OMG Alec!

It’s not that I hated her or anything.

Actually, it’s quite the opposite; I loved the hell out of her. I guess that’s why I did what I did. Alright, maybe I need to preface this with a bit of background. My name’s Ken Wong and I own a multi-billion dollar corporation. I also happen to have been involved with an esper for the past three years. Her name is Maggie Green and I met her when the world started to really go to shit. Mutants started making themselves known and as with any big thing happening in the timeline of humanity, people started flipping a shit as people are wont to do.

When we first met she was just a seventeen year old girl that didn’t like her lot in life and I was a twenty five year old business and academic badass looking for a competent personal assistant. I knew it wasn’t a very smart decision to go out with someone who could read my mind. I’m sure she knew it too, probably because she read my mind when I thought that, but the both of us decided to give it a try anyway.

Fast forward three years. We’ve broken up and I’m putting the final touches on my time machine. I swear I didn’t make the time machine so that I could go back and change things in our relationship, though sometimes I find it hard to resist that temptation. This time machine, like the demise of our relationship, has been three years in the making. I do admit, though, that the ending of our relationship is one of the primary reasons why I volunteered myself as the first human test subject. Afterall, a telepath as powerful as Maggie could read the mind of any person on this planet so long as they really put their mind to it. So, to escape from her I’ve decided that I need to escape from this time.

I knew I shouldn’t have put the destination as random. The funny thing about space and time is that, if you believe in the many worlds theory, each action could have infinite consequences it’s just that we’re only able to observe precisely one of those results. So, one can speculate that there are infinite worlds out there, the majority of which are such that mere human minds couldn’t possibly imagine them.

Well, it’s a good thing I’m not in one of those. The bad thing is that, well, if I’m traveling to the past it’s pretty much damn near impossible for me to exist in the thread of time that my consciousness has come from. The mere presence of me in the past will have taken the thread from which I originated and violently veered it off-course, causing me to spin-off in a thread wherein Maggie wouldn’t exist.

Well, I know this isn’t much of a story, I didn’t intend for it to be. Right now I’m just hopping threads leaving this journal entry on anything that looks like it’ll survive a few eons. I know there isn’t a good chance that I’ll be able to ascertain the exact thread in which I’m supposed to exist. Afterall, if I had landed in my original thread, then humanity will have known about some guy in the ancient past talking about time machines and looking for his lost love.

I guess the real purpose of this is to tell as many souls that exist in the multiverse as I can the story of my greatest mistake. I had loved once and made a rash decision due to heartache. Now I dive through the torrential seas of time trying to get back what I’ve lost.

This is just some flash fiction I decided to write while I was bored. It’s written from the point of view of a character that I made for Phil’s superhero game.

Alec stood valiantly, his gilded armor gleamed with the light of the world’s hope. He stood atop a crumbling bridge facing his opponent, trying to keep his mind off the ominous clouds and lightning strikes high above. He glanced quickly down below, taking note of the horde of animated corpses climbing up the cliff-side.

The world was but a wasteland, naught but fault lines littered throughout barren lands. Across the bridge was a long sought-after treasure, guarded by a knight in black. Alec studied his opponent. The Black Knight donned armor wrought from the very fires of hell, his menacing mace forged by Lucifer himself. Though Alec could not see his face, a dreadful sense of pride seemed to emanate from the Black Knight. The Knight was prideful for the horde of undeath is his creation; his fallen opponents.

Alec grabbed hold of his sword and faced his adversary with determination. He felt his innards start to quake in fear but steeled himself and belted out a war cry that would stagger Titans. With a step, Alec charged. He seemed to carry the weight of the world upon his shoulders, making the bridge beneath him tremble with every step. Closing in on the Black Knight, Alec raised his sword high and brought it down with force upon his foe. As the Black Knight parried, a shock wave emanated from his feet. The Black Knight winded up, took a step forward, and unleashed all of hell’s fury upon Alec. The blow nearly cracked his armor but Alec took it in stride, readying for another strike.

The battle raged on, blow after blow. The Black Knight seemed relentless. While Alec started to show fatigue in his movement, the Black Knight showed no signs of wear. The Black Knight kicked Alec to the ground and raised his hands high, chanting in a demonic tongue. Alec knew that this was his end.

