Brenda’s Talent:

Brenda loved art, especially watercolor. The fine lines, the accidental flourishes, the creep of gradient across a shaded area, and the dangerous tension of permanent mistakes. She tried her hand a couple of times, but the pieces she produced were amateurish, brutish and often resulted in a mockery of beauty rather than the elegance she intended.

For most of her life Brenda appreciated the mystery of watercolor while remaining painfully separate from it.

This was true until one day when she was drawn into a little shop resembling a gallery. Watercolors of birds were displayed outside with vibrant and expressive poses. Brenda found herself within the shop, looking through prints and original artwork in such variety she thought the owner must at least share some of her aesthetic principals.

She picked 3 of her favorite prints and went to purchase them. The store owner was a short and neglected man with cobwebs of gray around his ears. His pants needed to be hemmed, his shoes were ancient, and his shirt needed to be washed. From the edges of his collar, great tufts of gray hair rose out like a forest or a hedge which separated his head from the round body underneath. Likewise, around his wrists gray hair segmented his hands from his arms.

He asked if she found everything alright, and Brenda started to gush about the watercolors. She found herself rambling, and after a moment the owner told her she could be an artist if she wanted. The idea was instantly rejected, she had tried plenty of times with no success or enjoyment. The process would always end the same way; with disappointment and malcontent. So practiced was this reflex she spouted it off in small talk to the owner, “I have tried, believe me, but I don’t have the talent, not like these, not like this. “

The owner chuckled a little and said he had felt the same way for years, “I was once like you, but here you are telling me the artwork in your hand is good. I made those watercolors. What is missing is your method, your process. This may help you, it helped me when I was where you are now.”

He pulled a small book out from under the counter, flipped through the pages, bending the spine a too far as he handed her a passage to read. Brenda was curious and a little star struck; the watercolors were beautiful, and she had wondered how a person can make such pieces.

The passage before her read as follows: To achieve any greatness you must surrender to it and be willing to pay its cost.

The words had a vague sense of reason. They sounded like words from a self-help book with questionable prose. How do you pay for it? How can you negotiate with talent? For whom or what do you make the payment?

Brenda smirked, unsure if owner was serious. His small hands of fur looked comically primitive next to the dirty book, which he felt held some mantra of art magic. She laughed in her head, paid for her prints and continued her day. Giving the words no real consideration at first.

Later in the evening she remembered the words, they crawled into her awareness and presented her with ways the statement was true. How much had she tried to paint? What would she be willing to pay for the ability to create breathtaking lines of elegant contrast and color?  Thinking about what she was willing to give up was not something she had considered before.

She had tried something similar with religion, surrendering to a higher power, yet it never paid off. It seemed to involve an exhausting amount of mental concentration. There was no payment, no acknowledgment, nothing but an irritating sense of being tricked.

When she went to sleep the words curled into hypothetical smoke; wondering what she would be willing to give up for talent. With a chuckle she thought she would pay a pound of her own flesh. Such an exchange would let her eat with indulgence and be an artist of renown. Her imagination spun out into all sorts of exaggerations as she drifted into the wash of night.

She dreamt of gallery shows in faraway and hard to pronounce countries, meeting new and interesting people, and of course making a connection with an eccentric billionaire who absolutely adored her work. How free, how victorious she would be; to be mercifully unattached to the needs of the morning clock. She dreamt of becoming thinner, sharper, more in control of her emerging talent. She would be confident, articulate, and without a doubt her watercolors would stir the coldest critic. Oh, to be an artist with their heart open. What price could be too high?

Brenda woke the next morning with the moisture of fever sweats on her face. Her back was drenched, and her pillow soaked. She felt fine otherwise, perhaps even a little inspired by her dreams. Some of the fantasy remained, it hung on her like clean clothes. As the day turned to evening again, the glow compelled Brenda to think more on doing water colors. She dragged out her old supplies, laid them out around her, and took a brief inventory of colors. Some of the paints were unusable; their thin metal bodies reminded Brenda of insects on their backs with their legs handcuffed in cobwebs. So, she started painting a wasp.

The first line fell on the watercolor paper with a stroke for the wing, then another for the front leg, both with little effort. Brenda felt weightless, focused, drawn into the motion of each brush stroke, and application of pressure. Her previous doubts were absent from the moment. Hours passed in harmony and expression. Brenda thought of nothing else but the world of her wasp painting. She finished it in once sitting, this time without turning the details into resentment.

However, Brenda had been oblivious to exactly how many hours. 13 hours had passed, yet it seemed a single breath to Brenda. She had missed her work shift. She would have to call and try and explain herself, she needed her job. After some food and rest she could sort it out. She was more enthralled with her finished painting of a wasp. The colors were perfect, the angles exactly what she wanted, and the beauty scaled down at a distance.

The subject of her painting impressed itself again into her dreams as she drifted into unconsciousness. The wasp buzzed in thick iridescent clouds of whirling swarms of other insects. Grasshoppers turned locust, moths, bees, misquotes, flies, elongated gnats of various sizes all swayed together. They reflected colors of likewise variety, neon colors of unseen frequencies, bright warnings, and metallic dust from battered wings sprinkled like fairy dust on her sleep.

The second morning was filled with the same fever sweats and feelings of exhilaration. Again, Brenda dove into a painting and forgot about calling her work, or if was scheduled for today or not. Another blur of time passed with the same focus and intensity.

Brenda made a beetle for her second painting. It was displayed with its wings fanned out from under beautiful metallic segments. She felt weightless again, lost in 16 hours of inspiration. She was interrupted by a visit from a concerned friend. Brenda explained herself a little, but only halfheartedly, she was already thinking of her next painting.  Her friend was worried but left after dinner. Brenda promised to go to the doctor if the lapses of self-awareness happen again.

