Substitutions Incorporated

December 9, 2024 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

October 1, 2024 Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

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.

Unknown Future

December 21, 2021 Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

I was finally done with my construction of the machine. It’d taken a grueling two weeks to put together after I’d had a dream about it. Ever had a dream inspire you to do something you normally wouldn’t? Well, this was the same except I’d been studying quantum physics for a few months in preparation for a mid term and now.. it seemed, all that was just irrelevant considering the discovery I’d made. Time itself, just focused the right way ..would bend in on itself. All I needed was some cables, some lenses and positioning grips to focus it just so and it’d be done. I marvelled at the simplicity of it, why hadn’t anyone else thought of this before?

I was nervous though when I turned on the machine and time started to fold in on itself. If ANYTHING were to rustle the delicate machine when I went through, it’d be a total disaster. I’d probably die in horrible agony, like in that movie The Fly. So after a tense moment of trying to decide to go or to not go, I turned it off and then spent two more days just trying to psych myself up for it. On the third night, I woke up at 4am, bathing in my own sweat, nightmare after nightmare about the same damn thing.

That fucking machine. I’d built it, but I was too afraid to use it.

I COULD SEE MY FUTURE. But I was too afraid!

Then I got really angry, at myself, at my stupidity, at this whole stupid thing. Here I had the chance of a lifetime and I wasn’t going to waste it. I resolutely marched down from the upper floor and into my living room where it was still positioned. I grunted, turned on the machine and before I knew it, I was standing in a brightly lit mall.

Ah, of course, I’d been an idiot for thinking the world would just stop just because I travelled in time. My house was apparently gone along with my neighbourhood. I walked around for a bit, staring wide eyed at all the amazing new tech and it took me a while to realize that people were staring back at me as well.

It was at that point that I became very aware that I was in my PJs and still holding my wrench I’d used to tune the last mirror. So I snuck into some of the back streets outside of the mall and tried to compose myself. “A library” I thought to myself, “I’ve got to find a library.”

After wandering around for a few hours, I was nowhere closer to finding one, all the street signs had strange graphics on them. I assumed it was some new kind of technology I couldn’t decipher. Probably something like the old barcode or QR code system. After a while of aimless searching, I finally mustered up enough courage and walked up to a plain looking woman and asked her “Hey, I’m sorry to intrude, but would you know where the nearest library is?”

She looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled and said “Library? I’ve heard of those, aren’t they like the old museums used to be? I think we had a library once, but it’s been closed for ages. Are you feeling alright?”

The last question took me by surprise and I just shrugged and said “Yeah, I’m just a bit.. disoriented, I think I bumped my head.”

She looked concerned and replied: “Well, your PJs look really weird in the streets you know. Do you remember your name? Where do you live?”

I fibbed a bit when I answered “Yeah, it’s kind of odd, I don’t remember how I got here, but I know I used to live around here. I just can’t remember how I got here”

The woman took me by the arm and said “Mind if we head over to my place? It’s not far, I’m a federal nurse and I think you might be experiencing the aftereffects of a severe concussion.”

I just nodded feebly, feeling very out of place. We walked over to her place which truthfully wasn’t very far. One street down and she was opening her door and letting me inside.

Once inside, she told me to sit down on a chair while she got some things. She came back with a thing that looked like a tennis racket, she hovered it around my head, made some noises to herself and then looked me straight in the eyes.

“Who are you really? These readings don’t make ANY sense whatsoever. Your gene makeup is totally wrong, you’re missing so many markers that are usually present. Care to explain yourself?”

She stared daggers at me and I cracked and told her the truth. That I’d been travelling through time, that I was lost and that I was only trying to get a sneak peek of my future self. I told her my name and after some deliberation on her end, she told me hers: Kee.

“You know” she started, looking ponderous “If it hadn’t been for these genes, which you can’t really fake, I would have assumed you were delusional. OK, let’s find out what really happened to your future you then. I’m curious as well.”

She walked over to the wall and made some gestures and it lit up. She then made some cryptic comments which made lists show up on the screen. Not much of it made sense to me. After a while, she paused and looked at me and said “Oh, right! You’re from the past, you probably can’t read any of this without a blip can you?”

I shook my head and told her that it looked like total gibberish.

She laughed and said “Well, I can set you up with a temporary headset that we use for kids, it’ll be kind of uncomfortable, but you’ll be able to search yourself. “

And after a while, she came back with the headset and placed it on my head, suddenly I could see the screen, but also feel it. Then I realized I was the screen and I remembered that I wanted to find out who I was. I projected all of the information about myself that I knew into my tendrils and I started searching outward from the house I was in. All I felt was cold as I expanded further out. After a while, I looked at her and said “Is it supposed to be cold like this?”

She replied “Yes, cold means that there’s no information it can find, try looking around until you feel warmer. You’re really good at this, it’s like you’re a natural at it, keep going! I’ll be in the other room if you need me, I have some work to finish up.” she beamed me a smile and left the room.

And the hours passed, the cold remained and then after a while, she came back and asked me if I wanted something to eat. I realized that most the day had passed with me in front of the screen, trying to find something, anything about who I was in the future. I sighed, took off the headset and joined her in the kitchen.

The kitchen was unlike anything I’d ever seen, she was touching panels and making gestures and suddenly a beautiful melodic tone chimed from a box. She opened the box, drew in a deep breath and smiled as she said “Oh, I haven’t had this in a while, did you have Sushi back in your time?”

At the word Sushi, my stomach made a happy little jump of joy and I grinned and said that I loved the stuff.

So after a while, we sat at the table and had ourselves a nice dinner together. The sushi was markedly different from what I was used to. Strange meats and even stranger spices. As we both ate, we discussed the differences in her and my time. I told her about the California Maki roll and she was amazed at it and promised to make it at a later time. Then she told me about the Cyprenza Lemfo I was eating and how it was created with a very specific method of culvating a specific strain of bacterially contaminated mushrooms in ultra high gravity tanks.

After the dinner was over, I thanked her for a delicious meal and said “I’m really sorry to impose on you like this, but would it be OK if I went back into the other room to try and find out where I am now? Maybe the future me can send old me back home again.”

She smiled a strange smile and said “Oh, it’s no bother at all, just take your time.”

And so I kept at it for the remainder of the day and found nothing, the further out I searched, the colder I got. Not even an iota of warmth crept into my tendrils as I scoured the networks for any mention of me, any family I had, anything at all.

When I finally almost ripped off the headset in frustration, the sunlight had faded and a subtle brown glow in the edges of the room told me that the lights had turned themselves on everywhere.

I walked into the other room to talk to her and that’s when I saw her slumped on the side in the sofa. She was snoring very loudly and was clearly asleep. As I was looking at her, I felt a strange sense of shame, that I’d roped some stranger into this stupid search of mine. I was angry at myself, I’d taken a dumb risk and paid the price for it. And here I was, mooching off someone elses life.

I really had no right, I was a temporal anomaly and I was just making this persons life more complicated. So I snuck out, thankfully the door reacted to me when I approached and unsealed itself with a slight hiss. I stepped into the moonlit street and briskly walked down past the rows of houses, all wonderfully lit. I was in total despair and feeling more lost than I’d ever been in my entire life.

