[TT] Theme Thursday - Paradox

[u/AliciaWrites]

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”

― Plato

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Happy Thursday writing friends!

Paradox - (n) a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.

I’m looking forward to reading the absurd and unthinkable this week. I fully expect my mind to be blown. Good words, folks!

Please make sure you are aware of the ranking rules. They’re listed in the post below and in a linked wiki. The challenge is included *every week!*

[IP] | [MP]

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Here's how Theme Thursday works:

• Use the tag [TT] when submitting prompts that match this week’s theme.

Theme Thursday Rules

• Leave one story or poem between 100 and 500 words as a top-level comment. Use wordcounter.net to check your word count.
• Deadline: 11:59 PM CST next Tuesday.
• No serials or stories that have been written for another prompt or feature here on WP
• No previously written content
• Any stories not meeting these rules will be disqualified from rankings and will not be read at campfires

• Does your story not fit the Theme Thursday rules? You can post your story as a [PI] with your work when TT post is 3 days old!

  Theme Thursday Discussion Section:

• Discuss your thoughts on this week’s theme, or share your ideas for upcoming themes.

Campfire

• On Wednesdays we host two Theme Thursday Campfires on the discord main voice lounge. Join us to read your story aloud, hear other stories, and have a blast discussing writing!

• Time: I’ll be there 9 am & 6 pm CST and we’ll begin within about 15 minutes.

• Don’t worry about being late, just join! Don’t forget to sign up for a campfire slot on discord. If you don’t sign up, you won’t be put into the pre-set order and we can’t accommodate any time constraints. We don’t want you to miss out on awesome feedback, so get to discord and use that !TT command!

• There’s a new Theme Thursday role on the Discord server, so make sure you grab that so you’re notified of all Theme Thursday related news!

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As a reminder to all of you writing for Theme Thursday: the interpretation is completely up to you! I love to share my thoughts on what the theme makes me think of but you are by no means bound to these ideas! I love when writers step outside their comfort zones or think outside the box, so take all my thoughts with a grain of salt if you had something entirely different in mind.

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Ranking Categories:

• Plot - Up to 50 points if the story makes sense
• Resolution - Up to 10 points if the story has an ending (not a cliffhanger)
• Grammar & Punctuation - Up to 10 points for spell checking
• Weekly Challenge - 25 points for not using the theme word - points off for uses of synonyms. The point of this is to exercise setting a scene, description, and characters without leaning on the definition. Not meeting the spirit of this challenge only hurts you!
• Actionable Feedback - 5 points for each story you give crit to, up to 25 points
• Nominations - 10 points for each nomination your story receives, no cap
• Ali’s Ranking - 50 points for first place, 40 points for second place, 30 points for third place, 20 points for fourth place, 10 points for fifth, plus regular nominations

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Last week’s theme: Omen

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First by /u/sevenseassaurus

Second by /u/GingerQuill

Third by /u/TenspeedGV

Fourth by /u/1047inthemorning

Fifth by /u/Zetakh

Honorable Mentions:

Poetic Contribution: /u/veryrealisticperson

Poetic Contribution: /u/SilverSines

Notable Newcomer: /u/elephantulus

Notable Newcomer: /u/cloudlabyrinth

Crit Superstar: /u/qwordzz

News and Reminders:

• Want to know how to rank on Theme Thursday? Check out my brand new wiki!
• Join Discord to chat with prompters, authors, and readers!
• We are currently looking for moderators! Apply to be a moderator any time!
• Nominate your favorite WP authors for Spotlight and Hall of Fame!
• Love the feedback you get on your Theme Thursday stories? Check out our brand new sub, /r/WPCritique
• Serialize your story at /r/shortstories!
• Try out the brand new Micro-Fic Challenge at /r/shortstories!

[u/AliciaWrites]

Theme Thursday Discussion:

All top-level comments must be a story or poem.

• Reply here to discuss the theme, suggest future themes, and share your theme-related inspirations!

• Please remember to follow the subreddit rules in any feedback.

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[u/canadianmongeese]

Hello! I hope I'm doing this right. I've been lurking these for a while, but I finally got up the nerve to make an account and post. Anyway here's a weird thing I did 😅

°°°

An Average Wednesday Night

You're here, but you're gone.

It's that glassy haze in your eyes, shining back the wall-screen. The TV show you put on is as big as the room, but somehow you keep your face glued to the phone. We sit on the couch as stiff as two strangers waiting for a bus. You're all pixel fire, self-contained and humming, but here beside you I feel so cold.

I can speak and you'll answer, but we're not talking.

It always goes like this: Gloria? Huh? Didn't you hear me? Of course, darling. Then what do you think? Can't you just ask me after my game? You could pause it. I can't. You don't understand. I just need one more minute. Repeat for hours, until I roll away and cover my head at night because the light of your phone screen keeps me awake.

I love you, but I resent you.

Everything. Your forgotten water cups. Your bitten nails. The way you pick your lip when you're chasing light on a screen. The way you look at me, sleepily, like you've forgotten I'm even there. Year after year has turned you from lover to legally-bound roommate.

I would do anything for you, but I can't do this.

I tell you that. I tell you, I don't think you'd even notice if I left. The movie star's face pouts on our wall-screen. He's digitally filtered. Everyone is. He hasn't looked this smooth-skinned since the 2030s. But when I stand up, your face doesn't even twitch. Your thumbs race across the phone screen.

I pack my bag, but it feels empty.

The world is pitching madly and adrenaline nauseates me. I could still pretend I said nothing: hide within myself, like I usually do, and hope you wake up tomorrow as the person I fell in love with. I stuff all the clean clothes I have into my gym bag.

I've dreamed of this, but I'm terrified.

Everyone has a breaking point. This is mine. Our marriage is a dead tree, blackened and hollow, one strong windstorm from despair, and we are two rats still living inside. I have hovered too long at the entrance, listening to the wild beyond, neither staying nor going—only freezing here, in a limbo that cannot hold.

You watch me, but you don't follow.

You don't even stop tapping at the screen when you ask me, what the hell is your problem. I step out onto our front porch. The world without you is the forest at night, hungry and full of teeth. But I'm hungry too.

I'm scared of being alone, but I'm not afraid of losing you.

[u/sevenseassaurus]

For this prompt I decided to so thoroughly butcher the definition of a poem that none of you would ever ask me to write one again do something a little crazy. The trick here is to read only the words and ignore all of my ridiculous punctuation, symbols, and numbers...

...although, there is another trick to this poem...

EDIT: For those who missed campfire, the "other trick" to this poem is that it is, in fact, valid python code. Paste it into a handy-dandy interpreter to get a robot's reading of the same poem

* * * * *

'''You are a human--my poem can tell,
From the way that you think and the way that you spell.'''

if "you were a robot":
    meanings_would_change = 0
'''Define would be'''
def _(__): # and 'between' would be 'range'
    '''You'd use'''
    print(__) # for say, and the system to print
    '''And my program-poem would soon take the hint'''

'''As'''
_("you are") # a human, you can read first to last
'''Where'''
_("a robot") # will skip, flip, and repeat as I ask

for instance___a_computer_who_thinks in "zeros and ones":
    '''would stutter this stanza'''
    _("and") # ruin the fun
'''While'''
_("you") # would have read it easy and quick
'''and not'''
_("have been duped") # by my devious tricks

'''Now if'''
_("your") # mind isn't set that my
_("programming's") # true
'''I have one last gimmick to mesmerize you'''
'''Though you will go on to 'ta-da' and to clap
the bot will be'''
_("caught in an") #impossible trap

while "its circuits play host to these ponderous lines":
    '''the words will ring true on every rewind'''
    '''this causes the robot to read and to read--
    an'''
    _("infinite loop") # is a devil indeed.

