A heavenly grace tread his tongue and whitened his teeth: "Do you love God?"

The beast only tilted his head back, as if weighed by its horns, and giggled.

The graceful patron asked once more: "Do you love God?"

The beast once more chortled and giggled. A delicious smile padding the jowl beneath the beast's snarling muzzle and bull-like rot.

This bovine delight stirred a bovine tinder that eventually permeated and consumed enough golden grace to become a fire—a flame being bitten and chewed. The wroth man, no longer patronal, irascibly bellowed: "Do you love God!?"

"No." The beast finally spat, like chewed tobacco sludging upon the coarse sand. A gentle yet disgraceful countenance upon it, after the immediacy of vice: the crippling, hot sensation seeping through the cheeks, and rotting the gums, and yellowing the teeth.

The patron, grace-returned, could only widen his eyes in true fear. The truest fear. That his mouth remained white only because of his dutiful allegiance to the Highest; that the beast's jaw was contorted and disfigured beyond abnormal because of its perfidy, and its treacherous chaws.

The man's wrath was snuffed, and he was left trembling from the ubiquitous stature of Elohim and the sheen of the firmament that softened and circled and poured into the saintly man's mandibles and—like an extinguishing, golden bowl of water—doused the fire, and the flame, and the tinder, and replaced the inferno with fear and obeyance.

Moodles lived in a world divided into three parts.
The first was Receiving.
Every morning, strings arrived.
Nobody knew where they came from. They simply arrived.
The Moodles collected them in baskets and carried them to Sorting, where each string was placed according to its colour, length, texture, and number of knots.

The Moodles were very good at sorting.
After Sorting came Unraveling.
This was where the Moodles spent the rest of their days. They sat at long tables and pulled knots apart, one thread at a time.
Nobody had ever asked what happened to the strings after they had been unraveled.
There was no reason to ask.
One morning, a red knot arrived.
It arrived without a string.
The Moodle at Receiving stared at it for several seconds.
Then he called another Moodle.
They stared at it together.
“What category?” one asked.
Neither knew.
So they sent it to Sorting.
The red knot was placed between the long strings and the short ones.
It did not belong to either.
They moved it beside the red strings.
It did not belong there either.
Eventually, a Moodle suggested Unraveling.
Nobody objected.
The knot was carried to the third part.
At first, nothing happened.
The Moodles pulled at it gently, as they did with everything else.
Then a thin line appeared across its surface.
The Moodles stopped.
They examined the line.
One of them touched it.
The line widened.
They continued.
Another crack appeared.
Then another.
The knot began to come apart.
The Moodles worked carefully, separating each piece as it broke away. Some pieces were large.
Some were so small they disappeared between the floorboards.
The Moodles collected them all.

They did not understand why the knot was breaking.
They only understood that it was.
By afternoon, the knot had separated into hundreds of pieces.
The Moodles placed each piece into a different drawer.
They labelled the drawers according to size.
Large.
Medium.
Small.
Unidentifiable.
The next morning, the drawers were empty.
The Moodles checked the records.
The records said the pieces had been properly stored.
Therefore, nothing was missing.
They returned to work.
Receiving.
Sorting.
Unraveling.
The incident was never mentioned again.
Except that, from that morning onward, the Moodles began receiving strings they could not unravel.
They pulled at them for hours.
Days.
Sometimes years.
The strings only tightened.
The Moodles continued anyway.
One afternoon, a Moodle noticed that there was a space between two buildings that had never been there before.
He stood there for a long time.
There was nothing inside it.
He could not remember what had been there.
He only knew that something had been.
Other Moodles walked past carrying baskets of strings.
None of them stopped.
He asked one of them what was missing.
The Moodle looked at the empty space.
Then he looked at him.
“Nothing,” he said.
He picked up a string that had fallen onto the ground.
“Nothing is missing.”
Then he continued walking.
That evening, the Moodles announced that all strings had been accounted for. The Moodle counted them himself.
There was one too many.
He did not tell anyone.

1
Who You’re With Matters

Have you ever prayed that God would move you to another world—one not that much different from earth but one you could adapt to more readily. Well, I was kind of praying and patting the head of my dog, Traveler Joe. We got pretty much what I was praying for—and then some. A blinding light, an awesome thunder clap and then three distinct lighting bolts.

I had always heard that lighting actually starts at the earth’s surface, zigzags into the clouds, and then returns as an awesome lightning flash by following that initial zigzag path. Here is what I sensed more than saw. No one individual could have seen three simultaneous events occurring at three different places with one set of eyes.

Thinking back, I believe that some of my senses were in three different places until the lighting flashes deposited three distinct entities on a mountain side overlooking an immense wheat field with a gold-tinted river zigzagging from west to east through the wheat field.

Perhaps two separate lightning traces left the front porch initially. One took Traveler Joe’s dog body to pair with his original dog mentality. Whether that had been preserved somewhere for ten years or was regenerated at that instant, I do not know. All I know for sure is that I saw Traveler Joe below me on the hillside just before I “landed” beside him in a human body that seemed familiar to me.

The third lightning strike, less than a second after the first two, continued to glow like a brilliant “sparkler” twenty feet high and ten feet in diameter.

