Driving in Tokyo One Night

Sitting in a car, wrapped in aluminum and plastic and glass, on an elevated highway that itself sits below yet another highway, the middle slice of a sandwich of concrete and asphalt, canyoned on either side by monolith office towers of steel and glass, vacant floors awash in incandescent light.

Little driver of flesh and bone, warm and dry despite the evening rain. Shielded, swaddled. Cocooned.

A Day at the River

Luke goes down to the river. There are many others there, splashing in the water, swimming, paddling about in boats. They call to him, but he smiles and makes no answer. Luke dips his toes in but the water is cold, and so he sits instead upon the bank. 

The sun rises and warms him and he drowsily watches the others play. They no longer call to him. He's missed his window. Ah well. He'll go in later, he promises himself. No rush. He has a nap instead and lets the waters pass him by. 

When he wakes the sun is low and the wind is cool. The others have gone, and only Luke and the endlessly flowing waters remain. Flowing, flowing, taking away the morning and the people, never to return. 

He stands, stretches, feeling the stiffness set in his bones. He plunges in as darkness sets, strikes for the river bottom, and there finds the largest stone he can. 

He wraps both arms around it and waits, watching the line of bubbles float from his mouth to the surface.

The Bubble

Hello and welcome to The Bubble. Thank you for choosing The Bubble for your extradomular excursion to the surface world. Remember, choose The Bubble or die horribly. "The Bubble! It's what all your still-living friends are using!" 

Please fasten your restraints and do not stand while The Bubble is in motion. Attempting to leave The Bubble while outside the dome will result in immediate TERMINATION ... of your insurance policy. 

Ahaha. 

No but seriously, everything out there will kill you. 

Here we can see the flowering cherry tree. Note the delicate pink flowers, which bloom only for a week or two each year. Inhaling the pollen is like snorting ground glass directly up your nose. So don't do that. Remain in the comfort and safety of The Bubble. 

Underneath the tree you can see a feral example of an animal once known as felis catus. Aww. How cute! An estimated 90% of surviving specimens are infected with an RNA lyssavirus invariably fatal to humans. Do not worry. The Bubble will protect you. Nice kitty. Say bye-bye! 

Is there any other safe method of exploring the surface? Good question, I'm glad you asked. No, there is not. Other companies may claim their products provide protection, but they are lying. Any evidence provided by your own eyes cannot be trusted. Only The Bubble guarantees safety. Do not leave The Bubble. 

Please remain in your seat. Trust The Bubble. Return to your seat. The Bubble is your friend. The Bubble loves you. Do not open The Bubble. Lethal force authorized. Haha, just kidding. 

...

Passenger sanitized. Returning with biomass for recycling. Thank you for choosing The Bubble.

Madness

Madness lies at either end of the spectrum of popularity, where one is so hated, so ignored, or else so well loved, that nothing you think, say or do can make your life worse or better. Madness is freedom from consequences.

Cities Are Snares

Cities are snares for potential. It’s a wonder they don’t collapse under the weight of all that wasted energy, or snarl themselves into immobility.

Picture all those missed encounters, lost opportunities, wasted moments, bound around and tangled between the people like thick and heavy black strands, sticky spider webbing that grows denser and denser with each glance the wrong way, each misplaced word, each hesitation and retreat. 

That person, there, that best friend or partner who might have been, will walk on, never knowing you exist. Their vision slowly occluded by the mass of habit and anomie, until there is only tomorrow, which will be much like today.

And I.

I peer down at my phone, earphones in my ears. Happy little insect, tangled in the web.

Time Makes Everything Its Opposite

An archeologist, time’s tourist, stood in the excavation pit. A reverse grave, where people went to retrieve some living fragment of the dead; an inside-out box, where everything of value lay beyond the four walls. 

Potsherds and stone flakes rustled in their hand. Once a slave’s garbage, now incalculably valuable.

Smart Glasses

He put on the Smart Glasses, opened his eyes and for the first time, saw.

Images that skipped invisibly past unseeing eyes and pressed themselves directly on the optic nerve. Accurate in a way no lazy human eye could ever be, no guesswork or filling in what it expected to see, but the ocean of life in all its grainy, gritty glory.

He drowned himself in the depths of city streets, surfed the crashing waves on crowded commuter subways, watched waves lap at his feet along the beach, carrying their tides of plastic and paper.

A hand reached up, and took the glasses off.

1979

He was born in an in-between place, a valley with old and rounded hills behind, sharp and eager mountains before, a kind of negative space of not-geography. It was the kind of place life largely passed by, with wars that broke behind the weathered hills and storms that raged beyond the peaks. 

In the sheltered valley there was idyll and ease. Days, months and years slipped by his defenses, unchallenged. And crept up on him as he stood by the window, watching the distant lightning.

Digital Lascaux

One day you’re going to write the best thing you’ve ever written, and you won’t even know it until maybe years later. You’ll just go on, blissfully producing a steady stream of increasingly mediocre drivel. 

And what’s worse, no one will read it, this masterpiece of yours, and it will disappear forever into some dusty hard drive in some server farm cavern. Never to be seen again, unless data archeologists stumble across it in a thousand years, like some digital Lascaux. 

Van Gogh died a pauper, and you are no van Gogh.

No Word for Yes

The Tatemae were a quiet, peace-loving race, descended from avian omnivore stock, migrating along the Perseus arm in flocks of swept-wing spacecraft. 