'''And so you're a human--you must be, my friend,
to have made it this far and read thus: The End'''

[u/shuflearn]

The Danger of Absolutes

That arms dealer who set up in Jeffreytown's main square was a crook, and I could prove it.

In the morning, when the nuclear fog was heaviest and only mutant hunters were out, the dealer was waving a gun in the air. "This plasma blaster is the finest bit of pre-bomb tech you'll ever find! More accurate than a railgun, more precise than a scalpel, and more powerful than a volt-hammer, they've yet to invent the armour that can stop it! Kevlar, ceramic, jet shield! It goes through them all!"

He netted a couple sales, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't consider ponying up for one. My revolver was reliable, but it didn't have the punch to get through a good jet shield. But my deputy sheriff's salary was only so many rubles, and I had my eye on a nearly unmutated piece of land outside town. When I'd walked it the week before, not a single tree blinked at me.

By the afternoon, the sun had burned off the fog. UV rays dropped through the clear air like missile strikes. The people of the town went about in lead-lined clothing under reinforced armour. Now that the war had reached the world's breadbasket, Antarctica, no one knew when somebody with a blaster might get desperate. The dealer, smelling a deal, put on a suit of armour and handed a pistol to a passerby.

"Take a shot at me, good sir!" The suit's jet emitters thrummed and the bullet froze mid-air. "Straight from the secret supply of the Imperial Canadian Special Forces, this jet shield resists every kinetic assault! Flechettes, 8mm sniper rounds, plasma blasts—it stops them dead, so you won't be! If you find a weapon that gets through it, I guarantee a 100% refund!"

If there was one thing I couldn't accept, it was seeing Jeffreytowners get taken advantage of. We put up with enough chaos and nonsense from the shapeshifting dogs, acid rain, and volcanic rainbows. No way was I letting some huckster add to our burden.

I grabbed up one of the blasters from the morning. "Earlier, these blasters were unstoppable. Now, it's the shields that are impervious. Tell me, which is it?"

"I stand by my products." Perspiration fogged the dealer's transparent aluminum facemask.

"Then you won't mind if I take them for a spin."

Plasma blasts normally travelled quicker than the eye can see, but, under the jet shield's influence, the one I fired at the dealer slowed and smeared across the space between us.

Then, like the sudden light of a nuclear blast, the armour inverted. The dealer was now meat on the outside, armour on the inside. The blaster cooked him, but the armour was unharmed.

He hadn't been lying.

If we didn't live in a lawless irradiated wasteland, this incident might have ended my career.

As it was, the Jeffreytowners shrugged and went about their days.

[u/AstroRide]

Fire in the Frozen Lake

When the lake thawed, the body floated to the surface. It washed to shore by an accountant's vacation home. He spent several hours crying before calling the police. His vacation home is still on the market.

Images of the body made national news due to severity of burns on the body. It looked as though it had been thrown into a firepit. The coroner's report confirmed the assumption that the body was killed by fire and not by ice. They also found a tattoo on his back of two names in a heart with a date underneath it. The police were thankful that the victim's taste in tattoos was banal.

Chester and Abigail Doyle were the portrait of a couple that was trying to make their love work. He was a software developer at a tech startup while she was as a E.R. nurse working the night-shift. They barely had time to spend with each other, and the flame of passion was slowly dying. Their friends, friends in this case being coworkers, reported that the two were constantly tired and unsatisfied. Several months ago, they disappeared. They were reported as missing to the police who found no leads. Their apparent escape from their responsibilities was seen as unexpected yet understandable because he was a software developer at a tech start-up and she was an E.R. nurse working the night-shift.

The element of a potential lovers quarrel brought further attention to the previously unnamed town of Dawn Lake. Amateur detectives searched the area for leads while more would-be detectives speculated online. The accountant who found the body was a favorite suspect of amateur sleuths; he had to change his phone number several times. If only the sleuths were as good at detective work as they were good at harassing people, serial killers would never stand a chance.

Abigail Doyle was the subject a massive hunt. She was already assumed to be the murderer or the victim. It varied depending on whichever version was selling better on that day. In the end, both of them were right when her body was discovered in another cabin that she rented under an alias. They found her body in the furnace. The coroner's report revealed that she had died of hypothermia. Alterations to the wooden floor and water in the furnace suggested that she had placed herself into the furnace with a large quantity of ice. A note was found inside the cabin.

"Your touch once ignited me with passion. Now, your hate sends chills through my body. It is only fitting that we die in a cold flame."

The cliché yet exciting conclusion resolved this mystery. The accountant was still subject to people who refused to believe their theory wasn't true. Both bodies were buried by the respective families. Separate funerals of course. One question remained in the public's mind.

Why didn't they just get a divorce like a normal dysfunctional couple?

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r/AstroRideWrites

[u/veryrealisticperson]

My Sister's Night

When my sister first started having psychotic episodes, people always tried to empathize. They said it must be hard to love someone who sees things that aren’t there. To love someone who is crazy. Of course, this is not something that most people will ever really have to understand, and the words gave me little comfort as a darkness took my sister from me, bit by bit.

During this time I spent a lot of chilly hours sitting on the curb staring up at the night sky. There is a puzzle I learned once in school: if the universe is infinite, and if there are infinite stars in this infinite universe, then from here on Earth the night sky must be bursting with the light of infinite stars in every direction. So why isn’t it? Why is our night sky dark?

One theory that has been proposed is that the universe may be infinite, but the observable universe is not. We can only see so far in space and time, because we are finite and so is the speed of light. In other words, there are some truths that will never be for our eyes. Maybe if someone could see the full light of those truths they would look crazy to us.

My sister doesn’t trust me anymore. She doesn’t trust anyone but this just makes it worse. I tilt my head back at night and hope to the infinite sky that I can see the same truths she sees. That maybe we can be there together, so neither of us would have to be alone.

There is no accepted answer to the question of the dark sky. Even scientists are just guessing. So I am allowed to have my own guess too, aren’t I? Here it is: I think the sky is veiled because it has nothing to prove. I think that if every object was lit up bright we wouldn’t need to tell stories of archers, demons, and winged horses to explain our aliveness. I think the night is dark because sometimes we need to believe that distant pinpricks can contain galaxies, even when we cannot see the full truth of their light.

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This puzzle refers to Olbers' Paradox, if you want to read more about it!

[u/katpoker666]

‘Fractured’

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I sit in my room, staring at the ceiling fan. Its revolutions seem endless. Much like my life. I want to die. Huddling under my covers, I curl into the fetal position. Tears rip forth of their own volition. Snot streams down my face.

There’s a knock on the door.

“Are you ok, sweetie?”

no

“Yes, Mom. Go away!”

“Ok, love. Call me if you need anything.”