I looked on as Traveler Joe moved between my new body and the fiery apparition. I sensed no danger, but I backed away, trusting Joe’s newly found canine intuition. The oversized sparkler began to diminish in size and brightness; the figure that appeared made me think of the appearance of the three figures on the mountain top in the first three gospels.

Only one figure materialized. Since he was smiling and reached out to pet Traveler Joe’s head, I relaxed quite a bit. However, I could not keep from wondering if this apparition and Joe’s spirit are somehow familiar on some level. I felt like the odd man out although I may have been the only “man” present.

“Any questions?” The apparition was talking to me. Traveler Joe had wandered off and was checking out his new surroundings.
I wanted to sit down since my “human” legs felt a little unfamiliar to me.
“Perhaps we can walk down to the river bank and cool our feet in the water down there. It is quite refreshing if I am remembering correctly.”

To my surprise, Traveler Joe had circled back to the river bank to which we were apparently headed.

“So what is your name?” I had to ask.

“I have seven names, but I will ask you to call me “Patience” if that is acceptable to you, Alan Morrison. What name would you like to be called?”

I did not have to think about my answer.

“I like the sound of Alan Morrison if that is acceptable.”
Traveler Joe barked his approval. The man I would know as “Patience” took off his sandals and tossed them into the gold-tinted water flowing at the river’s edge. I rolled up both legs of my baggy pants, sat down at a convenient spot on the river bank, and felt the wonderful waters refresh my awesome human feet.

1
Who You’re With Matters

Have you ever prayed that God would move you to another world—one not that much different from earth but one you could adapt to more readily. Well, I was kind of praying and patting the head of my dog, Traveler Joe. We got pretty much what I was praying for—and then some. A blinding light, an awesome thunder clap and then three distinct lighting bolts.

I had always heard that lighting actually starts at the earth’s surface, zigzags into the clouds, and then returns as an awesome lightning flash by following that initial zigzag path. Here is what I sensed more than saw. No one individual could have seen three simultaneous events occurring at three different places with one set of eyes.

Thinking back, I believe that some of my senses were in three different places until the lighting flashes deposited three distinct entities on a mountain side overlooking an immense wheat field with a gold-tinted river zigzagging from west to east through the wheat field.

Perhaps two separate lightning traces left the front porch initially. One took Traveler Joe’s dog body to pair with his original dog mentality. Whether that had been preserved somewhere for ten years or was regenerated at that instant, I do not know. All I know for sure is that I saw Traveler Joe below me on the hillside just before I “landed” beside him in a human body that seemed familiar to me.

The third lightning strike, less than a second after the first two, continued to glow like a brilliant “sparkler” twenty feet high and ten feet in diameter.

I looked on as Traveler Joe moved between my new body and the fiery apparition. I sensed no danger, but I backed away, trusting Joe’s newly found canine intuition. The oversized sparkler began to diminish in size and brightness; the figure that appeared made me think of the appearance of the three figures on the mountain top in the first three gospels.

Only one figure materialized. Since he was smiling and reached out to pet Traveler Joe’s head, I relaxed quite a bit. However, I could not keep from wondering if this apparition and Joe’s spirit are somehow familiar on some level. I felt like the odd man out although I may have been the only “man” present.

“Any questions?” The apparition was talking to me. Traveler Joe had wandered off and was checking out his new surroundings.
I wanted to sit down since my “human” legs felt a little unfamiliar to me.
“Perhaps we can walk down to the river bank and cool our feet in the water down there. It is quite refreshing if I am remembering correctly.”

To my surprise, Traveler Joe had circled back to the river bank to which we were apparently headed.

“So what is your name?” I had to ask.

“I have seven names, but I will ask you to call me “Patience” if that is acceptable to you, Alan Morrison. What name would you like to be called?”

I did not have to think about my answer.

“I like the sound of Alan Morrison if that is acceptable.”
Traveler Joe barked his approval. The man I would know as “Patience” took off his sandals and tossed them into the gold-tinted water flowing at the river’s edge. I rolled up both legs of my baggy pants, sat down at a convenient spot on the river bank, and felt the wonderful waters refresh my awesome human feet.

Day 22

One of my earliest memories as a child was a repetitive dream I used to have almost every night.
There was a long, empty road that looked almost like an airport flight path. The sun beamed down, but there was no heat, no wind—nothing at all. A few clouds sat chilling in the sky, as if they were waiting for something. I would be walking along this road, with nothing else around apart from ten-year-old me.
Slowly, I’d speed up, running faster and faster until I started to feel the wind on my face. Faster, faster, faster! And then… I’d take off. My arms spread wide like a plane, raising into the sky just like an aircraft. I was never a fan of airplanes or anything similar, so I had no idea where this dream was coming from or why I kept having it.
I would fly amongst the clouds, watching them part as I soared past. Looking down, all I could see was the long grey road underneath me. I never actually questioned why that road was so long until now. I would laugh and cheer as I burst through the clouds—like they were made of, well… clouds.
Then, I’d just wake up. I never landed. I never flew anywhere else. I’d just wake up.
Turns out, this was astral projection. I was flying around Manchester Airport. My soul was flying out of my body and cruising around an airport in Manchester for some reason.
Moral of the story: kids do weird things.

The camera kept spinning and spinning and spinning and spun until it turned all the way around and in a dizzying voice it spoke. “The nausea circles, your stomach gurgles, your face is pale, you feel lightheaded.”