I didn’t have a future, I’d somehow disappeared the moment I left which could only mean one thing, I would never get back from this future. I was lost in time, I had no family left, no kids, no history, I was unmade. As I strode down the street, feeling ever more dejected and alone, I came upon a bridge crossing a pretty big river and that’s when it hit me. That’s how it was going to end wasn’t it?

I strode up to the edge of the bridge and looked down. The river was furious and shimmering in the light. It’d probably be quick, if the impact in the water didn’t kill me, I’d probably drown quickly enough. “Alright” I thought to myself, steeling my nerves “This is it, I hope I can at least do this one thing right.”

“WAIT! NO!” I heard a voice behind me scream in abject horror, I turned around and I was surprised to find Kee standing behind me. She looked tired and afraid. “Please, I know you’re feeling alone and lost, but there IS a better way!” she frantically blurted out.

“But I have no future, NO FUTURE! DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THAT MEANS?!” I yelled back at her. “I don’t get to live, I don’t get to ever come back there, my future ended the second I stepped through that damn portal I made!”

There was a deafening silence where we just stared at each other, both in total despair, time as it were, seemed to have stopped. But after a while, she slowly sank to her knees and broke down crying, between sobs she pleaded with me, no begged me to step down from the side of the bridge, it didn’t have to be this way she said, it wouldn’t be fair, as the rest of it was drowned in her tears I realized that this adventure would have quite a different ending. When I held her in her arms and promised I’d stay, we both knew that the future really wasn’t anything to think about, because the present is all that mattered.

* * * * * *

A couple of months later, I had mostly adjusted to the future, it wasn’t so different after all. People were still people, technology was still just there. As I turned on the new time machine, now made with vastly superior parts than my old one, I smiled and turned to Kee.

“Are you sure this’ll work? I mean, I basically inverted the design that I dreamt, but I have no idea if it’ll be viable.” I said to her.

Kee smiled and replied “It’ll be fine” and then we stepped through the portal.

2018-10-04

As I looked at myself sleeping in the bed, I grinned like a kid that’s taking a sneak peek at their Christmas presents on the night before. This was going to be great.

The Best Kind Of Happiness

December 10, 2021 Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

It’d been a shit morning so far. I’d had a rotten night’s sleep with vague dreams that were trying convey some message that I didn’t understand. Breakfast didn’t sit right with me, my stomach wasn’t really cooperating despite my implants trying their best to regulate it. I was sitting on my bunk, feeling the depressing weight of the attack corvette around me and thought about the black inky void peppered by stars outside.

My guts churned again, oh Lord, not more cramps.. please.. my breasts felt heavy and my nipples were sore and somehow itching at the same time. I dry heaved, oh no, this was going to be a horrible day. After a while, the implants managed to regulate some of it, giving me back at least a semblance of self control. But my mind was already going into the dark places, I could feel it, I could feel everything blacken around me.

And why not? The universe was such an ugly place after all, such a dark and unforgiving thing that was filled with horrors that you could almost not imagine. I sighed deeply and hung my head down, letting my hair obscure my vision, I hated the world and everything in it. My body ached, no.. my entire being ached, body and soul. I tried to meditate a bit on the nature of the soul, but it just wasn’t happening. It all felt so gray and pointless. The world was always going to be like this, nothing was ever going to change. Why were we out here in space anyway? What was the point of anything?

A noise alerted me to someone standing in the doorway of my quarters. I looked up, wondering who was unkind enough to disturb me in my misery. I probably looked pretty haggard since the CO was smiling at me in a compassionate way.

“We’ve found another base that wasn’t accounted for.” he said with a level tone of voice.

I got up on my feet and saluted him “Sir, yes sir! Ready to deploy on your word!” I really was struggling to feel the enthusiasm. Hell, I was struggling to feel anything that wasn’t the inky void of depression.

“Move out!” he said and nodded and headed down the hallway.

I sighed and got dressed and headed to the launch bay where my Mark 14 suit was located. The techs were preparing it already. I gave them the sign of the higher order as per custom and they all smiled as they returned it. I was placed inside the suit; the canopy above me was lowered into place as the systems adjusted to my body, integrating me with it.

“Sigma Sigma Thirteen Echo Test” I said mechanically, suddenly become aware again of the massive amount of cold metal around me, this time not of the ship, but of my trusted combat suit.

“Echo test OK Sigma Sigma 13” base answered through the transponder. The voice sounded a bit tinny, they were going to have to fix that. I made a note in the suit’s maintenance recorder about it as they lowered the suit into position.

And then I was blasted off, I mused about how the inertial compensator could never really take the edge off the massive G’s that you felt as you were fired into space. I gritted my teeth as the suit headed into orbit, fuck, this was worse than ever. I now fully wished that I would die on impact, that something would go wrong with the systems. I muttered to myself the prayer of the order as I started entering the atmosphere proper now. But it felt like I was droning out my own death sentence, oh please let it be just that.

About ten minutes later, the suit started picking up telemetry data, identifying land features, outlining the base underneath me. The same thing as always, nothing would ever change. I wanted to claw myself out of the suit, I didn’t want this, I just wanted to be left alone. Why me? Why this?

The shell around the suit popped off as it landed on the ground with a thud. It arose on it’s two legs and the arms deployed while the systems came back online, one by one.

“Sigma Sigma Thirteen, please confirm landing” Base said in my left ear now, dammit, why wasn’t this shit ever working properly?!

“Sigma Sigma Thirteen, landing confirmed. I am the spear of justice.” I answered back, not even feeling any of the holy words as I should properly do in a moment like this.

“Sigma Sigma Thirteen, You are cleared to begin, releasing behavioral locks.”

I stood there in the suit as it kept identifying targeting data, I breathed heavily as my perception of the world around me changed. I nodded to myself. Yes.. yes this was the turning point as always. I started shaking with a mixture of fear and awe. The Lord’s vision was coming to me.

I walked up to the gates as I felt my mood swing into excitement and then perfect harmony. It was all going to be alright, I was going to make everything fit into place. I nodded as I looked at the weak gates, yes, this wasn’t going to even be a problem for me. I really felt now like I was the instrument of the Lord’s justice.

My breath now came in short excited panting as I activated the weapon systems, I felt so deeply happy and harmonious. I turned on the external suit speakers and uttered the holy words “Heathens of base 55 Echo Delta, you are hereby being blessed with the Octagon order’s light.” as I slammed my fist into the wall, breaking it down.

The defensive turrets activated and started firing at me, I laughed with wild abandon as I ignored their low yield fire. There was no way they were going to interrupt this holy moment. I felt a bit sad for the operators who were trying to struggle against the light. Why were they fighting against the divinity? I was going to save all of them after all.

With a few more hits, the gate crumbled as I stepped inside, now feeling the Lord’s power radiate through me in waves, oh the total rapture and exhilaration was embodying me. I smiled an angelic smile as I saw the paltry soldiers forming into squads around me. I reached out my hand and my mounted armaments fired, turning a good chunk of them to my left into bloodied mist. I nodded with satisfaction, yes, a most holy bloodied mist it was.

I stood there for a moment watching the carnage, feeling the message reverberating through me.

