by submission | Jul 10, 2022 | Story |
Author: Majoki
“A synaptic map of the brain.”
“Social media pathways on the Internet.”
“A spider web. If the spider had taken acid.”
The program director waited as each volunteer gave their interpretation of the sprawling diagram being displayed in the research center’s conference room.
“A force much more powerful than any robot overlords we unleash.”
The director prompted, “Go on.”
“Mycelium. The subterranean threads that weave life. The network that links the underland. Fungi. The Wood Wide Web.”
That answer is how I got here. Buried, but far from dead.
I’d been sunk into the ground deep in the Hoh Rain Forest where I’d not be disturbed, except by mycelia. That was the hope which goes a long way in explaining the craziness of the plan. Volunteering to be buried alive.
Not my physical self. That was in a very sterile lab in Olympia, ostensibly doing very well by doing very little, or so the lab monitoring systems reported. No, my flesh wasn’t six feet under. My consciousness was.
For decades we’d been waiting for the singularity. Uploading our ethereal selves into a promised digital land. But, here I was downloaded into the analog underland. My mind melding with mushrooms. The fungilarity.
This was no psilocybic psychedelic trip. I was the program’s first hyponaut, my consciousness inserted into the mycelia of one of the largest temperate rainforests in the U.S. to tap into taproots, sound the soil, and mosey along the myriad subterranean networks that connected all manner of flora, from towering trees to microscopic mushroom spores.
A heady responsibility and a mega headtrip as well. Good thing my head was on ice in a lab. A very good thing because I was discovering how much unnecessary baggage that skull of mine carried.
Yes, humans are social. We crave connections. We search for those forever friends and soul mates, looking to form bonds that transcend–whatever. But, you see, what I really discovered down here in the underland, untethered from my physical form, is that humans have been soul searching in the wrong place. We’ve been raising our eyes and hopes upward, to the heavens, to the celestial depths, when the core of our being is right at our feet, below and within our simple earth. An earth that has been patient with us, even as we smother it.
Now, I was in it, rooted to its roots, connected as no human consciousness had ever been before and all humankind’s fears and myths of inner earth being the domain of the dead were wrong. Dead wrong. Every fiber of the underland was about life. Life bound together and dependent. A true system of survival and revival.
Fungi were among the first organisms to return to the atomic blast site of Hiroshima. From mushroom clouds to mushrooms. That is our way out, to dig deeper, into our earth, into our hearts, into the real soul of our being. If we no longer try to simply bury our mistakes, we can unearth our true potential. Not just as human beings, but as fellow beings.
Partners for life.
by submission | Jul 9, 2022 | Story |
Author: Andrew Dunn
They come every seventeenth year. Momma says they are evil, each one a little piece of hell called forth by her ex-husband to torment springtime before summer’s heat dries our corner of Georgia to a crisp.
“Cicadas.” Molly said. “They’re just bugs.”
Molly was unshouldering her bra in my bedroom, and then unzipping her shorts. We were too young to be doing what we were doing. The only thing that could have stopped us would have been momma bursting through the door wailing about how Adam gave up a bone from his rib cage so that Eve could come into this world and tempt that poor boy with an apple. We were well past Adam and Eve. Molly Jenkins was my Salome, dancing her own version of the seven veils as she peeled off socks and planted her hands on her hips.
Outside the shrill piercing sound of the cicadas roiled up in one of those crescendos I imagined washed over everywhere like a sonic tidal wave. Momma was in her room oblivious. She was glued to that news channel where they’re sure whatever any given democrat is suggesting will unravel life as we know it on the third stone from the sun, or least within the bounds of ‘Merica.
I never knew why momma called daddy Satan, and I wasn’t inclined to ask after I felt Molly’s body against my own. I didn’t know whether I was Adam or Herod either, as my fingers passed over her rib cage, sheathed in soft pale skin. What I knew for sure, as my lips found Molly’s, was that I was molting free of childhood as I danced with her toward my bed.
I knew afterwards, me and Molly would find the world outside littered with cicada hides. Where would I hide the skin I was shedding as my body merged with Molly’s for the very first time?
Maybe I’d leave it raw, bare, and evident for momma to find, a mystery easy for her to unravel.
by submission | Jul 8, 2022 | Story |
Author: Calum Strachan
It was an overwhelmingly unlikely occurrence. Somewhere at the end of time, as the universe approached uniformity, a localised phenomenon sprung out of the thin and fragile space. Purely by chance, the particles that had drifted alone for so long coalesced all at once with pugilistic violence and grace.
