Fear: the Final Commodity (Original Essay)

(Originally written July 2016)

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I feel that the world is constantly evaluating itself in a profoundly negative light. This is not simple optimism on the part of the author; this is a statement that may be backed up by legitimate and empirical observations in society over time.

Specifically, I am referring to reports of violent crime and international war that are now ever-dominating the news screens and internet feeds of American society. I have not been abroad as of late, so I cannot speak for the perspectives in international media — although I might speculate that many or most countries (those that are technologically developed like the United States) are broadcasting similar news stories as often as the States are. In the past twenty years, and perhaps exponentially in the past decade, frighteningly horrible reports of terrorism, domestic violence, and civil unrest have proverbially bludgeoned the American people’s poor hearts as they have watched “the news”.

Sadly, I believe that the more a society watches the news carefully for signs of violence or signs of alarm, the more that society will find causes to be alarmed. Even further, because news agencies must operate for a profit and therefore must cater to the needs and wants of their audiences, media outlets of all kinds are constantly impelled to seek out and report on stories about negative human action or heartbreak as opposed to routine stories, no matter how informational or useful the latter might be. Thus, a society like ours finds itself in a torrential feedback loop of confirmation bias: the audiences begin to hear of worrisome news, which prompts them to check their preferred news outlets for more information (“Should I be worried? What’s going on?”), which in turn incentivizes news outlets to provide more stories from the ‘Worrisome’ end of the spectrum. If a given news company intends to remain competitive and relevant in their market, then they hardly have a choice.

Unfortunately, the news market itself is the cause of much terror and concern in an otherwise peaceful and happy America. The irony is that America’s most iconic feature — free markets — is allowing the overrated menace of Violence to disturb the peace. From an economic perspective, it is indeed factual (albeit cold) to say that modern American society’s obsession with hearing about violence has turned into an impressive and lucrative market, driven by high demand and then raised supply, as all markets are. 

To be clear, the conclusion (or the implicitly proposed solution) is not to believe that “Ignorance is Bliss”, and avoid the news market entirely. The ideology of my conclusion believes that ignorance is not what society expects it to be: in short, it might be ignorant to ignore the news, but it is much more ignorant to rely on news media outlets — that is, news for profit — for a healthy, balanced, or otherwise unbiased representation of reality. 

I believe that contemporary society assumes that news media is equivalent to what our descendants might read about us in history books, as if the daily news were a well-rounded and scholastic snapshot of our time and culture in history. This kind of assumption is the larger problem with our society; this is the truer face of Ignorance. If one imagines that current news stories are just as relevant and undramatized as the stories related in a textbook, then one can hardly help but feel incredibly alarmed at the news. History textbooks very seldom explain the eviscerating details of historical violence, no matter how bloody or terrible a conflict (or a culture) may have been. Current news media companies, however, have 24 hours every day to spend on elaborating “What happened”, “Why it happened”, “How it happened”, and so on. In other words, history and news are completely different mediums of recording events — perhaps as different as an oil painting and a radio drama.

Therefore, it is not the awareness of troubling times that is most troubling to an otherwise peaceful world. The truest problem lies in the obsession over troubling things. All news outlets have a tangible incentive to focus on more negative news stories because their audience’s collective worry results in higher viewership or readership, and that results in higher profits. As a professional salesman once told me in confidence, “Fear is the number one driver of human action.” 

And with that understanding, it is clearer to the eye of the beholder that a rise in stories of violence, war, disease, or other tragedies does not necessarily mean that tragedies are on the rise. More likely, it simply means that the demand for stories of tragedy is on the rise — and that demand is rooted in the human emotion of Fear.

“…The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

—Addendum: April 2023—

I just discovered this quote today. Hm.

Righteous Indignation (Original Short Story — December 2022)

If they had planned it for weeks, the rebel forces could not have executed a more perfect slaughter of the 97th Airborne. 

The Major sat in the dirt and gazed out on a valley of what had been hundreds of fellow soldiers, just moments ago. C and D Companies of the 97th. The only thing he could see now was upturned earth and, where not buried by soil and shrapnel, body parts. 

And then there was his own body to deal with. He hesitantly lifted one gloved hand from his gut, and immediately slowed his breathing once he saw the amount of blood coating his fingers. He noticed that he couldn’t feel his legs anymore. They were still attached to him, but they would likely never be used again. 

Actually, none of him would ever be used again, he realized. Blood loss at this volume would take his life within… oh, ten minutes or so. Perhaps much sooner than that. Slowed breathing wouldn’t help him stay alive for longer; just regulate emotion and stem the panic that rose from his spine. What was left of his spine.

He returned his hands to his stomach and applied as much pressure as he could stand. The harder he pressed, the fiercer the pain spiked. Almost knocked him back out. He gasped and tried shaking his head awake.

