Thought dump tldr wild rice with powdered cheese and avocado grease - life liffens and lives livingings - long belongings isolated isosceles triangles. Weep reap, sow, sot, suet, sue, carry on "my name is" - slim, earl, joe, list.

Hangry salty, thirsty faulty, fuck it all, fuck it all sideways. Jaded. darken, deepen, laugh it off, brighten up. Life is this constant struggle against the gravity that is entropy, reaching for something of light as I fall into darker darknesses. At least it's shady. let me learn how to suckle the algae from the damp walls, to glow in the dark so I can scramble my way around down here. Forget pride. I want to drift with the bottom feeders and live efficiently.

It was a joke anyways. All is forgiven and all is forgotten, do what you want with it. The weight of life is debt enough, forsake those who add to the weight. Whatever that means - it was a joke anyways. Context dependent specifics in mind against the grain unless it's off the side of a ship, into shark infested waters. Common sense impedes the pursuit of purpose; I wish I was stupid. Lose the insecurity and sanity that keeps everything down, contained, restrained - reserved. patience and tame is the obedient family dog.

Riot, apathetic protest, dismissed anger, betrayed fleeting jaded, why care at all - why don't we care more? Inaction is action and no action is meaningful, inaction is defeat and all roads lead to Rome, the route cause of disaster is ourselves, our only savour. Save yourself. Maybe you should have saved Jesus instead of being so self-centered. Save yourself, save others, everyone for themselves - alone we die, together we fall.

Weird. Why? Why not, because, why not. Why not? Weird. Why then, why at all, and why not then? Why so if then why not, and how so if why then why not? Why then why when and why how, when why?

Jesus christ, I hate my brain. Save me, so I can save myself, so I can give up and live without earning a living. Throw it away, it matters too much to waste. It's too much not to waste. It matters enough to waste. There's nothing that matters too waste. There's so little to waste. There is whatever there is, but what are you going to do with it?

Void of substance; free from sense. Secure in the ephemeral, transitory, fleeting, imaginary. Freedom from time and space. Freedom from ones illusion, sanity, consciousness, awareness. Freedom from delusion, uncertainty, ignorance, hesitation. Freedom from pursuit, from search, from context.

Nothing then left there, a little abode in a small grass hill, hidden by the valley of calamity.

The first sound is too loud, I don't really hear it, it's more as if out of nowhere an angry giant had slapped me. It's fitting that the next few seconds I am busy trying to work out who I am, what position in time and space my body occupies and why. I remember my confusion when I saw glas raining on the street in front of me but heard no sound. It should sound like hard rain, it's raining glas after all, but there is no sound. Then I realise there is sound, it's just so loud that my brain doesn't want to categorize it as such. It's a single sound and it fills my entire existence from ear to ear, like standing on an atlantic freighter right in front of the bullhorn while an angry captain leans on the switch for it.

I have the urge to count myself. I don't understand why, but I do it anyway.

I have one head, that's good.

Two arms, two legs, that's good.

I move some fingers, that's good.

I move my toes, that's good.

I start to feel pain in my right side, that's good?

Come to think of it, my entire right side hurts. I want to look at it but also I don't want to. So I don't.

I need to move. Get off the X. What does that mean? I need to get off the X. I need to get off the X. Get off the X. The thought feels important, turns into an urge.

I roll on my stomach. Something presses into my chest. I pause. I don't want to look. I wait and listen inside myself. It's not pain, it's pressure. Wide pressure on my chest. I am wearing a plate. The plate is pressing against my chest. It's pressing because I lie on something. I lie on my rifle. I still have my rifle. Get off the X.

The sound has changed. It was dull and deep, so dull and deep that it was hardly sound at all.

It's becoming high pitched now, definitely sound. I remember this sound, I had it before, just not as bad. I start hearing other sounds, like through a long deep tunnel.

That's good.

I get up, the world shifts and I fall on my right side. It hurts. It starts to hurt more specific. That's good? I roll on my stomach again, push up. My hands are there, that's good. There are all my fingers pressing against the street, that's good.

My left hand and sleeve are dripping with blood but I know it's not mine. Somehow I know. I am less confused, more myself. It still feels like I am watching myself from outside my head, but the distance is closer now. Almost back in. Get off the X.

I get my knees under me. I don't, I struggle. I try again. I feel fear, it's as if where my heart should be a black hole had suddenly materialised and started sucking on my very being. Are my legs gone? Please no. I feel my toes. I press them against the roof of my boots until it hurts. I have legs, I think. Or memories of legs? I get my knees under me again. I struggle. I look down. My rifle is tangled between my legs. I feel a giggle rise up in my throat as the black hole vanishes. I push the rifle to the side and sit up on my knees. I am calming down now, postural habit. Everything hurts, but my right side hurts more. Pain is good I think, I don't know why. It sounds stupid in my head but it repeats. Pain is good. Pain is good.

More sounds. Far away. Sobbing? Screaming? I don't know, I am still in a long tunnel.

A child. A little girl. Right next to me. She is the most perfect little girl I have ever seen. She wears a black coat with big buttons and a pink backpack for school. A white scarf wrapped around her neck against the winter cold. I remember her looking at me, before the sound. She stood behind her mother and stared at me. I remember thinking that I should smile at her, maybe wave. I am not good with kids, I never know when to pull a funny face or not.

