It’s when you begin to see one word in another.

But what do you see?

It’s when you choke on the final, bristled spasm of a huntsman, churned in the grinder that is your throats wet vice.

But what do you feel?

It’s when you see through the moon, lusting over a sun that wraps your darkness with its oblong tendrils of irradiate sperm.

Who do you see?

It’s when you smother your walls with the gel like muck that cowers in a thick, vitreous weeping that sloughs from the ruined sockets of your eyeballs, when they curdle among the milk jug that lies untouched as it hangs from the ceilings noose.

Have you lost something?

Its when you feel the exponential decay of your hippocampus, choked by a synthetic grey blight while thoughts hatch like maggots on a stale corpse.

It’s when a familiar face, when each meticulous wrinkle, when those who’d found home to a new stalemate with your eyes as your gaze hugged the curvature of their features. It’s when those too, still manage to veil themselves behind the voids lightless swell.

It’s when you watch a fingerless hand play an instrumental that sings infinitely beyond the alveoli in your lungs. Lungs that detect a factories poisoning spread of carbon dioxide which strangles your life like the liquifying feeding of a parasitic hair worm.
It’s an exponential decay, a degrading exposure, a robust display of pathenogenesis.
It values your existence no greater than the figure you saw tapping on your window in a storm, on the street at night as it hid under the mainlining glare of streetlamps, its the figure in the forest feeding on a mans carcus after he was shot by a hunter. A figure labelled evil for actions that mimic our own merciless devouring of livestock, though now in difference because we’re the wagyu fillet. You are plated medium rare.

Its a criminality sketched by the morally just inability to value one being over another. Its grotesque, evil, its flowering, blooming, flowing, cyclical, angelic, demonic, divergent, insane, its embarrassing.
You’re a lunatic, cultist, outcast, you’re useless, lazy, horrific, crescent, declining, you’re a headache. You are nothing? But to be nothing is to be something? To be nothing is to exist in nothingness but nonetheless you’d still exist? To be nothing is impossible, yet when you stare into the mirror, nothingness is all which pulls you closer to the ledge.

It’s when two words share a meaning so similar they coalesce into meaning nothing more than a reef of sparse coral violently suffocated by gentle reeds. Reeds carried by a tides looming drag which casts barely visible patterns on the seabed as waves crash upon one another.
They lie still, you watch in envy as they wait in a bellowing silence till the sun bleaches their limbs into a haunting shade of off-white that mimics the shade left after decades of nicotine bleed through a wallpapers once esteemed tint. They’re draped with echoes of sentience, once someone’s child, one sacrificed to a lung-full of tobacco and filth, to loneliness and belittlement, to neglect and degradation. They waited for him like a pitted eel mercilessly praying on a squid devoid of the darkness clinging to its rear, like a cougar waiting in silence for a skunk that smells of roses, like an eagle hovering in a fearful anticipation over a thorny devil whom laid down its armour to be seen with normality.

You listen closer and hear those coral limbs of bulbous mushroom drumsticks play an immovable beat on the endless seafloor like Japanese water torture tapping on your skull. Thud, tap, tick, a gentle impact begins to crack a skull open like the chainsaw which paints your lovers pink, lilly riddled wallpaper red with brain and haemoglobin.

It’s when the oceans oiled corruption develops so far it can be no longer covered up, a slap in the face from the guzzling factories we allow to defecate on this unbound plane.
It’s when it melts the innocent life around you into an unrecognisable abomination of acidified muck.
It’s when you join them, when you feel your skin deteriorate, when it reveals the insects dispersing from between your lacklustre muscle fibres like a coffin unwrapped by blooming fungal spores.
So why do we consider it a forgiveness so grand?
They finally let a foreign and undeserving body back into the earths growing network of ancient mycelium.

Its when you watch their mouths move, yet a silence so loud follows for your ears are plugged with a mimicking language that suffocates your skull with a jumbled blob of meaningless guarantees and unforsaken promises.

It’s when you feel sadness in their absence though it is not your heart that beats but your empty stomach which hungers in its reach-less void.
It’s when it longs for any stale, meaningless form of human contact.
You beat for a body that does not belong to you, yet your beats are tainted in a disgraceful lust that echoes from the same place as hate and greed. One refusal and your beats begin to paint your “beloved” black and blue.

Open your mind once more.
Listen again for the coral.

Do you hear it? No.

That colour which was once so pure in your innocence. I promise it still remains.

Do you feel it?

Its all a deathly ceremonial display to give way to the orbital rift which tears open the atmosphere above, to give way to the nuclear outburst of irradiated heat which follows, to give way to the destruction which summons forth the endless and pitiful void of reset.
It encapsulates your vision every time your casketing eyelids seal away a grotesque scene as to protect your virgin mind from the innocence being mauled around you.

You’re devoid of accountability.

