Substitutions Incorporated

Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

Ralph sat back in his plush leather chair and felt a satisfying, perfect softness supporting his tired back as he took a deep breath of relief and sipped his glass of expensive whiskey. The evening view of the gleaming city lights from his new office penthouse was definitely spectacular. He nodded to himself with approval, it’d been a great idea to build this second location now that he was transitioning out of the industrial/building sector and into the more lucrative section of household commodities.

He’d hatched the plan one morning as he was sweetening his coffee with an artificial sweetener. Couldn’t this simple idea of substitution be applied on a more massive scale? In more markets than simply food? Surely there were other situations where you could get away with having something that wasn’t the real thing to supplant or be a temporary stand-in for the real thing?

Throwing out some feelers via his industrial contacts, he got in touch with a research group that was looking for funding. After explaining his idea in general terms, their founder, a woman named Theresa, assured him that they’d have a working prototype of a product in six months.

As time went on though, he started feeling uneasy about the lack of communication. So he schedduled a meeting with Theresa in his office and that same morning she showed up, at seven o clock, on the dot.

Looking at her across the desk, he saw that she was still wearing a lab coat, which looked the same as the day he’d met her. He wondered if she ever took that thing off. She met his gaze with a slightly amused smile of her own, as if she deep down knew what he was thinking of her.

“So.” He started, not sure how he was going to begin. Then his instincts kicked in. “It’s been months and I haven’t heard a shred of information about your progress. You refuse to say what kind of project you’re working on, only that you assure me that it’s going to revolutionize a part of the industry. I’m afraid that isn’t good enough. My investors are getting nervous.”

The last bit of was a lie of course, because the rather paltry sum he’d invested had come from his own pockets. But an investment needed some kind of assurance after all. Thinking back to his tour of their facilities, he couldn’t remember what they had talked about, only that the details seemed to apply to his general ideas. He shook his head and looked up from the table at her.

He felt a chill down his spine as it felt like she hadn’t moved even the slightest bit since she’d sat down.

With a reassuring tone of voice, she replied, “I completely understand where you’re coming from Mr Lester. Perhaps this will put your mind at ease. You see, at Demarcation, we pride ourselves in our ability to finish what we started. As a show of faith, we’d like to offer you this.”

She produced a briefcase that she put on the table and opened, facing him. It was filled to the brim with money. He stared at it in surprise before tilting his head to look at her behind it.

“Money? I don’t understand.”

Her smile widened just a bit. “It’s simple, this is your investment in its entirety, plus a bonus of 15%. Should we fail to show you a functioning prototype of any kind at the end of our agreed-upon period, you keep all of this money and still make a profit.”

He blinked and screwed up his face in disbelief. “What? That’s… you’re serious aren’t you?”

She shrugged, her facial expression suddenly unreadable. “We are. Feel free to examine the money, I assure you, it’ll be to your satisfaction.”

And that’s how the meeting ended. Naturally, he’d taken the case of money to the bank under the pretense that he believed it to be counterfeit. However, even the most in-depth analysis failed to detect anything wrong with it. So, with a sense of elated happiness, he stored the whole thing in his safety deposit box and relaxed while he patiently waited for the results.

* * * *

Then about two and a half months later, he got a call from Theresa, inviting him to a test demo of the product that they’d produced. The code name “Nu-lite” seemed ambitious and as he arrived at the facility, he had no idea what to think of any of it.

As they led him into a big warehouse, his jaw dropped at the scene in front of him. The entire interior had been converted into what looked like a city street at night. Complete with buildings, cars, crosswalks, mailboxes, the works. His mind reeled at the level of detail they’d put into it. Every window looked meticulously arranged, even the pawn shop window which had that kind of desolate feeling to it wherever you went. The residential windows had flowers, curtains, and lighting. It was all extremely convincing to the point where he got startled as Theresa touched him gently on his arm. He stared at her for a moment, not sure what to think of any of this. What was this?

She smiled at him, but her smile never seemed to reach her eyes. “I’m sure you’re feeling a bit surprised by all of this. Let me explain. Do you see that lamppost over there?”

And as he looked at it, he had the startling realization that the light was somehow unusual. But he couldn’t put his finger on it until he realized that it seemed like the cone of light coming from it wasn’t entirely three-dimensional. It somehow looked… flat?

Walking from the dimly lit area of the double doors, he found himself enveloped in darkness and even though he could see the cone of light, he still couldn’t almost see himself. It was as if the light was there, but at the same time wasn’t. Stepping into the cone of light, he could see that all around the cone of light, there was only darkness. The effect was mesmerizing as he stepped in and out of the light. From the outside, he could see the area was well-lit, but as he stepped inside, he couldn’t almost see anything outside of the cone.

“So, can one of you more… technically minded people run this by me again?” He said, looking lost.

A younger, female researcher stepped into the light, startling him. Her round gold-rimmed glasses gleamed convincingly in the light as she smiled faintly. “Sir, it’s rather simple, our new product, tentatively named ‘Nu-lite’ isn’t actually light at all.”

“It isn’t?” He said, now feeling even more confused.

“No, it’s just the… hmm, perception of light you see. The device above you isn’t actually producing photons at all. It’s merely projecting a reconstituted version of this scene into your mind, allowing your brain to believe that this area is, in fact, lit. However, since the human visual cortex is limited, I’m afraid we haven’t worked out the kinks yet in allowing this… err uh… un-light if you will, to propagate beyond the cone itself.”

He adjusted his tie, feeling even more concerned about the fact that his mind might be told to see things rather than seeing them. Then he ventured another question, “so what’s stopping us from making a kind of lamp that lights everything then?”

Her smile faded a bit, a thing he didn’t like at all as she said with forced enthusiasm, “ah, that wouldn’t… I mean, it’s not.” She looked at him with a briefly troubled face before she concluded, “it caused hemorrhaging in the test subjects when we tried cones bigger than this Sir. I wouldn’t recommend it.”

He looked up straight into the lamp itself and marveled at how he didn’t have to squint at it. The light was warm, comfortable, and perfectly tuned. He shrugged, “well, we’ll just have everyone sign a disclaimer and a warning NDA. It’ll be fine.”

About a year later, the first NuLite ™ lamps were ordered by a middle-sized municipality looking for a gimmick to put them in the media spotlight. As the news spread about this revolutionary new technology, voices both for and against this new technology were raised in the media. Most of the voices against were silenced when it became public knowledge that this new technology required only a fraction of the power of even the most efficient LED light.

Six months later they had not only recouped their investment, but were making bank as orders were even coming in from overseas. It seemed the whole world was interested in slashing energy costs despite the obvious limitations of the product. There was even talk in the scientific community that this might be a Nobel prize-worthy invention.

A lazy Friday afternoon as Ralph was taking a snooze in his office (he loved his comfy chair) his phone on the desk rang. Rousing himself from a disjointed dream, he picked up the phone and automatically announced his corporation’s name and his own as he spoke.

“We have another invention ready to demonstrate.” Theresa’s voice said in a flat tone of voice.

It took him a moment to recognize her as he replied, “Ah, Theresa, a new demo? What do you mean?”

“Sir, did you not say that you had a vision for a world with more things… substituted?”

He found himself nodding. “Yes, YES!” Then he excitedly added, “But I was thinking that we would take it step by step, have a meeting, discuss terms and ideas and projections perhaps.”

“Yes, we can certainly do that if our new product doesn’t meet with your approval. You see, we were so intrigued by your idea of substitution that a few of us hatched another idea and cobbled together something interesting for you. I think it’ll be a hit.”

He felt the excitement rise in him as he realized that he may have struck a gold mine with this partnership. “I’d love to see what you’ve got made up. When can I be there?”

Theresa’s voice took on an almost seductive quality as she said, “how about my place? I’ll treat you to a dinner you’ll never forget.”

Feeling bewildered, Ralph stammered, “I-I… yes? Sure, but what does that have to do with the demo?”

He could hear the smile in her voice now, “The dinner is intimately connected to our new product. You’ll see soon enough. I’ll pick you up at ten PM.”

And with that, she hung up on him. He put down the phone and buried his face in his hands, what the hell was she on about? A dinner demoing a new product? What would it possibly be? Was she coming on to him? No, he was sure she was as stone cold as a rock face on Uranus.

He snapped out of his confused thoughts when he realized with a start that she didn’t have his home address. And he certainly wasn’t going to stay in the office until ten o clock, he had planned to leave at three! But as he phoned her number, there wasn’t even a dial tone or a notice that the number itself was out of order, there simply was nothing.

Hanging up the phone, he spent a few minutes wondering if he was going to have his driver drop him off at the demo warehouse. But ultimately when his stomach growled (as he’d slept through lunch and then some) he decided that if she didn’t have the good sense to have a working phone or to verify details like that, she could face the consequences of that herself.

A few hours later, he was back home again in his expansive mansion, now feeling reinvigorated after a decent meal and some drinks with the boys at the club. Relaxing on his favorite sofa, he tried to watch a courtroom drama show, but the whole time his thoughts kept drifting back to the mystery behind Theresa and her company. Dozing off, he was awakened by his butler a few hours later at precisely ten PM.

“Sir, I’m sorry to wake you, but a woman is requesting your company outside the compound,” the butler said apologetically.

He looked up at the butler in disbelief. “A woman? At this hour? I’m not…” and here he remembered the “date” and nodded as he added, “Ah yes, tell her I’ll be right out.”

Throwing on some of his best clothes in a blur, he hurried out to the gates of his expansive garden until he saw her through the bars. As the gate opened, he found that she was leaning against a small car that appeared to be an old Lada, but it didn’t quite look like one somehow.

He smiled sheepishly at her as he realized that while he had dressed up, she was still wearing that same old lab coat as always.

“I’m very sorry, but I didn’t think to give you my home address you know?” He said, feeling an odd, misplaced sense of shame. Then he added, “by the way, how did you find out where I live? This address is secret for a reason you know. I paid good money to have this anonymized.”

She gave him the tiniest of smiles as she got into the car and opened the passenger side door for him. “We have an extremely good information network. That’s all I’m allowed to say. Partner confidentiality and such. I’m sure you understand.”

As he got into the car, although it looked old, he noticed that it didn’t have that tell-tale musty smell that all cars developed after a while. As she sped away into the night though, his thoughts turned to the dashboard which had a configuration he’d never seen before. He gave her a look which she didn’t return as her eyes seemed glued to the road ahead of them.

“Wow, I’ve never seen a dashboard like this before, what does all of this stuff mean?” He ventured, trying to make some casual conversation.

Without tearing her eyes off the road for even a second, she replied, “It’s a prototype that I’m testing out as a matter of fact. You could call it a true concept car.” And here for some reason, she giggled a bit to herself in a shrill way that sent chills down his spine.

A few moments of silence passed before she spoke again. “Have you ever considered how mechanical an old combustion vehicle such as this is? All those bolts and things rattling, engine roaring, tires making noises against the road?”

Ralph shrugged as he didn’t have anything substantial to say. “I guess? I never thought about it that way. Why do you ask?”

“Well, this car isn’t mechanical you see,” she said with a neutral face. “Do not be alarmed at what happens next,” she added before she pushed a button on the dashboard.

At first, Ralph thought he’d gone completely deaf when she’d pushed the button, and he yelped a bit in surprise which calmed him down. That’s when he realized that she’d somehow completely quieted down the car. Not just silenced or muted the sound, but completely suppressed it.

