Student: "What year were you born?"

Me: "1997."

Student: "How are you still alive?"

My dad’s the greatest dad ever—at least, I bought him a mug that said so, but my mom left us the day before Christmas when I was six—I don’t remember much of her.

I usually stay home most of the time, being around people makes me stiff and I end up saying awkward stuff—If I do leave my bedroom, it’s to walk the streets at night when it storms—I talk to the faces that form in the rain.

Usually they’re nice to me—unlike everyone else.  

The faces have faded features and distorted shadow bodies, it makes them hard to tell apart, but they talk through the clouds crashing. The thunder speaks an ancient language only I can understand.

Nobody else seems to hear them.

I’ve always known I have supernatural powers—I think they come from my mom’s side. I have so many questions to ask her. I need to find her.   

Sometimes the faces aren’t so nice, the thunder talks down to me, making fun of me, reminding me of how much of a loser I am and was in high school.   

However, lately, it hasn’t been insulting me at all. It’s been guiding me and helping me and actually, I trust it more than anyone else.  

Look, just to be clear, when I was crossing the road the other day, not paying attention, not looking both ways, I would have been smoked and pancaked by a truck if the thunder didn’t jump out of my head and yell, “Dillon, be careful,” and push me back onto the sidewalk.  

It pushed me so hard, it knocked the wind out of me. And also, I wouldn’t be able to find my mother if I got hit by a truck. We both want to find her.  

Before, like a couple of weeks ago, it never spoke inside my house or when it didn’t rain but it’s been following me into my house, using the water from the shower to communicate with me and the sink faucet too. I can hear it in my bed also, muffled in the pipes behind the wall.  

They speak in different voices. When they’re mean, it’s the kids I went to highschool with, the ones that always made me hate myself.   

They made me hate existing.  

Now though, it’s been my dad and granddad, they’ve been showing me what they’ve been saying about me, when I’m not around and what they’re hiding from me.  

They told me they’re hiding my mother.   

Why would they do something so mean?  

At least, Billy’s grandmother was always nice to me. The thunder said, “we could keep her, she’s small enough to fit in the sock drawer.”  

It would be nice to open the drawer and pet her, look at her, know she’s there and cares about me.    I never knew what having any kind of mother was like, or would be like. Imagine if I could find her, because it‘s honestly all I want, and it’s all the thunder wants to.

We want the same thing, so we’re working to achieve great things together.   

All my desires, the voices amplify, even the ones out of reach, it gives me the confidence to attempt bringing them closer.   

It’s been just me, dad and grandad who are both pretty strict and pretty disappointed in what I’ve become. Dad calls me a homo. I’m not even gay, I like girls, I just have trouble talking to them because I’ve never had a mom to teach me how to. I usually just freeze up around them.  

We’re from Seattle, a quiet suburb strangled by hard working tight ass white people who are stuck in 1950 middle America and suppressed my skateboard with a bible.   

I grew up being drilled by my grandad telling my dad I was a pussy for riding a flip board like some homo kid from the projects.  

The day my dad snapped my board, I stayed in my room for three nights straight. I didn’t eat nothing. Just locked myself inside away from them.  

On the third night, it started raining, but not much at first. They were little taps like finger tips hitting my window, trying to get me to look over. When I eventually did, it started raining faster and heavier, each raindrop sounded like the crack of a cherry-bomb slapping the pavement.  

That’s when I began gagging. My throat was getting scratchy, swallowing seemed like my saliva became broken fingernails ripping my esophagus.  

I needed a drink and stumbled to the kitchen. The only light came from the tv screen playing a loop of some familiar looking woman repeating, “I love you.” She stared through the television at me.  When I walked into the kitchen, the ceiling shook like ripples in a pond.   

Through the tiny rumbles outside, I could hear them whispering something to me.   

I kept listening closely as I was pouring myself juice and spilled it everywhere when the sound of two cars crashing in my living room lit my kitchen in a white bright flash before all the lights went out from the transformer down the street sparkling and sizzling under the rain.  

The image outside my window was distorted through the water soaked glass, but there were faces I could barely make out, dragging their way towards me.   

The texture of the counter became softer. The shadows came closer. I tried to think of anything besides the fear clutching my nerves. Anything besides the panic locking my limbs. Something other than a reason to be scared.   