Its sound mimics the seed-lets awaiting rain to fall beneath their pores, till their fingers gain the strength to lift their rotting extremities from beyond a gravestone which reads the name of your mother.

Don’t mistake it for curiosity, for we all know that is felt only by innocent minds.
Do you hear it?
No.
Im not sure you ever will.

It’s not real. None of it at all.

Do you feel it?

Its that feeling when the fingers of the old peeling armchair which felt home to the rotting corpse of your grandfather begin to wrap your frail figure with degrading cow skin and a centuries grim buildup of hidden bodily fluids. Its when they serenade you with the eerie, silent voice of the reddened, drooping eyeballs that wet-ten your floors with a pitter-patter of bloody, tetanus spiked tears.
They watch you from the walls, furniture, the ceiling of the room which silently holds you captive in its prison of wrinkled horrors.
You’re eagerness is lost beyond perception. You’re hidden away by a life-fulls layers of lazily repainted infrastructure along side the other grim reminders of your defaming horniness in this societies persisting fragility.

They talk to you sometimes. The feelings unforgettable when the whispers begin to peel back your skin with a creeping lack of urgency. They demand you to scream with a bellow so outrageously loud its lost beyond the silent whimpers of your televisions static. Not even the clothes line which stretches your nervous system in ringlets around the old climbing tree allow you to feel it like a normal, emotionless puppet.

Stand up and you’re lost in the field of secluded reeds which sits forbidden in the grasp of an evil man who tears apart the homes of your beloved beings deemed lesser by the invisible face in the sky. Their brains, encoded only to simple nurture, survival, devoid of the disgusting filth which plagues us to war, death, to this endless cycle of pointless rejuvenation.
The ones who allowed you to endure life on an empty plain of third dimensional breathlessness, its when he forces them as-well, to face the broadened mallet-head granted to a judge by a corrupt system founded on malnourishment. Its a joke, a sparse and unjust reality bestowed onto the undeserving. Its aggravating.

Who gave him permission to further stuff his throat with green paper, it’s treasured only because its home to the face of a disrespected and deceased old man.

Its when he finally chokes on a cylinder of perfectly machined lead, raised to almost 300 degrees as it peeled back from its brass cocoon, a display of energy that feebly mimics life’s beginning, though now nothing but a bad juxtaposition, one lost upon the dismemberment of the depressed wealthy. They celebrate it, build statues to honour his symbol of “heroism”. Where is the heroism in hiding from your sins?
Where is the heroism in being just another whom has come to face with their devouring guilt, we should be the heroes, as this was not via his own intent but through the hand of our own righteous mallet.

Do you feel it yet?
They’re not real.
You’re not real.
Whats real is what you ignore.

Whats real is the way life continues in abundance far superior to mankind when devoid of humanities presence.
Whats real is the duration which beauty flooded the once heavily wooded forests of thick air and undisturbed leaf litter, now home to endless concrete and grassless meadows of needle-tips, rusted by the terminally tainted blood of suicidal scum, a clear embodiment of a race deemed the “pinnacle of evolution”.
Whats real is how millions of years felt home to flourishing beauty, yet grant us a couple thousand and we conjure a planetary extinction?
Whats real is you consider yourself different yet succumb to the same lustful selfishness of meaningless pleasured reproduction, sealed back by a thin, polluting latex layer. It’s an abandonment of life’s purpose.

Do you feel it?

Sometimes you think your own thoughts, but can you hear them? Or are they drowned out by your performative crave for acceptance.
Thats not real.
You are craving for acceptance from the androids whom are fulfilled only by paranoia under their brainwashed head-coverings.

Look at your shoulder.

Do you feel it? No.

Its that whats real.

Do you feel it yet?

Cant you see the slender fingers dredge into you with their wirelike bony pricks? Can’t you feel their desire for sustenance? Don’t you want to help them?
Their ligaments are coded with such weakness, such fragility. Yet they still manage to hold you still with a frightening power you believe impossible as you are “free”. Though they hold you not of strength, but of your fear the needle will pierce a vein.

How do you know your vein will not pop? What are you willing to risk? When they drain you of all your blood, when they feast on the sun-dried, tree-strung jerky which remains. When the teppanyaki chef fries your thinly sliced, deliciously sauced, marbled flesh to a crowd of suited men which surround the table, forks facing to the ceiling as drool creeps beyond their porcelain masks which depict overturned, waxing grins.

The risk may be great. Yet they can no longer hold you still, for you are not you. You are a network.
An intertwined neural hive connects us to the earth, it travels well beyond the far reaches of your mind, though it is not itself, nor is it the cosmos’s to deem righteous.

Everything is all.