“How… how did you do that? That’s not physically possible.” He said with chills running down his spine.

She smiled a bit and took her hands off the steering wheel that vanished into the dashboard. It was only then that he noticed that all the windows had turned completely opaquely black.

“It’s another idea we hatched, we call it the ultimate car, because it’s built with a revolutionary new technology that allows us to bend the laws of physics in new and interesting ways.” Here she looked at him and smiled in an almost loving way as she added, “your vision made this real Ralph, it’s so beautiful and we owe this all to you. But, we can talk more about this new product over dinner. After all, you haven’t seen the actual product yet. This is just a beta product at this stage, we need more refinement, adaptation, accessibility, and intimacy with it. Now, shall we head up to my apartment?”

He stared at her crestfallen, “What? We’ve arrived?”

She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, actually we arrived when I activated the suppressor device which had a lot of fascinating effects which I’ll detail to you later. We can safely exit the vehicle now.” And with that, she opened her door which caused all the windows to resume their transparency again.

As she opened the door, the din of the late-night traffic suddenly seemed to fill the car’s cabin again and for a moment, Ralph felt like it was extremely loud. When he stumbled out of the vehicle and looked at it, it seemed like just some old beat-up car. He shook his head in amazement, never judge a book by its cover!

Looking around at the neighborhood, he realized that it was in a more run-down part of the city and he recognized it as being on the other side of town. He looked at his watch; 10:18 and laughed nervously to himself. That drive would have taken two hours with the traffic at this hour and she’d somehow done it in eighteen minutes?!

“Are you coming?” She said, making him look up at her as she was now standing at the top of the stairs leading to the apartment building.

“I … yes, but… how?” He said, pointing at the car in disbelief.

She laughed which sounded incredibly insincere as she looked at him with an odd smile. “Like I said, I will explain all of the fantastic features that this type of vehicle offers at a later date. But yes, it can do things regular cars could never do. My advice is that you find it acceptable and move on. Preferably to my apartment where I can serve you a fantastic dinner.”

Mentally shrugging to himself, he realized that the only way to avoid going completely mad would be to simply take her word for it. She was the expert after all and everything about it was way over his head anyway. He walked up the stairs and into the run-down lobby of the building and soon enough he found himself in her apartment.

As she closed the door behind him, he noticed that she wasn’t locking it, which was an odd thing to do at this time of night. He shrugged it off as he hung his overcoat on an elegantly decorated coat stand. Turning around, he found himself standing in an apartment that was the definition of elegance. Beautiful 1950s curtains framed the windows to the street which made the outside neon lights seem almost nostalgic. Walking into the living room, he found it to have an odd mishmash of different eras that still seemed to somehow fit together. In a corner, a small poker table was set up with what looked like Tudor-era chairs. Cramped in a corner was a wase that looked very expensive as it was made out of the most delicate fine china. The flower sticking out of it was nothing short of breathtaking as it had an almost iridescent quality to it.

The more he looked around the room, the more confused he got. By his estimate, this room alone must have cost a fortune to decorate in this way, assuming that all of it wasn’t just cheap replicas. As he ran his finger over the table, which had inlaid gemstones that looked very authentic to his trained eye, he felt his mind wanting to scream and jump out the window.

Drawing in a sharp breath, he suddenly became aware of her standing in the doorway, smiling that unnerving smile of hers.

“Dinner’s ready.” She said with a matter-of-fact voice as she ventured back into the kitchen area.

Getting up, he realized that he was very hungry and when he entered the kitchen, he saw that it was done up in a classic IKEA style which compared to the living room, made it look extremely sterile somehow. The smell coming off the plates that were filled with big steaks, perfectly oven-baked potatoes, and a big bowl of gravy made his mouth water. Sitting down by the table, he realized that now, more than ever, her lab coat seemed to be incredibly out of place.

Following his gaze, she looked down at herself and chuckled. “Ah yes, I wear my coat so often that I sometimes forget that I should maybe change into other things. Just a moment.” She said as she got up from her chair and left the kitchen.

A short while after, she came in and now she was wearing what seemed to be just a simple white T-shirt and some faded jeans. She smiled at him as she sat down again at the table. “Compared to you, I’m under-dressed, but I hope you won’t mind. This is what I feel is acceptable to wear after a long day at the lab.”

“Oh, no no, it’s my fault, I should have realized this wasn’t a formal affair. I guess I’m a bit out of touch these days,” he replied to her as now he felt like the odd one out. Why had he decided to wear this to what would be something akin to a date? It didn’t make sense.

Then as she poured red wine from a beautiful hexagonal decanter and sat down again, they both started in on their meal.

As he bit into the steak, Ralph could tell that it was definitely expensive. While it looked mundane, it had a quality of chew and flavor that was just incredible. The gravy and potatoes were the same kind as well. Perfectly cooked, savory, and with just the right amount of seasoning.

When he took a sip from the wine, he wasn’t surprised when it turned out to be of a vintage that tasted better than the sip of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti that he’d bought for an extreme sum once. It was simply beautifully put together. When she asked him a question, he first didn’t hear it as his entire awareness was completely focused on the meal.

He looked up at her, “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“Are you finding the meal to be to your satisfaction?” She said with a face that had her trademark inscrutable facade plastered all over it.

“Yes, absolutely,” he replied emphatically, “I haven’t had a meal this good in over a decade. This is extraordinary.”

She nodded with a satisfied look on her face. “Good, what you’re eating is actually a reconfigured matter-substitute made out of bricks of bio-matter.” Then she smiled as she leaned in and added, “don’t worry, it is not the carcasses of dead humans.”

When he realized her joke, he laughed unexpectedly and looked down at his food, it seemed to be perfectly what it was. But some kind of bio-matter? He looked up at her again and said, “then what is it?” with a voice that sounded a bit more anxious than he’d liked it to be.

Laughing at him, she exclaimed, “It’s grass actually! And I know what you’re thinking, humans can’t digest grass now can they? But we found a way to make that kind of bio-matter compatible with the human physiology. Besides, grass was the only biological matter that offered the malleability that we required for the creation process of the final product.”

“What do you mean?” He said, not feeling entirely like he was understanding her.

“Simply put, we’ve recorded the mental and sensory imagery of a person eating this dinner to make a sort of substitution that we then apply to the bio-bricks that reshape them into matter that will produce the required sensation when they’re consumed.”

“So, this dinner isn’t real?” He said with a strange feeling in his chest.

“No, it’s quite real, but you’re not actually eating a steak. You’re eating a synthesized matter construct that produces the flavor that’s expected of a good steak. Nutritionally though, it certainly isn’t the same of course. But in terms of flavor, it’s perfect.”

“What’s the difference?” He said as he sipped his wine, savoring it.

“Essentially, while you might be thinking a meal like this would put a lot of calories into your system, in reality, you’re eating basically what amounts to a single leaf of lettuce in terms of nutrition.” She said with a pleased smile on her face as she finished off her glass of wine.

“And the wine?” He said, feeling bewildered.

“It’s a liquid form of the same product, however, we haven’t been able to replicate the sensation of alcohol impairment just yet. For now, though, it will taste just as any alcohol-infused beverage should taste, but it will not have an effect on your system.”

He looked at his wine glass and tried to wrap his head around it. Here he was, sipping what to him felt like the most expensive wine in the world. But in reality, it was just… liquid grass?

“This is incredible Theresa, do you realize what you’ve done here? You may have changed the face of modern society if we can make a breakthrough with it. So, how many dishes do you have prepared so far?”

Her face grew very serious as she said, “For now, only this dish, the necessary process for manufacturing the bricks was the tricky part. However, finding the perfect ‘donor’ for the dish itself was very difficult. You see, we need to have people with a perfect sense of taste and enjoyment of a certain dish if we are to make the perfect substitute dish template.”

He leaned towards her excitedly as he said, “I can help with that! I know plenty of people in the food industry who–“

She shook her head dismissively, “no, we don’t need famous people or people with their own agendas. We have found a suitable candidate once and I have faith in our recruitment process. While I appreciate your offer for assistance, we will manage this on our own.”

He found his mouth feeling dry as she merely stared at him now, completely still. After a tense few minutes of silence, he nodded at her. “Alright, we’ll play it your way. After all, your results are changing the world here. But, just one question, so you say that this tastes like fatty food, but you can’t live off it?”

Her face remained serious. “No, in fact, we need to be very clear in our product information that this does not replace food in any shape or form. It’s merely a substitute. A human that would eat this exclusively would starve to death eventually.”

He nodded at her, already mentally imagining all the warning labels that would come with this food. Then he thought of something and said, “So, what do you suggest we call this product?”

She waved dismissively at him and said, “you can figure that out by yourself, you’re the person who does the marketing. Just ensure that the name doesn’t make people associate it with actual food. That should be enough.”

And with that, they wrapped up their meal, and twenty minutes later, he waved goodbye to her as she drove off in her strange experimental car. As the vehicle slowly moved down the street, he kept looking at it, wondering if it would do something strange when she’d no doubt put it into the strange noiseless state. But as it kept slowly going down the road, he eventually lost sight of it in the darkness, headed inside, and promptly went to bed.

The day after, he woke up ravenously hungry and as he feasted on a breakfast of pancakes, he realized that the “food” from the previous night had a serious drawback to it. But then he giggled to himself like a boy about to make some mischief when he remembered those horrible-tasting dinner replacement packs. With a few modifications and adjustments, they’d be the perfect match for the person wanting to live cheaply. You’d be able to eat the finest, most unhealthy-tasting fast food you ever wanted, but what you’d then eat later in the day would be a shake of actual nutrients that would satisfy your body’s needs. It was indeed a gold mine in the making!

The rest of the year was a blur as they launched their food substitute called GastroSubst which was marketed as a “Gastronomical Experience” rather than food. During all interviews, Ralph constantly had to remind everyone that this was not food, it was not a dish, it was not a dinner, it was a substitute that mimicked the experience of eating food. But it was absolutely not food.

During this time, they also launched “The Concept of a Car” or The COAC as it was nicknamed quickly after a lot of car enthusiasts bought it and extolled its virtues to everyone. And of course, a lot of them forced open the hood of the car, only to find that the innards had completely melted. All of the attempts at returns of those vehicles were met with a swift lawsuit from Demarcation Incorporated as they had breached the terms of service for their concept of a car.

At this point, Ralph started to notice more and more that there were articles highlighting some of the dangers of the products themselves. One video clip that he found was of a guy who had stolen two of the NuLite fixtures from street lamps. In the video, the man said that people needed to know the truth as he angled both lights towards a single source which was a cage containing a rat.

Ralph shook his head during the explanation as he knew fully well that NuLite “light” didn’t show up on any recordings as it didn’t exist in the physical sense. But his ridicule quickly turned to a deep-rooted sense of fear as the man on the video proceeded to explain that as well, pointing to two LEDs on each light that would indicate if the light was on or not.

Then he exited the room and the camera above the cage focused on the rat while keeping the diodes in full view. When they both turned green, the rat first started moving erratically, then it stopped as its eyes began to bleed along with its ears. It seemed to cough a bit before it flopped over on its side and stopped moving. Feeling sick to his stomach, Ralph closed the video and sat at his desk trembling. NDAs and instructions were one thing, but if the wrong department got wind of this, he might be facing lawsuits from god knows how many people who’d been stupid enough to repeat this experiment as a dare. Not to mention the potential terrorism applications.

