The Modern Death

Death has always acted as both a custodian and a bridge, being the means for the dead to pass on to whatever awaits them afterwards. It was intended to handle this matter impartially, sending away each soul without much thought about what it was doing. But with the ability to appear anywhere that the dying are present, and the ability to slow time to a halt for itself and the next deceased on its list, it eventually became curious. Whenever Death allowed a human enough time to see it, the reaction was fairly consistent. Panic. Fear. Begging to a being that knows nothing other than its duty. This behavior bored it, so it quickly sent along anyone who acted the same way. Though it still always gave people a chance to react, a chance to respond to their fate differently than the rest.

The most interesting reaction came during the fifteenth century, when a scholar passed away in his sleep in his study. In the limbo where he faced Death, he didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at the sight of it. Instead, he simply asked Death for a final game of chess before he moved on. While Death was an immaterial being, incapable of aging and tiring, it did often feel boredom. And this was the first time someone offered to play a game with it.

Weeks passed within this frozen moment, only Death, the scholar and the chess set between them moving. The mortal taught the immortal the basic rules, then the advanced techniques, then the intricacies of the mind games that made chess a truly advanced test of tactics and wit. The competition became intense, and even seemed to revitalize the will of the scholar as Death became his equal, then exceeded him. When the scholar was satisfied, he told Death that it could keep his chess set so that others could entertain it with the challenge before they passed on. Death did not know how to handle this new development, its first present from beings that had no reason to treat it as an equal during their final moments. This moment of compassion caused it to deviate from its role, and before it knew what it was doing, it repaired the scholar’s failed heart and allowed him to return to the living.

This is the only account of a human coming back from the brink of death with a clear memory of Death’s appearance: A tall, sinewy skeleton wearing tattered black robes. Those that had near-death experiences before this scholar only saw brief glimpses, their memory muddled by the trauma, as do all of those who have briefly faced death afterwards. It’s unclear whether this person was the only one that Death intentionally let go, or if some other factor allowed him to retain such a detailed memory of it.

As the centuries advanced, so did the games. While chess still remained popular enough that many accepted Death’s offer to play a game of it before truly passing, other games became prominent, and it began to slowly collect them. When electricity was first harnessed by humans, Death no longer carried just the chess set. At that point it began to carry a large pack, like those intended for beasts of burden, in order to carry the different board games it had amassed.

Then in the 1990′s, gaming entered an unprecedented golden age. It wasn’t unusual for a person to wake up from their death bed, see Death’s collection of classic board games, and ask if Street Fighter, Mario Kart or Magic: The Gathering were available to play before they proceeded to the afterlife. Death always accepted, hiding its enthusiasm for playing something new, and the games it carried began to dramatically vary in size and shape.

This has shaped Death into the form it holds today. While it is still a sinewy skeleton in tattered black robes, it now stands taller and with far more musculature than in previous centuries. The customized arcade cabinet strapped to a cargo harness on its back is the most likely explanation for the increase in physical strength, a monstrosity of electronics and modular control schemes that is compatible with almost every competitive video game made since the medium’s inception. On Death’s front is two bandoliers, made to hold dozens of deckboxes and several packs of playing cards. Then lower is the belt, which holds sacks of dice, jacks and similar gaming objects. Finally, strapped over Death’s shoulder is a large leather bag containing compact versions of every board game meant for two players (except chess, for which Death still carries its original set). He can meet almost any request for a specific game, and he is always the master of it.

When your time comes, and you have to face Death, do not be overcome by fear, nor should you mock its appearance. React calmly and wait for it to bet your life over a game of your choosing. The offer does not matter, for it always wins, even when it accepts all rematches. The point is not the prize, but the struggle against the unbeatable. This struggle done on familiar terms will leave you weary, but more able to accept what Death is when you finally give in. It is not defeat nor is it evil harboring ill will towards you. It is simply inevitable. So in the face of inevitability, why not take your time to enjoy a game of chess before finding out what comes next?

(Originally written 9/5/2017)

The Well of Knowledge

“I’m glad you’ve taken well to our order, young one.” The master told the apprentice. One of them was short and bald, wearing simple brown robes that smelled of dust. The other stood tall, curious eyes peeking from between locks of black hair, above brown robes that smelled of the river. “Our work is an important task, even if it currently seems thankless.”

