Wings to Carry Us Prologue: rough draft

 

Image: DuffusCastle. By Kourous. Wikimedia Commons.

 

Ereterus was hot and tired when he came to a large pair of ruins jutting out from a hill in the Plains of Van Durgle. Cracked, aged, and worn, the decrepit structure was the remnant of an old fort, and by the looks of the stag insignia above the partly open rusted portcullis, it had been in use by the Horfifin dynasty, who had long wiped out the vassal states, the smaller kingdoms that paid homage to the Austentoff dynasty. Ereterus knew history well. The Horfifin dynasty had overthrown and taken many of the smaller kingdoms from the Austentoff, claiming them as their own. The Austentoff dynasty had never forgiven them for it, and the unbridle malice that had time to stew and boil under the flames of hundreds and hundreds of years in resentment within the cauldron of time would be the Horfifin dynasty’s undoing, to a certain extent. Not that it mattered. In the long run King Horfifin’s XXXXVI wouldn’t have been able to withstand the even greater onslaught that ravaged the land a couple years later. It’s why hardly anyone lived on the ground anymore.

The tower, ancient and weathered, still exuded a feeling of strength, as if the spirit of the builders from ages past had put all their blood and ingenuity into it. In a sense, the spirits of the old builders still lived within these walls. Ereterus could feel it.

Ereterus took a look at the plain around him. From north to west, to east to south, the Plains of Van Durgle stretched like an undulating ocean, the grass bowing to the light breeze. The ruins wouldn’t be the safest place to camp (very little places at ground level were), but it would certainly be better than his prior nights of camping out in the open. It was only midday, but Ereterus didn’t care. He had been walking long hours for the past couple of months. He had been walking long hours for most of his life. Only rarely did he come across shelter that he could take refuge in. Normally he walked until 1 AM, only to get up at 7 AM. When he occasionally found a structure, which was rare, he would take advantage of his good fortune.

How he would have loved to have rested more. But time didn’t afford him the luxury. He had seen the vision from the oracle back in in Ipais. It wasn’t a vision set in stone, but a couple of visions that broke into two roads, one pleasant, one sinister, of what could be. There were two outcomes, a dead world, or reborn world of light and knowledge.

This knowledge that he carried was a burden. Ereterus knew that if he told anyone what he knew that they would kill him. The Ipains didn’t look kindly on what they considered blasphemy. If he dared share what the oracle had showed him, they would call him and the oracle a liar, giving them a prolonged death. Silence wasn’t always golden. It was more than that. It was the breath of life. Still, the knowledge he carried weighed heavier than the pack on his back, and he longed for the day that he wouldn’t have to keep it secret. Until then, there was nothing he could do. Eventually the time would come, he hoped, that all would be made known unto civilization.

He walked through the old portcullis and under the keep. Swords, spears, axes, and all other manner of weaponry were still nicely placed in the rack, despite the last ground war. In fact, there was little devastation inside the keep. The throne was still there, although the plush seating was spotted with mildew and the bronze frame had grown dull. Above the throne, the Horfifin coat of arms had been removed, obviously by the nobles who had still claimed allegiance to Austentoff. But the large round table for war meetings still stood in the middle and the tapestries, though a bit worn and moth eaten, still hung on the walls. Enough light was coming in from the slits for windows that Ereterus could see that there were a few blood stains on the table from the last scuffle as well as tears in the tapestries from swords. But overall it appeared that the dukes who had rebelled wanted this fortification to remain in the best condition possible so that they could make use of it. Remembering his history, Ereterus knew that the nobles weren’t that gracious with everything that Horfifin XXXVI owned. They and the rival Austentoff dynasty had laid utter waste to the magnificent marble brick and gold tiled Horfifin palace without mercy.

Ereterus shook his head. They needn’t had bothered. The upcoming dragon, dire wolf, or ogre attacks would have done all that hard work in a fraction of the time for the dukes and the kingdom of Austentoff. But what was done was done, and it wasn’t like Ereterus had anything to do with it; the events having transpired long before he was born.

Resuming his exploration of the structure, he walked up the stone steps that wound up to the top floor. At the top was a large oaken door, almost eaten away by termites. Ereterus gently pushed the door open, only to have it break into a pile of kindling, with the rusty door hinges just barely hanging onto the door frame.

He stepped into the chamber to find an old bed, the mattress and bedding partly eaten away by moths. Aside from the bed and a few tapestries on the wall, there wasn’t much left in the chamber, except for a small writing desk under an arrow slit, which, Ereterus found out, was strangely in better condition than the door had been.

He opened one of the upper drawers of the desk and found a parchment inside it, brittle but still readable. Ereterus had always loved reading old parchments and journals. They were windows back into the past, one that he could hardly understand, but one that he hoped to get a gleam some understanding, if only a little, from the written records of those who came before him. From this parchment, Ereterus learned that the commander stressed great value on horsemanship. Horsemanship! What a concept! In this age horses ran wild. Ereterus gently placed the parchment back in the drawer, closed it and opened another drawer only to find nothing.

He walked back down the stairs and out into the ward. From here he got a good look at the surrounding turrets. They had taken the most damage during the siege. Some had huge chunks blown out of their sides, others were missing their turrets. A particular large gash, wide at the top and narrowed as it slithered down, was in the north wall, opposite of the keep. This section had taken huge catapult damage.

What Ereterus really wanted to find was the dungeon. Though not the most comfortable place to sleep, it would offer him the most protection from ogres, dire wolves, and dragons. This was small comfort. Dragons and dire wolves could and did dig if they sensed a buried life form, and ogres were known to topple buildings for fun, trapping the poor, unfortunate soul who was unlucky enough to be buried under the rubble, but every little bit of protection helped.

Looking back on his month long journey across the plains, Ereterus was surprised that he hadn’t been picked off by one of these monsters. They were always on the hunt, and the plains offered little to no protection. He had encountered one ogre a couple of months ago, a lumbering beast as large as a small mountain, rock-like in nature with huge jagged plates of armor for skin, and knots of stone-like growth protruding like spikes from his back.

There had been no ruins on the open plains. No place to hide. No place except for the tall grass in the hopes that the ogre wouldn’t see him. Ereterus was lucky that ogres, unlike dragons don’t have a sense in which they can detect body heat, or the smell of a dire wolf. By nature, ogres are dumb and slow creatures, but they find simple pleasures, and there was no guarantee that the oaf wouldn’t still step on him by changing direction, or lie down and roll around in the grass.

Ereterus hadn’t remembered a time he had been so frightened in all his life. He counted it as a blessing and as proof of his divine mission when the ogre passed him by, finger up his nose as he lagged his clumsy feet behind him.

Tummy rumbling, Ereterus was reminded that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning. Finding a dislodged stone to sit on, he removed his cloak, took off his hat, and removed his knapsack to take out a piece of cheese and bread that he had stolen from one of those flying traders that often made their way to Ipais for trade. In this case, the trader had landed to make some minor repairs to his flying machine.

The food had looked tasty and Ereterus would have gladly paid for it if he had money to do so. He had gotten partly lucky with the trader. In this case Ereterus had offered to help him, hoping that he wouldn’t have to steal, but the trader had only scorned him as a stupid earth dweller. And so when the trader was deeply absorbed in his repairs, Ereterus stole some bread and a wheel of cheese from his table. Stolen or rightly earned, when one was starving it didn’t matter. It tasted good either way.

Ereterus drank from his flask, dislodging a piece of dry bread caught in the back of his throat. He breathed deeply, feeling the breeze lightly caress him under the warm sun. It was strange to think that small moments like this were moments of deep joy. But in living a life of constant movement, always trying to survive, in the hopes of finding an answer to the world’s problems, moments like this were a joy.

After eating, he fell into the grass. It was soft and flowers were all around him. Yellow flowers like the noonday sun, flowers as blue as the early morning, flowers as white as snow, flowers as red as velvet, wildflowers abounding in what was once a training ground. From his right ear, he heard some quiet chirping. He turned his head to his side to see a little field mouse harvesting little seeds from the flowers. The mouse scurried off to his den somewhere. Ereterus looked back up at the sky. The clouds were extra puffy today, billowing like sails unfurled as they sailed across the ocean of the firmament.

Ereterus yawned. He wanted to fall asleep in this peaceful ward, among the beautiful flowers, under the tranquil sky. But he knew that was a death wish. The sky could easily turn into a nightmare with the huge monsters roaming about. Certainly he had risked much in the past weeks, such as his encounter with the ogre, but that was because he had no shelter. When shelter was provided one took it.

Getting up he stretched before putting his cloak and hat back on, strapping his pack back to his back, and grabbing his knapsack. He walked along the walls of the fortress until he came across a set of stairs leading down. Either it lead to the cellar or the dungeon. Regardless, he had found it just in the nick of time. For a shadow fell over him. Flying high above him, wings outstretched to block out the clouds, was a dragon. Without hesitation, Ereterus ran down the stairs before the dragon could either burn him to a cinder or eat him raw.

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Cold Shades Ch 2: Revised and Expanded Rough Draft

Suggested for ages 18 and up for harsh violence, strong language, sexual themes and rape, and drug abuse. 

It had been a week since Becca visited her brother and she was still saddened over the whole ordeal. Though he was difficult, she still loved him. But there wasn’t anything she could do for him. She wished that an employer would give Harold a second chance, but she knew that she was asking the nearly impossible. What he said about no one hiring him was true, even though he could speak numerous languages. What was the point of that if anyone from around the world, Chinese, Spanish, German, and so forth could have their languages translated in her chip, as though they were speaking English! Even if the former wasn’t an issue, the vast majority of employers didn’t want to take the time to see a potential employee, hence they had computers do it. She wondered if it was because they were afraid. Becca couldn’t say so for certain but it would make sense. After all, if a potential employer was forced to look her brother in the eyes, seeing his hardships and his struggles, would such an employer be willing to give him a chance? Furthermore, despite all of the technology, would more people, even if only a few more, have jobs if there were less computers to conduct the interview process?

Computer interviews were so convenient for employers. Harold was certainly a victim of the system that didn’t give any leeway or room for extenuating circumstances, or complex reasons for why someone did what they did, or why they lacked experience but could gain it. There was no room for bargaining, no room for understanding.

Then again, she shouldn’t feel too sorry for Harold. Her mother had left them behind enough of a will that even someone like Becca’s brother was comfortably provided for. True, housing prices had risen since their mother had passed. But at least Harold had a small home. That was more than could be said for most. Downtown there were those housed in govern-mental so-called improved housing, families and individuals living and sharing the space in barely maintained buildings.

Becca tried to stop thinking about it. The situation was just too painful. Instead, she redirected her thoughts to the day at hand. She had work to do. Her clients had been sending her more angry messages than usual. That was bad enough, but it was unbearable to think that her chip was set on the same frequency as Cinema Palace’s, meaning that if the president and vice president wanted to read her v-mails they could, considering any customer complaint was a complaint against the whole company. It would have been no hard task for them to tap into the messages running to her chip anytime they liked. Not many were employed at Cinema Palace, only a handful of them and Becca was lucky (if she could be called lucky) to be employed. To save money, there weren’t any other supervisors over the few employees except for the two presidents. When Becca was giving written warnings about her falling short on the job, and she had been a couple of times, it was by the heads of the company.

She was already on thin ice enough with them.

After she had gotten back from visiting Harold yesterday, she had gotten into a particularly volatile argument with a customer. This customer was so irate that she had paid extra to send a holographic image of herself into Becca’s home to berate her. She had waited, waited like a tiger hiding in the foliage, until Becca was back home so she could pounce on her. The chip wouldn’t play a hologram unless Becca was near her computer. She hoped it would stay that way.

With the stress of Harold already weighing on her, Becca had lost her cool and cussed out the customer before ordering her chip to block the hologram. Two hours later, she had received a message from one of the heads, Vice President Robert Johnson, which notified her that a customer had complained about her conduct (gee, she wondered who, sarcastically), followed by a stern warning that blocking cliental was against company policy and that continuing to ignore policy would result in her termination. Becca had quickly responded, even going so far as to pay ten digifunds each, twenty-five in total because of tax, to send a hologram of herself over to both the customer she had slighted and her employers. Because of this, she had a little less digifunds in her account. Yesterday had easily been one of her worst workdays.

Becca cursed. Those bastards at Big Bytes could charge whatever they wanted for through holographic calls though their Insite Chips, and the heads of Cinema Palace made use of it by having their employees send a human hologram instead of a normal v-mail when they dishonored the company, and there was nothing Becca could do about it. Work was so scarce, and Cinema Palace was just a few of the many companies left owned by 4evRPlay. Screw them!

Even if she did try applying with a company under the thumb of another corporation, say Hippocare, Cornucopia, Elain June, or Bigbytes, it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if 4evRPlay fired her. She would become a pariah to all the big five corporations. And finding a job at an independent store would be a challenge in and of itself. She liked to think that she could look for another job now, but she knew that wasn’t possible. Her low-performance rating was transferred to the computers of all the corporations and the companies under them. In order to find another job, she would have to raise her approval rating first.

There were times that the Insite Chip didn’t make life easier, no matter what the commercials said. Job performance ratings stored on the chips were a good example.

She needed to relax. She could have fallen asleep and played a virtual game, but she hated virtual games. They were just absolute time wasters. No, she’d stay awake and watch another movie, a documentary.

Out from her small computer and touching the signal of her chip, a digital finger touching another digital finger, birthing an image of a crowd of people. It never ceased to amaze Becca. Never in reality had she seen so many people gathered together. Women wearing lose flowing, flowery skirts or harem skirts, men in tie dye t-shirts and ragged jeans, some of them from both genders wearing suede hats, brightly colored bandanas, and woven cotton hats. Some with shades on their eyes. People packed together, some unwashed, some with dreads for hair, all around a stage were psychedelic music wafted in the air. And while these unkempt, unwashed individuals sat on blankets enjoying the festival, Becca was enjoying it on her chair.

Come to think of it, why was she sitting on her chair? She had always wanted to experience Woodstock 69 the way the hippies did. Granted, she couldn’t sit on actual dirt or in actual mud, but she could have a feeling by sitting on the floor.

Becca sat on the floor just as the narrator began to narrate the picture, giving a history of the life at Woodstock. It was a brilliant documentary, cobbled together from archived video from 1969, reprogrammed to into a hologram.

It was one of Becca’s favorite documentaries. She had watched it so much that she knew what the narrator would say next, as if his words were chiseled into her brain and escribed onto her heart.

And yet the documentary never got old. WoodStock 69: A Remembrance, was a wonderland, a window back into time, yanking the past into the present, giving it fresh breath and new life, where the shades of colorful bohemian misfits could run, frolic, and play.

“My damn movie’s not working!” The voice broke the tranquility of the scene. Though not asleep, it shook Becca out of the lovely dream she had been immersed in.

Pausing the documentary, leaving a ghostly image of the past frozen in her living room, she gently asked, “I’m sorry, Sir. What’s the problem?”

Not only did he tell her the problem, but for thirty minutes he nearly chewed her ear off, pontificating everything wrong with Cinema Palace, how shoddy the service was. Becca profusely apologized while trying to make the situation right, all the while knowing that if she lost her temper she might as well write a goodbye note to her employers.

When it was all over, she tried to watch the movie again. But she couldn’t get into it. What if he called back?

She needed a drink. She poured herself some lite beer from the fridge. Too damn lite! She took out a normal beer and drank deeply from the can, savoring the bitter flavor that was like piss. She took one of her pills to calm her nerves.

She wanted to reach out and talk tom someone, to confide, and she didn’t want that someone to be Harold.

What had happened to her? Back in the day she had friends. Of course, they were friends she had met through her parents. By the time she was born, school was an archaic notion of the past. Becca had never known what a real teacher was like. Hers had not been one of flesh and blood but a virtual one. She was lucky though to have grown up in a time when virtual teachers hit the scene. During the day, Becca’s teacher, Mr. Driaza had taught her in holographic form. Nighttime lessons, when her mother had wished them, would then occasionally be given at night in Becca’s dreams, but in a subtle way in which Becca had never noticed she was dreaming about a lesson. With such a flexible schedule and programmed to know every subject from time tables, arithmetic, English, biology, to ecology; hell, the virtual teachers could do it all. A normal teacher couldn’t compete. In other words, there hadn’t been any physical buildings of learning for Becca to make friends in.

She had met her friends at dinner parties at her parent’s house, or at the homes of her parent’s friends. But strangely she had fallen out of touch with them, and no longer did she have their numbers saved within her Insight Chip. Using the chip, she could reactivate names of her friends, but that would cost money and she was too nervous about how awkward it would be if reached out to them after ten years of not speaking to them. What would she say? Better to find new friends.

She did have that date with Ted to look forward to. At least she hoped she did. Much to Becca’s frustration, she hadn’t been able to reach him. Whenever she tried calling him on his chip, his number was always busy. Talk about rude! Here she was pining for some meaningful human contact, and he wouldn’t even call back when she left a message on his chip. What was Ted doing? Making out with one of his jet cars? With the way he talked about them he may as well have been.

Or maybe he was intentionally avoiding her. Maybe he thought she was ugly. Becca gulped. She had been called ugly once. Well, not just once but numerous times. Not all the kids that her parents introduced her to thought she was pretty. Most didn’t. Some thought she was as homely as a rat and as skinny as a stick. Even her friends hadn’t thought she was much of a looker. As she grew up, her mom not once told her that she was blossoming into a beautiful rose. Becca felt like a weed then. She felt like a weed now.

Was that what was going on now? Did Ted actually think she was ugly? She took another drink of beer, and thought of going to the medicine cabinet to pop some more pills. The stress was killing her, wondering if she would die in this house alone. Her thoughts went back to her mother who had been alone when she was dying, except for Harold.

