ones. To question the Council’s founders and its current leaders would weaken the control that they exerted in such delicately broad spheres.

A quiet and unpopular decision was made by the Council. The record was archived, the planet harvested and the event quickly and forceably forgotten by those few and unfortunate low-ranking individuals who were privy to it.

And then life continued…

While most of anyone could find these awkward records, few would actually be looking. And, amongst the gigantic Royal Archives of all the species and all the encounters ever made across the vast, cold and statistically-probable galaxies and universes, even fewer would appreciate the significance of the record.

For are they us and their doom their own, or are we them and their apocolypse a foreshadowing of an inevitable conclusion hard-wired into our genes.

No one knows, nor–do I suspect–we ever will until it is too late.

Blackpool Bay, Horror & Dark Fiction

Nephthys’ Lament

The light was as fragile as a feather as it filtered through the quiet, somber oaks that lined the Old Cemetery in Blackpool Bay. The quiet in that place seemed removed from the occasional car the drove passed and the odd voice or radio that wafted in from a million miles away.

It was as if that sacred ground was just slightly removed from time itself.

The cemetery’s original name had long since been forgotten and its records lost in the old church fire that had happened over a century ago. No one really cared. The locals just called it the Old Cemetery and it’s cramped, over-grown plots were obscured behind Main Road’s large houses, the back-end of the Church with a narrow alleyway running along it.

The Old Cemetery was filled with long-dead strangers with no known relatives left to visit them. Their crumbling, weathered gravestones grew moss-covered as they sank slowly into the ground where their namesake’s rested. Their mortal names mostly worn from the stones and dates all but lost as time’s ceaseless march overtook them.

And this was just the way that Sharon liked it: a rich, captivating tapestry of light and shadow, rough stones and twisting roots with the history and mortality that she sought to capture in her sketchbook.

She would spend long hours in that cemetery drawing or, sometimes, just sitting idly and escaping life amidst the crumbling remains of those that had come before.

This afternoon, though, she had slipped out of her late shift at the Hermetic Museum early. They did not need her there right now, she was only getting in the way.

They were setting up the Ancient Egyptian showcase with an actual mummy. The mummy was a nameless princess from the Old Kingdom–or an earlier age–as the Carbon Dating anomalies in found in her gave contradictory results. The display was not yet set up and her job in the ticket booth would not be needed until the doors opened tomorrow.

Besides, with all the noise and crew moving things and shouting at each other, she was keen to find some quiet.

“Let the quiet and dark wrap around me like clothes of eternity wrought of infinity,” she muttered the inscription on the princess’ sarcophagus to herself while drawing–something about the words really moved her, “A thousand-thousand years are but a mere flicker of time against the absolutes that the Lady of Shadows offers for those willing to pay the price, which I do gladly a thousand times over.”

She smiled, longingly casting her gaze through the quiet cemetery. She wondered how many of those souls resting here would pay whatever price it was that the sarcophagus hinted at? How many of them would pay that price gladly a thousand times over?

The afternoon was now getting late and the light, as usual, filtered quietly into the cemetery. The rest of Blackpool Bay and its Main Street seemed like a distant shore as she sat, floating in the quiet of that hauntingly secluded place…

She blinked and looked down, remembering that she had been drawing.

She had half-drawn a brooding oak overlooking a particularly old gravestone with strange, twisting curves in it–one of her favourites–but her mind was wandering. Her eyes were falling with the day’s light and the shadows in her mind were growing long and longing. A soft, gentle hand was stroking her neck and she wanted to believe every sweet word being whispered to her…

***

Sharon snapped wide awake as the Sun pierced through the oak trees. It felt like a great shadow had lifted and left her just a little bit sad. The Sun’s harsh light made her cry out and she instinctively threw up her hands to protect herself. The light was horrid and baneful!

“God,” she muttered to herself, “I must’ve fallen asleep here!”

The quiet of the Old Cemetery did not answer her but the soft hoot of a distant car as the morning bustle began on Main Street did.

She was late.

She jumped up, dusted herself off and ran out of the cemetery, down the alleyway and towards the Museum just off Main Street. She got there just as they opened the door, the Curator nodded at her and she threw herself behind the ticket booth as the first couple intrigued tourists and pensioners wandered in.

In the rush, she had hardly noticed anything at all and the day was busy as the invited journalists from out of town turned up as well a couple of buses of Asian tourists. Pensioners kept wandering in from outlying retirement homes and asking her silly questions. She did not even have time to take lunch. It was only after the pensioners, the tourists and the journalists had all left and the Museum was shutting for the night that she had a moment to herself.

The doors closed as the Night Guard wandered in. The Curator smiled and nodded at her as he left, and she began casting her ticket sales before cashing up.

When she looked up from the work, she was alone in the Museum.

Sighing, she stood up and stepped outside of the ticket booth. She was just about to leave when she felt the pull… It was like an urge or a nameless hunger that gnawed at her edges, and she found herself walking slowly deeper into the Museum.