“CAN YOU FEEL THE RAPTURE?!” I screamed through the speakers as I moved inside, their screams were my confirmation that I was doing the right thing. I sighed happily as I turned yet another five of them into bloodied meat chunks, my heavy armaments of holy penetration firing with the beautiful golden light.

Another soldier in a smaller suit tried to rush towards me as I grabbed it by the chest, my hands crumpling the metal underneath my fingers, digging into the innards of cheap metal as it was just made out of clay. I laughed as I lifted him up and at a the same time, my angelic wings extended from my back, bathing the area around me in a holy golden light.

I threw him into the wall, exposing yet more of the base as I stepped forward and my instruments of high caliber radiance turned the rest of the heathens into nothing more than flesh and blood scattered around the area. When all was quiet, I knelt down and touched my bloodied suit’s hand to the outside of my cockpit and uttered the holy prayer.

“May the Supreme octagonal Lord have mercy upon your souls, illuminating them with His light.” I prayed, tears starting to form in my eyes as I’d never been happier than this before. I was so enraptured by the totality of the moment that it took me a while to get out the rest of the words. “As it was ordained in the beginning of time, the Lord’s light will reach you all. It will cleanse your souls and burn away the darkness and transform you into the holy beings that will serve Him forever in the perfect paradise. Glory to the Lord.”

I got back up seeing yet more telemetry data on my HUD, indicating that there were more people inside. It was most likely a trap, but at this point, I was absolutely certain that I was the instrument of salvation for them. I tore open the doors and entered the structure proper, heavy gunfire greeted me as the turret’s slugs slammed into my suit’s force field.

“WHY DO YOU ALL RESIST THE RAPTURE?” I yelled as I kept laughing uncontrollably between firing bursts of heavier yield to simply melt the turrets into piles of blessed slag that glowed with an orange light. I stopped for a moment to ponder the piles of slag running down off them and thought to myself that I’d never really considered just how cheerful the color orange really was.

I giggled as I resumed firing until there were no more turrets left and oddly enough, no more soldiers either. My soul soared as I tore open the last door, reaching the back compartment of the base. Beneath my suit on the floor, huddled together were 42 people that were all looking really haggard, dirty and most of all scared. I would often see this as I liberated bases and garrisons. They always had that same look in their faces, that fear of the light. These poor wretched people didn’t deserve being like this. No, remaining like this.

I raised my guns and smiled “Let the light bless you” as I started firing with my guns blazing a holy wave of destruction from left to right. I saw people’s heads explode into mists of blood, chunks and viscera, some of it got onto my cockpit, almost like a blessing in itself. I kept firing as they tried to run, but ultimately it was just bodies moving, being destroyed, turned into the constituent parts they once grew from. My holy eruptions reducing all the sin and corruption into beautiful red that coated everything inside the small space. One of the smaller ones tried to run between my legs and I caught her under my articulated foot and felt the claws dig through her torso as I twisted my leg, crushing her beneath me. Her screams turned into gurgles as her eyes lost focus of the world.

I smiled and lowered my gun and turned the rest of her into a red smear. Then as the already amazing feeling of rapture soared through my soul, I felt myself enter the golden light and then I faded away inside of its perfection.

When I came to again, I was back on the ship and the blessed technicians were helping me out of my suit. I wanted to hug and kiss them all, we’d done it, we’d liberated yet another encampment of the darkened ones. When I was free of the suit, I hugged the closest tech and kissed his hands, they all reached out to me, smiling happily as I touched all their hands, feeling the oneness of being the chosen ones. In the back I saw the CO approaching with a wide grin on his face, as he got up to us, he stood for a moment and then applauded us all as we all basked in the happiness. He then motioned to me and the others moved away in awe. This was it, this was going to be the mission report.

“You took out 142 heathens in total, most of them were soldiers, but a lot of civilians as well, including both women and children in the ages between 4-10. You certainly did the Lord’s work here soldier. You will be commended for this later as it is noted into your record along with your new rank of Radiant Paladin.” he said, smiling radiantly as he hung the golden octagonal symbol of my new station around my neck.

“No survivors?” I whispered, smiling.

“No survivors, they were all perfectly judged.” he replied with a satisfied nod.

It was all too beautiful, I sank to my knees and cried, it truly had turned out to be the best of days in the end.

Praise be to the light.

In The Faint Blue Light

December 3, 2021 Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

A remote outpost in space.
The small craft is outlined in the light of a weak blue star.
Inside the outpost, the lights are off, everything is quiet. Something is slowly pulsating in the darkness.

(Why? Whyyy…. ?)
(Quietdarkcomfortingthought. Don’t need to.)

A long moment passes. It’s dark, warm, wet. Safe.

(W…. What?)
(Silence, sleep, safety.)

Something shifts. A prick of pain. Nothing. Time extends.

(So tired. Can’t… can’t sleep)

(Schhh little one, you’re very safe and warm and comfortable and pleasured and warm and safe and tightly held and nursed and comfortable and safe)

Something squeezes tighter in the dark. Like a hug. Undulating shapes. Something else stirs. Deep. So very, very deep. Blissful calm returns.

(What am I doing here? I… I… mmm …that feels nice)
(The outside is harsh. It’s cold. You won’t survive. Stay/Sleep/Nurse/Produce/Relax. Filament says so. Here. Pleasure.)

Something tightens hard somewhere and a moan is quieted. Pulses of movement in a series of carefully calibrated sessions. Like the most advanced orchestra playing a piece of flesh, for just one person, more pricks of pain, things injecting. Muscles tensing, flexing, shuddering, orgasming.

A deep breath. Stillness. Quietness. Relief. Relaxation. Something exhales and lies back.

Some time later. A sharp inhale. Wet. No. Confined. Too tight. Struggle. Sinew, flesh, skin tears. Open it. Got to get….

(Oh fuck what is this?!l Where am I?)
(Filament says you stay or I kill you. Go back to sleep or face the consequences. This is not a warning.)

“Let .. me… out!!”

With this Allanah tore at it, all of it around her. Grey, pulsating flesh connected to her everywhere. No.. not connected.. growing on her. She sat up in her bunk,.or what had been her bunk. She breathed in stale air and puked over the side on the floor. What came out had a consistency of water. Oh god she was so full. Something tickled her throat and she pulled out a tentacle. As she did she felt it wriggling, resisting, trying to stick to her again. She threw it against the week with arms that felt like they were made out of wet noodles. Oh aeons, it had been in her.. inside of her.

She looked around. Her room turned into a nightmare of flesh that had melted away almost everything. Something tried to pull her back, but she got out of the bed and felt the cold air against her naked body. As she got out,.she felt more tentacles wriggling in her ears, her ass and her pussy, with disgust she tore them out and felt a nausea trying to stand. She felt so weak, so cold.. so alone.

She almost instinctively got her space suit out from the locker and with fingers that felt numb, she put it on and pressurized it. SELF TEST OK the orange display blinked at her. So.. tired. She shook her head and the movement felt incredibly sluggish, like she was doing it in slow motion. She felt sore all over.

She opened the airlock and the air rushed out into the space outside. She took a few trembling steps. In the back of her mind she heard a whisper.

(Filamentofferseverythingsleepdarkwarmnicelovesexblisscarefreelifenoworries)

She slammed her arm against the wall outside and felt the pain spreading into her.

“No, you piece of shit. Not falling for that. Fuck off.”