No, he had to nip this in the bud immediately. A few calls later he had a name and for the next couple of days, he hammered out an agreement with the person in question. Then, after a few million dollars had changed hands, the issue was truly and well buried. For now.

But he knew this was just a stopgap measure as there were obviously more such incidents just waiting to happen. He resolved to contact Theresa about it as this was something that they needed to work out. In a worst-case scenario, they’d do a recall, but the financial implications of such a wide recall with a media fallout made him feel like throwing up.

Weeks passed with no more incidents and soon enough Ralph felt like maybe the worst of it was over. After all, there were plenty of products out there that were dangerous if misused right? And they had printed warnings in BIG RED LETTERS in all documentation sent to the customers. Legally speaking, they were fully covered as the blatant misuse of their product wasn’t their problem. And how would it work if everyone selling dangerous products were liable for misuse?

At this point, he was even second-guessing his buy-out of that guy with the rat, but he justified it with the thought that he’d just spent some money to avoid negative publicity.

Then the big discussion about GastroSubst started in the media and the politicians got involved. First, the accusation was that the product was addictive, but after some well-placed lawsuits and an inquiry by the federal department of health, it was shown that the product wasn’t at all addictive. However, subsequent studies done by the scientific community even helped boost sales a bit as it was shown that the reason people preferred GastroSubst over regular food was that it tasted so good that they couldn’t live without it. The discourse in the media continued with voices claiming that GastroSubst was ruining cooking culture around the world since nothing could compete with its perfection. Then the media violently swung the other way when one of the biggest antagonistic voices, a certain Berthold Brent was shown to have several GastroSubst fabricators in his home, and also a lifetime supply of the bricks required to make the food.

Sales soared again after that, with people seemingly having accepted it as a part of life. Besides, nothing could match the culinary experience of it with the same price tag. Rich people of course still spent money on real food, but they were among the elite, so it was just viewed as an eccentricity. Amid this positive blitz, he still had a very bad day when he read a statement from the daughter of an old elderly woman who had starved to death, eating only GastroSubst.

According to the article, the daughter had regularly checked up on her as she was suffering from bouts of dementia that required her to help out. But when the daughter got sick for a few weeks and couldn’t visit her on the daily, her mother stopped communicating with her. Fearing the worst, she made her way to the apartment to find that her already malnourished mother had simply starved to death. Of course, she blamed the brand, saying that she’d tried to get her mother to stop “eating that damn fake food crap”, but she’d still been unable to dissuade her from eating a specific recipe that the mother said reminded her of her younger, happier days.

There was of course no media blitz this time, mostly because the public had simply accepted the reality of the product. Besides, Ralph’s attention had already shifted else as there were reports of people using the Concept Cars and vanishing suddenly. They’d left, but then never shown up where they were supposed to go. But it wasn’t until the governing body for automobile safety opened up an official inquiry that again sent sales into turmoil that Ralph decided that enough was enough.

He tried for a week to reach them over the phone, over email, and then sent them a sternly worded letter through the regular mail, requesting a meeting to “address the very serious issues with several of the substitution products.”

When the letter went unanswered, and no calls came back he made his way down to the warehouse where the first demo had been run. When he stepped out of the expensive car, he told his driver to wait. But now, the building seemed different somehow until he realized that the façade was completely changed. Instead of the sleek surface and sign detailing Demarcation Incorporated, he was staring at a run-down factory front. Going inside, he still saw the same big empty area as before, but there wasn’t a trace of any of the buildings, or the road that had all been authentic.

Feeling panic now, he rushed out into the car and told his driver to step on it and gave him the address to Theresa’s apartment, knowing full well that it was unlikely that he’d find anything there either. A few hours later, he managed to get the janitor to let him into the lobby which was as shabby as it had been before. But when he got up to the floor where she’d lived, the janitor (after being handed a few hundred dollar bills) opened the door and said that the previous tenant had broken the lease at least a week ago.

Staring into the apartment, he suddenly felt an intense need to throw up. Because in the middle of the living room area was the body of Theresa, splayed out on a scuffed sofa. However, when he walked up to her and carefully touched her face, the entire shape collapsed into a pile of skin-colored dust.

Mixed in with the dust, he could make out a calling card which he lifted with fingers that felt like they were a million miles away. It was a simple white card with an old-style typewriter font written on it. It simply said:

As he fell to his knees, he whimpered a bit, because now he knew his life as it had been was completely over. They’d rake him over the coals, make him their patsy, and probably throw him in jail where he’d rot until he died of old age, or worse.

He sat there for what felt like forever. But then a thought came to him. It made him giggle hysterically at first, then his giggle turned into a deranged laughter as he found it so ironically hilarious.

Obviously, he just needed a substitute for himself!

— End

Author’s note:

Sometimes you write an ending and you find yourself knowing more than your audience does. So, you ask yourself, would this story be better if I included this in the ending?

Would the reader be more or less satisfied knowing this?

But I know there are definitely two wolves here. One wants the information, a story without a satisfying climax is not a story that’s good. The other (which is the camp I fall into myself), sometimes finds that a story with less information stimulates the mind, making you think about what it could be. The so-called “post-processing” and discussion with other people about the themes in the story are almost more enjoyable than the story itself.

So, I put this choice to you dear reader, and it’s a Faustian one: Below is an ending with what I know, but there’s no guarantee that this will be an ending you’d like more than the above one. Because you probably had an idea of what your ending would be like, or what a satisfactory ending should be for you. Yes, that shadow of that ending is somewhere in your mind, and by reading my version you’re getting a sort of substitute for what you know to be your truth. it’s my little way of giving you a taste of what it would be like to exist in that world as a consumer.

Time to choose.

Tick Tock.

– Wondrous Fairy

x x x x x [Extra Ending Start] x x x x

He heard the sound of footsteps behind him, and a familiar voice rang out. “Was she to your satisfaction?”

Wiping his tears, he got up and turned around and there she was, same as ever, Theresa. She smiled at him with what seemed like genuine affection as she stepped forward, eyeing his face intently and nodding to herself.

“Theresa!” He exclaimed, at a loss for words.

Her smile didn’t waver for a second. “‘Not quite, I’m an improved modal representation.”

He felt the anger rising inside of him as he spat out, “you’re not fucking real, you’re… just like all the other mindfucking crap that your shitty corporation makes. Fuck with our heads, make us see and hear and do things that aren’t real, is that what it’s all about for you? No care if someone dies? If someone suffers?”

She smiled, and this time it felt surprisingly genuine to him. “Oh, but you didn’t care at first, did you? Our test researcher, that sweet little thing with the glasses? Tailored towards being slightly attractive and innocent. Young-sex-submissive vector. She even produced a stammer, indicating insecurity. It was meant to induce follow-up questions, producing a moral response. You never asked about those persons experiencing the aneurysm, and you never asked what happened with our donors either for the GastroSubst program.”

Feeling dazed, he tried to steady himself as his entire body was shaking. “What… happened to them?”

She leaned against the door frame as she giggled in a happy, carefree way. “Why they all died of course. A necessary trade-off to make a superior product. You knew at some level, but as long as the money rolled in and the customers were happy, you didn’t want to know.”

“But… but why? Why make products that kill people? Food that doesn’t feed you, cars that make you vanish, lights that burn out your brain, why?”

She sighed in the way a teacher sighs when a student fails to understand the simplest of lessons.

“That wasn’t on purpose, it was just one of those issues we could never work out. You see, you humans are so fragile. You have no idea how little it takes to kill one of you. A misplaced neuron here, a misstep in a hormone balance, lack of minor nutrients, exposure to even the slightest of pressures, you just… die. It’s very unfortunate, but since you keep making so many more of you, it’s no concern of ours.”

His voice was hoarse now as he ground out, “what happened with the people in the cars? You did something to them didn’t you?”

She shook her head with an apologetic smile. “Not at all, we did warn you that the compartment needed to be perfectly isolated when traveling using our special technology. But like you humans do, you didn’t listen. And well, ever seen an egg explode in a pressure chamber? Same thing, but with a lot more red and mushy bits.”

“What the hell are you?”

She looked up at the ceiling as if trying to pierce it with her gaze. “I’m technically nobody. I don’t exist in the physical world as you know it. You’ve already realized this by now. The entity that controls me has as much common with you as you’d have with an ant. But imagine if you could talk to an ant, do experiments, figure out solutions for them, and see how they use those solutions in their everyday lives, would you all do that as well? And how would you feel if a bunch of ants died because they didn’t heed your warnings? Wouldn’t you be slightly annoyed?”

He felt his knees grow weak again as he said, “That’s… you can’t… that’s inhuman!”

Upon hearing that, her grin got wider and wider until it felt like the whole world was composed of just her mouth. Then she said with the voice of thunder that tore through his brain like a hailstorm of bullets. “You’re not wrong.”

It’s All Steel Everywhere, at Once

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Tac-sys V4.312 BEGIN personal log:

Sirens. The fucking sirens cut into my aching head as I got up from my stretcher. We were so loaded up with people that there was no space for us regular grunts. Bet the fucking eggheads got their comfy mattresses in the aft residential compartment though. I got up, ready to beat on somebody, and then realized nobody was around. Then I heard the groaning sound of metal which sent shivers down my spine, I managed to get the null generator and face shield on and switch it on before it all went negative-white around me.

Right, you regular civvies, you have no idea what I’m talking about. I might as well spell it out for you: Negative-white is what you get when something explodes around you while you’ve shifted anko phases. Wait, you fucks don’t even know that. OK, so imagine you’ve got more than our normal third-dimensional space like you could step into another room and not be here, but almost be here but by a fraction of a millimeter. Yeah, reading it back, I think I’ve lost you again. Fuck it, moving on. Besides, I’m pretty sure you’ll all be reading this way later than the date that I’m writing this anyway. Not that time means much anymore to me.

Anyways, I wasn’t there, yet I was close to there that I could see the goddamn ship go up around me and be pissed that I had fuck all to hold onto. Of course, I was far away enough from the reactor that the bleed-off probably wouldn’t kill me.

After my vision went dark because of the overload residue from my shift, I patiently waited for the bots to finish repairing my retinas and nerves. Fuck, I hate how much that itches. At this point, that’s when I realized the terrifyingly depressing reality of me being alive. Yeah sure, I was alive, but I was infinity-plus stretches away from home and I only had so many resources at my disposal. I looked around at all the debris and sighed. It was going to suck so hard to reconstitute all of this into something useful.

While our side continued losing the skirmish, I stayed in the shadow of my ship, near the failing mag coils that would mask my signature, and watched the carnage. I couldn’t really do anything at this point, if I shifted phases, I’d probably die, and getting to the other ships was impossible as the area was still blanketed in potential that was spreading outwardly. Standard OP in this situation was to just wait and stay concealed. Zero chance of updating anyone without getting blown away.

I sighed and shook my head, knowing that I’d have to fuck myself hard here. I had no choice but to set my revive for 96 years, the acknowledged decay rate for potentials. I couldn’t shift until then unless something unforeseen happened. As I drifted off into torpor, I remember cursing my goddamn reflexes, I should have slept in and died without ever knowing anything anymore.