Brenda didn’t go to the doctor, she didn’t call anyone, she wanted only to paint more. She continued uninterrupted for the next 2 weeks, alternating between obsession and fever sweats. She grew thinner, each water color piece consuming a part of her. She didn’t care, she didn’t want to stop painting. Never had she felt so alive in her life, never had something had flattened time into a blink.

When she wasn’t looking at the canvas, she was sleeping or eating a small amount of leftover rice. She had managed to prepare some food, but only with the smallest of effort, something productive to do in the down swing while she gazed over the quality of the day’s work.  

The work was exquisite, surely anyone could see the mastery in her new creations. Brenda’s mania grew with each painting until 3 months had passed. Her friends surprised her with a visit of intervention. They found Brenda nearly skin and bones, having lost weight from submersion into the world of watercolors.

They rushed to her the hospital, her lips were cracked and stiff. She mumbled as they hooked her to saline. “I have so much more to make, let me go, release me!” Brenda had paid her price, and she wanted to pay more, for she had found something larger than herself.

Brenda died weighing 70lbs, having paid 1 pound for each painting. She considered her 86 pieces to be perfect by every measure of her aesthetic.  

Subatomic Limbo:

A beam of life had once broadcast itself over all worlds, even asteroid belts, Kepler fields, and increasingly icy comets. Now life was limited to a thermal range, no longer could photosynthesis or any other solar process be exploited to spread the reach of life. Now it squealed under a brittle sky of stellar jewels as the heavens sung a choir of cold monotony.

In an icy neighborhood of a dead quasar there was a crystal star. Many stars turn to crystals as they cool, but this star contained a small pod containing a few pounds of chemicals and a sleeping lifeform known as Mia.

Mia was entombed in the recently transformed white dwarf. The star resembled a diamond when viewed from its surrounding terrestrial planets. Most stars at this point in history were cooled to the point of crystallization. Stars of all sizes turned into radiant frozen gemstones: bright neon greens, luxuriate ribbons of red, and if you looked in the northern sky you could see deep indigo blazars throwing out star ejections of cosmic glitter. The jeweled abyss spread its brilliance out, and in every direction.

Also, not a single star has been born for 5 billion years, and the galactic skies are quickly becoming lake of glass. The lack of new furnaces has left the world increasingly cold, and great voids creating winds which blow over the remaining concentrations of life. The winds of thermal absence would normally freeze most life, but Mia was different, she was encased in thousands of kilometers of carbon insulation. She watched from her crystal window.

While encased in the star’s diamond flesh, she had many years to reflect on the state of the universe and what could be done about the inevitability of the future.

In her quest to travel down into the abyss of small creatures she created functionable tiny neurons. Even smaller than the neurons she was born with. She was drilling into a factor of size, which meant her meager resources had become larger and larger. Among her limited provisions were 400 grams of copper could be consumed at a tenth of the rate if she shrunk her consumption down by a factor of 10. While her resources were finite, the depth and smallness of the abyss proved to be a refuge against the stretches of time.

It may be important to note that factors of size within the universe is numerically depicted as factors of 10. For example: a human being could be considered a baseline, or 10 with zero factors. A typical star is 8 factors of 10 above human beings and carbon atoms are 8 factors below. The factors of comparison are used by all creatures within the universe as a type of coordinates. The factors determine how advertisements are to be stretched or compressed to be visible to those of particular sizes.

For example: all time dilatation must be set to 10 to the factor of 35 to reach all creatures, yet 10 to the factor of -20 only reached the very small. Mia was constantly shrinking her perspective to be the same dimension of smallness as the immortal v22.6s.

All this meant was as she grew smaller, her resources lasted longer. Though finite, they grew each time Mia pressed her consciousness into a smaller scale of size.

Mia had been shut inside the crystal sun as a desperate hope to undo a monolithic authority. Rather than icy winds, iron authority painted a picture of unchanging existence. The Church of Loa had united all life under their HBCF, and turned the universe into a bureaucratic machine of birth certificates, entertainment, and extensive safety precautions.

Mia was mercifully alien to the throbbing pulse of life.

She drilled down, year after year, edging around the atomic. While she compressed herself into an increasingly smaller existence, she watched the world.

5 billion years was nothing to the universe, because nothing changed. Lifeforms changed into whatever was required to occupy the cracks and corners of the universe. Progress had found the edges of the universe and blossomed in every way, all under the guidance and control of the Church of Loa. The currents of life flowed into every place there was energy. Starlight fed trillions of creatures, until the stars died out.

Chemical and nuclear production was imitated for a while but required more oversight and order from the Church. Life was held up as the necessity for more authority. However, due to the hardships of a cooling universe fewer birth certificates were issued, there was simply too much opportunity for suffering. Less population meant better quality of life for those able to survive in the low thermal conditions.

The Church of Loa wasn’t concerned. The v22.6s were following their programming and doing the best they could to continue life, if it was controllable. They suffered no anxiety from extinction or loss, as their bodies were so small, they felt no perceivable difference.

The remaining organisms, which made the bulk of the universe squirmed and cried for warmth. One by one they too were silenced, as the Church did not approve their reproduction due to concerns of continuing discontent.

The wail of life went on, thought muted and muffled. Blackholes began to dissipate, galaxies became more nebulous.  They collided into larger galaxies making piles of cold stones. These dense places formed what looked like gigantic snowflakes from Mia’s perspective, the same perspective as the immortal v22.6s who did not regard the structure as anything meaningful or important, simply the de facto shape of a dying universe.

There was little change for countless years. Until the cooling reached down into the world of atomic nuclear bonds. The effect was heard, as a crack of breaking ice. The glass pond lost the cohesion to remain as anything distinct and slipped slowly into a cloud of unconnected structures. The gigantic snowflake galaxies turned into smears of fuzzy gray.