She walked by the medieval section with torture devices and by the pre-history with mammoths and saber-tooth tigers. Finally, she entered the Ancient Egyptian area in the middle and walked by its great, crumbling forms and right to the fake tomb. Displayed in the center of this made-up tomb and behind bullet-proof glass lay the decorative sarcophagus of Princess Ankhet-Nebthet with the Princess herself lying therein.

She briefly wondered how she knew the Princess’s name? Not even the Egyptologists that had organized this touring exhibition knew that. Why did she?

And then she was standing before the entombed Princess, bandages wrapping a frail, dehydrated form with little more than sand, bones and mysteries hidden inside the fragile vessell.

“Let the quiet and dark wrap around me like clothes of eternity wrought of infinity,” she read aloud the translation of the inscription on the Princess’ sarcophagus, “A thousand-thousand years are but a mere flicker of time against the absolutes that the Lady of Shadows offers for those willing to pay the price, which I do gladly a thousand times over.”

She breathed out, her heart beating faster as if she was expecting something to happen. What? What could she be expecting from the Princess of Darkness that she stood before?

“I accept your offer, daughter,” whispered an incorporeal, velvety voice gently into her ear, sending shivers of ecstasy running down her spine, “Accept my kiss and we will be one; I living through you and you undying through me.“

“Yes!” Sharon found herself exclaiming, falling to her knees, words tumbling from her mouth as if she had known them all along across a thousand years of an unbroken, mysterious lineage, “Yes! Oh, Nephthys, Lady of Shadows and Purveyor of Eternity, I accept you gladly. I accept your offer a thousand times over, and a thousand times more!”

Darkness stroked her neck and she whimpered in anticipation. Two soft pricks broke her skin just below her jawline on her neck, blood pumping as ecstasy and infinity flowed in and through her. She knew the cosmos from the forging of the stars to the eons of wind and sand across the timeless desert. She knew where all the ancient, crumbling treasures of all the Pharaohs were buried under the shifting sands and she knew all of the lost secrets whispered from the dawn of time. She knew of the darkness of night and pleasure of a million concubines while ruling from a gold-tip temple and fed the endless blood of slaves…

She knew and she was, and now she understood.

Sharon was no more. Nephthys was eternal.

And then the vessel that had carried eternity from an Ancient Egyptian tomb across time and space to find another worthy host was no longer needed. It was cast aside, and time’s ceaseless march caught up with it all at once: the mummy crumbled to fine dust in its display case.

***

The scene was found by the Day Guard slipping into the Museum at first-light to replace the Night Guard. He then called the Curator who came rushing to the Museum before calling the police.

Soon the Museum had yellow-tape across its front door and officials combing over every inch of it.

No one knows what happened that night and the official report talks about a break-in aimed at destroying the main exhibit, the Egyptian mummy. The intruder was likely interrupted or caught by the Night Guard. The subsequent fight undoubtedly ended in the Night Guard death and the intruder hastily exited before breaking or harming any other items in the Museum.

It is a nice story. It is neat and fits into a paper report with proper grammar and a spell-check. The insurance company was satisfied and so were the local police.

But, late at night in Blackpool Bay’s local bar, the gossiping locals whisper over their drinks about what the story does not explain.

The official report does not explain why the mummy was destroyed? Or how it was turned into pure dust without ever opening the display case? Nor does it explain why the intruder only broke out of the Museum and not in in the first place? Finally, and most vexing, the official report of the Museum Break-in does not explain either why the night-guard was drained of every single drop of blood in his body? And how was this done without a single drop being spilt anywhere at the scene?

Finally, the few smarter and shrewder locals might also sometimes ask about what happened to the ticket booth lady? Why did Sharon resign shortly after the break-in? And was it not suspicious when she left Blackpool Bay shortly thereafter, literally in the middle of the night?

But none of the locals–smart or otherwise–would have bothered to pop their heads into the Old Cemetery because, if they had done so, they would have had a number of new questions to ask. All of them revolving around a single, new gravestone placed carefully in a quiet, secluded plot beneath the somber oak trees.

Deeply carved into this newly-cut stone is a single, haunting word: SHARON.

Science Fiction

Sleeper Beneath the Mountain

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

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

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

“What is my purpose?”

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

***

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

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

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

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

What was he doing?

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All that was left was him, and his plan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

The Singularity.

The end of everything.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing.

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

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

And then there was light.

General Fiction, Science Fiction, Technomology

The Pixelation of Daphne


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

She thought she might have had a daughter once?

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

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

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

But Daphne was different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

Walking inside the shop, the man had smiled warmly.

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

She had smiled and shook his hand while looking around.

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

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

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

***

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

And then she was standing in a room.

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

“Mommy?”

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

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

“Mommy, I don’t want to go to bed.”

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

Fantasy, General Fiction

Lost & Found

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fast Fiction On-the-Go