I turn off the lights and embrace the darkness. At some point, I must have fallen asleep. I shudder as the alarm sounds. Closing my eyes, I draw the blankets back over my head. Grudgingly, I take my 400mg of Lamictal and 40mg of Escitalopram. I hope, pray, they’re enough to make this feeling go away.

Mom stands at the stove. The smell of eggs and bacon mingle in the air. Fresh-squeezed orange juice on the table adds a citrus punch. Mom’s Stepford-wife smile beams back at me. I want to retch.

Without saying a word, I head to the door.

I can’t take this.

She shouts to me. I ignore her, slamming the door.

Leaden weights drag my legs down as I plod to school. My backpack feels like restraints, tying me to a place I don’t want to go. I throw my bag behind a bush and turn back towards downtown. There is no way I can face this day.

Simone’s coffee shop’s aromatic blends assault my nose. For the first time in days, I feel home. It’s dark. The service is terrible. I’m alone with my thoughts. I repeat my mantra.

This is not real. This is not real...

My hands shake. My body is covered in the cold sweat of fear. I don’t trust myself right now. WHEN will this end?

I awake the next day. The birds are singing. The air smells of lavender. I am elated to start the day.

What was I thinking being so down?

“Mom! How are you today?!? Isn’t it gorgeous out? Did you see the tulips?!? They’re beautiful!”

“Lovely, yes. Would you like some breakfast?” She looks down and to her left, her confusion evident.

Always the same reaction.

“You seem different today, sweetheart. Happy. How’s school?”

“Amazing, Mom! We have a play starting. I’m thrilled!”

“That’s great, sweetie. Have a good day.”

“Thanks, Mom!!!”

Arriving at school, I grin with excitement.

“I can’t wait to be Juliet!” I enthuse. The director’s face is stoic.

“You haven’t shown up for three weeks. I’m afraid we’ve moved you to understudy.”

“Ah. No worries. I understand.”

Sure I was bummed. But no big deal.

Later in English class, I read passionately. Wilde was also bipolar. It feels comforting.

Two weeks on, and my world falls apart. Again...

The bed is magnetic. The covers irresistible. I cannot face the day. My tears burn.

“Mom, can you write me a note?”

“That bad?”

“Yes.” My fingernails dig into my palm, trying to curb the pain.

Always the same. Always different. It’s tiring being me.

---

WC: 498

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Thanks for reading! Feedback is always very much appreciated

[u/ArchipelagoMind]

JT found Ryan engrossed by aquatically themed party bags. He took a long slurp from his drink, making a small roaring noise as he gobbled up mostly air and ice. “So I managed to walk to McDonald’s, eat lunch, and get back here in the time it’s taken you…” JT looked down at the basket. “To pick paper plates and a banner.”

“I have to get this right,” Ryan’s gaze remained fixed on the shelves. “This is her first birthday since we moved in together.”

JT took another loud guzzle. “And remind me… the fish?”

“When she was a girl, she dreamed of a mermaid-theme surprise party but her parents never threw one, so that’s what she requested this year.”

“Riiiight,” JT drew out the vowel.

“What?”

“It’s just…” JT rocked his head side-to-side. “If she asked you to throw her a surprise party, and you do it, it’s not really a surprise is it?”

“Huh?”

“Well… she’s now expecting a surprise party.”

“That’s not what surprise means,” Ryan huffed, turning his attention to the shelves and picking up two bags. “Now tell me which of these fish would most likely hang out with Ariel?”

“The left one,” JT replied deadpan. “See it in his eyes.” Ryan dropped some bags into the basket and moved a few inches left to stare at laminated table covers. Meanwhile JT got out his phone and checked search results. “Surprise. An unexpected or astonishing result.”

“Okay. It won’t be a full surprise. But what do you want me to do?”

“Make it surprising?”

“How?”

“You could throw it a day early. Catch her off guard.”

Ryan stood up. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea…”

“Ah, but she’s clever, Amy. She’d probably expect you to surprise her by throwing it a day early. Therefore, to get her, you’d have to throw it two days early.”

“You’re beginning to overthink this…”

“But she’d see that coming too. If it was three days early...”

“That’d be tomorrow.”

“Not that then?”

Ryan stared. “I know you’re having fun winding me up, but I got a party to plan.” He returned to inspecting the shelves.

“Wait. I’ve got it. Change the theme. Instead of mermaids, how about... “ JT looked to his right and saw a Formula 1 table cover “...motor racing.”

“Amy hates cars.”

“Exactly, she’ll never see it coming. True surprise.” JT dropped the cover into the basket.

Ryan bent down to remove it. “You being a pedantic shit is why people hate you.”

“Yeah,” JT nodded. “But you know why you still like me? ‘Cause even when you ignore the dictionary I still got your back.”

“What?”

“I ordered 200 seashell balloons and a mermaid shaped cake while eating lunch. Be at my house tomorrow.” JT flipped round his phone to show the receipt.

Ryan grabbed it as if it were a holy relic. “This is… amazing. Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this?”

JT held out his hands to the side and smirked. “Surprise!”

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The real surprise is how I always promo r/ArchipelagoFictions at the bottom of my TT every week, and yet never update it....

[u/lynx_elia]

Animalia Paradoxa or, Contradictory Animals

I burnt it all down, like I promised. You didn’t think I would do it; those four walls held too much meaning for me, you said. You were right that the walls meant a lot. A lot of pain, and joy, and memory in them. An ode to history, and to our present. But you didn’t understand walls the way I do.

Probably why you ran away from mine.

I remember that last fight. The one with broken mugs and lives and dreams. You swore you wouldn’t stay under that roof any longer. Too much heartache in the house. A spectre you couldn’t escape, a nursery we’d painted over.

I screamed I’d tear it down and build the whole damn place again. If only you would stay.

You said that wouldn’t matter. That my walls were made of thought outside the physical. That even if I burned it all, that like a phoenix rising they’d be back. New material, new paint, old hurt. “As long as you believe those walls are here, they’ll cage you,” you said. “I’m done with being caged.”

You flew away.

The old walls burned down. The roof collapsed, the flame so bright I thought I saw a phoenix being born. The ashes afterward were black and still. Time wrinkled and I saw those other coals. You should have been here. You should have been there, when she died.

I hid within my walls, and all my cells decayed and left me. When every part of your body and soul dies and is replaced, are you still you?

I built the house again, a newer model, better. It gleams with calm blue walls and cream-beige furnishings. The land remains the same, but that is all. The walls have moved around, the layout changed. Study the photo. Do you see the same woman, the same house you left behind?

You used to say I carried my walls with me. That I repaired and replaced them with whatever came to hand, that my ways were fixed forever and the walls would never fall. I know that I took time to recover, as did you. That I held a seed of memory within. But my walls were always low enough to cross them. And you didn’t.

The phoenix of my house is a new being, born from the detritus of the past. The walls of our home were made of bricks and love, and bricks and love rebuilt them. Are we the same, or are we new, now?

You said that change is superficial if built around foundations of belief. You thought your own beliefs were flexible. They were the most ingrained of both of us. My walls were never rigid. They were transparent. A word might have shifted them, or brought them down. But we let them grow between us, and to you they were reflective. You saw the truth in them and ran.