Oh, good, he mused. He had a concussion injury, too. This was wonderful timing. He blinked away the dizziness until he felt like he could think again. Plan. Evaluate.

First: paralyzing pain. Fatal injuries. Okay. He felt ready. His back lay against something hard; he looked up and saw that it was a chunk of rock about the size of a car. It was cracked in the middle but would still provide adequate cover. It sat at the top of a ridge extending to his left and his right, like a naturally entrenched fortification. Behind him, beyond the rock, lay rebel-controlled territory. No line of sight between him and enemy forces. For now. 

Second: utter devastation of allied forces. The 97th had been dismantled before his eyes by a delayed-detonation minefield. It must have been buried under their feet the whole time they had been building defensive positions and landing their artillery; he had no idea how the rebels had established a minefield of this size without being detected — but then he stopped himself from wondering. Ten minutes, he reminded himself. It was a depressing number. It meant no time for hindsight.

Third: survivors… He closed his eyes and thought. Not wondering, but wandering. His mind stretched itself, wandered, explored the battlefield. To the east, on his left, he sensed a single breathing soldier.

Only one. Seriously?

He stopped. Scrubbed the emotion from his mind. No time. Turned his head and let his mind scan the other half of the battlefield.

Zero.

…I’ll take the door on the left, he thought. 

The Major ordered his brain to reach out again, locating the one remaining soldier and latching onto his brainwaves. Her brainwaves, he realized. With a little more concentration, he discerned that she was both conscious and ambulatory, but her rifle had been lost and her mind was a mess. Shell-shock. Both she and the Major had been near opposite edges of the minefield when it detonated and had been spared the brunt of the deadly shockwave. She had narrowly missed the flying shrapnel from the blast. The Major had not. 

He read her name and rank from her memory: Pella Fought, First Sergeant, qualified in combat demolitions and marksmanship. Squad leader of a squad that now lay distributed across the valley in front of her. He felt the survivor’s guilt in her mind that came with that. He knew that feeling himself. She knelt, unmoving, in the burnt grass near where the explosion had thrown her, staring at the field of dead men. Wondering what to do.

The Major heard something on the wind: a slight buzzing sound that grew steadily louder. Probably rebel aircraft. There was no time to lose. 

He psychically tapped into her mind and addressed her.

SERGEANT.

She jumped. The voice startled her, as it did most people. Telepathy was still a highly-classified development by the DoD. She looked around for the source of the voice.

Sergeant, this is Major Getty. Report to the front line. 

The buzzing in the air from behind him reached a high-pitched whine, then transformed into three spy drones overhead — essentially winged missiles with a dozen cameras mounted on the outside — that bypassed his position and rapidly crisscrossed the carnage before him. The full extent of the 97th Airborne’s casualties were now laid bare. Their secret was out.

On the double! he ordered.

The intensity of the voice inside her own brain shocked her into obeying it. She stood instantly to her feet and yelled “Yessir,” without really knowing who she was saying it to. She turned toward the slope and spotted the rock where the Major lay, perched on top of the ridge like the centerpiece of a dining table.

The Major remembered to breathe slowly while he waited for her. He began to take stock of what few resources they had between them. At his side lay his helmet and his rifle, a specialized weapon that only a psion commando could operate. Beyond that, the only thing of any use to them was the Sergeant’s functioning legs and whatever sidearm she had on her.

She crested the hill at last and he got his first look at her. Slight build. Possibly a fast runner. Brown hair tucked into her helmet, pale face, and sober eyes that looked like they had already seen too much. She spotted him sitting at the base of the rock and approached, speaking once she was within earshot.

“Sir. First Sergeant Fought, Charlie Company —”

“Major Getty,” he interrupted. “I know who you are, Sergeant.”

She halted and regarded him with bemusement. He continued.

“Commensurate with the total loss of all field officers in the 97th Airborne, I hereby requisition command and subsume you into the PSICOM chain of authority. Sergeant, according to army rules, you report to me now.” 

“Yessir,” she answered instinctively. Then, realizing out loud: “…You’re one of the commandos. A telekat.”

“Psion is the proper name, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” In her mind swirled a thousand rumors and wild theories that the army infantry had come up with surrounding the psychic and telekinetic powers of the psion special operators — many of them secretly true. But most soldiers would never knowingly be face to face with a so-called ‘telekat’. On a subconscious level, she feared him.

“My unit is down.” she reported, and then looked at the valley behind her. “…We’re all down. What’s the situation? Can we call for evac?”

The Major gave her a hollow smile and lifted up his satcom transceiver from the ground with his left hand. It had been cleaved in two by the same shrapnel that had nearly bisected him. “You don’t happen to have one of these in your back pocket, do you?”