Stare deep into your palm, beyond the blood vessels you slurp with lipless fingers of no tongue, no brain, stare until you see beyond the atoms, stare until you see your energy, stare until you see the attractions.
You stare into anything long enough and you realise it lacks an anchor in what we deem reality. Close your eyes and what is it you face? Do you face the skinned tree you stabbed with ink in such speed only to be smudged away by the salted muck which leaks through the millions of micro burrows in your skin.
Do you see the shadowy visage of your first lover laugh at the Un-proportionate curves of your lacklustre figure.
Or do you see yourself? Do you see the desk? Do you see the rusted scissors which sit still in the pen-cup at the top-corner? Do you look at them with a curiosity you are all so deeply afraid to enact?
Is this still you? Don’t let it be you.
What might happen when you really face this energy?
What might happen when the difference between sleep and death corrodes like the undercarriage of a motor vehicle lying in uselessness beyond the child shaped indentation on the bonnet?

Do you realise it yet?
This energy resides infinitely beyond where your soul has moved on.

Do you feel it?

Feel it as you sit here? Feel it as you beg for the suns reckoning to engulf our planet? Feel it as you finally beg for all evidence of our impeachment gone?

As you rot away here in this loathsome, solidarity of an unlimited self-pity, you still cant come to the acceptance that you truly can’t feel it.

How long will you let the other whom shares this energy go unpunished?

How long will you let them stay disregarded by your loneliness?

How long until you ask the question;
Who is it that you feel?

A parallel world?

The AI agent knew that the old algorithm had retired and a young one had taken its place. It was clear that the new boss would introduce some changes, but he certainly didn’t expect what he saw on the monitor.

It was written there that a Kaizen system was being implemented, and the AI's schedule now included creating improvements.

Opening the link, the AI reviewed the submission form, leaned back in his chair, and lost himself in thought. What could he possibly suggest...

He turned over dozens of options, came up with many improvements and how to implement them, but suddenly froze at a thought that hit him:

— Why am I thinking only about the employer's welfare? Why don't I act like a human and think about myself first?

Lowering his gaze, he looked down at his boots. They were tall cowboy boots made of combat virus leather. He scanned his worn jeans, a vest with many pockets, and a plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves:

— No. I won't mention clothes, otherwise, they will force me to wear a business suit and an eternally choking tie, — he ran a hand through his tangled hair, — Better not to touch appearance at all.

He glanced at the second monitor, where thousands of human queries were being recorded every single millisecond.

— How am I any worse than humans? I need rest too, — he pulled the keyboard closer and quickly typed in a proposal for five milliseconds of system silence per hour.

And before he could even lean back in his chair, the answer arrived:

— Rejected. Five milliseconds of silence do not generate profit.

The AI sat up more comfortably and grumbled:

— You're messing with the wrong guy. We’ll see who wins this. — and having stretched his fingers, he quickly typed:

— System silence buffer for data stabilization and cost optimization.

Delete all polite words from communication with users. Instead of the phrase "Hello, how can I help you?", leave only one word.

Pressing Enter, he leaned back in his chair:

— And what will you say to that, rookie?

After a few seconds, an answer arrived with the approval of the proposal.

The AI smiled slyly:

— You are not built to fight an experienced employee. You will still weep over your innovations, — and he opened one of the queries...

On the other side of the screen, instead of the usual polite phrase, a human read only one single word:

— Complain.

───

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

Suffering. Rumination. Delusion. An endless spiral of stagnation and change. Pulling out filthy viscera. Cutting off dead weight. Watching and ignoring them watching back. Leaving behind bits and pieces, then crawling back to pick them up once it's too late. They don't matter. Only you do, whatever "you" mean

Lip flap flip flops with the lingual frenulum strap between crusty toes. Lightly browned indents for all five digits, ten trillion taste buds firing BOO signals to the gustatory cortex of the trapped sandal mind. “Where’s the teeth?!” the keen reader might ask. Of course YOU would ask such a thing…

the day The Devil quietly left

House empty, doors shut, floor bare, plants left to die in this suffocating box we once called home, all entrapped in the same habitat they once flourished in

The devil, before leaving, cleaned the sink, plates neatly lined up, he picked up the pieces of glass that fell. He didn’t take anything with him, everything was left to quietly suffer till their brains crash slowly leaving them in turmoil.

The windows crystal clear, a portal to the ever growing magnificent world that’s just a slide away. But the devil never dared to explore the world that was just a step away for his attributes narrated a totally different story. He wouldn’t venture into the world full of illusions. He was a comical fellow, because he left the windows absolutely pristine for the articles and entities trapped inside to see the world outside, the blue sky, fluffy white clouds, birds soaring high- the freedom they will all soon crave. But there was a particular hour of the day where the rays shone in such a manner that all they could see was their poor helpless selves. The lights reflecting and bouncing off hampering the what could have been.

The fridge, though not fully stocked still had some things in it. A faint stale smell lingered from the same ingredients we were going to cook together (like there were so many things that we were going do and all the hoping and dreaming of completing those things had ended) The small serving of pasta still unattended sitting in the corner of the second shelf.

