Time to Kill:



The Blind Watcher Maker’s argument hit the scene in 1802 and has been considered a way to describe the belief in an intelligent designer of the universe. The argument in its simplistic form goes as follows: If you were to take a pleasant walk in a forest, or mountain trail. Then upon taking a short break you were to find a golden pocket watch at the base of your feet. The reasoning follows it must have been created by an intelligent creature, for surely no watches exist in nature, fully formed with its intricate gears, springs, or whatever mechanisms hide within its golden body. The logic is then extended to the greater universe.



This argument is meant to reveal the contrast of seemingly chaotic nature and a constructed object, requiring intention, intelligence, and production. We have never seen a bird or tree create a watch, nor express any interest in owning one. A crow might inspect the object and appreciate its golden shell.



The question of how the watch found its resting place in the forest may have a long and complex story, but at some point, the watch had to be calibrated. Blueprints had to be drawn up, measurements made, and small tools used to craft the precise and intricate nature of the watch. This process could have taken any length of time, and in the argument of the Blind Watchmaker, these questions reveal the apparent difference between a constructed object and the mundane dirt and leaves.



However, the criticism of this argument begins with the distinct of what makes a watch a watch. To be considered a watch of any kind, time-telling must be visible. If the gold object is merely a replica, then the argument is about the appearance of distinction, and the illusion of a watch is only a glamour.



If the essence of a watch is the ability to tell time, then the natural world is full of such timepieces. The sun for example was worshipped for thousands of years, not only for its life-giving rays for a healthy harvest, but for determining geometry. Cultures have told time by the passing of moons, the motion of tides, changing of season, migration of animals, and other such predictable natural phenomena.



With the ability to accurately describe segments of time, and geometry to describe the surface objects, ancient societies could produce great feats of construction. In our modern age, such knowledge is trivial. We have measuring tape, protractors, plastic squares, plums, laser levels, and other technological shortcuts. Correct measurements adequately predict construction timelines, and therefor a quality of social rulership; predictable jobs or tasks.



A good ruler would be able to predict how much food would be required for a workforce, and how many hours and people required for the task. If the measurement of time was incorrect or the angle of the construction off by a couple degrees, your pyramid would be an embarrassment; an error of divine rulership. For example: the Egyptians made pyramids at a 41-degrees, except the bent pyramid at 54 degrees, which suffered from shallow slope, and then corrected to a steeper angle of 43 degrees.



Geometry and time-telling are also connected through the understanding of the stars. A ship navigator or ancient astrologer could follow the morning star of Venus and its endless pentagrams. A contemporary project manager of a skyscraper has to include timelines for workers in hours and days.



However, time-telling is imperfect. Even the day and night of the modern era is different than its primordial past. Since the creation of oceans, and the moon, the hours of the day have increased 6 hours. This is due to tidal locking, a mechanism of exchanging angular momentum between the moon and the earth through the ocean, and in 2.4 million years the earth will cease rotation exposing a face of the earth to the unrelenting sun. This distant future is calculated on the decreased rotation of 15 milliseconds annually; an exact and presence measurement. This is meant to show that time-telling is in fact a common and mundane process done by endless reference points in the world, and a watch being found in a forest is a matter of modern culture rather than a quality of the watch itself. A watch would never be found in the forest during 600 BCE, you might however find a stone with astrological markings from the decline of the Egyptian kingdom, something discarded in the fury of looting burial chambers.



The ability to see the design in an object is a cognitive ability. It is an ability which comes from many years of neuron development, pattern recognition, and indicators of familiar construction. If the object was not a watch but rather an alien object, with components of unknown production, we would consider it an even more unnatural occurrence. Quartz for example is not considered designed, yet its crystalline body has been a part of contemporary watches for many years. When the argument was expressed in 1802, there were no quartz watches, or digital watches. The details of what is considered a familiar construction could be smeared to the point where a golden pocket is veiled in ancient mystery, without sharp contrast to the world around it.



The watch may still seem out of place in the forest, especially since we cannot see the connection from its origin to its resting place by our feet on the trail.



If we knew there was a factory of watch construction nearby or lived by a family of watch makers who regularly walk in the forest, our narrative instinct wouldn’t even pause a moment, we would fill in the unknown gap without hesitation or question.



I am arguing that the appearance of design, intention and construction from an intelligence creature is indistinguishable from the unknown. The watch maker, the watch, and the feeling of obvious intention is superficial, and will dissolve upon any inspection. To illustrate this, I would like to point out the purpose, the design of a piece of wood.



A piece of lumber could be crafted into a rocking chair, a table leg, a or thrown on a fire for warmth. Describing any specific design as its sole purpose is an observation of potential. When an object has no other potential, we feel confident in its purpose, we have reduced it to simple clarity, collapsed the myriad of possibility down to a single function, like the function of time-telling for the pocket watch.



To say a pocket watch is separate from the forest is not a conclusion or observation about the watch but a reflection of our perception, our conceit of what we have created. In closing, it is grandiose to assume the analogy of the watch maker is something to be reflected in the greater world. It may be simply a cultural ignorance, an arrogance of human construction, or the negligence of a family member with similar walking habits.

From the Mouth of the Volcano:



I wasn’t always a volcano. I used to be a little hill. Other little hills around me were silent. We lived in the shadow of a great mountain, a towering queen of majestic peaks and cliffs. We were her children, her choir of stone and valleys.



I didn’t know she was a volcano. I was still a low hill when she erupted. We were gathered at her feet, wearing our green coats and white hats. She shook terribly; a rolling avalanche of earthquakes. A nearby valley filled with smoke and dust. Then she was quiet.



The next day the earth cracked at her summit. A ribbon of red appeared on her granite skull. More shaking, and plumes of dust rose from her eyes. Bolts of light, violent thunder, then a red streak encompassed her crown.



With a cry of pyroclastic terror, she threw her head into the sky. The magma flowed out of her mouth with violent sprays of molten rain. She howled the second day until there was nothing left inside. Above her rose a gray cloud full of ash and dust. The cloud stretched over a week until it circled the world.



Then the hills were silent and still.



The next year our green coats grew back, but the great mountain remained a slump of stone. Her bones wrapped around us, quiet and warm. We had no mouths of our own, we could not speak or cry.



Years later after uncounted nights of dreaming, the dreams changeless nothing, and the twilight of mundane sunsets. I felt the heat of the river beneath, an ooze of magnesium agitating me in the deep subterranean darkness.



Then, as if a different sun began to rise, the morning light marked the increase of the tectonic pressure beneath the skin of earth. The pressure grew each day. A headache is the closest human experience to such a thing, a feeling of growing, yet bound tight by an encasement of rock and trees. To have one’s skin become a prison as a bubbling deep fire rumbles through like hellish indigestion.



Some nights are worse than others and I can feel the magnesium eating at my bones. Inch by inch the pressure rises, and I haunted by night of the Queen Volcano upon her thunderous throne and how her bones are laid to a low ruin. Each year of the hot river beneath reminds me with terrible certainty that I too will throw my head into the sky.



Some human beings seem to understand what is happening. They crawl to my summit and ask me to be still and quiet. They bring offerings of flesh and smoke, but the fire inside can’t be silenced. I can hear their words; they offer songs to the sun and the moon, the night sky, and the earth beneath. I hear their frenzied hearts, their panic, their fear of dark fire.



Years have passed, and the river has risen to my throat.



The sunrise this morning was different, I knew it was my last. The words could not be held back any longer. I could feel the magnesium spittle forming on my lips. My teeth were chattering, and my skin shook with the rising of the Sun.



I have risen over the low hills and the stones of the old volcano. I have held the river in my mouth and the stars in my eyes. The words bubbled at first, dripping from my mouth. Then as the maw of fire bared its teeth to the sun; my throat open with a howl.



