Category: Fictional

Gun rights are important because if the government ever goes too far and takes away other rights, we can use our guns to shoot them and then we’ll have our rights back.

OK, maybe not that right, the government can take that one away, but if it takes away another one, oh man then we’re gonna shoot the government real good. I may be sitting on a couch now, but if they take another right, well then I’ll do something, and the thing I’ll do is nothing else but shoot some government people.

Politics? Nah, not going to waste my time with that. Protest? Maybe next time, but uh some of us have to work, you know! What, am I going to quit my job? Use some vacation time? No way. Anyway, if they take another right then I will definitely aim my gun at a real living human being and pull the trigger, and I will definitely do this while being totally comfortable knowing that I ended that human life.

They took another right? Those assholes! Ugh! OK, the shooting’s gonna start real soon now. Wow, they’re gonna be sorry. I’m getting so mad I’m gonna buy some more ammo and a tactical vest for carrying extra mags. I’m not worried about them taking another right–just let them try. They’ll see what me and millions of other gun owners will do!

Stop paying taxes, are you crazy? You try it, see what kind of other great ideas you come up with while sitting in jail, genius. And no I can’t reduce my income so that I’m funding the evil government less because I already paid for cruise tickets for next winter, and I can already barely afford all the other necessities like food. Just yesterday I was going to get a few steaks from the store after setting up my new 8K TV, and can you believe the price of food right now?

Hey, what are you doing? Stop that, that’s illegal. We might get fined. Listen, stop before someone sees us. Oh my god this is too embarrassing, I don’t want to be seen near you. You’re just asking for trouble! That’s probably not going to work anyway so don’t bother trying. Look, I mean I like the idea, but you know that the news is going to call you names for doing it, and then everyone will believe you’re really bad, and then it won’t have worked anyway. We can only do this if the news says it’s good. This is lame, I’m cold and I don’t feel powerful. C’mon, let’s just go home and wait for things to get worse and then shoot people.

They made it mandatory to do what to kids now? Oh that’s too far. That’s it. I’ve had enough! Good thing there’s an election coming up, we can vote for the other party, they’re saying so many things I like to hear, and they’re saying it so often, and with such professional banners, and with such good insults against the current party, and even though they’re only promising to slightly roll back the latest power grab that the ruling party is using to bring weird new evil into the world, they really will do more than that, it’s just that they can’t say that they will because then not enough people will vote for them. People won’t vote for them if they get called radicals. So they have to trick people to get their votes, and that’s why I feel confident that they’ll do what I wish they’ll do. You just have to be smart enough to figure out that they’re lying to be able to trust them.

It’s very important that you also vote this way, because if you don’t, then everything is lost and we’ll have no other option, there’s nothing else we could possibly do, we’ll just have to continue sitting on the couch until the government takes another right and then we’ll start shooting government people. After that, everything will just go back to nice normal, which is great because I don’t want to deal with any hassle that would delay my flight to get to my cruise ship. I think the garbage guys will clean up the bodies, or something.

I may be mild mannered, docile, impotent, decadent, noncommittal, and have my personal interests and identity deeply integrated with and dependent on the system right now, but if they put just one more boot on my face, then I will definitely throw all of that–and also my life–away and escalate my resistance to the system from nothing to everything.

I was waiting for a pile of gold to fall into my lap
And when it finally did, it crushed my sack
Oh I wish I had my poverty back

Falling!

Black!

A vortex of a thousand rabid butterflies churned his gut and his body flailed frantically, trying to grab something, to step on something, to regain lost balance in the wake of these sudden visceral primordial sensations.  A subterranean groan grated his ears as his lungs strained to gasp in breath while screaming.  His heart ached to splitting from the electric jolt of these simultaneous realizations unified into one like a direct impact from the divine lightning hammer.

Having nothing here but himself, he made this the focus of his attention, and set about controlling it.  Trying to recount the preceding moments, partly in a feeble attempt to disprove the reality of his perplexing situation, he couldn’t remember if he’d seen the countdown timer go all the way to straight zeros before it disappeared.  In any case, it clearly had, and he was no longer there.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness and the heralds of hypoxia, those flashing specks of phantom light receded, he saw that some dim specks remained.

For a while he watched the distant stars scroll by as he revolved slowly in weightless suspension.  None of them were familiar, he could recognize no constellations.