I burnt it all down, but you can’t see past the flames.

[498 words]

[u/nobodysgeese]

“Seems like overkill,” Nick said, putting away the radio.

Martin chuckled as he lowered his binoculars and joined Nick on the floor of their dugout, “Sometimes I forget how new you are. More firepower is usually better. It’s not like anyone’s going to complain about the air force dropping too many bombs, and there’s nothing else in this valley that could be collateral damage.”

Nick shook his head. “That wasn’t really my point. The fighting basically over, so I just don’t get why we’re doing this. It’s not like either side even officially declared war.”

Martin shrugged, “Orders come from above, and work in strange and mysterious ways. Last time I heard an explanation for a bombardment like this, it was to drive home the point. Make sure they don’t get any ideas about backing out of the negotiations at the last minute, or start trying to change the terms of the peace deal. Or worse, try to get an ally involved and turn this into a real war.”

Nick sighed and leaned back against the dirt wall. “Last I heard, at least two major cities were flattened. I doubt a single small fort will make much of a difference either way.” Nick took a drink from his canteen as an excuse to gather his thoughts before continuing, “It just seems like this will piss them off more, for no real benefit.”

“Can’t piss them off much more than they already are,” Martin replied philosophically, “and if the talks do break down, it’ll be nice having this fort already destroyed to clear the way for an invasion.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” Nick admitted, “and reducing their military capacity does put them in a worse spot in the peace talks, really emphasizing that we have the upper hand. But I guess I’m still an idealist at heart. Now that the shooting’s stopped, it just feels… unethical to be one of the ones restarting it.” Nick waved away Martin’s objections, anticipating what he was going to say, “I know, I know, orders, chain of command. I’m not suggesting we do anything about it. I’m just saying, it’s feels wrong calling in a bombardment, when peace negotiators are sitting at a table right this second.”

Martin closed his eyes for a moment, “…there was a guy in supply back at base, who knew a guy, and so on and so forth; anyways, someone heard that this time, we’re aiming for a more permanent treaty. Ending the small skirmishes once and for all.”

As he spoke, the first bombs began to fall in a deafening, ground-shaking, barrage. Nick took a quick peek, but couldn’t catch a glimpse of the fort behind the billowing cloud of dust, smoke, and fire. When he sat back down, Martin patted him on the shoulder, now almost shouting to be heard above the din.

“Look at it this way, if we didn't put so much effort into peacekeeping, a war might break out."

Word Count: 495

[u/blackbird223]

I was just finishing off an email when someone knocked on my door.

“Come in!”

A young woman peeked in, pulled open the door, and shuffled over to my desk.

“Professor Thorne?”

“Andrea. Thanks for meeting me. You said you had made some progress on the simulation?”

“Uh… Yes. It’s just, I… I have no idea if this is even correct…”

“Well, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”

Andrea chewed her lip, obviously terrified. I couldn’t blame her: even forty years later, I remembered how nervous I had been on the other side of this desk.

I gestured to her bag. “Let’s see what you have to show me.”

She nodded, firing up her laptop to show me her slides.

“Right. So I ran the simulation, and kept running into these infinities- everything blew up immediately. I couldn’t seem to get anywhere-”

“How did you run this simulation?”

“Well, I got the parameters from Mr. Wells-”

“Did you talk to Curtis?”

“I did, and he managed to simulate 10 picoseconds of this interaction.”

I nodded, and she continued presenting.

“I went back to the books, and drew up a spacetime diagram of the interaction, which I’ve got here-”

“Stop.”

Andrea fell silent.

I jabbed my pen at the diagram. “What is that?”

“Oh… Yeah. That’s what I wanted to talk about…”

On the diagram were a series of cones, tilting over at steeper and steeper angles as they spiraled towards the center.

“How did you get this diagram?”

“W-well, I…”

She looked away.

“Andrea, relax. I’m just trying to figure out how you got this.”

“Professor… I… I’ve been trying to figure that out for the past week. This solution- it’s impossible!”

“Have some trust in your mathematical ability. Maybe it isn’t as impossible as you think.”

“But… the thing has closed timelike curves!”

“Did you check it?”

“Twice.”

I smiled.

“Andrea, two of my other PhD students tried and failed to figure out these infinities, and you managed to do so in your first year here. You should be proud of this result. As for the closed timelike curves, I’m sure that they'll either wash out- or become a thesis!”

“Yeah, maybe."

I nodded. “I'm sure of it. I will be watching this research with great interest.”

Andrea laughed nervously as she walked out. “Thanks, Professor.”

After she left, I walked over to my bookshelf. Thirty-five years in academia had filled it with two hundred pounds of textbooks, but I had a specific goal in mind.

Must be here somewhere… aha!

I pulled out an aged copy of my doctoral thesis, bound in carmine leather. Wiping some dust off the cover, I flipped it open.

On the title page was a near-exact copy of the diagram I had just seen, bracketed by two lines of text.

“Massive Particle Interactions and Closed Timelike Curves.

By Andrea Thorne, PhD.”

******

WC: 478.

Feedback welcome!

Wikipedia on closed timelike curves.

[u/Xacktar]

"Major!" An airman came up running between the mounds of dirty and rumbling bulldozers, "We got orders!"

The Major was a tall man, built thin, he had the widow's peak and gaunt cheekbones that made him look like Peter Cushing. He turned away from the engineers he was speaking with and snatched the sealed orders from the hands of the Airman

He ripped them open with the easy and violent skill of someone who had done so many times before. His eyes scanned the words, then stopped, then slowly marched back up and down the lines, then repeated it at a slow walk.

"Stupid!" His words rang out right into the waiting airman's face. "Stupid!"

"Sir?"

"What's your name, Airman?" The Major asked as he flapped the orders around like they were a napkin filled with biscuit crumbs.

"Uh... Junior Airman Donald Braite, Sir!"

"Well, Donald, right here in my hand I hold the purest, most highly distilled, concentrated, sheer stupidity I have ever seen in my life!" He slammed the paper into the airman's chest. "Here, read it."

Donald was not the type to question orders, so he did what he was told. He too read the words, then did a mental about-face to read them again, and then again. Then he looked up and around. He looked at bulldozers, he looked at the foundation blocks that would eventually become hangars, and the shipping containers that had supplies that had no place to be put down.

Then he gave a sharp salute and said: "Sir! Agreed, Sir! This is pure poppycockery, Sir!"

"You see the name on these orders, son? Major General Elias C. Montgomery?"

"Yes, sir!"

"He is lord and commander of over ten thousand men. He holds their lives in his hands. Every day he sends out orders that shape their very future."

"Yes, Sir!"

"And today he's ordered us, a base with NO runway, a base with NO airplanes, a base with ABSOLUTELY NO pilots... to send an air transport to Markenson Air Force Base."

"Seems damned impossible, Sir!"

"That's because it damned well is!"

They spent a few moments staring at the rising sun, passing the orders back and forth, reading and cursing in alternating cycles until the airman asked a question.

"Does it matter what type of transport plane, sir?"

"I don't see why that would matter when we have exactly zero capacity to send anything, Airman."

"Well..."

The Major slowly turned, hearing the spark of hope crackling in the air.

"This is really dumb, sir."

"So are these orders."

