welcome back, mr. ashworth. [trigger #146]

Sprinting faster than he ever had before, Jonathan knew that his plan was about to come to fruition. He was going to do it. He never thought he’d pull it off, but it was really going to happen. Tears filled his eyes at the joy of it all. He was actually about to save his wife’s life, 30 years after her death. Theories of time travel had only been a hobby of his, a playful footnote in his glorious career. Yet, when Marilynn had died, he’d jumped headlong into the field and worked tirelessly to construct a time machine for nearly three decades. Now, after all that work and misery, he was about to stop his wife from ever getting into the car that awful Tuesday morning. Two more blocks and he will have done it, travelled through time and altered history. There were risks, to be sure, but he’d suppressed any doubts long ago. All that mattered was saving Marilynn’s life.

He reached their old apartment building and ran into the lobby. Any minute, the elevator door would open, his wife would step out, and he would start the awkward process of trying to explain to her what was going on. At the very least, all he needed to do was delay her long enough that she would avoid the accident. It probably would have been better to devise a plan that didn’t include her knowing he’d travelled in time, but the prospect of seeing her again after all this time proved too strong.

He watched as the numbers above the elevator counted down. Finally, they elevator reached the lobby and the doors began to open. He saw her for the briefest instant through the door, when suddenly bright white light shattered him. It came in through his eyes, even after he’d closed them, and stabbed away at his brain like a million tiny needles. It felt like his body was running away from his mind, like everything was getting farther from him, everything but that hot white light.

As suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. The light vanished, the bizarre physical sensations stopped and were replaced by terrible nausea. He tried to get his bearings. He was in his office again, in the present instead of the past.

His voice was a hoarse whisper as he spoke to himself. “No… what… I’d made it. Why am I back here?”

“Welcome back, Mr. Ashworth.”

Jonathan Ashworth started, when he’d made the jump back in time he was alone in his office, with the door securely locked.

“What… who are you. What’s happening here. My wife, I have to save her. It was going to work.”

“It certainly was going to work, Mr. Ashworth, just as it has all the other times.”

“Other times? What are you going on about?”

“This would have been the 34th time you saved your wife’s life. And while it pains me to say this, we have to cut you off at 33. If we let you keep saving her over and over again, your dimension will never get out of the frightful jam you have it stuck in, and you’ll destroy the universe.”

Jonathan suddenly had a million responses he wanted to make and questions he wanted to ask all at once. What he did instead was lean over the arm of his chair and vomit.

but humans hadn’t existed for centuries. [trigger #145]

It was a remarkably beautiful day, the sort that tends to make everyone’s mood just a tiny bit happier. It was especially beautiful because it was one of those days that happens every few months, when the suns align at opposite points in the sky and give the air that striking purple tint that makes the whole world look more lovely.

Glude was out enjoying the day, wandering through his favorite park. It’s the park right at the end of beta sector, just past the Orion Building. He could spend countless hours there when there isn’t anything else pressing on his time.

Glude needed a day like this. He’d been so weighed down lately. Trying to establish peaceful relations with the Ardent Fringe was going to be a long, difficult, messy situation, if not impossible. That’s why it was particularly stressful for Glude, who was responsible for coordinating all meetings, organizing all peace talks, keeping everyone from getting agitated about details and breaches in protocol so that they could focus on the more serious matter of ending the war.

He was finally starting to relax on his first afternoon off in months when he was startled by movement off to his right in the synthshrubs. He looked more closely, being careful not to move. Just when he was about to give up, thinking the movement had been a figment of his imagination, he saw it again. Something was most definitely moving about just a few meters away.

Against his better judgment, Glude started moving closer. He’d just about halved the distance between himself and where he’d seen the movement when whatever it was in the synthetic bushes bolted and ran to the next clump of growth. Glude started. He could swear he recognized that shape from old holo-films. The movement, the height, the fact that in the brief moment he saw the shape, he noticed that aside from spots on the head and face, most of the body was hairless enough to display flesh the color of high-quality synthetic mahogany. The idea was silly though, Glude reassured himself that he was starting to let stress and an overactive imagination to get the best of him. Everyone knew that humans hadn’t existed for centuries, and there is no way he was seeing one now.

pioneer square at midnight. [trigger #120]

There is a rite in Seattle that goes back before Seattle was its name. Before the man whose name the city honors, before the whites built an ill-advised town in the mud, before the first peoples deemed the land unlivable, before there were first peoples; before all of these things, this rite was practiced as one of the most holy the universe has known.

