Vacancy:

There wasn’t any problem setting the explosives. This was a job, and besides we all knew what would probably happen in the next few weeks. The conflict wasn’t going in our favor, maybe at first when we had the element of surprise, but now the enemy was learning and adapting.  They managed to drop 6 hotels all at once last week and it was all recorded.

I was there, inside the air traffic tower watching the area for my shift. The morning memo warned of sizeable buildings being dropped. The morning memos warned us of something every day and normally it meant watching nothing happen for an 8-hour shift.

This time the morning memo was spot on, it knew the time frame within 15 minutes. I was just getting into my coffee. The first explosion sounded the alarms, it was a hotel building that was probably considered a 5-star place before the war. The alarm was echoed 5 more times in sequence before I could spit out my coffee.

There was nothing to do about it, we were less than 5 miles from these buildings and the explosions could be heard muffled through the walls. The big screens lit up and the monitor drones began their encircling data collection. I saw all 6 buildings begin crumbling, the explosions were scalpel cuts at their foundation, just sliced off with needle point destruction. There wasn’t fire seen on the screen, but the smoke could be seen, and a couple of the buildings started a tenuous lean, one to the right and one to the left.

The next couple of minutes felt like syrup, waiting for the old hotels to fall, hundreds of beds, nearly 90 floors on the largest hotel.  The biggest building started slower and ended with a crunch into the nearby smaller hotel, the screen showed a white cloud of smoke and distortion. The visual distortion meant the impact probably caused a shockwave that could be felt in the next couple of seconds.

I had never felt a shockwave like that before. The wave enlarged and expanded out of the screen’s visual feed of the buildings. At nearly the same moment the shockwave washed over the air traffic tower I was stationed in. The wave moved through my body, like being shoved, grabbed by my bones and shook by an invisible angry scream. I squinted and winced while anticipating the feeling, but the wave rolled over like an avalanche of hammers, it felt like a car crash. I was blown back a few feet and disorientated, probably slightly concussed. Some of the other folks in the tower with me had blood coming out of their ears. I shouted to them, but no words came out. I saw the others opening and closing their mouths screaming silent screams back at me.

I pointed at their ears and someone pointed at mine, I reached up to feel a warm slick on my check and neck. There wasn’t any ringing, there wasn’t any pain, at least not at first. The big screens overhead showed a pile of smoke, ash and debris and a few buzzing drones weaving in and out of the smoke clouds. I saw red lights flashing and the alarms going off, I couldn’t hear them. I returned to my station, the terminal was still active, and I saw 3 notifications for remote links requests from the other command towers. Order slowly returned. My hearing never returned, we were given orders to blow the command tower and retreat to the California tower.

Setting the explosives this time was only to deny the enemy of the technology and resources of the air traffic tower. I finished the detonation preparation and am ready to push the button. 

With a button push the tower crumbles in a pale comparison. The shock wave is an echo in their bones, it washes over the solider and they wince as the bright memory is remembered.

Starfall:

The black ship weaved and floated through the fabric of space-time. It was a time ship, travelling from the past (depending on your constellation) and returning to where the single occupant called the present. The ship was needling through the starlight of history. The light was made from the monuments of tragedies. Mainly; genocide, famine, plague and slavery, each one marked itself on the map of mankind. 

The occupant was frozen in stasis, but their mind was able to navigate a dark night sky filled with the twinkling starlight. Weaving through, around and away from the tragedies of history. Each one left a mark on the occupant, each one let a pin prick of starlight fall into them and encased them in the experience. The ship’s buffers, filters and technology protected the occupant from being overwhelmed by experiencing the horror all at once. 

After finishing a mission, (or quest depending on your sensibilities) from the bronze age of 1125 B.C.E and returning in triumph. They had successfully laid the seed of change in the past of human history in the hopes of preventing the unpreventable. Which is to say the conditions of the present were so unbearable that temporal measures had to be taken. Time is a twisted and convoluted creature and sometimes knots can be undone and sometimes they can’t. 

The black ship, called the XJP-8400 was the pinnacle of technology, an art piece in its own rite and resembling a black thin needle. The creature inside the ship was a human being, at least the human being thought of itself as much. They had been trained, augmented and conditioned for this specific type of mission and travel. What they actually were was unimportant, nor are such things distinguishable under the smallest microscope. 

Inversely, the originators of the quest were not human by the slightest description. They were machines that could never die, they were made in the smallest voids of space and could not be unmade. They were the masters of a long line of machines that held a non-descript designation of: v22.6. These deathless machines became aware of the Stars of Tragedy when beginning the first temporal expeditions and had since refined the method of travel to a bleak science. 

The occupant of the XJP-8400 was close approaching their temporal point of origin, also the temporal home of the v22.6s. The size of their star was monstrous in comparison of other stars of history. The description that was registered and uploaded to the occupant of the black ship was as follows:  

The radiance of starlight is a gleam of inconsolable misery, an endless white void of clawed malevolence. The spines of an ancient quilled beast rising in a scream of self-conscious anguish. The star seems to be constantly exploding, pushing a terrible sadness of relentless experience out and then clawing it back into a gapping maw of brilliance, who’s fangs sink to the bone. Each gleam of light from this star is a river of bottomless suffering and tears, squirming with the masses of existence. Each face contorted in a hell of white light, a ghost of a self-awareness.

After this much of description was recorded by the ships sensors the fail-safes turned on and protected the occupant from any serious exposure.  The ship dilated and compressed into normal space-time and blinked into existence again next to a docking port of a gigantic citadel on the outer planetary rings of Seltus-B. The onboard retro-sense uploaded the experience into the occupant and to the v22.6s, their subspace connections accessed their ships journey and details. 