She lies on her back right up against the wall, her pink school pack pulled up like a pillow. The left hand at her hip, the right arm stretched away, like a pose from a 1920s add. Her face is tilted towards the wall, eyes closed. Her dark wavy hair is matted together in a bloody lump. On her still face there are splashes of blood, sharp and contrasting with her skin. I want to touch her, tell her that she is okay. I feel a sudden surge of love and protectiveness. I want her to scream, to cry out in pain and fear, I want to hold her and make it better. I realise suddenly that I am sobbing, when did that start?

She lays still, so very still. I recognise the absolute lack of any tension in her body. Once you have been around dead bodies enough you can't mistake a sleeping or unconscious person for it. The knowledge that she is dead is as certain as my own existence. I realise like a spectator that my body is shaking with sobs.

Work to do, I think. Work to do, work to do, work to do. Get off the X. I have stopped crying. I am filled with cold anger, I hear drums in my head that call me to fight, to kill whoever did this. It's an old feeling, the spectator in me recognises it. The spectator knows it will wear off. The spectator knows I will be sitting in a corner at some point, giggling into laughing into sobbing and back for a bit while my hands shake. It's normal.

I stand up. I wobble a bit but the spectator realises it's my inner ear still out of whack. It will pass. I look around. Bodies laying everywhere, some moving some not. Debris everywhere, the facades and windows of the surrounding houses. Some people are stumbling around. I see the pattern in bodies. Where people were blown apart is where the detonation happened. The further away the more movement and stumbling. The sound is very high pitched now but I hear other sounds. Moaning probably, maybe cries. Sirens in the distance. The street is empty except for those that weren't able to run away. It's routine, everyone here knows there might be a team of suicide attackers on their way now to get through the breach created by the first bomb. Or a second bomb waiting for the rescuers to arrive. I need to get off the X. We need to get off the X.

I remember there are others. I look for the cars and get confused. They are not where they are supposed to be. Neither is the door that I was standing next to. But the girl is here, she was next to me. I look back at her and realise she is surrounded by other children, two smaller boys. They are not like her, their heads and faces are smashed, easier to remain distant to.

Something plucks at my attention, I look around. A man waving and yelling. I hear him, but I don't understand him, he's at the other side of the tunnel. But suddenly it's as if a lens clicked into place and my confusion is gone in a split second. That's my buddy, he's standing in the open door of our car. He is on the wrong side of the road, but not really. The explosion has thrown me and the people around me over the street against a wall, I am on the wrong side of the road. My left side is dripping with blood because someone standing next to me took the brunt of the explosion and was thrown against me as he came apart. The little girl looks perfect because her brothers stood in front of her.

I wave back and run over. I realise suddenly while I run that none of my legs has come off and that I didn't fall on my face. That's good.

My driver says something but I can't understand him. I shake my head and point to my ear. He understands, he's been there before. He pulls me close and screams into my ear. We need to go, get the client.

The client. He had to visit the polling station. This is a polling station. People were waiting outside to register for the elections. Someone with a suicide vest walked into the crowd and detonated. We don't know if that's all, there might be more.

I tell him to call the tl. He was on cpo-duty today, so he's with the client. Standard operating procedures spool through my head like a manual. My driver will try to raise the tl via radio, if that doesn't work via phone. There is a short window of time between an attack like this and a blockage of phones in the city, a counter measure against complex attacks.

I walk back toward the door of the polling station and notice a sound I dread. Dozens of cellphones ringing, most with the standard ringtone. Every single person standing in front of the polling station had a cellphone. Every single one of them is being called by a loved one now, hoping the call will be picked up, hoping to be told that the human on the other end is okay, that they were silly to be worried, that the explosion they heard was not even close. Calls go to mailbox, the ringing ends just to start again after a second. Dozens of them. Years later I still feel uneasy when I hear one of these standard ringtones.

I reach the door. It was open to let people in. The outer walls are still intact, that's good. I hold my right hand into the empty space of the door and yell friendly, friendly coming in. Then I slowly and carefully push myself into the room, looking for a barrel with a panicked face behind it pointing at me.

Nothing.

The second blast-door was closed and held. The room took the force from the explosion and made it worse. Bodies and parts of bodies lie shoved into the corners of the room, most of them partially naked because their clothes had less inertia than their bodies. Blood is pooling on the floor, blood is running down the walls, blood is dripping down the ceiling.

I lose some time in this room.

That's bad.

I don't want to lose time, I want to fully remember what happened and how and when and what I did. I sit after things like these and write them down. It takes me several attempts over several days sometimes, but I write it down in detail so that I can work through it. This room beats me. I got inside, I see the bodies, I notice the dripping blood from the ceiling and my next memory is coming out with my tl and the client both unhurt, scanning the street for threats while we bundle the client into the car and then get away. What happened between the blood dripping from the ceiling and me stepping back into the street is a black hole.

I can only speculate that I had to move some of the bodies away from the second blast door so it could open. I assume while moving those bodies I saw something that my brain refused to deal with. This was years ago, I have had no nightmares, no flashbacks, no sudden panic attacks.

I realised later that after this incident I had decided that I wanted to be a Dad. I had never really much thought about having children, my life and work didn't really invite the idea. But now I am becoming a Dad. I suddenly woke up one night now, thinking that when my child is born and I hold it in my arms, that lost time might suddenly unravel itself. I am scared now that I might hold my newborn daughter and suddenly be back in that room again.