She shook her head, and then noticed the blood on his glove. It was too late to stop her from seeing — her face visibly changed once she saw his midsection. The energy in her eyes faded. She understood. 

“Sir, I can administer first aid.”

The Major creased his brow and considered how best to explain it to her. “Sergeant, behind this rock lies the main body of enemy infantry. A full battalion of fresh troops who plan on marching over our hill and taking this valley once and for all.”

He swallowed and gave the valley one last look. The 97th had been specially selected to fortify and hold this position; stop it from falling into rebel control. And now the entire battalion was gone. It pained him to consider losing their objective so easily.

“Even if you saved me,” he explained, “by the time you finished, we would both be captured by the enemy’s advance, and then the entire 97th would be K-I-A for nothing. That’s not the way this is supposed to end.” 

Her mouth hung open, not knowing what to say. She looked away. She hadn’t yet learned how to maintain eye contact with a dying comrade. The psion wondered if this particular soldier would have it in her to stand and fight.

He reached up and tapped with bloody fingers the fabric badge of the 97th Airborne on the shoulder of his uniform: a kneeling rifleman with an opened parachute above his head. “What does this say, First Sergeant Fought?”

She looked back at him with hollow eyes, then glanced at her own shoulder sleeve insignia as if she hadn’t memorized it long ago. “It says… Airborne. Righteous Indignation.” 

The Major monitored the emotions in her head as he pried, searching for whatever would connect with the soldier inside of her. The one he hoped had not surrendered already. “And what does that motto mean, soldier?”

Her mind was frozen. The fear inside her wanted to swallow her whole. But her voice came unstuck and with hardly a tremble said, “It means duty. And ferocity.”

The Major continued the line. “It means we’re good and pissed off. While there remains breath in us…” he proffered.

“…We will deny the enemy victory,” she finished automatically. When she looked back at him, her eyes had accepted it. “That’s what it means, sir.”

He nodded once, firmly. The concussion injury inside his skull punished him for it. He decided to simply stop moving his head. But now he knew that this one could be trusted. Enough, at least, to die on this battlefield with him, and perhaps enough to inflict significant losses on the enemy as they did.

He didn’t really know if it could work, but there was one idea.

The Major reached down and thumbed a switch on his rifle, removing a spiral cable connecting the butt of the rifle to his chest harness. “Sergeant, take my weapon.”

She regarded it with a moment of doubt; it looked too light, almost skeletal, to be a functioning firearm. To him, it felt heavier than ever before as he tried to lift it up for her. 

Her hands reached out and grabbed it from him, ignoring his blood on the casing. She was eager to obey. Ready to die with him. He gave her one weak thumbs up before returning both hands to his stomach. There may yet be at least one warrior remaining of the 97th Airborne, he hoped.

The Sergeant stood up and looked away from him. Through his mind, he could sense that her eyes were wet.

“You will not cry, soldier,” he ordered calmly. “Makes for bad marksmanship.”

She blinked a few times and then nodded. Exhaled through her mouth. “Understood, sir,” she answered. “Wilco.”

“Get eyes on the enemy,” he commanded. She hefted the rifle and clambered up the steep face of the rock using the split in the middle as a foothold. 

Moment of truth, the psion thought. If hostile counter-snipers were paying any attention, they could take her head off the second it poked above cover. He read her emotions through her brainwaves and discovered that she was thinking the same thing. 

Her helmet reached line of sight with the enemy, and the live camera mounted on its top recorded a two-second sweep of the terrain on the other side before ducking back down. 

“Bad news, sir,” she reported as the video feed displayed itself on both of their helmets’ visors. The Major picked his helmet up from the dirt beside him with one hand, careful not to smear his blood on the visor display. The video showed a low plain, what looked like a dried-up swamp full of tall grass and occasional copses of dead trees — and starting from about 200 yards away, several hundred brown-and-gray rebel uniforms spread out and advancing toward their hill. Two squads of three were in the front, running point. 

“Eh,” he answered. “They’re all Oscar Mike. Bad commander.”

“Sir?”

“They’re all moving at the same time; they don’t anticipate any resistance. Stupid commander. An enemy on a milk run is ripe for an ambush.”

She licked her dry lips. Nervous. “Orders, sir?”

“Let’s give them an ambush,” he growled. And then he lied to her. “Sergeant, what you’re holding is an experimental directed energy weapon. It was bound to change the war, but too few were manufactured in time. It fires differently from anything you’ve trained with.”

The Sergeant pursed her lips thoughtfully and lifted the rifle to her shoulder to test the sights. “If it shoots straight, I can use it.” 

What a woman. “Then get into position and use it. Forwardmost squad is your target. Line up your shot and then take it.”

She repositioned herself to the top of the rock, shouldered the rifle, and squeezed her face behind the rifle’s optic. He listened to her brainwaves — felt them, more like — and waited for the distinctive sensation of the trigger pull. Her mind tensed up in that old familiar way, and then:

Clack. Nothing happened. But now he knew what it felt like in her mind the moment her trigger finger squeezed.