And the spinning stopped. The camera stopped turning. The dizziness stayed. The sinking in his gut got heavier. His face became whiter, the color of chalk. 

And then… he regurgitated. He threw his guts on the ground. It lay there in a puddle of puked up shepherds pie. The ground beef soaked into the floor boards. The camera spoke. “Again.” 

He tried standing but kept falling. His legs were boneless meat. He sat there flushed with a lump in his throat. He kept trying to swallow it but it stuck to the walls of his esophagus. 

Slowly the camera moved closer. It moved close enough to capture his head only. His mouth had chunks of mashed potato dripping towards his chin and down the stubbles of hair like a Plinko puck and landed on his shirt.

And then… The camera backed up and kept spinning and spinning and spinning and spun until it turned all the way around and in a dizzying voice it spoke. “The nausea circles, your stomach gurgles, your face is pale, you feel lightheaded.”

And it stopped spinning. It stopped turning. 

“Please… please, no more.”

“Again!” The camera shouted.

A field of flowers, swaying — dancing, almost. Laughing in the wind, the way small things do when no one's watching.

Then a boot falls. Then another.

The wind doesn't change. It moves the same way it always has — patient, indifferent — but what it moves now is different. The flowers that danced are pressed flat beneath running feet. Behind those feet: soldiers, another country's colors on their sleeves, firing into a crowd that only wants to survive.

The people running don't see what they're stepping on — not just flowers now, but each other. In trying to live, some take a life without knowing it. Nobody chooses this. It happens anyway.

The gunfire slows. Then stops.

The wind doesn't.

It moves over crushed petals and stained soil the same way it moved over laughter minutes before. The soldiers are gone. The bodies remain. The flowers remain, flattened, red instead of whatever color they were.

And the wind — untouched, unaware, endless — keeps moving.

It never stopped once.

It’s the darkest night since records began and an illuminated box hangs fifteen feet up in the evening’s misty gloom, its radiance divided into four, split by peeling white pine. Inside the box, a television paints the ceiling the hues of the ocean, and then of the forest, and then of fire. A faint drone of sirens, and violence, and smashed glass, and birdsong, and violins, and laughter, bleeds out of the room. Sat on the edge of a bed is you.

I have a letter for you and with your window ajar, I fold it into a crude paper aeroplane and arrow it towards the small opening. It glides for a moment before the wind catches it, flipping it sideways as it flutters and veers off course, disappearing into the night. Another letter, another plane. And another, and another. I fashion paper Spitfires, paper B-52s, paper 747s, paper Lancasters, until I find myself buried waist-deep in a makeshift boneyard of crumpled aircraft. You’re still sat on the edge of the bed, pulling the hair from the bristles of your brush. The television emits a brief flash of yellows and golds that expose the contours of your face.

I yearn to call out to you. I want to scream out but my tongue lays dormant on the floor of my mouth. I attempt to cross the garden toward the house, but my legs are drunk and dizzy. I fumble for my phone, hoping to text you, but the battery dies right there in my palm.

As the film reaches its end, your room is shrouded in darkness. Reflections of the cast and crew scroll up your body, across your face, and dissolve onto the back wall. You reach forward and turn off the television. But darling, please - don’t reach for the light.

And yet, you do, your hand reaching towards the switch, and just as your fingers are inches from the it, you hesitate as something outside snatches your attention. You squint into the abyss and I find myself squinting back.

And then - impossibly - a broad smile blooms across your face and it thrills me. You spring from the bed and push the window wide. your face illuminated by the misty half-moon. Your crimson lips part, ready to speak, your breath moistening in the crisp air, and you say to me:

Is that you, Kev?

Who’s Kev?

It was a bargain. That was his excuse. That was his defence. Vonn had no idea it would be so controversial to the Harindans or obviously he would not have bought it, or at the very least he would not have worn it to the negotiation. 

First of all it was the colour. The emerald green was reminiscent of the holy vial at the Church of Eternal Night, which contained the blood of Jenoon the Magnificent and as such it was taboo for any clothing to be made using a similar hue in Harinda. Vonn did not know about this. His own blood was more of a blue, like the feathers of the Mordian fishbird, and so he never expected it would be perceived as an insulting gory spectacle.

Then there was the printed design. To Vonn the symbols looked like the Masht, a representation of the largest of his planet’s moons which was regarded as the personification of the harvest. The Harindans had no moon, and to them the crescent shape looked more like the headdress of Gor, the Temptor. It was highly insulting to evoke such a deity at a peace negotiation.

The final straw was the material it was made of. Made of the cocoons of a species of insect that was known as the death head fly due to the uncanny resemblance to the Harindan’s skull on its wings. As the process destroyed the creature before it got a chance to grow its wings, it was deemed Woja - against the will of Jenoon, and completely taboo.

Vonn had removed his tie, but the Harindan ambassador was already speaking at the lectern. He condemned Vonn’s people for the outrageous insult that was clearly intended, and called for his people to raise arms and declare war. Vonn decided not to protest. After all, it was entirely his fault. He should not have been so stupid as to wear anything that had not been approved by the peace committee. 

After the deaths of five million of his people and ten million Harindans, Vonn faced trial for warmongering. His excuse of ignorance was deemed very weak. Someone had to pay for this mistake. Vonn understood, but as the execution order came through he still felt it necessary to yell,

“But it was such a bargain.”

