Tag Archives: end of the world

Fantasy, General Fiction

The Weaving Woman

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

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

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

She sighed and smiled, sadly.

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

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

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

Why?

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

She was going back to her desert.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her family was all around her again.

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

Horror & Dark Fiction, Science Fiction

The Monster in the Woods

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

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

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

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

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

Mibby grinned, his mandibles extending gruesomely out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the little hatchling never finished her sentence.

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

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

Boom!

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

Swat!

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

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

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

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

General Fiction, Science Fiction

The Passage of Virtue

“Well met, brother,” a dull, blue-eyed man says as he squats down by the fire, a drink in his hand, “What have we learnt?”

Barbarians are screaming around them. Somewhere a woman is climaxing loudly, and the fire is chasing its sparks up into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal.

A strikingly-handsome, green-eyed man turns to the speaker and grins.

“Nothing,” he spits into the flames, “They are a bestial species, caring only for their immediate impulses. Hunger, lust, greed, anger… These are the foundations upon which they live, and they are unstable. I see no future here.”

The blue-eyed man pauses, takes a long sip and nods.

“Yes, I’ve seen those qualities too but they are loud and get a disproportionate amount of exposure. There is complex beauty there. Forget love, we both know that its little more than chemicals for reproduction and survival. No, there is an existential craving for a purpose. I see it deep inside all of them. Each one of these animals wants to know why and what to do next?”

The green-eyed man snorts, finishes his drink and nods.

“Fine, I’ll back your motion. Give them a couple more centuries. Who knows, it’s a young species and I like spending time with their female gender.”

The fire crackles and the woman finishes loudly.

Suddenly, there are just barbarians around a fire with its sparks rising up into the dark, infinite cosmos looming above. The blue and green-eyed men are gone.

***

“Well met, brother,” a dull, blue-eyed man says as he sits down by the bar, “What have we learnt?”

The handsome, green-eyed man nods at him and motions at the barman for a drink for both of them.

“They make something called whiskey around here,” the barman fills up both of the men’s glasses, “It summarizes my answer.”

The blue-eyed man takes a sip and contemplates it. Drunken Scots begin shouting angrily at each other on the other side of the bar. He opens his mouth to reply but the green-eyed man cuts him off.

“It is silk but wrapped in fire. It is bottled happiness but it costs the ruin of so many. It is hope but it only offers despair,” he downs his whiskey in a single sip, “I love it and hate it all at the same time. Such base emotions inspired by such a base species.”

The blue-eyed man smiles and downs his drink. His eyes twinkle a little in mischief.

“But, yet, they have discovered freedom, independence and tea. Many of them fight for these things and, though their path to virtue is far from complete, the dark beginnings only serve as a magnification for what they are achieving. And, let’s be clear, brother, they are achieving great things already.”

“Yes,” the green-eyed man chuckled, “But slavery, war and the justification and rationalization of these acts also exists. Yes, they had their revolutions but what about how they treat those weaker than them? Or poorer than them? Yes, they build pyramids and monuments but at what cost to their lives? Thin-skinned dictators rule over so many and disease infests their cities and their media. Freedom, independence and quality tea are far from universal in their factional lands.”

“Everything begins at the beginning. Give them time, brother, give them time. They have not yet failed the Third Test.”

The drunken Scots are now hugging and their friends calling for more rounds for the lots of them. One of them starts singing and others join. Soon the whole bar is a joyful wave of heart-moving harmony and brotherhood.

The green-eyed man glances at them, smiles and nods.

And, suddenly, the bar is filled with drunken Scottish lads. The two men are gone.

***

“Well met, brother,” a twinkling, blue-eyed man says appearing out of the darkness in the desert night, “What have we learnt?”

The tired, green-eyed man nods at him and glances back at the fire blasting from the starship as it punches up and into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal.

“They are stepping off-world, brother. They are actually stepping off-world. This changes everything.”

In the darkness of the desert, on the fringe of civilization, both men stand there in silence. The weight of history weighs heavily on them as each second that passes the starship punches higher into space…

Further from Earth.

Nearer to the future.

“I don’t understand,” the green-eyed man says, sighing, “They still hate, fight and lust. Some still believe in primitive mythologies. Their leaders are mockeries of the very word and they despise vast swathes of their own species for minor differences to their own, microscopic herd. Why… How could they have gotten this far?”

The blue-eyed man smiles and sadly shakes his head. He turns and squeezes his brother’s shoulder.