“Malfunction, sir.”

“Dry fire,” he lied. “Battery pack is on disconnect. Slap the switch on the left side, above the trigger guard.”

She found the switch and then set up her target again. 

“And, Sergeant,” he interrupted. “This weapon will surprise you. Once you begin firing, don’t stop. Recover from recoil as fast as possible, and make the enemy miserable.”

She breathed out, then in again, calming herself. “Wilco.”

“I’ll be watching through the helmet.” Another lie. His vision was already becoming blurry. So much of his blood was now outside of his vascular system that his body was shutting down everything non-essential. He would only be able to watch the battlefield through his mind. “I’ll call out targets as I see them.”

All that mattered was that she trusted him. 

“Hostiles at 50 yards and closing fast,” she reported.

That was close enough. “Then let them have it.”

The Sergeant put her finger on the trigger, and he was ready for it. The moment he felt her squeeze the trigger past the threshold, he ordered the weapon to fire. 

It reacted to his thoughts and drew power from his mind. All in one instant, a fiery lance flashed out of the muzzle, burned in a laser-straight vector, and penetrated the target. A massive cavitation bubble and sonic boom erupted from inside his torso — and the enemy combatant vanished from view. The two soldiers on his left and right were knocked down by the blast. For a moment, time stopped as every head on the battlefield turned to identify the sound.

I may have overcooked that one a little, the Major thought to himself.

“Wow,” she remarked. 

He recovered his focus. “Acquire your targets and continue firing. That’s an order.”

“Yessir,” she answered dutifully, but not without a hint of almost trepidation. She had newfound respect for the rifle, which would only tempt her to be more cautious with it. 

But there was no time for caution. The enemy was now fully apprised of the situation. Commands were being yelled across the field as men turned and dove for cover or kneeled in the grass and swept the horizon with their weapons, hunting for the sniper’s position. The Sergeant did not have an ideal hiding place; dead center on top of a boulder with the bright blue sky behind you was the equivalent of wearing a big red bullseye on your helmet. The only solution to poor camouflage was intimidation and intense firepower. The Major could supply her with both, but only as long as she kept firing that gun.

She shifted the rifle and eyed the other trio of point men to her left. She selected one and put the crosshairs on his center of mass. Her trigger finger squeezed, and the Major forced the rifle to fire. The enemy soldier fell with a sudden hole in his chest.

The Sergeant paused. Odd, she was thinking. This time the target didn’t explode.

“Sergeant!” he barked. “Keep. Firing.”

“Yessir!”

She acquired another target. Fired. No explosion; just a plasma bolt through the center. Reacquired. Fired. The last of the trio fell. 

He began hearing more screams from beyond the firing line; a quick psychic scan of the enemy revealed a coordinated counterattack brewing. The enemy CO believed they could locate the sniper’s nest if they moved fast and flanked the ridge. He stole a mental image from their commander’s mind, flipped it like a mirror, and overlaid it onto what he remembered of the territory from the video feed.

“Ignore the suppressing fire, Sergeant,” he said only a fraction of a second before enemy fire began peppering the ridge all around them. Only a few dozen rounds impacted the rock they were braced against, which meant that they still had not spotted the Sergeant’s exact position by some miracle. He sensed her brain beginning to panic.

Sergeant, he repeated directly in her mind. Ignore incoming fire. One o’clock, low, through that grass. Look for movement.

The enemy continued to fire and she flinched, fighting the instinct to get fully behind cover. Then she obeyed his command and began hunting for signs of movement in the tall grass on the right.

“…Enemy spotted.”

Weapons free.

Her trigger finger did not hesitate, this time. The Major felt her pull it twenty times with only minor pauses throughout. Each time, he concentrated his mind to send a single and powerful pulse through the rifle, catching the enemy in the grass and setting it and the adjacent trees ablaze.

It was exhausting. He was already dying, and every trigger pull robbed another wave of psionic energy from his already-fading pool of strength. He felt like he had more of that left in him than he did blood, but that wasn’t saying a whole lot. He would be able to last another five minutes, if he gave it his all. 

Five minutes to route an entire enemy battalion. And/or die trying. 

He heard something else, something distinct from the gunfire. The sound sharply crescendoed until it suddenly impacted the rock at his back, detonating with terrific force. The shockwave kicked the breath out of his chest and knocked him to the ground. His eyes turned watery with pain, and he found that he couldn’t breathe for three long seconds. Panic almost overtook him. 

Then the Sergeant was in front of his face, somehow, and dragging him by his arms a few feet away from where he had lain. She was yelling words at him which he couldn’t hear. Tinnitus — his ears were ringing so sharply that he couldn’t hear anything. He read her mind instead to figure out what she was saying.