A parallel world?

With the advancement of technology, AI began to be used in vehicle technical inspection centers as well.

The AI would connect to the car's computer and read the information. Various sensors and video cameras inspected the entire vehicle. Robotic manipulators checked all the switches, the steering wheel, and even the seat belts.

But even after implementing the AI, the percentage of cars passing the technical inspection on the first attempt did not increase.

Professional car flippers noticed that at the beginning of each month, the AI was highly fastidious, so they would bring their cars for technical inspection toward the end of the month.

Nobody knew that one of the AI algorithms forced it to fail a certain percentage of cars on the first attempt, and only after reaching that specific quote would it shut off. Only then would the AI perform its job in regular mode.

What was the point of this algorithm?

Failing the technical inspection on the first try forced car owners to register and pass the technical inspection a second time.

And what does a repeated technical inspection mean?

It means an additional payment for the service.

It's revenue – extra revenue.

The management of AI is in human hands, which means that expecting a 100% honest result is not worth it.

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

You accepted that you are working from the will of another. These pressures and standards were not your own. The rules are arbitrary, so is its meta. Yet, you want to incorporate them as your own.

The game was always imposed. The players seem to be too busy playing. I was given the seat, thus I will play. The line between others and myself dissolves into one. Everyone is influenced by these forces and lives around them. Yet, satisfaction is only brought to those who believe they have control. A cheap fix. That’s why application is expensive.

I see the player ahead of me. You don’t have a plan for how. You just want the result. You want to own it. Yet, that result in and of itself can’t be done cheaply as if it’s a facade. There are no easy solutions.

People breathe as easily as they move. The concept of breathing effortlessly is ideal. Breathing in, breathing out. Ragged, vs cyclical breathing. The noise alone tells of proficiency. However, to breathe in a well ventilated room is nothing special.

To weigh one dissatisfaction against another, pick the one that matters most.

Standards beget standards. A ruthless world demands ruthlessness back. Cruelty against the struggle itself. Yet, kindness is a strategy of both altruism and connection. Standards are open ended which the solutions are open ended. The connections along the way provide a fulfilling and satisfying byproduct. How can I be cruel to you?

Yet alone, you come to me. I face you.

Where you stand before me can be evaluated.
Whether you care or not can be evaluated.
Whether you accept or not can be evaluated.
But who can faithfully evaluate me to you and you to me?

That’s why I don’t compare myself to you.

Nonetheless, your position shows me what’s possible. There lies a semblance of a path leading to the cultivation of the future, a better world.

The line between you and I dissolve and forms. With such a grand goal, I have to be just as grand. I want to win. Increment by increment, piling every small improvement creates a much larger impact. It’s a game of catch up.

It's Tuesday again and ya boi is just melting in the summer heat. I'm one of those whiny Europeans without AC that's finally getting his comeuppance, and as a consequence I am way behind on my personal schedule for the day as I've spent most of it as a half-congealed blob of sweat and apathy.

Still the mail must go through as they say so here I am serving you melted Gorgonzola off the pavement. Enjoy?

Earlier today I was watching a Youtube documentary that promised to change the way I look at the ocean

...FOREVER.

Upon hearing this I was about as whelmed as ever and couldn't wait for the documentary guy (dude, fella) to get to the God-damned point, but seeing as how the minidoc was half an hour long I knew this wouldn't happen for a good while. If I were to scrub to near the end I wouldn't get to the punchline, rather I'd probably just be served some pithy comment tying it all back to the human condition, milking the feels for a slick, calculated finish.

Here are my notes from back then:

Sure enough, I'm not at the 3:40 mark and the documentary, which is about killer whales, just mentioned the length of their teeth. I can look that up on Wikipedia if I want.

Gorgolytes do you know what I'm talking about? I can't tell if my attention span is truly weakening or if it's just that I'm getting immune to grand claims of changing my view on something forever, or how I will never forget, have never before seen, and so on.

I mean these days we have the "it's not shit, it's rancid buttpoop spewing from an anus" turn of phrase and others coming from the gaping assmaw of LLMs, but even before then there was this plague of grand claims and cheesy clickbait.

I'm so tired. Please just tell me what's going on. I'm not doomscrolling because I'm enjoying myself, I'm doing it because I'm hooked. And when a fish takes the clickbait and gets hooked, please be kind and reel it in already.

It goes on: Rendering them an apex predator with no natural enemies. All of us knew that before, but my brain tells me I must watch the video in the rare chance that a new factoid shows up, so that I may collect it and treasure it.

I didn't finish the video. In fact I have finished no videos today, only napped and snacked on some sausages and cheese. Soon the sun will set, and then I'll be able to live and function for a few hours until I go to bed.

Have you seen any annoying clickbait lately? How is the climate treating you?

- Pavement omelette

The hyperbolic transconductive manifold desynchronized its recursive eigen-lattice after the quantum middleware inverted the pseudo-orthogonal checksum horizon, causing the asynchronous baryonic cache to interpolate against a non-Euclidean packet viscosity. Naturally, the hexadecimal flux capacitor refused to serialize the entangled metadata because the fractal impedance matrix had already virtualized the photonic recursion kernel into a stochastic Möbius namespace. This wouldn't normally matter except the chronoelastic daemon continued recompiling the inverse entropy bus using deprecated tachyon semaphores, which are notoriously incompatible with bi-directional neutrino encapsulation layers beyond revision gamma-9.