On the seventh night of every new moon, at midnight in what is now known as Pioneer Square, a deep old magic is called forth from the mysterious depths of the farthest reaches of the vaguest and most distant dimension yet discovered.

This rite has never been forgotten. It has been guarded by secret religions and societies. Wars have paused, dead have been resurrected, individuals have traded everything and everyone they loved, just to be sure that this rite continues.

If this magic; personified in the minds of many, but beyond personhood in truth; were not called across the far-flung depths of space, time, and dimensionality, all would be lost. Were even a single rite missed, the fabric of existence would slowly begin to unravel, until all things unbecame until it was as if they never were.

This is why, as he sprints across the rooftops and leaps between the buildings of downtown Seattle, Karasu Haruko is alarmed to see that he is still running very, very late.

woodstock 2019. [trigger #92]

Exciting news on next summer’s music festival season. The rumors are true, Woodstock 2019 has been announced. From everything we’ve been hearing, this is going to change the music festival game forever. As expected, as long as you’ve had the iJack 2.0 implanted, you won’t need to leave the comfort of your own home in order to attend. It will be the first major music festival to offer remote attendance.

We’ve had the exciting opportunity to sample just a bit of what the festival will feature, and it’s nothing short of amazing. It will utilize all the features of iJack 2.0, including:

• An entirely hands-free shopping environment for purchasing music and swag from bands you discover through the festival. Just think you’re way through the intuitively designed online store.
• Jump from stage to stage with minimal loading time, don’t miss any of your favorite bands.
• Make sure your avatars are up to date, there will be chat rooms, hook-up lobbies, and fan clubs ready and waiting for your iJack avatar to interact with other festival attendees.
• For select bands, the festival will incorporate subconscious back-layering. In case you haven’t tried it yet, subconscious back-layering is a mind-blowing experience. If you felt you’ve connected to music before, just wait until some of the world’s best songwriters and producers can get access to your entire emotional palate for crafting a music experience.

No word on a lineup yet, but we can only guess it’s going to be awe-inspiring. Make sure to pre-order your tickets when they go online next Monday.

the tiny stone came skipping back. [trigger #67]

He turned right at the old fork, to take him down to the lake. The year’s first snowfall began, and John decided to go out for a walk. After all that had happened, he had quite a bit on his mind. He’d known that they’d been growing apart for so long, but he never thought Rebekah would really be willing to leave him. Now that she’d told him she was seriously considering doing just that, he didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t scared, or desperate, or angry, so much as confused and numb.

That’s why he decided to go for a walk when he saw the snow begin to fall. He found there was no moment quite as clear as the first fall of snow, especially when it came at night. He’d stand still and stare up at the black sky as the white flakes slowly drifted down toward his face. That was when clarity would come, when enlightenment would strike. More than anything, clarity and enlightenment were what he needed at the moment.

As he got closer to the lake, he noticed a strange fog out on the water. It was luminescent, glowing green from the inside. He couldn’t help himself from continuing to move toward the edge of the water. He stood at water’s edge, looking out as the fog slowly moved toward him. There were strange flashes, like charges of electricity that would move around the outside of fog’s surface.

He picked up a rock, about the size of a softball, and threw it out into the fog. The rock broke the surface of the fog like it would in any other fog, aside from the fact that after that, it never struck the surface of the water. It disappeared into the fog and never made a sound.

He grabbed a stick from the edge of the woods and threw that in as well. Same result. It disappeared in the fog, but never made the sound that should have come as it struck the surface of the water.

He kept up the same thing, throwing random objects he could find out into the fog, only for it to vanish in the fog without ever hitting the lake. Then he picked up a small flat stone and skipped it along the lake’s surface into the fog. It vanished like the others. John slowly started backing away from the surface of the water, when the tiny stone came skipping back out of the fog.

my appointment with The Doctor. [trigger #63]

I had just rounded the corner off of Market onto Leary, when there was suddenly this loud wailing sound. It’s hard to describe, it was like a broken siren; or maybe an elephant who had smoked its whole life, trumpeting as a giant swung it around its head in a circle. I turned and went back around the corner to see what the sound was, only to find a tall blue box where a moment before there had been nothing. It most certainly hadn’t been there moments before, but there it was, and as the sound died down, the big blue box was definitely the source.