“MAJOR! Are you with me, sir??” 

I’m alive! he shouted back psychically. She froze. He must have yelled quite loudly inside her brain; she wasn’t used to it. Sitrep, he ordered.

She blinked. Then replied. “They fired a rocket at our position; it split the boulder wide open but we’re alright.”

Okay, he answered. Then reposition and get fire back on those rebels. He was finally able to breathe again, a little, and he blinked the tears out of his eyes. They definitely know where we are now.

“Yessir.” She reached under his arms and hoisted him back into a sitting position, propped up against the rock. “Don’t you cry on me, sir. It’s bad for marksmanship.”

He said something unbecoming of an officer in reply, but his ears were ringing too loudly for him to hear his own voice. She was back on the rifle and leaning against the rock next to him, finding a new firing line through the newly-formed gap. The rocket blast had literally blown the rock into two pieces; they now stood separated by a few inches at their closest point but widened out to a considerable space on the far side. By some strange, unusual fortune, it now formed a natural sniper’s nest.

The Sergeant lowered the rifle through the gap in the rock and found her next mark; put her finger on the trigger; squeezed. The Major forced another energy pulse through the weapon and felt the target go limp and fall.

We may have used up the last of our luck with that rocket. Make it count, he said psychically.

She grunted an acknowledgement, but kept her eye glued to the optic. No more distractions, she told herself. She didn’t know that the Major could hear her thoughts. 

She tried to find the hostile who had fired the rocket. At last she spotted him. A team of two were reloading the launcher together.

Five more shots. Two kills. She was getting frustrated with her misses. 

Do not stop firing, Sergeant Fought.

Sorry, sir, she thought back at him, before she realized that she had just answered him psychically. It made her pause.

Sergeant!

She clamped her eye back to the optic and returned to firing. Five more shots. Three kills. She decided to stop counting and just keep squeezing the trigger.

“How many shots does this weapon’s battery hold, sir?”

A lot. Stop thinking. Keep shooting. He hoped that she wouldn’t question that too hard.

Enemy fire began returning on their position, and she shifted her weight to protect herself and get a better angle. She stumbled suddenly and almost fell on him. “Ah!” she winced. 

Are you hit?

“Negative. Just my ankle when the rocket knocked me down.” She maneuvered into a better position that took the weight off of her left ankle and fired off another burst toward the enemy. The Major sent a rifle pulse with each pull of the trigger.

Focus on firing, soldier. Don’t stop, he repeated. Make them scared to even look our direction.

While she hunted out targets, he carefully reached out with his mind and found the center of pain in her foot. Two partially torn ligaments. He laid his hand on the heel of her boot, hoping it was subtle, and then began to leech the pain out of her body. It hurt him just as much as it hurt her, but the longer he kept at it, the more he felt it and the less she did. Just keep your mind off distractions, he reminded her.

She didn’t respond this time. Two more trigger pulls. Two more plasma beams. Two more bodies dropped. She was in the zone. 

There wasn’t much time left, the Major felt. He would stop breathing within a few minutes. He only hoped that with that time, they might terrorize the enemy enough to… He wasn’t sure. His head throbbed with pain. It was hard to plan. Or speak. Or breathe. 

The return fire from the enemy resurged and came far closer to the Sergeant’s head than before. She ducked down behind cover as pulverized rock pinged off of her helmet. The Major felt an extra burst of adrenaline course through his blood. “Counter-snipers!” she called out.

He began searching for their psychic signatures with his mind. “They’re hiding behind the trees,” he realized out loud.

“Which ones??” she yelled back.

He stretched his mind, his eyelids fidgeting with concentration. “…The ones on fire,” he said at last. They’re betting on the flames to give them concealment.

The Sergeant spun on her heel back into her firing position, and somehow didn’t notice the sprain in her ankle this time. She furrowed her brow as enemy rounds impacted the rock near her shoulder and exploded small chunks of stone into her view. Her eyes found the counter-snipers’ hiding place and sent three rounds through each tree trunk at shoulder level. Two riflemen slumped over from behind the burning trees, their chest-plates glowing orange with molten holes through them.

There’s one more, he told her. Two o’clock. He’s trying to flank.

The Sergeant lifted her face to get a visual, but the rock was too tall. She planted one hand on it and lifted with her legs until she had an angle over the top of the rock to her right, and hefted the pulse rifle to her shoulder. She leaned her weight against the stone in front of her and put both hands on the rifle, zeroing in.

The hair by her neck suddenly split in two as a bullet whizzed through it. She didn’t react. She hunted the target.

A chill of vicarious fear surged through the Major as he watched; the enemy’s next shot wouldn’t miss. Sergeant, he warned.