Breaking glass was the last sound heard by the remaining creatures who lived in atomic structures. They all fell apart into clouds of vaguely pigmented things, their shapes and expressions hung like cobwebs in the air, which wasn’t air anymore. The glass pond had shattered and within a million years, all atomic structures had dissolved.

Mia was living in the sub atomic when this happen, and the v22.6’s lived even lower. The event was viewed as a great dawn, as if light had entered their worlds. The light was only the gray of a great indistinct nothingness pressing its boundaries into their worlds.

The crystal star had evaporated in much the same manner as the other structures of the universe; it dissolved into subatomic soup. Mia, who was watching from within, had become so small that each of the protons and neutrons which remained were distant planets and stars for her to travel to. She had only one place left to go, and this was to the center of the great snowflake, which had turned into a gray and fuzzy thing.

A great Limbo was revealed, show only a gray horizon, a center, the v22.6s, and Mia travelling slowly from the edges of a dying world. She would take another countless stretch of eons to get there, and her locomotion would have to be powered by the remining energy within the smallest subatomic structures.

Meanwhile, the immortal v22.6s watched the universe shrink with little concern.

Quasar Cast Away:

Coincidence is perhaps one of the most marvelous phenomena of intelligent beings. Most creatures can find the epiphany when a couple of events happen, maybe if more than 3 or 4 events happens it’s a conjunction or a climax of an age or some other rhetorical description. However, as soon as a web of coincidence is seen, a cocoon has already formed; one made of ignorance and darkness. This is because trillions and trillions of events are happening simultaneously yet go unnoticed.

The temporal concept of the present, or more commonly referred to as “the here and now”, may be described as a crashing wave of metallic cymbals, all being hit with the same mallet. The following moment is filled by another wave, ready to be hit and smashed into pieces. Some call it entropy, but for all practical purposes it is a rolling back of the waves, like a great tide.

The high-water mark was visible to Lucy, and as a disillusioned seeker she saw no glamour in things being connected or occurring at the same time.

Lucy was traveling at some unpronounceable factor of the speed of light, traveling to the distant quasar with her beloved Medusa and a creature known as Mia. Both Medusa and Lucy were Loa-style androids in search of a solution to their growing anxiety of an involuntary and universe wide broadcast system. Mia shared in their frustration and came as a willing participant in a plan to erode the gigantic authority who wielded the broadcast system called HCBF, or Hercules-Corona Borealis Frequency.

Recently HCBF was used to broadcast a funeral event to all living organisms. From bacteria to stars, the entertainment program had reached everyone, whether they wanted it or not. Afterwards, advertisements for the upcoming event Battle of Titans was beamed out, heralding an inevitable increase of commercial consciousness.

As coincidence would have it, the arena for the Battle of Titans was within a short distance from the cooling white dwarf star, and also near the same interstellar void Medusa and Lucy had failed to escape the terror of contemporary existence.

The Battle of Titans arena was quarantined as off limits. There would be planetoids and planets vaguely shaped like lifeforms smashing into each other. They would be wearing costumes, wielding comet slingshots and asteroid catapults, some swinging pieces of magnetically organized asteroid belts, and some shooting nuclear fire from their mouths which resembled beasts of ancient mythologies.

As their space vessel approached the system, Medusa could see the variety of creatures gathering around the quasar, like little cobwebs of dust gathering near a corner of a neglected basement. She couldn’t distinguish any details, but she knew the one with absurd sunglasses was there; those fabricated costumes made for the entertainment of universe’s population.

Lucy set the coordinates for the nearby white dwarf, avoiding the space stations.

They were nearly there when the HCBF boomed in their heads, “Get ready for the battle of the universe! The event will begin in 1 hour!”

Mia was anxious to be unconscious again. Lucy prepared the small escape pod for corona temperature tolerance. Medusa gathered a few bags of required chemicals for Mia’s journey and loaded them into the pod.

They hurried their goodbyes to Mia, even though they had met only recently, she was their single greatest chance at a future catastrophe. Mia thanked them for getting her off the planet and showing her a wider world. 50 minutes later Lucy and Medusa watched the pod entering the cooling star’s light, and the moment Mia disappeared, the HCBF heralded the beginning of the Battle.

Everyone all over the universe watched planets colliding in a dramatic exposition of violence and destruction. Attacks from the Titans rendered asteroids to dust, and beams of gamma radiation dissolved the smaller planetoid fighters until only the largest and durable creatures remained.

Hours passed in cationic fixation as the last of the Titans pummeled each other with a kinetic frenzy. Finally, the winner threw the last remaining contender into the quasar and the planet-creature blinked out of existence. The broadcast ended with an advertisement for the next upcoming HCBF event in 3 weeks.

Lucy had enough, she wanted nothing to do with HCBF, the Church of Loa, and at this point, existence itself. She carried a pair of augmented eyes with her for such a circumstance; 2 sapphires with gleaming facets. She inserted them and waited for her onboard hardware to incorporate them.

She had another plan, something more immediate and permanent. She did not want to live in a world of growing involuntary intrusion, where the forces of life grow and propagate as an expansion of the monolithic authority of the Church of Loa. She had done all she could, and seen all she wanted to, she was ready to check out.

Lucy looked on Medusa for the first time, and Medusa gazed back. Their adventures and love had stretched to the edges of the universe, and there is no other she wished to see as she turned to a lifeless composite of stone.

Medusa said her farewell with hot kisses and embraced Lucy’s face with the smooth slithering of her snake hair. The kisses turned cold, and after a few seconds, Lucy was gone. Medusa was alone in the world. She wished she could follow Lucy into death, but her fail-safes prevented her from suicide. She had only one place left to go, and it was back to the Church. They would put her back in the machine and use her, but perhaps the chamber would insulate her from the HBCF broadcasts. At least within the machine she could lose herself in the gray horizon and disappear in her own way. Medusa set the coordinates and slumped in her chair, the desire to die had never been greater. She had one more task before leaving the system.