From the burning darkness beneath, the fire shot into the sky. My skull was a river delta as the magma flowed like ritual words of the human offerings. They flew like the scornful words of quarreling lovers. They flew like the angry speeches of kings demanding soldiers lay down to die. They flew out like reckless storms; whose winds howl for the end of all things.



I thought in heated madness: Let it come down, let the burning rains drown in the words of my fury until it is covered in ash and dust. If I can not remain, then nothing can remain, all must be covered in fire.



My heart split, my bones crumbled, and with an angry cry I threw my skull into the sky. Then everything was quiet. My head became a plume of gray, like a cloud of thoughts I can not contain. My legs folded, collapsed under the shell of my body, and I returned to a low hill; a ruin of the fury I once was.

Wish Machine:



Perhaps you are familiar with the idea of a Genie Wish, perhaps you have always wanted something, an object, a lifestyle, or a great vision for humanity. Perhaps you desire personal power for other reasons. The Genie Wish is a way to get everything you ever wanted. Getting 100% of what you want may never happen, but sometimes you might get 12% or 3% of your desires. This lesser portion of a Gennie Wish is commonly referred to as money.



If you would pardon a brief metaphysical description of money, I will then reveal the inner workings of a machine capable of achieving nearly every wish.



Money is relative, relative to what you want. The more you want something, they greater chance you will pay more for it. A milk cow is more valuable to a farmer than someone who lives in a small urban apartment. This is a self-organizing quality of the economic system of capitalism, and its appeal to desire. Money is also relative to income; someone who makes 25% of a Genie Wish annually may have less hesitation to use a portion of their Genie Wish for an object on superficial impulse, or for conspicuous display. Lastly, money is relative to control, those with the money have control, since their wishes hang like a heavy black blade of Damocles. You can change the world, but those with money will change it back, change it to their vision. Perhaps you have heard the platitude of the golden rule, “Those with the hold make the rules.”



An alternative to a relativistic system of wishes and money is authoritative tyranny, where a few decide the value of wishes for others. This is commonly seen in China where the dictator has no term limits and asserts the Chinese Dream into every aspect of its wish granting production.



Some choose to pass their Genie Wish amount down to their children, having never wished for anything. Sometimes the wish is passed to charities or noble causes. Inheritance tends to concentrate the potency of the Genie Wish resulting in small groups of people with accumulated power and influence. The shuffling of wishes may also be referred to as power-brokering, lobbying, bribing, corruption, or commerce. This consolidation is clandestinely referred to as the Iron Law of Oligarchy, where money piles itself up into a great heap.



In biological terms, money is the blood of the Wish Machine, and veins and arteries would be figuratively comparable to shipping lanes, truck routes, and express delivery systems. However, I am getting ahead of myself, first lets us look at the surface of the Wish Machine which may only be viewable through its many mouths. They are everywhere human civilization is; convince stores, department stores, the pleasant lips of consumer satisfaction. The glamour of new products, new clothes, handbags and cars are its teeth. Their tooth mark, can be seen in the geological impact of animal farms, and mineral mines. They are empty holes where the metal mouth took its bite, or in the bio-sludge lakes of animal waste. They chew up resources like coal, titanium oxide, anything to be made into semiconductors or transformed into consumer products for digestion.



To continue the biological analogy, which is an imperfect analogy, because nothing of its size or distinction have ever existed before. Even large things like continents or nations are small next to the cumulative hunger fueling the wish machine. The next stop down into the body of the machine is the stomach.



As the wishes are consumed, either in small or large amounts, there is a pollution, a byproduct, a cost of the construction of the most vague and intangible delights:  Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin



This chemical demon is odorless, colorless and the most toxic manmade chemical we have ever constructed. It may be considered a kind of wish radiation, something with emanates from the Genie bottle. The history of this chemical demon is fraught with corruption. For example, there is a place in Italy called the Triangle of Death where organized crime has facilitated a silent complicity of nations. Toxic dumping of dioxin and radioactive waste from industrial production has rendered it a cursed place to human beings. As desire increases and world population increase so does the products of the Wish Machine. Perhaps in the future there will be some new chemical or radiation, like lead to the Romans or mercury to the Mayans.



The last observation of the Wish Machine is the Genie creature; the operator of the Wish Machine. The Genie is often portraited as a servant, or an all-powerful provider of wishes with unlimited capacity. This is the trick, this is another glamour, the Genie will become a disembodied dictator wielding soft power until all desire travels through the Wish Machine, from lips to stomach to elimination.

The Village of Ix:

Getting accommodations required the last of my silver, and with any luck, I would return with a map worthy of gold. Quality maps get you back, and cheap maps get you lost. I am hoping to make my own maps on this expedition. I am a cartographer by trade, but a sailor by heart. My name is Korin, and I am an acolyte of knowledge.



The purchased map was well made. The coastline depicted a northern area of a distant port I knew, it was deep in the ice. The coastline looked so detailed, and the coordinates seemed to hum with a simple truth. The location on the map indicated a small village called Ix. I would head north from there and explore the unknown edges of the coast.



The crew was competent, and after a few days, we had a mutual understanding of non-interaction. They didn’t like going so far north, but my silver was good, and I bore the seal of the map maker’s guild. Once they delivered me to the village, they would return in 3 weeks to ferry me back to the Land of the Living. What they did in those 3 weeks was none of my business, I had a feeling they were pirates or raiders of some sort. I didn’t want to know too much, I preferred to be the innocent passenger with no tales to tell.



The location on the map was easy to find on the coastline. I was able to chart the movement of the stars and reference the map I purchased for a small ransom.



The village was unassuming, and near the coastline like the map showed. The ice and snow seemed to ignore the small gathering of huts and small fenced pens of chickens. I could also see pigs and goats; unusual given the seemingly harsh world.

I was greeted by the villagers in the common tongue. They agreed to let me stay, and I waved the crew farewell. They accepted me, my silver, and kindly gave me a modest room the duration of my stay. 



Ix was a sleepy village, and once I settled in, I joined the townsfolk in the common hall for dinner. They were silent, no joyous prayer for food or music by the fire. I attempted some social politeness but was greeted with a distracting generosity. The more I inquired, the more they brought me cheeses and wines, dried meats, and sweet preserves of blueberries. I did not expect such variety in an isolated town. I kept the cheese and meat and told them of my intention to map the coastline and topography around the area.



They told me not to go to the cave by the blue tree. There was no reason, no explanation, which made me highly curious. Local taboos often meant treasure or gravesites. I am not a gold seeker and promised to obey their traditions. I retired to my room and planned my expedition for the following weeks.



The furs and cloak I brought were sufficient for the clear and cold day. I gathered my cartographer supplies and dried food and walked towards a coastline cliff, from which I hoped to get a better vision on the land around me. The cliff was a sheared cliff face, as if half of a rocky hill had fallen into the ocean, leaving a strict wall of naked stone.



I hiked until the early afternoon and reached the ocean cliff with plenty of time to return before nightfall. I set out my location beads, a sundial, and my graphite. The coastline was visible for a hundred miles in both directions. I spent 2 hours drawing and marking the point for detailed description.



Near the end of the 3^rd hour I noticed the cave and tree the villagers mentioned. It was a pine tree of some sort, yet its leaves and trunk were blue. The same absence of ice or snow was noticeable around the cave and the tree. The mystery was too much. Before I could conjure a good reason to heed the instructions of the townsfolk, my legs had already carried me to a vantage point for closer inspection.



There was another attribute of the tree, something unnoticeable from the distance of the cliff; there was also a blue fruit hanging from the branches of the tree, and half-rotten cousins laying on ground, gathered around its trunk. The cave too revealed an unnoticed characteristic, there was a light mist flowing from the mouth of the rocky opening, which stood at a height of 2 or 3 houses. I was cautious to investigate the fruit and the tree. There was something about the complete blueness of the plant which made me uneasy.