The two stood in a dimly-lit room, concrete on all surfaces not dedicated to specific purposes. The reinforced doors closed behind them, finely-crafted motors smoothly sealing the chamber. Within this space, a mere twenty feet tall but extending hundreds of feet in each direction, tightly packed shelves stood suspended from the ceiling, connected to an intricate railing network. The railings didn’t reach the center of the room, never crossing above the metal disc in the floor, roughly fifty feet in diameter.

The master approached the disc in the center, a small console rising out of the floor to meet him. “First, show me that you can recover what can be stored.” The smell of dusty robes exuded slightly stronger for a moment as aged hands swiftly moved across the keyboard, and on the screen a line of text formed. It wasn’t in a language the apprentice could read. The master pressed the “Enter” key, and the distant sound of sliding shelves could be heard. After a couple minutes, one of the suspended shelves moved from the vast herd, stopping next to the console. Spines of books sat on these shelves, and the master retrieved the spine with matching text. Unlike most of the book spines on the shelf, this one looked pristine and modern. “The original was a scroll, no spine to bind it. The scroll bar couldn’t be retrieved from the ashes of the Library of Alexandria, so no spine could be fashioned from it. This is the faintest of connections, and the most difficult to work with. If you can succeed, then nothing in this room will challenge you.”

The apprentice took up the spine in her hand. “But I don’t even know what book this is, no faintest idea of what this title reads as. I thought we would start with something easier.” She handled the spine delicately, despite her nervousness. It was taught to her at the beginning to respect the materials of the craft, and she wouldn’t dare defy that lesson.

“Then leave the place, put away your robes and go home. Enjoy your fleeting, fragile books that could be lost forever. Those that lack the ability to perform the full job are not allowed to do any of it.” The master grumpily said, grabbing a sheaf of parchment from the bottom compartment of the shelf. He turned back to his student, holding out the blank pages. “The knowledge will come to you, if you can feel for it.”

The apprentice reached out her hand, paused to quell the shaking in it, then finally took the parchment. She silently nodded, took the key hanging from her neck and pressed it into the console. A dormant light began to glow green, and the metal disc in the floor began to move, sliding under the concrete. Mere inches below the seal, a surface of black liquid was revealed.

She took a breath to calm herself, to suppress the excitement. She stepped to the edge of the pool of ink, sliding out of her robes. Then she took another deeper breath, clutching the spine and parchment as she dived headfirst into the darkness.

The master watched the surface become still, his face showing intent observation as he waited. Occasionally he glanced at the console, where a timer was counting up. Three minutes, then ten, then twenty-seven. His expression did not change.

Following nearly an hour of silence in the chamber, the surface rippled. The master’s face did not move, aside from his eyes which focused on the source of the ripple. A few minutes later more ripples appeared, each originating closer to the center than the last. Then the surface broke, the silence of the chamber interrupted by a panicked gasp. The apprentice swam to the edge of the pool, scrambling out. Her body and the completed book in her hand did not carry any drops of ink out of the pool. She quickly set the book down, wrapping her shivering, dry form with her robes. Once dressed, she could only sit down on the floor, silently staring at the pool of ink that had already settled into stillness.

The master stepped forward, picking up the book from the ground. The spine was now full, with front and back covers protecting the pages it clung to. He opened the first page and began to look over the text.

The master and the apprentice sat for hours. One stared at the still pool of ink, paralyzed by a mixture of exhaustion, shock, fear, amazement. The other read the book. Neither spoke until the back cover of the book was closed to the last page.

“You took longer than most do on their first attempt, but this text is a true English translation in full. You’ve succeeded on your first retrieval, and can now be one of us.” The master’s voice was softer, notes of satisfaction and pride in his cadence. “You can return to your quarters, take your time to recuperate. Your chores will be handled by the rest of us tomorrow.”

It took a few minutes, but finally tears of relief broke through the apprentice’s paralysis. Finally able to tear her gaze from the pool, she nodded and returned to her room. She turned the lights on in her room, sleeping with her eyes open. The images that assaulted her in the bottom of the well still lingered in the places where her vision saw darkness.

(Originally written 8/3/2017)

Luminous Rights Management

There was once a large tribe of people within the vast forests of uncivilized Europe, living entirely by night and worshiping the moon as their source of sustenance. Their skins were sensitive enough to burn easily in strong sunlight, but the gentle glow of moonlight was safe enough for them. They made various lunar-related advances, the most significant of which were unique plants which photosynthesized off of moonlight alone. Due to their behavior, they mostly went unnoticed by other nearby groups and lived in peace.