Mia was nearly deep enough in the cooling white dwarf. She passed the corona without burning up, she augmented her body as quickly as she could and was able to adjust her temperature before she disintegrated. She slowed herself down, much more than the wait in the skyscraper meeting room. She placed the excess materials she brought next to herself and waited for the glare of Medusa to seal her in. She slipped into a purgatory of unconsciousness.

Medusa waited until the appointed time, then set her gaze to the cooling star. She stared at the dim light as tears crawled down her face. Her grief took flight and impaled the dying star, and it responded with a mortal shudder of solar flares; the star turned into a flawless diamond of carbon and pain. Medusa set the coordinates of the space vessel for a return trip to the Church of Loa and buried her face in her hands. Her snakes hissed softly as the stars turned into a blur of photonic streaks.

A few weeks later, she was unloaded from the vessel, nearly catatonic. Medusa was plugged into the amnesia machine; her gaze was lensed and focused as a weapon of control for those who opposed the church. She was insulated from any frequencies or broadcasts and returned to her gaze of the gray horizon.

A few centuries later there was no need for amnesia beams, all creatures were within the grasp of the Church of Loa. When the machine was turned off, Medusa had already slipped into death without anyone noticing.

Sleeping Beast:

The Mars facility was relatively abandoned. After the birth certificate technician left there was little reason for any upcoming scientists to remain, their projects dragged them to other star systems. Dr. Santayana remained as a monitor technician the in case of Mia woke up. He had been the designer of her genetics; her fate was something he took personally.

Medusa and Lucy walked up to the electron dissipation platform and entered in the coordinates for the front lobby of the research facility. With an electric crack of thunder, their bodies rematerlized on a nearly identical platform. There was no mistaking the sound.

Within seconds, Dr. Santayana entered the room. He was a shaggy gorilla of a man stuffed into a wrinkled white coat. He politely greeted them and began talking about his projects. They toured the facility as he explained the birth application process, how many hurdles, issues and failures he had run into. One such failure, he seemed obsessed with; a robot he created, he was frustrated nobody appreciated the economic turbulence it caused.

“The planet was over populated, I mean there were so many babies being born, you couldn’t walk down the street on an afternoon without stepping on a baby. The miniguns were a solution, if only I would have made the robot faster..” He shook his head in disappointment and regret.

Lucy tolerated his ramblings for a while and finally inquired about his other approvals. She was interested in all his successes, even if they didn’t turn out he wanted. Santayana paused a moment and described his biggest failure.

“I was able to get scan of the v22’s personality holographically and used it to create an organism which could terraform polluted planets. I was assigned the monitor technician position, but unfortunately the lifeform Mia has proven less than exciting, she currently is asleep. There is little hope she will wake up.”

Lucy and Medusa looked at each other, perhaps there was some way to wake Mia, some way to use her. Lucy told Santayana about her fear of involuntary shows and advertisements becoming more common. Something needed to be done, something needed to crack the power of the Church.

Santayana was sympathetic, he was terrified when Nefertari died; he was afraid viruses would be harder to acquire and would affect his currently applications. The idea of using Mia in some other way was intriguing, she was already a failure, what could be worse?

After some lunch, and detailed overview of Mia’s genetic profile, they walked unto the electron dissipater and with a familiar ZAP, they were back on their space vessel. The overhead speakers were still playing advertisements for birth certificate shows. Now some vintage tourism commercials were added in depicting attractions before the planet of Sol-3 was turned into a concrete ruin.

The travel was short, Lucy and the Dr. shared stories about v22s. Medusa avoided eye contact.

The planet was nearly lifeless, its molten core had been eroded from ancient times, when the planet was called Earth. They descended through the atmosphere effortlessly. Dr. Santayana had a locator for each Mia on the planet, she had split herself 43 times, now only 1 remained in a spore-like hibernation.

The wind was and sky were a mouth of icy teeth, and the ruins greeted them with cold promise. They descended into atmosphere until they saw the skyscraper. Their ship hovered above and they lowered themselves down with small compression packs. They wore respirators, and lightweight environmental suits. The air was contaminated with titanium dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and various other pollutants. 

The hibernation chamber was barricaded from inside. There were 3 dead humanoid bodies near the entrance. Dr. Santayana said they were other Mias trying to revive the sleeping one. Why this one went to sleep, and the others were collaborative, he didn’t know.

Medusa found herself looking at the bodies and within seconds they turned to stone. She would have to avert her eyes with the living Mia too. Lucy used a laser cutter to remove the barricade. The dust only settled slightly, as everything seemed to be covered in a thin metallic shine. They found Mia on the meeting table. Her body ashen and withered. There was no breathing. The Dr. reminded them, when in this state, she would only need to breath perhaps daily, or weekly.

Lucy and the Dr. set to collect Mia’s body and Medusa found herself gazing out over the meeting room window. The gray horizon looked familiar, like a long memory of when she was used as a weapon for the Church, as an amnesia beam. She wondered to herself if the Church would come looking for? Or would they let her slum around the universe, considering they had the ability to broadcast to all authorized lifeforms? Was amnesia the way out? What would Lucy do if she could forget? Medusa winced at the idea of Lucy forgetting her. She shook her head, trying not to think about it.

They returned to the vessel, then within an hour they were back on the Mars facility. Dr. Santayana brought Mia to a coalescence chamber and started the process of revival.

Mia awoke, surrounded by Lucy, the Dr., and Medusa who was looking at a screen, her snakes hissed softly. Mia was confused, but the Dr. explained the situation, in a way she found easy and comfortable. He explained the birth certification process, the intent of why she was created and the assumed failure.

Mia listened, and was grateful to come out of hibernation and get off the planet. She snickered at the Dr., amused he was her progenitor. She listened to Lucy, and her melodramatic issues with some involuntary broadcast. Lucy asked if Mia if she could eat anything smaller than atoms. Lucy wondered if Mia could learn to eat the v22.6s.