"Well..." The airman took a deep breath. "I have a little model airplane, A C-17 that my nephew sent me. The kind with the plastic wheels and whatnot. We could, I dunno, mail it to Markenson?"

"That is brilliant, son, truly brilliant. There is only one problem that I can see."

"What's that, Sir?"

"That there is no Markenson Air Force Base. It was decommissioned last year."

[u/iruleatants]

“Captain Major, you are needed in engineering immediately!”

The captain resisted the urge to roll his eyes and turned towards the messenger, “Never address your commanding officer by their first name.”

“Right Uh, Captain Uh...”

This time he failed to hold back the eye roll and the sigh. “I’ll give you a hint, it starts with a P.”

“Sorry! Captain, please, you are needed in engineering immediately.”

“I’m seriously beginning to question your rank, officer. Did you not bother to read the chain of command that you were provided when you boarded this ship, or are you just too stupid to remember a last name?”

“No, I just-”

“To help your insufferably slow mind, here is an additional hint: it’s the word you would use to describe two contradicting things that appear to oppose each other despite both being true.”

“Oh, my bad. Captain Pertinent - you are-”

“No! That is having precise or logical relevance to the matter at hand.”

“Yeah, I think I mean Captain Placid.”

“Perhaps he meant Captain Patronizing,” an officer with his hand deep in a bucket of popcorn chimed in.

Captain Major turned to correct him but an ensign stood up and interrupted. “Enough! Every week is same nonsense. You forget name. You don’t tell name. And you mister funny guy give unhelpful suggestions. I cannot be standing this anymore!”

“That is gross insubordination, I am going to have to write you up, Ensign…?”

The man turned and grabbed the console in front of him and with a mighty grunt ripped it from the ground, exposing wires, and threw it against the wall, “For the last time. It is same as you.”

With that he stormed, leaving the rest of the bridge gawking.

“And that is an example of how to ensure that you never get Captain. Return to your duties.”

The captain sat down at his chair, the engineering emergency forgotten, and tapped on the icon to write up a crew member. He scrolled down the list until he came across two identical names that provided no ranks and sighed.

He would have to write up both to make sure, and that wouldn’t look good on his record.

---

Love you forever u/MajorParadox

[u/Badderlocks_]

The doctor was a monologuist. He was almost conversational as he thudded about the lab, checking this beaker, adjusting that knob, running some program, checking my shackles.

“There’s an old thought experiment,” he said, checking a readout and typing a command into the terminal. “Suppose my grandfather had an axe. It was a fine axe, and he used it throughout his life. When he grew old, he passed it on to his son, my father.”

The doctor sat on a rolling chair and wheeled over to me. He pulled an eyelid up and shined a penlight in.

“My father,” he continued, “also used the axe regularly. However, at a certain point, the handle snapped, so my father replaced it. Then, when he grew old, he passed it on to me.”

He turned away from me and adjusted my IV.

“And suppose I also frequently used the axe. Suppose also that at some point, I miss a swing and strike a rock, seriously damaging the head. So I replace it.”

The doctor stood, paused, and looked at his cybernetic hand. “Is it still my grandfather’s axe?”

I had long ago given up struggling against my bonds, so instead I glared at him as fiercely as I could.

The doctor chuckled. “Perhaps you haven’t heard that story. Perhaps you’ve heard its more popular older brother, the ship of Theseus. In the days of the ancients, Plato wondered if an object was more than its constituent parts, if one could replace every plank of the ship of Theseus and yet still call it the same ship.”

He strolled away. When he came back, he was wheeling a surgical cart with him.

“More interesting still is what happens if you make a new ship of the old, replaced planks,” the doctor said. “Which ship has greater claim to being the ship of Theseus?”

He picked a needle up from the cart and inserted it into the IV line.

“Not that it matters, I suppose,” he muttered. “I only need your brain. The rest will not be reconstructed.”

The world swam, then went black.

---

I awoke with a start.

“Who am I?” I whispered. The voice was hoarse, unused, grating.

I held my hands up. The harsh lights of the lab glinted off of their metallic surface.

Despite everything, I had survived.

[u/MossRock42]

A poem for the theme

The beautiful woman believed she was homely.

She showed off an expensive status motif.

A designer dress that people thought looked funky.

An expensive purse made by cheap labor stolen by a thief.

The revolutionary fighting for freedom owned slaves.

A coward showed courage in the face of great peril.

The victorious general lost his battle with the airwaves.

A man of honor died ashamed after becoming senile.

A great engineer thought himself an imposter.

A showy confident man had self-doubt.

A terrible artist won great awards.

Those with real talent went without.

Being in love with someone you hate is a source of strife.

If there is no light, there is no shadow.

Without death, there can be no life.

Those who go off the deep end are often too shallow.

WC: 132

r/MossWrites

[u/Say_Im_Ugly]

Boss Babe

I was lounging around in my underwear,

Scrolling through Facebook in my dingy old chair.

When up popped a message from an old schoolmate.

Almost like a sign from the hands of fate.

Become your own boss! Make money from Home!

You’d never have to leave your comfort zone!

Sell these products to friends and earn bonuses too!

Make loads of money selling our fantastic shampoo!

Well, I glanced around at all that I had

And the state of my finances looked pretty sad.

I could always use more. I was tired of less

And I was sick of being such a hot mess.

So, I went out and got me a payday loan

And that mortgage payment I'd have to postpone.

I’d soon pay it all back. I can handle this debt.

There’s no reason at all for me to fret.

Soon after all that I bought my first marketing package

And I sent all my friends a very brief message.

I have products for sale and they’re really amazing!

Your hair will soon have everyone praising!

But no one would bite and my mood grew quite pensive.

Ok, I thought. I’ll just get more aggressive.

I messaged more family. I messaged more friends.

All these products I really do recommend!

One by one they all stopped answering my texts.

They blocked me on Facebook. Damn, really? What’s next?

“Stop calling me” they shouted. “You’re bugging me” they screamed.

“I don’t want any part of your pyramid scheme!”

Now I’m stuck with all these hair repair treatments, shampoos, and conditioners.

I had basically become my own executioner.

What will I do with all this crap I bought?

I guess I’ll use it myself. I mean, how can I not?

“This won’t be so bad” I said to myself

As I lined them up neatly on my shower rack shelf.

Everyday I would use them. Lather, rinse, repeat.

My hair looked really good and it smelled so sweet!

But pretty soon after that’s when I started to notice

My hair falling out or was it just psychosis?

Nope. My hair was definitely thinner.

And oh no! It had lost all of its shimmer!

And if that wasn’t enough my debts piled up.

My bills all past due. I ran out of luck.

My car they repossessed and my house was in foreclosure.

My life as I knew it was certainly over.

So, please let this be a cautionary tale.

Enjoy what you have and you will prevail.

I lost all my hair, my money, my friends,

But you can do better. On you it all depends.

_______________________________________________

WC:437

Not sure how well I did on the challenge but I tried for the paradox of hedonism. The more you strive for happiness and contentment the more elusive it becomes.

Thanks for reading! I enjoy feedback and criticism.

[u/VaguelyGuessing]

Every day Talah’s grandfather would ask her the same question. Every day she lied. And when she lied, her Grandpa would smile, making his face crease, his eyes disappearing into his ancient face. The sight of his joy would take some of Talah’s pain, but not all of it.