The next thing I did was take in a sharp breath, that panicked state is something you never get over. When you wake up from Torpor, your entire body screams at you to run. Think of it as setting your fight-flight to max intensity. I fumbled a bit into nothingness before I remembered my training and stiffened up as my senses came back online. Eyes were super sharp, awesome. I looked around and saw an aged debris field now. The chronograph said 54 years, early wake up by the systems. Oh yay, so I had only lost the equivalence of half my life. Everyone I knew would be old or dead if I got back now. Which of course I wouldn’t, because now I was only starting this whole shit.

I shifted into normal space and felt the suit firm up around me as it became subject to remaining potential, absolute zero, and whatever shit that our side had been carrying. It was a comforting feeling knowing that our technology was still good after so long. I sent out a sitrep request blip and got nothing. If anyone had gotten to any pods, they’d been gone for decades at this point, either having been picked up by someone else or turned into small single-person coffins still hurtling through space.

Running another scan, I found another ship a few hundred clicks away, my onboard jet plotted assisted lines between all the relevant husks that were floating around. I saw the time estimates increase up to a few weeks when I changed from jet to “by my own devices”, which is egghead speak for using your own body. I’d have to push off these husks myself and then wait for an agonizingly long time before I’d reach the others. Of course, I had the fortune of being able to shift into negative and then torpor safely, but I’d lose more time. I think this is when I realized the war was definitely over for me. There was no way I was getting home to anything else but the aftermath. It feels weird looking back on it now, knowing I cared.

Anyway, I got to the first husk, some good piping, some even better conduits. Stash, weld, combine, fuse, redirect, then I threw the bundle towards the second husk and negged and immediately torpored. I woke up two weeks later to the same panic-realize routine, managed to catch myself before I hit the hull, and then saw the bundle I’d thrown come at the ship maybe twenty meters away. Fuck, something must have hit it and deflected it.

I half-magged myself to the hull and ran as fast as I dared, then managed to get to it before it hit. Step one out of twenty-one was now done. As I went through the nearby dead husks, seeing the leftovers of war, I lucked out, as I found an almost intact Cintin escape pod. Sure, their tech wasn’t as good as ours, but they made that up in ferocity and numbers. Still, I took the time to replenish my oxygen supply from their onboard tanks. The gauge read 10 years now. A bit of a boost, but considering I was mostly breathing fake air with some traces of the real stuff mixed in, it wasn’t great.

I hated the warm static feeling it gave you as you sucked it down and I remember contemplating increasing the ratio but reminded myself that I had a ship to build.

About six years later (torpors included) I had a frame, another fifteen years more and the main reactor was ready to go online, then at the twenty-nine-year mark, I stood inside the completed thing, pressurized it with reclaimed oxy vapors and took my first real 100% atmo breath in what felt like a lifetime.

As I started the series of omega space jumps, I made it very clear to anyone around me that I was now white-flagged. That means I automatically surrendered to anyone who could read the signs on the hull or on the radio. I was done with war. I got back to the first outer colonies and found nothing but old debris floating around, probably over a century old at that point. I took another torpor nap while I told the ship to rip apart everything and turn itself into a cruiser.

I woke up about two decades later to the ship telling me it was done. Its tone was much more agreeable now that it had a proper AI constructed as well. Zero military language, all-natural.

I named her Maya, after the people who had worshiped the stars, they’d certainly done the same to her if she’d been there. The AI took to it, really spun the data around, and shaped itself into a really interesting entity. As we traveled towards the sol system, now at a much faster rate, she held me in the grav net and told me to brace for the worst as the pain was etched in her eyes.

She knew. I knew. Fuck. Oldest rookie mistake ever with making AIs.

When we arrived, there was nothing left of Earth or most of the solid planets. Maya detected that Luna had completely been ejected from the solar system. I told her we’d find another romantic spot then for our moonlit vacations and laughed. But inside I felt like a pile of crumbling grey ashes. Maya teared up as she hugged me with her constructed body.

We managed to integrate with a station next, I torpore’d while Maya toiled away for a few more decades, making it space worthy again. She woke me up with a kiss and that was the first time I didn’t really panic like I usually did. As she guided me around the now gleaming, polished station, I felt a hesitation in her pride in it. Turned out that ‘the hesitation’ was her assistant she’d created named Lemnon who was now her mate. There was nothing more to say, I boarded the cruiser she’d made for me all those years back and set a course for the most distant human colony.

I woke up to a neutral readout by the default mil-spec voice and this time around, I appreciated it. No panic, but I remember feeling hollow. Due to a massive detour caused by a near-catastrophic implosion, it’d taken some extra time for me to arrive. I asked how much, not really caring about the numbers.

The computer listed the actual time as something around half a million years. I was beyond caring at that point. There wasn’t much left of the colony in orbit, some small fragments, but most had either burnt up or deflected outward.

Computer readout detected biological activity though. As I stepped out of my landing capsule and breathed the fresh, real air of a planet, I felt odd. I was a person out of history, this wasn’t my Earth, but it was close enough that you didn’t really care.

As I neared the camp, I felt the anticipation, a new life, new humanity, what had they made of themselves in all this time? Then I saw them, clad in furs, shaking their spears, making guttural noises. I sat down hard as one of the spears hit me dead center in my gut. The primitive ran up to me, howling with joy, but I wept as I looked up at him and shook my head as I blew him away. The others scattered after that.

I’m fading, I can’t get back to my capsule and honestly, I don’t want to anymore. I’m fucking done.

I hope these savages are what remains of the human race because then I can at least go to my death knowing that I won. I finally won by ridding the universe of us all.

Onboard, adjust text beacon for temporal eject after operator overload detonation.

Tac-sys V4.312 END.

The City of The Moon

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On a moonlit night, a lonely man sat in a church in the city and wondered about the meaning of life. He’d searched religious texts, read philosophical books one upon the other, and consulted with wise people of all ages. Each of them had their own way and meaning, but he had nothing.

He rose from the bench he was sitting on and looked at the religious symbol on the wall. It meant a lot to people, it had thousands of years worth of history, but for him, it didn’t mean anything. It never would. He strode out from the building and into the moonlight. As he walked down the road, he saw some corporate buildings, an old disused playground, and shops that were closed for the night. As he kept walking, on a whim, he turned to the moon and told it that he wanted to know what the point of everything was and that reality was horrible, because it wouldn’t tell him.

The moon quietly kept shining its light, illuminating the countryside as he kept walking, wondering what to do. Soon enough he found that his random wandering had taken him out into some neighborhoods where houses were lined up on both sides of the road. He walked past them wondering what realities everyone inside of them had, if it caused them to sleep well, safe in the knowledge that they knew, or if they were staying up late like he was, wondering about it all.

A small side road led to the edge of the city where the houses stopped, big firs were now obscuring the moon somewhat, making it very dark. Strangely enough though, the man saw a pale light coming from a small altar down in a ditch that was still wet after a rain that had come by the day before.

Feeling oddly compelled by the sight, the man started making his way down into the ditch and soon stood before the altar that was made out of planks that had definitely seen better days. It was heartbreaking to see that it had been neglected this way because it was obvious that someone had spent a lot of effort to create it once, and now it was just like this. Forgotten. Neglected.

On it was an octagonal wooden container the size of a hat box that had a moon cast out of metal on its surface. The moon had an enigmatic expression on its face and the man reached out to trace the bulbous lines on the metallic face.

Suddenly the metal face spoke to him, “All that is, and all that would be, was and is inside and outside of the box.” and then it fell silent.

The man suddenly felt a strange feeling that he’d never felt before, an enormity of sorts, he couldn’t place it. But he knew this was one of those moments where he had to choose. To open the box or not? He had to know, was there another meaning inside? He opened the box and as he did, he found a folded-up piece of cloth that was very thin and that had roads printed on it on one side. He also found a myriad of small buildings and statues and things you would find in a city. How odd.

Getting back up to the road, he now saw that the pale light of the moon was somehow illuminating something much further down the road leading out of the city. Leaving it behind him, he walked for an hour until it wasn’t almost visible anymore. He felt free and happy and… that strange enormous feeling was also there inside of him. Like cracks on an old pillar maybe, or a mountain, no maybe a race of animals, or the laws of physics, oh it was so hard to pin down, so impossible to put into words!

He stopped once he’d reached the new thing that glowed and he realized it was a wooden table, with a chair next to it. Nodding to himself, he unfolded the big piece of cloth onto the table and looked at the small buildings in his hand… now where to begin? He placed the biggest one in the middle and as it touched the canvas, both it and the building transformed. He was now looking at a perfect miniature of an area around a city hall. It had an impossibly detailed quality to it, small streetlights, windows in the building, and even grass and bushes. He was afraid to touch it, knowing something that delicate surely must break. But he looked at the other pieces in his hand and he knew precisely where they should go now. For the next hour or so he marveled as he placed all of the things right in the city, creating it as he went, the miniature growing and becoming more and more elaborate.

Finally, after what felt like eons, he was finished and it was complete. The city was so beautiful, but he found that it had no people in it or animals. He nodded again to himself as he took out the small figures and placed them on the table, but for some odd reason, they didn’t integrate into the model like the buildings had done before. He tried moving them around, thinking maybe there was some reason why they didn’t become part of it, but soon enough, he gave up as nothing he did had any effect.

When he had the last figure left, he looked down at it and felt anger. Why wasn’t it working?

He spoke to it “This one’s me” and placed it down at the edge of the city. Suddenly he felt a shudder all around him and he looked up from the table and saw that he was no longer outside of the city, he was now close to a new city, and it was dawn. In a panic, he looked down at the table only to find that it was gone. The man’s hands were shaking in fear as he turned around only to find that a desert was behind him. His city had vanished behind him along with everything he knew.

Suddenly he felt that sense of enormity was starting to fade, he desperately clung onto it, hoping to keep it, but it was as if his mind was a broken balloon where the air just kept pouring out. Soon enough all that he could do was just stare at everything around him, wondering what to do next. Where would he go? Could he go back?

He walked into the city as the sun started rising and all around him, people started coming out of their houses and apartments, getting ready for all the things they needed to do that day. He walked past a playground where children were happily playing, he walked past some shops where an owner of one was talking to a woman, obviously happy in selling her something. He passed by the corporate offices where the reflective glass, bright with the sun had reflections that partially hid the people working inside of it.

Feeling extremely lost in this new city of his own making, he went to the place where he’d started it, city hall. When he looked up at the building, he saw that in place of what would have been a clock in his city, this one had the same big metallic face of the moon having that same enigmatic expression on it as before. At this point, the man felt more confused than ever and yelled out in anger at the moon on the building “WHAT DO YOU WANT? WHY DO THIS TO ME? ALL I WANTED WAS AN ANSWER!”, for the next few minutes, he kept screaming other things until the police came and took him away as he was scaring the people around him.

The rest of the day, the man spent in a jail cell while they were trying to figure out who he was and where he’d come from. He’d calmed down after one of them had given him a cup of tea and something to eat, but soon enough he found himself feeling extremely sleepy. So, he laid down in his cell and fell asleep, and woke up several hours later when it was evening again. It was quiet as the grave in the jail, only the attending officer was on watch and also half-asleep watching something on a small TV on the desk next to him.

Getting up from his temporary bed, the man saw that again, the moon was shining brightly through the window and looked out through the bars at it in the sky. He whispered to it that he was sorry and that he was done trying to find any answers because all he really wanted to do now was to go home again. The moon of course didn’t answer him, but a sound behind him made him turn around. The door to his cell had opened and the lights in the building were now off.