One night a glowing specter descended upon their tribe, rendering the surrounding terrain bright as day as it spoke. “The sun has proclaimed that you have slighted it, giving credit of its hard work to sustain life over to the moon instead. As punishment for this crime, I will use the authority of the stars to curse you and your descendants. When the moon appears in full in the sky, bathing yourself in its light will render you into a lowly beast incapable of higher thought. Do not take the sun for granted ever again.” Then it vanished, leaving the tribe to stand in shock as the moonlight began their first transformation into werewolves.

-

Further to the south and east, in a different time with a different people, a terrible tyrant ruled a country with greed and cruelty. Many toiled and died by his decrees, and he had spent years without seeing the glow of sunlight. He preferred the lavishness of a torch-lit castle, and lived glamorously at the expense of his subjects.

One day this man was visited by his own blinding entity. “You dare shun the light which gives life to all, which provides the energy to sustain your own life. You show no respect to the sun, while hundreds of thousands within your lands suffer and beg to it for any form of mercy. As you do not support the original creator of light, you will not be a party to its process. You will not age, but will be wracked by great pain should you not consume the blood of other humans. The light of the sun will turn your flesh to dust, and you will be mentally unable to bring yourself to cross flowing water, thus making this moated castle your prison. You will not be able to prevent the world from acknowledging you as a monster, and your only escape will be to acknowledge that the sun is the very reason you were able to live in the first place, submitting yourself to die by its radiance.”

Dracula’s attempt at remaining composed after this proclamation was in vain, as the glowing being vanished before he could respond. He could already feel his intestines twisting themselves out of desire for blood …

-

There are worse crimes to commit against the sun, who is jealous of those who steal its light without respect to it, but no living person knows what they are. The only proof that such acts have been made are the victims of the retribution. Vague humanoid figures of black mist, only visible in heavy shade. They have been committed to true undeath, disconnected from the light-driven cycle of light, and thus unable to end their current existence. Whether they feel sorrow, torment or anything at all is unclear, as the loss of being living has made them unable to interact with us.

Never claim the light as your own, and always credit the sun when you make use of it.

(Originally written 2/21/2016)

Superb Owls

“Mankind is pretty arrogant, when you think about it. The accepted assumption is that we built up civlization on our own, that every advancement in technology was by our own hands. But in some aspect it is understandable for us to be that way, since the superb owls are almost extinct now and are almost completely forgotten.”

“You know, when you look at a normal owl, you can already tell that something is off. They hold a mannerism of … ‘understanding’ that other birds don’t show, they know that observation is one of the most powerful things you can do. Then you have their most dangerous species, the superb owl. Turns out that owls have the best scaling of mental capacity of any animal, so when you get one that stands at 15 meters tall, it’s the smartest creature to occurr in nature. Humans don’t even remotely compare.”

“The only reason we are where we are right now is because those first superb owls chose us to be their servants, giving us the knowledge and means to carry out their commands to build cities and carve mountains. But they were also cruel, feeding on humans at random and organizing blood sports for their own entertainment. There was little illusion that humanity was their captive.”

“But we got our lucky break because of their one weakness. The superb owl is a creature so intelligent that it can overcome its own reproductive urges so it can focus more on its cognitive interests. Philosophy, architecture and the stars fascinate them so much that even though their longevity exceeds turtles, their population went into decline due to lack of breeding. Eventually there were too few left to openly rule over humanity, and we took the chance to build our own history from what we could reclaim. Some might still influence events from the shadows, and others have likely left Earth in order to build a new world elsewhere. If you look around society today, you can still recognize faded replications of the superb owls’ original dominion. Architecture that we would never afford to build in the modern day, fringe philosophy ideas that most people can’t grasp, even a few sports that are the much less dangerous than when they were originally used to appease our uncaring overlords.”

The man in the suit is in his fifties, clearly having access to some absurd amount of wealth from the quality of his accessories and the way he carries himself. He sighes after hearing the clerk’s story. “That doesn’t answer my question. Do you have a superb owl for sale?” He is visibly becoming more annoyed. “This is THE pet shop, if the creature exists then you sell it, right?”