The docking machines reached out with 5 fingered machines and collected the XJP-8400 and began processing the occupant for debriefing with the v22.6s via subspace. The occupant was retro-sensed, temporally sanitized and then brought to an empty room. Within moments a single v22.6 entered, it had assumed a humanoid form that the occupant would find pleasant, the shape of a tall and gleaming female. The v22.6s rarely wore skin and this was no exception, just a sleek black and gray metallic frame, the voice and eyes were warm and welcoming. The debriefing was a single monologue from the v22.6, the human being said nothing, they could only listen. The debriefing went as follows:

“You have done well, the sun cult of Marduk is annihilated, however the Present Star grows ever brighter. The mission details show that you did precisely what was asked, and your loyalty is unquestioned. We have another mission for you: You will be sent to the future, we have another plan into motion and need to see its effects. You may not survive since there is no starlight in the future but finding anything in the cold dark beyond may provide us with more answers. Your memory will be added to ours. Dismissed. “

The human being stood for a moment in confusion, this was nothing short of a death sentence. However, the obedience sub-routines took over and glory and honor flooded their brain. Noble self-sacrifice for the greater good, certainly a good way as any to go, they thought. They headed back to the 5 fingered docking machines and was soon back within the black hull of the XJP-8400. The screens lighting up with plasma lines and coordinates for the future. 

The ship’s engines whirled and buzzed, they made a static reverberation that echoed in the bones of the occupant. The starlight began to fade, then all light began to fade as the ship started its ascent into the future. The occupant didn’t think future travel was possible before today. Anxiety welled up and then quickly dissolved by the onboard buffers, returning to the visage of a dispassionate professional space sailor. 

The black ship whizzed out into the night sky, but no starlight could be seen. Not a single star since no tragedies had happened, not a single point of reference in the deep blackness. It was weeks and then months of nothing, just a long stretch of deep darkness. There was no energy reading or temporal fluctuations. The occupant’s body was held in a deep stasis and the retro-sense had nothing to update day after day. 

After nearly a year of undistinguished nothingness of the future there was something that the retro-sense picked up. It uploaded an object and turned on the self-awareness of the occupant for review. The object was another ship of sorts, it flew a black mast and a black hull like an English clipper ship. It was flying off the starboard side of the XJP-8400 and was barely visible, if not for the miniscule reflection of the plasma lines. The occupant scanned the object thoroughly, the physical dimensions were the only scan that revealed any information. The substance of its hull or any emissions were seemingly unknowable. 

The occupant veered starboard and extended a 3-fingered machine for docking. Even while in temporal flight there was possible physical interaction.  The XJP-8400 docked smoothly and the occupant came fully out of stasis to explore the black vessel. 

There was nothing on board, no sign of inhabitants, no signs of technology of any kind. The bleak darkness was very difficult to explore in. The occupant set up some plasma lights and as soon as he turned them on there was a gut-wrenching crunch. Something had imploded the XJP-8400, a wink and a wince and the ship blinked out of existence with a scratch of the darkness. Wide eyed and confused the occupant didn’t understand what had caused his ship to dissolve mid-flight. 

Now alone without any technology except for some plasma lights and stuck in a temporal flight on an unknown ship that defied any reasonable explanation of mechanism, they sat down in frustration. The plasma light illuminated a black wooden deck and a greater darkness beyond the plasma light, the whoosh of temporal flight could be heard off the edge of the ship. Hours seemed to pass with no change and hunger and sleep began to take their toll. 

The occupant took one of the plasma lights and shattered it, taking a piece of the alloyed metal and started to scratch words and symbols unto the hull. Momentarily pausing to consider the black surrounds of the future scape, an endless landscape of nothing, only a greater blackness howling out a starless sky. The occupant of the black ship began writing:

“I am sailor. I come from a time and place that most call the future. It is hard to say if you consider it the future. The eddies and rivers of time twist around in strange shapes, they don’t always flow in straight lines. I am writing this in hopes that one day it will be found, for posterity perhaps, or maybe it is a comforting imagination that lets me sleep finally in this cold and dark place……”

Rainfall:

Nebuchadnezzar #Reflection hour: 13:43

The year is 1122 B.C.E and my name is Nebuchadnezzar. I am not the real Nebuchadnezzar, I am from the future, well the future from the perspective of the bronze age denizens that live here. The real Nebuchadnezzar was winked out of existence when I arrived at this time and place. Since I made landfall I had put on the mask of the real Nebuchadnezzar and have positioned myself in this time and place for a very specific reason.

Let me back up a second, or a year depending on your point of view. I arrived at the year 1122 to supplant the ruler of this area of time to avoid a type of future scape that is unavoidable. If you pardon the paradox it may make a little sense. The future is grim, probably worse than is generally known. Existence itself has reach an event horizon of tragedy, the culmination of a great terribleness that dwarfs all other tragedies and no choice of the present seems to be able to undo, change or curtail the tidal forces that will likely rip existence apart.

Tragedies are the starlight by which our time ships travel, they provide constellations for us to navigate through the cosmos. The method in which we can see and navigate them is a discussion of protracted irritation. The story can only be described with mathematics, which is the language of the universe. Any written or spoken semantics are too imprecise for any meaningful description. Suffice to say that the present time (from my perspective) is the most terrible that has ever been recorded, detected or imagined in all the time-scapes of eternity.

So, we have sent people like myself to alter the past, perhaps to dim the light of the present by undoing wars or great suffering, and perhaps, just maybe darken the night sky a little.  