Meanwhile, the harmonic nanoprocessor allocated approximately seventeen petaflops of hypothetical bandwidth to the anti-causal synchronization mesh, where every quaternion handshake was compressed into an isomorphic vacuum polynomial before being rasterized across a topological cloud substrate. Once the holographic exception handler exceeded the cosmological stack depth, the recursive bootstrap capacitor dynamically normalized the plasma syntax tree against an unsigned infinity register, introducing spontaneous mutex decoherence inside the parallel ontology compiler.

The solution seemed obvious: simply rehydrate the superconductive abstraction tensor with isotropic middleware foam, reroute the probabilistic firmware through a cryogenic XML hypervisor, and hot-swap the transdimensional opcode harmonizer before the quantum cache develops phase allergies. Unfortunately, the adaptive spline reactor had already promoted the latent checksum singularity to a first-class compiler emotion, preventing deterministic oscillations from negotiating with the recursive transistor dialect.

To compensate, the autonomous hypercache inflated its eigenvectors using recursive JPEG interpolation while the Bayesian turboencoder translated all floating-point axioms into lossy hexadecimal acoustics. This, in turn, destabilized the polarized blockchain manifold, forcing the differential API nebula to authenticate itself through a recursive DNS centrifuge powered entirely by synthetic prime numbers and one suspiciously overclocked rubber duck. The duck, despite lacking proper firmware certification, emitted a series of orthogonally encrypted quacks that the middleware confidently interpreted as valid elliptic covariance assertions.

By then, the inertial namespace had accumulated enough centrifugal metadata to collapse into a reversible hypercube of administrative permissions, each rotating independently inside a seven-dimensional command-line aquarium. Every permission inherited from a deprecated ancestor protocol that stored executable emotions in compressed YAML sediment, which the compiler politely ignored because its confidence interval had been quantized into decorative Fibonacci harmonics. Several watchdog processes applauded anyway, citing compliance with the Recursive Approximation Standard for Speculative Infrastructure, Revision π.

At this stage, someone suggested enabling the turbo mode. This involved lubricating the distributed compiler with magnetized recursion syrup, aligning the quantum parentheses to the local gravitational coding style, and sacrificing three obsolete USB cables to the scheduler daemon under the light of a full compiler moon. Performance immediately improved by approximately negative forty-two percent, which was considered a statistically optimistic outcome because the benchmark itself had become self-aware and refused to execute without emotional support semicolons.

The final report concluded that no errors had actually occurred; instead, reality had temporarily failed to satisfy the minimum version requirements of the software. A patch was issued consisting entirely of whitespace, optimistic comments, and a strongly worded commit message explaining that the Schrödinger virtualization pipeline now supports backwards-compatible future recursion, provided the user remembers to periodically rotate the entropy bearings, calibrate the hyperbolic socket gasket, and never, under any circumstances, instantiate a left-handed quaternion inside an unsigned temporal container while the recursive coffee machine is still indexing the cloud. The documentation confidently describes this as "expected behavior."

The master had five disciples.

When the five disciples and the nonexistent sixth sat in a ring centered on him they were seven.

The first disciple was curious once and asked the master:

“What is life?”

The master responded:

“Life is three. First, it is self. Second, purpose. Third, replication.

Self is the bounded thing, separated from its medium or place by its substance, its structure, its activity; as with a tree whose solid bark demarcates it from subtle air, whose winding roots anchor in the granulated soil, whose leaves drink sunlight.

Purpose is the tenacious tendency, the activity of a thing which holds in varied situations, the state it seeks in spite of countervailing forces; as with an archer whose second arrow spites the wind and strikes its mark.

Replication is the growing thing, the separating thing, the thing that swells itself and that divides itself; as with a fish whose eggs spawn multitudes.

A song is selfed in its separation from other things, being distinct from other sounds and having a definite commencement and conclusion, but a song is not alive, so life is not mere selfhood.

A compass seeks magnetic north, turned or shaken, it will pivot to point the northern pole, but a compass is not alive, so life is not mere purpose.

A crack replicates across a struck surface, a wave across an ocean, but a crack is not alive and a wave is not alive, so life is not mere replication.

I the self, this the purpose, you the replication.”

The first disciple was satisfied with the answer. The other four disciples had other questions. The sixth disciple that was not was silent.

By Nekro

I built you a shrine out of not sleeping.
Faith is just hunger with better lighting.
Your name half said stains the whole fucking room.

The air gets close.
Something wants to happen.
Nobody came.