The cave however provided a darkness of a thick and irresistible sort, and within moments I was climbing over stones and lighting a candle. The light revealed a wide cavern with a descending path. I heard a noise; a loud snore, like an old man mindlessly sleeping in a neglected afternoon. I froze and waited, the snores were regular and uninterrupted by my exploration.



My heartbeat echoed in my skull, and I walked into the darkness slowly.



Upon turning a jagged corner, I found the source of the snores. A large head was sleeping on a nest of furs and blankets, bearing markings and motifs of the nearby village. The head had 1 central eye and rather than hair, fleshy arms grew from the top of its head. In the center of those flesh stalks, 3 eyes dozed. I saw no legs or torso connected to the large head.  Between the snores of the creature I noticed small teeth, brown and thin, needle-like, almost translucent. I froze in panic and stood transfixed.



The creature stirred, but I remained paralyzed with fear, and within seconds the great central eye dilated and focused on me and my candle, which I had mindlessly forgotten about. It spoke, and I felt its words echo in my head: “Feeble creature, bring me my fruit and spare me your light, QUICKLY before I swallow your body.”



My feet did as they were told, and before I could think of the words, I was picking up rotten fruit from the ground and carrying an armload of blue fruit resembling apples or peaches. I dumped the fruit near the large head. Within a second, the fruit was floating through the air as if carried by some invisible servant and placed in the mouth of the beast. The many eyes rolled back in pleasure as a perverse purr of indulgence hummed through the cavern. I felt sick; the aroma of the rotten fruit and the creature was too much. I fled without saying a word. I threw the bits of candle remaining at the darkness of the cave and fled to the village.



I arrived at dusk exhausted and it must have showed in my face. The villagers knew before I said anything.



They brought me soup and a piece of thick bread. While I ate they told me the tale of the cave. The creature was known to the village for 20 generations. It was a mighty demon of power, and the ancestors of the village had done everything to pacify the beast. They brought it foods and spices, exotic cloth and music, trinkets and jewels from every corner of the world, but the demon head, was unsatisfied. It used its rage and power to threaten and dominate the villagers, demanding new foods and new spices, or it would eat and destroy the village and everyone in it.

Over the years of seeking to appease the monster, the villagers of Ix found something, a tree bearing a blue fruit. The flesh of the blue fruit gives rich dreams of fantastic indulgence of inner most desires. Anyone eating the fruit will dream for a moment in the world of their choosing, a reality free of death, dissatisfaction, pleasure, anything including sadistic joy. The tree was cultivated under great strain, but the ancestors of the village of Ix prevailed, and pacified the creature into the present day.



Korin listened to the story and finished his soup. When he was done, he told the story of what he saw and what he did. The villagers said they understood, they have all felt the gaze of the central eyes and felt their feet moving without remembering. They urged him to keep the secret, to leave the cave alone and let the burden of feeding the demon head to them, and he should not be troubled with what he saw or what he did.



He retired to his bed and thought kindly of the village of Ix and drifted into sleep thinking of the gold he could acquire with the fruit of such a tree.

The next morning Korin found his feet moving down the paths of the village as if he had always lived there. While only his second day, the place seemed to impress itself unto him; a feeling of familiarity or triviality. His thoughts returning to the fruit of the tree and the monster of the cave.



He set out again to spend his time on the cliff mapping the coastline, but he could not focus, and distracted by the image of the tree; reminding him, teasing him with the idea of dreaming fruit. He had no intention of entering the cave again, but before he could argue with himself too much, he was picking rotten fruit from the ground, inspecting them for those most appetizing to eat.

The fruit tasted like a soft pear, mushy with decay. He felt very sleepy and within moments was dozing under the tree. Korin dreamed of curtains of color, a full stomach, and peaceful waves of a calm ocean. He awoke to a terrible cry, the monster in the cave was screaming for food, like a child for its mother. Korin saw villagers gathering around the cave with arms full of fruit. They paid him no concern and walked into the dark mouth of the cave.



Korin followed like a spectre; ignored and cloudy from the dream fruit. The villagers formed a line, and one by one presented their fruit to the demon head creature.



The eye stalks were active, searching the world around them for something, some speechless urgency expressed in those monstrous pupils, focusing, darting, and dilating with frantic agitation. The central eye seemed to control the mouth and where it looked, spittle and vicious words rolled from its leathery lips. The villagers bowed their heads, avoiding eye contact. Korin watched, transfixed, unable to form his own words.



The central eye looked over each of the villagers, then with a quick and brutal action opened its mouth and swallowed one of them. It smiled and with a voice muffled by chewing: “I am pleased for now, I will dream and will spare the rest of you, my faithful servants. Although next time I might eat all of you.”



The villagers joined in a song, a hymn to the unholy creature. The song was a lullaby, urging the creature to sleep and find its pleasures in the mouth of a greater darkness. Korin joined with his voice, involuntary, mindlessly, until the creature ate its meal and dozed off into a soft and saggy sleep, draping itself over the blankets and furs of its lair.



The villagers and the hazy Korin walked back to the village in mournful silence of the sacrifice to the eye demon. Once back in the village, and in his bed, Korin collapsed into a natural and empty sleep.



The next morning Korin felt powerless to do anything. The paths of the village seemed to contain him, like a walless maze. He had lost all ambition to continue his map making. His mind was a flame of questions.  He began asking each villager why they continued to feed the monster, why not ask for help from the armies of the world? Why not as the queen of the kingdom to send a killer to slay the creature and be free?



The villagers merely shook their heads dispassionately, unconcerned, and said “The demon of the cave cannot be killed. Our ancestors have tried with the sharpest swords, the most potent poison, and endless armies. There is no method we have found. However, one day, when the dreaming fruit no longer grows, it may be so feeble with age and sleep it will kill itself.” Korin listened to the villagers, but found his mind returning to his dreams the night before, when the flesh of the fruit ushered him into a world of bliss.



Later as the sun walked across the sky, Korin managed to escape the maze of the village paths and travelled to the tree. He ate the fruit and again slept at the trunk by the cave. This time he did not awake to a ritual or the sounds of screams, but to the early chill of night. He was reckless and brought no other food or water, leaving only the fruit nearby to consume.



He found shelter at the mouth of the cave, and after listening to the eye creature was sleeping, he curled up in a dry alcove and ate another piece of fruit.



A couple of weeks later the ship returned to the village to pick Korin up. They were sailors of their word, but the villagers said they had not seen Korin after the 3^rd day. The sailors owed Korin nothing and left the modest village with a vague sense of unease.

Cobwebs and Cameras:



Until the mid-2020’s there was no way to take census of bacteria. There were samples, guesses, extrapolations from data, but no counting. With the advent of web cams, facial recognition, surveillance, and 5G technology, x600 resolution were quick to develop. Semiconductors entered the nanometer range, and consumer logistics brought new devices into each home. Whether it be smart refrigerators, thermostats, AI assisted toasters, clocks, air conditioners, everything including data collecting coffee mugs and kitchen sinks with weekly metrics. Each semiconductor made with the metals mined from rainforests, oceans, and jungles.



With higher resolution, a face can be scanned and the bacteria, revealing changes in growth rates, grooming habits, stress indicators, and diet. The age of each bacteria can be measured precisely. Estimates before precise counting put the number of bacteria on a single person at 39-100 trillion. The human being became a new frontier of advertising. All non-conscious preferences of the human being could be seen as plain as the nose on their face. Their mood, reactions, sub-conscious indicators of desire flowing beneath the conscious mind.



in the late 2030s human psychology started to merge with microbiology, becoming micropsychology. The appetites of the bacteria could be encouraged through new marketing techniques. An example of such attempts was exposure to advertising to the point where obedience dissolves. Previously advertising required careful management of human’s belligerence and defiance, hoping to prevent them from complete market saturation.