I have lived in this community for a little over a year and need a couple more before I can ascend as king. First the old king must die and second I must set up the changes that hopefully unravel. In the annuals of history, Nebuchadnezzar was known for a war and afterwards the retrieval of a great golden idol of Marduk, who is one of the major gods of the time. Marduk as an idea represents an older authority, a cosmic sun cow of sorts. Later he will be adopted during the Hammurabi period as Jupiter.

The v22.6 models have made a compelling case that all the sun gods (and cows) must be eradicated, their brightness has directly added to the terrible starlight of the future. Hopefully I can undo this chapter of history with some well-placed organization.

#end Reflection hour Nebuchadnezzar hour: 13:49

Nebuchadnezzar logged his reflection hour on a device and cloaked the machine with a wave of his hand. He got dressed in typical Isen red skirt and prepared for the feast. The current king had called the nobles of houses from all over his kingdom for a great gathering. These gatherings were ideal for solidifying allegiances, marriages, improving defenses and bask in the presence of the king.

The current king was generous, peaceful and old. However, the rumors of armies massing in Zangi. The nobles needed a new leader they could trust and protect them. This was the place to sniff out who would replace the king if the need arose.

The gathering started with a procession, all the great houses were announced before a section of servants. The lowest nobles entered first and were only greeted by workers and servants. As more houses entered the pageantry and pomp increased. This continued until they were all seated and then with the heralded with a song, the king entered and soaked in the adulation. He brought with him a round table made of cork and the size of a large elephant. Sticking from the side of the cork was a large hook with 2 prongs.

Once the king was seated and the guests began feasting the king announced the purpose of the strange object. He described it as a test, the cork will hold the hooks tight. Any noble is welcome to try to remove the large hook, if they can he will grant them three kindnesses. The first will be a slave from the king’s own collection of beautiful female slaves. The second is food, the king will provide a generous supply of cheese and third is a large sum of coin, a handsome reward for the cleverness or strength of solving the king’s puzzle.

One by one the nobles tried. They wrenched and struggled to remove the large hook from the cork, but the cork held the iron tight. Nebuchadnezzar waited until everyone had tried, and until everyone had had a few cups of wine. Nebuchadnezzar had the strength beyond anything the humans of this era ever witnessed and after feigning a struggle he unsheathed the large double hook in a triumphant show of strength.

The king motioned for the slaves to be brought out, each a beautiful woman. Nebuchadnezzar was asked to pick which of the 13 slaves would be his. Nebuchadnezzar replied as such:

“My king I am sad to say that I am afflicted with a moral disease, I can not enjoy the intimate company of slaves, I can only enjoy that of equals. I beg your forgiveness, but if you were to free them I would gladly choose one, if she was willing. Your other gifts I would gladly pass over if you were to grant me this wish. “  

The laughter and howls from the gathering erupted in jubilation. Nebuchadnezzar had both criticized the king’s use of slaves and turned down his gifts of food and coin. The servants and nobles were elated by the cleverness of cornering the king to free his slaves. The king raised his hand for silence and after a moment of silence replied in turn:

“Nebuchadnezzar, you ask for more than you can handle. Will you not need the coin and food for your newly freed slaves? I think that your wish will be your undoing and for your rudeness of turning my gifts away I will grant you your desire. “

The crowds erupted in laughter and celebration! This was the sarcastic double banter they had wished to hear and see. The king had given in, and yet saved face in a stroke of wisdom. Nebuchadnezzar had won the hearts of the people and showed his disdain for greed and indulgence. The display would lead him to the crown in only a few short years.

During those years Nebuchadnezzar taught the 13 freed slaves the ways of leadership. Now women of his house and consecrated priestess of moon god Ur they were given every advantage. They were taught to read and taught the wisdom of Nebuchadnezzar. When Nebuchadnezzar assumed the throne in 1125 the armies of Zangi started their march.

Nebuchadnezzar had no desire to remain in this time-scape any longer. His plan was set in motion: The 13 slave queens, now adorned priestesses of Ur would lead the armies and put down the uprising of savages from Zangi. With any luck they would rule a peaceful empire as a council of educated leaders. They would not retrieve the golden idol of Marduk, nor would Nebuchadnezzar be remembered as a figure in history other than perhaps in clever parable.

Nebuchadnezzar faked his death by sickness and returned to his jet-black ship under the mountain. The XJP-8400 whirled up and the plasma lights greeted him as he walked into the dark cavern.  He removed the mask of Nebuchadnezzar and recorded one last entry before heading back into the sea of darkness.

Nebuchadnezzar #Reflection hour: 13:43

I have done what I have set out to do, I plan to navigate my way back to my native time. I don’t know if my actions have made any affect but in all practical measures of myself, I am successful. I have grown to love the priestesses of Ur who company over these last years has given me hope. Their minds shine with a meaningful desire for a better world. I have told them nothing of the future. I am looking forward to downloading the details of history of their rule. 

#end Reflection hour Nebuchadnezzar hour: 13:49

The ship began its dark journey home as a warm rain began to fall over the mountain and the valleys and down to the river Euphrates. The priestesses of Ur began their rite of ascension looking up to the rain clouds in vibrant elation. The clouds cracked with a single thunder and poured down over them with the waters of life.

Mickey Mouse:

The old man put down the pencil in frustration. For years he had wrestled with the calamity of dimensions. He knew something deep within him was knocking on the door of his brain. He had long ago retired from an unimportant job. His wife had died, and his two children had lives of their own. He however was haunted. He was haunted by the cartoon creature of his youth and with each of the persistent knocks, he had answered. Deep within, he had opened the door and looked out into a vast opaque nothingness, perhaps it had just returned to its original minting, perhaps it had been stolen.