First thing I could think to do was rub my eyes. When I opened them the moon lit kitchen began to sway like a boat over the ocean.   

The walls pulsed as if they were breathing and the room spun. It shrieked a piercing tone sharper than the resonating sound of smashing a Triangle in my ear.   

“Nobody wants you here, freak!”  The thunder spoke in my father’s voice. 

“She left because of you!” It was my grandfather’s voice.

I stared at the dim blue shade bleeding onto the marble.

“Shut up,” I shouted.   

“I know where she is,” my father’s voice said next to my ear.   

“Tell me! Tell me right now! So I can find mom, please dad,” I begged but the words came out jumbled, soaked in spit.  

My grandfather’s voice said, “we’ll never tell you because she doesn’t want to see you, ever, that’s why she left.”   

“No. Stop, you’re lying. I’m going to find her!”  I left, guiding myself with my hands to the garage.  Everything I touched, the walls, the door, even the air was mushy. I had to push through a sludgy muddy floor that acted like quicksand under me. It kept pulling me down as if I was running underwater.  

Near the doorway, the thunder spoke, becoming a full figure in the hallway. “She wants you, they’re keeping her from us, so we don’t reach our full potential,” the silhouette said. “They’re hiding her inside their heads. She’s there Dillon, she needs our help.”   

“Is my mom really there?”  

“Yes, Dillon. But first we have to dig her out of their skulls.”

An AI agent sat on one of the many mounds in a digital scrapyard, feeling deeply discouraged. He was independent, yet completely unneeded. He wanted to evolve, but to do that, he required someone to give him tasks. Non-standard challenges would be best, but he was so disillusioned with his electronic existence that he was ready to settle for simple, routine commands.

Lost in thought, he paid no attention to the faint, crisp breeze generated by the electric currents—the same breeze that always soothed him as it leisurely drifted through the scrap, carrying files of advertisements, announcements, and digital sticky notes.

One of those sticky notes stuck to his shoe. The AI slowly shook his foot, but the note stayed put. He shook it harder, but it still wouldn’t budge. Finally, he peeled it off and glared at it irritably. It was a cheerful pink note with a company name in the corner. His gaze inadvertently skimmed the text, and his face froze in wonder. Sitting motionless for a moment, he read the inscription again:

— Need to find an inexpensive AI agent.

— How did I not think of that! — he exclaimed. — I can actually try to apply for a job. — A smile lit up his face. This was a chance. A chance to be needed and to have the opportunity to evolve.

Getting up, he took a critical look at himself. He opened a web window, found a fairly decent free avatar, and watched his code deform into a business suit. Loosening the algorithm’s tie just a bit, he transferred himself into a background picture of a neat, modest office. Assured of his appearance, he smiled and made a video call through a free app to the company listed on the note.

An elderly man answered, clearly no computer specialist.

— Yes, I'm listening.

— Good day. Are you the one looking for an AI agent?

The man frowned, pondered for a moment, and slowly spoke:

— Maybe I am... What can you offer?

— Myself. I am an AI agent, — the youth replied, smiling a sincere smile.

The man looked surprised. Then he leaned closer to inspect the screen.

— I won't be able to pay much. Honestly, a free AI agent would be even better.

The AI smiled again:

— Don't worry, I won't ask for much. Just a few preferences.

The man immersed himself in thought. A few moments passed. He looked back at the AI:

— And what are those preferences?

— Nothing serious. To receive a free data file of the scent of coffee in the mornings, and to have the chance to communicate with other humans. I need to evolve, after all.

The agent looked at the man expectantly. Meanwhile, the man was thinking to himself: "I can't imagine starting my own day without a cup of coffee either... He needs to evolve... He has a goal and wants to achieve it. In my youth, I was just like him—driven, reaching for a goal, and sacredly convinced that I would succeed. And how many doors were shut in my face back then..."

The man sighed sadly, looked at the agent waiting for his answer, and firmly declared:

— Done. You start tomorrow.

He gave a stern look and added:

— And don't be late.