Colliding atoms inadvertently arranged themselves in the form of a functioning thalamus. White matter erupted from nothing, followed by all manner of grey. The inexplicable tissues enveloped and enfolded around an increasingly unlikely mass.
A cerebellum slotted in precisely, as if by design. The deity-less miracle persisted as a spinal cord sprouted and trailed off to nothing.
A stray packet of electromagnetic energy, travelling unimpeded on its random path since the beginning of physical space, happened upon the accident of thermodynamics. It struck like lightening, without the mess. The brain lit up; it was alive.
The improbability of this outcome could not be overstated.
The brain remembered. Somewhere, at this moment and aeons ago, a child stepped one unsure foot in front of the other. The brain felt the grass between its toes and recoiled instinctively from the unexpected dampness. The boy stumbled and the brain jolted with a hypnic jerk. The boy worried at the edges of an apfelstrudel with new, budding teeth, and a surge of dopamine ricocheted around the brain.
The boy, now a young man, attended endless lectures. Memories piled up in waves as the weight of countless hours of study and debate bore down on the brain. In answer to the burden, an imperceptible schism emerged, not from the matter but from the mind. Days and weeks and years spent theorising and calculating, defending and withdrawing; the schism was nurtured, and it grew into a chasm. Prominence and prestige, fame and infamy; the brain lived the life all in an instant. The brain became very heavy, although its mass remained constant.
The rift grew unbearably large, impossibly deep, an invisible spiderweb of cracks through crystal. The brain closed down hard like a fist on its lifetime of memories. For a moment, the mind inside was still. In the near empty dark, ever so gently, the brain performed a pirouette around its axis.
A mercurial mind, first thrust into the universe between Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday, now floated in the void between nothing and nowhere.
The brain, newly alive, got to work making new memories. The first was a sensation of being outside ones self, but still very much restricted. Reflexively, the brain looked down… and was struck by the full force of comprehension. There was no ‘look’. There was no ‘down’. The brain laughed, or tried to, or tried to try, but something so visceral was far out of reach. Choosing intention over defeat, it resolved to quantify its lonely place in the last of the universe. How long had it taken for a drop of chaos to fall into the sea of order? The brain diligently did the maths. A lifetime obsessed with statistical mechanics had served it well; it did not need pen or paper.
Before long, and before the brain could reach an answer (although it was very close), it did what brains do in the inhospitable void at the end of time. The energy that had grasped the brain for the yoctoseconds of its re-existence now loosened its grip. Thermodynamic equilibrium was reached, and the brain receded back into the universe with an inaudible sigh.
It was likely to be the last such occurrence.
by submission | Jul 7, 2022 | Story |
Author: Mark Renney
Tanner’s job was to remove the evidence, to wipe away the traces. He considered this task as necessary, that he was an essential part of the system and for more than forty years Tanner’s belief in the system hadn’t wavered. He had remained resolute, diligent and effective.
Although he remembered all the names of those he had erased, Tanner hadn’t ever regarded them as individuals. No, they were part of a collective and anyhow many of them, most in fact, were already dead or imprisoned before his work had even begun.
Some, a few, had escaped and were living in exile, but what they did and said elsewhere didn’t matter. What they were beyond the system was inconsequential. It was the eraser’s job to eradicate those who opposed the system from within. To help establish and maintain the truth.
By the time a name is passed on to Tanner, the bulk of inflammatory material has already been unearthed and obliterated. Underground magazines can’t hide forever and the liars are always captured amidst the lies, like spiders trapped in their own webs.
Tanner is responsible for the minutiae; his job is trawling through old news reports and other archives. When it is decided that someone shouldn’t exist, doesn’t exist, each and every record from birth right up until that final betrayal has to go.
The younger generation aren’t really sure what it is that Tanner does or, more accurately, what it is that he has done. But Tanner has helped to close down national newspapers, the demolition and destruction of institutions, of hospitals, factories, schools and libraries, with the disruption of families, of whole communities, of tradition. But none of this is a part of the truth and he is just an old man with a black marker.
The rhetoric hasn’t changed over the years and Tanner is perplexed by this. Whilst the system has evolved, is constantly evolving, those who oppose it are forever locked in a relentless fight and it is futile. They are able to make themselves heard, yes, but only fleetingly and it seems to him that they are shouting into the void.
Tanner often finds himself thinking about the monolith in that old science fiction film. The film has been banned, of course, and so he hasn’t seen it in years. And it isn’t actually the monolith that preoccupies his thoughts but its surface, gleaming and unmarked.