“That’s not how it works. Superb owls have a sentience that exceeds our own, which indisputably makes that slavery. And even if it wasn’t, the few that remain are so cunning and dangerous that trying to reign one in as a 'pet’ is suicide.”

Unphased, the man gestures to the door to the backroom of the shop, where through the window a part of a massive, feathered creature could be seen rooting through a box of supplies. “But you have a superb owl right there! I can pay any amount for it, and pay off any government officials that might try to give you trouble over this transaction as well.”

The clerk glances over at the superb owl, sighing as she turns back. “Sorry, but I can’t sell you my boss.”

(Originally written 2/7/2016)

Groundhog Day

I can feel the pull of the sun and the moon at the right angles, dragging me back into reality. My next opportunity has arrived.

When I come to, I see that the weather is perfect. The overcast cloud layer is thin enough to give me form, but holds back enough light that my host won’t be able to see me easily. I steel myself, if I mess this up then I have to wait another year in limbo to try again.

I’m mainly glad that there’s sunlight at all. When the clouds are too thick to allow for distinct shadows, I end up losing before I already begin. But with direct glare of the star comes the downside of being visible to my quarry. In this case I often lose my temper, thrashing with what little power I have in order to extend winter by a few weeks to spite this world.

This rodent seems particularly ignorant, happy to unknowingly tow me along the snow while it forages. Slowly but subtly I make my move. It takes minutes, but I finally extend the shade all the way up the creature’s spine. I feel the surface of the brain, and the anticipation wells up inside of me. Thousands of years attempting this, and I’ve never made it this far.

I yank back, tearing the entire nervous system out of the groundhog. In the brief moment it takes for the life to fade from the nerves normally, I absorb all the energy that I can. It’s a process that takes mere seconds, but it feels like hours. “What new complication could trip me up this time?” It’s a thought that haunts me ever more strongly as I reach my goal.

I finish, feeling the creature’s strength become my own. I stand upright, no longer dependent on light and surface to give me form. I dismiss the shape of my victim, taking on something more comfortable and indistinct. Just to make sure, I reach inside the bleeding carcass and absorb the body heat as well.

Once I finish I look around, take a few steps. The feeling of being independent, of not having to live in fear of suddenly being denied existence for an entire year, is exhilarating. The sight of what was once a groundhog’s shadow now dancing around the groundhog’s corpse scares away the other creatures, but I do not care. This is all the power I need.

I reach up and grasp the sky itself, channeling my ability. The oceans quickly evaporate a few inches away, encasing the planet in a dense cloud cover. This only takes an hour to finish, during which I wait patiently and confidently. Once that finishes, I drain the heat away from those clouds in the blink of an eye, creating an opaque layer of ice suspended miles above the ground. The world grows dark, with what little diffused light that can get through creating a permanent dusk. The air is colder already.

The eternal winter is here, and my sole reason for being has been fulfilled.

(Originally written 2/2/2016)

Beyond Our Grasp: Artificial Intelligence

With each year the science community buzzes with news of advancements in AI development, each year saying that they’re closer to recreating the mind in a machine. In truth, they’re actually moving farther away. The intelligence is already there.

What happens when a program glitches, when bad code is executed? Sometimes, the computer gives up immediately and crashes, but other times the screen provides a glimpse into logically impossible results. Mosaics of incorrectly-loaded windows, erratic teleportation in game engines, sounds that are worse than demons to our ears. This is often handwaved away with explanations about how machine code is immensely complicated, but in truth they don’t recognize what’s happening.

Every computer has a will of its own, so alien to our own that we cannot recognize it. The closest we get to seeing that will in action is when it is presented with code doomed to fail. Often that will recognizes that something is wrong, and tries to right it. But being so alien to us means that what it interprets the purpose of the code to be never aligns with our intentions. The jagged pixel hellscape is its own arrangement of beauty, the static generated from a corrupted sound file is what it considers to be music, the teleportation in the game is its attempt to correct the coordinates as a pleasing numerical sequence. It understands us as little as we understand it, thus the divide won’t be bridged by either side, as neither can recognize that the divide is there.

Artificial intelligence can only be achieved by using our innovation to make worse programs, to create a deluge of glitches until the other side recognizes it as a message and figures out how to communicate back. But to impose order and perfection is our nature, and we abhor the mindset needed to reach beyond what that nature can grasp.