They were involved in more and bloodier wars than any other race in the galaxy.

The trouble was this: The race had no word for “Yes,” and thus by extension, no way to give an unambiguous “No.” Regardless of their individual feelings, culture custom and language forced any individual Tatemae to hem and haw and reply to any request with “Well, it might be difficult…” 

Did they come in peace? Well, they might, they might not. Too early to tell.

Would they be willing to exchange technologies? Ah, now, that was a good question.

Could they change their migration route? Hm. Might be tricky.

How about a peace agreement between their race and ours? Perhaps. Hard to say. 

Would they withdraw before we open fire? They’d give it some thought.

And cue another bloodbath.

Animate Entropy

As quantum scientists know, the world is shaped by observation and belief, and so it will end when enough of us want it to. We’ve approached that point asymptotically, a steady erosion of our will to live through famine, war, pestilence, and even just the common, petty, daily drudgery of not being dead.

That loss has weakened the foundations of the world, and allowed the demons in.

A demon is just animate entropy, with no more malice than an acid or alkaline, only driven by the need to liberate all the stuff that makes you you from its molecular bonds and the tyranny of being you.

This is why demons are banished by belief. Only the certainty that life in all its imperfections is still worth living will ensure that there will be any life left in the universe.

Klondike Again

The wagon master eased his horse to a halt at the crest, and turned to the train behind him. 

After centuries the Klondike River was once again a destination, though its visitors were running from something, not to. It was hot even in winter, and gritty asphalt got into everything, including the food. 

“Welcome,” he called to the refugees. “Welcome to the promised land. Welcome to the last indrawn breath before the mortal exhalation of a dying world. Welcome to the penultimate paragraph in Earth’s final chapter. 

“Enjoy the scenery, dinner is at seven. Hope you like grubs and algae, cos that’s what you’re getting.”

One

There is only one soul, and it lives the life of every person, one at a time, forgetting itself at the end of each, so to return and do it all over again, only through different eyes. You will be the richest of us, and the poorest, you will be the happiest and the saddest, you will love yourself, torture and kill yourself, but never ever remember.

Transjovian Airsphere

Welcome to the Transjovian Airsphere, your soap bubble among the stars, your exotic exile, your home away from home, friends, family, pets, the whole shebang really. 

Head forward please while we insert the subdermal MTE chip. 

We’re five billion clicks from Earth so there’s not a lot to see or do, but not to worry, the chip gives you immediate retinal access to centuries of shows and movies. 

There we are.

Here’s your Motivator. Yes, it looks like a knife. The Airsphere orbits slowly but the walls are too thin to keep you in, so you’ve got to keep in constant motion or you float off into nothingness. Just give yourself a jab from time to time, stop yourself from getting too comfortable.

Right? All set then. Away you go.

The Point of It

The Grave Digger dug by the moon’s bony light, and the Bounty Hunter kept watch from his shadowy seat atop the next grave stone, thumbs hooked around his six-shooter belt. 

The Grave Digger’s spade bit deeper and deeper into the endless black earth, and the Bounty Hunter’s fingers drummed a brittle and skeletal tune on his thighs. 

“Just a little bit more,” said the Digger, leaning against the handle of his shovel and wiping cold sweat from his brow. 

“Ain’ goin’ nowhere,” the Hunter replied with the ghost of a shrug.

“No,” the Digger squinted at the Hunter. “I reckon you ain’t.”

The graveyard was silent but for the bell toll of the metal spade on unforgiving earth.

“Such a waste, dyin’ so young,” the Digger muttered. “Makes you wonder, what’s the point?”

“Too late to worry about that now. Either there’s no point, or the whole thing is the point. The length of the livin’ don’ enner into it.” 

When he was done, the Digger threw aside the shovel, and hauled himself out, back out of the hungering hole, dusted the dirt from his palms and took off his hat. Held it nervously in both hands. “Anything to say before we do the necessaries?”

“Naw, no sense in gettin’ all loquacious now. Best say what you need to say when you’re still among the quick. Why waste words on the dead?”

The Digger shrugged. “Like what you said: Either words are their own point, or there ain’t none.”

The Hunter chuckled, and took off his own hat. Giving the Digger a good view of the shot that had killed the Hunter, a neat, round and brown hole just above the right eye. “Maybe put that on my tombstone,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “My thanks.”

“Safe travels,” said the Digger as they shook, and then watched as the Hunter lay down in the hole he’d prepared for him. Sighing, the Digger began to fill it again.

The Doors Stood Open

They sailed west, beyond the failing light of a faded world, and so came at last to the shores of Asgard. The doors to Valhalla stood open, and they threw themselves inside, eyes bright and wet with hope, love and relief.

The hearth was as black as Odin’s missing eye, the benches as empty as their orphaned hearts. Only cold and dead frost claimed Odin’s throne.

They clustered in the center of the echoing nothing, and looked at one another with eyes that said: How do we live now?

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The barbarians were in the valley, burning as they went.

“How could this happen?” moaned the patrician, as he loaded another trunk upon his donkey’s back. “Where are the legions?”

The ungrateful slaves had all fled, leaving the villa echoing and empty, and with only the mule for company. It flicked an ear and the look it gave him was unsympathetic. The trunk unbalanced, fell to the ground and broke open in an artery of gold and rubies. 

The patrician wept, but it was too late to save his wealth. Already fires were dotting the horizon. He mounted the donkey and dug in his heels. “This is all the plebs’ fault.”