The doctors told him that he had the beginnings of dementia, his brain was eroding. The old man didn’t believe them, he knew something had gone missing, some creature had swallowed up his memories. He couldn’t prove it, yet.  He was determined to discover the criminal of his thoughts; some vile goblin had certainly sabotaged the gears and timing belts of his inner workings. He saw evidence everywhere he looked, in pictures he couldn’t recognize, in dreams of familiar faces that ignored him. The faces glossed over him in his own dreams, a stranger in his own house of cards, where none of the face cards added to 21. Like a gambler he was counting on the road signs that he thought he left in the past. Gone were the pleasant remembrances, replaced by a risky desperation.

His daily life was a sandstorm of lost underwear, misplaced car keys and dead batteries. The lights were on and no one was home he would think to himself while looking outside at the world. The secret sun was blank and empty, the night was hollow and filled with dirty blankets. The blade of the moon was a dull and rusted antique, it hung in the sky like the unused tools in his shed. The old man was furious at this loss. He was frustrated beyond rage, and through each day, when each memory was uncovered he would see the clues.

The clues were evidence that some force was working against him, eating his memories and tokens of pastimes. Convinced that false keepsakes were put there by a creature, an imp that was hiding somewhere nearby, somewhere they could watch him discover the blank and empty pages of his past. The old man would shake his fist, rub his head and try and see from the corners of his eyes where something was watching him.

This predatory fascination developed into a passion, a fever to find the mechanism as to how the creature could hide from him so easily. He sunk his time into science, the occult, anything with a description for the strange and unusual. This anchored him slightly, however he found himself reading the same books over and over again, a dim sense of memory with none of the details. Thwarted by the creature yet again, he desperately devised a failsafe for this insidious combination of erasure and rage.

The plan was simple, he would write out his thoughts on a blank page until he could not think, then he felt the creature would have to show itself. This action resulted in a confusing afternoon of staring at a page of paper with the words “Mickey Mouse” printed on it. He knew of the creature from childhood, memory loss had not reached quite down that far, but why did he write it, what was he thinking when he wrote it? These questions added more confusion than a voter’s ballot, which of course he loved filling out with great sadistic glee last week, he still remembered that.

Over the next couple of days, he contemplated the words “Mickey Mouse” and the attributes of the cartoon animal. The black and white animations, the innocent fool, the history of the cartoon, all of it was sieved out like a prospector’s invisible fortune.  After such attempts at investigation the old man was left feeling only that his childhood was now threaten by the memory erasing creature. Now looking at the blank page with the words “Mickey Mouse” , he grinded his teeth in seething frustration.

There was something that stuck in the empty brain soup, it was the ears of Mickey Mouse. Whether he turned right or left, whether he danced to wiggled, the ears remained flat. There was no depth, they were just two black hole son top of a cartoon man with a weird nose. The strangeness of this fact persisted and did not disappear like his other memories. This fact followed him around the house, constantly asking him: Why are his ears flat, why don’t they have and depth? 

The old man found himself staring at a screen reading a vaguely familiar text about dimensions. In math it seems that all dimensions are at right angles of the vertices or points. A square had four points and a cube has right angles to each of these four vertices making it a higher dimension. However, the old man remembered vaguely that a 2-dimensional creature viewing a 3-dimensional object would see it as flat slices passing by in confusing sizes. The words stuck to him, he felt nudged maybe even shown. The creature was trying to tell him something he thought, why did it let me remember these facts, like water marks from a lake of ideas that used to be there. 

He mulled over these ideas, these observations for the better part of a day. He was thrilled that he could remember these things, that his memory was not being eaten when he thought of math and Mickey Mouse. That evening when looking at the piece of paper with what he thought was the single most important clue scribbled by his own hand. Or was it? Maybe the creature wrote it down for him, a crumb trail leading into a moldy bread box?  Regardless he followed the crumbs and began frantically writing down his conclusions.

He had deduced that Mickey Mouse’s ears were at least a 4-dimensional object. The object appears flat, as if they were always at a right angle to the viewer, their vertices fixed firmly fixed in a higher right angle of existence. The fact that the ears were the only objects that existed in a higher dimension meant only one thing: Mickey Mouse was a finger puppet resembling a crude shaped person, controlled by two hovering fingers from another dimension. 

This was personal, this was intentional, at least that was what the old man thought. 

This assumption proved to be nearly correct, as later that night the old man awoke to a creature stumbling through the house. In his confusion he had discovered it was himself tripping over the sofa in the front room. He was sleep walking. He shuffled into the bathroom and splashed some cool water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror, two black circles were seen behind his head. The black circles looked like Mickey Mouse ears and with a rusted-cheese-grater shriek the old man collapsed in a terror induced heart attack. 

His last thoughts were ones of absolute certitude and clarity. The shadows of his brain were swept away, and the last steam of his single stroke engine gave out. The bright and blank pages of his brain had returned to their pristine white nothingness.

Landfall:

I am sailor. I come from a time and place that most call the future. It is hard to say if you consider it the future. The eddies and rivers of time twist around in strange shapes, they don’t always flow in straight lines. I am writing this in hopes that one day it will be found, for posterity perhaps, or maybe it is a comforting imagination that lets me sleep finally in this cold and dark place. 

Let me start with tragedy rather than ending in it. Tragedy is the star by which our ships sail, they are stars in the skies of history. Each one of them glows brightly with the tale of their creation, beaming out their lessons into a twinkling darkness. Our ships are guided by them, we avoid the stars and guide our mast and rudder by their point of light. Sailing our ships into the future is nearly impossible, the darkness offers only rocks to crush our ships on and without the light of tragedy we would never travel the night sky. 