Obedience itself was no longer required by society, no need to surrender or pledge to a nation, no need for words of absolution or forgiveness. The less obedient people were, the more their hungers ruled their choices, and the bacteria flourished within them.



Companies started directly advertising to bacteria in the early 2040s, and by 2044 the first streaming bacteria soap opera premiered, called Protozoa People. The show covered the lives and lysis of a colony of bacteria. By the end of the year, all facial covering was removed from production and any face covering behavior was reprogrammed out of human beings. All sunglasses were destroyed, as was make up, hoods, masks, long hair, or anything covering the face.



In the years which followed, products and logistics blossomed with the emerging bacteria market. The small organisms had their own hungers, and production companies were ready to encourage their appetite until the bacteria market dwarfed the human market, especially with a 100 trillion to 1 ratio. Bacteria had no brains or minds to wallow in doubt or indecision, they simply consumed.



Semiconductors continued to shrink, and left only glittering sparkles to the human eye, but in handfuls, as they were already beyond the threshold of human vision. The machines helped the bacteria consume, move, create structures both required and unnecessary within their bodies. Some small machines acted like vehicles; encompassing the creature, then bringing them to the specified coordinates. Much like the highly motile human beings, except they could travel individually, and without relying on the human’s decision-making capacity.



By the 2070s, human brain activity was removed from the production line entirely. The diagrams and exact genetic mapping of a few brains were kept for posterity. Space travel became easier with titanium filaments tubes. Structures of bacterial organization achieved a crystalline order, and nearly every pre-existing element on the planet was converted into a material for consumption.



Endless hunger seemed to have no adversary.



However, something began reducing the number of bacteria. There was no consciousness or mind to analyze what it was, or even if a reduction was good or bad thing, such awareness was beyond the consideration of the tiny mouths. There were no safeguards, no warning system.



At first only a few billion blinked out, then trillions blinked out every day. There were cameras and feeds, and images seen were not like anything recorded before; there was no creature or wave, no recognizable configuration from any image processing machines, bacteria, bacteriophages, amoeba, or any other organisms. To them, it was a great darkness sweeping over them, yet it was no different than the tide of a shoreline rising or receding, there was no consideration for life, only hunger.



The recovered trash archeology indicates the extinction of earth-made bacteria took 14 years. The feeds indicated the annihilation was from a galactic cleaning robot, who saw the bacterial growth as a mold to be sterilized. All attempts to communicate were made through all radioscopic frequencies, including 1420405751.7667 MHz, and after years of no response, it was clear the hunger of the bacteria and other microscopic life would not stop, it would not relent. So, the robot absorbed the electrons from the solar system, and stored it as a single lightning bolt. The energy would be reused and given for a more controlled, a more obedient lifeform matrix.

Giant Pumpkin:



Victor did not like people when viewed all at once. He didn’t engage in conversation because there were too many ways to be misunderstood. He didn’t like handshakes or hugs, and particularly didn’t like birthdays, holidays or any other day expecting people to be excited. He felt phony, as if everyone had to put on flimsy masks and pretended to be people they weren’t.



His mother was a brilliant psychotherapist, and helped countless people with their traumas, and mental illnesses. However, growing up under a parent with such skill, made Victor a fussy little creature. She’s dead now, but her ghost keeps him awake with constant self-analyzing, reminding him of all the ways people could despise him for his errors, a weighty hindsight mixed with curdling doubt. What opportunities did he miss? What relationships he should have spent more time on?



He wasn’t superstitious, and any metaphysical language for his inner world was already trimmed from his mind garden. The single fruitlike structure which did grow in the night soil of his mother’s words, was akin to a giant pumpkin made from a refined and honed self-awareness. It was so large, social interaction required a wheelbarrow. Sometimes he imagined it more like a cart, or pallet jack, maybe a hand truck or dolly. In short; he saw himself as being physically burdened by his own self-perception. He knew he was being egotistical, and he could only tolerate being somebody for so long. He daydreamed about his giant pumpkin rotting out and disappearing.



One October night his fantasy of disappearing took him on a walk. He became lost in his own garden; a vast sprawl of hedges made in self-defense against the gardener. He was not able to return to the house before nightfall. The path back to the house was hidden in the darkness. He curled up in the corner of a hedge and tried to sleep. Victor shivered and waited for exhaustion to bury him. As his eyes dimmed, the night air took on a pregnant silence. Victor welcomed the fresh silence and relaxed into a pillow of soft leaves.



As the hours crept by, the silence started to agitate Victor. The silence grew heavy, and the inner thoughts of Victor were heard in painful clarity to himself. He kept his mouth shut and waited for the silence to be broken. This was an old fight, and the silence could go on for hours; nothing would distract him from the Brownian anxiety jiggling in his head.



Eventually the silence was broken by the caw of crows. Then as Victor looked blankly into the night, a murder of crows flew overhead. Victor wished he could fly into the night like the crow and leave his sleeping body on the ground. The crows seemed to respond to the half-awake Victor and circled around him.



As they looked down on Victor, the crows also thought about being another creature. They thought about being a human being, with arms and legs, and being able to understand the rules of society. The Darkness swirled around both the crows and human, and let their mutual wish come true.



A song of crow voices filled the silence of the night, and the body of Victor disappeared. Victor was gone, his body became the crow’s body and their voice became his voice. The crows were polite and let the human get his wish first. They flew across the night like winkles on a thick blanket of stars. The wind whispered its secrets all around them, and they were free.



Victor woke the next morning in his house, with echoes of the nighttime flight, leaving him with the sense of weightless joy. He remembered the wish, the Darkness and the caw of the crows. He could still hear them, underneath the covers, muffled by the pillows and sheets. As he returned to the duties and chores of the human world, he could still feel the crows inside him, watching the world go by. He found himself describing mundane things, as if he were explaining to the crows.



When the heavy shadow of his self-perception started to bear fruit. Victor found his feet habitually carrying him into the garden to get the wheelbarrow. The crows within called out to him, telling him to leave the giant pumpkin in the garden, let it rot, don’t pick it up. The crows cried out, and with a flutter, Victor was gone. They spent the rest of the day as crows traveling from place to place, doing what crows might consider mundane. They thought in simple terms, trying to explain to the disembodied human about their chores and duties. Victor said nothing and watched from behind their black eyes.



Night came again and the flutter of crows filled Victor with the same feeling of weightlessness. He woke in the next morning as a person again. The rules were being made, and if Victor needed time to escape, the crows wouldn’t mind being his feathers. They were starting to understand too, and today they were hungry. They wanted human food, hot and sizzling and made with fire. They wanted to know the mysteries of cooking.



A mutual understand formed after a few days. Victor would tour them around the side show of human society, and they be there for him if he needed to escape society. By the end of the first week, Victor was comfortable disappearing. The haunted words of his mother could not describe the experience of becoming a murder of crows. For the first time he could remember, he felt out of reach of his mother’s ghost.



Victor’s joy was short lived. On the second week, he woke to find his arm was curled and gray. It was discolored all the way to the shoulder. Only after Victor freaked out, did the crows murmur anything. One of the crows had died, and they were in silent mourning. His freak out included pleading with the Darkness, crying, and sudden swings into anger at the crows. He wanted to go to the hospital, maybe ask if it was curable or reversable, but he knew it wasn’t.



The silence of the crows confirmed everything he feared.



After exhausted days of belligerently refusing to turn into the murder of crows, victor relented. When they took flight, his anger vanished, his confusion disintegrated, and only the dark horizon of a windswept night filled his eyes. Within a few days, things returned to a balanced sharing of time between Victor and the crows.