Heck, even Becca’s dad had been alone when he died. Alone except for some sex androids to pleasure him. It was all he had left, that and his drinking, after her mom had divorced him. He had been a cruel husband and a loafer of a father. He had drinking problems and refused to have a job, even though Sunset Harvest, a fruit and grain company, under the arm of Cornucopia Inc. had offered him a job.

“Damn, you’re ugly, just like your mom,” he had often told Becca.

One night he had grown so angry at both she and Harold for playing noisily at night that he had given them both a beating before telling them that there were always v-games to play that could keep the noise level down. He never liked the idea of her and her brother chasing each other around the house in a game of hide and seek or making box forts. This was hard because Becca had never liked v-games. There was something she felt that was so powerful about her own imagination that she preferred it over the digital realm of v-games. Her old man had never agreed.

In time, her mom had kicked him out. Not that it mattered. When it came to finances, Becca’s mom had kept most of the money. Her mom had been a prestigious lawyer (one of the few jobs that weren’t taken over by machines, at least not yet) who had commanded a lot of respect. She had earned good money from defending rich clients who got themselves into trouble, and since lawyers were a bit more sparse, her mom was able to charge high prices for her legal services.

To this day, Becca didn’t know how her mom fell for him. Her mom had said that it was his initial charm. If he once had charm, Becca never saw it. Regardless, when her father had once beat sixteen year old Harold nearly to death in a violent rage that was the last straw. Her mom had given him an ultimatum. Leave peacefully or she would call the police, and in Becca’s world the police, being fully functional androids with tough exteriors and heavy weaponry, were no laughing matter. Her old man, having a fear of the cops, as he called them, obliged her mom and took the little bit of money she had provided him to live in a dingy apartment with nothing but an old, rusty pair of sex bots to please him, and plenty of alcohol. He had died of alcohol poisoning later on, found attached, as it were, to a sex bot.

Not that it mattered. When it came to finances, Becca’s mom had kept most of the money. Her mom had been a prestigious lawyer (one of the few jobs that weren’t taken over by machines, at least not yet) who had commanded a lot of respect. She had earned good money from defending rich clients who got themselves into trouble, and since lawyers were a bit more sparse, her mom was able to charge high prices for her legal services.

Becca wished she could have said that life with her mom had been better. But it hadn’t. Though her mom didn’t ever beat her, she still gave her and her brother a tongue lashing. Her words could often be harsher than her dad’s; a sad, old man who died lonely. What was truly tragic was that her mother’s harsh words, such as calling Becca “skinny as a stick,” or saying that she was “plain-faced and dull,” was much better than when she flat out ignored her. Becca got the feeling that her mother had never wanted to be a mother to begin with, and as such, she and her brother were often neglected; only brought out for parties to show off as if she were a mother who really did care and who was proud of her.

“I’m so proud of my darling daughter. She means the world to me,” her mom would say at parties and social gatherings. It was all a load of dog crap. But her mother, with her eyes that sparkled and her smile that flashed, had fooled everyone there. A chameleon was what her mother had been, able to change when the setting called for it.

Becca looked at a can of beer in her hand and wondered if she was turning in her old man. Now there was a horrifying thought. She tried not to think too much about it. Her stress level was bad enough as it was. She didn’t want to give herself ulcers. If she did, the nano-medical bots inside her stomach would fix it up, but then she’d have to pay afterwards to some nameless CEO of Hippocare who was bribing the politicians to let this form of costly medical care stay in service. Becca, like everyone else, was born with nano-bots (also called bugs), that were inserted into the mother’s womb. But not everyone could afford to keep paying for software updates when they turned a certain age. So many were still without medical care. Patients before Profit was the motto of Hippocare. But really it should have been Profit before patients with what they charged.

All these nagging thoughts. Drowning in a sea of worries. She didn’t need this. She needed to stop thinking about Ted, and whether or not he’d call her back. If only her husband was still alive. She missed him so much. He had never thought she was ugly. But thinking about him just made her stomach hurt.

What she needed was to get out. She could take a trip to downtown. Her jet car, a magenta color with a neon yellow stripe, was waiting for her in her driveway. Activating her jet car by thought, the driver side door read her brainwaves and her chip and then opened for her.  She then told the car where she wanted to go. Its wheels gently folded into the frame of the car as it hovered up to 200 feet in the air before taking off like a stream of neon light. The trip wouldn’t take long. Jet cars could travel 300 mph.

Only a few vehicles were out flying. It was true that many of them didn’t have passengers in them, but were instead piloted by computers. Some of the vehicles were even robots themselves, like the driver that delivered Becca’s food to her the day before. Like the robotic vehicle, many of the vehicles on the road were making deliveries to the gargantuan number of homebodies. Due to computers controlling cars that ran on a gridline, monitored by the FSA (Flying Safety Administration), traffic lights had been consigned to history books.

And the FSA computer was doing its job, so for, in making sure that Becca’s jet car was flying to the destination she had asked it to go, and that it stopped at certain intervals. As she flew to the huge spires of downtown L.A. that functioned as a castle among the urban sprawl, Becca knew that the FSA was no guarantee of her safety. Computers, no matter how well programmed they were, were prone to error. It had certainly happened to her husband.

Don’t think about Kirk, dammit! she thought to herself. Reprimand herself as she may, it didn’t alter the facts that air-born collisions or crashes into buildings, or any other jet car problems, were still a very real thing. Each time she got into her jet car, she had a slight fear that what happened to her husband might happen to her. Becca would have prayed for safety, if she had of been a religious, God-fearing woman.

It took her only four minutes to get downtown. But those four minutes seemed more like twenty-five, especially since she hardly ever flew downtown to begin with.

Tall steel buildings brushed up against the sky. It should have been inspiring, a testament to human ingenuity. Except most of it wasn’t. Many of the buildings were abandoned after having been built up during a boom period, in which the amount of jobs people would need were overestimated. The shiny surfaces of the buildings still shone, though, since there were hovering robotics of all shapes that sizes kept them clean.

The car, gently hovering down, allowed Becca to see a bot in action. It was hovering on the side of a glass building. A gash of melted glass ran down the side of the building. Becca wasn’t sure what caused the glass to melt, but she really didn’t care. She did think it was interesting to watch the hover bot, though. It was twice as tall as her, a long cylinder. On its back was transparent tank boiling with hot liquid glass. Two lanky arms were outstretched, hooked to a roller with lots of holes. It ran over a piece of thin, but sturdy, piece of biodegradable mesh that was plugging up the gas. Out from the roller came hot glass.

Robots to take care of things, but hardly anyone to use the buildings. Becca laughed. Her surroundings offered no comfort. Though downtown was beautiful on the outside, it was cold and hollow on the inside.   The neon lights that had once burned without sleep were now burnt-out. Shadows engulfed the streets below and the lower buildings. Only her InSite Chip along with the computers in the buildings, fooled her into seeing light emanating, forming holograms and brightly colored, flashing billboards to try and excite her senses by playing on that primitive emotion of greed. Columns of old elevator shafts stood empty on the outside of the buildings from bygone days in which they were a joy to ride, offering the viewer a splendid view of the city. So many empty office buildings, so many empty restaurants and clubs. A near ghost town right in the heart of the city, except for the poor who lived in one of the government operated high rises.

Winding its way through the downtown area at different heights, curving and twisting around all the structures was a monorail. Once the pride of Las Angeles, it was now a curiosity from the past. A structure once propelled by magnetism and solar power, its glass tunnel atop its supports gave the illusion of one long hamster tunnel wrapped around the downtown area. Jet cars and declining population killed the monorail in the long run.

The GSN (Government Serving the Needy) shelters were the most depressing. The buildings were sound, up to safety codes, though it didn’t appear that way flying over them. The structures certainly didn’t look inviting, lacking that feeling of home. They gave the appearance of a group of barracks clustered together, drab and grey, which made Becca shudder as if just by looking at them would make her a prisoner.

Gleaming in a wide space in the center of the other buildings, almost blinding Becca, the food center stood out like a silver pin in a pile of dried pine needles. It grew food mainly from rice paddies in hydro-ponds as well as grains. Lab meat was also grown, though it wasn’t the highest quality lab meat; only the rich could afford that. A good lab-grown piece of beef was the Kobe beef of today when it came to price. As for Kobe beef, good luck affording that. With inferior meat, rice, and a slice of bread, the needy ate more like prisoners than they did law abiding citizens, and even then they had to pay for their meals by earning digifunds by doing odd jobs around the shelters.

Still, they were better off than the homeless.

Becca felt sick to her stomach. Harold could easily be a homeless, even though her mom did leave him a generous sum. With the way Harold spent his funds, he could be out sooner than anticipated. Then where would he be? The government wouldn’t want to help him. He was a liar. Better to let him go homeless and get rid of him.

No matter, she would take him in. Though she liked to think that was still far away. It was at least further away than her destination, which she was now at.

“Find a parking space below,” she told the car.

The car hovered down into what should have been a dark chasm, if not for the radiant lights of billboards and holograms. Becca had read that at one time holograms were projected by a type of laser light that formed an image. The idea was bizarre to Becca, as bizarre as music at one time being produced on a vinyl record. Even the vibrant animated neon signs were produced by holograms that were produced by a signal that manipulated the occipital lobe.

And yet, all the lights and images advertising different commercials didn’t make downtown L.A. feel any more alive. No one was out walking. At least none that Becca could see. No one running about in suits and ties, late to work, or casually strolling about in nice summer dresses, or shorts and a t-shirt. It was empty, despite the holographic images and animated neon signs.

At one time downtown was a fully living, breathing entity. Not a sickly individual just barely hanging on. It was a carnival of lights, of circus street performers, and of fresh hot dogs served from food carts. It was a hub of businessmen and women, running to and fro to get to their jobs. Wasn’t that the way of things? Work during the day, sleep at night, take a weekend off, repeat the cycle, and then die. Now it was just fend for food and die for many, particularly the homeless, and not even the robotics that kept it looking neat and clean and constantly made repairs could change that.

Of course, there were no homeless out and about. Security bots and android officers made sure the streets were clean of homeless vermin. Becca couldn’t see any of those robots either. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t there. They would come out when they detected danger or a homeless person roaming about.

Becca often wondered how the homeless got food and water if they couldn’t stand out on street corners anymore and beg. Where did they live, for that matter? Did they live out in the woods (though there were very little woods left since the Great Sprawl), did they live in dark alleyways? Maybe they foraged in the sewers. The government didn’t care if they died. Jobs were scarce enough, and if someone broke the law, which prohibited them from living in the GSN shelters, then it was better off that they died off rather than having to worry about taking care of them.

Becca sighed underneath the colorful lights. A hologram appeared before her of a new shop that had just been renovated. A clothing store that only the very rich could afford, meaning that the clothing didn’t have monitors or screens on them with advertisements. An image of a man flashed before her, hair slicked back, dressed nicely in a suit and tie.

“Don’t you want to look the best,” the man said. “At Regal Vanities we can” –

Becca walked on, not caring what the hologram had to say. Another hologram popped up. It was a young lady. She was wearing a bikini top and bottoms that hardly covered anything. She had tanned skin, and beach blond hair, and a white smile that almost blinded Becca’s eyes. “We all want the perfect beach body,” the image said. “And thanks to liposuction nanobots, such is possible. All you have to do is call 1800-sxy-body and you can have” –

Becca kept on walking. She planned on never getting overweight. Though Harold, her poor sap of a brother, could have certainly used nano technology to burn away his fat.

It seemed like there were nanobots for everything, and not just weight loss. Aside from weight loss, there were also nanobots for hair removal. If Becca had of wanted to, she could have paid to have nanobots living in her scalp, using lasers to burn away her hair at certain intervals if it grew too long. If that wasn’t enough, she could go completely overkill and pay exorbitant amounts of money for these microscopic bots to be put under the skin of her armpits, around her legs, and even her vulva, removing her of any hair before it grew out. She wasn’t about to pay that much money. Besides, she was fine being on the hairier side. Nonetheless, all these technological breakthroughs didn’t cure much of society’s vanity any.

As fas as Becca was concerned, the medical nanobots, which were called bugs, that lived within her were more than sufficient. If only the bugs had of been able to cure her mother’s cancer. But they had not been able to afford an upgrade on her mom’s medical insurance, so cancer consumed her.

Damn! It sure was dark down here, and none of the holograms and bright lights made it feel all that much lighter. Of course, if her chip went out, she would be plunged into complete shadows. The very little light that would be given would be the sliver of light from the sky, because the buildings were so tall. Sometimes she could see a faint sliver of blue, but it was gone quickly, blocked out by another overhang.

The glare of a yellow light from a 1^st story floor indicated one of the few shops left in the area and it was an expensive one. All of the stores in this area, which were few in number, were beyond her paycheck. These were specialty stores, dealing with specialty furniture, clothing, and even physical books for those who didn’t want to make use of V-books (virtual books). How Becca would have loved to have bought a physical book, but she couldn’t afford it. As for the rest of the stores, they were specialty based, in which she couldn’t afford their wares either.

That’s not to say that she lived without the necessities of life. Thank goodness for 3D printers that could print just about anything, from pots and pans, dishes and silverware, to furniture and electronics. That said, Becca would have loved to have tried something traditionally made, such as a bed. She had read that they felt better than printed ones.  Therefore artisans’ guilds, that were really just big businesses, had popped up, able to charge high prices for non 3D printed items.

Becca passed by a row of shops, each of them closed except for one. From the shop window was art. The 3D printed frames and canvases weren’t the only things done by computers. Becca stared at each of the paintings, from an elegant nude to a majestic mountain to a tranquil sea with islands and a sunset, amazed at that all of them were done with the greatest care and precision by computers. The glory days of the artists, their heads overflowing with the intoxicating wine of romanticism were long gone. Becca didn’t know of any Leonardos, Michaelangelos, Frida Kahlos, Picassos, or Georgia O’Keefes in art galleries today. Art galleries were an archaic notion. Sellers wanted art that could be mass produced at a low cost on their end, selling it for a higher price on the buyers end, and computerized art met that demand for cheap labor. Another Sistine chapel ceiling? No problems. Bots the size of mice could scurry up a wall and use lasers to paint a ceiling. Michelangelo would be out of a job today because the lay person could tell the bots or the computer what kind of art was needed and it would come out perfectly. The art from the window certainly matched the very definition of perfection. If Becca wanted to, she could buy a painting, and an original at that. They were all within her funds.

She wouldn’t even have to worry about dealing with an art dealer. Near the front door was a deposit box. Above the box was an InSite chip scanner. All it took was reading her chip, deciphering over what paining she wanted, her nodding in agreement, and then a painting would be deposited. It was one of the few downtown stores that were within her price range.

At the moment, Becca didn’t care about any of it. She just wanted to know if anyone was out and about. She would have checked one of the few stores, but she knew she had no chance of getting in. The computer at the door would scan her chip, revealing she didn’t have the sufficient funds. She didn’t care. Stored in her closet were some of her own works of art that she had painted years ago. Some even hung on her walls.

Why was she down here? What gave her the idea that a trip downtown could possibly make her feel any better?

Then she remembered that this was the location of town with Club Starlight. One didn’t have to be super rich to get in. One only had to earn a decent wage, and she did. Dancing had been her thing growing up. From her late teens to her early twenties, Becca had been a clubber. She loved everything about it. The blaring music that could rupture an ear drum to the dancing with a bunch of strangers in close quarters, Becca loved it all. Maybe it was time to rekindle her younger self. At thirty-two she wasn’t getting any younger.

She pressed below her ears and thought ‘take me to the nearest dance club.’ Her chip made a bright red line appear before her eyes. Five minutes walking distance, said the chip in her head.

Becca followed the line straight, then turned when the line veered to the right. In front of her was a building that didn’t look so run down. Constructed of glass and steel, it towered over Becca, and yet, even from outside, it looked so empty. At least empty of people. From the number of lights that were on, it was obvious that there were many stores still in business in this building, though she was sure that these retails had their own drivers like everyone else.

At the side of the building was a magnetic elevator. Becca approached it, and the computer at the lift scanned her head, making sure she had the necessary digifunds. When it was confirmed that she did, she took the magnetic elevator up to the top floor. Passing by her view were a plethora of chain stores and restaurants. Though the stores were open to the general public, she couldn’t see anyone working. Of course there were life-like androids as well as average robots, but even the life-like androids had aspects of the way they were built that differentiated them from people. For instance, androids had to be designed to show seams around the outline of their face in order to have a removable faceplate. This was made into law so that people could differentiate between a real person and an android. As for the lack of customers at the establishments, this didn’t matter, since all of these restaurants and stores delivered anyway, including Club Starlight, who delivered drinks.

It was madness to think that because of all the bots and androids, all these jobs were taken away from people, people who could pay for their products and services. Instead of rectifying this problem by delegating more work to people, though, companies instead chose to make the prices higher for those who still held jobs. It could be done because there were few major companies left anyway. Most of the major companies were now corporations, and they were few in number. As such, whether they operated in food, repair, robotics, computers, furniture, or whatnot, they could charge obscenely high prices, the rich feeding the rich, and the with people like Becca was barely living comfortably.

On the other side of Becca, facing outward, was sad, decrepit LA. The elevator passed by a one of the tunnels of the magnetic railroad. Even at the speed the elevator was going, she was able to get a good luck through the glass tunnels and at its cracked interior, graffiti sprayed everywhere. What a sad sight! One of the few things the bots didn’t bother with in their upkeep.

Finally she reached the top where the dance club was. The elevator let her out in an open air area. Already it was getting dark. Faint stars were beginning to peak out of the sky, competing with the light pollution from the city down below. On the roof was one Club Starlight. Its garish neon-green sign with a neon yellow star flying through the name of the club flashed in front of Becca’s eyes. A holographic image of a man in a sparkly white suit complete with a white tie, blond hair combed over, and an image of a woman in a dazzling blue dress, locks of black hair falling to her shoulders, her lips dark red, greeted Becca.