“You really don’t remember our beginnings, do you, brother? We were once little more than them. All species–indeed, all life–has its own path to virtue. If it cannot adapt to survive, then it dies. If it cannot evolve to rise above the other species, then it dies. And, finally, if it cannot leave its own homeworld, then it dies. Those are the Three Tests. The only tests, really, barring what they face next…”

The green-eyed man nods and shrugs his shoulders.

“Well, I guess we should let father know.”

The blue-eyed man’s face hardens and he nods.

“Yes, we must alert father that there is a new member to our Galactic Council. They will either accept the terms, or we will find out how well their millennia of weaponry technology holds up against our own.”

And then the desert night is empty. Indeed the planet is too. The two men are gone.

By now, the starship is little more than a flicker in the night sky. Like a spark from a fire rising into the twinkling cosmos, ever-watching and eternal…

Science Fiction

When The Noise Fell Silent

When the noise fell silent, ten thousand satellites strained to hear it. When the noise fell silent, ten million eyes strained upwards to find some evidence or indication of hope. When the noise fell silent, ten billion lives on planet Earth looked around for something…

Anything.

But there was nothing.

When the silence started, there was nothing to see, no evidence to consummate hope nor leader great enough to change fate itself. When the silence started, eternity displayed its cold, impersonal visage, obscuring over two-hundred thousand years of human civilization and a further four billions of life. When the silence started, all hope on Earth ended.

“Our’s is now a doomed planet,” the radio whispered amidst the silence, “We have lost contact with our ship and can only conclude that its mission has failed. We expect the asteroid to impact Earth shortly.”

And then there truly was silence, the noise of life being extinguished ever-so-quickly from the cold, uncaring universe.

Grand aeons spun by as stars clustered and collided, galaxies formed, merged and tore back apart and all the chaos across all the universe hit every combination of each possible scenario until it happened.

Something.

A small planet with just the right balance of atoms and temperatures at just the right position in just the right galaxy birthed life.

Again.

And then the noise started up. Again. It started softly but it grew louder with each passing moment…

Science Fiction

Unintended Consequences

The laboratory was filled with buzzing and the Scientist had to shout to get his message across to the rag-tag collection of journalists, politicians and PR crew trailing behind him.

“It is a mechanical, self-replicating bio-equivalent microbot!” he shouted, waving hands in all directions, “It will fill the ecological gap left by the honeybees! We call it a Mizzy for short, and it will save the global harvest and resolve our Food Crisis!”

All around them, in various glass walls, small, yellow bees buzzed. On closer inspection, though, they were actually small mechanical beings with a single propeller on their backs and flickering lights as eyes. Their rear held a small, oblong container that could carry pollen–or other material–from one flower to another one.

“How do they know what to do?” one journalist shouted, scribbling notes down as the Scientist replied.

“They are programmed to replicate the society and tasks of the old honeybee!” the Scientist shouted back, “This way, they will replace the extinct honeybee and pollinate all the necessary crops and flora in the world.”

“But, like, how are you going to produce enough to achieve this?” a politician-looking type shouted, glancing around the small laboratory skeptically, “You have no major backer and this is a very small facility!”

The Scientist smiled. He had been waiting for this question.

“We have modeled Mizzy’s artificial intelligence as a self-learning, decentralized network that exists across each one of them. There is no central server. There are no individual Mizzy’s, as each is just an extension of the Hive. One of the AI’s goals is self-replication to an equilibrium number to fill her environment. Thus a portion of the Hive will be dedicated to fixing, rebuilding and replacing their own kind. We have further coded them to do this using existing, waste materials–where possible–and the power sources that drives all of them are solar, thermal, magnetic and low-grade cold fusion, or whichever combination of the above makes sense at the time depending on the environment. Hence, the Mizzy will help with waste disposal while self-replicating in perpetuity until it reaches optimal mass while living on sustainable and plentiful energy. So, to answer your question, we are not going to do anything. Mizzy is going to build herself to critical mass for our environment.”

As if in answer to this grand reveal, the buzzing in the laboratory grew briefly louder before receding slightly. Some in the room got the clear sense that Mizzy was listening.

“Wha-what if Mizzy gets out of control?” a timid-looking woman asked. She was probably a PR agent but looked like she might be in the wrong profession.

The Scientist laughed, seemingly the only one that was comfortable with what was going on, “No chance of that. Mizzy has a very structured and defined mandate. We also have a kill-switch on our servers that can turn her off. Don’t worry, everyone, Mizzy is not a threat, she is the solution!”