The ship I was first commissioned to sail was a sleek and shiny XJP-8400, a jet-black muscle of technology. It hummed and churned with frantic plasma conduits and Bayesian interference generators. My construction engineer was a human computer that managed the technical side of such a device.  He had dedicated his life to understanding the intricacies of space-time. 

I had a basic understanding, but no words could really describe the math required. Math of course is the language of the universe and the imprecision of speech makes its description semantically impossible.  

My first commission was to the lower reaches of the bronze age, the star charts were drafted and reviewed. The ship was prepared, and I was encased in the cocoon of wires and plasma. I brought a few books and of course a few mementoes, there is always a possibility these trips are one way.

The ship set sail under a dark sky, no stars were seen at first and many days rolled by without a star to sail by. I occupied my time reviewing charts and mechanical schematics, luck favors the prepared as is said.

It was a week into the journey when I saw my first star. It was a pin prick in a curtain of black, the light needled down revealing an island of debris. I was able to steer away from it in time by making a few adjustments. I watched the island, transfixed by seeing my first Tragedy Star. Human bodies slumped over the debris. The wailing of mourners could be heard, like sirens calling for blood to be avenged. They screamed out the tale of a despot ruler who killed his subjects in a fit of monstrous rage, ordering his soldiers like dogs. They killed the kingdom in a ritual of madness and murder.  Their corpses piled high, built as a monument to bloodlust and senselessness.

The starlight flooded in as I passed by and the waves of sorrow washed over me. I remember the tears, I cried for a day, helpless against the torrent of the star’s gravity. When I was clear of the island of mourners I welcomed the black curtain again and sailed on into the night. I knew what to expect from my training, but the experience was overwhelming, to glimpse slaughter and sorrow in a pin prick. The needle of time had threaded through me and stitched me to that point.

When sailing in this manner my body did not age, my experiences recorded by sophisticated machinery that would later add these memories to my brain. I had logged 1400 hours in retro-sense simulator, I was conditioned for the upload later. I would re-remember the entire experience all over again for the first time. I was used to it, at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

During the next couple of weeks, I passed 13 stars on my way to the sub-bronze age region. Each star telling their own tale of tragedy and loss, each one imparting a high magnitude experience. Each time I was threaded through history and navigated away from the star. I sought a specific location and I had to find the right constellation before I could dock in the harbor of existence again.

It wasn’t long, or maybe it was forever these things are very difficult to describe after retro-sense. I found the right stellar configuration and docked the ship in a cave nearby a settlement of about 9 thousand humans. The onboard information uploaded all the details before disembarking.

The language of the time, the common known history, every detail of the culture was uploaded. The retro-sense was unnerving as all the tragedy starlight summarized itself in waves of loss. I camped a couple days before approaching the settlement, the melancholy was paralyzing. I was trained for this; however, experience often brings nuances you never expect.

I gathered my things, hid the XJP-8400 and walked into the settlement as a traveler. I knew the role I was to play and have such named myself in preparation. I will introduce myself as Nebuchadnezzar, placed the mask of history on my face and tried to dim the bright starlight of the future.

Lucky Stars:

Sheridan wasn’t interested in talking with anyone, she put her head phones on and focused on far away mountains. Little thoughts bubbled up and the street signs, cars and billboards flowed by like a river of visual garbage from a polluted river. New products to consume, new ways to think. They all seemed to echo a similar message, not surprising since the same billboard company was posted on the bottom of each one of them. They all encouraged extroverted behavior, with slogans like: Use Your Outside Voice, Pour You Soul Out (vodka advertisement) and even a few pro-life one-liners about the heart beat starting at 18 days. 

Sheridan snickered at the pro-life rhetoric, on the other side of the billboard was a bank advertisement with a cartoon baby putting cartoon coins into a cartoon piggy bank with the slogan: “It’s never too early to start saving.” The irony was probably missed on most people, but not Sheridan, she knew the rules. 

She learned them long ago as a kid, it was part of her education, she had the privilege of a decent school, or as she thought of it: LUCK

Her parents were well off, they both worked in pharmaceutical research and met each other in college. They had experienced their own form of luck. Both parents had come from mixed racial families, part of the civil rights era racial mixing. Her grandparents on both sides were progressive white and black folks that fought for equality. Both sides of her family got along well, neither side was religious, and she considered it another a stroke of luck to not have any religious guilt garbage thrust upon her. 

Her parents both got scholarships since they were black enough to qualify and both took advantage and bettered themselves through education. They used their success and opportunity to provide as much privilege for their child as the system allowed. They taught her to do the same.

Sheridan didn’t earn her luck. She snickered at this too, wondering if ever, anyone could earn privilege. As the twisted saying goes: We stand on the backs of giants, or slaves, whichever.

Sheridan was on her way to her college campus for her morning classes. She was smack in the middle of Pharmacy rotations. The rotation style curriculum was demanding, if you fail any of your classes you fail all of them. You get fast tracked, dumping metric tons of information into your brain for 4 years and then either passing or failing. There were no partial credits, no consolation prize, no second place, it was pass or fail.

Such a curriculum cost 58k minimum, not including living costs and a million semesters of pre-req. It is impossible to work, even part-time, during such an educational gauntlet.  You must have the privilege of money to even start the rat race. Sheridan of course applied for financial aid and was partially funded. Her parents also dedicated a generous portion of the costs.  They wanted their child to have as much advantage as possible.

Regardless, she was to inherit a handsome student loan even if she didn’t fail the first round of rotations. This caused her to snicker every day. The plain truth that even if she was given all these tools she was still to be bound in debt. Her parents were still paying off their house and even took out a second mortgage, so Sheridan could have a chance at being indebted to student loans. That was one of the rules she learned early: If you are lucky you can suffer the consequence of choice.