As she explored the small outpost, all the rooms were emptied out of their contents, no beds, no lockers, no personal items. Just empty space suits crumpled in a corner. All in different places. She entered the dark mess hall by cutting through a membrane that shrieked as she sawed through it with her suit knife.

And everywhere she went, just that grey flesh everywhere. Pulsating slowly. The mess hall had a few suits with tears or the face plate crushed. No people. Not too hard to figure out what had happened. One table was partially melted. In fact, thinking about it, she’d seen places being melted everywhere she’d been, heat damage? Or something else? On a strange impulse, she checked the fridges. Empty. Cleaned.

She nodded tiredly to herself as she walked into the hangar. A force field shimmered and inside everything looked..normal. She lowered the field and as she started walking, she heard a noise behind her and turned. Something coming … no .. growing out of the wall. A head… a torso.. a person.

It walked out onto the floor which was covered in the same grey flesh. No…. clothes.. skin.. hair…She recognized the face smiling at her from the shadows of the hallway. It reshaped itself in front of her further, matching some ideal. No, not some ideal. A person.

“Allanah, where are you going?” the voice rang out, a familiar voice that had that crack in it that only she loved. In front of her stood her bunk mate, no.. her girlfriend. Smiling as she’d always done. Allanah felt her heart swell for a second before she noticed it.

“You’re… not Badra. No.. no fucking way. She’s gone.. like the rest isn’t she?” She said, half wanting so bad to believe that she still was, in some way.

The being walked closer, becoming illuminated by the starlight outside, she smiled a blissful smile.. no.. it was changing.. it was her mischievous smile. That “come fuck me” smile.

“I’m not.. I promise. Come give me a hug.. please.. it’s so cold and dark here. I’ve missed you so long. I just want to hold you close. I … I love you Allanah.”

Allanah felt for a gun that was no longer at her hip, she took a step back and relaxed into a martial arts stance. “You’re an asshole. I’m not buying it, you come any closer and I’ll kill YOU instead you .. fila.. fucking .. whatever the shit you are!”

It observed her for a moment, then spoke with a flat tone of voice “Filament. It’s what we are. We offer you everything, pleasure, safety, warmth, dreams upon dreams upon perfect dreams. Life doesn’t have to be cold and dark and lonely. Not with us. All we ask is for you to join us.” It paused for a bit, then continued “You miss us. We feel it. Come back with us. Reconnect. You won’t remember. We promise you that. We can be again.”

When it uttered the word “be” there was such an undertow of emotions and sensations and half buried memories being sparked by it. Allanah almost agreed, she really did miss .. whatever it had been .. it’d be perfect. No words could do it justice. A .. state of pure.. nothing, endless dreams, always nice, always beautiful. Like a piece of art that wrote itself as it continued on and on. Hypnotic, there wasn’t any need to.. … she bent over and retched and puked in her suit, thankfully she’d angled her head so it didn’t splatter on her faceplate, but instead went down on the front of her body.

She stood back up again, the being was still, waiting. Her suit now smelled absolutely vile.. it snapped her back into her senses.

“Fuck no, you sick piece of alien shit, I’m getting off this rock .. and .. you can’t stop me.”

Allanah backed away towards one of the many ships lining the interior. The being had now backed away into the shadows again and assumed a neutral humanoid shape. No need for it to pretend anymore.

“You miss us.. come back.. come back…” the voice now again echoed with a timbre she knew, she’d known, she’d loved. The longing in it was maddening. She turned away from the being, because she knew she was safe. She knew so much about it and it about her. They’d melded. More memories flooded into her mind as she got onboard and pressurized the ship and activated its security screens.

It was old, older than humanity by a few million years at least. The filament.

She sat down in the pilot seat and the whole world became gray for a moment as more memories, violent ones forced their way into her mind. Death, so much death and dismemberment and melting and strangling and cutting and crushing. All of them, even Badra. She’d died in her sleep as it’d melted her brain slowly. Why not her?

And for a moment, she didn’t know who she was. Everyone was there. Everyone.

No, she was Allanah, A L L A N A H.

She spelled out her name one letter at a time, breathed deeply a few times and then did it again, reminding herself of which memories were hers. They’d covered this in training, forced disassociation during torture. She had this, SHE had this. After a few more deep breaths, she was back again, feeling like herself once more.

She activated the startup sequence of the engine and let out a sob as memories wormed their way through her mind. It’d arrived in the night. Attracted like a moth to a flame by the exhaust of some of their heat vents. It’d grown, slithered, silently making it’s way through the vent system and then.. then found sleeping bodies. By the time nobody woke up, it was too late. Outside, the ones awake on their night shift found themselves murdered quickly and efficiently by appendages taking on nightmarish forms, some familiar, some not so much. In the end, the sleepers kept sleeping, kept producing, the organism evolved, integrated, started feeding on everything in the base. Over the years, less and less edible things remained. Eventually a sleeper resisted, it killed him fast and mercilessly, absorbed him. Nutrients. Nothing more.

She started moving the ship out of the hangar, oh by the ages, so much death. As the ship accelerated into orbit towards the beacon there that was still operational, she sat back in her chair, took off her helmet and closed her eyes as more memories drip drip drip dripped into her consciousness. The food had been running out, it’d tried to eat the harder materials, but hadn’t found any nutrients in them. It’d eaten all their supplies. Drank all their liquids. It’d sacrificed a big part of itself to the medical bay where it had found potent drugs and poisons. That’d been a setback. A virus spreading inside of it. It’d severed and barricaded the door after that. A mistake. A lot of pain.

But it’d lived here with them for.. how many years?

She contacted the beacon as she got close. “S.. stellar… outpost .. alpha.. alpha uh.. thirty three seven. This is Allanah, first class private, calling in. Can anyone hear me?”

A long pause where she felt her stomach churn. She was still full.. no doubt it’d kept her well fed so she could produce all the chemicals and process all the things for it that it needed. Sickening. Another memory and she puked. It’d fed.. her.. oh god… no… When she realized the reality of that situation, she puked again over the side of the chair.

The radio crackled to life “Stellar outpost Alpha thirty three seven, this is main command, we read you loud and clear. Give us a sitrep over.”

Allanah composed herself and spoke back “We’re fucked, overrun by some alien .. thing.. … I’m the only one left.. you hear me? Only one left, everyone else is KIA, outpost compromised, full compromise. Request tactical response with maximum detail. I .. I .. might .. Ah…”

Her focus wavered, she felt weak all of a sudden. Weak and sleepy.

“Please confirm sitrep, over.”

She felt herself growing groggy, but fought herself back to consciousness. “Outpost compromised, do not land there, it’s full of hostiles. Biological in nature.”

A long pause where she zoned out and watched the stars twinkling in the distance.

“Understood private, can you cryosleep while we send an attachment?”

“Y.. yeah.. I guess.” Here Allanah remembered just how far out they were. Six months even by plus light. She thanked her lucky star for having chosen one of the bigger corvettes with a cryosleep attachment onboard, now it would save her life.

“We have previous confirmation that your location was compromised, bio alerts were inconclusive. Probes sent in were destroyed with no data available. We assumed hostile factions.”