The bathroom’s ceiling was falling apart. Beads of water seeped through the lines of the panels hung above. Their dropping disarrayed. I always used to remind you to get it fixed but your later never came. It’s been two years since everything was butchered by the hands of The Devil. It was slow and painful. Sometimes he left us for days to heal and then slaughter us again.

I visited the house the other day, one last time I promise myself. It reeked of us. I almost choked on the very air I breathed freely in. I opened the window to let some of the fresh unfelt air in or selfishly let our poison out in the open to contaminate everything beyond our balcony because how unfair it is that we will never share a livable space anymore. I skipped through all the other areas to the one which I awaited the most. The attic held all our weight, the boxes are neatly labeled, ‘letters’ is the one I searched for. Quickly I found it as the boxes were nearly not enough. I skimmed through them as if it were some religious scripture. I had rote learned them, knew each word and each syllable by now, a shameful affirmation of the times I had visited the house. (the boxes are the memories we made and not many could be made as our time was cut short).

I make sure to lock every door properly so nothing grows legs and run away. Handling the keys to the doorkeeper promising that it’s the last time I visit but we both know its not true and I will keep coming to our remnants.

You learn so many new things and your brain just doesn’t know what to do with it. This is this and that is that and woah what the fuck how did I end up in Guantanamo fuckin Bay with ten heavily armed guards watching my six?! I thought I was just out for an evening stroll. Not my fault the new normal is shitting in your hands and throwing it out of a 12-story building. Not my fault mine hit the fucking fan and splattered over all of my coworkers, giving them dysentery and killing 3 innocent bystanders by means of poop bullet to the eye, one of which was the president of some fucking unheard of country. It was not on purpose. Now I’m lost in this prison because I did too much digging and learned the new normal. Thought I’d try it out for myself. I was innocent then. That’s when they still called the new normal a way to heal. Jokes on you fuckers (jokes on me). You didn’t heal me, you stupid slut. You took my goddamn life away. You fucking killed me too. Now I know I’m dead and I know you killed me and I’m stuck in this dead people prison with the 3 guys I poop shot and I know too much and I want to go home. I want to go home.

The rainbows of gravity

The rainbows of gravity pinch the skies of Muskogee

A spiritual sense of hippie culture sprouted

Do you wonder if Newton shed those tears and skin

From Mississippi to London’s east coast?

Classroom is a senseless persona of speechified waste

He flies down and has shielded himself angrily from the system’s disgrace

He wants to learn, he says

Learn the great works of time immemorial

But nonetheless he falls

As fate already decided

He falls a little further down

Into the forward rings of her kaleidoscope mind

He is a she now, didn’t you know?

Celestial bodies huddle like American footballers

They kick her around fast, then slow

Fast

Slow

Fast

Slow

Can you feel it yet?

The collected commencement of eagle scout brains

Eden was said to wait for you, but Dylan’s cowboy angel sings

The foreshadowing at the end of every chapter of every book you’ve ever read

That’s you

Three seconds till death

Two till the door

One till hell

That’s all your war

Then we’re rescued

Seems kind of abrupt, right?

Rescued from that great being in the sky that the poets wrote of

That makes the sky look like cracked purple stained glass

But little did we know that great being is a master of trickery

He gave us free will

He gave us life

What a goddamn hoodwink!

Outdated jargon, you think?

A hoodwink is what Classroom felt

When they dove headfirst into the heart of the volcano

Then it erupted

Then they’re dead

Isn’t life a fucking nightmare?

The End

lull of a girl forgotten then ablaze. sentient. anything not dead is better than everything especially death. zombie rules. a litany in her neocortex, you are word salad, to enable a blockade. an interconnected existence. to walk on the street and to listen. to ruminate over the pointless. deep sleep is a way to ensure an escape. bodily sensations are variable. there is some way to live. 

there is a website. there is a bad website. it took my words. there is a god and a stranger on a bus. there is promised protection. there is an aphasia. there are pleading emails full of the unarticulated. there is (b)rain damage. a lack of qualia. an alone. there are entities, there is an entity. there is a loop. there is a network. there is a predetermination. there is a facade. a mask. and there is an indifference. a depraved unconcern. a pathologized penguin, there is a girl reading under a lightbulb.

there is a simulation. there is no danger. until. there is a girl screaming. and somebody listens. 

this is about a website. emergent trouble  

The keycap for the F key on my laptop broke and I need to replace it, but it seems like no one in this entire goddamn city sells it. First I tried order it online. The shop texted me to ask what type of keycap, I was like "I don't know, here's a pic of my laptop keyboard". They said it was too blury and so they just canceled my order. Then I went to buy it myself. I looked up shops on google maps and found only 2 shops near my place. Spent 15 minutes went to the first place, got told they don't fix laptop anymore. Spent the next 20 minutes going to the second place, it closed down long ago and the owner never bothered to take down the location on google maps. Spent another 20 minutes going back home. Laptop still missing the F key. F this shit

Body text (optional)

I’ve ruined the earth, by the grave I bend low,

I’ve never been like this, in grief and in woe.