So this was the edge of the error range in that fundamental equation that lay at the heart of the teleportation device, he thought to himself.  The engineers who built it were all confident that this possibility lay well beyond probability.  But the physicists who’d dreamt it up, those wizards of matter and energy, knew it was there.  As one of those physicists, he had known there was a chance that the blink–the instantaneous relocation–wouldn’t land him in Lab B, the intended target, but the promise of this technology that could open up all horizons and make every place reachable was too enticing–and so too was the chance to be the first teleported man too enticing.

That same miraculous insight that allowed the technology to work, the realization that, with the right manipulation, the universe could be tricked into thinking that each point in space was the same as any other, was also its greatest flaw. With the tremendous quantities of energy concentrated to densities well beyond natural phenomena that were needed to focus the machine on the intended target, all it had taken, presumably, was a picosecond drop or disruption in that energy flow for the focus to be lost, and without focus, every single point in the universe became equally likely to be his destination as any other.

Of course, if he’d known that he’d end up marooned between the stars, far from any planet, far from any sun, in who knows what region of the galaxy, or what region of the universe, he would never have stepped into the departure chamber at Lab A.  But here he was, and regrets are useless when there’s only three minutes of oxygen left.  He forced himself to appreciate the peculiarity of the transportation method that required the departure chamber to be void of all matter but the payload, therefore necessitating that he make the trip in a sealed suit with its own oxygen supply, leaving him with a few precious breaths at the end of his life instead of having his last ripped from him in this deep vacuum of deep space.

In one sense, it was the safest place he could be.  No predators, no natural disasters, no murder, nothing to fall on him–just nothing at all.  Possibly his suit could fail, but since there was nothing to make it fail–here there was nothing to make anything do anything but himself–that was as unlikely as spontaneous heart failure.

Rescue, even if he waited a trillion years, was impossible.  Finding a fraction of a speck of a shaving from a needle in a haystack would be easier than finding him in the random spot in the universe that he’d been dropped.

There would be a short time during which he would definitely not die, and then after that he was definitely going to die.

Three minutes of fresh air left, he thought to himself, and then a few seconds of fading consciousness. And then? How long would his body drift in nowhere, radiating out his heat until it dropped to the universal 3 kelvins, and how long would his nearly absolutely frozen corpse hang, motionlessly falling, pinned to nothing, without anything at all to molest it? Perhaps it would remain mummified until the very last days of the universe, when the atoms themselves ultimately tired and fell apart.

He thought of his future there, buried between the stars, ascended to the heavens to endure eternally among the constellations.  Did that make him like the mythological gods whose great deeds in life earned them a fixed place in the firmament?  As the only solid matter in a space potentially greater than any galaxy, he was indeed by far the most powerful being in his realm, and certainly in comparison to any of the isolated helium nuclei he could call his neighbours he would be considered a god.

The god looked out at his world and the night that surrounded him.  His night stayed; there was no Sun to warm his backside, as the Earth has, and no hope for a dawn.  Only night that would pass away to yet more night as he rotated like a miniature planet.

But the Sun is just a star, special only for its proximity, and his world was filled with stars, none occluded by any planet.  If night means being in the shadow of your planet cast by the Sun, then he would declare himself his own planet, and all the multitudinous stars shining on him his suns, thereby placing him in eternal day.  It would be day more gloriously bountiful than the fleeting periods experienced by those still trapped on Earth.  Not eternal night, but a miraculous uninterrupted teeming quantity of day!

He felt hot.  Though his destiny was a deep freeze, for now his body was still metabolising, slowly burning through its food, generating heat.  His environment was neither cold nor hot: temperature is a property of matter, and his environment had no matter.  The vacuum around him instead was a barrier to heat transfer, an unfathomably thick layer of insulation.

Realizing his oxygen supply had depleted, he felt relieved to have come to terms with what he now knew was his fortunate fate.

One last thought touched his consciousness as the starfield before his eyes began to be replaced once again by the twinkling bright points of hypoxia: a billion billion sunrises every moment, and all of them utterly dim.

Deeper and deeper they went, hacking at the earth, chipping the rock into rubble. Long ago having cursed the sun for its burning light in summer and its pale cold glare in winter, they turned from its remote indifference, declaring instead their fealty and love for the Earth, only the Earth. With an aching need to be closer, to feel its solid, warm embrace they’d entered the cave, descended to the depths of its cavernous abodes, then, upon meeting the final nook, they began to tunnel.

As they descended their gratitude grew, for here they found freedom: freedom from fickle weather, freedom from cruel predators, and freedom from the changing seasons. And they found warmth growing, so they graciously shed unnecessary garments—all was laid bare as the rock of their walls, roof, and floor. When any one of them had doubts about their course and harboured thoughts of the abandoned luminous world above, these were assuaged with an assurance that “where there is warmth, there is light.”