“Welcome to Club Starlight,” said the holographic man “Where you can reach for the stars.”

“And where you can drink to the moon,” said his female holographic companion, flashing a smile as bright as a crescent moon.

The doors slid open and Becca walked into the club. This club reeked of wild college days, if such days were still around. Well, the atmosphere was wild at least. There wasn’t anyone in the club except for a robot bartender at the very end who would tell extremely bad jokes, sometimes recycling the same ones over and over again. The dance floor was a constantly changing kaleidoscope of different stars, planets, moons, and nebulas, traveling across the LED squares at light speed. A holographic moon, from a projector, hovered in the air above the platform. Stars traveled across the ceiling. The music blared a pulsating beat, one to bring out the primitive, carnal nature of humanity. As cliché as the expression was, Becca could hardly hear herself think in this place.

Becca found a clear-neon plastic table and sat down. A menu on the screen of her table exhibited bright, bold images of the alcohol in stock. They all looked good. But Becca could have easily stayed home and drank. She was hoping to meet some people to dance within the club. No such luck.

She tried calling Ted. Still couldn’t get a hold of him. What a jerk! Asking her to hang out and then ignoring her calls. It would have been fun to have brought him here. At least she would have had someone to dance with, even if she had to listen to his palavering over jet cars.

Speaking of clientele, Becca wondered how a place like this stayed in business, considering the lack of it. Obviously, there was their delivery services, but was it worth keeping the building open itself? Maybe there were groups of friends, corporate CEOs that got together and rented the place out at regular intervals. Still, then why not just have it open at those reserved times?

Whatever. It wasn’t worth it.

Becca left the bar without stopping to listen to the robot bartender’s cheesy jokes.

She took the elevator down a couple of floors, deciding she’d explore the mall. Most of the original shops were closed, having made way for big corporations to take up most of the space. Along the halls there were a bunch of restaurants, all owned by the same corporation, Cornucopia, which also owned Club Starlight, and two clothing stores at each end, both owned by Elaine June. Hardly anyone was shopping at them, at least not physically. From some of the restaurants and clothing came out small, robotic hover vans. They zipped by Becca in the halls, just narrowly missing her. Talk about unnerving.

Next, one of the androids came out from the clothing store and addressed her. “May I help you ma’am?”

Becca should have been comfortable with androids. But she wasn’t. It wasn’t that she was afraid of them. Just uncomfortable. They looked too human. The android was decked out in a full tuxedo, and his skin and hair follicles looked authentically human. But it was the seams around the face plate that she couldn’t take her eyes off of. Removing it could make one think of peeling the flesh off a man, down to his skull, even if the skull was electronic.

“I’m fine, thank you,” said Becca, walking off.

She turned a corner of the store. A bunch of closed shops lined the hall under pale yellow lights.

Fatigued and bored by it all, Becca decided to head home.

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Cold Shades Ch1: Revised and expanded

 

City of the Future by Linforth. Wikimedia Commons

 

Advisory: This novel as a whole is suggested for ages 18 and up due to strong language, harsh violence, adult subject matter and rape, and drug use.

Rebecca Brown, simply known as Becca, was typing on her computer screen, but not in the archaic method with her fingers on a keyboard. The words were pouring out of her mind and onto a holographic screen that popped out of a small slot from a computer that was as flat as and no bigger than a post-it-note.

Tense, angry, frustrated. There were times she detested her job. But with the lack of employment she was glad to have it. A love-hate relationship if there ever was one. Monotony aside, it would have been okay if not for the disagreeable customers she had to deal with on a daily basis. Today was no exception.

Where’s my damn movie? the words came up, a font loudly bold, hanging in thin air before her eyes.

Breathe, she thought to herself. There was no sense in losing her cool. To take extra-precautions, she had deactivated the instant v-message. Just because the customer was acting like an ass didn’t mean she had to. Still, her nerves were worn thin, so it was best to have the v-messenger off at her end so as not to think anything negative that could travel back to the customer and cause her to lose her job. It was just as well, seeing as she was teetering near the brink of unbridled rage.

Thoughtfully, trying to control her temper, she thought nice words, patient words, and these words within her mind were scanned and sent to the holographic monitor.

If it could be called holographic. In truth, holograms weren’t produced in the old fashioned way with light forming images that Becca had read about. The very screen Becca looked at was more like an illusion, the chip in her head and the miniature computer on the counter collaborating together to help her hallucinate it. When she was ready to send them, she would think press her finger under the lobe of her right ear, and think the word send.

Delete that paragraph, she thought to the computer, her finger under her right ear-lobe, letting computer know that she wanted those words deleted and not typed otu. She didn’t need the customer reading that he was a damned idiot. Even though it was true. It was hard working with fools day in and day out, and that was putting it lightly. It was overwhelming.

I’m sorry that you are having technical difficulties with your movie download, she thought the words out. We at Cinema Palace value your patronage and are doing everything we can to fix the problem.

Hah! Value patronage. That was a good one. Cinema Palace was the only movie streaming company, and it was owned by 4evR Play, one of the big seven of the corporations. It’s not like the client had anywhere else to turn to. At least the client’s options were limited. 4evR Play had bought out 95% of movies, both old and new, leaving only 5% for the smaller, independent streaming services to fight over. Be that as it may, 4EvR Play liked to give people the illusion of good service.

We are working on the problem as we speak, she continued thinking out her message. Have you checked to make sure that everything is working with your memory chip? Though really, Becca wanted to ask if everything was working okay with his brain.

The soft buzz of robotics hummed gently in the air, helping to soothe her temper just a bit. After all, they were a blessing by keeping up her house so she could focus on her work. She took a sip of a can of beer that was on the arm of her chair, only to clumsily knock it over. Out came the scrub beetles, as big as a thumb, scurrying about on metallic legs, to dry up the mess and then sanitize the floor. Becca took no notice of them, too engaged in finishing the v-mail.

Her stomach grumbled, letting her know in no uncertain terms that it needed nourishment. A break was in order. She used her index finger to press under her left earlobe: Send the current v-message. From a sensor under her skin, the order traveled up a wire to her brain chip to send out the message. End program, she said. She didn’t wish to interact with the disagreeable snot any more than she had to until her break was over, and she was in the mood for a long one.

“Restaurants,” Becca said, causing a holographic image to project a list of local eateries. “Chinese,” she continued, realizing she hadn’t had one of her favorite meals in a while; sweet and sour pork. A list of Chinese restaurants flashed in bright neon-letters across in front of her face, bold, big and bright. “Mrs. Yang’s” she said. Materializing straight out of the little computer box, right into her living room, was a Chinese waitress wearing a long red dress of silk, her black hair curled into a bun. Though only an illusion, the likeness of a real person was impeccable. It never ceased to amaze her.

She couldn’t speak for everyone though. Not everyone was pleased with this technology. Some hated it, calling it an invasion of their minds. But though there were a few Platos still in the world who didn’t approve of it, harping on the analogy of the cave with its shadows and illusions, such luddites had always been a rare breed.

“Welcome to Mrs. Yang’s,” the waitress said, her voice echoing into Becca’s brain chip and traveling to her ears via computer signal. “A house of the finest Chinese cuisine to satisfy you and your family’s appetites awaits you. Would you like to try our special today?”

“What’s today’s special?” asked Becca.

“Today’s special is twice-cooked pork, fried-cheese wontons, and three egg rolls, plus a drink, all for ten-ninety five.” A perfect 3D image of the food appeared before her.

Tempting price, but Becca didn’t care for twice-cooked pork. “No,” she said.

“Would you like to see our menu?”

“Yes.”

“Let me know when you’re ready to order.”

Illusions of smorgasbords, followed by descriptions of each one of the foods, popped up into her living room in crystal clear precision, as though they could be grabbed. Such realism further satiated her hunger. Becca browsed, not bothering to say another word to the waitress until she ordered. It would be pointless to do so anyway. The waitress was only a recorded person, only able to respond to certain words and phrases. It was a normal tactic done by all restaurant management; video record a person, then program that image and voice into the computer, in which they would respond to applicable questions. There was no use asking how she was doing. She wasn’t fine, sad, angry, or flustered; she just was as is. It would be pointless telling her that her red dress laced with etchings of golden dragons was appreciated. It wouldn’t change a mood that was never there. She was only the shell of the waitress, made visualized flesh by computer and by chip, fooling her brain and her eyes, not the actual person.

After looking over all the appetizers, entrees, dinners, and side dishes, Becca was still confident about her previous decision. “I would like the sweet and sour pork with a side of ham fried rice.”

“Anything to drink?”

“No.”

“Will that be all?”

“Yes.”

“Is this for pickup or delivery?”

“Delivery.”

“Plus driver tax, your total comes to fifteen twenty-five,” said the waitress. “Are you ready for us to scan your chip?”

“Go for it!” Becca assented.

Out from the computer came a blue laser, scanning the chip implanted in her brain. “Ms. Rebecca Brown, age thirty-one, of 4213 Willington Dr. Las Angeles, California,” said the waitress. “Is this correct?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No.”

“Thank you for ordering from Mrs. Yang’s,” the image said with a bow. “Your food will be arriving shortly.”

Becca didn’t immediately return to work. She was sure that it was her hunger that was causing her to be short with the customer. She thought back to those meditation techniques she had learned and decided now was as good a time as any to put them to use.

On the floor, legs crossed in the lotus flower position, Becca breathed deeply. It wasn’t the customers fault. The customer was trying to survive, just like her, just like everyone else. Patience, kindness, understanding. That was what was needed now. Not anger. Let it go, Becca thought to herself. Let it go.

If Becca hadn’t felt so hungry, she would have even done some yoga. But her disagreeable tummy wouldn’t allow it at the moment.

Lotus position alone, though, wasn’t working. Bitter thoughts kept invading her mind, a place that should have been her temple of tranquility. Thoughts, bringing her down. They had a tendency to do that. The key was to cultivate a spirit of gratitude, to be grateful for what she did have. Digifunds were hard to save. Customers were almost always impossible to deal with. But Becca had a roof over head and food in her fridge, something that couldn’t be said for a lot of people. Better yet, with all the tech she had at her disposal, life was good. She didn’t have to worry about the stress of going out. She could be in the comfort of her own home.

Good vibes alone weren’t working. Music was what was needed. Not wanting to move the position of her hands, she said out loud, “computer, play my meditation music.” The music played inside her head, so only she could hear it. Her anger drained away to the music that flowed like a river into a tranquil sea.

Though ordering out was convenient, it came with a price and that price was more than money. She was certain that she would be dreaming of Mrs. Yang’s off and on, just as she dreamed about some of her other favorite restaurants. It wasn’t uncommon for these companies to hack into the chip when one was asleep to send images into it, causing customers to dream. It was the most effective form of advertising ever. Originally, there had been laws passed against this, the courts having deemed it as an infringement upon peoples’ privacy, but the ruling didn’t hold up long. Corporations made the argument that they ‘weren’t actually prying into peoples’ thoughts,’ but rather were ‘only broadcasting their products from stores and chains that the consumer had already purchased from.’ While this had still seemed invasive, in the end money and corporate interests won out against the lawmakers and legislatures against it. Bribery was a surefire way to get politicians on the side of the corporations.

In any event, it wasn’t like many people cared about the advertisements in their sleep. Society was bombarded by advertisements on a daily basis. At this very moment, Becca was wearing a T-shirt with advertisements on it, as well as pair of slacks with ads, running down the legs. Besides, most corporations were smart enough to know not to overdo it. Usually the dreams were subtle, sometimes to the point that people could hardly remember them. Sometimes only the subliminal message remained. It wasn’t like corporations were broadcasting advertisements into peoples’ heads while they were awake. At least not yet!

At the moment, such was only a small thought. The meditation calmed her, and decided to experience a movie. From her slender computer a world sprung up around her. Trees sprang out from the floor, the floor was now covered in grass and purple wild flowers. The confines of her living room slipped away, making way for snowy white French Alps in the distance, and a stone cottage with a thatched roof in the forefront. An old green door, the weathered paint peeling off it, creaked open and out came a young girl, no more than fifteen years of age, wearing a bonnet and a simple dress, with a wicker basket of cheese, bread, and wine.

Enamored in her favorite French film, Becca wondered what it would have been like to have lived back in 19^th century France. From the V-books she had read, it didn’t sound all that pleasant. Women were second class citizens, not even given the right to vote. Education wasn’t at the fingertips, or at the brain chip-tip as the modern expression went, like it was now.

None of that mattered, though. Becca couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for a time period she had never lived, one before all the huge amount of tech and the great sprawl that had devoured most of the landscape aside from specially designated parks. She wondered what it would be like to have land that she could walk on, without all the buildup that happened during the era of the Great Sprawl, to smell flowers (what did flowers even smell like), to walk through real groves of trees and not simulated ones. What would it be like to wear a 19^th century dress and bonnet, devoid of advertisements from modern day jeans and a T-shirt? Oh, how she loved the clothing from that time period and desired a closet of those dresses and bonnets for herself, especially the ballroom dresses.

There was no use in cogitating over it. Life was better now and it was all thanks to modern tech. It was tech, the signal being relayed from her small, palm-held computer to her chip that gave her the illusion that she was in 19^th century France without any of the danger. Yes, it was a phenomenal time to be alive. And a great deal of it was because of the chips in peoples’ heads, Insite Chips, developed and programmed by Big Bytes, promising a better world.

And a better world Big Bytes was giving her through her Insite Chip, whisking her away to a time long ago.

Absorbed in her favorite story of a young farm girl who wished to marry a man of the upper-class, all seemed well. Truthfully, the story was pure French sap, but Becca didn’t care. She was lost in the countryside, soaring over the fields below the mountains with young Vanessa as she ran through the flowers.  Bliss, the whole thing was pure, simple bliss.

‘Your food is here,’ said a pleasant computer automated voice in her ear. Becca ordered the film to shut down, plunging her back into her boring living room.

At her door was a Delivery Bot. The robot was constructed simplistic enough, being built more like a car, and able to hold numerous orders in its interior which was always heated by a heat lamp. Like an average car, it hovered. A large metal neck jutted out from the front, ending in what looked like a pair of oversized binoculars for vision. It held a bag of food out in one metallic hand, while the other hand was a card scanner, greedily outstretched, as hungry for the payment as Becca was for the food. Becca quickly paid it. No chit-chat, no time wasted. Just pay and eat.

As the delivery bot flew off, Becca thought back to the history books she read, which told of a time that human delivery had caused too many problems because of irresponsible and their demands for higher wages. Robots were the logical answer to the problem. And not just for restaurants, but for grocery stores too. Robots now delivered everything from fresh eggs, meats, and fish, to cereal and bread, to cleaners and soaps and so forth, meaning one never had to leave their home to go to go the grocery store, either. Truth be told, the robots were so effective that most restaurants, including Ms. Yangs, didn’t have a main hub for them to eat. Robotic vehicles would fly to restaurants, get the ingredients needed, and just prepare the meals themselves. Becca, who was digging into her meal as she started her film back up, knew that within the robot diver that had delivered her meal had been other robotics that had mixed the ingredients together before the inner oven cooked the food. This had the advantage of making sure the food was still hot when it arrived, and her meal was hot, having just got out of the oven.

But the best was for Becca was that she didn’t have to leave unless she really wanted to.

The part of that film that always scared her now popped up. A pair raging wolves, eyes glowering, leapt out of the flowers and towards Vanessa. After all these years of watching it, the scene still scared Becca. For it didn’t feel like the wolves were jumping towards Vanessa, but also towards the viewer. Becca felt like she was in the field with the wolves circling around her. Surprised as usual, she spilled her drink and a little bit of her food.

Not a problem! The maid bot, built low and hovering only a couple of inches off the ground, came by and burned, with pinpoint precision, away any food particles and evaporated any liquid off of her tile floor, allowing her the freedom to continue the movie uninterrupted.

Becca felt a sense of satisfaction when the film was over. Moved to tears, like she always was when Vanessa married the nobleman, Becca was grateful that there holographic films that offered the diversion away from real life.

Finishing her meal, Becca felt like a walk was in order. While it was true that many people chose to stay inside, living in a state of eternal hibernation, she craved the fresh air. Not wanting to deal with disagreeable customers at the moment, Becca walked towards the door and stepped outside, as the long, extending robotic arm came out from the kitchen to pick up her trash and toss it in the kitchen incinerator. She could hear the lasers evaporate the trash.

Outside she was greeted by houses spread out for miles in all directions, a sea of concrete and plaster. In-between blocks of neighborhoods, one might come across a store or one of those rare sit-down restaurants. There were, of course, office buildings, but they were more conglomerated downtown.

Soaring in the sky above Becca were a couple of jet-cars. Though she had a car, she hated them ever since her husband had died in one. Fairly frequently, the news reported terrible car wrecks. One that stuck out in her memory most vividly was of a drunk driver who, before getting himself drunk, had dismantled the automated flying program. He had crashed into an office building, killing a CEO and damaging lots of droids and other computer equipment. One would have thought that since cars were computer operated that wrecks would have been a tragedy consigned to the annals of history. But this was not the case. Aside from those who loved the thrill of driving their own cars and who would find ways to deactivate the self-driving mechanisms, there was also the fear of cyber-terrorists from other nations who might get a sick thrill out of hacking into someone else’s car terminal and rerouting the designated safe route into a building or into a skyway with cars, flying in the opposite direction. It didn’t seem to matter how many security programs were newly put in place, as hackers loved the challenge of finding ways around them. In short, Pandora’s Box had been opened, and not solely by flying cars, but by the advent of putting computers into cars, back in the early 2000s, even before they could fly.