Mia wasn’t sure, she had never tried. The Dr. said it was possible but would require immense refinement of her pyrrolysine induction. He mumbled something about it taking a billion years to get to the subatomic. Mia was also curious about the wider world, for so long she had been stuck in the skyscraper. She wanted to see more of the universe. Their conversation was interrupted by an involuntary advertisement, broadcasted over HCBF frequencies. Mia held her head in pain, as if something had been forced into her mind most alien and strange:

“Coming in 3 days, is the first ever Battle of Titans, where the greatest of world collide in an arena of cosmic proportions! You won’t miss the event, now broadcasting in Star Vision and HCBF!”

Mia screamed in surprise and fear. She had never experienced an advertisement and the idea of more involuntary intrusions into her mind was terrifying. She was starting to see what Lucy meant. Mia asked to see some star charts, a plan was forming in her head, and Lucy was thrilled the experience had added weight to her persuasion.

Hours passed as Mia and Lucy talked about current events. Mia asked endless questions about types of life, including the creation of the v22.6s, Plutonium Television, New Life, Battle of Titans, and what to do about it. The Dr. excused himself, he had more immediate matters to attend to, besides Lucy and Medusa could handle their own obsessive quest to avoid commercials.

Medusa felt useless, her snakes coiled into tight melancholy spirals.

Mia and Lucy poured over star charts. Within 6 hours they found what they were searching for. Mia had a plan and they found the fertile soil to grow it. They found a white dwarf at the end of its cooling period. Lucy rushed out of the room to find Medusa and tell her the exciting news.

Mia and Lucy had a plan, and they took turns describing parts of it. Mia’s v22 personality reflected Lucy so precisely, Medusa felt like she was listening to Lucy talk through Mia: “The weakness of the Church is within the very thing they seek, and they seek nothing less than total power. Total power is brittle, so when they have acquired all there is, when all the stars are in their grasp, then their power can be undone. The plan is to introduce Mia to the v22.6s after their power is absolute and their timeless presence knows nothing but the brilliant radiance of domination.”

Medusa scratched her head in confusion, “This isn’t a plan, this is metaphysics, how is this going to topple anything?”

Lucy calmly reassured Medusa, “We will need your help for the practical. Your gaze can turn any carbon-based lifeform into stone, more precisely; crystalline composite of the creature. Star Vision has proven stars themselves are alive, although their time scale makes it impossible to communicate without a time-dilator. White dwarf stars are already in the process of turning into crystals. You could finish the process with your gaze.”

Medusa felt more confused, she kept her eyes down and her snakes squirmed anxiously.

Mia finished the thought when she saw Medusa’s unease, “I have hibernated in an attempt to wait until I could leave the planet, much in the same way I will hibernate in a cooling star until I can emerge. I need to be sealed behind, I need it to hide me from any monitoring, hide me away until I can refine my appetite to consume the v22s.”

Lucy added a little more, “The v22.6s claim to be immortal, but they have not been tested, they have not been hunted. There is no certainty, even by design. Mia could end all of this, all the power, all the life, everything she could eat it all with her hunger.”

Medusa agreed, she had no better ideas, but the time frame was fuzzy. “How long would you have to be entombed in the crystal star?”

“I don’t know, I have never had to refine myself to this degree. If what Lucy says is true, there is little I wanted to do in a world with these kinds of involuntary intrusions into my mind. Maybe I will burn up in the star slowly over the next million years. “

Lucy said good bye and thanked Dr. Santayana for his help. Medusa set the coordinates for a nearly cooled white dwarf star located on the inner reaches of the quasar ULAS-13. Medusa thought the destination sounded familiar.

Pushed:

Following the death of Nefertari, the universe became considerably smaller. Not in terms of size or physical measurement, but in a reduction to the space between worlds and cultures. Many isolated worlds could now experience the same thing, the same broadcasts as everyone else. No longer would culture be determined by immediate environment, or even a galactic neighborhood, now all societies, organisms, both tiny and immense could watch with whatever eyes they had. This was largely due to the communication company called Plutonium Television. Technology allowed the broadcast of Neferatri’s death, funeral, and decay to involuntarily reach all organisms across the universe.

Similar pages of history were dog-eared with the terms: car, gun, television, and if you looked back far enough you might find a creature called the horse. Each step of technology meant more connections, more communication and more stability for order and authority to lay another stone to the height of authority required to ensure such a connection. The technology for the broadcast was developed and sold by the Church of Loa, who occupied the near pinnacle of the pyramid of power. 

Everything else squirmed underneath.

For example: Plutonium Television was a galactic mega organization, yet their certifications for broadcasting were controlled by the Church. All receiving devices within organisms and monitoring devices were also property of the Church. On controlled planets no organisms could be born, neither bacterial of multicellular without a birth certificate from the Church. New organisms needed vaccines, Nano-cameras, and proper lifetime evaluation to ensure no unnecessary suffering. As Plutonium Television grew, so did the reach of the Church of Loa, who included each world as another brick in the foundation of their pyramid.

Another organization tried to reach the top, for very much the same reasons as the Church. New Life was an organization dedicated to life itself, or rather the wide horizon of endless diversity. However, New Life lacked the basic technology to spread itself over the universe with any speed, relying on the Church’s technology to propel to the edge of un-regulated life.

The death of Nefertari stopped contamination of unregulated growth. The involuntary broadcast pulled nearly all lifeforms into a sharp awareness of the funeral, either through direct consciousness, visual experience, dreams, or electron dissipation frequencies. Bacteria on someone’s skin could watch Plutonium Television and the host organism would also be forced to be tuned in. There was no escape, no direction you could turn your eyes from to avoid the glare of involuntary advertisements. Unregulated creatures now became part of the world of Television and the Church.