For this devotion they were richly rewarded. An uncontainable abundance of precious metals and stones overflowed their bulging pockets, falling unheeded into the worthless pebbles of broken terrestrial skeleton. Still they drove deeper, superterranean memories becoming more remote, their senses becoming more accustomed to the dim light of their torches. In this darkness, the glint and glean of their newly discovered treasures seemed to ever brighten into dazzling attraction.

In this pursuit, they turned first from the harsh glare of their torches to the faces of those who held them, and as the fires passed away from their sight, so did they pass from their words and thoughts.  Pupils dilated wider. Then even reflecting faces too became unbearable to see, and they turned to their shadows on the walls, addressing them so that when they talked to each other, they talked to their shadows.

Downward they dug in the hot darkness, surrounded by their frantically dancing shadows.

Kill ’em all, he thought.  18 of the beasts had cornered him here with all the exits blocked, and with what he’d been through, giving up was even less of an option than flight.  They sure as hell wouldn’t call it quits, not while their blood—or whatever it was that oozed out when he put holes in them—still circulated, still animated the hideous frenzied urge that enthralled them to his doom.

He probably wouldn’t make it out of this, but if he did, it would be through their dismembered corpses.  Their faces were like exit signs to him, showing him the way through fortified flesh that needed opening with his blaster.  Point there, squeeze here, and a portal would burst open in the beast, letting him walk out through the meaty mess.  The thought of myriad instant butchery provoked his hunger for killing into just the kind of madness needed to eagerly charge the deadly savagery closing in.

“Put down your weapon and reveal your empty hands!”  The audacity with which the tyrannical beast voiced this demand made his stomach churn.  Those sick freaks had no place using words—words are for humans, real, live, red-blooded humans!  The corrupted souls of these damned creatures—whatever the hell they were–could be seen a mile away through their dead eyes.  They weren’t fooling him, though they continued to try.  “If you comply willingly I am authorised to adjudicate a mitigated sentence.”

The nerve. “There’s just one thing I wanna know!”  He gripped his blaster tighter and became a coiled spring.

“What would you like to know?”

He’d been through hell—all 9 rings and a few extra epicycles to boot.  He’d pillaged a good deal of knowledge along the way, vast booty of arcane science and occult perceptions plus the usual exoteric observations on the requirements of survival: blast whatever gets in your way, keep moving, trust only self and blaster, sleep while blasting, and if blasting doesn’t work, smash it.  Don’t drop the medkit, unless you enjoy moving on perforated legs and smashing with a broken hand (he didn’t—much).  Getting a new medkit takes a lot of killing.

He also knew his blaster had 88% charge.  That would probably be enough, accounting for maybe 2 or 3 more unexpected complications.

And then there were all the things he thought he knew.  He thought he knew the layout of this facility down to the last brimstone brick.  He thought he knew that this room had access to the ventilation exhaust system.  He thought he was out.

It didn’t, and he wasn’t, and now he knew that hell had a lean-to, a 10th ring, a ring for the last finger, the trigger finger.  Lucky for him, he knew all about trigger fingers and his own was just itching to squeeze.  As he looked at the blaster in his hand a flood of countless memories of encroaching doom upon which it had rained down a cleansing fire visited him, and he smiled fondly at the intricately printed metal and energy display and glowing, murmuring hole of death at the end.

“I wanna know what kinda slimy bile’s sloshing around insida your soulless corpses!”  His brain blitzed into activity like a berserk Tesla coil, sending lightning rage through legion motor neurons to explode each harnessed muscle fibre with the motive power of undiluted centrifugally enriched bloodlust—or whatever-the-hell-lust.

Gazing euphorically at the lamp, he was reminded of all the effort it took to get to this point. There was the ten years of study he’d spent in his early years, reading all that was written about genies. Then, emerging from seclusion, there were the years–twice as many–abroad, searching, asking, digging, all in an unwavering drive, never doubting that he’d find one, some day. Against all odds that day came, the day his trembling hands pulled out the tarnished lamp and held it up the the gas lantern so that his eyes might see through their streams of satiated joy and confirm his highest hopes. But even after half a lifetime of anticipation and through his strongest desires for fulfilment, he had willed his hands into stone so that they would be unable to give the lamp the slightest polish, the faintest brush. This genie, he had been utterly determined, would not wake until he’d become ready to meet him.