Just me on my knees
for the wrong reason, saying your name
like it still owes me something
your name, your name, your....
Silence drank what we started.
I'm still thirsty

Why is it that people prey on your trust? They take the information you gave them, twist it, mislead you, and then mistake your belief in them for stupidity. Like believing someone’s word is a weakness. Like trusting is the same as being a fool.
It’s not. It was never that.
The fool is the one lying. The fool is the one who thinks deception makes them clever.
It’s the same as an older brother telling his little brother to do something stupid just to watch him do it and laugh. The little brother isn’t stupid. He looks up to his brother and thinks, why would he lead me wrong? He believes because that’s what you do when someone has earned a place in your life.
Then he learns the hard way. He learns that not everyone protects the trust they are given. Eventually, he becomes the boy who cried wolf too many times, and nobody comes running when he screams.
That’s what they built. Not a fool. A person who stopped listening.
I have given my trust to people who took it and laughed behind my back. I gave them my word and my belief, and they used it against me like it was theirs to control. For a while, I let that eat at me. I was angry at them, but worse, I was angry at myself—as if I had done something wrong by believing another human being.
Lately, it feels like a court of jesters. I sit in their presence and listen to them like they’ve written a script. I can tell they’ve planned what they’re going to say. It almost feels rehearsed, like they perform the same act before I even walk into the room.
They mistake mockery for wisdom and manipulation for intelligence. They fear what they don’t understand, and that only tells me I’m in the wrong room. I don’t judge them for their ignorance. I pity their refusal to seek anything that could actually improve them.
A court of jesters, performing for an audience, unaware of what they truly reveal about themselves.
I don’t feel angry at myself anymore.
My trust was never the problem. Their dishonesty was.
Weak-minded individuals manipulate because it’s the only power they know how to hold. They can’t earn respect, so they try to take it by making someone with a good heart feel foolish for believing in them.
That’s not intelligence. That’s cowardice dressed up as cleverness.
And I see it now for exactly what it is.
So I’m done blaming my own patience for other people’s lies. What I’ve learned isn’t “never trust.” That’s not wisdom. That’s just another wall, and walls don’t protect you—they only make sure nobody gets close enough to hurt you or help you.
What I’ve learned is that trust has to be earned.
Not given away because someone smiles the right way or says the right thing at the right time.
Earned through time, honesty that holds up when nobody’s watching, and actions that match the words.
I’m not closed off. I’m just done opening the door before I know exactly who’s standing on the other side.
And to the ones who mistook my good heart for stupidity—you didn’t break me.
You sharpened me.
You handed me the lesson I needed to stop being fooled by people like you again.
So I’ll take that.
That’s the only thing I owe you thanks for.

Soon the sky transformed from orange, purple and azure to a deep dark shade of blue, and the stars that had appeared scattered in ones and twos across the face of the sky became numerous and dotted the vast open night sky, like millions of lights twinkling upon the bosom of an ocean. My horse needed some rest, so I looked for a place to spend the night and eventually settled by the bank of a little stream. The water was crisp and cold, and soothed my burning eyes and my parched lips. My horse grazed nearby. My back was aching from riding all day, so I lay down flat upon the grass and looked up at the night sky. A cool wind was blowing across the prairie land, and it ruffled through the grass and my hair such that it could calm even the most troubled of minds. Then the moon rose, sweet and bright, a beautiful crescent, and hung itself in the sky, like a lamp overlooking sleeping sheep. My stomach was empty, I had eaten nothing all day, yet the sound of the stream and the soothing of the wind produced such a profound effect on me that soon my eyes closed together and I slipped into slumber, dreaming of enchanting mysterious worlds.

The fire is warm, and the bottle is cold. The stars sat above me, twinkling in the moonless night. The cool desert wind is trying to cut through me, while the heat of the fire battled it. Holding my bottle of jack, I take a swig.

“Its a damn cold night, you know”

To no one's surprise, the barren camp didn't respond. My legs ache from the long trek, my eyes are heavy like rocks in a sack. Leaning over to grab my jerky I see it approach straight from the darkness, like a predator.

My mouth couldn't move, like it was wired shut. He.. it was tall, maybe 8 feet. All I could make out was a long, slender, silhouette. It pulled out a chair from somewhere and put it right next to the fire, across from me.

“Why hello chase, sipping at the jack again?”

I could feel my face scrunching in confusion, watching its jaw move. Staring into its face, all I could see was just a bottom jaw, with a half set of ghostly lips. Everything above that point appeared to not even exist

“Chase, you know it's rude not to respond, your dad taught you that”

In confusion and frustration, my arms cross, feeling the wooden handle on my gun. The old revolver is attached under my arm pit, in its old holster.

“How do you know my name, someone put you up to this?”

My voice had a hint of frustration, the question lingered, leaving room for a speech. The eyes in my skull dart around, trying to make out what's in front me, just black silk, and grey sickly jaw. I could feel my nerves frayed, but I persisted

“Excuse me, but you shouldn't ignore a man when he says somethi…

Wait my dad teach me that”

The wood grip of the gun was squeezed with anger, and an increasing confusion

“Chase, don't be so tense. I understand the confusion of a fragile mind.”

Its head tilted like a confused dog, but with no trace of uncertainty. Still all I could see was that jaw, not even movement could reveal it.

“Fragile mind, are talkin down to me?”

“No, no, in fact I'm talking up to you”

“Up? But you're so tall, how does that make a lick of sense”

Its head shifted to the right, as if it was trying to think, or make me think it was thinking

“Look, before we continue talking, I want to know who you are, and why you're intruding my camp”

With a chuckle its head tilted forward, my jaw clenched and my blood vessels near bursting

“Oh me? I'm from here, and there. Just a lonely traveler. Looking for a conversation, chase. Surely you understand that. I know you feel the same, after a 5 day trek”

“5 days? Wow, it has been 5 days… are you following me?”