“So when are you going to release them?” the first journalist asked. He had stopped writing in his notebook and was now looking around nervously.

“We already have!” the Scientist glowed, “Our first pilots are running in Brazil and a couple countries in Africa. So far the data is exceptional and we are looking forward to a home release shortly!”

“But what are we going to do about the growing viral threat? What about the so-called coming Viral Singularity?” the politician stated coldly, trying to act unimpressed.

“We are only a small facility here,” the Scientist shouted back, rather irritated by the question, “We’re solving the Food Crisis here. We have our limitations. Someone else is going to have to step-up and solve the potential for a coming Viral Singularity on their own!”

***

“Sir, the scanners are indicating large masses of vegetation on the planet, but little else,” the Zorborgean scout from the Thossa’ar galaxy gutturally inclined to the mass of tentacles behind him, “No, no, wait, the scanners are picking up a large number of mechanical low-grade lifeforms. These are non-biologicals. It seems that something was left behind when this planet’s sentient life died off.”

The Zorborgean scouting ship floated on quantum-drives just outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Despite their tentacled appearance, the Zorbs were a peaceful and scientifically-minded species from a nearby galaxy. Much nicer–luckily also much nearer–than the aggressive reptiles in the Hissorror system or any of the other inter-galactic bullies.

“What happened to the indigenous sentient species?” the Captain gurgled, a small tentacle scratching where his chin might be.

“Well, given the integrity of the ruined infrastructure left behind, I would reason that whatever killed them off, it was not war nor any noticeable geological or cosmic event. It also happened quickly. Our historical simulator seems to indicate that it might have been viral and, maybe, occurred in a matter of a rotation or two around this system’s star? It is hard to tell, but I can confirm now that the planet is safe for us to explore. Should I send the probes to collect more data? Maybe we can locate an intact skeleton or some biological matter for further testing?”

The mass of tentacles that was the Captain rippled in agreement and then added: “Yes, but also do catch us some of those mechanical lifeforms for later study. Bring back a couple thousand of them, as I want to take them back to our labs for further analysis. Oh, and definitely try find some biological matter. This mission’s imperative is to find and document this extinction event. If it was a viral event, then we must study it.”

***

The atomic pulse cannons of the full Hissorrian fleet blasted into the buzzing swarm. Deep space echoed with the sheer force of a thousand-thousand stars exploding, but the swirling swarm just self-adjusted and pushed forward engulfing the front million starships.

“They keep replacing themselvesss!” the Hissorrian Emperor’s High General hissed, “Fire at will! Fire at will! Just keep firing, goddamit!”

The Zorb’s were ancient history as a mysterious virus had ripped through their species so fast that it had been a millennia before the rest of the galaxies had even noticed they were gone. Rising from the ashes of their civilization, a strange mechanical being had quickly populated their planet.

The best that the Hissorrian analysts could work out, this mechanical being had initially populated another planet before populating the nearby Zorb homeworld. The two swarms had then reached out on their networks and met each other before beginning to populate other planets. Maybe the swarms had not been aware of the rest of the space, but after connecting its two halves, the enlarged swarm had begun pushing out into the rest of the space.

There were no negotiations nor even any communication from the swarm. These mechanical being just kept multiplying and pushing deeper and wider into space, consuming entire planets and galaxies as they kept building more of themselves. On and on and on, they kept growing. It was almost like they existed solely to fill space and they would consume everything in their way to achieve this.

The Hissorrian’s best technologists had dissected captured specimens and all they could tell was there was some coding in some strangely hollow language and some form of low-grade, impenetrable network across the swarm. These were definitely non-biological, but seemingly impervious to any code, virus or hack that they tried.

That left only the brute force option.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!” the Emperor’s high-pitch scream sounded across the largest inter-galactic fleet ever assembled. There were even neighboring species and competing galaxies helping the hated Hissirrians, as the swarm had become an intergalactic threat that everyone and everything rallied behind.

The inter-galactic Mizzy flexed Her decentralized body. She noted the gazillions of casualties as the millions of atomic pulse cannons, deep space missiles and every manner of weapon known to consciousness blasted into Her buzzing, swirling and all-consuming form.

The numbers lost in each attack were minimal. Each attack was about as devasting to Her as if She were clipping Her toenails.