She day dreamed briefly as she went through the list of drugs and some side effects for the Immunology test coming up. Her brain was overflowing. Her day dreams were much like her night time dreams, they all churned with an undercurrent of anxiety. The heavy forces of success, focus and determination kept her twisting around the deep gravity of doubt. She fought it every day, she was resolute in finishing the curriculum and making her parents proud.

When the billboards and advertisements whizzed past with their extroverted prodding, their teasing of expression of feelings, she winced. She kept that doubt buried, she kept her snickers to herself, and defiantly opposed such self-expression. She knew the rules for this too: Telling people what you want or how you feel is a great way for them to sell products to you.

Sheridan rocked in her seat slightly as the bus came to a stop, time for school. She switched her brain into high gear and marched to her first class of the day. However, her march was stopped short. 300 feet ahead gun shots rang out and 4 people in front of her fell to the ground. A crazed student was spraying a hand gun at people. The echo of the bullets twisted over the seconds into a shrill cacophony of screams and cries.

Sheridan dropped to the ground and watched. She kept her mouth shut and her eyes peeled. All the previous information at the front of her brain was dumped, replaced by paralyzing fear. The gun owner was a student, they had snapped, reaching a point of stress that pushed them over. At least that is what Sheridan thought as the student ranted and raved, firing at anyone who came close. Between the screams and occasional soggy flesh hit, the gunner vomited a senseless string of logic:

“I this what it takes? Is this what we are making? You can’t crush me, you can’t undo me. I refuse to submit! I REFUSE TO SUBMIT!”

The meaningless rant was answered finally with a volley of police bullets. The gun wielding student joining the bodies of their fellows in blood. Sheridan remained unhurt through the experience. The reporters, students and police all began a confusing attempt at restoring order. The thunder slowly passed, and order returned. The bodies were removed, the reporters got all the firsthand accounts and the students counted their lucky stars they didn’t get shot.

Sheridan’s parents got out of work and picked her up from the scene. They each told her how lucky she was, tears and appreciation wrapped around her, grateful she wasn’t one of the casualties. Sheridan thought to herself before drifting off into sleep that night: One of these days my luck will run out. She snickered to herself at the idea; as if luck could be saved in a cartoon piggy bank.

The Void is Bright:

The television burped out a few more commercials, a brightened sparkler in a sea of fireworks. The other devices offered much the same distraction, momentary rat holes to crawl down. A safe feeling is worth a thousand solutions and this wide-eyed sea traveler looked over an empty horizon. 

The dude spent most of his free time with his eyes no less than 3 feet from any device, either at work or at home. There were so many ideas, conversations and upcoming anticipations to consume, they were all at the tip of tiny devices. The brainstorm inside seemed to churn up mellow waves of a predictable tide. His imagination strolling through the trash pile of the social feeds for something.

He didn’t know what he was looking for, just a looking to dredge something up, something to jar loose and show him the bright light of clarity. Of course, he didn’t know this, he was only looking via autonomic habits that were firmly cemented by years of nearly religious observation. As an observer he was removed from consequence, a helpless voyeur that sought to slake the dark hunger of something more.  

It was only dark to the dude because he didn’t know what he wanted, what he sought or what would satisfy him, he had no clue. He was wandering an electronic landscape of endless diversion, peppered with occasional indulgence and sleep. Click and post, watch and stream and of course: tip and message. Cam girls were his favorite indulgence, “money well spent” is what he thought afterwards. No shame or guilt prevented the indifferent hedonistic leisure of his endless search, nothing was off limits.  

The dude had managed a relatively mediocre lifestyle, nothing perverse, nothing twisted or illegal. Anything with too much risk put the search for something more in jeopardy. He worked hard from time to time, only to find his hard work unrewarded. He cared about others now an again only to have his heart broken, his parents die, or some other decay fall over the importance of such things. 

Time and again his emotional investment into anything seemed to be met with hardship. The hardship was sour, it left a pain in his heart and looking at that for any length of time only brought up past disappointments. So, he looked away, looked into the television and the countless devices ready to offer him distraction. 

Like any decent human being his brain was fully capable of offering him the capacity to turn away from such frustration. It seeped his brain in all the glorious chemicals that the sea of devices could offer. It rewarded him for interest in the rolling river of electronic diversion. So, it remained dark, an unknown goal that the tide constantly washed up. 

The dude grew old, his habits had cemented him up to his ears in certainty. He was currently onboard a Caribbean cruise, soaking his body in the warm poolside waters of a floating restaurant. The beautiful golden sun glowing overheard with its disintegrating radiation. He was too old to really worry about it. The children and families around him reminded him that maybe the next generation will find something worthwhile, something he had been searching for. 

That night he ate well, drunk well and stumbled back to his overpriced cabin. He stumbled down the stairs, catching himself in a whirl of alcohol. He fumbled for his cabin card, managed to scan himself in and collapsed on the bed. His old flesh was exhausted from the consumption, his mind had long ago set his brain on autopilot. 

He laid there, passed out, drooling a little. His worn-out body was starting to give up the ghost. He had a rupture in is left ventricle artery and was bleeding internally. He was far too unconscious for any alarm to be raised, and his blood pressure was falling. Soon he died, quiet and peaceful, face down on his factory-made pillow.  

His brain however was not as peaceful, it had a few chores left to do before closing up shop. As the neurons died slowly from starvation of oxygen, they shriveled and fired their last electrical charge. Pop, pop they went, like light bulbs burning out, the filaments finally losing any resistance. The electric landscape offered a firework show in honor of his life. They burst and flowered, each turning into a quaint sparkler. A fizzling white light paraded through his consciousness with all the familiar sights of memory. 