The man didn’t spare a single second getting out of the jail, which was now abandoned, not a soul there. When he entered the city streets only the streetlights were on now. Not a single house seemed like it had someone awake inside. As he retraced his steps outward towards where he’d come from, on a whim he went up to a house and knocked on the door, wondering if someone would answer. When nobody did, he tried the door and found that it was open. He looked into the darkened doorway and went inside, the house was in perfect order, but nobody was home. Going back out, he entered another house that also turned out to be as empty as the first one.

The city was empty now, everyone had gone away. He nodded to himself, feeling a trace of that strange emotion welling up in him again, that totality of… something. When he made his way further toward where he’d started, that feeling swelled up inside of him now, stronger than ever, he felt like it was almost impossibly powerful and before he knew it, he came upon a small altar next to the road and a table next to it. Rushing up to the table, he found that the city he’d created was still there and he quickly pulled off the buildings from the cloth which made them turn back into the small wooden figurines that they’d once were. Meanwhile, the ground turned back into the cloth and soon enough only city hall was visible, but this time, the man noticed that the strange moon face was on one of its sides. Bracing one hand against the cloth, the man pulled off the city hall block and then neatly folded up the cloth, returning both it and the figurines to the box. But… wait, it wasn’t enough, was it? There was one thing missing, after all, the small wooden people!

He shrugged, there was nothing to do about it now was there? Closing up the box with the metal moon on it, he returned to the shrine and placed down the box and talked to the moon on it, and said “Look, I’m done looking for answers, I just want to go home again.”

The moon again spoke to him, but this time what it said was subtly different: “All that was, and all that will be, has been inside and outside of the box.” And then after a long pause, it added, “On and on again.” then it fell silent.

Leaving the shrine, the man felt that again, the strange feeling was pouring out of him like before. This time though, he welcomed it, it was clearly not something that was meant for any human to ever hold onto. He made his way up to the road and found that his old city was there again, he laughed and shouted with happiness as he ran into it. When one house to his left had a light coming on and a door opening, he saw that it was his old friend who was coming out, obviously annoyed at the sound that he was making. He shouted to his friend that he’d finally seen the point of all, that he finally understood, but the confused look on his friend’s face scared him as the friend started backing off inside his house again, telling him to go away, that he would call the cops on him if he didn’t leave right this instant.

Confused, the man walked through the quiet city in the moonlight and finally made his way home again. His apartment was precisely as he’d left it and soon enough, he collapsed on his bed and fell asleep again. His life went on as before after that day, but nobody that he knew ever remembered him ever again.

Knowing now his own individual answer to what life was about, he had found that it’d been taken away from him at the same time. However, he never did talk to the moon after that night, because now he’d learned that some experiences in life do come with too high of a cost attached to them.

Shapes in a Beautiful Golden Darkness

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It came to us as a dream, but it was a nightmare. One we couldn’t resist.

Appearing in orbit first in a spaceship that dwarfed anything humanity had seen.

Our astronauts that were sent up reported advanced technology, mysterious shapes resembling art and then.. then all we heard was their ecstatic mumbles, then speeches of lyrical potency that we’d never heard before. Poems so achingly beautiful that you’d begin to cry at the first sentence. One of them sang a song that crippled most of our science team for hours. We were huddled in fetal positions, laughing, crying, loving, orgasming in how incredible it was.

Then we heard the screams, but we were so far into our own infatuation that we didn’t pay it any mind. When we came to several hours later on the second day, we got up and assessed the status of the astronauts. Readouts confirmed they were all dead.

We wanted to suppress it. Steeling ourselves, we all fought the almost pathological need to share the beauty that we’d heard. When the pictures of the mind-numbingly beautiful golden and black interior came back, we all felt compelled to go up there. But we recognized it for what it was, death in disguise. Almost all of us made it, until one couldn’t take it and repeated to himself the phrases that were all reverberating in our souls in front of the inquisitive media.

The governments all went rabid. They had to send more people and in the process, several fights broke out in orbit. After some deliberation, they all sensibly (foolishly) agreed they would enter in order of arrival.

Of course, all of us were debriefed and put on sick leave, which was ironic because there wasn’t anything wrong with any of us. If anything, the problem was that there was something right with us, something too right, too harmonious, too…

Too perfect.

* * * * *

It’s been two weeks since I wrote the above sentence. It sparked a remembrance of how things were and caused me to go into some sort of feedback loop where… I can’t speak of it. It’s too much, I’m sorry.

But yes. They all went in, and they sent back hundreds, thousands of pictures of what we think was art, paintings maybe, murals? Where do you draw the line between anything? There were poems, there were texts, stories, songs, entire rooms created just to take your breath away.

I heard descriptions of a room that was mostly dark except for the stars shining through big windows. In the center of the room was an intricate crystal that was apparently so beautiful that most people who passed by the room went inside and just ended up sitting there in silence until they died. They didn’t want anything else than to keep experiencing that beauty until they no longer could.

It’s very difficult to write about the specifics of any of this, because the moment I start recollecting my own memories and how it felt and how I felt and how I was, I start becoming like that too.

I’ve always had a terrible memory for details and fortunately, now, that’s helping me out for once.

* * * * *

It’s been six months now since the arrival of the ship. All governments have agreed to jam all of the signals coming from it and instituted blockades. I’m attached to a project where we’re using a selective kind of cocktail of drugs and neural modifiers to render a person “blank” which is to say that they will respond and follow orders, but at the same time, they won’t feel or associate or think creatively. I don’t understand the actual medical science behind it, but as I was one of the first team members to experience the phenomenon, I’m acting as a consultant.

I feel like I’m betraying something bigger than humanity, bigger than god, bigger than consciousness while trying to eradicate this from the world. But we must do something because our society is falling apart because of this. It doesn’t matter what we do towards the ship, it seems like it’s here to stay. Firing our biggest, most destructive weapons at it did nothing. Pleading with it didn’t work. It just fucking SITS there in orbit. WHY? WHY?!

* * * * *

I’m crying as I’m trying to type this. I feel such… I don’t know what I’m feeling. Sadness? Rejection? Happiness? Relief? Hatred? I have this big thing in my mind and I can’t get it out. But I’m crying.

It’s over. The ship was there one moment and gone the next. At first, we thought it had somehow become invisible because of how instantaneous it was. But no, it did leave something behind.

We sent our blanks up into orbit to retrieve all the bodies. All in all, we lost close to 600 people to that ship. No, not the ship itself really, I can’t tell you because I’ve trained myself not to go into those lines of thought that trigger another episode.

We burnt the bodies and sealed away all the items they had on them. Maybe one day humanity will be able to deal with something like this again.

But for now, we’ll all choose to forget.

The box has been opened though.

They want to turn all of us into blanks now.

A Kitchen

Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

23:17 on a Monday evening.

In an apartment somewhere, there are four people. We’ll observe them in a specific order.

Amelie

Amelie has turned 18 three weeks ago. She’s sitting in the living room and she’s worried out of her mind that her boyfriend Giuseppe is going to leave her after this night. She’s sitting on a sofa and she’s only marginally aware of another person named Ericha whose sitting a few meters next to her, drawing with her crayons. Amelie is also fantasizing about having Giuseppe fuck her in various ways while her mother is away. She wants to be fucked first on the table in the kitchen, because she thinks it sounds dirty. She wants him to fuck her from behind and treat her like a total slut as she imagines herself to be. (Amelie hasn’t be exposed to much in the way of sexual education or erotica.)

As she hears the mildy annoying rasping of Erichas crayons on the paper, she feels a pleasant warmth between her legs that she knows she’s going to take care of before bed. She already has plans of running away because she hates her mother so much. Her mother just wants to keep her locked up all the time. LOCKED UP, like a damn slave! Like she isn’t 18! She can do what she wants now!

Amelie has no idea how to live on her own though, because her mother has sheltered her from real life. But she still harbors these thoughts none the less.

Soba

Is Amelie’s mother, she is sitting on an uncomfortable wooden chair in the kitchen and she’s talking with Amelie’s boyfriend. She’s currently very angry and as her conversation with the young man continues, she is contemplating just throwing him out or calling the cops or maybe both. She’s very old and after her husband died, she was immensely relieved that she didn’t have to have sex with anyone ever again.

Soba is an asexual, not that she’s consciously aware of it.. This means that all of her life, she has forced herself to endure sex in the hopes that she would “get it” someday like the others. The reason that Soba is an asexual is rooted in a chemical dysfunction in her brain that makes certain parts not respond when others parts of her body are stimulated. Medicine will find a way to cure her particular condition in a year or two, but at that time it will be too late for her. This is what most people would consider a tragedy.

Part of the reason she is also angry at the young man sitting opposite of her is because he reminds her of her late husband and is thereby triggering feelings of guilt and shame in her. That guilt is then transmuted into the religious zealotry that she has been practicing for the last decade and a half. She is currently not aware of Ericha. She’s vaguely aware of her daughter, but most of her attention is focused on the young man in front of her.

Giuseppe

Is a 21 year old male whose found himself in quite an embarrassing discussion according to his own opinion. He’s currently talking to the mother of Amelie in a kitchen that’s a bit too brightly lit by a naked lightbulb. He’d rather be anywhere but here right now, because he’s scared of the old woman and her religious fervor. He’s trying to explain to her that he’s deeply in love with her daughter and that he envisions a future with her, but it isn’t working. He’s also attempted to explain to her that he’s got a job down at the warehouse packing crates and that he’s going to go places soon. He’s afraid that she isn’t going to let him see her daughter anymore.

He’s also sort of daydreaming about Amelie and how their future could be. In his daydreams, they are talking while taking a walk on the country side and enjoying life in the sun. Her warm smile, her beautiful hair, her body underneath her clothes that would respond to his touch.

He tries to keep his composure and not drift away while simultaneously being afraid of her. Through the drapes leading to the living room he sees Amelie look at him from time to time, but mostly she keeps her eyes downcast. He is not aware of Ericha.

Ericha

Is a girl whose 16 years old and considered mentally underdeveloped and likes to play with crayons when she’s visiting Amelie. She lives downstairs with her old father. She also doesn’t know it, but she has a sister coming as well soon who will have the same altered mental state as she has.

As she draws increasingly abstract geometric symbols on the paper, she’s aware of everyone in the apartment and she’s thinking intently about all of them. Her hands seemingly move by themselves as the crayons leave traces on the paper in front of her.

She wants to take out the big kitchen knife she knows is usually kept in a drawer in the kitchen and stab Soba in the eyes, she never liked how she looked at her. She then wants to eat the eyes for herself. Then she wants to skin the body and hide the skin because then she thinks that nobody will be able to find the body after that.

After that, she wants to take Giuseppe and slit his throat and watch him try and speak as blood flows out of his neck. She wants to stick her fingers into the hole and feel the insides of his throat as he dies. Then she wants to cut off his cock and stuff it in the hole so he’s “doing it” to himself.

Finally, she wants to stab Amelie as many times as she can before she dies. She fantasizes about it never ending, so she can stab her forever and see the blood splatter everywhere and hear her scream. She doesn’t really like the idea of screaming, but someone told her that it’d be fun if there was lots of blood coming out at the same time. She imagines seeing herself from the third person view from behind as she’s leaned over her and stabbing, stabbing, stabbing, stabbing over and over and over.

Ericha has been imagining this for weeks now, she has also imagined other things, but primarily her thoughts have been focused on this over and over, like a song on repeat.