Becca continued on her walk, choosing not to focus on the macabre scenario. It made her think too much of her deceased husband.

Instead she kept her eyes open for interesting people she could possibly meet. But where were they? Come to think of, when had she last seen people out and about? The neighborhood was a silent cemetery. About half the houses were probably deserted, remnants of bygone days, a time known as the Great Sprawl when people had spread even further to the outskirts of town.

A ro-mower was silently droning as it hovered just barely over the grass, cutting the blades with a spinning laser. A couple blocks further, a louder noise was generated by a swarm of nano-flies cutting the branches off a tree, a pile of sawdust at the base. That was it. Just a couple of robotics out and about. Not a single human.

She was about to give up, but then she saw him.

He was tall and broad shouldered. He wore a polo shirt and a pair of khakis. Upon his shirt an advertisement was ending for a new cereal brand, making way for an ad about the newest in automated indoor sprinkling systems to put out house fires. An ad was running down the video strip on his khakis for the mind-phone update that could be installed in the computer chip.

He flashed her a smile that looked as though it could come off the cover of a romance novel.

“Hello there,” said Becca.

“Hello,” he reciprocated. “Where do you come from?”

Becca shrugged. “Just this neighborhood, I’m afraid. Nothing exciting, I know.”

“Nothing exciting? I can hardly believe that, Ms…. Uh, what’s your name?”

“My name is Rebecca Brown,” she said, extending her hand for him to shake. “But just call me Becca.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Becca,” said the man, shaking her hand. “I’m Theodore Green. Kind of a dorky name, I know.”

“Not at all! It sounds strong, masculine.”

“That’s very kind of you. Anyway, you can call me Ted.”

“Okay, Ted,” Becca nodded. “Do you live nearby?”

Ted shook his head. “No. I live on the other end of town. But you know, getting restless and all, I decided I’d take a scenic drive.”

“Scenic!” exclaimed Becca in disbelief. “Why? I didn’t think the neighborhood south of here looked much different than this one. Also, why even take a walk here when you can just take one on your end?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not sure of what you’re getting at,” said Ted.

“Oh, don’t worry about it. It seems kind of weird, but whatever.”

“Say, do you like cars?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Not really. My husband was killed in one.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” said Ted. “Man that sucks! I hope I didn’t dredge up any painful memories.”

“It’s okay. I’d like to take a look at your car anyway,” she lied, two factors prompting it, her feelings of infatuation and it being rude to turn down someone friendly.

Besides, she had not gone on a date for quite some time. She needed to get out more, to dance, to feel the embrace of the opposite sex. She had been working far too hard not to indulge in some healthy human interaction. Customers sending angry emails, in which she reciprocated twice as angrily, was not good bonding with her fellow man.

“Right on!” said Ted. “Follow me.” Becca did so, without thinking of the potential consequences of blindly following a stranger. Her parents had warned her, ever since she was a child, of the dangers of just trusting anybody. It was one of the reasons they had enrolled her in virtual classes, so as not to have her deal with bullies and school shootings. In this case, her parents would certainly warn her against following a stranger to his car. And Ted was strange, strange in his mannerisms, and with the way he answered questions.

It only took a minute to come to Ted’s pride and glory, an Orange Bolt 3000. It was sleek and beautiful. Its coloring was that of a sunset, a bright orange slowly fading to a purple with a yellow stripe running across the middle of it. It was modeled after the old convertibles in that it lacked a roof.

“Would you like to hop in for a drive?” Ted wore an expression bespeaking of himself as the perfect gentlemen as the car door automatically opened. “We can go to your place or mine. Maybe we could even get a beer, chill out, watch a movie?”

“Gee, thanks for the invite,” said Becca. “But, I’m not ready for that yet. I mean, let’s get real for a sec. I just met you.”

“I’m sorry, but is there a problem with the car?” asked Ted.

Problem with the car? Becca couldn’t believe her ears. She hadn’t said a thing about the car. Still, he was kind of cute. “How about we meet up some time,” she ventured, not wanting to ruin an opportunity of jumping back into the dating pool.

“That’d be great! What do you like to do?”

“Let’s go to a bar,” she said, staring at an advertisement for her favorite beer playing across his shirt. “We could go to a bar and clubbing.”

“Awesome,” said Ted, excitedly. “I’m down for whatever. Maybe I can pick you up in my car.”

“Cool, let’s do it! But I’ll meet you there. I’m not ready to ride with you yet. No offense, but you are a stranger.”

“Can I get your number?”

Becca reluctantly gave it, and in turn he gave her his, the small chip in her head saving it. Now she noticed that the screen on Ted’s polo was primarily showing off different cars. They made a little more chit-chat before Ted drove off.

Overall, Becca had found the conversation to be peculiar, and she was a little annoyed that it often came back to his car. Before leaving he had at least talked about his car for five minutes, boasting about how wonderfully efficient it was. Yet, he was kind enough and she didn’t sense any danger from him.

Becca shrugged. Maybe she didn’t get it, but she didn’t care. She had been trying so hard to forget about her husband that she would take the quirks of a new boyfriend, even if those quirks were talking about cars. Also it’d be a lie to say that she didn’t have her own interests, such as movies and books, which could make her quirky. Who was she to judge someone for loving cars?  She only hoped that if something were to develop between the two of them that she could broaden his horizons.

Becca could have gotten lost in her reverie of finding romance until she remembered that today was the day that she had to visit her deadbeat brother. She didn’t relish this. But she had made a promise to be his wet nurse and she was stuck with her decision. Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that he lived within walking distance. She could keep the visit brief.

Walking briskly, Becca found herself there in no less than five minutes. A laser came down from the front porch, scanning her chip. Only after it had analyzed all the data did it grant her entrance.

She found her brother sprawled out on the couch, a slug of a man, slowly but steadily drowning under waves of his own fat. The rolls of fat couldn’t hide the advertisement playing on his shirt for a new virtual game that came out, a shooter. Becca tried to block the image out. She didn’t need all that visual noise, especially noise dealing in violence.

“I don’t suppose you brought me something to eat?” her brother asked.

How typical! Of course that would be the first question out of his voracious vacuum of a mouth.

“No, Harold,” she said gently. “I’m sorry. It must have slipped my mind.”

Peaceful thoughts, gentle thoughts. It was her job to be longsuffering, as all humanity should be.

“You know my funds are limited,” he pointed out.

“I understand that,” she said, patience still in her voice.

“I feel like nothing I do matters. Because I can’t do anything. All I ask of you is to help me out a little more.”

Becca sighed. She didn’t have time for this. She wanted to be patient. But it was so hard. She felt more like a maid than a sister to her brother. “I am willing to help you, but you also have to help yourself.”

“So, what am I supposed to do?” he pressed the matter.

“You know, if you hadn’t of lied on the questioner, you probably wouldn’t be immobilized here on your fat ass,” Becca finally snapped, without worrying the least bit about candor.

“Ah, cut me some slack! You know that I tried to sound convincing.”

“Harold,” cried out Becca in exasperation, “you told the computer that you had prior work experience as a manager! How the hell did you think that would go over?”

“I wasn’t thinking” –

“So what else is new?” Becca cut him off. “Harold, even if they didn’t verify through your work history and past employers, the lie detector chip is more than enough to tell them that you are full of shit. A quick scan from a computer monitors your heart rate, your brain waves, just about everything that could give you away. I shouldn’t even be telling you this. You should be smart enough to know this.”

“Well, I’m not, so excuse me!” shouted Harold. “I’ve never been as smart as you. Never as brilliant.”

“Harold. You have genius level abilities in the fields of history and linguistics. You have no right to call yourself stupid. In your case it’s not about brilliance, it’s just about common sense.”

“Yeah, well I guess I lack that. Besides, brain chips can translate every language now anyway, so what use would any organization have for me?” he grumbled. “It was only a hobby.”

Becca was flustered. Why did this have to be so hard? She and Harold had always clashed. This was nothing new. And yet, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Most problems he faced in life he had brought on himself, but society didn’t make it any easier, not with computers and all having taken over the interview process.

It had started out simple enough, with many large companies using computers to do online applications. Now computers were advanced enough to conduct interviews, ascertaining the honesty of the interviewee and assessing his or her skills and weaknesses. In theory it was supposed to be simple, but in reality it made life more difficult. No matter how smart the AI was, no matter what questions the computer could ask, no matter how capable it was of reading heart-rate and brain waves to analyze honesty, there was still room for a great margin of error.

Though the misfortunes couldn’t all be blamed on a computer. Those damn head chips more than did their part. The InSite chips, produced by BigBytes, handled everything, from typing on the computer, to seeing holographic movies, to entering the neuro-scape when asleep, to storing phone numbers; there was nothing it couldn’t do, and that included helping a computer decipher when someone was cheating.

Harold had had the misfortune of being interviewed by a particularly rigid computer program from a prestigious educational firm. He had wanted to be a museum curator, and he had studied hard for many years at an expensive virtual university, paying out huge sums of money and appropriating a large debt in student loans, only to have it capitulate in a small apartment. The thread which had led to his career demise had slowly unwound into a tangled mess after he had graduated. He had made the mistake of taking a year sabbatical before finding a job, in order to help out their sick mother. In retrospect, Harold should have just taken that opportunity to interview for the museum.

But could have he in good conscious?

Their mother had been being treated for cancer for over a year, and she had gradually been growing worse. Nothing the life-like android nurses could do could help her. There had been a couple of flesh and blood doctors there, but they had seldom visited her, except at brief intervals, having so many other things to attend to. Becca had visited her a few times a month when she could manage. If she had of known her mother’s condition was that bad, she would have visited her more. For this Becca still felt heavy guilt. It was Harold who had taken up the mantle of caring for their mother. It was he who had helped her improve for a little while. It didn’t last, but for a short time she had been happier.

However, her brother’s sacrifice had come with a price. The computerized interview had asked him if he had been engaged in any education or work in that one year gap. When he had told the computer that he was looking after his mother, the computer had only responded with, ‘I don’t understand. Have you been employed or enrolled in any schooling this past year?’ He should have said no. But he had known that doing so would have brought on the high probability of barring him from future interviews. So, panicking, he had lied, telling the computer that he had spent the last year enrolled as a supervisor for robotic tour guides at historic sites. It didn’t take long for the computer to read his brain waves and his heart-rate, finding that he was lying. Since then, Harold’s reputation had spread through other computer employment systems, effectively lowering his chances fifty-fold of landing a job.

Now, her brother was living off of borrowed funds from their deceased mother and from Becca herself. He could hardly pay the tuition costs back and he barely had a sufficient amount for his own living conditions. It wouldn’t be long until Becca would have to take her brother in to live with her, seeing as the funds within his chip would soon be depleted.

Yes, it was only logical. Becca should have taken her mom in. Then again, why should she have? Why should Harold have even bothered? It wasn’t like Becca’s parents were there for them that much. While they had worked, the robotic butler and maid had watched after her and her brother. And they were cheap robotics at that. They were built to walk on four legs, and looked more like a mechanical set of dogs than they did people. Becca’s parents couldn’t bother to pay for the life-like androids, even though they could have afforded it. The most the robotic nanny and butler did was tell them when to go to bed, help fix them food, and prevent them getting into any danger. In a way, it was her mom’s fault for not being there for them. Why should she have expected any of her kids to be there for them? Becca felt like crap for thinking this. Harold, in many ways, was a better person than her.

“I’m sure something will come up,” Becca lied.

“Yeah, maybe if I can get some pills to take that change the heart rate and the brain-waves to fool the computer,” said Harold.

“Those are illegal!”

“Oh, I’d sell my own mother to afford pills to cheat the system,” he shrugged.

“Not funny,” said Becca. She wanted to slap him for that remark. But she controlled herself by remembering that her brother never had much of a filter to begin with. Besides, despite that utterly tasteless joke over their dead mother, he had still been the one to watch over her (not Becca), thus getting himself into this predicament. “Harold,” she said in a softer tone, “I know it’s rough right now. But you’re bound to find something.”

“Like what? Who in the hell would have me?”

Becca was at a loss for words. Very few companies would hire him. “What can I do to help make your life easier?” she asked instead.

“Well, you could buy me some of those cream filled cookies. You know the kind I like! I can then happily gorge myself on those. You can also buy me some packs of my favorite beer. I can use those to vomit out my sorrow.”

“Harold,” she said gently, “what good would that do?”

“You’re one to talk, you and your pious, holier-than-thou attitude,” pointed out Harold, shaking a fat fist at her, without even standing up. “You at least have a job. I don’t have jack-shit! How dare you have the nerve lecturing me about how morally wrong slowly killing myself is! Well, society is slowly killing me a little bit each and every day. If I’m to die, at least let it be from drinking myself to death, or a heart attack brought on by a sugar rush.”

Becca blushed. He was right. She had no right to condemn him. She had to be there for him. He was family. It was the least she could do in failing their mother.

“I’m sorry, Harold,” she whispered. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Outside, Becca wiped the sweat from her brow. Her heart was pounding. Anxiety was rising from the pit of her stomach like lava from a volcano. Talking to her brother had worked her up more than she thought it would. She reached in her pocket, took out a case of pills and popped one in her mouth to ease the stress.

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What’s the Plan?

It’s no secret that I have taken a rest from WordPress since last December. There are times one has to step away from the screen and find themselves, a process that can’t always be in our writing.

Image from Giphy.

In my case, I have had to step back and ask myself what my goals and ambitions as a writer are. Do I keep up a Twitter account to promote my work? Do I write for Medium? Do I try to find work on Upwork? Should I try my hand at Transcribeme? Should I keep writing articles to submit to other publications? Maybe I should try ghostwriting? Or should I just focus on my short stories and novels and hope to grow patrons as the years go by? These are all valid questions, considering writing is hard work (don’t let anyone tell you otherwise) and takes up a lot of time. Where do I place my priorities?

I can’t speak for every writer, but I hope I can give some thoughts that ignite the wiring in your brains into deep contemplation.

The Noise of Twitter

I have pretty much given up on Twitter. It brought out the worst in me. People have unequivocally told me that the platform is necessary for promoting your work as a writer. But I have my doubts. Twitter should be renamed to Screecher, as it’s not so much the tweeting of little songbirds, but the screeching angry hawks. Whether it’s mean words (which I was guilty of sometimes) or trying to promote your work among millions of other writers, it’s an all-around noisy platform. I acknowledge that Twitter has its place, and maybe I’ll return to it, but for the time being I have no desire to.

 The Joy of Medium

Medium is competitive too. I don’t get nearly as many claps as I would like. It can also be maddening to see writers who are no more than superficial and simplistic thinkers, fools who speak like they are wise, get thousands to tens of thousands of claps, while the deeper thinkers who can comprehend and see the issues of life from many different levels get ignored. Sometimes I feel like Medium isn’t a place if you want to be analytical. Though my understanding and perception about the ways of life are greatly limited, I have tried to think deeply about issues facing us, only to have very little feedback. Of course, I think most people favor extremism on either side, rather than moderation and balance.

So, for the most part, instead of writing about deep issues on Medium (though I have once in a while), I have focused more on writing about art and video games. And though I haven’t gotten loads of claps (at least not from strangers) on my articles, I still find a joy in having my own two publications, Reflections in the Portrait and Philosophical Gamer.

Granted, though it’s competitive like Twitter, at least I have more room to express myself. These two publications have helped me to understand more about why I love art and video games. Therefore, darn straight I’m going to keep up with Medium, even if I don’t have a lot of followers.

Trying to Advertise Myself on Upwork

Oh, how it would be wonderful to land a freelance writing job easily. But I have found that it’s easier to think of being self-employed as a freelance writer than it actually is to find a job. While fishing out in those open waters of the Craigslist, I have often felt a bite only to have my catch swim away. Then again, there are some real bottom feeders on Craigslist, so perhaps it’s for the best. But it can still be discouraging.

Still, if I’m going to have a client get away from me, I might as well fish in reputable sites instead of the polluted waters of Craigslist. However, in order to do this, I must be a salesman, able to advertise myself, and I have no idea how to promote myself. Sure, I can have all the skills and qualifications, but if I don’t know how promote myself, how can I find work?

TranscribeMe

“Youl would be a good transcriber,” one of my friends told me. But would I? He had recommended TranscribeMe. I thought, sure, why not? Writing down what people say. How hard can it be? Especially online where you can slow down and pause a recording.

However, I found the exam to get into TranscribeMe as maddening and stress-inducing. The idea of putting all my time into an examen and then wait to see if I passed it or not is just too much. I’ll pass.

Submitting Articles

I have submitted articles before, such as opinion pieces like this one. Still, I’ve had articles that I’ve put a lot of time, effort, and research into turned down before, too. So, while writing can get your name out there, there is so only so much room in publications that people are competing to get into and even online publications are competitive.

Ghostwriting

On the surface, ghostwriting sounds easy. Write well and get hired. But finding someone trustworthy to ghostwrite for is a whole other challenge. Sure, I’ve been paid for ghostwriting before. But there have been many more times in which clients have flaked out on me, disappearing like ghosts in the night, even when I tried to work with them and their schedules.

Focusing on my Novels and Short stories.

So far, I’m finding what’s most enjoyable for me is focusing on writing my short stories and novels, and earning money from patrons who support me. Though I don’t have a lot of patrons on my Patreon account, I have a few who believe in my vision of self-publishing a book, and many other friends who are not patrons, but who are highly supportive of my talents.

Image from Giphy

A Lot to Consider as a Writer

So, there is a lot to consider as a writer. Writing takes time, and the days are so short. Where does one put their time and effort? There is certainly writing for enjoyment* and writing for profit. Most of us want to make a living writing. But to make a living as a writer takes years. Is it best to focus on practical writing, such as ghostwriting and the writing of articles or academic papers, or is is better to follow one’s heart and work on their fiction? Either way, how much time should be spent on self-promoation using Upwork and Twitter for each? It’s a question I stil haven’t found the answer to.