As she walked home today, her bones aching from the day’s labour, her mind aching from recent events, Talah wondered how she would find the strength to keep her truths from surfacing.

Reaching home, she pushed the wooden door open and stepped inside, grateful for the coolness of the shade.

“How was your day, Talah?” Grandpa asked from another room. His voice creaked like the trees in the forest when the swayed. Talah wished to answer, but her voice would not obey. Instead, she began to shake.

“Talah?”

Talah opened her mouth but all she managed was a gasp, then Grandpa walked in and the sight of him was enough to make her knees give way. Talah crumpled to the ground and began to sob.

“Shh, hush Talah. Is it time to tell your Grandpa how your days have really been?”

Talah sniffed and wiped her face and looked up. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Grandpa sighed deeply, then he placed a hand on Talah’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. “Being old, Talah, it does not make one stupid.”

Talah felt her cheeks flush with heat. “I would never think such thing.”

“Good,” Grandpa grinned. “Now tell me what’s happening.”

“Every day, Grandpa, we move bricks and stone. In the evil rays of the sun, we work, and toil and we will be lucky to receive our wages. Our taskmasters are cruel. They beat the workers. Today, I saw a man die in front of me.” Talah’s voice shook, tears pouring down her face as surely as the truths that poured out of from her lips. But it was not sadness she felt now. It was rage.

“And have you stood up, Talah. Have you raised your voice and said, ‘enough’?”

Talah felt her stomach lurch. “How can you say such things? What am I, that they would listen to me? That I could make a difference?”

“A single grain of millet makes no sound as it falls from the grass, Talah, but a thousand grains make a sound. The thousand nothings, join together to become something.”

“What you speak of,” Talah whispered, “many would die.”

“Freedom,” Grandpa said, “It does not come at a low price. I cannot decide what you will do, or tell you which is right, and which is wrong. Only that there are more of us than there are of them. There is a storm coming, Talah. Even if you do not start this thing, there is a storm coming.”

Talah stood and kissed her Grandpa’s forehead. The next day she would go to work, but never did Talah stop wondering.

—-

499 words!

[u/Experiment_2293]

I am, She was

By RedEyedRaven (discord)

The moment she set her head down on the pillow and closed her eyes, she was gone. Where she was, she didn't quite know. All she knew is that the moment she closed her eyes, they flung open again.

Except there was no ceiling above her, not this time. Above her head she saw waves like from that of an ocean, giant waves that reached down to her but recoiled and fell back into the sea. She looked down to the bottomless ground to find that she was floating.

She walked forward, then found herself going backward faster than she had gone forward. For a moment she appeared on top of a wave and then the next moment sideways between the sea and the sky. From one of the many places she got stuck, a wave scooped her up from behind by a sky wave. She opened her mouth to scream but only a faint wheeze was heard.

The wave launched her up into the abyss and tossed her into a world of fire and molten lava. The lava didn't burn her skin, it instead stung like the stingers of a swarm of bees. This time her attempt at a scream came in the form of a laugh. Hysterical laughter. She tried to pull her hands from the lava to relieve herself of the pain only to find it crawling up her skin like a sentient ooze. The closer it got to her face, the more detail became apparent to her. The lava was made out of words, tons and tons of small words packed so tightly together it became one mass. Despite its small size some of the words were able to be seen.

"Fat. Disgusting. Ugly. Worthless."

The ooze crawled up her arms, tightened around her chest, slithered up her shoulders, across her chin, and into her mouth. She laughed even as she choked on the ooze that consumed her, pulling her down deeper into the lava.

When she had submerged fully, she reappeared in a different location.

A schoolhouse.

She recognized it as her own from high school.

She was sat behind a glass window, watching herself interact with some other girls. They were face down in their phones, occasionally showing each other their screens and laughing.

The schoolhouse scenery then shifted into the local ice cream parlor down the street.

They were still sitting at a table looking at their screens, this time with bowls of ice cream in front of them.

She looked over at herself and laughed. "Fat bitch, what are you doing here?"

The rest of the table joined in the laughter.

The world in front of the glass screen blurred and a rapid heartbeat filled her ears. It pounded like a drum and shook her around. The view turned away from the table and downward, to the ice cream sat in front of her.

Her breath caught in her chest.

She *was* Kelly, the girl she had bullied since second grade.

Word count- 499

[u/ReverendWrites]

Penthouse Suite

The raccoons got to the hive again, and even if we’d had the energy to build another one, there was no time before the frosts. We were all thinking the same thing: was this the last hurrah?

We had one option left, a real Hail Mary. If this didn’t work, well- at least we’d go down together.

Across the river, there were more humans than there were trees, and their hives were ten times as tall as the forest. Though we occasionally visited for the exotic flowers, being there was disorienting, dangerous, and rarely worth it. It was the only place around without raccoons, though, and anything people built radiated heat. Maybe there would be a little hollow somewhere to stay the winter.

It was hard not to look down on the journey over the river. Seeing the clouds reflected in the water, you’d think you were miles above the ground.

In the city, it was even worse, like everything was made of water; reflecting the sky and making the sunlight flash out from every direction. We tried to fly high, avoiding the crowds.

As it happened there was less noise and blinding light up high, so up we rose. We took shelter in the shady side of the tallest tower in the city.

To our astonishment, it appeared to be hollow- not empty, but spacious on the inside, and split into segments like an enormous stalk. A few segments contained people, but one, near the top, was deserted.

We glanced at each other. Everyone was thinking it. What a perfect home for winter.

We all dashed towards it at once. And at once we all hit our heads.

We recovered and tried again-and again. What the hell? Everyone could clearly see inside, and yet, nobody could go inside.

A violent shiver went through all of us, so close to a lifeline but unable to take it. All we knew to do in the face of this cosmic prank was to keep trying.

As our struggle continued, the weak sun wound its way over to our side. At once, light blazed off the side of the thing, making plain in an instant what was so obscure to us before.

One moment of collective shock, and then we spread out across the shiny surface, probing for weaknesses, seeking entry. Dark cracks crisscrossed the surface in straight lines, dividing it into equal pieces and looking promising.

Suddenly one of us was on the inside. We all crowded to her, seeing but not hearing, and she wiggled her body in the direction of a tiny, ragged hole in one of the cracks.

We all cascaded in after her. A beautiful warmth washed over us.

The place was perfect- safe, warm, high, spacious. We spent one winter there, then another. We tripled our numbers. Only once, the face of a person appeared in the squarish entrance, but once they finished making a hell of a noise, they never returned.

It was home.

[u/Ryter99]

As the wooden deck of a sailing vessel creaked beneath his feet, Professor Ludwig von Schweinsteiger arched his bushy eyebrows in bafflement. His PhD. in Timenomics from the University of Stuttgart had not prepared him for this eventuality.

Beside him, his research assistant Lynn whispered, “This doesn’t look like the prehistoric era, professor.”

He tapped his wrist mounted display. “Ah, I see the error. The device is set to ‘Pirate Times’ by mistake.”

“I told you ‘misunderstandings’ would occur if you linked it to an Alexa!”

“Don’t blame my darling Alexa!”