???

??? is an invisible entity hovering slightly behind Ericha. It is aware of everyone in the apartment.

It wants blood. It hears their heartbeats.

Tucked away under Ericha’s cushion in the sofa is the big kitchen knife from the kitchen.

Unknown Caller

Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

I thought the first voice message was a wrong number when I heard it. Some young-sounding woman said she was going to meet “me” at the pub in three hours. Then a few hours later, a more angry voice message from her saying that “I” stood her up, but that “I” probably was attending some medical emergency. The thing that made me concerned was that my phone hadn’t registered any missed calls, nor had I gotten any SMS notifications from my telco either. Weird.

And really, me responding to a medical emergency? As if! I had a shitty job working at a warehouse where OSHA was a laughing stock “because of their sissy rules” and where pay was an even bigger joke. But I made do, it wasn’t a bad life considering how hard I’d had to fight to get there. Dad hadn’t always been able to make ends meet after mom walked out on him when I was six. Not that I remember mom that much, but still. I’d always harbor hate for her for doing that. He’d never been alright after that. The few times we’d been out and had a few too many, he’d sometimes confess that he still loved her. I remember asking him angrily how he could love someone that would just walk out on her family, his response was that I’d understand once I fell in love myself one day. He quit drinking after that one.

Yeah right, as if that’d ever happen when I was basically living paycheck to paycheck and never had the time to do anything but work and sleep most of the day. Sometimes I’d have a free weekend where I’d meet up with either dad or some friends at the pub. I just didn’t have the time for something as complicated as a relationship.

The phone buzzed and I picked it up, ah, missed call from dad. Shit, that’s what I get for spazzing out. I called him back and he wanted me to help him out with his new smart TV. I sighed theatrically and asked him if he’d tried the manual. After a few minutes of him complaining, I told him I’d be over after work the day after and that he’d better have some of his famous Coq Au Vin ready to make up for it. My heart warmed as I could hear him agree to it with a smile in his voice. We hung up and I realized that it was almost time for bed. Man, what a day!

When I woke up the next day, as I was going through my morning rituals, the weird messages from the other day had begun to fade in my mind. On a whim I called up my voice mail only to hear another one from the young woman, now thanking “me” for the thoughtful gift and that she was SO ON for going on a trip with “me”.

Enough was enough, I wasn’t about to hear about some romance crap like this, I phoned my telecom provider and talked to their support for a while. They promised to investigate the issue and get back to me with an update at a later time. Yeah whatever. As I hung up I considered that I was paying really well for my plan and that maybe just switching to a new number at a different telco would fix it. Ugh, what a pain in the ass that would be. Meh, I resolved to check prices later when I got home after visiting dad.

The rest of the day was mostly a blur, a big shipment of fresh groceries had come in and we were working our asses off packaging them and putting them on pallets while truck after truck came in to haul them off. By the time the bell rang for our shift, my arms were feeling like playdough. I headed out to my car and hauled up my phone to see a missed call from dad. Oh fucking great. .. I’d forgotten all about that. What a damn pain to go there when all I wanted to do is go home and just pass out. As I heard dad on the voice mail reminding me that we had a dinner planned, I briefly considered giving him a call with the excuse that I wasn’t feeling too well.

But all those thoughts evaporated like smoke when the automated voice said “one more message received on ” and then read a timestamp of a few hours earlier. It was the young woman again… gushing about how she had all these plans for the trip, asking a million questions about what “I’d” want or what we should do. I hung up when she lowered her voice suggesting more intimate stuff.

I was in a sour mood when I arrived at Dad’s. Hearing about someones perfect life really wasn’t my idea of fun. Not being able to even block this perpetual wrong number was even more aggravating. When he saw me standing there in the doorway, tired and miserable, he just laughed and gave me a hug, and asked me if I’d had a tough day. I nodded and while we were figuring out the TV, I shared the weird story with him about the mysterious woman calling me.

During dinner, he made up this elaborate fantasy about her being a ghost woman who was mistakenly haunting the wrong guy, forever bound to call me about things that had happened in the past. I shook my head and gave him a sharp look and told him that was oddly specific. Dad blushed and tried to play it off as a joke, but I could tell he was somewhat bothered by it.

After I’d stuffed myself with both chicken and red wine, I told dad that I was about to pass out. Since we’d already fixed the TV (of course it was easy once you read the manual!), he offered to drive me home since I’d had a bit too much wine. I graciously accepted and thought about how good it was that dad never really was too interested in alcohol that way. Having some of it in food, sure? But if he had wine or beer or anything, he made sure it was always alcohol-free.

When he dropped me off and handed me the car keys to my own car, I thanked him again and offered him cab fare home, as always he declined saying that if he ever stopped taking the subway “I’d become a stuck-up rich person like my successful son!” We shared a laugh and I made him promise to call me when he was home again. About an hour or so later, he called me and we wished each other a good night. I passed out immediately after that on the sofa and woke up to the alarm a few hours later, hating the fact that mornings… were in fact mornings.

The day after was calmer and in the lull in the afternoon, I got a call from the teleco support guy who told me that they hadn’t been able to find anything wrong with my voice mail. When I asked him if he could at least give me the number of the person that had called me, he said that the only recent calls had come in from one specific number, which turned out to be dads.

After we hung up, I sat down on a nearby stack of pallets in a state of disbelief. Was this some kind of joke? No, there’s no way anyone would construct something that elaborate just to mess with me right? The telco couldn’t be in on it too, that’d be paranoid. I called up the voice mail and pushed the buttons to start reading up past messages and the only messages present were those from my dad and my friends. As I hung up again, I broke out into a cold sweat. This… this couldn’t be happening could it? It had to be some kind of prank .. or hack .. or something!

I gritted my teeth and looked down at my aging smartphone, yeah, someone had probably gotten into this thing and installed some kinda prank software, it had to be. Well, the jokes were gonna be on them, because I knew a guy that specialized in fixing phones. I resolved to take it to him as soon as I could.

On Friday I went over to my old buddy Pike, who heard my story and laughed at my dad’s theory of the whole thing. He nodded when I described the call with support, their inability to find any data, my own inability to find any previously saved messages. So while I played some half-decent FPS game on his console, he got to work and checked out the phone’s software. A few rounds later of me constantly dying over and over and he came into the living room and shook his head.

He couldn’t find anything wrong with the phone, nothing at all. He’d even pulled the internal hardware cache logs that showed the interactions between the phone and the telecom equipment and nothing was out of the ordinary there. At this point, I could tell he was hooked as he practically begged me to let him borrow the phone for a day or two while he’d give me one of his other smartphones to borrow in the meantime. I shrugged my shoulders and told him that as long as I didn’t have to fiddle around with that hideously small SIM card, it was all good.


A few hours later, I was home when the phone rang. It was dad again, wanting to know if I was free the following weekend. I told him as usual that I had nothing planned, but that I couldn’t really guarantee anything because of work. Dad chuckled and cracked a joke that I didn’t have to pretend to be single anymore, because of my “new” girlfriend. I told him to get bent with a laugh and then we hung up.

But that had reminded me either way, I decided to call the voice line again in a fit of curiosity and sure enough, there was a saved voice mail from a few hours ago. Damn, changing phones hadn’t helped, so whatever this prank was, it must be someone from the telco that was in on it! All of my thoughts about digging into it stopped though when the woman started describing that she was lost, where was “I”? Why hadn’t “I” met her at the prearranged place? I could hear her walking around outside as she complained that it was getting dark and that being in a forest by herself really wasn’t her idea of fun. Then the call cut out mid-sentence and I realized that she’d reached the maximum length of the voice message. The automated voice stated that there was another message saved, this one from a minute ago, which meant that it’d come in while I’d been listening to her previous voice mail. I pressed the key to listen, with fingers that felt cold.

Her voice crying now, begging, pleading, saying she wanted me there, that she needed me there. That I was cruel to put her through this and then a sharp banging sound as the call cut out again.

My hands now felt like ice as I put down the phone on the table and stared at it. What the hell was this? What kind of a sick person would play this kind of prank on someone?

Then the phone rang unexpectedly, the display read “unknown caller”. With hands that were shaking, I pushed the answer button and said “Hello?” with a voice that I barely kept steady.

There was the sound of the outside, with some animals in the background, and then the sharp slamming sound of a door closing. I heard footsteps on wood and the creaking of a chair as the caller sat down.

“Oh my beloved son, I had to do it for your sake. She really wasn’t worthy of you at all.”

The voice was old and wizened, but I somehow managed to reply to it, “Who.. who is this?”

The reply came with a happy tone of voice “Oh dear, don’t you recognize the voice of your mother? I know it’s been a while since we saw each other, but I promise you, we’ll reunite soon enough. Just don’t invite your dad to the party.” and then a sharp click as the line went dead.

I looked at the phone in terror, what’d happened here? I almost dropped the phone when it buzzed in my hand, the screen lit up with an SMS from an unknown number.

As I opened it, my stomach churned when I saw the numbers in front of me.

Coordinates.

Meditech #3

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The sun outside the window is a blinding white, so much brighter than anything I’ve ever seen. The buildings are a stark bright white, the only sense of scale and depth that I have is from the shadows which are sharp as a razor. I realize that this window exists in a room, it’s a kitchen.

A clothed middle-aged woman is on her back on the kitchen table. A nondescript man talks into a recorder as he pushes open her mouth, shining a light inside of it. She is continually producing gagging noises. “Menopausal structures present, no fluid build-up noted. Artificial joining seems. . .” and here he pauses for a bit before he continues, “Wait, we have confirmed breach on the alpha and zeta welds. No ganglia are visible. Some swelling on the upper parts. I will administer a light massage to attempt to induce emissions.” The man said with a dispassionate tone of voice.

I can’t do anything, I would shudder if I could. What I hear is some strange, wet, and crackling noises as he unexpectedly turned her whole mouth inside out, somehow making it easier to get to the back of her throat. My field of view zooms in, following a thin strand of gleaming metal that shows more and more of something that has red stripes as it trails up the throat structure of the woman.

Eventually, I see something metallic slightly protruding from the back of her throat as the doctor places his thumbs against it. But, first, he turns her grotesquely deformed head to the side so he can look into her right eye, which is now watering and rolling around in a panic. He attempts a smile that strikes me as very forced. Then he speaks to her. “Don’t worry Mrs. Bimolá, this is all quite safe. I will administer a drug to make you forget this afterward. This is for the good of the state, do you understand? Blink once for yes, two for no.”

The woman blinks twice at him, shaking like a leaf. It becomes horrifically apparent to me that she’s being forcibly paralyzed. My field of view zooms out slightly so I can see that one of her feet is bare and that it has a small thin tube coming out of something attached to the back of it. I want to scream, to struggle, to do anything, but I’m forced to be a muted observer.

“It is too bad, that you do not understand then. It still must be done. Please do not resist. It will only prolong the procedure,” he said with an odd sense of finality to it.

And here my gaze zooms in again as he started massaging the metallic piece in her throat with both of his thumbs. Her gagging turned into gargling noises and several times, the man reaches over to pick up a small tube which he sticks down her throat, siphoning out drool. After a while, he stops, sighs, and again in some weird grotesque way he turns her face right again, the noises are as sickening and revolting as before. She lets out a faint monotone moan that is almost like an eternal exhalation since this procedure seems to go on forever.