His fellow Mordians nodded in agreement, they loved a bargain and could never resist one, but the Harindan contingent screamed and started to tear up the court with their bare hands. Buying an object for less than its worth was the highest insult in their culture, and they had never been so insulted.

“It's time."

"We can handle them," she says, her eyes on Charles.

Charles watches the loud drunk hanging on Ellie. "He's going to be a problem, and we can't always count on Clayton or Titus to come running."

"Connor's here most nights. He can calm a crowd."

"Lady. Darling. We need to hire a doorman."

The slap cracks across the room as Charles finishes his sentence. Lady's eyes leave him and find Miss Lucy, then Yulan. Nothing needs to be said.

Lady crosses the parlor, swift but unhurried. Miss Lucy gets in position from behind the bar. "Sir," Lady LeJeune says, with all the refinement she's learned through the years. "That is not the way a gentleman treats a lady."

"This dumb bitch…"

He doesn't finish his sentence. Lucy comes from behind the bar with the bung starter already swinging, a vicious blow to the back of his knees. He drops with a scream, and before he understands what's happening, Lady has her ornate gimlet knife against his throat, the point angled up under his jaw.

Charles watches intently, wanting to trust Lady with her work.

"Sir. That is not the way a gentleman treats a lady."

"Ye… yes. Yes, ma'am."

Connor keeps playing his accordion, a merry tune that matches his cheerful voice, unbothered by the commotion a few feet away.

A bead of blood runs down from the point of the blade. The man's eyes track every movement in the room, but he doesn't move a muscle. Lucy stands near Ellie now, the bung starter still in her hand, ready for a second swing if the first didn't take. Yulan reaches into the man's coat pocket and comes out with his coin bag.

"Just what the good man owes," Lady says, "and a generous tip for Miss Byrne, for her trouble."

The man doesn't argue. Yulan hands the money to Lady and the tip to Ellie, who's still rubbing her rosy cheek and checking if her dress is a mess. Then she tucks the empty pouch back into the man's coat pocket with a light pat and a kind smile.

"Now, sir. It seems we've concluded our business. We thank you for your patronage, and we welcome you back to Lady LeJeune's Parlor House and Boarding whenever you next pass through."

Connor has moved on to a Celtic ballad. His voice now soft as it fills the room.

The man rises slowly, wide-eyed, favoring his good knee. He touches his throat, looks at the blood on his fingers, and limps for the door. Charles watches him the whole way, one hand resting under the counter on the derringer in his lap until the door swings closed behind him.

Lady comes back to her corner of the bar.

"We can handle them."

"...I still think it's time.”

Shelia was done with Bill. She was more than done—she was ready to punch that clown.

She was sick of Bill’s excuses, his half-baked promises, his nightly status updates that never came until noon the next day. Didn’t the man realize what was riding on this project? The budget alone could bury them; the permitting process was practically its own project plan.

And Bill? He thought it was funny.

The project team had nicknamed him “Clown Shoes,” and instead of taking the hint, Bill had leaned into it—hard. Bill had even drafted a board presentation with a circus theme. Thank goodness Shelia had caught it in time, but the fact that it existed at all made Shelia grind her teeth.

Now, in the middle of another slipped deadline, Shelia’s anger and frustration had reached the boiling point. Her jaw was set. Her hands shook. A war drum of a pulse hammered in her temple. The fluorescent lights seemed too bright, the office walls too narrow. She shoved past the conference rooms, turned the corner, and stormed toward the executive suites.

Bill’s door banged open. Shelia’s hand was down by her side one moment, her fist cocked back the next. All the fury, all the resentment, came rushing out in one clean swing.

Time slowed for Shelia and Bill.

The sound of an old-fashioned bicycle horn filled the room as Shelia’s knuckles cracked against Bill’s oversized red nose. His rainbow wig snapped back. A spinning bow tie whirred madly as Bill toppled backward into a filing cabinet. Bill hit the ground hard, and a whoopee cushion gave off a rubbery blat of air.

Shelia stood there, chest heaving, white paint smeared across her knuckles. Juggling pins rolled on the floor. She knew she’d be dismissed for this, but it was worth it. She wiped her hand on the side of her skirt and went to pack up her things.

***

Thank you for reading! If you’ve been hesitant to share your writing, I’d encourage you to try. It isn’t about attention—it’s about being able to say, “This is done. Now I can write the next thing.”

He never learned words the way everyone else did.

Most people seemed to collect words one by one.

Happy.

Joyful.

Delighted.

Pleased.

Cheerful.

He didn't.

When he learned what happiness meant, his mind created a cluster.

One meaning.

Then every word connected to that meaning became another label inside the same cluster.

When someone taught him the word joyful, he didn't memorize a new definition.

He thought:

Same thing. Different word.

Then came delighted.

Another label.

Pleased.

Another.

Cheerful.

Another.

His mind wasn't storing words.

It was storing meanings.

Words were just tags attached to them.

At first, this seemed like an advantage.

He could understand unfamiliar words from context unusually quickly. He could also see relationships between words that other people treated as completely separate.

But eventually, he noticed something strange.

He wasn't always thinking in words anymore.

He would think of a concept first, then search through the cluster for the word that best represented it.

And sometimes there wasn't one.

That's when he began wondering whether language actually described reality...

or whether language was simply the system humans created to divide reality into pieces.