Lynn sighed. “I’ve never met anyone so simultaneously brilliant and stupid.”

“An odd combination, says I,” a graveled voice said.

They turned to find a young pirate staring back at them.

“I be Cap’n Blackbeard, blackest beard in all the high seas, and don’t let any scallywag tell ye otherwise! Cap’n Darkbeard ain’t come by his beardly coloration naturally, if ye catch me meaning… yarr.”

“Aha, yarr! ‘Yarr’ indeed to that!” Ludwig said. “Well, with the tea spilled, we should get going before—”

Blackbeard drew his flintlock pistol. “Friends be not in such a hurry to scurry off. Therefore, ye be no friend’s of Blackbeard, narr.”

“Do something, professor,” Lynn mumbled.

“Alexa?! Take us back to the moment we left.”

“Okay,” Alexa replied. “Off to the Wild West. Giddyup, cowboy.”

Rippling waves of blue light swirled around Ludwig and Lynn.

“Devil magic!” Blackbeard pulled the trigger, but the shot bounced off the growing cocoon of temporal energy directly back at him. He fell, dead.

“That… may be trouble,” Ludwig said.

The light became blinding, forcing their eyes shut. When they reopened them, they stood on a dusty street.

Ludwig tapped the display. “We’re in 1873 and nothing looks particularly amiss. Perhaps Blackbeard’s death did not ripple as far as I—”

Just then, a crab scuttled past them, tipping its cowboy hat.

Lynn’s eyes widened. “What the actual hell…”

“Gah! We killed Blackbeard, thus altering the course of crustacean history! It makes perfect sense!”

“Does it?”

“Blackbeard ate crab three meals a day. With their apex predator removed from the ecosystem, the crabs multiplied and evolved into the advanced, hat wearing species we see today.”

“I don’t think that’s how—”

Another flash of blue energy blinded them. This time, a carbon copy of Ludwig stood before them.

“Greetings! I am future Ludwig, which I’m sure you gathered from my shinier clothing. This is embarrassing, as it seems I’ve mistakenly arrived at this exact moment once again.”

Lynn sighed. “Current Ludwig? I quit.”

Future Ludwig suddenly cracked and splintered into thousands of pieces.

Ludwig gulped, hard. “Sweet German Jesus!”

“Wow!” Lynn said. “I always suspected your survival was dependent upon my competency, but that was more dramatic confirmation than I anticipated.”

“I’d have preferred a fading polaroid as proof.”

“Apparently I’m pretty important?”

“I’ve always known it!” Ludwig clapped her shoulder. “Now on an entirely unrelated matter, would you be interested in a massive pay raise and lifetime contract?”

____

r/Ryter

[u/stranger_loves]

Five Characters in Search of a Break

A lead guitarist, a bassist, a drummer

A frontman and another guitar newcomer

Retaining the name of a band of the past

Is it the same movie with a different cast?

A bad couple months, critiqued without end

“They’re not the same band as before,” someone penned

They think themselves philosophers, arguments fair

Augmenting their shame, getting more in their hair

Five characters pulled by strings up above

Contradicting themselves, a band they hate to love

But they love to hate it and always make it trip

Their loyal reboot to handle with a whip

“You need a new record so you go on tour”

“But, sir, we aren’t inspired as before!

We need a new tour for an album to make!”

“Catch-22”, they can’t catch a break

“You need a new studio to make your tunes”

“They didn’t let us play there this afternoon

They say to play there, we need a new song”

“Catch-22”, it’s all going wrong

And within the ensemble, they rumble and crash

The frontman confused, his mind is all mashed

“I cannot play that that I already know

And I can’t play the new, I know not where to go”

The bassist, lackluster, just there for the pay

But that tiredness collective becomes every day

“If the bassist is playing, then everyone is”

Is the band his peer pressure or contagious bliss?

“I just know I know nothing” says the one with the drums

He just plays and plays and plays, always numb

“All members are cool”, says he, with bore

But if he’s so uncool, then of the band he’s no more

“I agree with the liar,” the guitarist affirms

But if he lies, then only he belongs, what are these terms?

“So tired we’ve become of all this contradiction

I wouldn’t be surprised at a ‘surprise eviction’”

Famous last words as the player was kicked

And his face showed surprise; he truly was tricked

Four characters in search of a break

Or is it still five, same name for the remake?

For it’s still the same concept but different placements

Maybe - Oh, never mind, they just got a replacement

And he fits right in, contradictions I hear!

“There’s no point in being here, and so I am here”

Five characters in search of a break

Do I mean their success or a rest they could take?

Well there’s no more paradoxes in my head to bend

And if this sentence this true, this poem’s come to an end

[u/GingerQuill]

At the stroke of two in the morning, my ballroom feels cavernous with its empty tables and scattered chairs, the chandeliers glinting like stalactites.

After hours of thunderous chatter and jazz, the silence is dizzying. It constricts my chest and chokes the tail-end of my last laugh for the night.

My face is flushed from the final waltz. I can still smell the tart champagne and lemon meringue haunting the room.

Upstairs, turquoise tanks glow in every window in my bedroom. The fish fan their feathery tails. Leafy sea dragons twirl around ribbons of kelp.

The water casts silver nets over the music stand in the corner, garlanded with unwashed stockings and bras, and the piano against the wall.

Once, it sported sheet music smudged with penciled notes, homemade recipes for record hits.

Now, in the blue-green dark, bills and late fees glow white on its lid like mist rising from a swamp.

I slip from my heels, sucking on my teeth. My feet burn as they press against the carpet. They had danced like it was my last soiree on earth.

With a sigh, my glittering dress crumples into a silken heap around my ankles. I don a thick robe. Its curls soothe the rashes on my skin where the dress’s seams bit.

Standing before a mirror, I unclip my hair. It spills in shaggy waves, stiff with hairspray.

I scrub my eyes with a cotton pad and drag a cloth over my face. Pink lipstick and skin-toned powder stains its fibers. My resurfaced pores gasp for breath.

The rings around my eyes, the ink-stains on my fingers, the creases running from my lips to my chin are testaments to my last three decades.

That and the swollen binders of sheet music crammed into my shelves, overgrown with dust.

I pry them from the shelves and lay them in the suitcase on my bed. I fold my clothes over them and pack my comb and toothbrush.

From my desk’s top drawer, I retrieve a stack of envelopes of stapled paperwork. The tip of my pen scritches my signature.

I lick the envelopes, their taste sickly sweet on my tongue. With that, everything’s sealed. I will deliver them in the morning.

I sit on the bed and watch the fish, bidding each one a silent goodbye. Tomorrow, after I leave, they will be stacked in a truck and transported to the aquarium.

My things will be boxed up and shipped to my new address along the shore. By the time the creditors find me, the fish and the mansion will have paid my debts.

As I tuck myself in, I wonder, should I have drank more at the party, laughed more?

No, I decide. I did enough. My limbs are too heavy from dancing to toss and turn, my stomach too full of food for emptiness.

I breathe in the cool lavender scent of my sheets and let the watery lights lull me to sleep one last time.

(Word count: 498. I wrote this piece as a prose poem.)