Knowing that not even the heavens could interfere, Alec relented and watched as a pillar of fire engulfed him. He glanced past the Black Knight once more, looking for the treasure, the one thing that could bring him release.

Stuck in hell, Alec had not known the sweet song of sleep in the years past. The treasure he sought would not bring him out of hell, he knew he would never have that chance. The treasure would merely allow him to sleep. He fought the minions of hell seeking that treasure hoping for the chance that he may see his lost lover in his dreams.

((Insomnia’s a bitch. It gets really scary when you’ve been awake for more than 60 hours and sleep doesn’t seem to be coming in the foreseeable future. So maybe I get a bit morbid…))

Kayla watched intently through the glass as her father, with the help of his lab assistant, inserted microbes into the brain of a lab rat. Kayla was so entranced by the scientists that she barely noticed another girl joining her.

“That’s my daddy,” Kayla said without turning her head. “He didn’t want me to come on bring-your-kids day but I made him so he did.”

“I’m Beonca,” said the girl.

“I’m Kayla,” she responded. “So anyway, I made my daddy tell me about what he does, and like, he sticks wires into those mice’s heads and then he can control them,” she paused, waiting for a response.

With eyes still glued on her father, Kayla continued. “Then I started to think, like, what it would feel like, y’know? Like, do you just feel your arms and leg move and you don’t know why and, like, you don’t want them to? Or does it, like, make you feel like you really want to move, or do something? What if they did that to a person? Like, could they make you think something? Could they make you like something?”

Kayla finally stopped to catch her breath. For a bit, both girls stood in silence, watching the scientists poke and prod without emotion at the rodent’s brain. Kayla’s father then walked to a console and pushed on a joystick. The mouse started moving and Kayla’s father nodded his approval.

“Like,” Kayla paused, trying to find her words. “I donno how much thinking a mouse can do, but they’re treating him like just some object. What if some aliens or robots were doing this to people? Like, y’know, talking about us like things and stuff, talking about our feelings like it was just data…”

Beonca gazed down at the ground, “I think I have to go now…” she uttered quietly and looked away.

It was only then that Kayla looked over at Beonca and noticed the wires.

Boots always joked to himself that he had the power of invisibility. It was mandatory that all newborns in The Hive were implanted with a Cyberbrain module, which Boots lacked. He himself never knew the reasons behind it, but being that all citizens of The Hive used The Net as their only form of interaction and communication, Boots had been ignored all his life. As a child, Boots would often sit on the street-side watching mindless drones in corporate uniforms march, in orderly fashion, to their destinations. Boots alone would stare starkly at the spartan buildings; purely functional in design to save on wasted effort. No eyes would feast upon any furnishings of the real, not in The Hive.

Boots would often question his own existence, often after failed attempts at interaction with the “meat husks”, as he had called them. He would stare into their hazy eyes wondering what it was they saw; what curtain was pulled in front of their eyes that was so beautiful and magical that they lumbered around with grins of blissful stupor. He watched them toil like clockwork. He watched them shovel globs of synthesized meat product into their mouths. He watched them sit motionless for hours staring into empty space. They can’t be enjoying this life, he reasoned with himself, “lest they be blind idiots”.
“Oh, they’re idiots alright, but not fer the same reason yer thinkin’,” for the first time in his fourteen years of living, someone was talking to Boots directly, “they’re idiots ‘cuz they let the corporations ‘mote control their bodies while they occupy their minds” Boots turned and stared back, unable to speak. He saw before him a balding, rotund man wearing a grease-stained undershirt and holey jeans.
“Name’s Earl, I run a jazz club, a real jazz club, fer us enlightened ones, unpluggeds, c’mon,” said Earl in his thick, gruff voice.
Without a word Boots stood up and looked at Earl, nodding.

Too tired, part 2 tomorrow.

It all started with that damn d20. Well, maybe I’ll give a little background.

My name is Kenny Hideyoshi and ever since I first started gaming I’ve had an obsession with unique and interesting dice. No less than once a week would I go to my local card or gaming shops to buy a new set of dice, I could never find any that really fit me. That is, until a year ago today.

I wasn’t even out looking for dice. I was with a few of my buddies off on spring break in St. Augustine and just strolling through some local shops. I had found a dingy little shop tucked away in some back alley in which none of my friends were interested. I wasn’t even entirely sure it was a shop so I stepped in slowly, taking care not to track any sand inside, as I told my friends I’d be back shortly.