 

* I use the term enjoyment lightly, considering that even writing novels, short stories, children’s books, and even poetry can still be a lot of work

 

Journaling to Become a More Effective Writer

Diary from Wikimedia Commons. 

In our daily lives with our busy schedules, taking time to journal, especially when we are already writers, seems like a waste of time when we could be focusing on writing our novels, short stories, or articles. However, ever since I have resumed journaling, I have noticed the opposite. Journaling has helped me with my creative writing and my articles. But how could this be so?

Here are my three observations.

 

Journaling Gives me a Schedule 

As writers, it can be hard to find a schedule, partly because writing is such a flexible pastime, parttime, or fulltime activity. And as much as we want to be responsible adults, with flexibility comes complacency. For flexibility is power and we all know what Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker who became Spider-man. Responsibility with flexibility is hard to put into place, the two of them being competing for our attention We are easily distracted creatures, prone to veg out on Youtube, Facebook, or, worse, Twitter. Responsibility coming with age? Sometimes, but other times hardly.

However, journaling encourages us to have a schedule. Most people journal at night, when the day is coming to a close. But there is no written law of when one should journal. Just find time to journal.

Ever since I’ve gotten back into journaling, I have noticed that a schedule has slowly developed for my writing. Before journaling, I usually work on my novels and short stories, or an article. That’s not to say that I don’t have lapses. Sometimes I’m still an unproductive slug. But I have many more moments of productivity, and I feel that journaling has been the key to helping me with my productivity in my other writing projects. Being a night owl, this productivity usually hits in the early evening.

 

Journaling Helps me Express Myself

Whether we want to admit it or not, we put much of ourselves in our stories and novels. Even if we are writing characters who are the polar opposites of us. It doesn’t matter if the writer is religious and the character he/she created is an atheist, or if their characters are vegetarians and they aren’t, or if they love sports but their characters hate it. Complete polar opposites of characters can be created that don’t reflect the author’s viewpoints, while the writer’s viewpoints still sink into the overall framework of the story, even if subtlety, which is often the case.

Self-expression and clarity of thought are particularly important when writing non-fiction papers such as articles or opinion pieces.

It’s why journaling is important. Think of it as an exercise in self-expression. I don’t know about all of you, my dear readers, but sometimes I think it just might be a more strenuous workout to exercise our minds to develop strong and clear self-expression rather than exercise our body with weight lifting, jogging, or pushups. Journaling allows us to develop what I call the thought-muscles to better express ourselves when we write fiction. For what is fiction but an exaggerated form of reality? Fiction is at least a great way to explore reality.

 

More Journaling Equals More Writing of my Other Work

Because journaling helps me set aside a schedule and helps me to develop my thoughts, I am able to write more of my fiction and articles. Part of my unproductivity came from feeling overwhelmed over the mountain of words I had to write and the numerous projects I had to finish. In a way, as cliche as this may sound, journaling has taught me that writing is a journey and not a destination. I, therefore, have been feeling less stressed about finishing projects by a certain date, which caused me to break down and not work on any projects at all. Ironically, I have gotten much more done ever since I started relaxing with journaling.

 

In Conclusion

Journaling can work wonders. It’s what’s encouraged me to focus on my other writing, to not be so hard on myself if I have an off-day, and to start posting on WordPress again.

 

 

Change Like the Tides: Complete rough draft

 

Here is a very rough draft of Change Like the Tides. And when I mean rough draft, I mean rough draft. Lots of spelling errors. Choppy sentence structures. Not a very good flow. However, I will work on correcting it. Until then enjoy the story. 

Image: Body of Water During Golden Hour. Copyright by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels Photo. 

Kirk Carlson was excited for his shore-leave to Jybogia, a planet dominated by mainly water. With a surface covered in 95 percent water, it made the 71 percent of earth covered in water look pathetic. From out the porthole, he could see the planet radiating like a blue gemstone.

It had been a long two weeks with the Interplanetary Expedition (IX) in researching the soil of a desert planet a 600 million light years away. Even with the warping of space, it still felt like a long trip. Sure, the IX Explorer was equipped with virtual reality wires that sent someone to sleep, thus manipulating dreams into games, but it was still shades and not reality in and of itself. It got boring. But it didn’t get as boring as the expedition to the desert planet that Carlson and his crewmates had to go on. All for taking soil samples to see if there was once life. Granted, it IX prided itself on exploring all sorts of worlds, some with life, some without life, but some planets were more exciting than ever. Taking soil samples for two weeks hadn’t been Carlson’s idea of a good trip. But this water planet was a different matter. This would be a much needed vacation.

But it wasn’t so much the planet that he was looking forward to seeing again, although he did find Jybogia to be one of the most fascinating planets they had come across, but Thuuth. Thuuth was a Jybogian.

Upon IX’s later encounter with this semi-aquatic race, they found by taking some DNA samples (voluntarily given) that the Jybogians had 80 percent human DNA, solidifying the theory of panspermia from a common source. The other 20 percent was amphibian DNA. The first meeting with the Jybogians got off to a rocky start, as the translators initially had a hard time deciphering their language. Not easy, considering the crew wanted to learn the language of the native inhabitants to show good graces. Honestly, radio frequencies should have been used to pick up the Jybogian language first to be translated and studied before disembarking on the surface. But protocol had been foolishly ignored in their excitement, and the inhabitants had hid from them in the ocean for five hours, the amount of time they could hold their breaths. Still, after long months trust was earned. Particularly when Carlson and the others offered the Jybogians gifts, which the natives looked at as though they were magical talismans, and started to speak some of the Jybogian’s own language.

It was when trust was established that the crew had been invited to a dinner by the Jybogians. It was a risky endeavor, to be sure. Strange food on a foreign planet; would the human system be able to digest it? Dr. Valerie Brentwood had brought the food analyzer along, but scanning the chemical compounds of the food didn’t negate all the risks. There were occasionally stories of IX members of other ships and crews who died from eating alien food. Thankfully, such was not the case among the Jybogian cuisine. Their dishes of their own fish and their salads of their own sea-plants were not just edible, but tasty.

But it had been the dancers that intrigued most of the crew. They had come out on a platform, if it could be called a platform. It was more like a large stone tub full of water, stuffed with water flowers and planets, including Jybogia’s own type of lily pad. And on the pads danced four young Jybogian women. Lithe and slender, and of different colors, they danced on the pads in a mix that was like a human ballet and the way a fish would dance if fish could dance. Light yellow, pale orange, sky blue, and mint green, dressed in the pink and red petals of sea plants, moved their bodies in a symphony to the music being played, lightly leaping from pad to pad, graceful kicks in the air, to come back to arm and arm (as well as fin and fin; seeing as part of their arms had thin wispy, transparent fins lining them) with one another. It was the most beautiful performance Carlson had ever seen. Even his boss, Captain Gerald Jones, who was a stern man, hard to impress, had been enraptured by the dance.

Carlson had not expected to see the dancers again. But the blue one had asked him, in broken, but understandable English, if she could sit by him. In turn, Carlson had granted her request in broken but understandable Jybogian. That was how he had met Thuuth.

And Carlson soon learned that Thuuth had an appetite that was hungry for the cosmos and all the wonders it held. Carlson had planned to ask her everything he could about Jybogia, but she was more interested in learning about Earth. She couldn’t fathom that there was something called ‘continents, when her planet was made up of a bunch of different islands. She was particularly impressed by the number of land mammals, considering there weren’t any land mammals on her planet. In turn, Carlson couldn’t help but be impressed by the young Jybogian’s gregarious attitude as well as her curiosity. She was incredibly gentle. The friendship she and the rest of her people showed the crew was nothing short of extraordinary, considering there was a lack of trust to begin.

Staring out the window, Carlson could see that the shuttle was rapidly approaching the surface of the big island, out of a long chain of islands. Dubbed the coil, the island chain almost formed a perfect question mark except the top end part of the mark curved downward and then into itself, islands meeting islands. Aside from that, it was nearly a perfect question mark. Even the last dot on the opposite end was spaced far enough apart from the other islands to look like the period portion of a question mark. A bright green one at that. It reminded Carlson of when he lived back on earth and has visited Ireland.

The shuttle came to a landing on a soft pasture of grass and the Carlson un-boarded the ramp with the rest of the crew. That fresh sea breeze hit him, not that much different than earths.

But what was different was the fauna. Carlson never got tired of it. Flowers about twelve feet tall loomed over them. The petals were as big as a dinner plate and they shone a transparent violet when the sun hit them. A violet ray of light was bathing Carlson as he stopped to admire the flowers roots. He loved how the jutted out from the earth, and bent over like a bunch of poles to hold up a tent. These huge flowers weren’t all that different than some of the mangroves back on earth. Like the mangroves back home, the violet flowers needed strong roots to withstand the onslaught of not just storms, but the waves. Since the planet had two moons, the tide was much more powerful and stronger, able to cover all the islands, including the big one, during high tide. Underneath the large violet flowers were smaller yellow flowers, glittering like scattered pirate’s gold. Their vines made a covering, wrapping themselves around the roots of the giant flowers. And while the giant flowers protected the smaller ones, the smaller yellow ones helped filter out much of the salt for the bigger ones; a symbiotic relationship if there ever was one.

But the most impressive site was what the Jybogians called the Talylul trees. There were many of them further inland on this island that was only three square miles. Clustering close together for protection from the harsh ocean, Carlson could see them from a mile away. They were tall. About half the size of a full grown redwood, and their roots and branches curled around one another, give each other extra support. It was in spaces between the branches of the trees that the Jybogians built their homes. From this distance, Carlson may as well have been blind, but once he and the crew got up into the foliage, the dwellings would become visible.

“Get your butts moving,” said the gruff voice of Captain Gerald Jones. Carlson could blame the captain’s ill temper. Like the rest of the crew, he was tired.

“You coming lover-boy?” teased Dr. Brentwood.

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” said Carlson.

All seven members of the crew made their way towards the Jybogian capital within the trees. With heavy luggage, even a mile long walk could feel like an ordeal. Thankfully, all the luggage, Carlson’s included, were loaded onto a hover pallet, meaning no one had to carry it. The pallet gave off a light humming as it hovered a half-foot off the ground and followed the procession.

“Did anyone remember to activate the force field on the shuttle before we left?” the Captain stopped dead in his tracks.

“Don’t worry, sir,” said one of the crewmates, the engineer Burt Babbit. “I made sure that the force field was activated just as soon as we stepped off the ship.

“Are you sure?”

Carlson had to stifle a laugh. It was amazing that Henderson had ever made the rank of captain. While being vigilant and secure was a virtue, there were times that Henderson almost bordered on obsessive-compulsive to the point that he would go back and check something, including making sure a force field was functioning, again and again. Carlson wanted to see Thuuth, so he hoped this wouldn’t be one of those moments.

“Sir, I promise you, I put in the program myself before we disembarked.”

“I fear high tide. I don’t need forty foot waves washing away the shuttle.”

“I promise you, sir, we are not going to be stranded on this planet. I even looked back to see the force field go up.”

“Fine,” barked Jones. “But if we are stranded here, I’ll throw you to the fishes of this sea.”

The engineer nodded and shrugged.

“He certainly has his uniform on too tight, doesn’t he?” whispered Brentwood. “You’d think that he doesn’t know that IX headquarters doesn’t know where we are or that they have our DNA safely in a computer bank that they can track us with by sending out a signal to read for our signs.”

“You would think,” Carlson whispered back.

“You would think he was going old and senile and that he forgot his meds,” she chuckled.

Carlson cocked a sly eyebrow at her. “I would think that you as doctor would make sure he remembered to take them.”

Brentwood laughed.

Jones shot a glare back at them. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Just a funny joke Dr. Brentwood told me,” said Carlson.

Grumbling, nerves obviously frayed from the stress of the last trip, the captain kept leading the procession. Meanwhile, Carlson couldn’t help but take a look at the doctor. Beautiful! With her tan skin and black hair. But her personality was incredibly attractive with her wicked sense of humor and easy going mannerism. If Carlson wasn’t so infatuated with Thuuth, he would have tried to kindle a deeper relationship with Valerie Brentwood.

As it was, Carlson couldn’t contain his excitement. Though a practical man and not a romanticist by nature, he couldn’t help but feel his heart tugging him towards the grove of Talylul trees. He liked to think that he and Thuuth’s heart were just as entangled as the branches of those trees.

Relax, he told himself. Take in the natural beauty of the surroundings. Though he had seen it all before, he never got tired of the rich variety of flora and fauna of Jybogia. In a deep puddle were some crescent flowers of neon pink and green and resting on them were a type of snail the Jybogian’s called geelaks. These snails had hard shells that were almost the same color as the crescent flowers, enabling them to camouflage themselves from all the sharp tooth beasties that wanted to eat them. The snails themselves were a dark purple color, with a silver strip running horizontal on their sides. Soon they passed some rocks and boulders, though in truth they were giant blue salt crystals. They glittered like blue ice in the sunlight, but didn’t melt. Perched one of them was a white lizard, a brub, wings two feet long outstretched to absorb the sunlight. Head craned down, as though weighed down by the horn in the middle of its head (though it wasn’t weighed down, as the horn was light and hollow) it looked quizzically at the procession as the passed along.

No matter where Carlson turned his head, there were just too many wonders to see, and though he had seen them all before, it felt like he was looking at it all with the fresh eyes of a child discovering the wonders around him for the first, especially since his trip to the desert planet.

This sense of wonder helped the time pass by and moved him closer to his goal, until he was the Talylul tree grove. High up, the trees towered over him with many branches knotted around one another in a firm grip to withstand the raging waters at high tide. Carlson touched the silver bark of one of the trees, smooth under his fingertips. If not for the branches, he didn’t know how anyone could climb these trees. For that matter, even if the branches, it was slick enough that he wasn’t sure how even the most nimble of human children could grip onto them without slipping and falling on their backs. But the Jybogians were different. Light and nimble, they were good jumpers as well as good swimmers. Notwithstanding, they still didn’t like always jump. Sometimes they were too tired after a day of fishing and hunting for birds that they just wanted to conserve their energy and take the makeshift elevator up. This was not just beneficial for the Jybogians, but serendipitous for people like Carlson.

The makeshift elevator, attached to a long vine and operated with a crank, came down and out of the wicker basket stepped out Jubul, the advisor to the chief of this tribe of Jybogians and well respected among all of them. Carlson had seen him before landing. The advisor was conspicuous among the green foliage of the trees with his red skin.

In perfect English he said, “Ah, friend Jones, Brentwood, Carlson, Babbit, Suski, Griffith, and Morgan, welcome, welcome! It’s always so good to have your company. Will you be needing lodging for the night?”

“If it’s agreeable with the chief, we were hoping for a couple of weeks,” said Jones. We are on shore-leave.”

Carlson had to give the captain credit. Despite his prickly nature, he could be quiet diplomatic when need be. Of course he had to be. IXP’s goal was good relations with all life-forms, and if a captain acted up, he or she would be demoted faster than light sucked into a black hole.

“But of course,” said Jubul. “Chief Biguk has instructed me that you are all to be our honored guests as long as you wish, and not to bother him over such trivialities of when you come and go. You know, he is still fond of the gift you gave him. For that matter,” and the advisor reached into the pocket of his leafy smock to bring out a small, circular holo-projector that fit perfectly in the interior of the palm. An image of a wife in a long leafy dress holding a child popped up; Jubul’s wife and child. “Because of your lovely gift, I can take my wife and child with me wherever I go, in a sense I can that is.”

With pleasantries out of the way, people were then loaded two at a time up the wicker basket. Carlson was one of the last to get in. Up he went, past the tangled branches and the leaves as thick and as wide as him. Knock, knock, went the wicker basket, sometimes bumping up against branches and leaves. Immersed in a jungle, it was hard to tell that they were 80 feet up, and that the trees rose 150 feet at the highest points.

Wrapped still among the leaves and shadowed by the branches, he was now on the platform where a stairway lead up to the first wooden structure, the welcome hall of the gods where the Jybogian’s had carved idols out of salt of all their gods. Walking through the hall, Carlson and company came to the exit where wood bridges and steps branched off in in every direction through the branches and to the different structures. Here the crew split up, leaving Carlson to do his own thing. Everyone knew where the guest quarters were and that the hover pallet with their supplies could get their own its own, drop off their supplies and park itself in a safe crevice of the trees until it was needed again. As for Carlson, he knew that Thuuth was likely in one of two places, her home or the performance hall.

Remembering that Thuuth usually performed in the evening, and it was still midday, and it would be a midday for a long time as the two moons slowed down Jybogia’s rotation, he decided to try her hut. Traversing the path, Carlson found himself having that same wild, exhilarating sense of freedom he first felt when he arrived. He was a kid again, and though he had walked these paths many times during his last visit, it all felt new and fresh, as if he were exploring a tree fort anew, in which anything could happen. First he walked a solid bridge leading from one large branch to another, then a longer wooden bridge greeted him, a rope bridge, swinging from the light breeze. Carlson held tight to the vine ropes of the bridge and steadies himself as he walked across. In a flash of fluttering color likes leaves blown in the autumn wind, orange, gold, and yellow neekal birds took flight, taking away Carlson’s breath. Resuming his walk, he came to the wooden planks that were nailed into a huge tree, forming a set of stairs that wound around the tree.

He walked up the planks until he was a good twenty feet higher up than before. There, nestled in the crevice of where the branches branched out even further and where other stairways lead up to other huts. A silk curtain, or a material that was like a silk, hung at Thuuth’s doorway. Regardless, the material for the doorway came from worms, but these black worms were as large as cats, covered in spines, and highly toxic.