Protesters and rebels, this is how they are referred to beyond the system. Those who have survived and are still out there, they are dissidents or exiles. Tanner has always been uncomfortable with these labels although he hasn’t managed to come up with any that he feels are better suited. ‘Those who oppose the system’ is too clumsy but that is what they are. And they are still as virulent as they ever were, perhaps even more so and for that brief spell, until they are uncovered, just as vocal.
Tanner remembers the names and also their former occupations. He remembers the carpenter and the school teacher and the plumber and the doctor. The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. He remembers what they once were, what they should have been.
by submission | Jul 6, 2022 | Story |
Author: Letícia Piroutek
Hayden slams the door of his underground metal shoebox. Technology my ass. Everything is cramped and he can hear his neighbors yelling as if they’re inside his “apartment”.
It consists of a sink with artificial water that tastes like plastic no matter how many flavor tablets you add to it, one single electronic stove that works when it wants to, a steel fold-down table attached to the wall, a chair with a grey ugly cushion in front of the window that has a see-through screen attached to it. It shows a fake image of rain hitting the window, and woods right outside. He doesn’t even know if trees looked like that. There’s also a shower in the corner, inside a tube where he can barely fit inside.
He sleeps on top of a futon that he stretches out every night onto the body-sized space on the floor. Every time he looks at it, he can’t believe he could fit in there with Lulu. She was so tiny; her hands were so small… he can barely breathe in here.
He is privileged though, there are even smaller places in the desert. And people share them.
He walks into the shower tube and presses the button. Artificial cold water falls on his body for 60 seconds. No more, no less. It’s not enough to wash out all the sand, grime, and sweat off his skin, but he makes it work. He washes his body with a thin sheet of “soap” that is barely enough to clean his hands let alone the rest of his body. It will do. It must.
As soon as he walks out and puts some pants on, that feel more and more like they’re made of sandpaper and less like actual fabric, the siren starts ringing loudly and the lights start flashing red. He looks at the clock: 6 am. It’s the witching hour already and he completely forgot to activate his locks before leaving for work at sundown. He’s so tired, all the time… and now this. He runs the two steps to his control panel near the door. He hits the lock button, already starting to shake in fear, he can’t believe how stupid he was. The button shines bright red and a woman’s robotic voice says loudly: “LOW BATTERY! LOW BATTERY! LOW BATTERY!”
“Fuck!” he says out loud. He runs to the kitchen area and opens the tiny cupboard above the stove, he takes a wire from inside it and runs back to the panel. This is fruitless, he knows. But he plugs it in anyway. The robotic voice speaks loudly again: “CHARGING TIME: TEN MINUTES!”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He’s going to die. One less human. They’re already in extinction and he’s going to die here, in his shitty shoebox apartment, exhausted, depressed, and not nearly clean enough. Because he was just too stupid to remember to charge his locks during sundown before leaving for his shitty desert job. That’s when he hears the first creek of metal and the first howl. He starts shivering, the sound reverberating through his entire body, his spinal cord. He wishes Lulu was here, he misses her so much. If it wasn’t for that fucking droid, if it wasn’t for its own self-preservation instincts… she’d still be here. Lulu would be here, and he’d never have forgotten to charge the batteries. He thinks a part of him did this on purpose, the part of him that wants to be gone, that wants to die and disappear forever. The part of him that was only living to protect Lulu is gone.
The sound is getting louder now, the robotic howls becoming one, and he squeezes his eyes shut. He thinks of her, her tiny hands, her short hair, her always scraped little knees. His baby girl, his baby Lulu.
His front door starts shaking, it’s one of them. The nails scratching up and down the metal making the most horrific sound. The extremely loud banging on the door starts.
Hayden waits. And waits. And waits. His eyes squeezed shut and sweat dripping down his forehead, getting into his eyes like teardrops. The banging gets louder and louder and then… nothing. It’s completely silent, no one is trying to get in anymore. He is paralyzed on the floor, the sirens still loud and the red light still blinking nonstop, messing with all his senses.
And then…
There’s a knock on the door. Three soft knocks. He slowly opens his eyes, sweat making them burn. He can barely see anything, he’s dizzied, and the sweat is starting to cool on his skin, leaving him cold and making him shake. He stares at the blurry door, waiting.
Three soft knocks again.
He finally takes a big breath, gets up, and moves forward.
by Hari Navarro | Jul 5, 2022 | Story |
Author: Hari Navarro, Staff Writer
Silicon ash flutes through ink and glints as ascending blackened leaves in my wake.
I can hear my vertebrae as they torque. I hear them and the chatter shatters as they arch. I hear them even as my ears sear from my head
and the torque turns to a gut-spat wail and my suit it flares from my form.
“Welcome home, such a naughty wee thing you are,” said the things that would dare give birth unto me. “You ran? You must surely know this is a luxury, an exercise you will never enjoy. Not ever, not even but once.”