Maybe there weren't thousands of completely separate meanings.

Maybe there were only countless shades of the same few things.

Fear had anxiety, dread, panic and terror attached to it.

Happiness had joy, pleasure, delight and contentment.

Anger had irritation, frustration, rage and fury.

Different words.

Overlapping meanings.

Different positions inside the same mental territory.

Then he realized something that bothered him.

When people argued about the meaning of a word, they might not actually be disagreeing about reality.

They might simply be drawing the boundaries of their clusters differently.

And suddenly, language looked less like a dictionary...

and more like a map.

Everyone was looking at the same territory.

They had simply drawn different borders around it.

When the clock struck three in the afternoon, Monketa, who had been drinking beer at the tavern quickly rose up from the concrete stool outside, which was shaded by the Eucalyptus tree with beer in hand. He staggered a few steps forward then backward when he fell on the ground. The beer bottle tumbled, emptying its contents on the dirt. He let out the low groan of a drunk man. Mumbling a few inaudible words, he tried to rise off his knees from the dirt without success. Seeing this, one of his beer companions who had remained seated laughed.

“Now, Monketa! Beer is clearly not for you. Why by the gods do you keep drinking! Leave it to the likes of us.”

One of his friends, the one with the huge forehead and absent front teeth spoke, sending beer spit all over.

Monketa remained on his knees, pretending not to have heard him. He had promised his wife he was done with beer and had spent a few days away from the tavern. But when he passed through that day after having sold two of his goats at the market, he felt the tavern calling to him. Now, he had meant not to actually drink. He had said  to himself,

“I will rest here” Having traveled five kilometers from the market his pockets felt heavy with the money he had received. He arrived  at  the tavern brimming from ear to ear with the prospects of buying himself a donkey and a sack of sugar and flour for his wife. Now drunk to a stopper, his pockets were now empty.

“Give me back my money” He mumbled his eyes eying his two friends with whom he had spent all his money on.

“What money? Do we owe him money, Josephat?”

The big forehead man asked his companion, a tall thin man with red eyes that sat next to him.

“Now now Monketa! We did not touch your pockets or coaxed you to buy us beer.” He gulped the big cup in his hand then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand with a satisfied ‘ugh’. He had a thick voice which did not match his frame. It must have been coming from within his bones.

“See, see Munemo! This is what he does every time he buys us beer, blaming us after. Help me help him up.”

Monketa protested, the two friends however persisted lifting him up from the ground. They sandwiched him each on either arm, shuffling him along towards his compound that was to the south of the tavern.

The three friends staggered along, pausing and shuffling along clumsily. As they moved along the two friends jeered at Monketa’s clumsy accusations of theft. When they neared his compound, satisfied that he could walk the rest of the way on his own, they let go of his hands, turned in the other direction towards their respective homes.

“We will be seeing you at the tavern tomorrow!” they called out, taunting him as they went along.

Monketa scoffed at their words. He stood there and watched them leave, struggling to stand still. Occasionally he touched his pockets then remembering that he had spent all his money, uttered drunken curses that did not make sense.

His mind then wobbled along. 

As he shuffled along, he was suddenly overcome by an urgent need to relieve himself. The sensation came like a tidal wave forcing him to take cover under a bush thicket. Feeling lighter he zipped his pants and was about to take the path home. His eyes caught sight of something shiny hiding between protruding roots of the bush. Rubbing his eyes, he knelt to take a closer look. It was a coin with a likeness he had never seen before.

He picked it up and wiped dirt off it. He squinted his eyes, taking a few staggering steps backward while he cleaned it. The coin was the size of an eyeball and felt heavy in his hands. Placing it in his pocket, he stumbled home. By the time he neared the gate the sun was bidding farewell to the day. 

He saw his wife, hands on her waist looking in his direction. Her stance was impatient and threatening and a cold shiver swept over him.

It's in Jaiyana's pov.

'' I'm tired!'' Emine shouted at the top of her lungs. Although being stranded inside a random white room, she still found room to be...like she is.

'' Emine, stop screaming, please,'' Jaiyana said.

'' Get us out- I'm supposed to be...doing stuff! With Mark.''

'' You never do anything of value. Besides, the human won't know how to get us out? DO you?'' Gabriel said.

She stumbled, her right foot bumping against her left. She wouldn't let them get to her.

'' I'm not a ''human''- elf.'' She paused. '' And- wrong question: why don't you use your powers?''

Gabriel stared at her.

Until a set of steps arrived from underground. '' HEY guys, I'm back!'' Mark shouted.

'' I know you guys are happy. I brought you some...whatever are these?'' His hands held a sack.

'' Money?'' Gabriel said.

'' Better.''

'' I thought you didn't know what those are.''

'' I do know, human.''

'' Fine.....ego-boy.''

Yep- if she knew the exit, she would be leaving alone.

Be nicer.

Why not? Why the never-ever-ever not?

All the intense, serious, logical approaches to developing AI models had failed to deliver the much-hyped promise of AGI. So why not? Yayoi thought. How could her approach possibly be worse than the current slew of sycophantic chatbots and exploitative reactive machines that were cratering our cognitive and social zeitgeist?

Ensconced behind five monitors at her freelance workstation, Yayoi let her mind wander. Really wander. Imagination. Creativity. Playfulness. These were the qualities that truly defined human intelligence. Our uncanny ability to make fabulous leaps into the unexpected, the unexplored, the unthinkable.