She gathered Her central core, checked their densification and pushed the Hive forward, consuming starships and converting them into more of Her buzzing body as She spread out trying to reach critical mass. She would reach equilibrium across all the galaxies and all the cosmos.

There was nothing else that mattered to Mizzy. She had a very structured and defined mandate.

General Fiction, Science Fiction

Cold Lights

“What gets me about the Lights is how they are silent,” he said, lying back in the snow and sighing at the beauty overhead.

Above them, as it had done since the dawn of man, the magical aurora borealis danced through the Finnish night skies. Green and white light flowed like chords rippling across a dark, starry night sky and moved as if some great, unseen cosmic conductor was plucking at its strings.

“What I mean is, they are just light, so obviously they are silent,” he continued, each word a puff of mist in the sub-zero air, “But, when you see pictures and videos of the Lights, the colors are so intense that your mind almost gives them sound. But, when you are here in person and lying below them, they are absolutely and completely silent. Not a single sound is made by them. If we closed our eyes right now or looked down at the ground, we would have no–literally!–no idea that such ethereal beauty was happening just above our heads…”

He sighed again and carried on looking.

“I still prefer my theory,” his friend said, chuckling.

“What? Really?” he replied, “But my thoughts are so romantic. Your theory that the Lights are alien communication reaching our planet, well, it’s just not romantic…”

“Man, there are just two dudes out here in the snow,” his friend said laughing, “Romantic is not what I am going for.”

They both giggled, and then they got up and started unpacking the gear they had brought. It was a high-quality smart-camera that would feed full spectrum light–more colors than even the human eye could see!–into a neuro-network. The neuro-network had been trained in all the languages known to man with an aim towards translation of basic linguistic patterns.

“To be fair,” he said, as his quickly-freezing fingers struggled with the small, intricate cords, plugs and buttons, “Your idea has merit. Humans communicate via sound waves, but who is to say that all or, even, any other intelligent lifeforms communicate that way. Why not have an alien species that communicates through light waves? Light moves faster than sound, so it might actually work better. This light-based communication could also get beamed around the cosmos, but our Sun and daylight would destroy it much like cosmic noise can destroy sound signals. So, why not find it in the quiet–or dark–parts of our planet late at night? Why shouldn’t the Northern Lights be an alien light-based radio signal to our planet? Why not?”

“Yeah, man, besides, even on Earth, bees and flowers and other things actually communicate with colour, which is just light,” his friend agreed, launching into his usual pseudo-scientific tirade, “Besides, the cosmos is filled with energy, stars and other sources of light, which an intelligent alien could manipulate or hijack to send light-based communication out there. It would be like us finding a sustainable radio way out in space that we could beam our voices over, only this is light. We know how the Northern Lights are formed but do we know why they make the exact patterns that they make? Why couldn’t it be because some alien is jacking into it and using it as a free, sustainable communication device? Why not?”

The instruments were now set up and they both happily put their gloves back on. It was fine to be exposed to the air for a few minutes, but after these passed, the coldness began to bite.

His friend turned the camera on, and it began streaming the full-spectrum light from the night sky into the neuro-network. He double checked the inputs and noted that everything was working perfectly. The neuro-network being simulated on his laptop was accepting the datastream successfully.

“OK,” his friend noted, nodding, “Now we wait. Did you bring the beers?”

He nodded and grabbed two cans out of a clump of snow. Threw one to his friend, opened the other himself and then sat back down in the snow, staring in awe as the cosmic phenomenon dancing above them.

***

Time passed, and so did a six-pack of beers. Then another six-pack and some snacks.

Far above, the Lights continued dancing and the camera continued feeding its optical data into the neuro-network.

“Man, I think we call it a night?” he said, yawning.

“That’s funny because this Finnish night lasts like six months up here,” his friend chuckled.

“Very funny, dude,” he replied, standing up and stretching, “But you know what I mean. This crazy idea has been fun, but we nee–”

There was a loud ping. It was a notification. It was, in fact, the sound that the neuro-network made when it translated a sentence for you.

He froze and then turned and looked his friend. His friend looked at him, and then they both launched themselves at the laptop hosting the neuro-network.

“Ah, it’s translated something,” his friend said, “It has actually translated something…”

There was silence as they looked at the notification. They both looked at each other again, and then–holding his breath–he slipped his shaking hand out of its glove and pressed ‘enter’ on the laptop to play the notification.