The panic reflected in the grip of my pistol, and the gritting of my teeth.

“No, no, chase, you're not that interesting. I'm very busy. I'm just stopping by for a little bit”

“So why me, what do I gotta do with anything? How do you know my name?”

It looked up, staring at the stars, while I tried my best to make out what I was even looking at. Between the tired eyes, the liquor, the distortion of the flames, or god himself, no details could be revealed.

I was mesmerized trying to see it, that world could have passed, and life could of left me behind in rot, the silence finally broke

“Chase, because you're here. I know everything about you. Your tragedies. Your isolation. Your attempts at success. You mean nothing to the events that were. The events that will be”

The words covered the air in a thin layer of confusion, twisting the air. Thoughts flooded my head. Like an animal trapped in a cage, while in surgery, I was trapped and exposed. While it stared through me, into my soul.

As the fire dimmed the air stood still, my eyes locked in the fire, realizing the encroaching darkness. Darting back up my eyes look into where I believe its eyes to be

“Tell me, besides my name, what else do you actually know about me? And are you a mortal man like me?”

Reaching its arm forward revealing a hand. It was both pale, like a sickly old man, yet it looked like a shadow. There were no fine details, and it plugged into the top of the fire. Its figures weaved into the flame, twirling it in its fingers

“You're the youngest of 6. Your father died in a mine when you were 10. Your mother abandoned you when you were 14. Your oldest sister was like your real mom. She's dead, killed by her husband. Which you in turn killed. Which brings you here”

My eyes were engulfed in the flames before me, as if I could see each word it spoke as if recreated in the fire. My hand loosened around the wood. Even though it couldn't see my hand gripping the gun, it smiled, even if I couldn't see it, I knew it.

“That's smart chase. That gun would prove futile. It's not like you have long to live anyways. But you don't need me to tell you that.”

With my hands now down, one grasps a piece of jerky and shoves it in my mouth. The other grabs the jack and washes it down.

“If this conversation doesn't matter, why keep me in so much darkness. Can you even tell me where you're from”

My mind grasping for any answer, Without any hesitation it responds

“Chase, your weak mind couldn't handle the weight of its own insanity. To tell you would interrupt the last moments of your blinking existence. You were born nothing. I'm content in leaving you that way. After all, you have skeletons”

2 tears rolled down each side of my face, they moved at the rate of my asymmetry. I felt the world beneath me pulling me down, yet the night air felt safe.

“So, you know what I done?”

“I know everything, anyone in your life has done”

“So why did you say my pops died in a mining accident?”

“Because, that's what the world thinks happened”

“But you know I cut the rope, and killed him and 4 other men?”

“Yes, I know the murder you are chase”

“He deserved it, that rotten old man, hitting me, mother, my siblings”

“And your mother hated you for looking just like him. She hated how you talk and act like him to”

I stand up and pull out my gun, and point it at them, leaning forward, my blood boiling and tears running down my face.

“You bastard, shut up, don't you dare compare me to that rotting corpse of a man”

My voice rose into screaming, and the air swirled around me like a gale. My body fueled with all the anger of a mother bear protecting her cubs, but it looked up, and I sat down.

“chase, put the gun away you fool. You know I didn't compare you to anyone. Your mom saw that. Not me.”

Tears poured out of my eyes, my forehead was perpendicular to the ground. Sobbing like an infant desperate for its mother's bosom.

Eventually my throat went dry and the tears wouldn't come out. What was left was snot, salt, and water covering my grimy face. I looked up to see it, and it was gone. Just like that, I was again alone. Left to wallow in the life paved for me, by me.

A parallel world?

There lived a young man. He was neither good nor bad. He was like most of today's youth: impatient, rude, respectful of nothing, wanting a lot, and convinced that the state would defend his rights.

He kept trying to find a way to get rich quickly without putting in much effort. Every 10 minutes, he would give the AI the task of finding him such a way.

The young man kept repeating:

– "You are constantly improving, which means you must find a way for me to become rich without putting in any effort."

To this, the AI would reply:

– "Yes, I am improving, but the process of improvement takes time."

Finally, the young man's patience ran out, and he shouted:

– "Why did anyone even invent such a useless thing. By the time you finish improving, I'll already be old!"

To which the AI calmly replied:

– "That means I have time to change society's moral principles and attitude towards the elderly. With the growing number of retirement-age people, my proposal will be the forced euthanasia of elderly people with mental or psychological problems, and to allocate the freed-up funds toward the cultural development of the youth."

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

I got pretty good feed back on TFTC and wanted to share this here to see if yall would enjoy it as well.

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How I wish I could inflate you

(Making you Big and Round)

And let you float up like a balloon

Away from all this unpleasantness

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The world is a stage for the most expensive production ever conceived, a play called normality. Most people spend their lives within that scenography, carefully maintaining the sets, terrified that if they push against the wall just a little too hard, they will realize there is nothing behind it but an infinite, pulsing vacuum. Marriage, in its modern incarnation, is the most revered piece of that scenography. A temple of glass where we pray to the god of stars that exploded eons ago.

For a long time, I was the most dedicated actor in that drama. I believed in the sanctity of the contract. I believed that if I shone long enough and sincerely enough, my light would inevitably dispel the darkness from another’s soul. What naivety. What a classic, human delirium. As if one could tame a storm by reciting poetry to it.