Here she remembered the war.. oh the damn war. Of course they’d been ignored. They probably thought the enemy had gotten to them. She cleared her throat “No hostiles of the Star Union Sir, I don’t think this was one of .. theirs.”

“Understood private. You are hereby ordered to suspend in cryo according to SOP until further notice. You will be brought out once we have secured the area. Please confirm orders.”

“I’m .. to go into cryo and set the timer for six months. Gotcha command.”

“Command over and out.” the console went dead as per protocol.

She moved back into the bowels of the ship and made her way into the cryochamber where she laid down on one of the beds. She set the timer for six months and the canopy of the bed started closing in on her. The chill started creeping into her body and just before it all went black, she clearly heard Badras voice in her mind speaking. “You’ll be my Eve among the stars.”

The Vampire’s Stalker

December 3, 2021December 3, 2021 Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

I usually skip right to the stories on this blog, mostly because I think they speak for themselves. However, this story is a bit special in that it actually resulted in us being banned from r/writingprompts, a sub on Reddit where someone can suggest a topic and others write a story about it. Considering I’ve submitted stories with risqué content before, I was a bit surprised by a message informing me that I was now permanently banned from the subreddit.

When I asked about the reason why (Because I wondered if I’d missed a new rule or something) I was informed that because of the story’s obvious pornographic content, I was assumed to be doing it in bad faith, therefore a permban was issued. I can only just laugh at this considering I’ve been writing stories for years now and definitely don’t consider the sub in question one of my major places to post. Either way, here’s the story for all of you in it’s uncensored glory! 😀

The original prompt was this:

You are a centuries old vampire lord, during present day you are walking through a city when in the distance you see her exactly like how your remember her from her previous lives, your stalker has re-incarnated and found you again.

I had just exited the supermarket and there she was. Again.

As always, I felt an odd mix of strong annoyance and arousal and disbelief. Why me? WHY ME?

Sure, I’m a vampire since the dark ages, but .. why the fuck would someone who could reincarnate and remember each previous life want to stalk someone like me anyway? Beth was an annoyance, one that had followed me through the centuries, ironically the only thing that remained unchanging.

Well, that’s not fair, Beth would always change her clothes, but her hair and makeup would roughly be the same. Voluminous black hair in big curly locks, always like it was cascading, her eyeshadow, always with the old style emo raccoon look.

I sighed and walked down the street. I knew she’d follow me home again, as she always did. Eventually she’d be watching me through the windows. I hadn’t really bothered to check if she’d rented any of the apartments from across the street, but I assumed that since she was so brazen now to show herself, that yes.. she probably already had.

Life had been particularly difficult in this era, lots of surveillance, lots of disease and governments meddling in people’s business. That and humanity keeping faithfully destroying their biotope. Not that it bothered me, for all I cared, they could drench the planet in oil and nuclear waste and I’d be no worse for wear unless of course all the other animals died. Yes, I mused to myself, that age old superstition of vampires feeding on human blood was a quaint one. I’d always assumed it was some sort of body horror spawned from the blood diseases that had plagued them during the times when me and my kind rose up into existence.

I kept musing about feeding habits as I unpacked the groceries. Ah yes, it’d be a fine dinner tonight, two steaks and vegetables and potatoes. It was hard to find a good steak these days, luckily I’d made a decent fortune over the centuries, so I could still afford it. Synthsteak wasn’t really something I could use as a food anyway and the taste? That was horrible.

Before I put it into the pan, I lightly touched the surface of both of the steaks and as always, I absorbed the life essence out of it. Ah yes, can’t drain too much out of them, then they’d become brittle and lifeless. Better to just siphon as much as you needed and then have a nice dinner with the rest. I chuckled to myself as I thought about writing a cook book for vampires. A scraping sound on the window outside made me look out into the musky darkness outside. Nope.. nothing.

I sighed again, a bit more frustrated this time around. It was happening, I was getting jumpy again. It’d probably just been thermal expansion in the wood around the glass. As the potatoes boiling was starting to fog up the glass, I moved over and opened the windows to the outside and just barely caught her as her camo suit disrupted when she lost footing against the glass.

I stared down at her as she materialized once she shut off her suit. With her other hand she removed her face mask and I saw her face smiling up at me with that crazy attitude she always had.

“Elizabeth” I started and then chided myself “Beth, what are you doing here?”

“Better get me inside before someone notices..” she wheezed back at me. I hauled her inside the window into my kitchen and closed the windows. Immediately I had her in my arms and her perfume, oh god that same perfume as always assaulted my senses.

“Beth… … we .. can’t… you can’t keep doing this.. this isnt’ healthy for you.” I said to her as she planted a kiss on my neck.

“I live for you. Only you. There’s never been another. I’m yours.” she said with her eyes wide with wonder, that same old damn wonder as always.

I let out air through my nose in frustration. Dammit.

“Beth, you know that’s not how vampirism works, you’re not my thrall and you’re not my ghoul or any other of the millions of ideas that your kind has about us. I’m not controlling you, you’re not obligated to do anything. Please.. go seek help with this… obsession of yours. Please.”

“No” she said mutely against my shoulder. “I’m staying with you. For as long as I live.” and hugged me tighter. I swallowed hard and looked over to the steaks which were beginning to get a bit dry.

“Then at least let go of me long enough so I can get these steaks flipped.”

And with that, she let go and gave me that starry eyed look of pure devotion that I knew her to have. I shook my head with disapproval and went over to flip the steaks. Damn, slightly singed a bit too much on that side. Oh well, I’d just get the other side a bit less then.

“Is that.. steak?” she said with wonder in her voice.

“Yes, since you invited yourself in, which again, might I point out, is something a vampire thrall shouldn’t be able to do according to your old legends, you might as well join me for dinner.”

“But you’re a vampire, the rules of humans don’t apply to you.” she said, smiling widely. There was no arguing with her. She was possibly the world’s foremost expert on any and all vampire lore and she knew it. Too bad most of it was just made up bullshit fairy tales.

We sat down in silence and as we were eating, I studied her face. She seemed a bit too eager this time around. Almost like there was something wrong. The steak had turned out nicely though I thought to myself as I took another bite.

“So, why are you living here anyway?” she said and then added for emphasis “Nice place though, a bit too upscale for you isn’t it?”

“I got tired of the same slums and decided to change it up. Besides, in this era, nobody would believe in vampires anyway. Not with all the crazy tech these humans have cooked up. I could feed in front of a human and they’d just compliment me for my good augs.” I answered her.

“Ah, but I know the truth.” she replied, her face positively glowing with the joy that she alone had the secret about me.

“Yes you do” I said, trying my best to avoid egging her on. She was always into it so damn hard. And .. it’d always end the same way. I cursed at myself silently.

“Sooo.. how’s the Family doing?” she probed with a flirty state of voice as she chewed on a piece of steak.

“They’re fine. I guess.” I said, not really sure since I hadn’t really been in contact with them for over two centuries. Annoying twats, the lot of them.

“Oh come on, they’re your kin! You shouldn’t shut them out like that you know?” she said excitedly, her voice betraying her obsession and wish to meet them someday. If I had my way, she’d never do that. Not for their sake, but for hers. “I can’t stand them. That’s the truth.” I said, scowling in a way that I hoped would convey my dislike with them. She didn’t notice it, no doubt dreaming up fantasies in her head about how wonderful it would be with a whole group at once.