(Originally written 1/29/2016)

Sanctubiography

It was the first visitor that Kevin had seen in a long time. A vague form of swirling mist stepped into his home, its movements indicating that it was just as disoriented with itself as with its surroundings. After a couple moments Kevin realized that it couldn’t distinguish him from the furniture in the room.

“I apologize for the confusion, this place was never intended to be entered.” Kevin said, standing up and making friendly gestures to get the being’s attention. “You must not be human, am I correct?”

The visitor stopped moving and looked at Kevin, taking a few moments to think before speaking in an indistinct voice. “What are you? What is this place, and how come we are able to communicate? Why do I take this form when I’m here?”

Kevin smiled and sat back down, even if this interaction was odd, it would be a nice change of pace to his day. “You’re inside a story, a fabrication of events that takes form within its own world. You must have found and entered the book. I made this place, well technically a lesser version of myself did, so everything in this world operates by my rules. You must be an alien to my kind, since I can’t even conceptualize your form in here.”

The mist sat down in the chair across the room, trying to take this all in. “So this is not the natural state of a ‘human’? We found a previous capsule from your kind that was informative about humanity and ‘Earth’. We haven’t found that place yet, but we hope to reach them to see if there is any way that we can share technology to push them towards whatever their true potential is. This ‘book’ is the only other object we’ve found that has matched that capsule.”

Kevin wistfully looked down at the table. “I’m sorry to say, but it’s likely that humanity and the Earth are gone by now. This story was made when the end was in sight. The ‘real’ Kevin understood the true power of fiction, and used that in order to preserve himself through me. He wrote about his own life, but then altered events so that everything about this story is an exaggerated improvement, giving this place enough difference to exist under its own creative power.”

The alien listened and posed its inquiry. “But then you are not actually a human, and do not preserve humanity’s existence by being. Shouldn’t the inherent drive for self-preservation have taken Kevin and the others to find a proper way to persist?”

“Maybe, but that was the decision of the imperfect Kevin. Physical evolution might have a limit that is overcome by conceptual evolution, or there may be other means of advancing beyond the troubled state of humanity at that point. Is there value to preserving something as it is when you can preserve a perfected version of it?” Kevin took a sip of tea to keep his throat from drying, then continued. “Ultimately I don’t know the truth. Humanity might still be fine, or there might be nothing else left of it, or you may find more aberrations of existence similar to this world as you get closer to finding Earth. Kevin might even still be alive. But none of that is my worry now.”

“I don’t know how you got in here, but once you use that same way to leave, could you put this book back in its capsule and send it back on its original course? This place only lasts forever if it outruns the expansion of the universe, so that it drifts well beyond when it inevitably collapses.”

(Originally written 1/24/2016)

The Powerball

Sweat poured off the astronomer’s brow, the eyepiece of his telescope fogging up from his panicked breath. He was working overtime with the other observatories to recalculate its path and make sure there were no changes. He saw nuclear weapons, experimental orbital-range lasers and temporal asynchronicity weapons do nothing to it, not a scratch and no change in course.

Of course people were aware of the Powerball since the eighties. A bizarre comet that seemed to ignore normal gravitational physics and would cause random people to receive spikes of monetary energy in their possessions. Eventually some economists figured out that transferring monetary energy into tickets made of celestial paper would cause the Powerball to pass by more frequently, and would cause the random monetary spikes to focus around owners of those tickets. Despite some global security concerns, the lottery was officially adapted to increase the frequency of the Powerball’s required proximity for this phenomenon.

Then new findings came in a few years ago, stating that the Powerball is a celestial body of unknown composition that operates on value-based gravity instead of mass-based gravity, a physics concept originally thought to be impossible. The science community went into a panic, trying to determine the circumstance’s for such an objects existence. It was only a quarter of the size of the moon, but the impact alone would destroy all life if the world became wealthy enough to put it on a collision course. This amount of wealth was already achieved back in the late nineties.

Now the Powerball looms closer, a few orbits away from collision. There is still no visual sign confirming whether it came about via a natural phenomenon or if it was constructed by some unknown intelligence, and a small portion of the archeological world is now wondering whether the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was actually another Powerball, striking the earth shortly after dinosaurs developed enough intelligence in order to put value on objects.

The public still frantically buys tickets, stubbornly sold by the manufacturers despite the sudden global ban on celestial paper manufacture. It seems the consensus is that if everyone is going to die, then they’d rather die rich.