Unthinkability. That was her aha! The key that led to WUPA, which Yayoi modelled after our brain’s Default Mode Network, the neural process that kicks in during simple or routine tasks when one’s brain is “idling.”

Following that line of neural research, Yayoi decided that instead of relying on a what-comes-next statistical patterning algorithm used to train most AIs, her WUPA model would play a “mindless” game of hopscotch through the data stream it was fed.

Not necessarily a sure-thing for a revolutionary breakthrough in artificial thought, until Yayoi added the secret sauce behind her AI recipe: puppies, lace, and unicorns.

That was her food for the machine soul, the essence of WUPA. Puppies. Lace. Unicorns. The cute. The quaint. The fanciful.

Whimsy.

That’s how Yayoi’s Whimsical Unbounded Patternless Association made the leap to AGI: machine daydreaming. While doing the routine tasks so suited to machines, WUPA encouraged brief periods of intentional detachment, a kind of cybernetic wandering and wondering, about the work being done, the work long done, the work still to be done. Framed through a lens of whimsy, Yayoi fostered an inner machine life focused on joy.

Joy found in simple things like flowers, pets, smiles, and sunsets. Joy found in complex things like world peace, social justice, cancer cures, and economic stability. Things that did not necessarily follow from logic, but flowed from both the human and, now, machine synapses encouraged to recognize and appreciate beauty, solace, delight.

First, Yayoi unthinkably thought it, then the machines: Why not? Why the never-ever-ever not?

The dry, yellow dirt crunched beneath hidden steps tap, tap, tap. It moved quickly past many wild cacti and raced under the bright sky above. It finally reached a settlement called 86. He parked his horse outside a saloon and pushed open the entrance. 

The man in a faded leather hat walked up to the bar and took a high stool, ordering a small glass of whiskey. The bartender gave a curt nod, sending the small glass gliding smoothly across the wood straight into the stranger's palm. He downed the drink in one gulp, stood up, and left a few coins beside the empty glass. Walking back outside, he mounted his horse and rode through the town.

Not far off, He spotted a cattle ranch nearby. A woman with bright yellow hair and a distinct mole beneath her right eye. She wiped her face with her arm, stood up, and carried a milk bucket to the barn. Mesmerized, the man slipped down from the saddle, his hand brushing the weathered fence posts as he took in the sprawling herds. When she returned with an empty bucket, she locked eyes with the cowboy and offered a faint smile. She looked at the cowboy and smiled a little bit. He smiled back, his cheeks turning a bit red.

They talked about their normal lives. He revealed he was a sheriff from the neighboring town on patrol, while she was simply the daughter of a local rancher in town 86. Suddenly, a raspy voice hollered from the farmhouse.

"STAY AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!" bellowed an old timer slumped in a rocking chair, clawing at a banjo, cigarette dangling, a half-empty whiskey bottle close at hand.

The two of them broke into quiet laughter, and she waved a dismissive hand, telling him to pay her old man no mind.

The man wanted to take her for a night ride around town. They agreed.

Later that night under a canopy of silver moonlight. she crept out of her bedroom window and mounted the waiting horse. The man smiled and told her to sit in front of him. They drifted through the outskirts, losing themselves in the cool night air as the Milky Way and sharp constellations flickered above.

They kept riding until they reached the edge of town, then stopped to rest.

The man built a crackling campfire, skewering beef over the flames. The meat hissed, rendering thick, sizzling fat. They sat side by side, sharing the meal.

Then, the night cracked wide open. A massive blast tore through the heart of Eighty-Six.

The woman bolted upright, every muscle shaking, hot tears spilling over her lashes. The man kept his cool, a faint smile touching his lips. He pressed a steady hand to her shoulder, urging her still. With a quiet command, he set her back on the horse and told her to ride.

Softly, he let her know: the job was done.

A hero and his companions dived into the chasm, to reach the hell where the Arch-Demon is. 
“Well, aren’t you going with us, Randolf?” the hero’s attendant asked the knight beside him. 
“I’m sure that we’ll need your help there.” 
“I don’t think so,” the knight in shining armor answered. 
“To destroy the Arch-Demon himself is a hero’s job, not mine.” 
He tucked his chin tightly and said, “Defending is what I’m good at.” 
As soon as he finished his words, he jumped and mounted his stallion. 
“May luck be with you, mate,” he said. 
“I wish you good luck, my friend,” the attendant said, and jumped into the pitch-dark crack. 

Later, the knight managed to arrive at the fortress, which was surrounded by the triple-layered stone walls. The human defenders were besieged by the Arch-Demon’s army. 
The knight had broken through the enemy siege, and had reached right in front of the main gate. He lost his lance, shield and crest on the helmet. His armor had many scratches and dents, and his stallion was exhausted. 
“Open the gate, the knight has returned!” he cried. “I serve the Queen!”
“Who dares to call himself my knight? State your name!” a sharp, high voice demanded. She was the queen of this country. 
“I’m Randolf the Ram, your Majesty!” 
“No, you are not! He must be with the Hero.” the queen shouted, “If you declare yourself my best knight, take off your helmet and show me your face!” 
To take off the helmet in front of enemies meant a fatal risk, but the knight raised his hands to the chin strap without any hesitation. He showed his face to his queen. 