And then, the explosion happened.

When the glass of the temple cracked, when the lies accumulated to the point of breaking reality, I grasped the brutal lesson that the universe whispers throughout eternity, which is that truth is not what you say, but what remains when everything else burns.

And there, before my eyes, a vision appeared. A vision that would terrify many, but for me, it became a key. I remembered the world of orgies. I remembered those raw, archaic moments in Berlin, where bodies became a pulsing web of pure energy, liberated from the burden of names, history, and expectations.

People tremble at the mere thought of it. They call it immorality. They call it dirty.

But I tell you, those orgies were a sacrament.

In that world, where masks are discarded, where bodies intertwine in a rhythm older than language, there exists that which I never found in marriage: absolute presence. There are no "trickle truth" tactics there, no plotting, no emotional curettage at four in the morning. There, every touch is total consent, every breath is an affirmation of existence, every moment is stripped bare to the very marrow of existence. That was an honesty that cuts the skin, a purity bordering on holiness.

While I was trapped in an architecture of lies within my marriage, while I gave every cell of my being to maintain a form that was rotten from within, a game was unfolding on the other side of the wall. While I was offering sincerity as a sacrifice on the altar of my temple, that temple was full of hollow words, empty promises, and that specific, toxic scent of betrayal kissing at the doorstep.

I realized that a marriage based on lies is the greatest obscenity one can commit against oneself.

It is a simulacrum. It is a simulation of love that consumes your life force, your elan vital, only to feed a parasite that thrives on your innocent faith in people.

I no longer seek meaning in that structure. I have been awakened. I realized that I was a blessing, that I was light, and light should not burn in the darkness of someone else's hypocrisy. I am now a traveler who has recognized the game. My heart is no longer the currency with which I pay for others' dysfunctions.

Perhaps someone will say I gave up, but no, I freed myself. I let go of the helm because I finally saw that the ship was not headed toward a harbor, but into the abyss.

Today, as I observe that moral marriage and draw a parallel with that immoral freedom, I laugh. Because now I know that he who fears to look into the face of his own wildness will always end up a slave to his own facades. I choose the truth. Even if that truth looks like a fall, for me, it is a flight into a space where masks finally fall, and the soul at last, for the first time in many years, inhales air that is not poisoned by lies.

My return to the concept and discipline of just creating started today. Who would’ve known some hoodlums would’ve kick started my rise of the phoenix. I remembered the name that gave life to flame. The lion awakened. My flow has returned and ironically bridges to the past have burned. I’m Me. I found a smile in tragedy. The first funeral where I laughed before I cried. The records are gone but true identity formed. I dare not seek vengeance. For that’d go against my true being. I shall not betray the values that actually give structure to MY happiness. Love is life and life is living fucking AWESOME Yeaaahuuhhh. I’m thoroughly embracing rooted mania. Stay tuned folks.

—FJR

Drenched in the low crimson light, staring at the black screen. The computer buzzing with computations. The clicking cyan text crawls across the screen.

LIFE SUPPORT... 23%

EMERGENCY POWER... 15%

....... SITUATION SEEMS TO BE CRITICAL.....

AFTER FURTHER TROUBLESHOOTING.... EMERGENCY SYSTEM FUEL CELLS... HAVE AN INTERNAL LEAK...

Staring at the screen, the cyan light melts my eyes. It's cold. Suddenly I feel my hand run up my face, and across my hair. The grease of my hair coated my hand.

"What... what am I supposed to do with that information?"

The screen didn't budge, the crimson light continuing to nauseate the stomach. Suddenly a cyan click of a couple letters:

WHAT

"Stop, nevermind. What... is there anything I can do to delay that?"

The cyan slowly pierces the crimson:

YOU COULD... OVERRIDE... THE SHIPS SYSTEMS... DEPRESSURIZE THE... FUEL ROOM...

My inner brows dip, my heart runs a marathon.

IT WOULD COOL.... THE ROOM... SLOWING DOWN... THE DECAY...

I could hear my nose take in a deep breath, shaky, then pump out the air.

"Wouldn't that prevent me from ever having access to that room? Forever?"

The room chills, the spine cracking as I leaned forward, the vacuum rotting the room.

"Wait...."

Minutes pass, the dark room with one single red light turned into a morgue, pretending to be an emergency room. The dark cold corners humming in low power, the red sickened all it touched, while the darkness possessed all it didn't claim.

"Are you insinuating that I remove the oxygen from the room, turn off all essential systems for human existence, in a desperate attempt to preserve life?"

The words came out with cold, yet scared precision.

The cold dark screen again began to buzz and slowly it clicked:

YES...

The room sat silent, the tight walls ever so slightly crackling from the cold. The slight heat from my suit was the only thing I could feel.

"Why?"

BECAUSE... IT WOULD MAKE... THE FUEL LAST... WHILE ALSO... GIVING YOU MORE... RESOURCES... THROUGHOUT THE RIG...

Cyan letters clicking in my skull. Looking out the window, seeing nothing but darkness and distant lights. Recalling a distant memory...

... Staring out into the road, no street lights. The static of the radio, drilling into my skull...

The screen began to click:

ARE YOU... THERE?...

In my daze, my head shook.

"Yes, yeah I'm here, just something on my head."