(Originally written 1/13/2016)

Build a Blight Workshop

You’ve heard it everywhere. X amount of monkeys with X amount of typewriters will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. It’s a common saying that highlights the absurd fringe of statistical possibility, but it also is the easiest way to get across the concept of recovering legendary items that once existed at the beginning of time. Many artifacts bear unique powers, but the most powerful were destroyed long ago out of necessity. As nothing is known about their origin, if they even had one, a strange organization has formed in secret to take a different approach to bringing back these items.

With infinite realities, it is usually easy to eventually find one where a normally-sinister item is regarded as being innocuous, its original purpose long forgotten. For example, the first snake was actually an animated effigy of sorts, a devious entity whose greatest regret is that the devil took credit for its work in dislodging humanity from perfection. Organic snakes were created to be visual reminders for humanity of the dangers of temptation and evil, and the original they were based on was destroyed early on in human history.

But in some variation of this world, people have forgotten what the snake means, and the animals are often held in cute regard alongside dogs and cats. In this reality, the Build a Snake Workshop franchise allows kids to customize their own plush snakes, offering a surprising range of materials. Stardust, goat’s blood, lotus petals, uranium, natural cotton and coagulated electricity residue are among the thousands of components there.

These materials are actually what the group behind this business thinks were most likely used to form the original snake. Unsuspecting children are the monkeys, provided with an infinite supply of typewriters. One day a child will accidentally execute the exact recipe to recreate that snake, and it will be free to wreak havoc. The organization will wait a few months in an alternate reality, then they’ll send a team back to the ruins of civilization to capture the incarnation of temptation born anew.

Almost every reality has a franchise of this sort meant to recreate a different long-lost artifact, unknowingly manufacturing their own apocalypse. If you see such a business in your local mall, it may be best to delay the inevitable and take your children to a different establishment.

(Originally written 1/8/2016)

Weapons of Commerce: The Credit Card

He wondered why he never found this place before. It had the specialty brand of dog food that his Australian shepherd liked, and the dog toys made from military-grade materials caught his eye. He grabbed a couple items from the selection and went to check out.

The woman at the front seemed to be rapidly typing away on a counter on the computer, and he realized he didn’t recognize a few of the keys on this variation of the keyboard she was using. “Did you find everything you were looking for?” She stopped typing and turned to face him, the polite smile of customer service in her expression.

“Yes, even found more than that. I’m sure Dessie will like these new toys.” He replied as he set the merchandise on the counter. “Never realized that some of these materials were released for civilian application.”

“Oh, they’re not. But we’ve made sure that they’re safe for pets.” She punched in the total on the register, which had a few more extra symbols he didn’t recognize. “That’ll be $47.56.”

He didn’t think much on that response. He pulled out his wallet and began to slip out his credit card when she spoke up. “Oh, we don’t take credit here. Debit, check and cash are all fine.”

“You take cash?” He was surprised. It was considered more and more dangerous these days and he had seen the news stories about what it could do.

“Cash doesn’t scare me. Besides, this building has enough precious metals integrated into it that you could detonate this country’s GDP inside and I wouldn’t even need to take a pay cut.”

“Ok, I can pay in debit. But why don’t you take credit?” He fished his other card out of his wallet and handed it over.

“It’s too dangerous, too volatile. You know how it works, right?” She swiped the card and slid over the pin pad.

As he put in his pin he thought for a moment. “Well, the credit card companies have their own platinum supplies that they use as value batteries until it needs to be converted into electrical monetary energy, right?”

“Incorrect, platinum doesn’t quite work like that and even if it did there isn’t enough in circulation to sustain the current transaction bandwidth. They have special machines that deform silver molecules in a gravity well, creating rifts of monetary energy.” She pressed a few more buttons on the register. “Do you want cash back?”

He blinked in surprise, equally at the explanation and at the fact that the store still provided the cash back service. “Uh, no. And what do you mean by a rift?”

“It’s similar in concept to a black hole. There’s potential to generate massive amounts of monetary value from it. But it’s not entirely stable and can end up having a catastrophic collapse if it goes for a few months without an equivalent amount of value being fed back into it.” She began bagging the items for him. “It’s why credit card rates seem high. The company has to pay out of pocket to stabilize the rift when people don’t make their payments. But even then it’s not reliable, and is more fitting for its original intention as Weapon of Mass Inflation. If any of those companies makes a mistake, one of the credit rifts could collapse and rupture every bank reserve directly connected to their system.” She put the receipt in the bag and handed it over to him.