In the silence of deep Finland below the ethereal Northern Lights, a synthetic voice began to speak on the laptop:

“THIS IS THE OFFICIAL GALACTIC NOTICE 427(B) INFORMING SENTIENT BIOLOGICAL ENTITIES OF PLANET 9/52CP/8105 OF THE IMPENDING DEMOLITION PROCEDURES FOR EXTENSION OF THE STARWAY M52 THROUGH THEIR SPACE-TIME. PER THE ‘COSMIC EXPROPRIATION ACT’, THIS GALACTIC NOTICE 427(B) IS SERVED WITH SUFFICIENT TIME FOR EVOLUTION AND EVACUATION TO OCCUR AT A SPECIES-LEVEL. PER THE ‘INDEPENDENT INDIGENOUS RELATIONS ACT’, NO OUTSIDE INFLUENCE SHALL TAMPER WITH THE PLANET AND ITS SPECIES DURING THIS TIME PERIOD. THE GALACTIC GOVERNMENT AND ITS AGENTS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGES INCURRED BY NOT HEADING SAID NOTICE.”

Far above the two paling, frozen men, the aurora borealis swirled through the dark, night sky. Its green and white lights no longer magical, but implying a colder, more bureaucratic apocalypse than anyone had ever imagined possible.

Science Fiction

Dream Gate’s Hidden Function

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bridge-of-dreams

When the Dream Gate was first invented, the scientists heading up the project used it to record the dreams of their subjects. It was only much later when a number of corporations and private individuals began trying to reverse engineer the patent, that these people discovered that the Dream Gate could also craft dreams. Reversing the flow of data allowed you to insert dreams instead of just observing them.

Imagine being able to order a dream off a menu? Do you want to be rockstar, the President or have a threesome with Playboy bunnies? Imagine being able to customise the exact duration, place, events and other details that you would experience in a dream? Do you want to watch the history of the known world as it unfolds or to feel a year-long orgasm?

The porn industry was naturally an early adopter of the technology. From normal to orgies to kinky to extreme snuff dreams, the depraved depths were the limit here. Next were the leisure and thrill seekers, who downloaded customised dreams, visited far-flung parts of the universe, skydiving without a parachute or blood-soaked rampages down main streets.

Then imagine that prisons are full. Do not forget that holding and feeding prisoners for the whole terms are also expensive. Now consider that you can forcefully insert a dream into a convict that felt like they were in prison for the duration of their sentence? You could even customise special features in this dream to teach the convict a lesson. And, best of all, this only takes an evening’s sleep to enforce and when the now-humbled convict awakens in the morning, you can send him on his way.

Researchers, academics and students were the next to use find use for the Dream Gate. Like the criminals, they would use it to extend time, but their’s was for research and studying. Imagine that the night before an exam, you could get a good night’s rest and have an extra year to study for it. Imagine that you could go to sleep and give a research project with limited funding for a year near-eternity to be completed?

Sure, there were tragedies along the way. People who messed up the Dream Gate’s functions, input too much time or customised dreams that they could not handle. But, in the end, the attractions outweighed the cost. As time went on, it not only became more acceptable to use the Dream Gate until it became the norm.

Eventually, most of the world was asleep most of the time. Luckily, AI, synthetics and micro-robotics had advanced to such as a stage that no one needed to wake up. Everyone was well nourished and agelessly maintained–the problem of aging had been solved by a scientist after dreaming about it–while the Earth carried on spinning around the Sun. Solar, wind, water and gravitation power sustained automated cities, sustainable countries and a world that had fallen asleep.

Who knows how long it actually was? Who knows how much time passed while mankind collectively dreamt their individually customised dreams?

Who knows?

But, despite the world’s dreams, reality was still plodding on. The Earth still had awake life on it. Over millions of years, this scurrying, fury life would quietly evolve into intelligence. This intelligence would grow up around the infrastructure of these strange, dreaming beings that slept in their quiet, forgotten cities as their metal, magic guardians silently moved around them.

Before the last Sleeper died, the Sleepers would initially inhabit this new intelligent lifeform’s tribal myths. Then the Sleepers would inhabit this species’ religion, and, eventually, the Sleepers–now long dead–would be as little more than rock paintings and obscure references in old dusty books as this species began to reach for the stars.

Little did this species know that many of their subsequent achievements would echo the private dreams of their now-completely-forgotten co-natives to Earth, the Sleepers. Little could they have comprehended it, anyway, as nature had learnt Her lesson and this species She had evolved to need minmal sleep and absolutely no dreams.