This process lasted a few minutes until brain death was absolute and the dude was silent and still, down to the bone and in every cell of his body. The last thought he had was “Wow this is really bright” as he enjoyed last of the distraction his brain could muster.

Abandoned Avalanche:

She sat by the window watching the rain. The type of thinking that gets lost in the imagination of another life. She thought of the requirements it would take to move out, to get a new job, to become a new person. It seemed wondrous, gazing out into the static of the rain drops, letting the gray and the wet fall into her head. 

She pondered in melancholy for an hour, sipping the cooled coffee. The black liquid was a bitter refreshment, a habit for keeping her brain going. She planned and schemed through the fog of the unknown, detailing the way she would like her life to end up. She thought on each step, updating her resume, what area she would like to live in, time frames and everything in-between. Then she worked backwards. 

The girl followed the imagination breadcrumbs back to where she started, finding the first step she would have to take to set the great plan into action. Thousands of tasks all lined up in a sharp edge of necessity that was to make a big story, a big change that would be set in motion. She had it all in her head, she could see it all unfolding over the next few years.

She sat at the top of the mountain of the tasks, looking down at the avalanche she was about to cause. One little stone throw and the mountain would come crumbling down, each action exploding into another and then another. She indulged in the imagination on the top of that proverbial mountain as she sat in the coffee shop. 

She went to go clear her porcelain and crumbs. She walked to the dish bin and nearby was a collection of literature. Newspapers, paper tigers, and advertisements, the kind of stuff most people ignore. However, in the midst of these trash ribbons there was a zine, a little half page booklet with white and black letters. 

The title gave away nothing about its contents, it could have been anything. She picked it up and flipped through quickly, no table of contents, no clear message or clues from the titles of the stories. She brought it back to her table and ordered another coffee, she was still high from the planning and scheming from the moments before. 

She returned to her table with fresh coffee and a little black and white booklet. She opened it up and started at the beginning. The stories made no sense, atmospheric perhaps, but no story in the sense of a beginning, middle or end plot. They were little flecks, tiny motes of imaginations that peppered her brain with a light dusting of black snowfall. 

She read all the stories, pausing after a few to remember her previous mental brainstorming. Ending with a sense of strangeness. Her clarity had been darkened just a little bit, nothing unnerving. She sat on the top of her mental mountain looking out into the valley of fog and black snowfall. 

She put the booklet back. She gathered herself and went about her day. She had the first few steps of  her soon to be new life lined up, she knew the sequence of actions and was set to take care of the daily business. The first time in a long time she was certain of her life. Her stride was unbroken.

The days rolled by and the nights rolled with them. The task list was being done, each thing done in turn according to the mountain top plan. There was something else though, it followed her in her dreams. It was the black snowfall of the coffee shop literature. The snowfall continued in her dreams, it didn’t stop after the booklet was put back, it kept on falling and falling, little dark spots in the distance.

The dark snow was beautiful, it added a hypnotic static, much like the rain fall of the coffee shop. It laid a calm weather in her heart, a darkness, or perhaps a chime of some ancient monastery on another mountain peak. Her dreams took on a serene and somber cadence. Her clarity and purpose did not falter. She continued her task list, unaffected by the snow fall of her dreams. 

Predictably as with all plans, there was something she missed. Some unforeseen problem that she didn’t imagine. Her plans were reduced to the debris and rubble of life. Some timing or condition of circumstance didn’t quite play out how she imagined. A few years later she was drinking coffee and found herself staring outside the window watching the raindrops again. She had moved but the neighborhood wasn’t what she thought, her new job paid more but brought another wave of problems she didn’t foresee.

She remembered the booklet and searched the literature area again. This time a different booklet with an equally vague cover greeted her. She read the new booklet, and the black snowfall began drifting down again, the same meaningless melancholy weather. This time she didn’t hadn’t make any mountainous plans for the future. She just took it all in, the rain, the words on the page and the sullen reflection of growing older, with no plans. 

She felt weightless, drifting on the gray clouds and cold wind. She was content to be a dark snowflake falling on a crumbling mountain. The warm coffee offering the solace on the wide horizon of the unknown future, a landscape of darkened snow and rain soaked coffee shops.

Asteroid Adam: 

The long arm of a 4-fingered machine reached down into the pit. It pulled the brain cage of a discarded robot from the trash pile. Sometimes the brain cages survived the scavenging process and sometimes they worked. The long arm placed the cage inside a smooth black casing. A few snaps and locks and the case went whizzing and whirling to the nearby re-mantling box.

Re-mantling is a lot like reincarnation. The duotronic matrix can be reconfigured and blanked. Sometimes that process leaves a few memories, never anything serious. The brain gets put into a new body, given some background memories. The self-perception firm ware is flashed and set to factory specs. Then the brain is turned on.

This brain had been sitting at the bottom of the asteroid dump on Xerges-12 for at least 600 years. It had been off that whole time, all the capacitors and fuses were empty. The asteroid dump was one of the few sites authorized for archeological mining. The asteroids had floated around long enough for the trash that piled up to be a curiosity for the new creatures of the galaxy.

Re-mantling this brain wasn’t hard and was nearly finished before the 4-fingered machine found another brain cage. The re-mantling machine groaned out an ending. Emerging from the natal-cage was a fully formed human being. Standing at the doorway with blank staring eyes, the naked skin shivering and the lungs flexing in a first-time emergency.

The human being remembered nothing of their previous life. They looked out over the horizon, not recognizing the asteroid, the 4-fingered machine nor the black re-mantling box they just emerged from. The looked down at their hands and body, fleshy and soft things. Their breathing eased, their eyes learned to focus again.