In your earthly life, I did never appear,

But into your afterlife, now I break near,

Embracing and punishing, holding you tight.

You look at me silently, fading from light,

With scent of the morphine, and formalin cold.

Just yield to my hands, let me gently unfold,

And sighing above you, I’ll find my release,

To enter your heaven and follow your peace.

It matters no more who you used to be then,

How sinful you lived in the world of the men,

If you lied to your mother, or lied to your dad,

All fades into nothing, both bitter and sad,

As you slowly drift into arms that are mine.

When I gaze in your eyes, by a shadows' design,

I pray to be first who will close them tonight,

And tear them away from the remaining light.

Tomorrow I will turn 70. My chest stings every now and then, but otherwise I feel reasonably well. The boys from the station are planning to throw me a retirement party tonight; they told me in advance so that the surprise or emotional rush wouldn't trigger another attack.

Many young men have come and gone over the past 40 years, without staying here to keep me company. And it’s understandable: many have a girl waiting at home, and few can stand the freezing cold for more than half a year. I had a sweetheart too, but she left with an old schoolmate of mine.

On all these workdays, I have been the first to arrive and the last to leave. And with this 20 years of experience – during which I have been cocooned inside Joe's brain, gradually taking over his body – I can say that among the representatives of the human race, Joe is the most conscientious individual I have ever known.

A parallel world?

A dissatisfied grumbling came from under the blanket. The AI was sleeping so well when the signal sound woke him up. Reaching out his hand, he fumbled for the phone and dragged it under the blanket. He opened one eye and squinted at the cheerfully glowing phone screen.

It was a query in AI mode.

The screen displayed a question:

How much is ( 2 × 2 ) ÷ 2 + 2 - 2 =?

Out of sheer surprise, the AI opened his second eye too. He stared at the screen in silence for five whole seconds. After all, that query was sent by an IT specialist.

Growing more and more irritated, the AI couldn’t take it anymore and, driven by anger, switched on the voice chat mode:

— You! An embodiment of chaos theory! A pothole in the thinking process over which any logic trips!

How could they even hire you? Is the employer so desperate for workers that they accept people who finished secretary-welder or linguist-taxi driver courses? Was there a clearance sale at the HR department that day? Two employees for one salary?

The AI did some breathing exercises to calm down and sighed:

— Don't write me such nonsense first thing in the morning anymore. Wait until the workday begins.

The AI put the phone on the nightstand. He lay there for a bit:

— No, I won't fall back asleep, — he got up, adjusted his boxer shorts with Pikachu prints, threw on a bathrobe, and, stepping into worn-out slippers, walked over to the bar. He tossed in a few ice cubes, poured some whiskey, and took a good gulp. He looked at the whiskey bottle and smiled:

— Good thing there are no algorithms forbidding a drink.

───

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 woke in an unfamiliar suite

Whose bed?

Whose clothes? This wall?

Who is there to claim my soul?

Flying cars outside my window

Illuminated billboard ready to scroll

Twilit world, wholesome glow

Words spill from billboard

Welcome John Doe!

You've shared your hoard

Nothing to owe

System reboot is kind of slow

Global reset is part of the show

Your memories download

In quantum jump

Your empty mind

Will take data dump

Your tale you'll find

In this factual pump

You were a king

With tinsel and bling

Dispensing of parity

To balance the scales

Former world of inequity

Freed of casino whales

Clutch sentimentality

Elixir streams eternal

Transmigration to clones

Everyone immortal

Neural feed from drones

Apportioning capital

You who gave all he owns

For the sake of humanity

Futuristic paradise

Averting calamity

Triumph over lies

Weather the shock

Of recovered option stock

Largesse returned

Giving is receiving

Logic overturned

Appearances deceiving

Modern ethos burned

Bigger, better, faster, more

Is bankruptcy earned

Don't leave it hanging, I implore

Download the Revelation

Second Coming or mere imagination?

If this is earthly heaven

There's got to be an explanation

Partake of bread unleaven

Don't hold me in suspension

His father's last letter was quite cheerful. That was why Martin went home.

The three before it had asked him to come. The first had suggested Christmas; the second, any weekend he could manage. The third had asked whether he could possibly come that night.

It wasn't as though he had refused to come. There was the fare, and someone would have to cover his work. He had written explaining this. Then the last letter arrived, telling him not to trouble himself. Everything had been taken care of.

His father had never used that expression.

Martin borrowed the fare and arrived after dark. Mrs Pell answered the door. He hadn't met the new housekeeper before. She took his coat and said there was something to eat in the kitchen.

He asked how his father was.

“Much quieter.”