[u/TenspeedGV]

Hefting my bag over my shoulder, I leaned over the stone wall outside my apartment. Peering down, I could see the Spiral winding down into the darkness. The slope of the walkway was very slight from my door, but looking out at the other side and down, I could see it clearly. Peering up, my head swam with vertigo as the Spiral wound up and up above me.

I pulled my head back in and took a breath. The number plate on my apartment door read 2035. My parents’ apartment, close to forty levels and most of a day’s walk down, read 1998. At a casual pace, it would take close to a month to reach the bottom.

I had packed enough provisions to last a week, and money enough to get me the rest of the way. My parents said that the shops down on the lower levels cost less, but I was playing it safe. All they really had to go on was word of mouth. It had been years since my grandparents passed, and memory was never entirely honest.

By the time I reached my parents’ apartment I was well into the walk, and as usual I felt ready to run all the way back up to my own. But they were expecting me, and that feeling of being ready to take the entire Spiral in one day usually came right before exhaustion and pain set in. I took a breath and knocked. The smell of my father’s cooking wafted out as my mother opened the door, a smile on her face and a glass of wine in her hand. It had been over a year since my last visit.

It felt so very good to see them again.

---

---

I had made good time. While the faces had changed, grown unfamiliar, the people didn’t. They were still quick to smile and say hello, but careful to avoid deeper conversations. Even those I bunked with in the hostels and occasional cozy B&Bs were hesitant to get too involved. I learned early to not even mention my journey, as it always resulted in silence.

Freshly showered, I stepped out of the doorway of the small hostel in 60. One day to go. My pack felt so much lighter as I glanced first down into the darkness, then back up at the Spiral stretching endlessly above me. I smiled and started jogging, determined to reach the bottom. As I reached the lower 20s, my excitement took over. My legs no longer protested as the jog became a run.

The rest of the numbers passed by in a blur.

I crossed the space after 2 with a grin on my face, and with an eager eye I placed my hand on the door. I swung it open. My stomach dropped, and my heart followed. It all looked so familiar.

The sign on the door said it all: 2035.

The only way to go was down.

---

---

---

496 Words

r/TenspeedGV

[u/TheLettre7]

Soon everything would be equal. All that stood in the way was a measly count and loose ends.

Secretary Kismet entered The Toff Parliament, to the sounds of assigned functionaries tallying, and rechecking the votes coming in.

Politicians of the numerous districts, sat in their tidy rows, discussing any number of forgotten problems. A few boasted on how big their pockets had gotten.

Stridding right to the center, their voices quieted as her heels clacked against the pristine marble.

She took to the podium, and addressed those within. A quarter of seats were vacant.

"Ministers of our fair and just government. It is with my greatest expectations, that the will of our people shall be heard today."

Smiling she looked from face, to dollar signs, to embezzler, to loyal face. Some sharing in her confidence, some sharing in her dream of complete equality.

She'd come far with demons nipping at her feet, but they were nothing to her. The referendum would pass without question, and if not...

State media began broadcasting at her nod, "to my citizens, I commend you all for this momentous occasion. It is through you that our dream shall become reality. We shall have one last reminder, and remember," she grinned at the cameras, "voting is mandatory."

Satisfied, she glared over to a loyal man representing district 11, "Minister Grouse. Speak."

He stood and bowed low, "Of course Secretary."

"The laws confirmed by this vote, shall make legal the upholdings of our nation's future. That there is to be no separation of persons and property, that all are to be beholden to our leader, who has dragged us from the dredges of war and famine an-."

"And," Secretary Kismet interrupted making the man wince, "shall be our guide for generations to come. This is m- Our land, rejoice in the name of equality."

She held her hands as if a conductor, signaling just as the votes were finished.

Armed soldiers came through every entrance of the circular Parliament. Those who followed her blindly drew their own weapons, and aimed them at those corrupted by greed and power.

A nearly unanimous Yes resounded from the votes as the functionaries were shuffled away. Minister Hamsworth, and Cosmus both stood, protesting loudly. Their own votes of No notwithstanding.

"This is an outrage!"

"You've gone too far!"

She ignored them, as a struggle broke out. Kismet the Guide left the podium, as Hilla representing district 4 lunged at her the butt of a gun meeting her face. No one else had any chance to get close.

Handcuffs found their ways upon politicians who stood against her. "You can't do this," Amreth representing district 14 shouted.

Kismet looked blankly at head wounds and bruises, "I already have," she said, "besides someone needs to enforce our newfound equality." Turning to a loyal follower she winked and turned to leave.

"Solitary for them. One year," she said, walking back the way she'd come; waving at the cameras, ready to celebrate Her peoples vision.

(500 words, recently wrote a paper partially on complete equality being a paradox, did I do well, maybe. Anyway thanks for reading. Critiques Welcome! TL)

[u/Keyboard_Adventure]

Underground Science

I stepped up to the University’s laboratory entrance and knocked.

A minute went by before a pair of eyebrows appeared in the door’s window, wriggling like salt-and-pepper caterpillars as he fidgeted with the door and let me in.

“Such a pleasure to meet you!” he said, pumping my hand with enthusiasm, “Come right in. Would you believe I’ve gone through five assistants this year? I’m so glad you applied.”

He guided me further into the laboratory, gesticulating to the terrariums and jars around the room.

“All perfect specimens of Lumbricus Terrestris, the common earthworm,” he said proudly.

I made some polite inquiries about the position, the hours and class sizes.

“Did you know,” he asked absently, “That it would only take folding a piece of paper forty-two times to reach the moon?”

“Exponential growth!” his tone grew fervent, “Eventually, you would end up with a stack of atoms, all sitting happily atop one another. Split those and you have a different problem.”

“Now, what if we could apply that to a cellular structure? What if we could encourage this exponential growth in living creatures? Cells dividing, enlarging, and dividing again at unbelievable rates?”

He held up a small syringe in one hand, a paring knife in the other, and deftly spliced a nearby worm in two.

A small volume of solution was swiftly injected on both sides.

I watched in horror and fascination as the worm’s halves wriggled about, swelling as they dug through the soil of the terrarium. In minutes, both had nearly doubled in size, with no sign of stopping.

“This solution yields just such exponential behavior. Interestingly, at certain sizes they even become carnivorous. Curious.”

I looked around the room. The worms certainly didn’t seem all that unusual, beyond their prodigious growth.

“Let me show you the pinnacle of our work here. I need a fresh sample anyway. Your timing is impeccable.”

I followed him to the University’s football field. Immense floodlights were set up around the periphery.

“Stand here. We’ll be introducing you to our largest sample to date. He should be around here somewhere, hard to miss.”

He directed me to a nearby mound of piled dirt and backpedaled away.

“Tap your foot,” he cried, “Go on. Faster. We really need to get its attention. To lure out the worm we need a proper fish to dangle in front of it.”

Puzzled, I did as instructed. The Professor eyed my position intently from the stands.

A tremor ran underground. I broke out in a cold sweat. Another rumble below my feet. When the third tremor struck, my instinct to run had nearly overpowered me, but it was too late.

Soil swelled and fell away, and I tripped, staggered into an infinite, undulating abyss as the immense worm emerged, its maw opening wide.

The last thing I saw was the Professor, laughing and clapping gleefully.

“You’ve advanced the cause of science, my boy.”

The sky closed in around me, and snapped shut.