“Thuuth, I’m back,” he called out excitedly. No answer.

He moved aside the curtain and looked inside. Her cot with silk blankets was at one side, (there were no fur blankets, but there didn’t need to be; due to the planet mainly being water to regulate the temperature, it never got that cold) was undisturbed. Her little table with salt crystal idols was over at the other side. Neat and tidy, just like she liked it.

No matter. The performance center wasn’t far from her home. Carlson walked up the steps of one of the nearby branches and then crossed a bridge to another tree. Winding his way further up another set of stairs, he came to the performance center. It was just like he remembered seeing when he saw Thuuth first perform, with the purple curtain hanging on the door frame and the etchings of the native wildlife on the door frame. He walked through the door, under the slanted roof with a carved symbol of a dancer.

Inside were the dancers practicing over that same stone pond that he had watched them perform over during his last visit, and sitting in front on a wooden chair was Thuuth. He could recognize that blue skin and the shape of the head.

“Thuuth,” her name bubbled out from the confines of his soul, gushing forth joyfully. “Thuuth, I’ve missed you.”

She turned her head and looked at him with those same pale white eyes. How beautiful! How elegant! How a humanoid creature that was primarily human in form but with a little bit of amphibian could look so lovely.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” the Jybogian said in a deep, masculine voice.

“I’m sorry,” Carlson apologized. “It’s just you look so much like her.” He bit his tongue and blushed, fearing that his words may have come across as offense. People back on earth didn’t like being mistaken for the opposite sex. He couldn’t imagine Jybogians would feel any different. “Again, I’m sorry. I seem to be a real klutz.”

The man shrugged and stood up from his chair. He wore a long leaf tunic, his bare arms exposed. He had exactly the same fin structure down his arms as well as the same webbed fingers and toes that Thuuth had.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s obvious why we would look alike. I’m her twin brother.”

“She never told me she had a twin.”

“She couldn’t speak very good English then.”

Carlson nodded in agreement. “Can she speak good English now? You speak perfect English.”

“Thank you. I practiced with the translators you left us. How about you? Can you speak perfect Jybogian?”

If Carlson had been embarrassed before, he was ten-fold now; the blood running to his face. He felt like a bad guest not taking more time to learn their language. “No, I’m afraid I can’t.”

Again, the male Jybogian shrugged as it to assure Carlson that it wasn’t that big of a deal. “No matter,” he said. “You’ll see Thuuth when she comes back, if she comes back.”

“What do you mean if?” Carlson felt a sick sensation creep into his stomach. He had heard stories about Jybogians going on dangerous quests to prove themselves to their gods, but he didn’t know that the females did it too.

“She is on a long journey, swimming a great distance to the land of our ancestors in order to commune with them. It’s not an easy journey. The seas are full of dangerous creatures who make us their diets.”

“I guess I could try tracking her,” said Carlson.

“She is not to be disturbed. Would you dishonor our traditions?” he glared at Carlson angrily.

Carlson gulped. No, of course he wouldn’t. IXP had a strict code of respecting other cultures. Interacting with them was permissible, but breaking the codes they lived by was not. “I’m sorry. Once again I have shown ignorance.”

“Don’t let it trouble you any further,” the man’s face softened. “I worry about her, too. But we must respect the traditions of our ancestors. Now, I’m afraid I’m at a loss; you are?”

“Kirk Carlson.”

“Ah, nice to meet you. I am Gabigot. If things go well, my sister should be back in another month.”

Carlson’s heart sunk even further. He only had two weeks on the planet. “Any chance she could come back sooner?”

“Perhaps, but not likely.”

Carlson thanked him and left the performance hall. As he was making his way up a set of stairs up a large branch, he was confronted by a female Jybogian; a mint-green one who was one of the original performers he had seen dance with Thuuth. At first she had startled him. For she had followed him by leaping from branch to branch before taking a bigger leap off a branch nearest to him, somersaulting in the air and landing smack on her feet in front of him.

“So sorry,” she said. “Mean not to you scare.”

Her English was broken, but Carlson didn’t care. He could understand her.

“It’s okay,” he said, breathing heavily. “What’s up?”

She looked at him confused. “More tree,” she finally said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Sky.”

Carlson sighed. It wasn’t her fault, but his own for not being clear. “I mean is there something you wanted to tell me?”

“Yes,” she nodded, smiling at herself as though she had finally got it.

“Okay, then. What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“Thuuth! Her you forget.”

“I never forgot her,” he scratched his chin, puzzled.

“No! Need!” And she pointed at his chest. “Her you need forget.”

“But why?”

“Because she you is dead. Dead. Brother eat her.”

Carlson didn’t need a mirror to know that his face turned ashen.

The dancer gave him a look of pity and pointed herself. “Sorry, I am,” she said. Then she took a huge leap and leapt on the branch of another tree.

Sick. Carlson was sick to his stomach. If Jybogia had only one moon, it would be a long day, but with two moons the day was going to be longer. Night would be a long time coming.

For that matter, there was hardly any night. The two moons lit up the sky, making it difficult for Carlson to sleep. Awake upon the soft silk bedding and under the soft silk sheets within the guest room, he couldn’t feel any comfort. The sounds of the native fauna, which had seemed tranquil during his last visit now sounded hostile. On a planet with two moons, most of the fauna had developed ways to camouflage themselves from nighttime predators, but Carlson didn’t have any way to blend in like a chameleon back on earth, or some of the animals on Jybogia could. He felt vulnerable.

He couldn’t stop thinking about what that dancer said about Thuuth. Dead. Consumed by her brother. Had Gabigot eaten his own sister? Carlson controlled the urge to retch. He didn’t need to wake his sleeping companions, some of whom were snoring like rocket jets near him. Some, such as Valerie Brentwood, had earlier asked him if he was okay when they saw that he looked paled. Oh, how wanted to tell them the truth, especially to the gentle doctor. But he lied, assuring them that he was perfectly fine, that he just got a bit dizzy swinging from a long vine. He had no right to ruin their shore-leave. Cultures were different and he had to accept that. Besides, this humanoid civilization had a little bit of amphibian DNA in them, and didn’t some amphibians eat their young? It wasn’t unheard. Back on earth it was normal for frogs to eat their young. A sad but true fact of the animal kingdom.

That’s what the Jybogians were like. Frogs. The way they leapt from trees. How far they could hop. And fish. They were like fish with how they could swim. Eating one another wouldn’t be out of the question. For them it might even be logical.

But then was lying logical too for this species? Was Thuuth’s brother Gabigot a liar as well as a cannibal? Despite feeling upset, Carlson had to sickly chuckle to himself over how he had prioritized that thought. It was as if he was prioritizing lying as more abhorrent than cannibalism. Not just any cannibalism, but family cannibalism. The whole thing was a morbid family affair.

Not able to sleep, Carlson pushed the covers aside and went out onto the deck. The moons glowed above him, one brighter than the other because of the active volcanoes on the surface. The brightness of the moons illuminated the high tide. It had already come in, and the waters were winding around the trees. Foamy flecks of surf struck the trunks of the trees. The surf was far from gentle. It was fierce.

With a high tide that washed over and drowned out all the island chains, Carlson couldn’t imagine the hurricanes on this planet. How did the Jybogians survive? One thing was for certain, what once seemed like a peaceful planet now seemed like Darwin’s survival of the fittest magnified tenfold.

He looked back up at the moons. One day one of those moons would crash into the other moon, and there would be only one moon. The tide wouldn’t be as strong. Perhaps there would even be a little more land because of it. But for now they were a symbol of the hostility of the planet, with the volcanic one glowing a hellish orange.

Amazing how perceptions could change. For not only had once Carlson’s eyes perceived the planet in a more positive light, but it wasn’t long ago that he had gazed at the moons with a different set of eyes. That was when Thuuth was alive. He had walked out on one of the balconies with her, and together they had admired both the moons and the high tide that cleansed the islands. The idea of an ocean engulfing a whole island would have been a scary thought to those not accustomed or native to the planet, but to Thuuth it was life and a natural order of things. The vegetation wasn’t just prepared for the flooding, it thrived off it, and Thuuth had helped Carlson to see the order of nature the same way she did.

“Look at the two moons,” she had said, pointing to them. “Don’t you love how one of them is brighter than the other?”

In turn, Carlson had said, “That’s because the first moon, the less bright one is tugging on the brighter one, instigating volcanic activity.” This had led to a talk on gravity and physics. Most importantly, it had led to stronger emotional connection between the two of them.

Thuuth helped Carlson see life in way that he had never seen, and he had helped her look at life in a way that she had never seen. Carlson had initial concerns about talking to her about science, worried that it would destroy her faith. But the opposite had happened. It had helped her see her gods work in a different way, giving more meaning to the myth. On the other hand, her unwavering belief in her gods had helped Carlson remember the importance of the mythopoeic mind.

Their trust had grown so strong that Thuuth had barred a part of her body to Carlson. She had removed her top let him see tattoo above her breasts. It was a refined symbol. It was about the size of his fist, and it was a cross between their sun and their ocean. It was circular with what could have been either choppy waves or fiery sunlight. Nestled in-between the circle were the inkings of one of a god bird and a goddess fish. The two of them encircling each other almost like the Ying and the Yang of Taoism did, symbolic of the harmony between the two, which created a mix between land and water creatures, the Jybogians the most blessed. Two graceful lines swirled down to her breasts and encircled her nipples, a reminder that the gods gave women the gift of life, birth and milk. Though, in the case of the Jybogians, while the women gave milk, they still laid eggs.

“Do you trust me?” Thuuth had asked Carlson.

“Yes.”

“Then you have nothing to fear with me.”

Carlson had come to find out that that meant that Thuuth had hoped to show him a hurricane someday. This had scared Carlson, but he had to remind himself their trees were of a stronger substance than back on earth. She had assured him that he would be safe, and that she wanted him to see their gods as their best.

Now Carlson was so worried about what happened to Thuuth that he would have gladly taken weathering a monster hurricane with her instead of facing the unknown of what happened to her, worrying if he’d ever see her again. Yes, it would be a long night, lasting over twenty hours because of those two moons. Long days, long nights. And unlike the Jybogian’s, Carlson couldn’t sleep for over twenty hours, even though it had been a very long day, a day that last longer than a day on earth.

He wanted to go back to the shuttle to sleep in a more comfortable bed, but the high tide was up. It intrigued Carlson to know that the trunks of the trees below him were now mired in water. It made him think back home to the Louisiana Bayou or the Florida Everglades. But come day, the trees would be nourished, their roots having filtered out the salt.

Carlson went back to his bed and climbed under the covers. Listening to the surf lapping up against the trees, he eventually fell asleep. But anxieties from unanswered questions plagued him and he needed answers.

Tossing aside the blankets, Carlson made his way back to the Thuuth’s hut, the double moons giving him ample light. Heart full of determination, and hope, he would surprise Thuuth when she came back. Surely she was coming back. She must be coming back. For his sake she had to return. But did she? Logically she didn’t have. Compassion and human emotion didn’t dictate the universe, but cold, hard scientific facts. Carlson had traveled the galaxy enough to know that it was an unforgiving place. From the surface of a planet to the depths of outer space to the close proximity of a star, no place was truly safe. Either Thuuth had died in her spiritual quest or that Jybogian was lying about the quest and they had killed her. It was a drastic thought. Carlson reminded himself that just because the Jybogians were frog-like didn’t mean they were frogs. There was more homo-sapian in their DNA. And homo-sapiens didn’t eat each other, at least not normally. Then again, the Jybogians were more like the ancient earth tribes, so add their little bit of frog DNA and put into consideration that they were like old earth tribes, maybe cannibalism wasn’t that off the wall. Then again, it was foolish to look at primitive tribes of earth and frogs and then say that the Jybogians would be cannibals because of those two examples. Science was determined by hard-empiricism more than it was innate ideas, or, as Carlson like to think of it, of preconceived biases.

A soft light illuminated from the windows of Thuuth’s hut. Heart pounding, Carlson had to stop himself from rushing to the door, lest he take a fall from the tree. Thuuth was back!

At least that’s what he thought.

When Carlson pulled back the curtain and called her name, it wasn’t Thuuth who looked up from the table but Gabigot.

For a moment, Carlson almost lost control of his emotional faculties. He wanted to take Gabigot and slam him to the floor, pinning him down, shouting at the top of his lungs if it was true whether he ate his sister. Instead he gently asked, “Is it true?”

“Is what true?” Gabigot looked at him quizzically. “And what are you doing in my – I mean Thuuth’s house?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” said Carlson, pulling up a chair from the opposite end of the table and taking a seat. “A Jybogian woman came to me today and told me that you had eaten your sister. I am hoping that’s not true.”

Gabigot peered at him with sad eyes, and Carlson was for certain that with a look that manifested such guilt that it was true. Thuuth was eaten. By her own brother. Carlson felt sick to his stomach.

“So, it is true?”

Gabigot nodded. “Yes, but not for the reason you think.”

“I loved her,” Carlson’s voice strained, holding back a shout. His fists were clenched on top of the table, the nails of his fingers dinging in his hands, and his face was burning red as he gritted his teeth. It was the only thing he could do to keep from lashing out.

“She is alive in a sense,” continued Gabigot, undeterred by Carlson’s anger.

“So you did eat her?”

“That’s a crude way of putting it. But it’s an analogy my people have lived with for a long time, and if you talked with a Jybogian who hardly knows English, well, I get why you might think that. But the truth is, I am here. I am Thuuth.”

“What?”

Without the least bit of grace, Gabigot ripped his tunic off of him, and though he was flat chested, the same tattoo was on his chest, the fish and the bird conspicuous. “Remember when I showed you this?” he asked.

“It can’t be,” Carlson slapped a hand to his head. “I was told that every Jybogian has a tattoo unique to them, and that was unique to Thuuth.”

“Just as unique to her as it is to me,” nodded Gabigot thoughtfully. “You see, her and I are one.”

“But you don’t mean one as in you ate her?”

“No. Not like the way you are thinking. But I still fear telling you the whole story.”

“Please tell me,” begged Carlson, having left his chair and gotten on his knees. “I need to know.”

“I will if you promise you won’t judge me harshly,” said Gabigot.

“I promise. Just tell me.”

Gabigot sighed as he took Carlson by the hands. He allowed himself to be gently raised up by this strong male Jybogian. Eyes to eyes, it felt like an eternity before Gabigot said something. When he did, it hit Carlson hard. “Like a frog, I’m a freak of nature.”

Carlson felt like he had been punched in the stomach, the air knocked out of him. He had told Thuuth, but not Gabigot, that some species of frogs on his planet changed sexes. From birthing from their backs, to pushing down food with their eyes, to changing their sexes, he had joked that frogs were freaks of nature. But that couldn’t possibly mean…

“Do you change your sex?” the words came out of Carlson’s mouth slowly like molasses through a filter.

“Yes,” said Gabigot. “I am your Thuuth. We do change our sexes. Not on our own accord, but because we believe that’s what our father god, the bird, and our mother god, the fish, decided. It is believed that long ago the two sexes grew prideful in their own femininity and masculinity, and feelings grew so bitter between the two that they came to blows. Mother God and Father God then put a curse on us, so that we could change our sexes. Of course, I know that you have a scientific explanation for how they do it.”

“I’m sure I do,” said Carlson. “But didn’t you tell me that you’ll change back into a female in a month?”

“I might,” Gabigot walked over to the window to look out at the night sky. “But it’s not for certain.” He turned to look back at Carlson. “Didn’t you say something about genetics?”

“I did.”

Gabigot looked back out the window. “I imagine that genetics play a role whether I will turn back into a female or remain a male. It’s hard to tell. It’s different with each one of us of my species. Some are born male to change female, to never turn back. Some are born female to change male, never turning back. While some of us fluctuate for a while before choosing one form for the rest of our lives whereas others of us are always changing until the day we die. Gods, genetics, call it what you will, but it’s the way of things.”

“Yeah, I guess it is.” Carlson couldn’t help but remember all the science classes he had to take before joining IX. One thing that was bombarded into his brain was that with all the wonders of science coupled with the limited understanding of people, to have an open mind when out exploring the cosmos.

“I need to know,” said Gabigot. “Do you still love me? Can you still love me?”

This was a question that Carlson had never thought he’d be asked and he didn’t much like it. Could he love Thuuth when she was Gabigot? He was a man who loved women, always had, and now his notions were being challenged. It would have been easier to love Gabigot if he knew for certain that he would change back into Thuuth, that this male body was only temporary. It’s not to say that Carlson only fell in love with Thuuth for her body. Goodness no. He had fallen in love with her for her gregarious personality, her kindly disposition, her inquisitive nature, and a brilliant mind that laid dormant, just ready to be woken up. Then again, those were features that could never be taken unless Gabigot changed his personality for the worst. But when it came to sexually attraction, Carlson was straight and he could do nothing to alter that orientation.

Mind made up, Carlson stared Gabigot straight in the eyes, took his hands and said, “Thuuth, I know you are in there, and I have a feeling you will always be in there, even if your body never changes back to what it was before. So relax. I will always love you, Thuuth. I will love you now and I will love you forever.”

“I don’t know if Thuuth will ever come back,” said Gabigot.

“I don’t think she ever left,” said Carlson.

“So, you still do love me?”

“Yes. And I always will. As for reverting back to female, we’ll see what happens. Besides, a romance doesn’t have to be physical. Are you okay with that?”

That old twinkle sparkled in Thuuth’s eyes, and Carlson felt like he was looking back at how he first saw her when he first met her. “Yes, of course, that’s okay.” Thuuth, in the rough arms and body of Gabigot, held Carlson tight and Carlson returned the embrace, feeling Thuuth under that body.