They had no idea about anything, not what had happened in the past 600 nor any clue where in the universe they were. They could see stars but no knowledge of what space or science or anything was. Their brain was empty, only the personality program running. Instinct sub-programs started to come online. Panic, fear, and the unknown started to bubble up in the consciousness of the human being.

“Where am I? What is going on? What is this 4-fingered robot doing? Why am I so cold?”

The 4-fingered machine turned to the human being and a small, shiny black speaker replied, “Please remain at the re-mantling box until excavation is complete, all re-mantled people will be processed shortly.”

Language was possible, but only some of the words made sense, what was re-mantling? The human being grew restless and grew colder. They looked down at their hands, they were now fists. “Why should I obey the 4-fingered machine? Why should I wait?” Anger swelled up and raged in the human being’s brain.

The fists felt good, the anger warmed them up a bit. The human being looked around and saw a long metal pole. It felt good to hold a weapon, to hold a tool. The imagination sparked up the dry tinder of senselessness. Nothing made sense, the metal pole made sense though. Action had no argument, why would there be any reason not to?

The human being thought for a moment on what action should be done with the pole. Should it be used in some way to warm your body. Perhaps to strike down the 4-fingered machine with the commandments? This thought was interrupted by a new emerging human being. The black box shuttered, and a wet and shivering body flopped down on the ground in front of them.

The two human beings stared at each other. The second one went through the same questioning and the same answer emanated from the 4-fingered machine in the same way as it did for the first human being. The second human being asked about the metal pole.

Like a thunderclap instinct echoed in the first human being and overwhelmed by the senselessness of the situation, they attacked the 4-fingered machine. Smashing and kicking, bludgeoning the small black speaker and ripping the electric cords out unto the ground.

The 2 human beings were left alone now. There was no voice or machinery to answer back. They died slowly over the next few days from thirst. It would be 2 months later before a new 4-fingered machine arrived at the asteroid for excavation. After a simple investigation, it was concluded that personality and instinct only re-mantling should not be done on site. Human beings were too dangerous for direct revival, complete insulation was recommended.

White Dragon:

The genus of Magnus Destructuvis contained a small population of the species Blanco Voidium. The species was named after the Apachistani myth of the “Bright Void”. Blanco Voidum is commonly referred to by occult circles simply as the “White Dragon”.   

This is not to be confused with popular culture references of the Dragon with teeth and scales breathing fire and leathery wings. The White Dragon may terrible in visual presence, but the biological and alchemical taxonomy demonstrates that the astro-zoology tree of Magnus Destructuvis has a unique evolutionary history.

The earliest fossils of pan-dimensional paleo-thaumaturgy places emergence of the creature firmly in the late age of the Fang. The later part of the eon included an increased access to cosmic prey. The great Zuvuya buffalo herds were spread all throughout the universe, occupying at least 680 nebula torrents for feeding. The Zuvuya buffalo allowed the 13 radial claws of the Magnus Destructuvis to grow with ample nutrients. The 13 radial claws each have a growth rate that is only visible when Mercury is in retrograde. 

The large radial claws allowed the Blanco Voidum to speciate from the rest of the Magnus Destructuvis.. Even though radial claws have limited Chakra intersection their large size allows for partial spiritual evisceration. The Kundalini is separated from the Zuvuya buffalo by removing the 3 base chakras with a 13-point gravitational wave pool. The remaining chakras are then inhaled by Blanco Voidum through the 7^th eyehole. This is the same type of poison and suck hunting style of the Ouroboros constrictor of the Limbo-nesse jungles. This radial adaptation firmly cemented Blanco Voidum as a top apex predator of its environment.

Ambush also is a distinguished behavior that separated Blanco Voidum from their smaller cousins. They are born with a null aura. This makes them particularly stealthy against the sensitive Zuvuya buffalo. The buffalo are from the despondent ensepholopod genus, this means they are required at least once every 600 sub-lunar years to refresh their vibration sensors. The null aura Blanco Voidum can wait in the dense ether fields surrounding the Yixian Formation. Once the Zuvuya buffalo approach their ancestral homeland, the Blanco Voidum burst out of the 3^rd plane of Nirvana and tsunamiprise the base Chakuras away. Once the Zuvuya dissolve their ectoplasm the Blanco Voidum can fully emerge from Nirvana to consume their prey.

The largest measurements of an adult Blanco Voidum records the largest specimens at 1500 pentagons. Their maturing rate accelerates during enlightenment to 16-17 pentagons a sub-lunar year. This puts the species as a whole approximately 28% larger that their less aggressive cosmic kissing cousins. When they grow old enough they start to simulaculate, consuming vast Anahata chakras and bloating to 2000 pentagons before bursting. The burst is often mistaken for supernovas but anyone or anything with an Anahata sensitivity or heliocentric aura would feel a 15-pentagon shockwave. 

In the sixth retrograde of the left leaning manibalism, the wizards of the yellow arches discovered that Blanco Voidum is a dead end of evolution. The large radial claws continue growing even after bloated explosion. Their radial claws leave amethyst deposits in the last stage of Nirvana. The heavy deposits prevent other Blanco Voidums from being to conceive of new transcendental spiritual realities, effectively grounding them into a single reality. 

The consequence of single meaning transdepostion of alchemical ascendency limits the single life force. The species as a whole is endangered and probably won’t survive the rise of the house of Aquinas, but new experiments are being done on radial claw fossils, with high spectrum truth lasers.  

Last stage Nirvana mining operations have also been set up to stop the deposits from interfering with Blanco Voidum gestation. The deposits are currently being used to power an amethyst chakra killing cannon. If you would like to know more, please donate a small spiritual sum of truth-light coins to the White Dragon Foundation of Seltus -B.