And so he’d begun the most arduous and most important period of his life, twice still as long as the last. For the last 38 years he’d immersed himself in study of law, philosophy, logic, linguistics, and whatever field or discipline could prepare him in any way to meet the genie. And now, looking down at the lamp, as seductively close to pristine as it had been when unearthed, still beckoning and yearning to be wiped clean, he knew he was ready.

Fools, as the stories show, would unthinkingly rub the lamp right after finding it and summon the genie without preparation. Invariably, they’d ask for gold, immortality, or any number of pleasures, and, inevitably, the genie would smugly grant their wishes through fiendishly calculated horrors. They’d receive gold stolen from a king eager to have it returned, immortality without youth, or a harem whose beauty and quantity was matched only by the ferocity and diversity of its’ venereal diseases. The fools.

But he would succeed where they failed, he’d hesitate in thought where they acted dumbly, he’d outwit the cunning genie and cast a trickery-proof armour about himself as his first wish. He was sure of it.

This first wish was the result of the efforts of his final years. He’d ensured it was grammatically correct. He’d proved the logic had no loopholes for exploitation by ill-meaning genies. And now he was ready to become the first man to come out on top after rubbing a lamp.

He removed the glass case and tossed it aside. It crashed against the floor and spread out into thousands of shards that would be of little concern to one who has the powers he would momentarily undoubtedly possess. This time when he held the lamp the only tremors in his hands came from his age. His certainty was acting for him now, all he needed to do was watch as the scene played out. He watched as his sleeve, held in his hand, rubbed against the lamp. He watched as the shimmering smoke poured out and produced the grantor of wishes with his arms crossed over his ethereal breast. He listened as the genie made the offer: three wishes, whatever he might desire. And he listened as his own reply came, the same as in its numerous rehearsals:

“I wish that I was immune to genie trickery,” he commanded, with a clear and audible voice.

Immediately, the genie disappeared.

There is a palace that is so secure that it has no doors, no windows, and no way for solid matter to get in or out. To enter, a person must pierce themself with small tubes that protrude from the wall and allow their blood, their animating essence, and their soul, to be sucked out, leaving a rubbery empty husk of skin and bones and shrivelled viscera that crumples up into a dead heap on the dirt. Their liquids are piped into the palace, wherein they are pumped into a new lifeless shell. Consciousness returns after the new vessel is fully inflated, and the guest attends to his business. To leave, the same process is undergone.

“What do yo mean it’s OK?”, he croaked cautiously. The stars in the viewport hung motionless as the stale air in the spacepod. The pilot’s low, even tone caught the cook off guard, and his face erected a quick sheepish smile to mask his contemplative hesitation.

He chuckled once, “uh, just exactly what I said. It’s OK to drink. It’s safe.”

The pilot smiled humourlessly to himself. “But I didn’t ask if it was safe. I just wanted to know we had enough that I could have this one right now.” Turning away from the control console, he faced the cook directly, ready to fully observe and analyse his response. ”Is there a reason why it wouldn’t be safe?”

”No, no. I just wasn’t sure what you meant. It was a vague question, you know.” He went back to reorganizing the remaining rations, then realized that the rations way out there in the corner might need some organizing too, and so pursued them to that end.

The captain watched the cook’s receding back, analysing the way it was carried, and what that meant about his inner thoughts. ”You can tell a lot about a guy based on the way his muscles hold onto his bones,” he mused quietly to the copilot. ”Incidentally.”

The copilot kept his focus on the temporarily impotent controls. Temporary, that’s the word the tech kept emphasising every time he was asked. Where’s the distinction between temporary and permanent? Ground bases on Venus, they call them permanent but only expect them to last for ten orbs. His own position as copilot, that was supposed to be temporary, but how long has it been? A few more revs of consuming the unrenewables and all their lives would become pretty damn temporary. He kept his eyes on the controls and obligatorily accepted engagement into the conversation. “How do you mean?”

The pilot was ready. “You see they way his muscles are all–I know, it’s hard to see them under the fat–but just look at the way his muscles are all hard and awake, clutching his bones tightly. That’s a sure sign he’s worked up about something. They’re all wrapped around his ribs and tight. Not much room to stretch them. Much more of that and they’ll start to fight back–twitch. That’s the next stage, that’s what they do. Just watch them. Keep an eye on them, that much I’ll say.” The pilot continued to watch them.

The copilot blinked a stolen glance of the pilot, and blinked his eyes back to the controls. “Yeah, this wait is taking its toll on all of us. Are you going to drink the Carrot Essence?”