My eyes had barely adjusted to the dark, dusty shop when I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of dread. It might have been the shrunken head in a jar staring back at me, but I felt something in the pit of my stomach. A feeling that an ancient evil had just woken from a deep slumber due to my infractions and was staring deep into me with profound hatred.

I had found the shop keep after some effort, partly due to his ability to sit motionless for extended periods of time, and partly because his old, decrepit features fit in so well with his surroundings. He offered no help after I acknowledged his presence so I kept glancing about the shop.

Lining the shelves were what seemed to be old trinkets of wood, stone, and bone. There were larger objects as well, in the corners and lining the back walls, that seemed to be totems and statues of sorts. A few items had caught my interest, but it all quickly faded as my eyes landed on it.

“It” was an obsidian, twenty sided, polyhedral object; it was almost as if the object was made to be a die. Losing all interest in the other trinkets, I walked up to the object and glanced back at the shop keep. He seemed to be either inattentive or apathetic so I reached out and grabbed it.

The moment I moved the object life seemed to again run in its veins. Colors indescribable seemed to swirl around beneath its ebony skin. Startled, I put it down. Almost immediately, the aimless swirling started to solidify at the top and formed into a character in some unknown language. It shone bright for a few seconds then faded out, returning to its original, black, state.

I had to have it.

I grabbed the die and walked straight to the shop keep, placing it and a five dollar bill on the counter. The shop keep finally stirred, reached a hand out, and daintily picked up the bill. I took this as a sign that we were both in agreement and placed the die in my pocket, walking swiftly out of the shop without a word having been spoken.

Of course I showed it off to my friends, who, being gamers themselves, were mightily jealous. It wasn’t even a week later that I used it in a session as my main die, having written down each of the characters, equated them to a number, and subsequently memorizing each character. I have played using that die exclusively even to this day.

There is… something special about the die though. It wasn’t until three months after I had acquired the die that I noticed something a little… magical about it. Like many gamers, whenever I found myself bored during a session I would roll my die incessantly. I had been doing this for months until I noticed that the die was almost… predictive. I had found that when I was waiting on another player to finish their turn my die rolls were always consistent to a certain degree. The harder I thought about the player’s intended actions the more consistent the die would roll. I had almost brushed it off as coincidence until I decided to try my luck, on a whim.

I concentrated as hard as I could on the current situation as I waited and was able to will the die to roll a thirteen… seven times in a row. The player I was waiting on then made his roll: Thirteen. It baffled me why I hadn’t noticed the die’s behavior before. I realize now that the die was watching, adjusting its prediction according to fate; realigning its characters to what I had interpreted them as, if you will.

Of course, at the time, I was so awestruck that I almost decided to get a new die and forget what had happened. It was with a slow and cautious step that I ventured into experimenting with what the die could do in real life.

After I had made the realization of the die’s power, its ability in prediction was almost perfect. For several months I had used the die’s power in daily life, consulting it obsessively for every decision I would make, every action I planned on taking. After I had used it to bring me fortune I let curiosity about its origins take me over.

I found that I was not the first in history to find such an item of power. Originating from Sumerian times, an uncatalogued number of artifacts have surfaced throughout history, making their mark on their respective owners then abruptly disappearing, lost forever in the mist of time.

The further I delved into the matter the more I felt a shadow linger over me. Questions raced through my mind every waking moment I had. I spent all of my conscious effort thinking about and researching these artifacts and left the die to decide the other, trivial, aspects of my life.

I have found myself growing distant from my family and friends, traveling abroad in search of answers about these artifacts, relying on the die to make enough money to pay for food and shelter. I was not surprised to find that I was being followed on my journeys by hooded men that were seemingly invisible to others.

Here I sit now, alone in an abandoned shack off the side of a country road with a singular thought in my mind. With die in hand, I sit thinking of the possibility that these hooded men are after my life, seeking my artifact. I sit, listening to footsteps approaching, too afraid to roll.

Just a quick one today, I stumbled on to this site called 365 Tomorrows. It’s filled with some really good sci-fi flash fiction and it’s updated everyday.

Here’s a really cool one I found

The site is here