Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Chapter 3: Awakening

It was a warm summer day. Exceedingly warm in fact. July had been brutal this year. It was unusual for the weather to ever exceed a temperature above even 30 degrees C in Sweden. Today it was 37 C.


A lot of people wouldn't know this, but, the human body handles external temperatures surprisingly well. It doesn’t really matter if its five degrees or forty-five degrees. The human body just kind of make due with what it got. Except for when the external temperature matches the internal one.  That magical number of 37.3 C. 


This is more or less when your brain gets fried and goes haywire. There’s not really any better explanation for it than that. Rational thought just abruptly changes its name to “Joe Smith”, packs its bags, and gets on the first plane to New Zealand, Australia or any other commonwealth country.


This leaves you with a body controlled mainly by distorted feelings and animal instinct. Without the rational side keeping those two in check this combination can lead to some quite interesting if not extremely volatile situations.


“It’s hot” John said. He was lying uncomfortably in the grass behind one of the many benches in this suburban area. He was way too out of it to care about some minor discomfort thought. Besides, the built up humidity in the grass felt good against his back.


“Have you ever thought about life, John?” Chris asked him while sitting on the aforementioned bench. The question itself addressed John but the tone made it sound like he was rather addressing a room full of people. Or no one in particular. John couldn’t decide.


“It’s way too hot” he replied without even considering the details in Chris’s question. His warm brain felt like it was melting and thus he was in no mood to entertain another one of Chris’ crazy ideas. God know he have had a few during the years.


Chris continued anyway. “We are born right? And then we die. And a lot of stuff happens in between right? But none of it really matters since it’s all erased at the end right? Like a faulty hard drive all data is lost and forever gone. The only reason we exist to begin with is because of how it’s programmed into our genes. We’re literally programmed to stay alive and reproduce. Otherwise there just wouldn’t be any life because it’d all be dead, you know? ”


John turned his head over to look at Chris since he had noticed not only the tonal change in his voice but also how his gestures grew wilder as the monolog went on. Chris had turned his body around on the bench and was now looking directly at John as he was speaking.


“But you know John. There's one thing that has fascinated me. For these past few weeks in fact. We all know our birth day right? We celebrate it every year. But at the same time we pass our death date every year. Not even knowing it's there, you know? Just skulking away in the shadows waiting for the year that is THE YEAR you know?”


Chris had ended his sentence with a question but it was very clear that he wasn't really looking for an answer as he now held a .356 Magnum pointed towards John. John was close enough to see that it looked fully loaded. That is, the second before Chris actually fired at John, puncturing his lung.

While trying to gasp for air John could hear Chris continue his monolog: “You now know your death day John. And so do I to be honest.” Johns lungs was now starting to fill up with an unhealthy amount of blood which was in turn pushing out all the valuable air from where it should be. Not only that but John’s vision was starting to get blurry as well.


“Is this how I'm going to fucking die? In a grass field looking at a psycho on a bench?” was one of the last things going through John’s head as he watched Chris put a bullet through his.

They both knew their death date.

Thursday, July 21, 2016

I don't really like Erdogan...


Thursday, July 14, 2016

Chapter 2: Revenge

So what happened to that first desire that bound all humans together in the first place? That want, if not need, to protect their race at all costs? So, as mentioned earlier, the humans had perfected their salvaged technology after thirty-five years. But that’s another part of the human condition. They can never have enough. Just copying someone else’s work was nowhere as near as satisfying as it’d be to surpass them. So it took them about forty years to implement it. And another ten years to surpass it greatly. Technology that had once been outside their grasp was now beneath them. So they sent out scouting parties. They knew that the aliens had sent out a final warning into space by conventional radio waves. But they didn’t know who was the intended receiver nor where they would be located. It took them years of hard labor before they finally found their home system. The humans had been able to find it more or less by luck when one of their mining probes unexpectedly went offline in the middle of a mining operation. Billions of dollars were lost that day but the monetary loss was insignificant compared to what they gained. They now knew where their enemies were. And better yet, they hadn’t received the message yet. So they prepared for war. Then they patiently waited. They wanted the aliens to hear the message from their fallen comrades that had been sent so many, many years before. Once they had received the message and the severity of it had spread over all of their alien home worlds the humans decided. They decided to bring their war to them. The human ships and sky cities warped into orbit of the aliens home planets. Enough of them to blot out the skies. Just leaving the ships in orbit would have been worse than a nuclear winter. But the humans wanted revenge. They wanted blood. They wanted to show their would be captors what the human race was made of. What they could do. What the would do. The war lasted for minutes as they laid waste to entire planets. The humans had won. Yet it wasn't enough.

Mirrors

Hi there. It's me again. You might remember me from my story Claire. Or you might not. Doesn't really matter except if you want a bit of a backstory about me and my company. Btw, none of us has yet to respond that... thing in the Faraday cage.

But you guys aren't here to hear about old stories now are you? You're here to hear about mirrors! The bane of almost any human existence. Even if they're just reflecting coherent light back at you we still write stories, filming movies and making video games revolving almost solely about mirrors. But have you ever wondered why? Well me neither. Which brings me to last Saturdays discussion I had with an old friend and colleague of mine. Well, it was more of a long sided monologue from his side.

It all started in a bar. Like most shady stories do. Like I said, he was a colleague of mine, working in the physics department at the same company. Head of department really, but it's not that relevant. What's relevant is how this "discussion" came about.

So I had been waiting in the bar for about an hour before he finally showed up. Not that it was unusual in and by itself, he was a physicist after all. They're better known for their cleverness than their punctuality. Still, I haven't seen the guy in about a month so... yeah.