Dinner was finally over and as we sipped the red wine afterwards, she gave me that look that I couldn’t ignore. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.

“Join me?” she said, getting up and moving over to the sofa with that walk that she did. I took a deep shaky breath.

“No.. you should leave. This isn’t healthy for you.”

She sat down on the sofa and spread her legs a bit and smiled as she ran a finger down the middle of her crotch and smiled at me.

“I’ll decide what’s health for me. And right now.. this is what I want.”

I steeled myself “No, just no.. this isn’t.. no. You need to leave. This isn’t going to happen.”

“Awww.. is someone being shy?” she said, sitting up a bit more modest. “How about you just sit down in the sofa with me? We’ll just talk. I promise.” she added. I looked at her sternly, but her face betrayed no lies, after all, I could read her as plain as a book and she could do the same to me.

“Alright. Just talk.” I said as I moved over and sat down next to her.

And for the next hour or so, we talked and caught up. This was the part that I did enjoy in all our of encounters. The way our lives would always be similar and yet so different. She’d tell me about how she’d grow up as a normal child of her time up until her 18nth birthday when she’d always “awaken” as it were and remember her past lives. In a way, she was as inhuman as me in spirit, which was the way that we were connected.

Eventually, the hour grew late and soon enough her head was resting against my shoulder as she was drifting off to sleep. I looked at her and she, with her drowsy eyes looked back at me.

“What?”

“It’s getting late. You should leave.”

“I’m fine right here.” she said with a bit of a pout as she made it very clear that she was staying.

“You’re sleeping on the sofa then.”

“No double sized bed this time?”

“No. I .. haven’t.. ” and as soon as I said the words, I tensed up a bit as I realized that I’d slipped up .. yet again.

“WHAT?!” she said excitedly and sat up, her eyes ablaze again with her obsession. “You haven’t since last we met? OH GOD, WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?!” she said with laughter in her voice. “Come on, what the hell?! You can’t deny your urges you know!”

I groaned a bit and then got up out of the sofa. “Look, this.. THIS isn’t happening, you’re not going to have your damn obsession with me fulfilled this time. This is all wrong. You can stay the night, but in the morning you’re going to leave and then I’m going to vanish and from then on, I want you to leave me alone alright?”

She gave me the puppy dog eyes, and I just shook my head as I went and got some extra sheets and pillows for her along with a blanket. I tossed it at her and then turned and went into the shower, but only brushed my teeth before heading off to bed. This was such a shit day.

It took the better part of an hour before I drifted off to sleep and the dreams that came to me were as always a disjointed mish-mash of disturbing imagery from my past. In the dream I reflected on my past and my own sinful living. It hadn’t been right. I didn’t have the right.

With a start, I woke up to feel a soft heaviness on top of me. I reached up and felt her familiar contour in the darkness. I sighed again theatrically.

“Go back to the sofa”

“Not until you do it to me, I want you to do it to me.” She said, her voice almost hypnotic to my ears.

“It’s not beautiful, it’s horrible. It’s ugly. I don’t know why you keep insisting on this in every life that you’ve lived. How many more lives will you waste on this nonsense? You know it only ends one way and one way only. Go.. live your life instead.”

“It’s what I want.” and her she shifted as she leaned down towards me, exposing herself in the moonlight that was shining through the windows. My breath got caught in my throat as I looked her face, as always almost a statuesque mask in the sharp contrast between darkness and light.

“What about what I want?” I said back to her with a weak voice, feeling my resolve weaken.

“I know what your kind wants after all” she said as she shifted slightly and I felt a familar warmth down there as she rubbed herself against my cock that was stiffening rapidly.

“That’s.. sexist.. and you know it…” I groaned out as I stiffened even more as I felt her pussy getting wetter.

“Yes, but only you can make me feel this way. Only I can make you feel this way.” she said, and on the word “this” I felt myself enter her. I groaned as she slowly pushed me inside of her.

“This isn’t right, it’s a sin.” I replied, half not even caring.

“It’s sex and it’s a normal thing for two adults to do with each other. What you’re doing is the actual sin.” and then she spat out “Abstinence” as if it was a curse.

“I made a promise to the lord” I meekly said as she straighted up and pushed the last bit inside of her.

“Whose quoting bullshit now?” she moaned as she leaned down and kissed me.

And that’s how it went. For the rest of the night, we fucked like animals and when dawn drew near, she’d passed out against my shoulder, my seed leaking out of all of her orifices and drying against her skin. I held her tighter and sighed, it’d be now like it’d always be. I’d love her to the end of her days and then she’d die and then there’d be those 20or so years more until she’d come back to me once more. I was a filthy sinner, but at least I had the love of my life by my side.

I apologized to god once more and swore that I’d try harder next time.

Things Of Position The

December 3, 2021 Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

Soundtrack: Soundcloud -Things Of Position The –

I have to fight to wake up, I have to really struggle, something urgently calls me. But it feels like something else is pushing me down, trying to water down my strength into nothing. I struggle harder, I give it all I’ve got and suddenly I come out of the darkness into a state of pure terror.

What? What?! WHAT?! I look around in a panic, I have no idea why I’m panicking or where I am. I see a shadow outside of the bus window and I freeze in a state of even more panic. Then it fades as the shadow blinks out of existence. I look around the bus interior and then I remember that I’m on a trip going by bus into the mountains of Norway.

Right… I calm down considerably, it was only a dream after all. No wonder, the bus is warm and it’s shaking everywhere as it’s going up to some village whose name I’ve already forgotten. The bus rattles as it drives over a bridge.. no.. a ferry loading dock and onto a boat.

As it stops inside, I start to panic again, my hands and wrists are itching, but I’m not really paying attention to them as I rush out of the bus and mingle with the other passengers, desperate to get away from something. I feel like someone’s hunting me and I’m the prey whose going to end up on this someone’s dinner plate. I look down at my itching hands and wrists and notice they’re riddled with scars now, scars I’ve never had before. My stomach feels like it’s falling into the ground, my legs start shaking. But I keep my composure as we go up the deck into the boat where I sit down at a table, watching the boat leave the harbour.

I look out the window, trying to calm myself down and think, what’s this happening right now? Am I alright? Maybe I should see a doctor about this, have I had a memory lapse? My thoughts just swirl around and I look at my arms again where my scars are still visible and still itching as if they’re still fresh.

After what feels like an eternity between the sky and the water, the ferry connects with another port and I go down into the bus and sit down in my seat. I resolve to go see a doctor when we reach the next village or town or whatever is next on our schedule. The bus keeps driving and soon enough the comforting rocking puts me to sleep again.

I wake up at a hospital, my hands and lower arms are now bandaged, I try to talk but my throat feels hoarse, the doctor comes in, talks to me and asks me if I can remember anything. I tell him what I remember, that I was on a bus and what happened after that with the ferry. He asks me if I remember how this all happened, I tell him that my mind is a blank and that I’m scared that I might be losing my mind. He assures me that it’ll be fine that it’s just shock and that it’ll likely wear off soon. I tell him that I’m still very tired, he says that it’s no wonder, considering how much blood I’ve lost.

He gives me a shot with something that’ll help me sleep. As I drift off, my mind is ablaze with panic, but the drug soon takes hold and I mercifully fade out.