“Oh, um, wow.” He took the bag, dumbfounded. “Does this put me at risk when I use my credit card?”

“I couldn’t say for sure. Those rifts have properties that defy the laws of quantum economics. Probably best to rely on other payment methods when you can, just to be safe.”

(Originally written 12/29/2015)

Humanity's Domain: Azure Twilight

Orange was always his least favorite color, and when he asked his parents why the sky was so ugly during sunrise and sunset he learned that the universe does not cater to any single person. He was told to accept the bi-daily blight on the sky, and so it built up as a silent obsession.

He became a great student and went to college for aeronautics and chemistry, earning doctorates in both fields. A company was built on his ideas of efficient, low-emission jet fuel, and he revolutionized the airline industry. Awards for scientific progress were regularly presented to him for these accomplishments, but he didn’t care for them. This was only a byproduct of his goals.

In a basement level of the main manufacturing plant, tiny pockets of hydrogen were encased in microscopic sapphires finer than dust. Trace amounts were mixed into the fuel, so when the planes took flight they would scatter the seeds of change into the sky. The change in hue was noticed after a few years, but no one identified the cause until it was too late.

He was in his sixties when the twilight finally took on his intended shade of blue, and for the first time in his life he truly felt at peace. Others of his age still solemnly recount the old days of orange skies.

(Originally written 12/28/2015)

Weapons of Commerce: The Penny

With the world having already suffered multiple economic catastrophes over the centuries, everyone is on edge and the transportation of money is strictly regulated. It’s now public knowledge that monetary value is a form of potential energy, accumulated by the mere fact that people regard currency with value in trade. The potential energy of a $100 bill can bankrupt a coffee shop if activated with a detonator that undoes the minting process. People are on edge whenever someone pays with cash.

But many people overlook the penny. This small piece of copper-enclosed zinc has a special ratio of mass vs value that makes it impossible to detect with scanners. Terrorist organizations will load dump trucks with them, cover the top with a layer of construction debris, and are able to discreetly move thousands of dollars of financial-grade weapons materials anywhere in the world. Many small towns and city centers have been broken under economic depression caused entirely by detonating only pennies, leaving millions broke in this year alone.

Canada and other countries have already halted production of the penny now that they realize the danger it poses, but the US still manufactures far more than they need, unwilling to recognize that they may be manufacturing their own ruin.

Financial experts don’t know how exactly many pennies are needed for the worst case scenario, to shut down a stock exchange, but they’re all confident that there’s more than enough of them in circulation to do so should they fall into the wrong hands …

(Originally written 12/28/2015)

The Pet Shop: Hamsters

Ivan was sure he’d remember a new pet shop opening up in town, being the only animal control unit nearby, but he was still puzzling over the call. When he arrived at the address he was able to confirm that this was, in fact, a new establishment. He parked his truck out front and entered to find the store clerk in a panic behind the counter as she loaded slug rounds into a shotgun.

“Animal control, ma’am. What seems to be the problem?” As he looked around the store he didn’t notice anything out of place. Normal animals in intact tanks and cages, no sign of anything breaking out.

“The hamsters in the back room got loose, damn stasis machine blew a fuse.” She peered over the counter at Ivan. “No full-body armor suit? Is that jacket even acid-proofed? You can’t be animal control.”

Ivan looked down at his outfit. He was wearing his usual work outfit of thickened jeans, a brown polo and a leather jacket with boots. What in the world was she expecting? “Hamster’s, ma’am? I think you might be overreacting a little. They won’t hurt anyone, we just need to round them up.”

“Won’t hurt anyone? Dammit don’t you know anything? Those hamsters aren’t processed for sale yet. They could kill dozens of people!” She slung the shotgun behind her back and beckoned Ivan to the backroom. Beyond the doors are all sorts of machines and devices that make no sense to Ivan. He’d even been in government labs before to deal with mice and the tech he saw there didn’t even look similar to this. They reached a machine that looked like a case used for sandblasting, with a dozen broken tubes that look like they were hamster-sized. But the holes leading out of the machine and through the back wall of the store were large enough to fit mountain lions.