Days passed, then months until the winter wind another crow. This time Victor didn’t panic, and the loss of his leg signaled a growing trend; his death was soon approaching. He was haunted by a dream; A black sun rose over a previously invisible horizon, and those dark light shines over the white and spectral face of his mother; her eyes empty and cruel, bringing the last retort to a lifetime of constriction, squeezing inevitable judgment, until the dark mouth of the sun swallowed him up.



Such was the melodrama of Victor’s mind. The crows watched from within, underneath, waiting for some dreamtime signal. They perched on the fence of his garden and eyed his body through the windows. The 3 crows secretly conversed with each other. If Victor’s body failed, they all died, and if the crows perished, so did Victor. Their conversation turned to conspiracy, and they formed a plan.



The plan was simple; they would convince Victor to permanently disappear in the flutter of crows.



They pressured him with denial, refusing to turn into a crow when Victor wanted, denying him the joy of their nighttime flight. Soon Victor pleaded with them like he pleaded with the Darkness, promising every pleasure of the human word. The crows remained steadfast, knowing they had the whole of the man’s life to wait; they would not age as crows if they remained underneath Victor, or perched upon his fence.



Another year passed and Victor returned to a reclusive state, unwilling to interact with people or society. His existence became unbearable, and without an escape plan, he was corned in the garden, and the giant pumpkin grew to an enormous size. Victor watched it from his window, and each day the pumpkin seemed to grow with a preternatural speed, until the crown of the gourd peaked over the roof of his house.

Every morning the shadow of the garden grew darker. Then on a rain-soaked winter, Victor gave up. He walked out to his garden and stood before the towering pumpkin, its presence pressing down on him until he was a thin line. Then with a small step, he let the crows out. He wanted to never return to the human world, and upon releasing them, completed the wish of the evening wish with the Darkness.



The swirl of shadows fell on Victor, and each tendril became a crow. The 3 crows cawed and cooed as the body of the man disappeared. They saw the giant pumpkin and called out to the night, to the rain and clouds, and their cry brought a tide of crows. Hundreds and hundreds flew to Victor’s house, and they all feasted on the rotting squash, and each crow thanked the Darkness for their meal.

The Small Revolution:



Hello, I would like to share something about the world. Some things are very hard to see due to their size. Eyes alone will not see it; you need technology to see. To see for yourself, you will need a microscope, or a device capable of 600x times magnification. Perhaps in school or a field trip you have used a magnifying glass; a curved lens where things appear bigger. With enough of these, you can see.



We will in a world where we wash our hands, spray and clean our surfaces. We also use heat and chemicals to clean things. The world of the very small is why we do these things. We call these small things, germs, viruses, bacteria, phages, and diseases. These are a lot of words for things we can’t see without technology, but they wiggle around on our skin, on our desks, in the ocean, in the dirt, in our cars, they are everywhere.



They small things don’t have any brains, they can’t think or talk, they can’t drive cars, or play musical instruments. They can’t paint pictures or sing songs. However, they can so something better than us, and this reason is why we clean our faces, wash our hands, and take showers and baths. They can change faster than we can change.



From the time we wake up to when we go to bed, these small things are born in the morning, have kids in the afternoon, and die before you go to sleep. Some are born and die faster, sometimes as little as 15 minutes. We are slow moving giant buildings to them, and our voices are thunder.



We are also small things in a larger world. As we grow up, we discover a world of giants, and these things which do not change very quickly. Perhaps you don’t see the large things yet either. Some large things I have seen are streets, cities, towns, freeways, and schools. They are made up of lots of little things, all doing their tasks require to make the big thing work. Big things take more time to change. A school building requires paint and a sunny afternoon to change how it looks, but a person can change their clothes or shoes in a couple of minutes.



As you grow up, you will change many times, into all sorts of different people. You might feel exactly the same as you do now, you might even look the same, but like your shoes or your clothes, they get worn out and need to be replaced or fixed.



Perhaps when you grow up, or even as a you are now, you might be overwhelmed with the world around you. There might be something going you don’t understand, perhaps something which makes you cry or causes you to become frustrated and mad. There are large things moving around which are so big, you can’t see them, these things I call countries and companies. They have their own dinner time and lunch time, and they eat things like forests and rivers, and they cut them down to make houses and roads.



I like trees and rivers, and it makes me cry when these things get cut down. I can’t stop those very large things, and sometimes I feel like there is nothing I can do and feel trapped. I sit by myself or with a friend and remind myself I am a very small thing, and I can change quickly.

Another word for change is revolution. Typically, this happens when something larger cannot change fast enough. The smaller things start to add up. This happens with trash; each little piece adds up and becomes a big thing. It fills our oceans, our landfills, and rivers. When the trash becomes too large there will be no rivers and forests.



As a small person, soon to become someone else, please remember you can change. You can change what you throw away, and you can change what you pick up. You can change because you are small. Perhaps with enough change, forests and rivers don’t have to get washed away by trash, or nations, or companies.

The Spinning Room:



I remember the first time I discovered every house has a spinning room. I was 9 and my grandmother was dying. She had been dying my whole life; always in bed, strained coughing, and a parade of people saying goodbye to her. To me, she was the dying grandma, but to everyone else she was a withering hero.



The day she died, everyone cried and cried. They had been practicing their sad feelings for years, and when the day came, there was a flood of tears. It was too much for me, I fled to my room, and locked the door. I could still hear everyone sobbing, so I covered the windows, and pulled a pillow over my head. Still the murmurs found a way into my ears.



I couldn’t take it anymore, and started to spin around in circles, like I was at recess. I got so dizzy I couldn’t hear my parents crying. I kept spinning and spinning, until I got sick and fell. I watched the room in a blur of nausea. When I got up, I couldn’t hear any crying.



I ventured out into the living room, my parents were sitting with calm smiles and pleasant voices.



I asked mt parents about the room she used to sleep in, which was locked, bolted, and forbidden. They never talked about my grandmother again. Which made me think something happened while I was spinning, something to do with the qualities of the room itself. It was as though she never existed. Later, and in the following years all things associated with my grandmother disappeared. It was as though I stepped into a different world, one in which my grandmother had never existed.



Spinning in my room was helpful as a teenager. The nausea of being dizzy drowned out everything, and when I opened the door, the world seemed lighter, or different. I tried spinning in other rooms, like the bathroom at school, but the dizzy was mundane.



When we moved, my bedroom didn’t work, but the kitchen did. I would wait until everyone was away or asleep. I would sneak through the dark hours and twirl around in circles until I felt the world disappear, and nausea washed me into another place where my problems didn’t exist. Spinning in a spinning room was required. Some subtle mechanism would shuffle me into another reality, another dimension of existence. With enough spinning I could travel out of reach of any problem.



When I was 27, I moved out and acquired my own place, I decorated my spinning room, which was my bedroom. I draped thick curtains over the walls and added extra locks on the doors. Work and adult life brought more waves, more problems for which I used my spinning room to deal with. My mother died, and after a few days of relentless spinning, I found a world in which she never existed, and my father was happy. He never mentioned her again, and I didn’t want to return to a place where the grief of her life could be seen.



Later when my father died, I spun for a couple days, and found a pleasant universe where all his possessions where already dealt with, and the rest of my family was at peace. I didn’t mention his existence to my family, because some part of me knew if I brought some secret knowledge from another dimension, the magic of my spinning room would be broken.



I met someone, a partner to share my life with, but love hurt too much. I felt needles which others call kisses, and I heard the whispers of shadows; things not best repeated. I spent a lot of time spinning, so much I was haunted by emotional exhaustion from trying to find a world where misunderstandings are forgiven, only to find nothing. I felt helpless, and spun myself into a nausea so deep, when I finished, I was in a world where they never existed.



Peace followed me into my withered years, gracing me with its unchanging silence. Until one day when my apartment building burned down. My spinning room was destroyed, and I was stranded.