But it didn’t matter. The next shot didn’t come from the enemy or the Major — it came from her. The hostile sniper fell with a smoldering hole in his helmet the instant her brain made the decision to fire. At the exact moment of synapse. 

Without her trigger finger, or the Major, doing anything.

“Whoa,” she breathed. He could feel her mind reeling from the new sensation — the ‘brain drain’, as psions termed it. “That felt really weird.”

The Major knew exactly what had happened, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult to conceal it from her. Difficult to conceal his surprise, too. Experimental weapon, he explained quickly. Reacts to the thoughts of the user. And then, as an afterthought, he added: It’s good if it does that. Don’t be alarmed.

The Sergeant slid back down the rock to her better-concealed firing position and returned to shooting before he could yell at her again. “I heard about these commando guns,” she said between trigger pulls, “but I always assumed you had to be psionic to use them.”

The Major didn’t say anything to that. Pretended that his ragged breathing was preventing a response. 

The enemy force was in a panic, now. They knew exactly where the sniper was, but the wedge of the rock gave them only a minuscule window through which to hit the Sergeant. She had a 90-degree open spread of the battlefield from her position. She could see everyone plainly; they could barely see her. Every glint of a marksman’s scope was rewarded with near-instant death from her weapon.

And she was getting better with the rifle. He could tell because it was taking less concentration from him to keep the weapon firing. Now that she knew what kind of feeling to expect, every fifth shot or so was coming from her own mind instead of his. Like she was becoming one with the weapon. 

One with the gun, he remembered. That was the phrase the first class of psions had coined during training at the Ranch.

The Sergeant fired a rapid burst at a moving enemy, and then stopped. The Major could tell that something was wrong — her cortisol levels were spiking.

“I just fired around a corner!” 

Hm, thought the Major. This was going to be harder to explain.

“I missed, but it curved and hit the target anyway! You said it fires straight!”

I never actually said that, he countered. I only said that it reacts to the thoughts of the user.

So, it shoots what I want it to shoot, independent of the sights? she asked, not consciously realizing that she was talking to him with her mind again.

If you concentrate. Only if you get used to the gun, and only if it gets used to you.

After another moment of stunned silence, she resumed chasing enemy infantry with the rifle while her mind churned in confusion. “…This is basically science fiction,” she said at last.

Basically, he thought back. 

Their only advantage as a fireteam was that they both had cover while the rebel forces had only concealment. There was nothing bulletproof to hide behind in the marshland. The enemy was faced with the unenviable decision of charging the hill directly and becoming instant casualties or attempting to remain hidden and fire back from the grass. The Sergeant’s eyes kept finding them eventually, anyway.

It all fell apart when two bullets finally threaded the gap between the rocks and hit the Sergeant in the chest, knocking her backward. The Major felt her stop breathing — and then sharply inhale again as she stumbled and almost fell onto her rear. Her chest-plate had stopped the bullets and distributed their kinetic force over her entire torso, saving her life. 

“Ow,” she gasped.

And then the Major suddenly sensed it in the sky.

Sergeant, twelve o’clock high!

She snapped back to a firing position as best as she could, aiming at the clouds, wondering what she was aiming for. 

Grenade launch, he told her. It would be a golf ball-sized target traveling at 200 feet per second, coming towards them in a high arc in order to reach them behind cover and then explode. Once fired, it was not possible to stop such a grenade. 

The Major understood all of those facts instantly, and he told her none of them. What he told her was:

Don’t think — shoot!!

Her trigger finger squeezed manically as she pointed the rifle at the sky, her optic nearly useless against the glare of the sun. The weapon dutifully fired a rapid stream of plasma in a shotgun-burst pattern, saturating the sky above them with dozens of independent beams — one of which finally found the grenade. It detonated twenty yards above their heads, and the rifle fell silent.

That’s a good shot, the Major admitted. The Sergeant’s mind had instinctively told the rifle to fire a forked burst to maximize the chances of hitting a tiny, fast-moving target. And it had obeyed. 

The rebels on the other side of the rock were now truly desperate; the Major could feel it. They knew there was something wrong with this army sniper they were facing. Something singularly dangerous. Nonetheless, their commanding officer had determined to push up the slope, and his men were afraid to disobey his orders. 

The Major gave her a reassuring pat on her leg, the only part of her he could reach. They’re coming for us en masse, now, he explained. They want this hill. 

The Sergeant didn’t move, except to realign her rifle back into the crevice and resume firing. “Orders, sir?” 

The psion exhaled, considering the sheer numbers of the enemy. Three or four hundred still remained, spread from their hill to the horizon. After all that had been said, he didn’t want her to die. 

He gave her his answer. 

…Make them suffer.

“Wilco, Major, sir.” Her mind was iron. 