The iron law of Oligarchy gripped the neighborhood of galactic superclusters.

With the inclusion of all 3 super-powers, the new broadcasting technology was called the Hercules Corona Borealis Frequency, named after the popular Plutonium Television star Hercules v2, and an archaic reference to the superclusters included in the broadcast. New Life used the frequency to spread their message of inclusion, every week lifeforms heard the proselytizing of “All Life is New Life”, and each week millions of new creatures petitioned the Church for birth certificates. New Life became a vassal, and each year they became more dependent on HCBF transmission to spread their message.

Little by little, distinction between New Life, Plutonium Television, and the Church of Loa blurred.

Very few creatures saw this happening. One creature was Lucy, an eyeless android who had forsaken the experience of visual information, yet it was clear to her. There was only a single direction the universe would move now, oligarchy was a closed fist, and its nails were made of stars and dust clouds. The claw of authority would pull every world into it, every terrestrial planet, asteroid, comet or moon which could hold life, would be under control.

How long it took to gain control was irrelevant when a million years could be predicted to the thinnest margin. There was no hope for catastrophe.

Lucy flipped through Plutonium Television channels in a frustrated habit. Everywhere was tuned in to the recap of the funeral, and the brilliant new market of a connected world. There were even advertisements for upcoming advertisements, reality shows involving who would or wouldn’t get their birth certificate approved, and a hundred lifetimes of cooking shows bursting with first-time viewers ready to binge on the new vision of a divine consumption.

Lucy was frustrated, and she had spent hours listening rather than watching.

It was Medusa who tried to comfort her with possibilities: “Maybe there is a new life forms to hunt your corporate powerhouses, surely nothing can escape predation?”

Lucy had just finished listening to the Tony Bids show on Mars and wondered if any of the scientists involved would know something. Perhaps they had some secret information which was overlooked? Failures of the Church are often buried, but who knows what trash they threw out?

Lucy convinced Medusa to go with her to Sol-4 and interview Dr. Santayana, who had been writing applications for new lifeforms for a hundred years. His contact information was connected the Tony Bids show.

The entire travel time of 3 years was filled with commercials for life-application shows, as if being born was an involuntary advertisement.

Lair of the Spider:

I awoke to empty darkness. My head was a thick stuffing; spongy and hot. My arms and legs were all there, my clothes were greasy, damp and covered in what felt like plastic Halloween webbing. I felt around, looking for more information, seeing nothing but a wall of black. A few heartbeats later I guessed I was in a tunnel, or a hall of dirt. I heard no movement, and my voice had no echo; the air was heavy and difficult to breath in.

I also felt heavy, my body left like had not been used for days. Cramps slowed me down as I crawled through the darkness. I found a dim light after an unknown amount of time. I crawled towards it, I had no other choice. Confusion offered nothing, and my head seemed like it had been emptied completely. I convinced myself the amnesia would loosen, and consciousness would eventually offer a clue if I was patient.

My fingers were sore from crawling, I tried to stand but my legs cramped again after a few minutes of stumbling. Seeing the light ahead renewed me a little, it cleared some of the muck from my head. The light emitted from a small opening to a large cavern. Like a keyhole, I pushed myself through the opening and squinted at the sharp light.

The scene came into focus as I looked upon a great cave wall opposite me, lined with bioluminescent strands. At the edge of the light I could also see a great network of spider webs, it looked like plastic material; with cobwebs held in loose patterns. It was like someone had decorated the cave for a party. I looked down at myself, and my decrepit clothes, which looked for a moment like an absurd costume. I don’t remember these clothes or what they looked like before they turned into tatters.

I stopped laughing, and fear squeezed my voice into a suffocated squeak when I saw the web move. I backed into the darkness, out of the light. The adrenaline gave me strength; I found myself on my feet, crouched and trying my best to silently step my way back. I didn’t take my stare off the web, as I slowly retreated through the opening.

I heard the whisper of a woman behind me, I thought I recognized the words. The deliberation caused me to freeze in my steps. Upon strained listening I couldn’t tell it was coming from the cavern opening or from behind me. Then I saw the legs. Shadows resembling arachnid legs folded into front of me and pinned me against a warm body. It felt like a woman’s body, I could feel the heat from the hips and stomach. I couldn’t turn my head around, but something told me there was nothing I could do. I stood there paralyzed and shut my eyes.

The legs lightly pushed me towards the unseen person behind me. I could hear the slow exhales and inhales, and between each I could hear whispers like distant conversations with strangers. Then an elbow or knee pressed into my back. It rocked slowly between my shoulders, the shadowed legs pushed me a little harder with each movement. The movement continued down my back in its alien rhythm, almost sexual. Maybe it was, but then the insect legs dissolved into a black shadow, and the whispering woman vanished. I collapsed and tucked my legs into a fetal position and let my heartbeat slow down.

I heard myself crying, I could see myself in the tunnel, curled and covered in tattered clothes.  I remained in the moment with eager ears, hearing nothing except my own poisonous imagination. My body dragged itself through the darkness, crawling slowly. I remember becoming thirsty, but the feeling was eclipsed by an itchy certainty of being watched.

As I crawled, I attempted to stand and walk again with some success. I kept my feet moving, connecting the muffled steps with the sensation in my legs and feet. I couldn’t see them, but it’s all I could think of doing, except lying there and doing nothing until the spider came back. I don’t know why she didn’t finish me there, she could have, perhaps something compelled her away in an emergency? I could see only darkness as I headed away from the light, away from the web.

Unknown hours passed, and my throat felt salted. I stumbled upon some wooden stairs leading to a porch. I could only feel the wood with my fingers and palms; the surface was wet and flaky. I found a doorway leading into a small house. A few rooms and some stairs leading up to an inaccessible floor. The stairs were blocked by cold stone, as was the back wall of the house. Whatever story the debris held, the place was scoured of it. The stone itself seemed to be in the process of consuming the house, starting with the top floor. I tried to sleep in the structure, but I could not get the image of a mouth made of rock collapsing in on me.