Luckily, I was in a world of great abundance and found a new place soon after. It was a community of older folks like me. It was full of survivors; veterans, vicious warriors who had their own emotional scars. I found a spinning room in the bathroom on the 3^rd floor and used it to dial in the kind of world I wanted to fade away to.



I heard transcendent rumors on the 3^rd floor, whispers of a world without death, a world where everyone fades into the night quickly, rather than the withering gloom withering. After some effort I saw a glimpse. I couldn’t reach it alone; it was too distant for a single occupant spinning room, I needed help.



I told the others living here about a different world, other than being a burden to your family with a slow crawl. I was surprised at their eagerness, how much we were tolerating an existence because we saw no escape, but I saw it, and after a few visitors in the Spinning Room: my vision was shared.



We vowed to travel together; tonight we would all fall into the silence as one. They said goodbye to a few people, I said goodbye to no one. We met in the bathroom of the 3^rd floor.



I went first, showing the cosmic coordinates, the frequency of spin and the duration. After 3 hours, I came to the black gate again and saw the void beyond. The cold and silent plateau greeted me with uncaring eyes. I waited at the threshold until the others arrived. Their forms resembling mine; shadows with thin lines, cast by some unknown light. We gathered ourselves, blending into a single shadow.



We stepped over the threshold and into the world of a greater darkness. I see now without eyes and hear without ears, and feel the world spinning in ceaseless motion, forever escaping itself.   

Cave-36:



Below the scorched surface of the earth, humanity finds itself cloistered in caves of immense size. Artificial sunlight is beamed out from floating machines, alternating brightness to simulant night and day. Connections to other caves are rare, demanding pioneers lay wire heedlessly into the darkness. Technology persists, holding humanity up regardless of the radioactive damage inflicted. Mutations are common, mortality is high, and popular broadcasts highlight the daily lives of cave life.



A television fills an entire wall, and the luminous afterglow fills the rest of the room. A disembodied voice began humming the theme music for a new show on Cave-36 public television.



“Welcome to Faces of Mutants, where our guests have undergone some epigenetic changes. Today we have 4 guests which have begun the process of turning into spiders. They are all widows.”



The theme music for Faces of Mutants played as the stage reveled 4 figures cloaked in shadows. Their eyes reflected the ambient light, and their legs appeared folded on the oversized couches. A dim spotlight introduced each one, and the light showed the rest of their spider bodies.



They were not completely spiders yet. The first widow had lost her partner 3 weeks ago and the stress allowed for an irreversible mutation. They survived the expansion of the cranium, and the hardening of the skin. Their additional legs were not grown in completely, and they kept still while the widow recalled the first time, they noticed changes of their transformation into a spider. At first the changes were painful and paralyzing, then the pain ebbed, and the clear instincts of the hunter took over. They started to eat small vermin, and eventually find ways to trap them for later consumption. The widow described how her freezer was filled with frozen rats, and an occasion mongrel.



The second widow was the least spiderlike, she still had human eyes and skin, but her mouth was separating into mandibles, so her oration was filled with mumbled clicks and excessive pointing at her newly developing appendages on her sides. They were only nubs by comparison to the first widow’s development. She shifted uneasily in her chair, until something caught her eye and she became silence and still.



The third widow was very chatty, she described the death of her late husband Doug at great length, then expounded upon the various details of her arachnid transformation. However, only the earliest signs of transformation were seen. She had no legs, or thorax definition, no eye changes or skin hardening. The host of the show continued to ask questions for as long as the widow talked, until the end of the show approached.



There was 4 minutes left in the public access time slot, and the 4^th guest was being introduced. Her transformation was nearly absolute; she hung from rafters of the stage from her spinneret. When the spotlight illuminated her abdomen, geometric patterns of orange and black could be seen clearly by the audience of Cave-36. The patterns were like mandalas; full of triangles tessellating in get kaleidoscopic patterns. The widow said nothing, unable to communicate without human vocal cords.

“We have a special surprise tonight, or this morning, depending on what sleep cycle you belong to. In the latest and greatest of technological adaptation to cave life, we have a neural scanner. This should allow us to understand the syntax what mutants mean with their inhuman brains. “



A large device was wheeled unto the stage by a 2-armed robot. The device looked like a prototype, towering uneasily with a haphazard placement of wires and circuits. The robot paused halfway and adjusted the contraption; stabilizing the top mechanism with one arm and stuffing trailing cords with the other. The widows watched with a hexagonal gaze.



45 seconds later, the 2-armed robot approached the fully transformed widow and told her to remain still while they directed a small satellite dish at the head of the mutant insect. The widow sat motionless except for her mandibles which clapped nervously, as if trying to say something. The host turned the machine on. Fans whirled up and small lights blinked in confirmation.



“Now, let’s hear what is going on inside the brain of a transformed mutant!” The host turned the microphone on, and after a few seconds of mumbled feedback, a distorted voice whispered from the machine: “Hunger is its own reward.” Hissed the machine. The widow remained motionless.



The host looked down at a piece of paper, looking for a question to ask the spider. As soon as they looked down, a rumbling was felt. The stage lights flickered, and the floor started to shake. The rolling earthquake lasted 30 seconds, the lights recovered, and the broadcast continued. Then there was silence.



A few minutes later, someone ran to the host, who was curled up under a desk, waiting for the aftershocks. They shoved a piece of paper in their hand and scurried off camera. The host gathered themselves, looked around with a dazed look, then at the paper. They composed themselves and addressed the camera.



“Cave-36 has just experienced a 6.3 earthquake, however power has been maintained in 98% of cave. However, I am sad to inform the population of Cave-36 of the loss of contact with Cave-17. For those with family in Cave-17, I offer my sincerest condolences. I would like to end the show wi-  AARRrggghhhh…..mmmmmhmmthth!!”



Loss of contact with another cave after an earthquake, meant either the corridors leading to the cave collapsed, or the cave itself had collapsed. The sudden interruption of the host was made clear to those watching the live feed: the fully transformed widow ambushed the host, buried her fangs in his neck and muffled any screams with a web from her frantic spinneret.



A blanket of mutant spider silk covered the host in less time than it took to kill the broadcast.

Eye of the Storm:



The territory of Limbo is a middle world set between the brilliant lights cast down by the lattice of heaven, and the slimy depths of the descending Abyss. The creation of such a place happens when the tides of a greater darkness rise and wash up the shapes and structures from beyond the lands of the living.



Limbo is filled with shadows; a long creeping darkness cast from the few distinct things which populate its horizon. Perhaps a house or castle may appear, yet when inspected, is only a ruin left to fall into dust by the burning light above or erosive tendrils below.



There are many roads to Limbo, either by travelling the astral sea, or through some meditative madness where the opaque nothingness peals away and allows some traveler to slip through the folds of a cosmic black fabric. Entering is either an accident, or a place for battle. Some angel or guardian spirit descends from their exalted realm to smite or challenge some crawling demon. However, if either demon or angel step feather or hoof from their appointed realms, they are corrupted by the shadows.



This corruption is a blindness. For the demon, they think they are seeking power, usually some great relic containing ultimate domination, or another such egomaniacal fantasy. For the angels, they become blinded by moral righteousness, justifying their departure from the celestial worlds armed with some moral necessity to stop demons, or prevent some great catastrophe. There is always a reason, and the reason doesn’t prevent corruption.



Once within Limbo, the horizon reveals how small such battles and moral crusades are, or how quickly power and control can evaporate. Limbo is neutral ground and allows nothing to rise above its landscape which was not already there when the forging of the heavens and Abyss.



This doesn’t stop the creatures from above and below from their designs and plans. If you were to tour the shadows, you would find a small number of creatures, who, having lived in the shadows of heaven, turn their faces towards darkness, and those below become gray and bleach in the holy lights from above. Limbo consumes and flattens all who enter and contorts them into apathetic stones; strange hallowed beasts with empty stomachs and broken horns.