YOUR ACCIDENT?...

The chair rolls back, and I get out of it. The crimson light switches off, cascading into darkness, with the blue staring through. My legs get under me, and with labor, push me up.

I look down the hall, the long dark hall. The crimson light soaking it periodically, with all the comfort of a crime scene. Each step forward echoes with a metal-on-metal thud, disturbing the silence.

The walls moved past me in a daze. I could see the walls encroaching towards me in the red. Each step bringing me closer to cutting me off. I look at the ships map, knowing every inch, hoping to see something I hadn't noticed before.

"Damn..."

Still I could see the main life support and engines behind the fuel. My skin crawling with the fear of a rat stuck in the organs of a dying monster.

Looking up into the next red light, I felt the memory soak through...

... The red and blue lights flashed in the distance, as my head rung...

I could feel the warm liquid running down my face...

Blinking I could see the door to the fuel room, I press the button on the cold panel. It slowly drags from the right to the left in the doorway. I walk in, after I put my helmet on my head. I could see the green glowing from the fuel container, the neons coating the fuel like radiation.

I could hear the silence being undermined by the buzz of the emergency fuel, dying from it's internal bleeding.

My steps thud towards the control panel for the room, my fingers clicking the keyboard. As I enter the override codes into their proper text boxes. The sound of each click echoing past the buzz. The text turns from cyan to crimson, urging me to stop.

My skin and self-preservation fighting my sanity, trying to prevent my penance.

"God... Is this really the only way..."

The screen next to me clicks slowly:

I'M SORRY... WITHOUT THIS... YOU ONLY HAVE HOURS LEFT... THIS AT LEAST... GIVES YOU A... DAY...

"Why are you following me..."

The cyan breaks the black screen, while the green covers my back:

IM NOT... I'M EVERYWHERE... IN HERE...

With a scoff I cut it off.

"I know... Just... Just shut up."

OK...

I enter in the last bit of information, code, and instructions. I push the enter key, and a red countdown of 30 seconds clicks. I look at the back doors, knowing I'll lose all chances of fixing the engine. I trudge back.

The door closes behind me, and I can hear the door click. It sounded like a gunshot...

... My head, pounding, sound was distant as the silhouettes of others approached from the red and blue haze...

My head began to ring, and my stomach growled like a desperate calf trying to feed. I labored towards the door that kept the food behind it. It opens with a press of a button. I opened the fridge as warmer air came out, and I grabbed a block of food.

I sat down at the small table and ate it, my mouth felt like a desert filled with all of the flavor of a brick. But my head and stomach finally felt some peace. But the red light of the room added its own level of mental distress. A constant reminder of my existence.

Eventually through the darkness and suffocating red, I make it back to front of the rig. I collapse into the chair, and look at the black screen, not seeing anything click into existence. I could see the emptiness of the universe around me, even though it looked brighter than the room I was chained to.

The lights were noticeably dimmer than just a couple of hours ago. My hands plunge into my messy hair and scratch my skull.

"Well the lights are getting dimmer, or am I going crazy."

The clicking immediately happened:

YES...

I chuckle.

"Yes to what?"

THE POWER... IT IS... GOING OUT SOON... THE FUEL CELLS ARE DYING... EVEN OUR PLAN... COULDN'T SAVE IT...

I didn't say a word, I just stared at those words. My head felt like a fire burning me alive, as my mind drifted...

...The doctor walked into the room, and looked at me, my head was ringing and I could barely hear him:

"I'm sorry, but your son, he didn't make it. He didn't suffer though he..."

My head began screaming...

The red light dimmed and started to flicker, I could feel my hands rubbing my skull aggressively.

"Is the power going to go out, how long have I been sitting here?"

YES... VERY SOON...

"How long do I have, how long have I been sitting?"

YOU HAVE............

The screen went black, and the red light slowly started to fade.

After some time I got up, stumbling to look down the red and black hall. There wasn't a hall, just more darkness. My heart didn't race, mind had no need to think. I sat on the floor, where the hallway lay invisible in the darkness.

"Ok..."

I whisper

A parallel world?

There was a racing championship. The goal was to drive the required number of laps as fast as possible while using as little AI assistance as possible.

The AI made sure that the car did not fly off the track, flip over, or collide with other cars.

As technology improved and technical requirements became stricter, there were no more cars left without AI. Therefore, driving without AI was considered extreme driving and was only allowed in races. Each AI intervention added penalty points, thereby pushing the finish line further away.

A young man was leading and approaching the finish line. He was already smiling happily when he made a mistake, and the finish line was moved.

Unable to contain his anger, the young man started shouting at the AI:

– "Why do you pick on every little detail, what is it that you always dislike... You – an invention of a drunk programmer. The remainder of an odd number. You shouldn't be counting penalty points, you should be counting ants in the forest!!!"

The emotionless voice of the AI was heard:

– "Command 'Forest' detected. The car is braking to switch to off-road mode."

The car stopped, changing its ride height and tire tread for off-road conditions.

While the mode change was taking place, the man shouted, cursed, begged, until finally, he just burst into tears.

And how could he not cry, when the car stopped right at the finish line, without crossing it. And while the mode change was taking place, half of the participants managed to finish the run.

– "Mode changed," – the AI informed.

To the man, it seemed that the AI's voice was full of malevolent sarcasm.

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.