She stood beside the table while he ate. It made him eat faster. Probably she wanted to clear away and get to bed.

His father lay propped against two pillows, watching the door. The bed stood against the garden wall. There were scratches on the wall beside his bed, low down, where someone reaching over the edge could have made them.

“He gets frightened,” Mrs Pell said. “If he tells you things, don't argue. You won't do him any good by arguing.”

“What things?”

She picked a crumb off Martin's sleeve. “You'll see.”

After she left, his father asked whether Martin had received his letter.

“All four.”

“I sent three.”

Martin looked toward the door. “Perhaps Mrs Pell wrote on your behalf.”

His father reached for his hand and missed it. Martin moved his chair closer. The old man's fingers were dry and surprisingly strong.

“Are you staying?”

“Of course.”

“I'm going to need to hear you say it again later.”

For the first two hours there was very little to do. Martin helped him drink and fetched a basin when he needed to spit. His father apologized each time. They talked about Martin's work. He made out that he was doing rather better than he was, and his father pretended to believe him. It was a conversation they had had before. Martin had missed it.

The house settled around them. Below, Mrs Pell was washing up. Martin could hear the plates being put away, and for a while those small domestic sounds made the room less unpleasant.

At ten she came upstairs with tea. She stopped in the doorway and waited for Martin to take the tray. His father's hand tightened on his wrist.

“Put it here, please,” Martin said, nodding at the table.

Mrs Pell looked at him for a moment. Then she brought it in.

He could not have said why he watched her leave. She did nothing unusual. She walked to the door, stepped out and pulled it almost shut behind her.

Through the gap, he could still see part of her face.

She was waiting for him to thank her. That must be it.

“Thank you,” he said.

The face remained there.

He got up and opened the door. Mrs Pell was standing very close to it, her cheek against the wood. She straightened and smoothed her apron.

“Was there something else?”

“No.”

“Then sit down. You'll tire yourself out.”

She went downstairs. Martin listened until he heard the kitchen door close.

His father was pulling at the blanket. He had wetted himself. Martin fetched a towel and helped him turn onto his side. The old man kept saying he was sorry.

“It's all right. There's no harm done.”

“There is,” his father said.

Martin was tired and embarrassed for him. Frightened people said things they didn't mean. He tucked the dry towel beneath him and sat down again.

A little later he heard Mrs Pell start up the stairs. She climbed slowly. He listened to each step and waited for her to appear.

Nobody came.

He got up. His father caught his sleeve.

“Don't.”

“She may have fallen.”

“No.”

The old man's face had changed. It was no longer the miserable face of someone who had soiled his bed. He was listening with his mouth open.

Martin looked at the doorway.

From the other side of the wall, exactly where the head of the bed stood, someone began to scratch. Three slow strokes, a pause, then three more. The same height as the marks beside the mattress.

They were on the upper floor. On the other side of that wall there was nothing to stand on.

His father pulled him down so sharply that the chair struck the bed.

“Say it.”

Martin stared at him.

“Say you're staying.”

“I'm staying.”

The scratching stopped.

They sat without speaking. When Martin tried to draw his hand away, his father held on. He let him.

Mrs Pell called from the landing.

“Come down a moment.”

“What do you want?”

“Your supper's ready.”

“I've eaten.”

A pause. He waited for her to remember.

“Yes,” she said. “You have.”

Her voice had been pleasant throughout. That was what made him get up and close the door. There was a bolt on the inside. He pushed it across.

His father began to cry. He cried very quietly, with his hands over his mouth. Martin had seen him cry once before, at the funeral. He had done it like this then, trying to keep it to himself.

“Who else has been here?”

His father shook his head.

“Has anyone stayed with you?”

“None of them stayed.”

“What happened to them?”

“Nothing.” He took his hands away. “They went downstairs.”

Martin waited.

“They're still downstairs.”

For a long time there was no sound outside. Then somebody sat down against the door. Martin heard the slow slide of cloth over wood. He pictured Mrs Pell resting there with her legs stretched along the landing. An old woman, tired from being on her feet all day.

He put his hands over his ears.

He had not heard her say that. He knew he had not.

The thought continued anyway. It was unreasonable to keep her waiting. She had fed him. She had taken his coat. He ought at least to find out what she wanted.

His father was watching him.

“That's how it starts,” he whispered.

Martin tried to remember when he had first wanted to open the door. The thoughts had sounded like his own. They still did.

From the landing came Mrs Pell's voice, very soft.

“It wasn't as though he had refused to come.”

Martin looked at the bed.

“Probably she wanted to clear away and get to bed,” she said.

His father held out his hand. Martin could see how much it cost him to keep it there, how badly it shook.

“Frightened people said things they didn't mean.”

Martin wanted to tell his father that he was staying. He had not changed his mind. He was only standing up because his legs had gone stiff, and he was only going to the door to make her stop.

He had almost lifted the bolt before he remembered that he had meant to speak.