I got turned around searching through the house, and when I headed off into the darkness, I wasn’t certain I wasn’t heading back to the web. My pace slowed, and I watched myself shuffle through the tunnel from overhead, disembodied. It gave me something to focus on, the movement of my limbs and how they might look if I could see them.

Hours later I stumbled upon a large insect body in the tunnel, I thought it was asleep. The body was cold and empty, a recent molt pf an enormous spider. I was able to get an idea of the creature’s size. This only served to terrify me more; knowing the dimensions of the thing in the darkness.

My breath started to sound weaker and began to rattle at the end of each exhale. Every couple of steps seemed to add more to the rattle, until my breathing was a rasp. The rasp grew into a hiss, when the hiss wasn’t mine, I knew the spider was near. I curled into ball again and tried to hold my breath.

The dim light returned, so slowly I didn’t realize my eyes were open. A figure of a woman was silhouetted against a gray light. I couldn’t see the details of her face, just a darker smear. When she moved, I saw the edges of segmented legs silently propelling her body. I shut my eyes and hugged my knees against my chest.

I felt her legs first; they rolled me around like toy, until I felt the body of woman behind me. I tried to turn my head, but the legs of the spider pinned me with heavy precision. She held me, I could feel her hips and shoulders against mine, they were so warm. As the moment stretched on, the warmth of the woman’s body flowed into mine. I started to accept my fate. I wanted to be part of something warm and alive, not struggling in the darkness or the ruins of places. I wanted to be part of the spider woman.

She must have felt my body go slack and knew it was time. Her fangs arced over my shoulders, the dim light revealing those hideous segmented legs, and the sleek fangs of a recently molted predator. The fangs sunk into my chest and my blood turned into syrup. Everything became unfocussed and turned into horizon of gray and fuzzy stars, until my eyes closed. I could hear myself dissolving, gurgling like applause. When I couldn’t hear my breath anymore, I knew the nutrients of my body were added to hers; I was becoming part of the greater darkness.

Equality:

There wasn’t a funeral, just a simple cremation for a single unnamed person. The body was processed without human interaction; from morgue to ashes, no one was involved. The ashes were stored in a communal memorial for the citizens of the city. A plaque vaguely referred to those who died, and their clandestine journey into the unknown:

“May the sun never set on the horizon of our souls”, was embossed on a corroded brass square.

Before the cremation, small devices recorded every movement of the unnamed person’s life. They recorded everything, documentation was a fact of life. Freeways, highways, alleys, office buildings, public gather places, anyplace a consumer may be, there were cameras. Sometimes they recorded visual, sometimes audio, sometimes they recorded very specific actions like the motion of thumbs, eyes, or the gait of someone’s walk.

Even smaller cameras and devices were inside, recording the smallest of actions. There was a device which monitored their breathing; how fast or how deep, whether they excited or relaxed. Another device watching the stomach; what was eaten and how much it was chewed. Implants also ran in the eyes and ears, recording each movement, rebroadcasting what was received by the ears. All the devices broadcasted wirelessly and had been continuously recorded since the birth. All the recordings of the recently incinerated body were stored redundantly, even if no one cared.

No one watched this person’s feeds as they finished the last process of the existence. They were a nobody, with no fans or voyeurs or followers. They had no channels or shows, and they didn’t advertise for themselves. They were merely a watcher, a no-name looker; someone who perhaps could only be described as a pair of eyes. Perhaps being a pair of eyes was enough to define existence, because in this period of history surveillance was everything.

The company called Plutonium Television advertised for themselves under the axiom: The expansion of surveillance is the expansion of consciousness. Devices were produced by the Church of Loa and integrated devices in every new life form. Birth involved countless injection of Nano-cameras, proton-telescopes, and new genetic storage or lifetime playbacks. This allows the viewer to watch highlights of their life without having to manually filter everything. The technology records specific memories based on the impression of the experience. All remaining human beings, new android, hybrid clones and assimilated lifeforms have some level of surveillance programmed into their bodies.

While the fires of the cremation chamber were reducing the nobody to ashes another creature also died, but one with an immense number of watchers. Nefertari died from a deadly silicone virus. She contracted the infection and within 3 days her synthetic neurons had disintegrated, her consciousness lost in the electron turbulence. Nefertai was worshiped, she was a queen of fame, a pinnacle of popularity, she had no equal to those who loved her.

Her funeral was televised over 20 million solar systems, and the recording was watched by trillions of lifeforms. Plutonium Television used higher dimensional frequencies for their broadcast, traveling into receiving devices like a threaded needle through the fabric of space-time.

The ceremony was the eye of the needle; a sacred space for mourners, grievers, and share holders of the Nefertari merchandise empire. The Church of Loa surrounded her body with a kaleidoscopic array of flowers, and dense purple hallo of petals around her head. Music was played through the whole event, swollen with a hysteria. A heavy grief was placed on the altar of beauty for all to see. Nefertari’s eulogy was 3 days long, after the event a full recording was available for purchase. The event was also dilated into Star Vision for viewers with multiple solar masses. 

Nefertari’s death was considered perhaps the most grandiose event in the universe, at least in terms in of popularity and adoration. She was buried in an opal tomb with spires of elegant crystals doubling as cameras. The smaller lifeforms watched the decay, numbering trillions of viewers, especially since Nefertari perished from a virus. To them a galaxy of silicone was dissolving; the virus was their champion, an ambassador from the lower worlds to the out reaches of conscious creatures. To them, the decay was a celebration.

The queen of popularity was dead, but her fame shined brighter into the worlds of lower realms, a world which showed little difference between living and dead.