The Major laid his head back against the rock as he listened to the gunfire increase from both sides. She had taken the reins. It felt good. Felt like he could trust her to see this last stand through to the end, for both of them. He was proud of her. 

He lifted one hand away from his gut and felt around on his thigh for his army datapad. Grabbed it and pulled it from its pouch. Tried to find the power button, but he couldn’t see anything clearly anymore. Black fog had overtaken his peripheral and his eyes could barely focus on anything that wasn’t right in front of his face. He tried lifting the datapad to his nose and found that it was too much effort. His blood already covered most of the screen anyway.

“Voice rec, confirm,” he stated as loudly as he could. 

The datapad pulsed once under his fingertips and a female voice piped back. “Voice recognition confirmed; state access.”

“Major Alfred Getty, US Army. Alpha Alpha niner Zulu five. Emergency protocol.”

“Emergency pro—” the computer tried to protest.

“Victor one-one-one. Bypass Whiskey Foxtrot.”

The machine suddenly understood. “Bypass recognized. State command.”

The Major was finding it hard to think, now. He closed his eyes and tried to focus. “Uh. Sergeant. Sergeant Pella Fought, US Army. 97th Airborne Battalion. Access records.”

“Records retrieved. State command.”

“Force credentials; PSICOM authority. Subsume serviceman into PSICOM chain of command.”

“Confirm transfer request,” the computer demanded flatly.

“Confirmed,” he breathed. Running out of blood. Running out of time. 

The computer began to explain a whole slew of martial code that he didn’t have time for. “Emergency protocol; skip,” he ordered.

The computer hummed an affirmative tone. “State command.”

“Force command. Field promotion.” His throat was dry. He gulped. It didn’t help. “Second lieutenant,” he managed. 

“Acknowledged. State command.”

“Force… ah, something…” He gasped for air, but in vain. He was losing his focus. “…PSICOM authority.” He had to cough something wet out of his lungs, and then sucked in one more breath. “Assign serviceman to… S-O-F task group. Attach special classification to serviceman.”

“Acknowledged. State new classification.”

The Major closed his eyes and tried to find the breath to finish this one last thing. His hands and arms were trembling with cold. Somewhere vaguely in the distance, he could still hear the unique report of the psi-rifle punching holes in enemy targets. But he no longer felt it draining him. 

He was sure.

“…Psion,” he said at last.

“Acknowledged,” the computer replied. “State command.”

The Major didn’t say anything. To his left, the Sergeant continued to fire as rapidly as she could find targets, trying not to flinch at every bullet that impacted the rock near her head.

After ten seconds, the datapad repeated itself. “State command.”

The enemy tried firing more grenades at their position; with desperate nerves, she shot each of them out of the sky. 

“State command.”

The gunfire spiked in intensity and raged on for another ten seconds. 

“Session terminated,” the computer concluded. “Data synchrony awaiting network.”

The battle lasted only a few minutes longer. By the end, the Sergeant had taken more than ten rounds in the arms and chest before she finally stopped firing. The rebels had lost almost one quarter of their fighters trying to capture the hill.

When at last the rebel forces had retreated with their wounded, she found the Major’s body sitting exactly where she had left him. The datapad in his hand was coated with his blood, the screen dark. The only thing left for her was silence.

It wasn’t until the medevac transport retrieved them both from the ridge that she learned of her new assignment.

---

(Happy New Year.)

Stitches, Part 2 of 2 (Original Short Story — October 2022)

(Re-read Part 1 here: Stitches, Part 1 of 2)

---

After several kilometers of riding at breakneck speeds away from the junkyard, the adrenaline began to die down for both of us — enough that he thought to check on how I was doing, and enough that I could no longer block him from seeing the truth. Motion sickness, sympathetic or parasympathetic acute stress disorder, psychological trauma… or, at least, that was how Taz interpreted it when looking inside my brain. To me, it only felt like I was dying from the inside. I couldn’t swallow or breathe.

The motorbike slowed, and the moment it stopped I found myself stumbling onto my feet again and running away from the bike, from the exhaust, from the smell… I think I was trying to escape the memory. But it was continually in front of my eyes. I pressed my fingers against my face and tried to stop seeing it. The sticky gauze was hanging off of my cheek near my stitches; it had hardly done its job before it unstuck itself. I tore it off and tried to get it to stop sticking to my hands.

My hair was filthy. My fingers and my face were dirty, but with more than just dirt. I wondered if his… if that… beast’s blood was still on my face somewhere. 

I stopped suddenly, involuntarily, and fell to my hands. My stomach retched, and I didn’t have the strength to fight it. I stood on my hands and knees for a miserable moment, trying not to buckle into a puddle of sick, and wondered if I would ever forget this feeling.

Back, said a voice from inside of me. Back; sit back; sit up. There we go. And the voice also had hands, guiding me backwards and helping me brush my hair away from my mouth.