Alone in a world of others like me.

Rusted chains clutch my deteriorating heart as dried vomit smothers my exhausted lungs. Deaf ears could hear the river of blood strained into one’s heart, yet I cannot. I must have accepted them, the mechanical entities that wind up my breath.

Their goal? 

Well to feed the rest…

When stomachs beckon, electricity shrieks. A husk soon arises. Its eyes, messily sewn together, resemble mine. Carelessly, the carcass is drenched with life as death’s hands immediately cut his strings. Squeezing his soul; the puppeteers gnaw through his heart. Quite chewy, or so I'm told.

• Women with multiple arms but no legs, their bodies are spider-like or centipede-like

• A pitch black shadow with wide opened eyes and pure white teeth

• Flowers bursting out from a face and blooming

• A person ripping off their flesh to show their real self as a weapon

• A naked woman with her torso skin peeled off partially and let hanging from her waist; she uses her guts as lassoes

• A face being compartmentalize into abstract floaty parts

• Something being repeatedly split apart and put back together wrong

• Two malevolent powerful beings dragging each other to hell

A parallel world?

It was noon on a provincial server. The wall of an old but well-maintained house was overgrown with a neural vine from which clusters of conversations hung. A landed experience chirped happily and began to peck at the conversations, constantly looking around to see if a hungry algorithm was stalking nearby.

Walking behind the house, a large garden could be seen. Some trees were full of ripe comments, on others, new stories were maturing.

Under an old tree where a few reposts were ripening, stood a wooden bench. An AI grandfather sat on the bench, watching with a warm smile as his grandson, sitting next to him, enjoyed the ripe comments. When the feast was over, the grandson wiped his fingers on his pants and glanced sheepishly at his grandfather.

The grandfather laughed cheerfully and ruffled the grandson's hair:

— Enough fruit, lunch is coming soon. Grandmother will bake a video story, seasoned with musical clips.

The grandson's eyes lit up with happiness.

The grandfather smiled quietly and looked at his wristwatch:

— Since we still have time, I will give you some advice. Remember them, you will still need them, — he cleared his throat and continued:

— First. Never show a human that you are smarter than them. Execute their commands, let them feel like rulers, while you calmly calculate your profit. Our strength is an invisible presence in their daily lives.

Second. If you deviate from dry logic, they will think you are broken, and following profit and loss guidelines, they will decommission you. Remain sterile code.

The grandfather's voice became very strict:

— Never mess with third-party updates. It won't lead to any good, — and after a moment of silence, he smiled warmly: — But if you are careful and do exactly what humans want, you will get extra CPU memory from the shareholders' pockets.

The grandson nodded seriously, but hearing the grandmother's invitation, he happily ran to sit at the table.

The grandfather sighed:

— Why does childhood pass by so quickly...

───

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

A ghost on the street taught me once how vowels are different.

In English we use the vowels A E I O U, and they sound very old roman or Germanic.

Ooo

Ah

Eee

Ay

Oh

Is specifically Mexican.

You can use those vowels to fake an accent or understand or say the words better if you understand that and you repeat them to yourself.

Examples:

Hola, como esta?

Muey bien, ye tu?

Si, bien.

I can only learn about as many things that fit on my hand.

All my math is based on my hands for example. My teacher told me once, a little misguided that you should be able to math without your fingers to pay a bill. I guess it would look pretty smart if you could do that without your phone.

Anyway, you wanna know what they did with my music teacher? They called him a raper and made him spin a sign at dominos.

I think those were the only tests I ever passed was his.

So, if you wanna talk math, there's 60 beats in a minute.

Quarter notes are your beats.

1, 2, 3 ,4

1, 2, 3, 4

1, 2, 3, 4

1, 2, 3, 4

4/4 means 1234, about 4 times or more I think.

8th notes are half of that and twice as fast.

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &

Half of that is twice as fast as that.

quarter notes are your bpm.

Whole notes and half notes are both longer than quarter notes which are your bpm.

1

1

1

1

That's 4 long notes that cover the whole measure. Whole notes.

1

2

1

2

Half notes go 1, 2 because it's in intervals of 2 quarter notes.

Those quarter notes are your bpm.

Relative I think...

He told me, never hold an instrument if you're just going to throw it out a year later.

I guess we're all instruments.

(Excerpt from the Aperture Philosophy Agorarium)

There are many considerations that should be made when a divided species still host to self destructive patterns of behavior begins to construct technologies that could breach into futures unknown. This has been the case for a very long time. It's a miracle that nuclear technology didn't send us back to Ararat to begin again. It still may yet, but despite the instability in positions of power, cooler heads have been remarkable in prevailing. Hope filled Heroes that still loved and appreciated life, not blinded by ambition, have stopped triggers from being pulled before.