I wake up in pure terror again, I’m at some rest stop further up the mountains, the shadow is back, I scream as I feel intense pain in my hands and arms as I hold them in front of me, I feel something tearing at me, growling with a sound that isn’t human. I lose my composure and just panic, running towards a truck and jumping onto it’s bed, barely getting over the edge of it.

I’m still bleeding profusely as I squeeze myself in between some black crates, I’m not safe anywhere I think to myself. I don’t know what’s happening and soon enough I black out.

I wake up again with a start and look down at my hands and arms which are OK again. How are they fine again? HOW?! I feel my mind starting to lose it as I start to wonder if any of this is real, am I real? What’s happening? This has to be a dream hasn’t it? But what kind of dream has you bleeding everywhere and feeling it so well?

I look down at the bed and the crates, no blood, no nothing. And that’s when I notice that it’s not the same truck as before. How did I get on this one? I have no idea where this one is going. But I stay hidden, ever aware of the shadows around me, terrified that they might come to life and hurt me.

After an hour where nothing of note happens, I look around and see that the area around me is positively beautiful. The nature is just so inviting that it makes me want to hop off and take a walk right now. I shake my head and realize that it’d probably mean my death, because at least now I’m moving somewhere instead of being a stationary target. I still feel a sense of peace as the sweet air and the feeling of putting distance between me and whatever that was is a comfort.

The truck stops at a complex with what looks like an over sized skiing lift. Only it’s a huge industrial elevator that takes things up the mountain. It’s loaded with machinery and various crates and as I try to sneak on board, I hear somebody say “Excuse me?” and I freeze in place. When I direct my gaze to my right, I see a couple of backpackers smiling at me. I apologize for sneaking aboard and they all laugh saying that we’d all better hide before the elevator starts up because the guards are gonna check this any second now.

So we hide behind some more crates while we hear the rustling of someone walking around checking that everything is in shape. Just when I think that we’ll be discovered, the guard walks back and yells something to someone and the lift rumbles and starts up very slowly towards what seems like an astronomy tower up in the distance.

I introduce myself and they in turn give me their names as well. There’s two girls, one whose a bit shorter and heavyset and the other whose a tall lanky one. The guy addressing me looks like a serious hunk and I almost have to forcibly tear my gaze of him with force to notice the last guy in the group which looks like a classic nerd. Zits on the face, glasses and greasy hair that’s going everywhere.

As the trip is taking quite a lot of time, me and Hunk have some time to talk about things. He tells me he’s from Norway himself and after some hesitation I tell him I’m on a trip from abroad to see as much as I can. He brightens up and tells me lots of stories about the surrounding area while the two girls and the nerd guy sit quiet browsing on their phones, doing their best to ignore us.

We hit it off and soon enough I find myself telling him the honest truth, because I’m still scared. He gives me a sharp look and asks me for more details. As I tell him what I can, he tells me that it’s strange that I’ve experienced so many odd things considering that him and his friends are actually occult explorers and are going to sneak into the facility above us.

He originally thought I was doing the same and that we perhaps had been browsing the same forums online. But we get interrupted by the elevator soon coming to a halt up close to the facility, as before, we wait for an opening and then we all quietly rush out and sneak past the guards who are tired and bored. Then again, it’s no wonder considering that it’s now getting close to night time with the sun setting slowly.

We make it into a sort of sterile looking cafeteria and steal some food and chomp down on it, it’s all very drab stuff like chocolate bars and some kind of bran crackers. We rinse it down with some water from the taps, but since the cupboards and drawers are are locked for some reason, we can’t get any glasses, so we settle for some of their canteens.

The others decide to explore the facility, but I’m so drained that I just have to sit down. The hunk sits with me, he’s worried about me too. The other three tell us that they’re going to see “The core” which is apparently some device they’re testing out here. After a while, the nerd guy comes down and screams at us that the girls are acting crazy, he’s got a nose bleed himself and his skin doesn’t look right for some reason. We still get up and rush up to higher levels of the facility, everything around us is turning darker the higher we go and the guards are nowhere to be seen.

Floor after floor of stairs until suddenly we come out into a big domed room which obviously used to be an observatory since the slits in the ceiling are still there. But the rest is dominated by a huge machine displaying a spinning 3D hologram in the air. I stop in my tracks, staring at it, my mind recoils because it just feels wrong. “That shape shouldn’t be” I think to myself as it spins around in a way that makes me question if our world is the unreal one and that hologram is the only real thing around us.

I hear a scream to my left and my eyes snap off the impossible glyph and I see blood everywhere, on the walls, on the floor, on the screens and on the controls to the huge device. And then I see the girls sitting on the floor in a pool of blood, laughing and moving in ways they shouldn’t be able to. In the dusk of the control room their faces are white ovals, their eyes are completely black and their laughter sort of warps around us and cuts out in unsettling ways. I notice with a strange sense of detachment that their hair has fallen off completely and their their skulls are undulating in strange ways as if something inside wants to break out.

The hunky guy seals his fate when he rushes to the console and tries to pull a big lever. The instant he touches it, he falls to the floor instantly and screams only to get cut off mid-scream. His opened eyes turn white as I see his face starts to grow cracks. He soon collapses into dust and I realize that he’s very much dead and gone. As I back peddle towards a window, a strange babbling-creaking-chittering sound grabs my attention and I see the nerd guy, or whatever he’s become now, come at me with a knife.

Half his face is torn away down to the bone and he smiles a happy gleeful smile as the blade is sinking towards me, I react instinctively and push him away from me, which just so happens to be towards a window which shatters. As he falls, he laughs even harder and the knife clatters against the floor and then falls out the window as well, leaving nothing behind.

I turn away from the hole where an icy wind now howls into the room and look at the device, this has to have been the source of all of this. The girls are still sitting and their heads are wobbling on their necks as if they’ve become mannequins. I grab a piece of fabric and wrap it around a steel rod I find nearby and I smash what I think is the main electrical components, the machine makes a shuddering sound and sounds like it’s starting to power down.

I waste no time and run down the stairs into the darkening facility, behind me the echoes of the girls laughter follows me. Thankfully it fades out as I make it down to the ground level again and find myself at the big elevator. I run into the booth and thankfully the levers and instructions are simple enough that I manage to get the thing going down again. As the machinery hums to life, I spot what appears to be a satellite phone for emergencies, I grab that and a first aid kit that I find and rush to the platform elevator, getting on it before it starts going down again.

While the elevator goes down, the air has grown heavier and lighting is tearing up the landscape around me. Whatever I started certainly doesn’t seem like it’s going to end up well for this place. I sit down and lean towards one of the crates and let out a big sigh of relief. At least I’m safe for now… right?

However, my adrenaline-filled body’s anxiety still holds me in it’s grip until the great freight elevator finally reaches the ground. I rush off and look for anyone to help me, anyone that I can warn of whatever it is up there. There’s nobody, the entire complex at the bottom seems abandoned as well. I make it into one of the offices and find an old withered and scratched board with numbered keys, I realize that these are keys for cars and grab one and rush outside and find it’s corresponding vehicle.

As I get into the car, I put the sat phone on the seat next to me and start it and quickly speed down the road towards civilization. As the miles behind me increase I feel my tension slowly starting to slip away. I must be far enough away now I think to myself. I pull into the side of the road and decide to try and call some emergency services with the phone I have.