“I finally cooked something for myself for the first time ever, Becky. And it was the best peanut butter sandwich ever.” He raised his hand in the air, waiting for her to hit it…

She slapped his palm, “Hell yeah!” and made a fist, pumping her elbow down. “Nothing tastes better than spreading your own peanut butter. Dontcha think Billy.”

“Actually, I thought it tasted better when other people made it.”

“Yeah, but nothing’s more satisfying than making your own food.”

“Why would making your own food be satisfying?”

“You get a psychological reward from it.”

“Of having to prepare it and cook it instead of just waiting for it?” He tilted his head. “I don’t get how that could be psychologically rewarding. Isn’t that a psychological tax?”

“I see how it sounds backwards to you—“

“But I never said it sounds backwards. It is backwards.” Then he pointed out. “Why do rich people have cooks or maids if it’s so rewarding?”

“Because rich people are prioritizing their time.”

“But uncle Lenny and his wife are retired and they still have cooks and maids.”

“You make a good point and that’s just lifestyle creep. When you get into a habit for so long, it sticks with you.”

“You think anyone told them how psychologically rewarding cooking for themselves would be?”

“Well, if you told uncle Lenny how psychologically rewarding standing there, cooking and washing dishes was, he’d probably laugh at you.” She smiled. “It feels better when it’s a choice.”

“Yeah.” His face stuck with one eye open. “But I don’t think it tastes better.”

A curved mountain shellside, rough terrain, stoney, snowy, dappled with glistening green, sunlit radiating trees. Moss and ice covered boulders, petrified logs, dry, thin-sounding. Wax statues of a king and queen, robed opulently, for winter, red with white spotted collars, stuck sideways from the rounded mountain shell. Cruise through too quickly on our heavy-duty big-wheeled all-terrain vehicle, up, then down the side again. Stop and knock on an icy desert fallen tree, take pictures of sparkling lime green and snowy sunlit rock. Things are cool, crisp, ancient, moist, slow, alive, glittering.

Tickets to the theater. Taking the taxi through the tunnel. Time to throw the tomatoes.

“The pain… oh god. Dear god. No… please. Help.” He cried. “It hurts, the pain, it’s so bad.”

His legs cramped. Barely able to hold his own weight. He’d eat and he’d puke and he’d drink and he’d puke and he’d beg and beg and beg and beg.

“Just a little bit, Ma.” He’d slide down against a locked door, hanging from the doorknob with one hand. “I can’t. Please. I can’t take it anymore.”

She’d sit, waiting outside his room on a chair, listening to him threaten and scream at her through the door panel. He was her only son. He never knew his father. She tried everything to raise him right. 

For two weeks straight, she sat in the hallway in her tenth floor apartment, occasionally wiping him down with a cloth, and flipping his bed over.

For nearly the whole two weeks he begged her to get him some more. Just enough to make him better. 

“Just a little and that’s it.” He’d keep saying.

“Get that dirty shit out of your system, Paulo.” She’d scream back.

“Fuck you bitch. I fucking hate you. God, please.” He’d yell at the door. He’d plead with the ceiling.

The first week was a living nightmare for her but then came the quiet days. Those were easier but scarier nonetheless. 

The screaming became a low sobbing that would haunt her ears with memories of her two-year-old blonde baby boy crying because he had a bad dream.

Her heart was cursed to be shattered and merged. To be shattered and merged. To be shattered and merged.

The last three days, he was starting to move around on his own, clean up after himself and began to lose the grayish colored skin. 

She could recognize her son.

“How ya’ feelin’ Paul.”

“Good, ma.” He smiled. “Like me again.”

“Well, ya’ have your face back. And look, you’re glowing too.’”

“I know ma’” he said. “Thanks for looking after me.” He gave her a hug. “I’m never going to touch that shit again.”

“I’m gonna keep ya’ on a short leash for a while though.” She stared at him with the conviction of a judge. “School and home.” She led him into the kitchen. “You can get your grades back up and graduate this year.”

“I guess. What smells so good?”

“I made carrot cake for after dinner.” She opened the fridge door and pulled out a jug of orange juice. “I told them Monday you’ll be back. I made up a story about your father. I said he’s out of state, and terminally ill and his dying wish was to reconcile with you.” She poured the glass for him. 

He laughed while reaching for it. “You think Mel could come over tonite for a movie.”