“And you’re not a freak,” Carlson said. “I’m sorry I ever used that analogy.”

And for the rest of the night, the two of them sat on the balcony, looked up at the moons, and thought about what could be.

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Change Like the Tides: very rough draft

 

Body of Water During Golden Hour. Copyright by Sebastian Voortman from Pexels Photo.

This is an incomplete, very rough draft. 

Kirk Carlson was excited for his shore-leave to Jybogia, a planet dominated by mainly water. With a surface covered in 95 percent water, it made the 71 percent of earth covered in water look pathetic. From out the porthole, he could see the planet radiating like a blue gemstone.

It had been a long two weeks with the Interplanetary Expedition (IX) in researching the soil of a desert planet at 600 million light-years away. Even with the warping of space, it still felt like a long trip. Sure, the IX Explorer was equipped with virtual reality wires that sent someone to sleep, thus manipulating dreams into games, but it was still shades and not reality in and of itself. It got boring. But it didn’t get as boring as the expedition to the desert planet that Carlson and his crewmates had to go on. All for taking soil samples to see if there was once life. Granted, it IX prided itself on exploring all sorts of worlds, some with life, some without life, but some planets were more exciting than ever. Taking soil samples for two weeks hadn’t been Carlson’s idea of a good trip. But this water planet was a different matter. This would be a much-needed vacation.

But it wasn’t so much the planet that he was looking forward to seeing again, although he did find Jybogia to be one of the most fascinating planets they had come across, but Thuuth. Thuuth was a Jybogian.

Upon IX’s later encounter with this semi-aquatic race, they found by taking some DNA samples (voluntarily given) that the Jybogians had 80 percent human DNA, solidifying the theory of panspermia from a common source. The other 20 percent was amphibian DNA. The first meeting with the Jybogians got off to a rocky start, as the translators initially had a hard time deciphering their language. Not easy, considering the crew wanted to learn the language of the native inhabitants to show good graces. Honestly, radio frequencies should have been used to pick up the Jybogian language first to be translated and studied before disembarking on the surface. But protocol had been foolishly ignored in their excitement, and the inhabitants had hid from them in the ocean for five hours, the amount of time they could hold their breaths. Still, after long months trust was earned. Particularly when Carlson and the others offered the Jybogians gifts, which the natives looked at as though they were magical talismans, and started to speak some of the Jybogian’s own language.

It was when trust was established that the crew had been invited to a dinner by the Jybogians. It was a risky endeavor, to be sure. Strange food on a foreign planet; would the human system be able to digest it? Dr. Valerie Brentwood had brought the food analyzer along, but scanning the chemical compounds of the food didn’t negate all the risks. There were occasionally stories of IX members of other ships and crews who died from eating alien food. Thankfully, such was not the case among the Jybogian cuisine. Their dishes of their own fish and their salads of their own sea-plants were not just edible, but tasty.

But it had been the dancers that intrigued most of the crew. They had come out on a platform, if it could be called a platform. It was more like a large stone tub full of water, stuffed with water flowers and planets, including Jybogia’s own type of lily pad. And on the pads danced four young Jybogian women. Lithe and slender, and of different colors, they danced on the pads in a mix that was like a human ballet and the way a fish would dance if fish could dance. Light yellow, pale orange, earth-sky blue, and mint green, dressed in the pink and red petals of sea plants, moved their bodies in a symphony to the music being played, lightly leaping from pad to pad, graceful kicks in the air, to come back to arm and arm (as well as fin and fin; seeing as part of their arms had thin wispy, transparent fins lining them) with one another. It was the most beautiful performance Carlson had ever seen. Even his boss, Captain Gerald Jones, who was a stern man, hard to impress, had been enraptured by the dance.

Carlson had not expected to see the dancers again. But the blue one had asked him, in broken, but understandable English, if she could sit by him. In turn, Carlson had granted her request in broken but understandable Jybogian. That was how he had met Thuuth.

And Carlson soon learned that Thuuth had an appetite that was hungry for the cosmos and all the wonders it held. Carlson had planned to ask her everything he could about Jybogia, but she was more interested in learning about Earth. She couldn’t fathom that there was something called ‘continents, when her planet was made up of a bunch of different islands. She was particularly impressed by the number of land mammals, considering there weren’t any land mammals on her planet. In turn, Carlson couldn’t help but be impressed by the young Jybogian’s gregarious attitude as well as her curiosity. She was incredibly gentle. The friendship she and the rest of her people showed the crew was nothing short of extraordinary, considering there was a lack of trust to begin.

Staring out the window, Carlson could see that the shuttle was rapidly approaching the surface of the big island, out of a long chain of islands. Dubbed the coil, the island chain almost formed a perfect question mark except the top end part of the mark curved downward and then into itself, islands meeting islands. Aside from that, it was nearly a perfect question mark. Even the last dot on the opposite end was spaced far enough apart from the other islands to look like the period portion of a question mark. A bright green one at that. It reminded Carlson of when he lived back on earth and has visited Ireland.

The shuttle came to a landing on a soft pasture of grass and the Carlson un-boarded the ramp with the rest of the crew. That fresh sea breeze hit him, not that much different than earths.

But what was different was the fauna. Carlson never got tired of it. Flowers about twelve feet tall loomed over them. The petals were as big as a dinner plate and they shone a transparent violet when the sun hit them. A violet ray of light was bathing Carlson as he stopped to admire the flowers roots. He loved how the jutted out from the earth and bent over like a bunch of poles to hold up a tent. These huge flowers weren’t all that different than some of the mangroves back on earth. Like the mangroves back home, the violet flowers needed strong roots to withstand the onslaught of not just storms, but the waves. Since the planet had two moons, the tide was much more powerful and stronger, able to cover all the islands, including the big one, during high tide. Underneath the large violet flowers were smaller yellow flowers, glittering like scattered pirate’s gold. Their vines made a covering, wrapping themselves around the roots of the giant flowers. And while the giant flowers protected the smaller ones, the smaller yellow ones helped filter out much of the salt for the bigger ones; a symbiotic relationship if there ever was one.

But the most impressive site was what the Jybogians called the Talylul trees. There were many of them further inland on this island that was only three square miles. Clustering close together for protection from the harsh ocean, Carlson could see them from a mile away. They were tall. About half the size of a full-grown redwood, and their roots and branches curled around one another give each other extra support. It was in spaces between the branches of the trees that the Jybogians built their homes. From this distance, Carlson may as well have been blind, but once he and the crew got up into the foliage, the dwellings would become visible.

“Get your butts moving,” said the gruff voice of Captain Gerald Jones. Carlson could blame the captain’s ill-temper. Like the rest of the crew, he was tired.

“You coming lover-boy?” teased Dr. Brentwood.

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” said Carlson.

All seven members of the crew made their way towards the Jybogian capital within the trees. With heavy luggage, even a mile-long walk could feel like an ordeal. Thankfully, all the luggage, Carlson’s included, were loaded onto a hover pallet, meaning no one had to carry it. The pallet gave off a light humming as it hovered a half-foot off the ground and followed the procession.

“Did anyone remember to activate the force field on the shuttle before we left?” the Captain stopped dead in his tracks.

“Don’t worry, sir,” said one of the crewmates, the engineer Burt Babbit. “I made sure that the force field was activated just as soon as we stepped off the ship.

“Are you sure?”

Carlson had to stifle a laugh. It was amazing that Henderson had ever made the rank of captain. While being vigilant and secure was a virtue, there were times that Henderson almost bordered on obsessive-compulsive to the point that he would go back and check something, including making sure a force field was functioning, again and again. Carlson wanted to see Thuuth, so he hoped this wouldn’t be one of those moments.

“Sir, I promise you, I put in the program myself before we disembarked.”

“I fear high tide. I don’t need forty foot waves washing away the shuttle.”

“I promise you, sir, we are not going to be stranded on this planet. I even looked back to see the force field go up.”

“Fine,” barked Jones. “But if we are stranded here, I’ll throw you to the fishes of this sea.”

The engineer nodded and shrugged.

“He certainly has his uniform on too tight, doesn’t he?” whispered Brentwood. “You’d think that he doesn’t know that IXP headquarters doesn’t know where we are or that they have our DNA safely in a computer bank that they can track us with by sending out a signal to read for our signs.”

“You would think,” Carlson whispered back.

“You would think he was going old and senile and that he forgot his meds,” she chuckled.

Carlson cocked a sly eyebrow at her. “I would think that you as a doctor would make sure he remembered to take them.”

Brentwood laughed.

Jones shot a glare back at them. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. Just a funny joke Dr. Brentwood told me,” said Carlson.

Grumbling, nerves obviously frayed from the stress of the last trip, the captain kept leading the procession. Meanwhile, Carlson couldn’t help but take a look at the doctor. Beautiful! With her tan skin and black hair. But her personality was incredibly attractive with her wicked sense of humor and easy-going mannerism. If Carlson wasn’t so infatuated with Thuuth, he would have tried to kindle a deeper relationship with Valerie Brentwood.

As it was, Carlson couldn’t contain his excitement. Though a practical man and not a romanticist by nature, he couldn’t help but feel his heart tugging him towards the grove of Talylul trees. He liked to think that he and Thuuth’s heart were just as entangled as the branches of those trees.

Relax, he told himself. Take in the natural beauty of the surroundings. Though he had seen it all before, he never got tired of the rich variety of flora and fauna of Azu. In a deep puddle were some crescent flowers of neon pink and green and resting on them were a type of snail the Jybogian’s called geelaks. These snails had hard shells that were almost the same color as the crescent flowers, enabling them to camaflouge themselves from all the sharp tooth beasties that wanted to eat them. The snails themselves were a dark purple color, with a silver strip running horizontal on their sides. Soon they passed some rocks and boulders, though in truth they were giant blue salt crystals. They glittered like blue ice in the sunlight, but didn’t melt. Perched one of them was a white lizard, a brub, wings two feet long outstretched to absorb the sunlight. Head craned down, as though weighed down by the horn in the middle of its head (though it wasn’t weighed down, as the horn was light and hollow) it looked quizzically at the procession as the passed along.

No matter where Carlson turned his head, there were just too many wonders to see, and though he had seen them all before, it felt like he was looking at it all with the fresh eyes of a child discovering the wonders around him for the first, especially since his trip to the desert planet.

This sense of wonder helped the time pass by and moved him closer to his goal, until he was the Talylul tree grove. High up, the trees towered over him with many branches knotted around one another in a firm grip to withstand the raging waters at high tide. Carlson touched the silver bark of one of the trees, smooth under his fingertips. If not for the branches, he didn’t know how anyone could climb these trees. For that matter, even if the branches, it was slick enough that he wasn’t sure how even the most nimble of human children could grip onto them without slipping and falling on their backs. But the Jybogians were different. Light and nimble, they were good jumpers as well as good swimmers. Notwithstanding, they still didn’t like always jump. Sometimes they were too tired after a day of fishing and hunting for birds that they just wanted to conserve their energy and take the makeshift elevator up. This was not just beneficial for the Jybogians, but serendipitous for people like Carlson.

The makeshift elevator, attached to a long vine and operated with a crank, came down and out of the wicker basket stepped out Jubul, the advisor to the chief of this tribe of Jybogians and well respected among all of them. Carlson had seen him before landing. The advisor was conspicuous among the green foliage of the trees with his red skin.

In near-perfect English he said, “Ah, friend Jones, Brentwood, Carlson, Babbit, Suski, Griffith, and Morgan, welcome, welcome! It’s always so good to have your company. Will you be needing lodging for the night?”

“If it’s agreeable with the chief, we were hoping for a couple of weeks,” said Jones. We are on shore-leave.”

Carlson had to give the captain credit. Despite his prickly nature, he could be quiet diplomatic when need be. Of course, he had to be. IXP’s goal was good relations with all life-forms, and if a captain acted up, he or she would be demoted faster than light sucked into a black hole.

“But of course,” said Jubul. “Chief Biguk has instructed me that you are all to be our honored guests as long as you wish, and not to bother him over such trivialities of when you come and go. You know, he is still fond of the gift you gave him. For that matter,” and the advisor reached into the pocket of his leafy smock to bring out a small, circular holo-projector that fit perfectly in the interior of the palm. An image of a wife in a long leafy dress holding a child popped up; Jubul’s wife and child. “Because of your lovely gift, I can take my wife and child with me wherever I go, in a sense I can that is.”

With pleasantries out of the way, people were then loaded two at a time up the wicker basket. Carlson was one of the last to get in. Up he went, past the tangled branches and the leaves as thick and as wide as him. Knock, knock, went the wicker basket, sometimes bumping up against branches and leaves. Immersed in a jungle, it was hard to tell that they were 80 feet up, and that the trees rose 150 feet at the highest points.

Wrapped still among the leaves and shadowed by the branches, he was now on the platform where a stairway lead up to the first wooden structure, the welcome hall of the gods where the Jybogian’s had carved idols out of salt of all their gods. Walking through that hall, Carlson and company came to the exit where wood bridges and steps branched off in in every direction through the branches and to the different structures. Here the crew split up, leaving Carlson to do his own thing. Everyone knew where the guest quarters were, and Carlson knew that Thuuth was likely in one of two places, her home or the performance hall.

Remembering that Thuuth usually performed in the evening, and it was still midday, and it would be a midday for a long time as the two moons slowed down Azu’s rotation, he decided to try her hut. Traversing the path, Carlson found himself having that same wild, exhilarating sense of freedom he first felt when he arrived. He was a kid again, and though he had walked these paths many times during his last visit, it all felt new and fresh, as if he were exploring a tree fort anew, in which anything could happen. First he walked a solid bridge leading from one large branch to another, then a longer wooden bridge greeted him, a rope bridge, swinging from the light breeze. Carlson held tight to the vine ropes of the bridge and steadies himself as he walked across. In a flash of fluttering color likes leaves blown in the Autumn wind, orange, gold, and yellow neekal birds took flight, taking away Carlson’s breath. Resuming his walk, he came to the wooden planks that were nailed into a huge tree, forming a set of stairs that wound around the tree.

He walked up the planks until he was a good twenty feet higher up than before. There, nestled in the crevice of where the branches branched out even further and where other stairways lead up to other huts. A silk curtain, or a material that was like a silk, hung at Thuuth’s doorway. Regardless, the material for the doorway came from worms, but these black worms were as large as cats, covered in spines, and highly toxic.

“Thuuth, I’m back,” he called out excitedly. No answer.

He moved aside the curtain and looked inside. Her cot with silk blankets was at one side, (there were no fur blankets, but there didn’t need to be; due to the planet mainly being water to regulate the temperature, it never got that cold) was undisturbed. Her little table with salt crystal idols was over at the other side. Neat and tidy, just like she liked it.

No matter. The performance center wasn’t far from her home. Carlson walked up the steps of one of the nearby branches and then crossed a bridge to another tree. Winding his way further up another set of stairs, he came to the performance center. It was just like he remembered seeing when he saw Thuuth first perform, with the purple curtain hanging on the door frame and the etchings of the native wildlife on the door frame. He walked through the door, under the slanted roof with a carved symbol of a dancer.

Inside were the dancers practicing over that same stone pond that he had watched them perform over during his last visit, and sitting in front on a wooden chair was Thuuth. He could recognize that blue skin and the shape of the head.

“Thuuth,” her name bubbled out from the confines of his soul, gushing forth joyfully. “Thuuth, I’ve missed you.”

She turned her head and looked at him with those same pale white eyes. How beautiful! How elegant! How a humanoid creature that was primarily human in form but with a little bit of amphibian could look so lovely.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” the Jybogian said in a deep, masculine voice.

“I’m sorry,” Carlson apologized. “It’s just you look so much like her.” He bit his tongue and blushed, fearing that his words may have come across as offense. People back on earth didn’t like being mistaken for the opposite sex. He couldn’t imagine Jybogians would feel any different. “Again, I’m sorry. I seem to be a real klutz.”

The man shrugged and stood up from his chair. He wore a long leaf tunic, his bare arms exposed. He had exactly the same fin structure down his arms as well as the same webbed fingers and toes that Thuuth had.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s obvious why we would look alike. I’m her twin brother.”

“She never told me she had a twin.”

“She couldn’t speak very good English then.”

Carlson nodded in agreement. “Can she speak good English now? You speak perfect English.”

“Thank you. I practiced with the translators you left us. How about you? Can you speak perfect Jybogian?”

If Carlson had been embarrassed before, he was ten-fold now; the blood running to his face. He felt like a bad guest not taking more time to learn their language. “No, I’m afraid I can’t.”

Again, the male Jybogian shrugged as it to assure Carlson that it wasn’t that big of a deal. “No matter,” he said. “You’ll see Thuuth when she comes back, if she comes back.”

“What do you mean if?” Carlson felt a sick sensation creep into his stomach. He had heard stories about Jybogians going on dangerous quests to prove themselves to their gods, but he didn’t know that the females did it too.

“She is on a long journey, swimming a great distance to the land of our ancestors in order to commune with them. It’s not an easy journey. The seas are full of dangerous creatures who make us their diets.”

“I guess I could try tracking her,” said Carlson.

“She is not to be disturbed. Would you dishonor our traditions?” he glared at Carlson angrily.

Carlson gulped. No, of course he wouldn’t. IXP had a strict code of respecting other cultures. Interacting with them was permissible, but breaking the codes they lived by was not. “I’m sorry. Once again I have shown ignorance.”

“Don’t let it trouble you any further,” the man’s face softened. “I worry about her, too. But we must respect the traditions of our ancestors. Now, I’m afraid I’m at a loss; you are?”

“Kirk Carlson.”

“Ah, nice to meet you. I am Gabigot. If things go well, my sister should be back in another month.”

Carlson’s heart sunk even further. He only had two weeks on the planet. “Any chance she could come back sooner?”