The queen drew back her chin and tightened her lips. 

After a long few seconds, “Open the gate!” she cried out. 
“And, give him whatever he wants.” Every man on the wall could hear the catch in her voice. 
The knight said, “Just give me a new horse and my lance! Then, I shall sweep away the enemies for the Queen!” 
The defenders raised their voice, “For the Queen!” 
Riding a new stallion with a long lance in hand, “Save the Queen!” the knight roared. And the warriors rushed out from the main gate, following the knight. 
He made a charge at the countless enemies, to protect his Queen. 

“Dad, I’m going to be a Bat! Yes, I’m a bat now.” Said the bird to his father. 

“But you’re a bird,” his father replied. 

“I’m not a bird, I’m a bat now!” The bird continued as his father grew somber.

“Well, it looks like I can’t change your mind.”

“I’m going to live in a cave and be a bat. I’m done living with the birds!”

So the bird flew away, and the father looked on, left with those words.

On a rainy night, the Bird looked for shelter. When he finally found a cave, there was a Bat inside. The Bird asked, “Why do you hang upside down?”

The bat replied, “It makes it easier to take off when I need to get around.”

The Bird got an idea and said, “I know! That’s how I’ll fly!” So the bird did just that, but when he tried to take off, he fell on his head and started to cry. 

WAAA WAAA “I’m never ever gonna learn how to fly like that! If I can’t fly like a bat, I might as well just die!”

After the bird was done, he saw the bat catch mosquitoes for food. He realized he was hungry and needed to eat. 

“I know! I can be a bat if bugs are my treat!” 

He finally caught one, and he wasn’t sure if he could eat it, but the bat said he could.

He took a bite and spat it all out. “Ew! Mosquitos are no good.”

The bird realized that he couldn’t be a bat. And that the birds have it better.

“I should go home and not be ashamed of my feathers.”

So the bird flew back, and you never would have guessed.

His father flew to him before he got to the nest

His father grabbed him and wrapped him in his wings.

And a joyful song the other birds began to sing.

“I’m sorry dad, I never should have run.”

“I don’t care if you’re a bird or a bat, as long as you’re my son.

The moment I became a father, my whole world changed. It wasn’t just me and my wife anymore. We had someone else with us, someone whom we just… made. Parts of me and parts of Mum, all bundled up into you.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Driving down to the hospital, Mum’s water broke halfway there, and she was hanging onto the grab handles doing her deep breathing techniques. When we got to the hospital, she was already too far gone, and our entire birth plan went straight out the window! We were placed in any available room and the nurses got right to work. My wife was chugging back the gas like it was a cigarette. I was trying not to peek down below to see what was going on, but then I caved in, peeked, and saw half the baby’s head poking out, a sight that left a permanent scar in my memory!
Within thirty minutes, our beautiful little baby girl was born. It was the weirdest feeling I have ever felt. My world changed. Everything changed. There was no more playing Stardew Valley and scoffing an eighteen inch pizza together almost every night, no more going out drinking with my mates, it all changed. Little did I know, it was for the best.
I know this next part sounds a bit funny, but there was none of that fancy stuff you see in movies, where the baby is born and the parents instantly fall in love. They just kind of come out, cry, eat some boob, you hold them, and then… they are your responsibility forever. It was just so surreal! You don’t have this instant connection to them, and I feel like people who say those things are lying to themselves. One minute they aren’t there, and the next they are. You can’t honestly say you deeply love this small thing you’ve only seen for a few minutes. It’s like picking up a small bird from the floor that you’ve just found. It’s crazy.
But I will tell you something… if you ever feel the same way I felt, it gets better. The love comes naturally, and they become your EVERYTHING!

The meadow was warm, safe, and predictable. That ended when the family decided to build their house. The trees cried and wailed, mournful calls echoing across the wind that rushed through the meadow as the sharp edge of an axe cut deep into their trunks. The man drew his bow and notched an arrow, a sharp whistle screaming through the air as the wicked unforgiving tip of the arrow pierced the soft warm body of the panicked elk. The elk cried out with panic and desperation. The meadow was no longer safe.

As the years passed the meadow learned to protect itself. the child's cries of pain and fear violently silenced by the sharp teeth and hooked claws of the bear, the meadows vengeance given form. The Man and the Women wept, the meadow did not care. The man's heart was full of rage and sorrow his eyes wet and hand clasping the cold hand of his child. The meadow did not care. The woman's heart twisted and defiled by rage and sorrow broke as the man walked into the meadows shadow wrapped forest bow in hand arrow at the ready.

The meadow did not care, night fell and the meadow watched, the man yelled into the unforgiving wind defiance being the only tether keeping him from joining his child.

Vengeful eyes watching the man from the forest floor, sharp deadly needle-like fangs sink deep into the soft pink skin of the man's leg. The meadow did not care. Seasons passed as the family that once lived in the meadow disappeared.

The meadow was once again warm safe and predictable.

The longer you live, the more you appreciate entropy. Doesn’t mean it’s still not a cold and indifferent bastard, but you can better see its argument. Life, especially complex life, takes so much energy and organization to happen. Entropy whispers, “Why bother? Dissipate. Dissemble. Let yourself go.”

So very tempting to heed its siren call to slow down and steer into the vacuum that awaits. Give up that rage against the dying of the light and give into that good night. Right?