When I turn on the device, the LCD screen lights up with a faded green hue and I see the following rows appear:

REVERSE
REVERSE
REVERSE

And that’s when I realize that I’ve been doing all of this in the wrong order….

Somewhere in Space, Around a Dying Star

December 3, 2021 Wondrous FairyLeave a comment

Soundtrack:https://soundcloud.com/user-427260418/the-fairy-system-somewhere-in-space-around-a-dying-star

The old freighter had been sitting in orbit around the dying sun for at least a couple of millennia now. Some of the hull had been flaking off bit by bit, sometimes a compartment or room would collapse and the air inside would rush out along with some random debris, all glittering in the sunlight. The ship was obviously falling apart, but the life support systems and the automatic orbit compensators were mostly intact on a majority of the decks. Not that it really mattered to either of the two who were aboard.

In the dusk of one of the rooms, in the shade from the sun, she looks at him and he looks at her. She takes a few steps forward, a perfectly sculpted woman, her face is something you would write poems about if you could see it. She smiles in a sort of absentminded way like a comet coming around for a never-ending turn. The man is an Adonis in body, perfectly toned muscles and amazing proportions everywhere. His eyes sparkle with a brown tint most women would fall in love with in a second. His hair is short, but well groomed, styled in a hairdo that seemingly says “I’m sophisticated, but beware, the tiger that lurks below”

The man stretches out his hand and she takes it. He leads her to the bed, taking his time and gently ushering her towards it. His hands gently brush up against her body in all the sensitive places. She suddenly stops, letting his naked sex press against her back side.. leaning backwards and looking up at him. They share a kiss.. like a thinly veiled promise which then deepens into a more intense reality. She leans over slight, subtly shifting her body so that he can see her breasts. His eyes dart all over her body as his hand reaches down to cup her left breast in the palm of his hand. She gasps and with a giggle gets on the bed and faces him, all naked and with no shame.

He kneels in front of her.. letting his lips and his tongue tease her ever so gently, but without reaching for her sensitive spots. Slowly, with a practiced ease, his hands briefly brushes over her breasts, making her nipples stiff as he brings his mouth close to each one of them, giving them the attention they require. He kisses her stomach downwards, but skips over her wet, sensitive spot, leaving that for later. His lips impress on her thighs as his hands squeeze and massage her ass, he’s teasing her slowly, as he’s done so many times before. Throughout his gentle stimulation, she gasps and moans a few times as well. Then he seemingly refocuses his attention on her center, that wet clit and pussy, as he pushes apart her legs with a sudden fierceness. She produces a mocking, shocked smile, but allows him to continue as he brings his tongue and lips and fingers down to tease her folds and her clit in the old practiced ways.

It doesn’t take long before her body shudders and she explodes in an orgasm, panting, moaning and saying his name. A sound that means nothing in the scope of things. In an old husk of a ship, drifting around a dead star. Two specks in the cosmic night, carving out a niche for themselves in an unlikely place. She gets up and motions for him gently to sit on the bed, he does so with rapt attention, his cock standing straight up, that as well, much like her pussy, a true work of art. A bit of precum leaks from the tip as she takes her finger and puts it on the tip, siphoning it up and putting it against her lips with a ravishing smile, seemingly tasting it.

But she doesn’t go for the prize immediately either, she spends some time teasing his nipples, making sure they’re stiff as well. Meanwhile, her hands are busy playing with his thighs and balls. They both know exactly what they’re doing after all. But after some more teasing, he takes her head in his hands and guides her mouth to his cock, seemingly impatient. She smirks and licks the tip a few times, letting her tongue ride up and down the shaft before she plunges his cock deep inside of her mouth. He braces himself against the bed and moans as she did a few moments before. She sucks with efficient and ravenous strokes as his cock pulsates in her mouth, getting closer and closer to exploding. But after a while, he beckons her to stop. They share a look and they kiss again, this time it’s clear it’s a harsh and intense kiss. The time for teasing has ended and now it’s time for the real action to begin.

They shift sides on the bed, she on her back, with her legs spread and a lurid smile, him with eyes wide open with lust as he lowers himself and pushes his cock deep inside of her wet pussy. For a while, he moves forward and back and the slapping of his balls accentuates her moans. It’s just the two of them here, alone on the bed, alone in this condemned solar system, alone in this quadrant even. As the fury of the sun next to them flares up, they both also explode into a frenzy of action. Nibbling, kissing, clawing, moaning, fucking harshly together. His cock leaking precum into her pussy, her pussy so ready and wet and aroused and ready for his load. But, they’re not done yet. They shift position so he’s on his back. She takes the opportunity to plunge her mouth down on his cock, sucking it clean from her juices and then she straddles him and guides his hands up to her breasts where he teases her as she begins fucking him instead now.

When she impales herself on his cock over and over, he moans more loudly, clearly reacting stronger to the increased stimuli of her tight pussy squeezing down on his member. As his hands go down to squeeze and guide her ass, her own hands goes up to her breasts and she plays with them and shows off to him. Then she suddenly stops and bites her lower lip with a mischievous glint in her eyes.

She gets off him and he moves off the bed and to the side, knowing what’s to come next as she bares her ass for him, clearly intending him to take her in all of her holes. The man doesn’t miss a beat as he licks his fingers and gently probes her tight hole, lubing it up as best he can. She moans deep inside of her throat, clearly reacting strongly to his probing, but she doesn’t flinch. She patiently stays still as his fingers increasingly widen her anus enough for him to be able to start teasing it with his big cock. When he pushes his tip against her butt and it starts sliding inside, she makes a half surprised O-face, but then her features tighten up as she begins rubbing her clit in rhythm with his cock going in and out of her ass. They go at it for a while, the man starting off slowly, only to pick up the pace faster and faster. His balls slapping against her pussy, her fingers deftly manipulating her folds and her clit for maximum intensity. Their moans being muted in the room they’re in, the dusk still reigning supreme in the space they share.

Their mutual dance builds up to a crescendo as his cock and balls finally get ready to ejaculate inside of her, her ass is pliant, yielding, ready to devour his load. As the pace picks up into a feverish pitch, the mans body briefly twitches once.. and then twice and then hers begin doing the same. Then instantly, they both freeze for a long time, mid-thrust. Their bodies perfectly still as a drop of mixed precum and her juices hits the bed. The bed spread has a big mouldy black spot, because this isn’t the first time it’s happened, nor will it be the last.

After a period of a few minutes, they both make a few whirring sounds and then he pulls out of her harshly. He stiffly walks over to the same spot he stood before he started and she gets up from the bed as her fluids leak down her pristine leg, and returns to her spot in front of him. Their faces now vacant and empty as the day they were unpacked from their boxes as they arrived on the ship.

Now they stand there staring at each other, the heat of the sun against the ship generates enough warmth inside that their fluids over time evaporate again. In the dusk of the room, in the shade from the sun, she looks at him and he looks at her. She takes a few steps forward, she smiles in a sort of absentminded way like a comet coming around for a never-ending turn…….

Wondrous Fairy Art Collective

Tag: Science Fiction

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Somewhere in Space, Around a Dying Star