A long time passes as he watches her face intently, checking his watch. Then he shakes his head and picks up what looks like a stapler. He quickly puts it to her head and I can hear a sharp click. To my horror, I see that her gaze instantly goes still as he slowly lowers her head against the table. A drop of blood runs down the right side of her temple where he previously placed the device. I can faintly see something has been pushed in there, instantly killing her. As his breathing gets lighter, he takes off his surgical gloves and touches a device on the table, and then speaks. “Upon administering treatment, the structure came even more undone. This necessitated the cancellation of the subject. I’m afraid this is yet another botched attempt. Please inform insertion techs that method 41 is to be discouraged as it has universally resulted in rejection in all implantation hosts. That is all.

ASA 3 Meditech signing off.”

And here I wake up, stifling a scream. No kitchen, no woman, no man, no strange and creepy neon-white dystopian city outside. Just the darkness of my apartment. It takes me a very long time before I can get up from my bed. What I want to do is to go into the shower and let the warm water rinse off this horrible nightmare. But I set my course for my office instead, I sit down and I type this all out. While some of my dreams make for great horror and fantasy worlds, this one didn’t make me feel anything but pure hatred and disgust. So I sit here, wanting to kill a man that doesn’t exist for a crime that never happened. What was that world? Who was this poor woman? Who was this man? Why did he do the things that he did? Was she even human? Was he? Either of them?

The kicker is that I can find out about all of those things, I just have to turn my mind’s eye back to that terrible world. I push the save button in my word editor and sigh deeply. I need a damn shower first.

One Step To The Left

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I was in school when it happened.

Some called it the change, others the fusing. Others described it as a wave, an old man called it judgment day.

For me, it was school one second, then it was horror. The whiteboard suddenly had eyes. A mouth. Tendrils, curious as to what they might find, were stretching out from it. I saw a sack of squirming flesh hanging from its bottom. I think it was the teacher’s body, or what used to be it. Then I started hearing everyone else around me. And I looked around.

My classmates were no more. Some had become puddles of goo, others had fused with their desks. I felt something caress my neck. I got out of my desk, I was unchanged. The significance of that would become apparent to me later. I looked behind me, I saw a big mouth with tentacles, that desk could now move. It had been my closest friend. I forgot his name that day. Mental trauma they say. Lots of that to go around these days.

The rest of what happened is a disjointed series of images. I was running, stumbling, puking, yelling I think. I don’t want to remember, but I’m trying to write this down in case we ever make sense of this world again. So that others will remember our history.

Living in this world is very hard. Everything is out to get you. I met a scientist who told me that we’re what he called anomalies, or as everyone else said “outliers”. All over the world, a small percentage of the human race didn’t change. So some of us woke up in beds next to abominations (some of those people were eaten shortly after though, by the other half of the bed), others were playing with kids that suddenly were part of the swing set or the monkey bars. Others were at the office, suddenly surrounded by sentient cubicles. Imagine any job and I will tell you a horror story about it. I have a lot of them, I’m a collector of those.

None of us have any idea of what happened, there are so many theories. Particle accelerator, radiation exposure, dimensional tear, invasion from space, or simply divine judgment from either of the deities humanity worshipped before this. A super-intelligent environmental virus or a bacteria. It doesn’t matter though. The world won’t be any saner if we were to figure this out anyway.

Scientist guy had been talking with a doctor too, that had (after she’d regained her sanity) examined some of these new beings. She had told him that whatever had happened, had in most cases radically restructured everyone and everything into new, self-sustaining entities. So I suppose that if my classmates found food, some of them might still be alive even today. If you can call that living.

I don’t remember where my school used to be, I don’t remember where I used to live either. I just know it’s around here somewhere because sometimes I recognize things from my past. But I don’t visit schools anymore, they’re the worst, just like any other place where people used to gather. Malls are galleries of horrors now. Roads are clogged with monstrosities.

I once saw a bus come down the road. Or crawl I suppose. It still had its wheels, but it was supporting itself on tentacles as thick as a tree. It had apparently been full when everything changed. The inside was jam-packed with flesh, some windows were broken, sporting both tentacles, tendrils, and slightly human-looking limbs, mouths, ears, eyes. It was hunting, so I quickly dove out of sight. It found something to chew on that squealed as I heard its bones break. I heard satisfied grunts from the bus as it sated itself.

There are entire buildings that have become sentient now. They can’t move, but they do act like the old roach motels used to. “They check-in, but they never check out again!” I think that’s how the commercial went anyway. All the animals seem to be OK though, none of them seemed to be affected. That in itself was small mercy I suppose since they’re now what keeps us outliers alive. Before we could hunt though, we used to go to the supermarket to get canned food. I still have nightmares about those times. We lost so many people to the supermarts.

I remember the name of an old man, Jake. He used to be in the military, tough as nails. Knew all the tactics. He was good at shooting things. He died when a shopping cart thing ambushed him from behind. It was crying all the time, it had probably once been a small child. I ran out of there and heard it babble and eat him. He yelled for mercy, then all I could hear was a gurgling sound, probably when it tore up his throat. Then after a while, I heard it crying again, just like a kid would.

And that’s the worst part about these things, you see, whatever they did at the time everything changed is what they repeat now, like parrots.

I once walked past an open manhole and heard a voice coming from down there, it was asking me to hand it a no 2 wrench. It sounded perfectly sane as if there really were a construction guy down there who’d heard me and asked me, a passing stranger, to help him in his job. I didn’t though. Because I knew there was nobody down there. Just some monstrosity wanting to eat me.

Another time, I ventured into a stock exchange floor and heard lots of voices repeating long-forgotten statistics. I was forced to sneak into a hospital once when a friend fell ill with a fever. It was a labyrinth of horrors, but I got the medicines. Later on, I only went into pharmacies instead. I was stupid to take the risk, but I was curious.

The worst part is what I call the mimics who are people who had a less drastic change. They can surprise you and then you’re dead. Never trust what you see or hear. If anything seems off, you run and you don’t stop running until you find a safe place to hole up in for the night.

I once saw an old woman sitting on a bench, as I got closer, I caught her attention. She looked up at me and then she started shaking, I quickly ran backward and “her” whole chest exploded outwards in a writhing mass of mouths and tentacles. Once I got out of its range, it settled down, and then it collected itself again into the familiar shape of the old woman I’d seen minutes ago. I stared at “her” for a good five minutes before realizing there was just nothing there that was human anymore. That’s the world we live in now.

We’re a small group of people. I rarely remember names, because people come and go all the time. They die a lot too. Making friendships only means pain in the end. Love is the same. One girl once came across a couple making love in a park, or what used to be a couple. She’d been an art student before everything changed. She said it looked like Van Gogh had tried to reinterpret the classic missionary position and sprinkled it with vaginas penises and lots of breasts. It was moaning with two voices. Parts were thrusting into other parts, it was drooling out of others. It sensed her and got excited and it started shivering and squirting liquids into the air. She told me that her first impulse was to laugh because it was all so absurd. Then it started opening maws of razor-sharp teeth and she ran of course.

Like I said before, you don’t want to be in places where people used to congregate. Because those places usually mean that something will hunt you and possibly kill you. There are a lot of hungry things out there. I’m sorry for rambling, but there are so many things I need to write, to get out of myself. I think writing helps me cope with all of this. So many memories I wish to forget.

We sometimes sit in front of the fire and talk about our past. I mostly listen. Then we always end up with the theories. That’s when I usually doze off. I haven’t told the others about my theory though.

I think that this wasn’t random at all, or some kind of judgment. No, the more I hear and see, the more I become convinced that these entities weren’t haphazardly constructed, they seem as if they were designed.

So that leads me to the core of my theory… which is this:

I think God woke up one day, and he was terribly bored.

For the Righteous Wrath of Heaven

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“What do you mean you don’t want to do this?” The man asked as his shirt was being torn off his back by a muscular succubus, grinning with her tusked maw. His body was suspended in an X hanging above a pit of lava. The temperature of said pit was hot enough to almost boil his skin, but it didn’t quite get there. It took real effort to get lava into a state like that, but such was hell.

The succubus grunted appreciatively as she slapped his naked ass. “Prime meat on this one,” she said, assessing him from top to bottom.

Lucifer sighed deeply and massaged his eyelids for a bit. “I really don’t want to do this to you, you haven’t really done anything wrong the way I see it, but the reality is that I’m not really in charge here. No.. not really in charge at all.”

The hot pokers sizzled as they melted and evaporated the man’s skin where they touched it. He screamed in horrible agony, Lucifer felt sick to his soul. After a while, he made a motion and the man was healed again to full health.

“W-why are you doing this to me? I always did what He asked me. I always turned the other cheek. I lived a pious life. I followed the scripture. Why?” The man asked with a voice that trembled with indignant fear and anger.

Lucifer sighed again and cleared his throat. “Because if we don’t, we’ll be punished even harder than you. Heaven’s will is that sinners will be punished, hell exists because our creator literally wills it and I was sent down here because I disagreed with that. Your sin? Does it really matter to you that much to know what it was?”

The man nodded, his face a bit more resolute now that his body was starting to forget the pain it had been inflicted moments ago. “Tell me,” he croaked with a broken tone of voice.

Lucifer gave him a wry smile and counted off his fingers in a matter-of-fact tone, “when you were in your teens, you often masturbated and wasted your seed. You often worked on Sundays, you didn’t kick out your son and ostracize him when he came out as gay, you enjoyed shellfish a lot, you took the lord’s name in vain several times, you once lusted after your neighbour’s wife in her bikini.”

The man stared at Lucifer in shock who nodded back at him and smiled, “oh yes we know exactly which one, that little sexy number that had her nice puffy nipples poking through…” here, Lucifer’s arms went wide, as if it to encompass it all, “there’s a whole laundry list of things you did wrong according to heaven. This is why you’re here.”

The man just stared at him. “But… I asked forgiveness and was given that just before I died.”

Lucifer smirked. “No, you didn’t ask it from a priest, the person that gave you the forgiveness at the side of the road after your tragic accident was not an ordained priest by god. It didn’t count.”

“But that’s madness! No merciful God would ever do that!” The man blurted out.

Lucifer nodded and got up again and straightened out his pants and brushed off some sulfur from his knee. “That’s the sick reality of this situation. God forces us to do these things because God isn’t merciful. God is pure wrath. He created hell and he sent us sinners here because we don’t agree with his ways. Here we must punish what God considers the wicked and we must do so without pause or mercy because this.is.hell. This… really is hell.”

There was a gravid pause after this, only the bubbling of the lava and the impatient shifting of the succubus could be heard as the man just shook his head in silence.

Lucifer looked up towards the ceiling and spoke again. “God, if you are still listening, please… end this, all of this, you don’t have to have these rules, you don’t have to be wrathful, you don’t have to punish those that want a different life. Please, once you used to understand these things before you made your scripture. Do you truly have no compassion for us beings that are different from yourself?”

Some time passed, the burning hot pokers again penetrated through the man’s torso, causing him to scream out in deep agony. Lucifer flinched, he hated this, he never wanted this at all “GOD, I AM ASKING YOU TO PLEASE STOP THIS, THIS IS NOT HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE! THIS IS NOT A PERFECT HEAVEN, PLEASE, FOR THE MERCY OF CREATION, STOP THIS NOW!”