The box was some sort of phone box, and there was a sign on the door, but before I could read the sign the door opened and a man stepped out. He looked around him, checking his surroundings as if I wasn’t standing there.

He had a weird object in his hand, shaped like a large pen. At the end was a green light, and the man would point it at various objects, at which point the giant pen thing would make a high-pitched whirring sound.

None of what this man was doing seemed even remotely familiar. He had a lanky, nervous sort of energy, always moving and adjusting his arms. He was wearing a tweed jacket and a bowtie, which in Seattle was the least of his oddities. His hair was thick and long, and all of it seemed to be attempting to join a wave from the left side of his head to the right. In part, it looked like he normally wore an 80’s Flock of Seagulls hairstyle, but had forgotten his hairspray.

All of it was bizarre, but also a little fantastic. “Uh, hello?” I wasn’t sure exactly how to approach the situation, but I did know I couldn’t just turn and leave.

Finally, he noticed me. “Scott. Scoooott. There you are, my friend. Oh, right, you don’t know me yet do you? Not to worry, I’ll have you up to speed in no time. However, I’m going to have to ask you to trust me for a moment and step into the blue box behind me.” He had more than a little swagger as he spoke, like he had an amazing secret the rest of the universe didn’t have, as if he were 1000 years old, but also still an excited little boy.

“I’m sorry, have we met?”

“Yes. No. Well, yes and no. Yes for me, no for you. It’s a time travel thing.”

“Time travel?”

“Yes, and we’ve got a bit of a time problem at the moment, so I’m going to need you to come with me.”

“A time problem? I’m not sure I understand. Or, I know I don’t understand.”

“You know those lava-lamps? All the colors and bubbles settle and separate, until you heat it up and it all starts mixing together and moving about.”

“Time is like that?”

“Well, no, but if it helps…”

“I’m sorry, you want me to get in that box with you?”

“Don’t worry, it’s bigger on the inside. Shall we go?”

“I, uh, I don’t know about that.”

“Scott, c’moooonnn! You can do this. You stood up to the Palafraxian Governer of New Antwerp. You bested the Wizard of Granwar. You and your wife almost single handedly took down the second coming of the Rascus Androxious. You can do this. Oh, and by the way, that sexy blue box is a time machine and a space ship, just so you’re prepared.”

“In that case, can we stop and pick up my wife and my dogs on our way to… wherever and whenever it is we’re going?”

“Yes, dogs. I like travelling with dogs. Dogs are cool.”

the body was sent on ahead instead. [trigger #62]

He was meant to leave for earth along with his body, to take the same starship out and arrive whole at the planet of his parents’ birth. However, some pressing business arose on Titus that kept his mind home while his body was sent on ahead, instead. His body would be waiting safely in stasis when he arrived on earth a few weeks later, as if he’d travelled with it; still, ever since the ability to upload became available it was something he’d used out of necessity, but never felt fully comfortable with.

Everyone in the neurotech fields knew it was coming, years before the breakthrough finally happened. The remarkable interactions, relationships, and sparks that make up the human mind had finally been fully mapped. After that, the only thing that needed to be created was the proper vessel for it to exist outside the hardware of the brain. Now, it was possible for someone to upload their brain into his or her home hardware, and they could exist without a body for long periods of time. Eventually, the information tended to erode, and a consciousness would be lost, but that wouldn’t happen for years.

So, Max’s mind would remain on Titus, finishing some odds and ends on the current deal that would be hard to accomplish from the other end of the galaxy, while his actual brain was on a starship bound for the origin planet of all human life. It was the third time he’d uploaded, and he’d heard the third time is when one finally becomes accustomed to the oddity of it all, but he still felt uneasy.

in the future we will be robots. [trigger #59]

“It’s true,” said Doctor Klein. “In the future, we really will be robots. At least, crudely speaking that would be an accurate thing to say. Of course, one would hope to use a bit more nuance when actually categorizing such things.”

“So, what,” asked Preston, “We’ll all be human brains in metal bodies?”