Anyways, when he finally showed up he looked disheveled. Like he hadn't changed his shirt in days, his beard was grown, and his hair was undone. The guy also looked like he lost something like twenty pounds since I last saw him. Since I had packed on a few pounds myself over the years, I was about to ask him what his secret was as soon as he sat down. But before I spoke he pre-empted me.

"Barkeep. A mug and a cheap whiskey please. Leave the bottle" He said looking straight at the barkeep. He put down his credit card on the counter and said "No ice. A black mug if you have one". Quite flabbergasted by his behavior I said "Well, hello to you too" in a sarcastic tone. "Sorry" he solemnly responded. "It's been a rough month"

I barely had to say "It's ok mate, so wha..." before he began to speak again. "They want us to observe them. They fucking want us to see them."

I'm getting more and more confused by the second, and being three beers in didn't really help my thinking process, so I flat out said "Alright mate, I have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Talk some god damn sense dammit!" thinking that he's talking about some reverse stalker or something.

That's when he laid it all on me. Apparently they had come across a phenomenon as were random background radiation could sometimes hit the same electron as regular light at the same time, resulting in a different light output. So of course, scientist as they are, they had scrounged up the shiniest mirror they could find and a really strong laser.

"Lasers and mirrors, I picked the wrong profession" I though to myself while continuing to listen to his story. And at first the result was to be expected. Since the light going out was constant, and background radiation is random noise, their... optic meters(?) picked up random variations of the light. This went on for a week, burning tax payers money, until something unexpected happened.

They started to get repetitions. Small ones at first. Kinda like getting red five times in a row on a roulette table. So they added more lasers to get more data. And the more they observed the less random these occurrences became. So now, like a hundred lasers in total, all being measured, started to show the same two colors in different sequences, over and over again.

"What? That's bloody impossible" Even I knew that the chances of that would be like winning every lottery while being struck by every single lightning bolt ever.  Really fucking improbable is what I'm saying.

"Yeah, I know" He said. "But that's just were it really started. We did something we shouldn't have. We translated it to binary and then over to letters. You know what it said?" He looked me with eyes so intense that I could see my self in them. "It said 'We can see you too now. Lets see each other more'"

After that, he told me, everyone in the "laser" team had started to see things. At first it was just something in the peripheral while looking in the mirror. But the more they saw them the more they started to look like creatures. Humans and... other things. And it wasn't just in the mirrors either. It graduated to anything shiny, and then later, to anything that reflects light relatively well.

The last thing he told me that night in that bar was "I can even see them in your eyes"

So what to take from this? Did he just finally crash or is there something out there trying to get our attention? I can't really be sure. All I know is that I don't look too long into the bathroom mirror anymore.

A response to a "Magic" user.

This is a response to: I need someone to take me seriously, please. The whole world's at stake.(Link)

Ha, "Magic users". Your pride is your downfall. Thinking you're better than mere mortals but teleport away at the first sign of trouble. At least the humans stand back and fight. Some of them until their last man. As many of them did in the last cycle.
Automatic weapons tearing through the dormant. A trillion bullets would be an understatement. And their airplanes, bombing them so swiftly from the sky, until they were out of bullets, bombs and fuel. With nowhere to land, even their last breaths in those machines took out more than you did with your "magic", crashing into the dormant. Killing them by the thousands per ship.
Then there were the nukes. Even thought napalm always was my favorite thing to see, oh how they burned both man and dormant alike, the nukes were breathtaking. Stunning. Each one of them like a unique flower sprouting into the atmosphere oh so fiercely.
As a last ditch effort, the few remaining humans, holed out in bunkers or at sea, fired their nuclear armaments almost simultaneously, for total annihilation. Of both skies. Smog filled the sky as billions upon billions of souls were evaporated by a heat only rivaled by the sun.
As someone who has walked at the deepest depths, these "things" as you so haphazardly calls them are just that. Things. Not much more powerful than you "almighty magic users". Not all that powerful at all really, since they're already dead.
The dormant is the accumulated fear from eons of lifeforms. Some human, some not. Fear clinging to rotting flesh and brittle bones. Lying dormant in the depths of the seas, sleeping away their agony. Hence their name.
To those who wonders, the cycle of his repeats every year or two or so. The world ends. We feed on your, the "magic users " and the Dormants fears and agony. Every slice, every dice, every cry in pain, every time something loses its last sliver of hope is like sweet, sweet wine for us. Oh and what a perfectly sublime agony it is. Each unique soul having its own torments and anguish. Billions upon billions of souls each harvest. So ungodly good. It's a shame you'll never be able to experience this from our point of view.
Then we just reset it. Resets the world. Let the humans live their pathetic lives. Let the "magic users" feel like the upper class for a while. Let the dormant have their uninterrupted slumber.
Well, except for this poor sap. There's a reason time travel is outlawed inside their little magic circles. It's not because it requires tremendous power and luck. It's because forgetfulness is bliss. After each reset, everyone forgets everything. We leave not a trace in the minds of the entitets we feed off of.
But our reset has a flaw. If someone were to time travel backwards before we reset the cycle they'll remember ever last bit of it. This guy will feel the same terror and helplessness until the cycle repeats. And he couldn't even bring his own body with him. I'm sorry but that just puts a gleeful smile on my face, metaphorically speaking.
But yeah, he'll always remember. That kind of terror doesn't leave your soul so easily.
Have fun "Spellsword". I guess I'll see you again next cycle. :)