There are no mountains or valleys, no cities or towns. There are however vague scorch marks; radial blackened circles which resemble meteor impacts, but with no crater, as if the ground itself filled in the holes with its own intention to flatline the world. There are a few monolithic stones called Standing Stones which carry a mystery of their own; they are artifacts from the world before. The stones offer no clues, no symbols or etching, and from their shadows, cast by the holy and unholy lights, creatures grow.



With qualities resembling an amphibian and a humanoid, these native creatures claw their way from the iridescent darkness as multicolored beasts. Their fates are not bound in the stories of evil and good, but in hunger. Once able to see the pristine and orderly structure of heaven, they may choose to travel to the cosmic light and feast on the divine opalescence. Some look down and travel into the inky caverns of the Abyss, searching for power or something to sharpen their teeth on; some horned adversary to grind against. These creatures are called Slaads.



There are others who live in Limbo, and perhaps saying they live may be too much. The special and temporal nature of Limbo prevents categorical understanding of time, there is no day or night, no rising or setting of any star, nor moon pulling its weighted face down in tidal motions. In some respects, Limbo is as unchanging as heaven, and perhaps would be included as a stark and empty basement by those above, if such maps were ever drawn. However, no clandestine cartographers have included Limbo as the dominion of any creature, god, or empire, because living in Limbo grinds everything down into a shadow of their once vibrant form.



However, even the changeless Limbo is not beyond the tides of darkness…



An eager student of White Crane style toiled with her self-refinement in a small monastery in southern China. Wu trained since she was able to jump from the trunks of plum trees as a young girl. Over the years, she proved to be worthy of monastery training. She learned to control her body and how to move them between the stances of the masters. White Crane style focused heavily on exposing weakness and exploiting vulnerabilities.



When she was 14, she dreamt of climbing the stairs of celestial light and facing the brilliant breath of the Dragon. She could see the lattice of heaven, the pristine bodhisattvas, and the voiceless song of radiant order.



Driven by her premonitions, she dedicated her life to White Crane style. When she was 25, she was on the cusp of surpassing her master; a withered figured who spent most of their time meditating and instructing Wu.



Near the end of her master’s life, they spent more time on the lessons of meditation. Wu was taught how to face demons and devils; to remember they are dead masters with their own lessons to learn. She was taught to bow before celestial light, to let it pass over and through her; to become transparent in the face of the glittering lotus of heaven.



She was shown every technique to satisfy her ambition. Her master taught her the empty body of the southern dragon, the fearlessness of the mantis, and the predatory eyes of the crane. Yet for all her training, the weight of master’s death slowed her steps, dragged her feet, and pulled her down into a twilight of gloom. Wu carried a small stone of grief within her.



One evening Wu was meditating by a shaded stream. She focused on the impermanence of things, letting the sounds of the stream pass through her, then letting the rocks and ground fall away. After a timeless wink through a soft oblivion, she opened her eyes to see the gray horizon of Limbo.



She looked down to see the shadows cast from her movements, the source of light was not seen. There was no sun, or moon, yet her shadow persisted. Wu wandered the ambient landscape until seeing one of the few distinct landmarks of Limbo.  The Standing Stones, remains of the world before. They loomed over Wu, and she could feel them imposing themselves into the landscape.



The shadows of these stones contained inky pools of freshly hatched Slaads. Wu saw their tadpole tails wiggling, and began her approach in crane style; mimicking the irregular motions of the bird as it hunts the coy. Wu crooked her neck and shifted her shoulders, then dropped her arms and pivoted her feet in syncopated oscillation.



They didn’t seem to respond or were unable to leave the greater darkness of the stone’s shadow.



Upon reaching the other side of the stones, she felt a presence pulling her up into the sky, as if the heavens above demanded a scattering of her body. Wu slowly separated into a vortex of currents, her legs and arms circling different directions until they swirled together. The cyclone grew and grew, each turn around the vortex pulled more clouds into it. Then the spin slowed, and the eye of the storm dilated out until a still absence formed over the Standing Stones. The once indistinct sky flowed in a wrinkle of gray silk.



The sky pulled her apart, yet within her, a stone of grief of her master’s death kept her from assimilating into the formless horizon. The Standing Stones hummed in reverberant satisfaction. The stones could sense the conflict within Wu, even while transformed into a cloud. They pulled on her grief, as if tethered to Wu. There is no language to explain the hunger of the Standing Stones; their monstrous appetites unsated for uncounted eons.



The shadows dimmed as Wu transformed into a monstrous storm front. The vortex slowed further and began to blacken; the clouds turned from ashen gray to a thick violet soup of rumbling sky. The stone of grief could not endure the pressure of being pulled between the sky and the monoliths. While Wu was scattered into the clouds, the stone of grief hovered from the ground, until the friction of the clouds could not be contained.  



A bolt of lightning disintegrated the stone within Wu and the Standing Stones below in a single release. A vibrant thunderbolt stood with both feet on the standing stones, stomping them into rumble. The crack in the sky was tectonic, and the shifting titans of clouds shuffled themselves around as the stomping feet struck heedlessly in the area, marking the ground with blackened spots.



Wu awakened to the sound of thunder traveling away until it became the pleasant trickle of the nearby stream. Her meditation had produced successful self-annihilation, and she took a moment to dwell on impermanence of the world, letting her grief flow away with the water.



Limbo now echoes with thunder, a new characteristic of a nearly empty landscape. The Standing Stones are now erased, and with them the last distinction from the world which came before. The thunder rolls without end, unobstructed, unchallenged, like a chamber of glass covering a candle of darkness.

A Secret Gathering of Robins:



Philip received a message from his friend on Wednesday night; an invitation to a Black Mass themed Halloween party. Philip didn’t know what mass was, nor the relevance of a black version. The message was accentuated with priority; a handwritten card in the mail. Small silver snakes lined the edges, and gold font elegantly rolled out the letters and numbers: October 31^st 11:11



On the back of the card, it read: Black Mass at 11:00, Ceremony of Jubilex, bring a black robe, alcohol will be provided.



The phrase was confusing to Philip. Who was Jubilex? The directions seemed clear enough, and there was plenty of time to acquire a black robe. Philip called his friend who mailed him the message; this required some explanation. After a few rings, David answered, and with a half giggle described it as Art Church, “don’t take it seriously”, and “it is just a Halloween party.” David said it would be his 3^rd year going, and was pleased Philip got the invitation.



“You can use my robe from last year, I got a new one.”



Philip was lost in the evening, thinking about cultists, processions, and cliché visions of bad horror movies. His dreams of the evening were filled with fractured advice and haunting darkness; little irrational reminders telling him this was how horror movies started, and usually ended with some reckless abandonment of caution.



The party was almost 2 months away, and slowly, day by day the idea dimmed until the week before. His co-worker asked him if he was attending any Halloween parties. “I can’t tell you, it’s a secret.” Philip found himself pleased in having a secret to hide, something beyond the reach of casual conversation. He figured a Black Mass conversation may upset religiously minded folks.



When the evening came, David arrived at his house with the black vestments, dressed in a luxuriant velvet robe of his own. “You may want to wait until the party, we need to get ice on our way, unless you don’t mind walking into the grocery store.” David said with a smirk. Philip decided to wait, he wasn’t comfortable being in a costume in public, a party sure, but a grocery store would be full of unwanted attention and questions.



They arrived at 8:30, and the party was already filed with buzz. A large 3 story house and a private backyard contained black-robed figures drinking a purple liquid from plastic cups. At first glance the scene appeared to be a circus, but all the clowns and attendees were wearing black.



There were people painting on canvases, with cups of cloudy water. Figures of demons and devils grew with each paint stroke.