The pilot forced a scoff. “There’s no need to get antsy, tech says we’ll get moving soon. Everybody’s fine.” He looked at the essence and rubbed his chin. He narrowed his eyes at the essence. He turned his head slightly and clenched his teeth at the essence, then let out a long angry sigh. Dropping his hands to his legs, he said, “I’m not playing his games,” and stood up. From the suddenness, and from uncertainty of the pilot’s next action, the copilot’s heart twinged and beat rapidly. He realized he didn’t actually know the pilot very well.

They’d served together for two orbs on this ship, and were strangers before that. The pilot was a native of Venus, and had that aura of impatience and immediacy all Venusians had. That didn’t bother the copilot; his homedome was on Luna so he was used to all kinds of people. But he’d never before been stuck on a dead ship halfway to the dead edge of the solar system with any of them.

The pilot walked out the room and the copilot’s blood took a moment to fizzle out.

She stares at me from the corner, but I don’t dare meet those eyes with mine.  I glance toward her only occasionally, to ensure her restraints are holding.  There’s no reason they wouldn’t still hold: I have by now become quite skilled at preventing her from escaping.  But every time I look into those familiar eyes, see her face, and see what I’ve done to the person I love most, my empathy bewitches me and I’m filled with a single-minded desire to free her and tearfully apologise for the bruises and the sores on her wrists and ankles.

But, of course, that would be my doom.  I know well by now that while her mind is still inhabited by one of the malicious souls, she will do all she can to cause me harm.  Indeed, I have my own share of bruises, and worse, attesting to the ferocity and vigour with which the soul will employ the whole of her body — fists, nails, feet, teeth — to the end of damaging and destroying me.  The arcane powers deep bellow this valley fuel its strength, and drive its lust for destruction and suffering.  Motivated by the most uncompromising hate, this uninvited guest would act as the agent of chaotic entropy unfailingly, crushing and tearing apart all life as it went, for as long as its hapless host remained untorn and intact.

This valley, I was informed before our arrival, is infested by a cloud of evil souls. They enter the bodies of unvigilant victims, overthrowing the minds of any who are not constantly alert and on guard against their entry.  And for many long weeks of forgotten quantity we have traveled, in our attempt to get through.  My memory of the decision to take this road, against all recommendations and warnings from the local peasants and townsfolk, has faded into such a haze that it now more resembles an event told to me, rather than experienced by me. I return to it and dwell on it often in these periods of intensely dull peace when she is restrained.  The deep self-loathing resulting from the deep regret of that misdeed, rather than altering the past to reverse that ignorant decision, as I foolishly, futilely hope, only worsens my health.   My clothes are constantly damp with cold sweat, my muscles sore from never quite fully relaxing.  My mind is in a sea of needles, constantly prickled, and I long for sleep.  I am constantly at war with my body as it rages against me and uses any means it can to suck me down into sleep, not limiting itself to only blackening my sight, or refusing my request to move a limb.  I have yet to surrender, however, for my allies, which make me strong, are the love I have for my wife, and the fear of the violent soul that inhabits her.

Yes, it is my wife that I must so desperately protect myself against!  Never before could I have imagined such a perplexingly terrible thing:  that my dearest wife, my overflowing font of gaiety and primary purpose in life, would be my greatest foe!

Oh, if only I could continue our travel and escape this valley!  Dwelling is such great pain.  Perhaps I could find, or fashion, a cage strong enough to contain a crazed woman.  Yes, a cage of thick iron bars and a lock blessed by a hundred bishops, whose key I could keep safe on my person, never to use till the poisonous soul departs.  I could place it upon a cart drawn by the steadiest oxen — to reduce to a minimum the antagonization brought to that deranged soul.  These oxen would never fail, for I would bath them daily in the concoctions of alchemists, and let them drink their fill of the potions of wizards!  No beast could harm them, and we would carry on through the darkest forests, never stopping, impossible to stop, with the infinite inertia of God himself until finally we are gone from this valley, never to return!

Now, where am I to find this cage?  Who can produce it?  Ah, what’s this?  Whence came this hair that lingers in my lap and is in my fingers wrapped? Of course, it is my own, the source:  my head, where it was grown!  Fortuitous providence: a material for the cage!  Divine inspiration — weaving: the method to build the cage!  The path out the valley is found, our suffering ends soon.  Look, wife, watch me construct!   A cage of iron bars shall form in view of your occupied eyes.  With my hair, and my unconquered determination, it will assemble itself.  My sweat will be wizard potion, my blood will spawn oxen.  Urine will mix with the spit of my mouth, as surely must be recorded the alchemists’ tomes.  Wife, we shall be together unhindered again soon!