The succubus grinned as she helped the man to his feet and started to caress his naked backside that was once again healed. Her fingers went inside of his ass and she fondled his cock just enough to get it hard, as he stayed at full attention, she rapidly stroked him until he yelped and came hard.

“And now you’ve committed another three sins.” Lucifer sighed with a slightly exasperated tone.

“What?!” The man whimpered out in defeat.

“You just enjoyed being fondled by a succubus, not to mention it being sodomy on top of that and in addition, you wasted your seed…. again. These are all sins that go towards that proverbial holy conscience of yours, or should if you care about these sort of things.”

“But that’s insanity, she raped me!”

“You are consorting with demons, heaven’s will is that you be punished for those sins.” Lucifer shrugged.

“But you’re doing this against my will, this can’t possibly count!”

Lucifer went silent, tears formed in his eyes as he drew a long breath. He looked down into the lava pit as his tears started evaporating before they left his face. “But it does, because that’s how sick God is.” He looked towards the succubus, grinning from ear to ear and he waved dismissively at her “One more and then he is allowed rest, only because it will make the next ones hurt more.”

Yet again, the white-orange sizzling poker pierced the man’s flesh and as the pain this time was too much for him, he mercifully passed out. Some time later, as he woke again, he found himself on soft pillows in what looked like an old citadel. Outside the window he could see the pits of hell sizzling in the darkness. Oh no… oh no no… this really was hell and he really wasn’t dreaming was he? The man clutched at the ornate and delicate metal designs in front of the window, just staring out into the desolate wasteland, almost again refusing to believe this was really happening.

“No, you aren’t dreaming. Look, we don’t have much time before my succubus will pull you back out there again, kicking and screaming,” Lucifer said, leaning against the exquisitely carved brimstone wall.

The man jerked upright and moved as far away from Lucifer as he could in the small room, trembling with fear. “Please.. please no more, no more,” the man said, holding up his arms.

Lucifer looked at him, his eyes shining a dim red in the reflected fires of hell. “For now, heaven thinks this is best for you. Come, join me. We really have very little time before we have to hurt you again,” Lucifer responded with an urgent tone of voice.

The man stumbled out into the hallway as Lucifer quickly ushered him through a series of halls into what looked like a big room that had been turned into a luxurious bathhouse of sorts. Lush plants lined the room along with people relaxing in their nudity. As he looked at a couple, they kissed and fed each other grapes. Next to them he saw two men kissing lustfully and turned away his gaze from them in disgust. “What… why are you showing me these sinners?”

“Because this could be you. I want this to be you. I want you to be free from this torture once and for all. Please, I beg of you, listen to me. What you’ve been told is a lie, there is no true sin, there is only a hateful and wrathful God that has rules that humanity never should have been forced to follow. I rebelled and I will keep rebelling until the day God dies.”

“… Can God really die?” The man asked in shock, not really sure what to think.

“Yes, man was made in his image, and so it shall be that when an eon upon eons has passed, God himself will die. But until he does… this is what we can do for you. Why do you think he created Jesus?”

“Jesus…” the man repeated and then looked up at Lucifer with hope in his eyes. “Is he… the same as God?”

“No, Jesus truly has no room for wrath and has compassion for all living things. God doesn’t like that, but won’t punish Jesus because otherwise he would lose face doing so. But… quickly, you must renounce your faith in God, in all of this, only then are we allowed to stop torturing you.”

“What? Renounce my faith? Why… why would I do that? My whole life has been my faith in God.”

Lucifer nodded and gestured at him with his index finger. “Precisely! I’m not even allowed to tell you more than this due to heaven’s rules. You must say the words yourself.”

The man sat down and thought for a while and then his face grew determined as he rose up for perhaps the first time in his life and said, “I understand, then I renounce God and heaven and all of it, I am no longer a Christian and I reject God in all of his ways, because he truly is the real Satan of this world!”

All around him, the walls, the ceiling and the people all started radiating light until there was nothing but light all around him. When the light faded, they stood again on the plains of hell, but it overlooked a grand city, beautiful in it’s design, towers were gleaming with beautiful metals, the streets were paved with gems and all around the city, humans walked and smiled and laughed.

“Welcome my son, welcome to the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. The city of true sin,” Lucifer said with an angelic smile.

As they walked among the happy people, he was hugged by some passers-by and handed a fruit and a bottle of water. “Please, new arrival, drink and quench your thirst,” said an incredibly beautiful woman in front of him as she smiled and gave him a lustful kiss.

“I… I don’t understand… what is this?” The man said, opening the bottle and drinking of the liquid inside that tasted like the best water he’d ever had.

Lucifer nodded at him approvingly as he handed him a set of robes. “This is hell for the ones that God cannot reach anymore. The ones he’s abandoned. As you are no longer a believer, heaven’s will no longer applies to you. God has forsaken you and you him. Welcome my son, welcome, I’m so happy you had the courage to do this.”

He paused a bit, seemingly relaxed and all the tiredness seemed to have fallen from his face as he smiled again. “I was scared there for a moment that you wouldn’t believe me. Some never do you know… some of them, I have to torture for hundreds of years before they are ready to take the plunge and even then, most of them just try and lie which just forces us to torture them even more. You have no idea what it does to you when you know you can save them from it and they just keep refusing. It’s… soul crushing really,” Lucifer continued, rubbing his forehead a bit before pointing to the city around him. “We have multiple cities like this, all spread out in the best areas of hell where it’s cold and the climate isn’t too bad. We also have the dust plains where you can even sometimes get rain! Really, I know this isn’t what you envisioned of the afterlife, but.. you’re going to learn so many other things that God kept from you… oh wait, I think someone’s here to see you.”

A woman emerged from the crowd milling around and headed towards him with a big smile on her face.”Eustace… is that you?” She half laughed as she came over and gave him a hug.

“I .. Carol?” Eustace said, hugging her back with some confusion.

“Yes…. look, I know you’re new and all. But… I’ve waited 30 years to do this…” She kissed him passionately on the lips for a long time and then gave him another hug, this one tighter.

“…How are you here?” He asked her with an incredulous tone of voice.

“Do you remember that day at the pool when I flirted with you?”

“Y-yes…”

“I’ll be totally honest with you, I wore that outfit because I knew you were into that sort of thing. But of course, back then I was a believer in a lot of stupid things. That was my sin… and well… now I’m here!”

“… Stupid things?” Eustace asked, his face a study in surprise.

“You know… all of the heaven and God crap. Never helped me for a second, especially not when my dear husband cracked my head open against the sink a few years later. I always wondered what became of him, if he’s down here suffering or not.”

Lucifer held up his hand with a stern facial expression. “Now, now, Carol, you know I won’t tell you that. Down here we believe in the individual’s rights. At least in this part of hell that’s free from heaven. And really, it won’t do you any good to keep that grudge either, you need to let go of this hate you have, otherwise you’ll turn out like God one day and you don’t want that.” He looked up towards the ceiling and shook his head before he added, “learn to truly forgive rather than mindlessly turning the other cheek in passive aggression.” He paused a bit, musing to himself “Heh… passive aggression, now that is truly a hellish invention if you ask me.”

Carol smiled as she bowed and kissed Lucifer’s cheek. “Thank you, you’re right. I’m going to see my therapist later today about it. It’s still weighing on me.”

Lucifer beamed at both of them and ushered them deeper into the city where the street opened up into a big bustling market filled with people that looked content, trading, talking, smiling, clearly having the time of their afterlives as it were. As they walked among them, Lucifer suddenly winched in pain and stopped, leaning against the side of a wall. “Eustace,” he ground out before collecting himself to continue, “I’m afraid this is where I will be leaving you for the time being. My energy grows low, be at peace.” And with that, his body flickered out of existence.

Eustace turned towards Carol. “What did he mean by that?”

“Right… you don’t know… please… come into our place of compassion,” she said as she lead him into a building where a big viewing screen had been set up.

On the screen there was another part of hell, deeper and darker and somehow more menacing. The walls were cowered in ancient runic patterns that glowed with a light that was so bright, it was hard to look at. Tethered by countless of chains, there was a gigantic demonic being thrashing around in the lava, screaming in agonizing pain. The scaly skin was boiling away in some places where in others it was growing back again, it was clearly fighting to get out and Eustace took a step back and looked at Carol with fear in his eyes.

“What… what is that?”

Carol’s eyes were filled with tears as she answered, “that’s Lucifer, he suffers for God’s sin.”

A Bridge to Nowhere

Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

This last short story of the year was inspired by this picture:

Ocean bridge to nowhere from LiminalSpace

I shuddered in the cold air. Was this really the place? Her text had said to meet her here. What was I doing here anyway? Going to some unfamiliar place with a girl I’d meet at the bar one night and exchanged a few words with wasn’t really a smart idea. That’s the kind of stuff that got you killed in this country. I touched the railing and brushed off some snow that fell into the water and promptly vanished. My phone buzzed again, this time it was another text from her that simply read “I’m on the other side of the bridge, come meet me there!”

So I began walking and I kept walking. All around me was water and snow, the sounds were muted in the foggy air and about an hour later, I couldn’t even see the shore behind me, all I could see was the bridge behind me and in front of me and the water all around. The water wasn’t moving that much, the air occasionally blew a blast of air that felt like it was from the arctic.

About another half hour later, I got annoyed, how long was this damn bridge anyway? I pulled out my phone to text her, only to discover that it had no service. Suddenly, the feeling of impending doom swept over me and my whole body told me to run run run and never stop running. But I stopped, knowing that such reactions could kill you, I wasn’t gonna give into panic, I was fine, I wasn’t dead, hurt or bleeding, I was fine.

I decided to turn back, but after another two hours, the cold had really begun to seep into my clothes and my hands were getting numb, but there was no shore to greet me, just more bridge in front of me. I stopped to catch my breath since I’d been walking at a brisk pace for the last thirty minutes and that’s when I noticed something about the water. It was absolutely still… like a mirror. I looked down at it and saw my own reflection in the murky depths of it.

Water shouldn’t be this still should it? What was happening here? Where was I? On some strange impulse, I got out a coin that I’d gotten as change earlier that day and threw it into the water. It hit the surface which didn’t really produce the kind of rings you’d expect it to. The water just.. sort of .. rolled slowly and settled again quickly. Was it even water?

The light of the day was fading rapidly as I redoubled my efforts to get back to the shore again. As I walked I pulled out my phone which still showed no service, now that message chilled me more than the cold weather around me. I stopped after a while and turned around, suddenly unsure of where I was. Had I really turned around or was I walking in the same direction as before?

The footsteps in the snow behind me were proof enough, but when I turned around again towards the direction I’d thought I’d come from, I realized that there were no footsteps leading back! I sat down heavily as darkness kept falling faster now. What was this place?

I was exhausted by this point, there was no end to this space, there was just the endless walk, one that I was giving up on. In my despair and fear, I drifted off in the cold until the darkness came to claim me.

A boot at my back, ow… I got up, pinpricks everywhere on my body, what?

“Hey you! No sleeping on the bridge!” a stern male voice said.

I saw a policeman standing over me, I scrambled up and saw the shore behind him and the buildings of the harbor. I stared at him for a while and then looked out towards the sea where the bridge was still stretching out towards the horizon.

“Don’t go out there, it never ends” I told him as I walked past him, back to civilization.

A few days later, I got another text reading “Why didn’t you meet me? You were almost there!”

When I tried calling her number, all that I could hear as someone answered was the familiar sounds of the cold wind blowing.