There were people playing guitar, writing poetry, chanting, humming, twirling around. There was a button machine, a spiral graph, a puzzle station, bubbles, streamers of red and black, a cornhole game, a harpist, and the commanding presence of the host describing the condition of the animals living there. There were chickens, bees, an old cat, a bin of many thousand worms, and a sprawling squash plant, with a large gourd resembling a giant pumpkin. The host was heard but yet visible.



The kitchen was a prep place, and 2 signs guided people to the other destinations; one leading to the basement with the words “Unholy Communion 12:00” and another: “Dungeons and Dragons drop in” The signs were painted with beautiful calligraphy and handwriting. The excitement of the game downstairs could be heard through the vents in the floor. An occasional cry of excitement rose up, disembodied.



David stayed with Philip, and as shadows they floated around letting their eyes soak it all in. The garden was wearing its winter cloak, and the twilight of evening cast no shadows over the grape vines, which looked like bone briars, laced with iron lattice. The combination of nature and manufactured materials stood as a shrine, and there were people taking pictures within it, framed in the vines and black metal.



The attendants rarely used names, and some embraced in friendship when the robes failed to hide their identities.



The back yard was being prepared by 2 robed figures and a booming host. They were pointing and discussion the placement of a large circle, and the host could be heard guessing at a number; “34? No at least 45”



When Philip finally saw the host and matched the voice to the face, he was not surprised to see the Devil. The host was wearing a tuxedo, long white hair and red skin paint. He was a dashing gentleman of a Devil; hospitable, graceful, imposing, His beard and mustache were also white with touches of gray, yet he appeared a young man, and his smile stretched with genuine affection and warmth. There were 2 others near him, handling his commands, their faces were unseen and did as he instructed.



Philip and David stood in the backyard overlooking a hill leading to a typical junction of suburban property, divided by a weak chain-linked fence. One side of the hill was covered in plant material percolating in different states of decomposition, the pumpkin plant dominated the greater slope of rot with large prehistoric leaves. One of the Devil’s attendants approached David and Philip and offered them some purple punch. “Would you like a sip of darkness?”



They both said yes, and cups of semi-alcoholic punch was poured for them and dramatically offered with both hands. The drink was mild, like a sweet sangria, with a little elderberry aftertaste.  



As they looked around, their eyes were lost in the little details. Animals bones hung from trees, rotten apples were pilled up in makeshift pyramids, dear horns were affixed to the house and symbols decorated everything with thematic detail. There were pentagrams, 7 pointed stars, the leviathan cross, upside down crosses, a couple versions of goat heads, talons, teeth, and coiled serpents. There were images and symbols Philip did not know; elder signs with angles and shapes of unknown imaginations. There was a guest book of sorts; a large canvased square in which everyone took turns drawing or signing. Personal symbols, and names like “Stay Asleep”, or “Hellhound””, filled the edges of the shape with visual confetti.



After some time, they wandered into the house. Since their arrival a dozen more artists and activities blossomed, and their flowers of art were displayed for the neophytes to enjoy. There was dollmaking, amulet construction, book discussion, more poetry with endless spoken phonetic slime. The air itself oozed in a manic tension. Philip felt electrified, charged in some way, and he could see the same in others around him. He felt a startling awareness when he heard the Devil shouting from the nearby vent. David elbowed him, “Sounds like the Dungeons and Dragons is going well. The Devil is in the details, right?” They giggled themselves silly at the terrible pun, and their laughter echoed in the jubilation around them.



Philip was handed his 4^th cup of purple punch.



He loosened up a bit more and found a chatty figure in a winkled robe. The figure was talking to a small group about Jubilex, and Philip wanted to know more. The figure seemed to start the conversation over, and as they repeated a monologue, a more neophytes gathered and listened. “Jubilex is a fictional character from Dungeons and Dragons, but he symbolizes much. Our world has lost the vision of decay and disintegration, they have forgotten the purpose of decay; to return to the pristine silence of the void, to drag existence back into the darkness. There are those who have come before us, the microbes; the slimes and jellies, who have been rulers of the world beneath, the underworld of life. “



The figured stopped a moment and played a small flute, as if the brief noise was ceremonial nod. Then the figure recited a poem about a falling flower:



Petals born beneath,

Roots growing in the darkness,

Flowers for the night.



Behind Philip, someone blew bubbles and told a joke about cars having too many wheels.



A couple hours rolled by, and flame of art burned until the Devil could be heard calling everyone to the back yard. His voice rose over the music and chatter. Everyone turned silent, and Philip likewise followed the robed figures to the backyard.



Gathered in an awkward circle were the party goers, and the variety of black robes were clearly seen. The Devil walked around the circle, moving and spacing them out until the circle grew to include everyone. Then after everyone was placed, the Devil took the center, and read out something from a piece of paper. He raised his hands and took on the presence of a practiced public speaker. His voice boomed over the wooded yard, over the birds and the bees, and over the purple-punched figures.





**

“Welcome everyone to the Black Mass, a gathering of Jubilex the Disintegrator, Lord of Slimes Jellies and Oozes. We are gathered here in a fellowship of shadows on this joyous Halloween night.



The robes we wear symbolize the Darkness; the eternal silence, for which all things return. Gathered here we leave behind our lives, our faces, and our roles in society. Here we are shadows; here we are equal.



Tonight, in celebration of Halloween we recognize the agents of dissolution, the spirits of decay, the ghosts of the endless horizon, the demons of the abyss, the serpents of the garden, and the haunts of the deep. We acknowledge the devils and demons, elder gods, fallen angels, vengeful spirits, monsters of sublime and unspeakable madness, and banshees of shrieking grief. May their cries erode the pillars of creation. May their claws rip down the heavens. 



Join me in a twice spoken poem. Let the words melt your mind, as we arrive together in the greater darkness.



Scatter the stars,

Throw them into the ocean,

Sinking in slow motion,

A tar pit, a hole with no bottom.

Throw yourselves down,

Follow the lights,

Break into shadows,

Become transparent,

Disappear.



(spoken twice)



Please join me, the Dark Lord, in a moment of silence, after which barbecued pulled pork will be served in the basement for the Unholy Communion.



The silence was tense and wonderful, Philip listened to the night, and nothing was heard; nether creature or tree broke the moment. Then a night wind joined and rustled a handful of windchimes, filling the silence with a gentle tone. Soft conversation bubbled up and the crowd moved casually to the basement.  



The Devil was preparing to serve the meat, but before he did, he offered a quick poem: “May this creature to remind us of the Beast; the endless chain of being for which we are a part of. By eating the Beast, we acknowledge our place in the line of cosmic digestion, in which there no escape.”



The Devil then slowly placed a serving of meat on a plate held by a robed figure and said, “Let this flesh become your flesh.” Then repeated the slow service and words for the next robe.  A few people into the line and someone said “no meat”, and the Devil instead placed a small piece of 93% dark chocolate on their plate, and said “Hunger is its own reward.”



Philip was buzzing, and when he came face to face with the Devil, he managed to say “Can I have both?”, and the Devil said of course, placing the chocolate and pulled pork on his plate. He gave Philip a wink and said both lines.

The basement was full of fantasy artwork, small miniatures creatures for games and display, there were maps of places Philip didn’t know. Objects hung on the walls; swords, a flail, elaborate plastic models of dragons, sigils of fictional gods and demons, and handmade scrolls depicting unknown figures.



The night continued its electric vibe until 2:00pm. Philip was starting to fade; and it was time to leave. David and Philip left the Black Mass in elation. When he crashed into sleep, his dreams were filled the laughter of the evening.



Later the next day, Philip went for a walk, thinking of all the strange things he saw the night before, and on his walk he saw a gathering of robins in a neighbor’s yard, and wondered if they too held fellowships, or joined each other in silence, even if to listen for worms, they were part of the cosmic digestion.



Philip was eager for next year.