“Perhaps, but not likely.”

To be corrected and continued.

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Dead Men Tell Tales: rough draft

 

Art by William Blake.

Recommended for ages 13 and up for morbid subject matter and involving a child.

Spring, sunlight, fresh flowers. It’s a time when the sun reaches down its rays and thaws away the ice, banishing the winter. The earth is reborn again.

Elizabeth Fairweather loved the spring and she loved spending it at her grandma’s out in the countryside. Her father had just dropped her off at her grandma’s house, and Elizabeth was excited. Elizabeth, having recently turned eight, joyfully bounded out of her father’s pickup truck, youthful vigor driving her forward, her neon green and yellow sundress flapping like a blur of light, the straw hat on her head almost blowing off, to the front porch and into her grandma’s arms.

“Oh, how beautiful you are growing,” her grandma reached out an old withered hand to brush Elizabeth’s bright red hair, and to run her old fingers down a young freckled face, kissed by the sun. They were gentle hands. Hands that had toiled long and hard, sacrificing for a family she loved. Hands that comforted the sick when she was a nurse. Hands that held newborn infants and comforted new moms. Hands that had left their mark on the world for the better.

Grandma Fairweather held Elizabeth tightly, and Elizabeth sunk deep into her bosom. Two generations of Fairweathers bound together with an unbreakable bond. Grandma Fairweather often aid that Elizabeth was the splitting image of herself when she was a child, both in mannerisms and looks. Elizabeth often wanted to grow up to be like her grandmother, a strong, kindly woman.

“How are you doing, Lizzy, dear?” Grandma Fairweather stroked her hair.

“I’m doing great, Grand-mama,” said Elizabeth.

The pickup truck backed out of the dirt driveway as Elizabeth’s father waved her goodbye.

“Would you like some cookies and lemonade,” her grandma asked her.

“I’d rather have some cookies and milk, if it’s not too much trouble, Grand-mama.”

“Of course not, dear. You come inside and you make yourself comfortable.”

Elizabeth followed her grandma into what was more than just an old house, but a gateway to the past. Inside was an old rotary phone, still attached to a line, an old 1970s television set, 1970s and early 80s furniture, including an ugly beige couch, and old books crammed into bookshelves. And that was only the living room, where the walls were still covered in 1970s psychedelic flower-power, orange and red wall paper. In the kitchen was a wall oven and a stove top dating back from the 1960s.

“Can I help you at all, grand-mama?”

“No, you just relax, dear,” the old woman said. “I’ve got this taken care of.”

Elizabeth took a seat at the kitchen table as her grandma got the Tupperware full to the brim with cookies and a pitcher of cold lemonade out. In the middle of the table was a picture of her grandma and her grandpa when they were young, in their early 30s, back in the early 70s. They looked so content together, like they found a happiness that could last forever. He with his right arm over her shoulders. She leaning into him, her face against his chest as she smiled. Both of them dressed for their wedding. Aside from Grandma Fairweather, the old photos that were peppered around the house were Elizabeth’s favorite thing about this old home. The photos were everywhere, in frames hanging from the walls, in frames on bookcases, tables, and nightstands, even attached without frames to the fridge with magnets. In the living room, through the hall, in the bedrooms, and in the kitchen. Photos of old aunts and uncles who had passed, some of old age, some from a war. Photos of children and grandchildren. Some of vacations and some of family birthday parties. But all of them reminders of precious moments consigned to the past, of loved ones lost. Elizabeth knew that her grandma especially missed her husband grandpa Fairweather, who had died before Elizabeth was born.

Elizabeth’s grandma came back with a plate of cookies and a glass of lemonade. “If you want anymore, you just tell me.”

“Thank you so much,” Elizabeth said, a wide smile crossing her face as she voraciously consumed a cookie from her plate. Chocolate chip! Her favorite!

She looked up at her grandma who was smiling gently at her. Elizabeth liked to think that all the lines on her grandma’s face that moved in unison with her smile were left over smiles from so many years of joy. And those eyes, they didn’t look the least bit cloudy. They still shone bright, like they trapped the light of childhood. How Elizabeth loved her.

For the remainder of the morning and early afternoon, Elizabeth helped her grandma around the house, even though her grandma insisted that she didn’t have to. Of course, the chores, which weren’t backbreaking to begin with, were finished that much faster because of Elizabeth’s help. Until about 3 PM, she spent time talking with her grandma as they worked on putting together a puzzle. The two of them then played card games until dinner, in which Elizabeth helped her grandma. After dinner, it was bedtime.

Elizabeth was sleeping in the upstairs bedroom when she heard a tapping on the window near her bed. She rubbed her eyes and looked over at the window. She didn’t see anyone knocking on it. However, the moonlight illuminated the dead ok that was at the side of the house. One of the oak’s twisted branches was only a couple of feet away from Elizabeth’s window, and on it, glittering like black ebony under the moonlight, was a crow.

Caw, caw, caw, the crow said. Caw, caw, caw.

Elizabeth stared at the fowl. For some reason it made her uneasy. Caw, caw, caw, caw, kill, kill, kill. Elizabeth hid under her covers, hoping the bird would fly away.

When she looked out from the covers, the crow was gone. She chalked it up as just a bad dream before falling back to sleep.

The next day, Elizabeth went to town to shop with her grandma. When they got back at 3, she told her grandma that she wanted to go outside and explore nature. To this her grandma consented, but told her to stay close by, keeping her range within the fields and the meadows, and not to approach the tree line. Elizabeth happily agreed.

She ran outside, her legs carrying her to the hills behind her grandma’s house. The sun felt like love and warmth hugging her body, and a gentle breeze tempered what could have been unbearable heat. White dandelion petals were blown by the breeze, swirling through the air in a pattern like they were a flock of fairies. From atop the first hill, Elizabeth obtained a perfect view of the meadow and its hillsides covered in fresh grass dotted with yellow, red, and purple flowers. In the far distance, she could see the tree-line and the mountains. Elizabeth would honor Grandma Fairweather’s wishes to stay in the meadows. Though the mountains, their peaks still covered in snow, looked inviting.

Elizabeth ran and tumbled down the hills, not caring if her summer dress got torn or dirty. She was just happy to be outside among the flowers and under a sky of azure blue with clouds puffed up like white cotton candy. She picked some flowers from all the colors that the meadow offered and made herself a wreath for her head. It was something that her grandma had taught her, something that she had learned at some place called Woodstock. Come to think of it, she would make two flower crowns, one for her and one for grandma too. She was giggling while making the crowns when a big butterfly passed by, bright yellow with black stripes. Closer examination showed that there were numerous butterflies fluttering about, of all different colors. They were slating their thirst with the nectar from the flowers or they were flapping their wings in colorful unison in the air.

But it was the yellow and black striped one that locked onto Elizabeth’s eyes, catching her childlike wonder in its own net. It made her think of a flying tiger. And with that thought, she laughed at the absurdity of all it. Watch out, all you other butterflies. I’m a tiger with wings and I’m going to eat you. She decided to chase after the butterfly, grasping her crowns as she did so. She chased it over the hills. Those wings, they were hypnotizing her, pulling her like a puppet on strings. She had lost track of the time as she chased the butterfly over another hill, and another, and another.

At the top of one of the hill, Elizabeth lost her balance and she went tumbling down the small slope in front of her. It startled her but she was okay, though a bit dazed.

When she came to, she found she was still within the field of flowers. But that’s not all that was there.

The bright foliage couldn’t obscure the horror in front of her. Laying on her back, she learned as much when she reached her hand to her side and touched something that felt dry and brittle. She picked it up, initially with the idea that it was an odd shaped rock. Such was not the case. Bleached white, as though having laid to rest for years, were the intact bones of a hand, the finger bones perfectly attached to it. Elizabeth dropped them, her eyes widening and her heart thumping as she sat up.

Right beside her, nestled in the flowers, was an adult skeleton. Its rib caged was split open. In-between the separated ribs grew bright red flowers. There were sparse sections of the flowers where she could see a mangled and twisted spine. The right arm and hand bones, from the side she didn’t land by, were detached from the skeleton and spread about not far from each other. The pelvis was twisted, along with the lower spine, at an abnormal angle. The left leg bones were broken apart where the kneecap met, and the right leg wasn’t even there. It was as if it had been torn and taken out by some creature or someone.

But it was the skull that that Elizabeth found most unsettling. It stared up at her with hollow eyes. A face, if it could be called such, smiled at her sickly. There was a large crack running down the left side of the skull, down to near the jawbone. That smile, it was as though it was laughing at Elizabeth. And the eye sockets, despite being devoid of eyes, peered deep into her, peeling away the layers of her skin and flesh in order to reach her heart. In turn, she peered deep into those empty sockets, falling into them as though they were an eternal abyss.

Knot in her throat, she forced it down to ask the dead how he or she died. And she could swear the skull, though its mouth remained closed, was speaking to her. How did I die? Who’s to say? Maybe I died of old age, and some animals pulled my corpse apart. Maybe I was out walking in the wood nearby when a bear came out and mauled me. Or perhaps I was alone in my house when someone broke in, robbed me, and beat and chopped me up, only to dump my body out here. Then again, it could have been someone who just hit me with truck, and too ashamed to face the facts, took my mangled body out this pleasant meadow. Who knows? So many ways to die.

               Elizabeth, paralyzed with fear, was only able to scoot back on her bottom only a few spaces. Those empty eyes and that hideous grin held her. Oh, you’re so beautiful. So young, so naïve. Don’t get too comfortable, my pretty. Life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It isn’t all love and laughter. That pretty red hair will gray. Your skin will wrinkle and sag. That’s if you’re lucky. Who’s to say you won’t be hit by a bus at school? The dice may be rolled landing on you getting struck by lightning. That’s not uncommon. Maybe fate will dictate that you will be killed by a rabid dog. Death might draw a card, the fool, in which you are foolish enough to choose the wrong man. A man who will kill you instead of love you. It matters not. Either way, the earth calls for you. It calls for all. And all must submit to the portal of the dead. This has fate decreed.

               Elizabeth felt a wind coming from in front of her. She looked up to see that the forest was only ten feet away from her. It didn’t look inviting in the least. The trees closed in together, the branches shuddered under the wind, and they groaned like they were giving homage to oncoming darkness. Was there something in the forest?

In answer to her question, the skeleton said, there is death everywhere.

Then, with a fluttering of wings, out from the right eye socket that same crow that Elizabeth saw the night before hopped out. And in a different voice than that of the skeleton, it said Caw, caw, caw… kill, before flapping its wings and flying off.

               Shocked, Elizabeth ran back up the hill. It was getting late. She could see the sun setting in the distance. Night quickly approaching. Thankfully, she could still see the home, though it looked so far from where she was.

With no time to spare, she ran as quickly as her little legs could carry her. The hills, which had once looked lush and green under the sunlight, were now dark under the coming nightfall. She had to get back.

And return to her home, she did. It was amazing at how rapidly Elizabeth was able to run.

She flung open the front door and rushed into the house, yelling “Grand-mama. Grandma-mama. Are you home? I’m sorry I’m late.”

No answer.

Elizabeth, heart thumping, blood flowing, sweat pouring down her locks of hair and staining her face and sundress, walked to the living room in the hopes that her grandma was there, sitting in her favorite chair and giving her the silent treatment. She would absolutely deserve it.

Only a dim lamp on a small end table was on in the living room, with the rest of the surroundings wrapped in blackness. The end table was by her grandma’s favorite chair, the club chair. And from the right of the club chair, its back facing Elizabeth, her grandma’s arm could be seen hanging down.

“Grand-mama?” Elizabeth asked, her feet lightly touching the floor in trepidation. “Are you okay? It’s me Elizabeth. I’m home.”

When Elizabeth got to the chair, she took Grandma Fairweather’s hand and said, “Grand-mama?” Her grandma’s hand was cold and stiff. “Grand-mama.”

Elizabeth looked at the front of her chair, to see her grandma lying there lifeless, her eyes without light. Death had arrived and taken what was his.

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Twitter: A High School Popularity Contest

I created a Twitter account to promote my writing, in the hopes that I would get more readers and more feedback, and hopefully a few patrons for my Patreon account. Sometimes I wonder if it was worth it. To be honest, I hate it. It feels like a high school popularity contest, that time of life when one is trying desperately hard to gain followers and recognition.

Yep, being almost by yourself on Twitter, while everyone else is hanging with the cool users. Image from Wikimedia Commons by Arief Rahman Saan (Ezagren). Lonely Boy.

There can be a huge lack of followers.
It’s true. You can post status after status, and it feels like no one is following you. Sure, your Twitter account may mention that you have a huge number of followers. But Twitter is a pathological liar, or those using Twitter are. Mark Twain said that there are three kinds of lies, and they are “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Twitter falls into the worst category, the last. Just because someone clicked on follow, doesn’t mean they are actually following you. Which means that…..

 

 

 

 

More often than not, they click on follow in the hopes to gain followers in turn.
But I mean, hey, can you blame them? It’s the classic you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours mentality. We hope that in helping someone else out that they will help us out. In a writer’s case, we hope that they will support us and our writing. Maybe they will click on a link to our blog so that they will offer feedback. I’ve had one or two people do that. One lady offered me praise. It was wonderful. It was akin to finding an oasis in a hot barren desert. But more often than not I am wandering alone through this Twitter desert, hoping to quench my thirst with feedback, constructive criticism, and praise, only to find I am, more often than not, alone.

Interacting with your followers and non-followers is often a one-way relationship.
Comment on their posts and 90 percent of the time these fellow struggling writers are likely to respond back. Yet the feelings are not reciprocal. Most are not likely to go onto your wall and interact with you in turn.  Then again, how can their feelings be reciprocal? They have so many followers that they can’t interact with everyone’s post or read everyone’s work. They just don’t have the time. Hence a one-way relationship is usually formed.

Try different types of posts in hopes of better interaction and feedback, good luck. 
For some reason that I can’t fathom some users have more success than others. You get Twitter users who have huge followings and others who have very low. It makes no difference if you post the absurd, some silly meme or gif, a link to a story you wrote,  a poll, or you talk about something relevant to life. Chances are unless you are one of the naturally charismatic Twitter users most people are going to ignore you.

In short, it becomes a high school popularity contest. It’s about the number of likes, the number of “true” followers who interact. Instead of working on short stories one is taking on the role of a salesperson, trying to promote his or her own work. To do so on Twitter one must be popular. And to be popular sometimes one must be…..

Stupid or willing to glorify in stupidity.
I’m serious. It enrages me to no end to see the number of people who post stupid crap and have a huge interactive group of followers because of it. Most people don’t appreciate art, beauty, human emotion, or philosophy. Society glorifies shallow thinking, mass-producing citizens as mindless drones. The most loved people on Twitter tend to be those who post angry conservative or liberal political rants 24/7, or amateur porn stars who sell their bodies as well as their souls. It’s the people who talk about sports, fashion, or celebrity gossip that hook a majority. People striving to create great literature, forget it!

To those who may protest, I am well aware that brilliant authors like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Robin Hobb, and so forth have very active Twitter accounts and that they are lauded by the Twitter community. But they already achieved fame, so they have a step above many of the struggling writers. (Note: I am a huge fan of all three authors, having their books on my shelves, so what I’ve said isn’t meant to be interpreted as being said discouragingly against them)

Of course, I previously mentioned that beginning writers can make it if they have a charisma to them that not all of us have.

 

The popular Twitter users. It’s like high school.

Is it worth it?
Twitter is often touted as a great platform to promote oneself. And while it’s true that there are lots of small-time (as well as large) editors and publishing firms who make their homes on Twitter, many of who (especially the smaller firms) will offer their services to you, the site still seems like a huge time-waster than anything else. These publishing firms and editors can be found on other forums or through a search engine instead of the user having to spend time on Twitter.

Also, all the time spent on Twitter, just in the hopes that one might gain a few more ‘serious’ followers could be used in writing and rewriting. I can’t enumerate the time I have wasted on social media trying to promote myself. Times that I could have been writing. Times I could have been developing characters and creating vast new worlds. Times I could have been crafting intriguing and exciting stories to settle my mind and calm my nerves.

Is Twitter really worth it?

Surely there are other ways to promote oneself. Why not go to a bookstore and a library, and ask permission to promote yourself? That way you get to meet people face to face and leave an impression that can’t be left online. Save up some money, if possible, and use it to travel and promote your book. That way you can at least see different parts of the country or the world while doing so.

In conclusion, SCREW TWITTER. I am thinking of getting rid of it. I’m tired of this high school popularity contest.

 

 

A Message in a Frame: Finding Meaning in Art

I have loved art for a long time. Plato called art a vile deception, declaring that it was a copy of another copy, being even further removed from the good, the most perfect of forms. However, what if art is a portal, helping artists show the world what the noumenal reality is? I confess that what I am stating is in the realms of metaphysics, but still fun to think about.

The point is, art inspires me. It always has. It takes my mind to new possibilities and transcends my mind to new worlds. It helps me with my writing, and I would say that certain artists have been just as much of an influence on me as certain writers.

So, what better way to show my love for art than starting my own posts on Medium about it. I have entitled my publication Reflections in the Portrait because we can all see ourselves, discovering our desires and human nature, in art.

My first post is about Impressionism. Give it a read and see what you think. And if you like it, I ask for two small favors that will help me immensely. First, follow me. That way you can see read my upcoming posts about art. Second, there is an icon button of a pair of hands clapping. Click on the “clap” icon as much as you wish. If you think my writing is worth one clap then it’s worth one clap, if two claps then it’s worth two claps, if it’s five then five, ten then ten, twenty or more then twenty or more. If you think my writing isn’t worth any claps that’s fine, too.

I invite you all to check out Reflections in the Portrait. Thank you.

View at Medium.com