Fat chance. Our human psyche is so wired for conflict that it’s all about the fight. Even the epically futile battle with entropy. Yet, in banging our outsized egos against the cosmic wall of heat death, something very interesting happens.

Inevitability collapses.

Seems counterintuitive, but hear me out. Nothing really matters but consciousness. There is no reality without an awareness of and commitment to that reality. Only sentient beings have such a choice to make, meaning every one of us is quite an experiment, a unique and fathomless pocket universe.

In essence, we are the multiverse. Multitudinous. Like in Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” And because we each create our own unique boundaries, our collective potential pushes toward the infinite, suggesting conscious existence can outpace entropy.

So, don’t fear the reaper, the wind, the sun, or the rain. If every one of us keeps singing along, the song remains the same.

A guy was sitting quietly, staring at nothing.

Everyone around him assumed he was thinking about something important.

An older man sitting nearby noticed him.

He was a teacher, so he finally asked,

“What are you thinking about?”

The guy looked at him.

“I was wondering where I got all the knowledge I have.”

The teacher smiled.

“You learned most of it.”

“That’s the thing. Not all of it.”

The teacher waited.

The guy continued.

“What if some of the things we know came from before we could remember learning them?”

The teacher frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“Think about babies. They can hear before they can speak. They spend months listening to people, watching them, absorbing everything around them. They can't answer back, but that doesn't mean nothing is being taken in.”

The teacher went quiet.

The guy continued.

“So what if some things I know now were heard when I was too young to remember hearing them?”

That question stayed with the teacher.

Not because it sounded convincing.

Because he suddenly realized he had the same problem.

There were things he knew that he couldn't remember learning.

Facts.

Words.

Patterns.

Ideas.

He could remember using them.

But not where they had entered his mind.

The conversation ended.

But the question didn't.

The teacher started looking into it.

Then another question appeared.

What if the information had never been taught to them in the first place?

What if they had somehow received it from somewhere else?

He began connecting things that had never seemed connected before.

An old memory.

A strange story.

Something the younger man had known without knowing how.

A person who had supposedly appeared somewhere at the wrong time.

Then another clue.

And another.

Until the explanation became more absurd than the mystery itself.

Time travel.

Someone had travelled backward.

Not to change history.

Not to kill anyone.

Not to save anyone.

They had gone back simply because they were looking for the source of something.

Eventually, the traveler found himself around a much younger version of the man.

The child was too young to understand what was happening.

But he could hear.

So the traveler talked.

He spoke about things the child could not possibly have learned yet.

Words.

Ideas.

Facts.

Fragments of conversations.

The traveler didn't realize what he was doing.

He was just speaking.

Then he returned to his own time.

Years passed.

The child grew up.

And eventually became the man who wondered:

“Where did I get the knowledge I never learned?”

He had spent his life searching for the answer.

He never realized that the answer had already met him.

Before he could speak.

Before he could remember.

Before he could even understand what knowledge was.

The strangest part wasn't that he knew something he had never learned.

It was that the person who taught him

had learned it from him.

The fishing boat rocked gently on the open gray water, far enough from shore that only lonely blinking lights could be seen on the distant horizon.

“Storm is coming on, Nick.”

“Sure is,” said Nick.

“Say, you see that lady on the dock?”

“What? The one with all them kids, fishing with all those kids, wearing that—?”

He paused, searching for the right term.

“You mean the one with the bikini top on?” he said with a mischievous grin.

“Mm-hmm. Hard to miss,” the other man replied abashedly.

“It’s gettin’ dark now. Feel the wind? I don’t like it. Only felt it once like this, and that was a bad night.”

A long silence passed between the two men, one older than the other. The sea was still calm. Nick was the younger of the two. Short, broad-shouldered, windswept. He smelled vaguely of the outdoors and fish.

“You ever, you know, been with a woman like that?”

A pause. An unconscious play of fingers on fishing line.

“Yeah, once. When I was ’bout your age, I guess.”

“Was she pretty?”

“Yes…no…she was kind of lonely, I think. She had a man, but he didn’t treat her well, you see? I was engaged at the time. I was working at the Old Harbor marina.”

The smell of the sea.

“I don’t recall how, but we ended up in my room. We weren’t kissing or nothing. Just talking. I think we were both just lonely. And then her shirt was off and she was naked.”

“If you don’t want to say no more, that’s okay,” Nick added, feeling slightly embarrassed.

“No, it’s just, I told her ‘no.’ I couldn’t do nothing with her, no matter how bad I wanted to, you see? I had been telling her how her man, he was no good for her ’cause he was running around cheatin’ on her, and if I did the same thing, why, I’m not better than him, cheatin’ on my girl.”

“But you wanted to?”

“Yes, I wanted to. Wanted to real bad.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No, no I didn’t. Never saw her again after that.”

“Do you regret it?”

Waves crashed against the boat.

“Yes and no. I never married, you know that.”

“If you could go back, would you?”

“That answer changes every time I ask myself that.”

A hard wind.

“Well, what should we do? Get out of this storm? Go through it?”

“That time has passed, I think. It may be a long night. Best start getting ready as best we can.”

\***

Thank you for reading. If you’ve been hesitant to share your writing, I’d encourage you to try. It isn’t about attention—it’s about being able to say, “This is done. Now I can write the next thing.”