“No, no, no, my dear boy. That’s sci-fi thinking from the 1950’s.” His hands gestured passionately. Clearly he enjoyed lecturing on this topic, even to his 14 year old nephew. “Metal exoskeletons will have nothing to do with it.

“You see, back then there was such a poor understanding of what computers and robotics could do. How small and efficient they could be. There was no actual thought about realistic uses or industrial design. Remember, the 1960’s computer that landed the first men on the moon had approximately 64Kb of memory and operated at 0.043MHz . Compare that to your iPhone there, with your 32Gb and 600 MHz, and you can keep it in your pocket. They would have been amazed at the idea of having the sort of computer power you have in your phone in an entire building, they’d never even dream of having it in your palm.”

Preston was clearly getting lost.

“Put it this way, boy. You know how your dad is always joking about how he’s part cyborg because of the titanium in his knee? Well, titanium joints are nothing. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg. That’s a drop of unfrozen moisture gently resting on the top of the tip of the iceberg.

“Nanotechnology will one day make it possible for diseases to be fought at a microscopic level, by computers that can stay in your body full-time. You’d literally have a robotic immune system that can be reprogrammed to adapt to new diseases, or mutations in old diseases. Imagine cancer fighting nanobots that can move through your entire body and wipe out all malignant cells!

“And biotechnology will eventually blur the line between organic and synthetic. It will become impossible to tell where organic life ends and artificial life begins. Sure, there will be plenty who will complain about the ethics of it; but let’s see how they respond when they can either die of heart disease, or get a new valve or atrium or artery, or even a brand new biotech heart. They’ll choose life every time, my boy.”

“So, will we become immortal? If you can just recreate organs and body parts, then what will keep us from doing it over and over?”

“Well, at this point the limit would be the human brain. Folks try to pretend to understand the brain, but they don’t. The artificial intelligence of science fiction still functions assuming the brain works like a computer, but we know that isn’t true now. Our brains are not mere self-referential analytic machines. The metaphor can work in some ways, but the connections and relationships in the brain are far more complex than we ever previously thought. It isn’t as simple as hardware and programming. So, for now, the future would seem to indicate that our brains will be the limit of our mortality.

“There’s something sacred about the way a brain works and thinks that we don’t understand, for all of our bluster and noise. Still, every major human advancement seemed impossible earlier in human history, so perhaps that sort of break in neurology and AI is simply further down the road, most probably long after I’m gone.”

“We’re going to be bionic!” Preston’s 14 year old eyes were wide as his uncle’s words really started to sink in. “That’s going to be so fucking cool!”

“Watch you mouth, son. Your mom will kill me if you go home from your time with me talking like that.”

rules to live by. [trigger #58]

20 rules to live by in the event of  a zombie apocalypse:

1. Ammo runs out, find melee weapons.

2. Guns make noise, noise attracts zombies, see above rule.

3. You’re stronger together than alone.

4. Still, once someone starts to turn, they aren’t your loved one anymore. In the words of Zombieland: Double-tap.

5. Go north, frozen zombies can’t eat you.

6. Setting zombies on fire is both useful and cathartic.

7. The more layers of clothing you wear, the less likely teeth meet skin.

8. When in doubt, always be moving. Zombies are slow, you shouldn’t be. Your primary disadvantage is numbers, and the most danger is in being swarmed; your primary advantage is being far faster than the undead. Often, a fast walk will be enough to stay ahead of danger, while freezing to decide your next move only allows more zombies to converge.

9. When in danger, run like a motherfucker. As mentioned above, zombies are slow.  Fight only when absolutely necessary, flight is always the safer option.

10. As in any crisis, water is your most important commodity. A healthy human can survive for weeks without food, but even in ideal conditions, you’ll be dead within five days without water.

11. Sleep in shifts, zombies don’t sleep so someone needs to be paying attention at all times.

12. Zombies can often be tricked with smells and sounds. All zombies will be in a different state of decomp, but sight deteriorates far faster than hearing or smell. Also, cognitive filtering processes will no longer be active. Thus, zombies will follow noises and human smells even if it is completely illogical to do so, often even if it feels like they should be able to see you. You’re smarter than they are, act like it.

13. Never be the slowest person in your party.

14. The military is not trained for Z-Day. When you find the military outpost that claims to be safe and seems too good to be true, it is. Stay long enough to stock up on supplies and move on. Shit is going to hit the fan eventually and you don’t want to be there when it does.