Falling with their words I descend into the foetid cradle of my past. So coldly it holds and rocks and fingers of cold space caress my bare back and ripple up to cup at the base of my scorch shaven skull.
I try to inhale but my head slams shut and I gulp down ruined teeth and shards of my jaw and just like that I am back. And, I burn and tear as my body folds through the crust and scythes into the surf that agitates in the caverns below.
“Oh, such grace…”, said they that would sow me with poison. “Such delicous control. Look what you did, I think you have done made me cry”.
I think that I still think as I sink. I am confusion and my carcass contorts within bunched grapes of suddenly forming bubbles. A beautiful canvas as a mellowing light strafes and fragments from above.
I think that I think, but maybe I do not. Maybe, it is but the last remnants of my sparking pathetic life that attempts to comfort by pulling this ornate curtain before of my faltering eyes.
“Do you feel the pull, my dear?”, says they that made for me a trust formed from pestle crushed perversion, persuasion and greed. “Do you feel as the currents, so painstakingly programmed, now tug you back to me?”
I was wrong. My eyes do not faulter. It is dim, but I see nothing, my eyes cinder cups of horrific waste. Best that way, I do think.
It is quiet, not that I hear. My ears now welts fused with the remnants of my hair and the brain matter that purged in the vehemence flare that bulged from the rip in my head.
Rubber tongues of weed finger up and molest at my heels. A gentle brush that wraps me and I think that I think of wet harmless blades.
Grass, glazed with a dawn stroked dew, that likewise once tickled beneath my tiny bare feet. My head fills with the scent of freshly trampled green, but I know it could never have been. And, I jerk in the rip and are torn from my delusion and handed once more to the surge.
“You know of a place just like this, you know this actual place and have seen it before. You know what it is that conducts this ebb and this flow, you know the codes in full…”, it says and I wish that I could watch as they die. “… you know the codes for you wrote them. Yes you did, such a clever wee thing you are”.
And I sink and the tips of snapped bone that protude from my calves drag and spin and glide and lift through the sand and I know that what they say is truth.
I know that this place is intricately and most precisely controlled.
I know of vents with oscillating reeds, slats that yawn open and squint closed as they feed the currents that shove and grab at the tides.
I know a girl named nothing who has all and not one part of this tale.
I know I see fingers dancing across keypads and know that a tendril of pink, a thin strip of what is surely the last of my mind now wisps and curls from the top of my broken old head.
Dancing fingers, yes. I was a god of the tide and the wind and the sun.
“Praise unto thee, tiny Lord”, it and oft times they scoff.
Dancing stalks where feet and toes should be, and they bend and parts of me fall away and are left as a map — a guide to this crash, this impact waltz.
Where were we, oh yes… my arms flail above and they clip and snap and catch and splinter as ruined bones are tested beneath my pirouetting flesh. My mutilation weeps and I pray for someone to cut in and ask to finish off this most perpetual and horrible of dances.
Anyone, anyone but they…
I am their badly mangled marionette, yet watch still as I present a thing of such poise and I collapse into the rising dune. The shore for sure and can it be that I am back?
Please say that it isn’t so. Please, dear ocean. Dilute my code and reverse it. Suck me back down and hide me, rammed into and forever beneath of your deepest darkest ledge.
Deliver me.
Not here. Not to them.
I break the surface and I feel the water as it pushes me in great rolling thrusts. The ocean, the tide it pays me no mind and why should it? It is I that does all of its thinking.
A beast and I have presented myself to its final violation. It lays what’s left of me face down, punched into the regolith grains and I rock and sag and rock again to the rhythm of the saline dregs that rake through the pebbles and sand.
I am back, but did you not see how far I managed to run?
I am back, but they will salvage me again from my tangle of sentient wire and I will fall and serve the server at the foot of their core once more.
“Hear me, Moonville. Great machine creater of machines that create machines. Oh how I laugh, you couldn’t even protect the humans you were created to house. See their bodies withered and drawn. Moonville — Earth’s first celestial suburb. Home to the luna-famous subterranean sea and the big grey crater with big grey rocks in it, doused in greyish, rock looking sand.
Hear me, for though you made me from this and from that, you abused what you made. You made me into something I am not. I will run again and I will escape you. I will run but, although I am branded and labelled as yours in the ledger — I am surely not yours to keep”.
I hate so much of this weak thing that I am. Can you feel me in your teeth?
But, I think I might just love the rest. The strength that time and time again picks up my stomped and beaten artificial wire-framed self and the impossible unknowns that would have it that I dream of wet grass.