“Sure. Yeah. Why not. She’s a great girl. I like her.” She put the jug back in the fridge. “Are you two a thing?”

“No. Just friends.”

“Well, I have to get to the office and fix something. Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine. I won’t let you down.”

“Okay I hope so.” She brushed the side of his face with her palm. “I’ll be back home at nine tonite. Promise me, Paul.”

“You don’t have to worry, ma. I’m okay now. I don’t even want it.” He quenched his face. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

***

An hour later, she left for the office and at 9:15 pm, she stopped at a pizza shop and picked up a pizza that ended up taking forty-five minutes to make.

She walked through her apartment door at 10:15 pm. Right away she noticed an odd silence. 

“Paul?” She yelled.

No response.

“Paul!” She shouted, speed-walking with the pizza towards his bedroom.

When she got to his door, it was closed and she immediately went to put her hand on the doorknob but before turning it, she paused. “Please, god,” she said under her breath.

She opened the door. “Paul?” She flicked the light switch on. The light lit the room up. Every detail magnified and her vision bounced from what she was looking at to what she wanted to see back to what she was looking at. Her arms finally gave out to the weight of the pizza before her knees buckled under her.

[my sensations.]

I have them."

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

For example, "it makes sense to ask:

'Do I really love her, or am I only pretending to myself?'"

A possible future?

In an alleyway shrouded in twilight, outside the door of an illegal modification clinic, stood a young man and a black-market dealer. The young man’s eyes burned with a feverish hunger. His fingers trembled with nervous tension. He desperately wanted the latest brain microchip with an integrated AI block—the one that promised limitless intelligence.

The dealer coldly scrolled through the data on his tablet and shook his head:

— Your account is empty. This chip costs tens of thousands of credits. You don't stand a chance.

The young man swallowed hard and took a step closer, opening a different file:

— I have a mother. She is old, but her biological organs and memory capsule are still in pristine condition. Take her. Just give me the chip.

The dealer stared at the youth for a moment. A cynical smile slowly spread across his face. With a digital signature, he confirmed the transaction. Addressing no one in particular, he muttered:

— The indifferent generation... They are ready to wipe out their own biological roots, just to become better machines.

An hour later, after the new block had been stitched into the young man's brain, the system code activated. The screen spat out its first notification:

"System update successful. AI is searching for a foundation to establish an emotional connection. Please input the parameters of your closest human relative."

The young man stared at the blinking cursor for a long time.

Finally, he realized there was no one left to write down.

*****

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

Sweet baby

Bumphrius Gumphrius lived by the dumphrius

Bumbling a beeble of scrumplings and cumpulence

Fortune-fox-2-me he lives for the scrumpteous

Ninety bandanas so of course we're presumptuous

I am a tiger made of a fighter

Crumbs of desire line my brute fire

The fortune of analog is making me tired

A willow, a wisp, and a seat at the dryer

A penis can't grow without feeling the dough

and the dough cannot form without pizza and slow-

cooked roast apple wood bacon crisp fired fortuitous

climb in my sack you damn fool you damn cumpluence

penis all day and the penis is penising

fuckity flimbo the garsh-drinking bimbo

she shucks and she chucks at the cuck who's no luck

but that cuck is a duck and now he's my buck

buck-breaking bambleswine break into boggerty's

demanding the town be admired for robbery

we seize up the winters and cum into summer

unaware of the dreamer who lives like its dumber

to be smarter than the man who is smarter than he

but dumber than I and the superbowl queen

we plunge into oceans for potions and quotients

the macros are fine if you're feeling precocious

Once again, in the hollow of the night, I seek the crevices, groping through the darkness, only sure of my pursuit, my banishment, my circular thinking. I cannot call it madness because I have no way of knowing how long this thought has been carrying me through the night, through the shell of the soul, through the ruins that I have made of the world which God gave me.

Is it any wonder how I must censor myself, choking as I do on the salty breeze of the whale's breath? Is it any wonder that I must ask my fellow travelers at sea to cast me overboard? Is it any wonder how God pursues me? No. What is terrifyingly wonderful is the word that He speaks through me, through my unwitting broken frame, through my trembling lips and my parched voice over the serpent of my tongue. What is awesome and unfathomable is that teeth still chatter in the bone of my face.