15. Little kid zombies are just as dangerous as adult zombies. Leave sentimentality behind or become zombie chow. They aren’t human anymore, kill the fuckers.

16. Have sex whenever consensual and safely possible. Endorphins will be in short supply and sex provides them in healthy quantities. Apocalypse creates panic, sex creates peace of mind and helps one keep a level head. Also, it helps you remember what you have to live for. Forget your normal ethics and rules. It’s the end of the world, folks, you might as well enjoy the few benefits.

17. Travel light. Sentimentality is your enemy. Carry only what can directly aid your survival.

18. Your trust should be hard earned. When everyone is trying to survive, betrayal will be commonplace, choose who you decide to trust very, very carefully.

19. Play to your strengths, be wary of your weaknesses. Be brutally honest with yourself about your survival skills, both as contributions to a group and as an individual. Working out how to utilize your strengths will keep you alive, ignoring embarrassing weaknesses will get you killed.

20. Always be brainstorming strategies as a party. Creativity and ingenuity are advantages you have over the horde, use them. Zombies are nothing more than shuffling apetites, making them predictable. It should be possible to create strategies for your group to survive indefinitely with a little bit of forethought.

the pot was melting into the soup. [trigger #51]

We all laughed. We made fun of those lunatics, with their rapture predictions. Even the bible says such a prediction is impossible, so it seems odd you’d be able to use that some bible to do some math and pick out when the rapture was going to happen.

We laughed right up until the moment on May 21st when all those people disappeared. Other ideas were suggested. An elaborate hoax. Spontaneous human combustion. Even alien abduction. Still, deep down we all knew. We’d been left behind.

Now, all that was left to do was await the end of the world on October 21.

People chose to wait in a myriad of ways. They joked; they planned ‘end of the world’ parties; they got wasted; they had lots of sex; they committed suicide; they tried illicit drugs; they went to war; they converted and prayed for a second rapture; they started doomsday cults, a few of which even resorted to human sacrifice. Yet, most of these sorts of behaviors were frequently interrupted. It was the great period of tribulation after all. Earthquakes were happening almost daily. Tornadoes, hurricanes, and random storms of locusts were popping up in the most unlikely of places at a remarkably frequent rate. It was hard to plan ahead, even by a few moments.

It was mid-August when Seattle finally went, about half-way through the tribulation. Many predicted Seattle would go earlier than that. The city had really gone to hell since Mark Driscoll had been raptured. There was all the gay marrying; lots of yoga; guys in dresses; dudes weren’t fighting each other for macho dominance; dads were staying at home to take care of their children instead of the moms, all of whom were wearing pants and putting on weight like crazy, turning their husbands into homosexual adulterers; people were even watching Avatar and turning into crazy tree-huggers. It was basically the most terrible environment imaginable. Still, against all odds the city made it to the midway point.

Seattle literally went up in smoke in impressive fashion. On August 16th, 2011, at 1:46pm, the city turned into a volcano. It wasn’t that the nearby volcanic mountains erupted, those had sunk beneath the ground and turned into lakes weeks earlier. No, the city of Seattle itself turned into a volcano.

First, came the heat. It had been growing gradually warmer for days, on August 15th it was 103 degrees.

On the 16th, shit got real.

Scott was in his kitchen when it happened, attempting to carry out an ill-advised plan to make himself some tomato soup and tuna melts before he passed out again from the high temperature. All morning the heat had been rising in earnest, and it picked up pace at 1:30. It didn’t take long for him to realize something was very wrong. The floor became too hot to touch, forcing him to take off his shorts to stand on them to protect his feet. That was about the time his skin started turned red from the heat. Still the temperature rose.

He knew he was about to die. For someone who had always been terrified of death, and who was about as good with pain as a toddler who’d missed his nap, Scott was surprised how calm he was as his skin started to blister from the heat. He looked over at what moments earlier had been intended to be his lunch: the pot was melting into the soup, which in turn was pouring all over stove, bubbling and smoking.

As molten rock started to erupt through the surface of the earth in his backyard, Scott’s last thought was of the irony that the lack of heat and relatively low number of crazy religious fundamentalists had been two of his favorite things about Seattle, and now he was melting in his own kitchen because he hadn’t heeded the warnings of a fundamentalist doomsday preacher.