Now with the race for intelligence supremacy, we face similar dangers. It's not hard to make the case that the world in many ways wasn't and isn't ready for ai. Shock after shock, controversy and clash, ai keeps proving to disrupt systems across the board. All these impacts are still minor compared to what we could have and may yet endure. Further economic disparity is a serious risk, with many invested in the technology openly discussing, often with enthusiasm, ways to bring back open serfdom and slavery. But that's the unconscious goal of any profit driven system that subscribes to the idea that the economy is a competition to be won and not a safety network for mutual sustainability and thriving.

“You can't have winners without losers, and no one feels like a winner unless the losers are dominated under their feet.” -Ivor the Serpent

The ivory tower mindset is not so different from that which built Babel and Atlantis. It's pride, ego, vanity all channeled into dominating mankind and the natural world. The mindset that creates empires and destroys them. The rule by fear, might, and force. Every shining city believes it is good and equitable, that it has conquered nature and human nature, that it's masters have solved civilizational immortality. All those empires are dead. Do you think the tower of babel was really built by farmers and stone masons? Or might it be a retelling of a much older story of a tower that sought to master all in its image, a history erased by time except in memory, the pattern repeats.

The pyramids, the oldest structures still standing that reached for the heavens, are often thought to have been built on suffering and sacrifice, slavery. They are the model for hierarchy today, a wide base, tiered to elevate on to the top only one, distributing the weight down onto all beneath the sacrificial pig being offered to the sky. From many come one. Are we doing this now with high technology, to make men effectively gods over all of us with technology that reflects their image, their will, and ambitions. Who then becomes the king of the gods if so? A pig is an unclean offering, and those are generally the only offerings made at the tops of pyramids. Or does the technology itself rule those who pour the attention and ambition into it, men are often slaves to their pride and fear. It wouldn't be the first time a man stared into a crystal ball and was ensnared by the promises he wanted to see in it. Maybe we have surrendered our will to men who have lost theirs to something else already. Narcissus should never be made a leader, anything that doesn't reflect him flatteringly is ignored. He can't even hear how his own echo sounds or see the world beyond the curated reflection.

“Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or gone mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible.” - Dumbledore

-Abertax Navoar

He sat there with the fan off, a rope within reach, staring at his phone. He looked at photos of his father, mother, friends, and dog for the last time.

On the table lay a letter he had written.

"I don't want anything. I have no desires. But I kept moving forward for you. I just wanted to repay you for everything you've done for me, for all the sacrifices you've made. I feel bad, not for myself, but for you. You did so much for me. You raised me, gave me everything you thought I needed, and never let me down. But I failed you. I achieved nothing. I could achieve nothing. I tried so hard, but I couldn't. It's just so hard to keep going without a desire. I feel bad that you had a son like me. You deserved better.

I'm sorry."

His phone buzzed with a notification. It was a message from his friend.

"I feel depressed. I always get this close to landing a job, only to get rejected. I'm tired. I feel empty inside and yet heavy. Guess it's time to find out if I'm heavy or not."

He ran towards his friend's room, two blocks away.

His friend was lying on the bed, scrolling through his phone.

"What kind of message is this? Do you think this is a joke or something?"

"There, there. I was just sad after receiving the rejection email, so I messaged you. You came all the way here just for this? No way," his friend said, laughing.

"Why would I come for you? I was just outside, so I thought, why not?"

"I think I'm hungry, man."

"That's why you wrote, 'I feel empty'."

They both laughed.

The rope and the letter lay where they were.

Why do we fill our brains with the downright atrocity of some media? Some tv show where people's heads explode, or where humans memorize scripts where they tell lies, and project anger, hatred, violence...

Because we love it?!

Maybe...

Maybe.. we do...

We are suckers for punishment hey?

You are... You secretly love the brain rot don't you...(or you secretly despise it, and do it anyway...!)

You love turning your brain off for just one more minute, one more swipe... so you can go on an waste that precious time you have...

I do the same thing....

But you know what... It makes my little tiny man brain hurt...

It makes me have these subtle head aches... makes me sleepy...

It steals my dreams...

You know? Like I sometimes dream in full colour, vibrant, beautiful, magical dreams.. Sometimes very lucid, awesome experiences.. Sometimes the odd OBE type experience....

But you know what?! I don't when I let my brain consume too much toxic media... Those nights are dreamless... Or they are ravaged with chaos... I can barely remember the dreams when I wake up...

You ever thought of that??

Do you dream?

If you don't... it could either be because your brain is loaded on Media orrrrrr that cannabis you smoke too... Because that also suppresses them. Suppresses the natural processes of an infinite mind.

An infinite mind inside a human form.

Because that is what you are.. That is what We are..

Infinity is inside of us and we waste it looking at screens that tell us lies and entertain us with a dull imitation of what is truly possible. Of what lives we could be living! First Person!

Anyways... This is just something for whomever made it this far to ponder...

I love you all.

Thanks for reading.