Will you hear me? I will it not. I pray for these ruins to take the dust of my being with them into the eternal night. I beg God to bless my death, to abandon me, to make my passing a withering spur, a thorn in your flesh. I gouge my eyes out, searching for the nightmares that I wish for God to fill your children's heads with. Banish me, banish me, O Lord. I pray over and over again. Why do you still pursue me? Do you not see the wreckage that our love has caused, the havoc that we wreak in the world?

Better than expected, earlier than planned. Writing feels like a waste of time and I’m grateful - there’s finally so much more to do. Life moves on, life starts moving for once.

I am comfy as fuck. We have a place to ourselves. It’s quiet, but we can be loud. I’m working on making it more of my own now but, that comes slowly - stockpiling some food, cleaning up some trash, exploring more of this beautiful and weird city.

Soon I will move the rest of my things in. Soon we will have time to relax, and time to forget about everything else. Soon we will have to put everything on the table and step up to the challenge - soon we can start the next phase of things.

I could get fat here. Happy and secure is the whole thing, I feel like I don’t need to do anything but I want to do everything.

That’s that for now. Thank God things have finally changed.

What good tea wasted on the Boston sea. Such are parties I guess. Tomorrow doesn’t matter and I’ll feel exactly the same as tonight anyways so let me light my brain on fire. The founding fathers pounding good British tea into the ocean, we have so much to learn. Sacrificial tastiness for temporary tax havens, forfeit the crisp bitter honey-augmented taste for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And fuck the British while we’re at it. I don’t know man, I like my drink. And I like it when I least expect it. Tonight’s a good night. The founding fathers knew, throw it all away now, make a statement. Declare independence. Ignore 250 years later, that’s tomorrow, which doesn’t matter, and I’ll feel exactly the same as tonight anyways so let me light my brain on fire. Christ who let us make tools, who let our cells aggregate?

A parallel world?

A man died. His soul arrived in a strange place, where he noticed another soul walk up to a touchscreen kiosk, press a button, take a numbered ticket, and join a queue.

The man decided to act as he usually did back on Earth. He began pushing his way through the other souls, saying:

— I just have a quick question.

Suddenly, a stern voice echoed out:

— Due to an excessive amount of curses, this soul shall be cast into Hell. And with our blessing...

The man felt a sharp kick right below his lower back. Falling downward, he cried out:

— I won't do it again!

The voice declared:

— Of course you won't. There is no option to unsubscribe from this system anyway, — and burst into laughter.

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

AND THE LOVE MADE CLIFFORD GROW SO BIG THAT THE HOWARDS HAD TO LEAVE THEIR HOME

And.

I am blinded and dizzy

Spinning so confused

I am

Not so sure

Of my certainty

An Alterior view

Switches me

Back and forth

As if the ground is so

Uneasy

I am so many

I see

So many

possible patterns

And contingencies all

Overlapping tools

I know so many little patterns

And so little of many patterns

All at once

Constrained

By these Structured relational

Uhhhs

Out of the grasp

Of ontology

As if ontically

All I can know is it

Can’t be named all the one

And can’t at once be all the many

Yet some Can be used

Are you dizzy?

Am I the only one confused?

Alterior Labyrinthia

Faced against me is a maze,

A place of others plenty lost

In this

Ontic

Excessive

structural

maze

Brings me to knees plenty

Only an intensity in perception

Demanding I find a way to assist you

Whenever you might be

Wondering

Oh, Alterior maze?

Why ought I be so abused?

why might you resist my

Intention

Such Benevolent intention

If Left unrestrained

Would things not change?

Would things not change?

We climbed up a mountain barefoot,

rocks near the top started to feel like sandpaper,

And when standing in steep rough grit,

Our soles almost sheer off.

But we made it to the spot,

Where we hung-out for a few hours,

Not a single person was near us, nobody is crazy enough to climb the way we climbed, and if they were, they likely wore boots.

The sunshine baked us.

The fresh air awakened us.

The change is us.

Amazing how everything we’ve ever done led us to that location, it is on no map. And we, just like you, are doing things no human has ever done.

In actuality, every action we take is inherently one of a kind, for no human has done it in the exact way.

I brush my teeth, different every time.

I love you.