Further down, in the subatomic, the immortal v22.6 machines watched the universe. They didn’t care about life or death, they saw only the power plays of corporations bidding for control of the copyrights. There was a vast reservoir of sentimentally to be harvested from the emerging consumer populations. All signs pointed to a growing influence of higher dimensional broadcasting. The Church of Loa v22.6s turned their attention to the Plutonium Television broadcasting company.

All different sizes of creatures flowed down the river of Nefertari’s death, the great eyes of consciousness watched every detail with fascination. There was a few who felt disgusted, some who were trying not to see, trying to escape the great intense glare of the endlessly growing life of the universe; pulsing with gelatinous voyeurism. However, since lifeforms are rarely a singular organism, it was not uncommon for the creatures living inside digestive tracts to receive the broadcast and drag their larger hosts through the intergalactic advertisements.

A couple of creatures who did not appreciate Nefetari’s death were Medusa and Lucy. They were saturated of the whole mess; the idea of watching, being watched, or caring about the appearance of things, was completely sickening to them. Like a stone of old guilt, the imagination of the universe watching as a single eye, towards a single thing, was too much to endure. They decided to get as far from the cameras as they could.

They headed to Moloch-3, a distant and cold planet with a rogue star as its source of warmth. Lucy was certain there would be more monumental broadcasts, more involuntary advertisements. Medusa’s snakes hissed with agitation as she made plans for transportation.

La Arana:

Directive 84,329 was sent to the outer administration facility on Sol-4, whose ancient earth-era name was called Mars. The mandate was the explicit task of collecting genetic information on the creatures within the New Life Organization. New Life welcomed all life forms, from the viral to the largest star swarms. New Life sought to expand the reaches of life by any means, each galaxy or solar system under its association meant life could assimilate and include each and every creature.

The directive came from another large, if not more potent organization: The Church of Loa, who were responsible for creating Loa style androids across the universe. The Church was now interested in any new qualities or strategies the New Life organization may have been discovered over the years of including new life forms.

The Church spread its agents out over the universe like a web; a network of biological espionage, sticky with life emerging from every corner. They scanned, probed, sampled and ingested as many life forms as they could. Some of the more exotic methods included the creation of a time dilator megaphone, this allowed a conversation to be stretched 1000 or so years in either direction to communicate with large or tiny organisms. Sometimes the larger stars could take up to 700 years to say their name. 

During these 200 years, the Sol-4 facility was also used for testing and exploring the various conclusions made by the agents. The universe’s top scientists all submitted designs of potential life forms to be born. Some experiments included mixing qualities of various creatures, potentially creating something more sophisticated by the Church’s standards.

Head birth technician Tony Bids was frustrated with rejecting a queue of applications. He was the last stop before the approval of new life, and he took his certification process very seriously. He neurotically flicked his nose when he rejected one, and today his nose was red. He muttered to himself as he hit the queue for another application and slumped his shoulders in resignation. He felt buried in failure.

“Why are we doing this pointless research? This doesn’t make any sense, we have achieved immortality, these new life forms will only suffer existence.” Tony felt responsible for those being born, it weighed on him, as did the new accepted forms of life, like star swarms. He wasn’t sure if they were living creatures, but if he didn’t treat them like living things, perhaps he would be inflicting an involuntary existence upon them as a product. Involuntary existence meant you could be copied and enslaved regardless of objection. Approval of a new life form meant protections, denial meant the production line; property or life.

The new application was for a lifeform called Mia. “She” was a term used in the vernacular of the scientist who compiled her. Mia was a multi-cellular motile pyrrolysine inductor. This meant Mia could change her genetics in real time as she needed them. Her storehouse of information included the highlights of millions of organisms. She could select any of their qualities to overcome obstacles. Tony noticed there was also an unusual addition, which gave him pause before rejecting the application outright. Certain Church fail-safes were part of the organism, Mia was given a v22 personality. Tony only saw these fail-safes on the highest authority of the Church; v22s of any designation did not suffer doubt, anxiety, or dread. The abstractions were removed and replaced with enhanced temporal perspectives.

In short; the organism was vaccinated against suffering.

The hesitation occupied Tony Bids into the next day as he further reviewed the application. He thought of the possibilities for this lifeform; a fearless and consciousness thing, with the principles of life at the fore front of its control. What shape could it take, what size could it shrink or expand to? What kind of existence would such a creature have? Would it be torturous? Tony thought on the principles of life, and if this creature could reflect them without suffering.

His indecision stretched into another day. Secondary questions haunted him: Where would Mia live? What would Mia do if given resources? If she had a v22 personality, surely the higher v22.6s had vouched for her existence? Her designation was only 22.5, which meant she could die.

The application model predicted she would be used to re-terraform polluted planets by converting the ruins and radiation into a gigantic biological mass of Mia. With a genetic switch she could be killed, and the decay would transform the surface into a lush paradise for oxygen respirating creatures. Tony decided to approve the application after reviewing the prediction modeling of her life.

Sol-3 was the suggested incubation planet, Mia could be retrieved when needed, and the old ruins of Earth era society provided ample resources of nickel and sulfur. Tony Bids felt the application reflected the principles of life adequately, as well as some consideration for suffering.

Tony Bids never followed up with the organisms he approved, there were too many ways to get ripped by regret. Seeing other being suffer because he approved their existence haunted him, and he had no intention of adding more ghosts to his already burgeoning collection.  

After 200 years directive 84,329 was completed and, the Sol-4 facility was closed, Tony Bids having only approved 3 applications for new life forms. The first being Mia, the second being Tony Bids v2, and the third being a planetary seed creature which would be used in a Plutonium Television show called Battle of the Titans. This was the first program to be televised in Star Vision, a time-dilated show for living stars all over the universe.

Mia was created and sent through an interplanetary postal service to Sol-3. Her body was deposited on the southern continent and then ignored. A monitor technician was assigned to report, in the event she grew into the bio mass predicted in the application.