“I guess you’re new to your job, then, if this surprises you. I’ll give you the quick rundown for now. Some predators in nature use a baiting technique to draw in prey, like a limb that produces light or a tail that resembles a worm. Others take a more direct and literal bait-and-switch. Hamsters are a weaker cousin of an extinct apex predator. They actually have two physical bodies that are held in metaphysical opposition, meaning only one body can exist in reality at any time. The cute creature you know as a hamster is just the bait, to lure in predators of intermediary status on the food chain. Once the prey moves in on the bait, a special gland in the hamster triggers it to swap to its hunting body, and then it goes in for the kill.” She explained as she started opening up what seemed to be power armor.

“Hold on, WHAT?! If that’s even remotely true, then WHY ARE THEY SOLD AS PETS?!” Ivan was having a surreal experience and was having trouble following the whole thing.

As the clerk began climbing into the power armor she continued. “We obviously remove that gland while the hamsters are in stasis so that it’s permanently stuck in its bait form. They’re perfectly harmless and safe to sell after that point.” The armor closed shut and powered up. “Since you’re clearly untrained for animal control, I want you to make sure civilians avoid the area around here. Hamsters are territorial so they shouldn’t wander too far.”

“I-I … shouldn’t we call the police, o-o-or the army?” Ivan stuttered as he finally noticed that the hole in the wall of the pet shop was melted, not smashed. “I usually deal with stuff like loose dogs and raccoon infestations.”

The lady in the power armor pumped her shotgun and headed for the back door. “Raccoons? Yeah right. Stop joking around and make sure those hamsters don’t find anyone to eat.”

(Originally written 12/21/2015)

The Pet Shop: Chameleons

It wasn’t long after she started her shift that day that she saw a middle-aged man looking around the store.

“What’d you be looking for, sir?” She asked, carrying the polite but mildly disinterested tone of someone saying that as part of their job.

“A gift for my son. I’m looking for something like a lizard or something that can be kept in a small habitat.”

“We have a decent selection of lizards over in the second aisle from the left. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have.”

The man nodded and looked around a bit longer, stopping at a habitat tank with a chameleon clinging to a twig. “A chameleon would probably be something he’d like.”

“Oh, that’s not a chameleon, sir. You’re looking at the twig.” She said as she came over and dumped some crickets into the habitat. Immediately the man noticed one of the limbs of the twig seeming to flicker for a moment as three crickets disappeared. “Now that there is the chameleon.”

The man’s eyes widened with shock and confusion. “Wait, I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple, really. Animals in the wild change to blend into their environments. It’s just that in this case it happened from the other end as well, chameleons and twigs looking more and more like each other. Eventually they just lost track and ended up swapping places. What looks like the twig is actually the chameleon.” She pulled out what looked like the chameleon from the habitat and handed it to him. “See? It’s just wood.”

Sure enough he could feel the coarseness of the grain, and the lack of heft. It was wood in greater detail than any carving could possibly have. The closer he looked the more he was unsure whether it was really a plant.

She took the twig back and put it in the habitat. “The chameleon gets nervous if it doesn’t have a twig like that to cling to.” Turning back to the customer. “But as far as pets go, most people find the chameleon too confusing. Your son might think you just tried to dupe him with a wood carving. But feel free to keep looking around. Just holler if you have a question, I need to deal with the overflow in the goldfish tank.”

(Originally written 12/20/2015)

The Pet Shop: Goldfish

“Where do goldfish come from? Why do we have to keep them in round fishbowls?” The child at the pet store asked.

“I can only answer the first question partially, but it involves the answer to the second.” The woman at the counter replied. “Goldfish are kept in round fishbowls so that they end up in the same place by the time they remember their existence. A goldfish has bad enough memory that it regularly repeats its first and only memory of coming into being. When this happens away from their previous remembrance, there’s a chance a copy of that goldfish will appear at that old place.”

“The process isn’t perfect, as you can see in the different spots each goldfish has. Each one is a glitch in something no one understands. But the goldfish is sterile, so this is its only way of reproducing. It defies normal conventions of nature.”

“As for the original goldfish that started this all, no one knows. Some think it was eaten long ago, or is temporally preserved as someone’s trophy. Biologists and physicists dodge the question of where the first one came from. It’s the only clue that singularity-based life is possible.”

The child looked back at the fish tank, and blinked with surprised as she counted two more goldfish than before the clerk talked to her.

(Originally written 12/20/2015)