Oh… It was Taz. I remembered that I wasn’t alone.

I got back to my feet, or I tried to. He helped me, and would not let go of my arms until my weight was steadied on my own feet instead of on him.

You’re not ready to move yet, are you?

I shook my head in denial. It’s fine, I said to him. Let’s just…

I closed my eyes and took a breath. It tasted like stomach acid when I exhaled. Can we just walk, for a moment? I asked. So I can breathe?

He agreed, and I took one step back towards the road.

And then I passed out.

I must have. I woke up on a dusty leather couch inside some building I’d never seen, and my lip was split from landing on it. Or was that from my attackers, just a few hours ago? I shuddered. It wasn’t from cold.

Taz slept nearby on the floor; I could feel him with my stitches. I listened, and then I could hear him breathing, too. I tried to focus my mind on him to distract myself. I couldn’t bear to relive what had happened.

Somehow, it relaxed me to experience it both ways: my stitches could discern individual heartbeats, and then I could hear how his breathing matched up with them. It was therapeutic. Not an obsessive focus — just my personal habit. Apparently, it was rare for stitches to be as sensitive as mine. The most that others could do was concentrate their stitches to tell the difference between animal or human, living or dead. Without really trying, I could tell male from female and calm from panic in any creature within a few meters of myself. I supposed I was proud of that.

I began putting together the story of what must have happened, since I didn’t want to wake him. We were in Old Town, right now. Some abandoned apartment block that he had found for the night, I gathered. I could see a bit of early morning sunlight through the dust-grimed window, but I didn’t want to get close to it, just to be safe. It looked like we were near the ground floor, not too high up. Maybe the second level. Moths had eaten the furniture here. The smell was unsettling. But I was used to such discomforts, after exploring the ruins of the city for months on my own. 

Which was what had led me here, or… had led us both here. 

God, it was my fault that this had happened, wasn’t it? I had wanted to be independent. So I acted like I was. Like I was invincible. Except I wasn’t; no one with stitches was safe in these areas, and we all knew which parts were safe. I had been beyond stupid. And Taz, well… He came looking for me voluntarily. But there would never have been a need, if I hadn’t pushed the envelope so far. Months of aimless wandering by myself, and I had thought nothing at all would happen? I guess I had never believed I might be in any danger. Not really. 

Stupid. Stupid, of course, but worse: guilty. I’m sorry, Taz. 

If you didn’t explore…

I started. He was awake! I hadn’t even noticed. Too focused on myself, as usual…

Hush, his thoughts pulsed at me. If we didn’t explore, as a species, we would never be where we are today. We would have made no inventions. No progress. You understand.

No progress? I replied in my mind. Taz, if this is ‘progress’, then… I’m surprised that progress is still considered a good thing. I gestured, with my mind, to all the surrounding city. Sent him images in memory of places burned and torn to shreds by the last year’s war.

He shrugged an acknowledgement, mentally. But he disagreed. War isn’t part of progress. But since some of us were for progress, and others were against, there had to be a division. Division never has to be violent; we wanted to be separate in our own, peaceful way. There were never enough stitches for everyone to be implanted all at once, anyway.

But division led to war, Taz.

Chell, you are female, and I am male. Your skin is paler than mine, and I am taller. Are we not technically divided into different categories because of these things?

I smiled and looked towards window, trying to think of something else and trying not to agree with his reasoning. But of course it’s not the same, I reasoned. Our differences are genetic, but the stitches were a choice. 

I knew where his argument would go next, naturally. Do you choose to be alone more frequently or to remain with others for company? Because, judging from your habits, you choose the former. I choose the latter, usually. Thus, we are separated because of our choices. Are we at war?

I was silent, but rolled my eyes, so he could feel through me how obnoxious his little spiel was getting. But I also had to fight to not smile. He could sense both feelings.

Chell, people go to war only if they want to. And you and I both know that our side did not want war. We only fought because they sought to exterminate us. 

I was silent again. Taz was right. I resented him — a little bit — for it. He always knew how to cut right to the heart of an issue; that was his gift. He was terrible at social gatherings, if ever something beyond casual banter took place. He couldn’t help himself. No one enjoyed an argument against Taz; they could never win. 

I tried stretching my legs on the couch. They felt sore, but the blood was flowing. I swung my legs to the floor and rose slowly to my feet. The window was only a few paces away; I felt safer now that Taz was awake — which he could read through our stitches. I approached the glass and cautiously peered through to see the world outside. Old Town hadn’t changed much in the last few years. Lots of resources and space; not enough survivors of the war to staff it all. It had fallen into disrepair and stayed that way ever since the fighting began. The sun was rising, though, and golden-orange light painted the gray stone buildings… a little less gray.

I appreciated that Taz had such a handle on the truth, despite the annoyance. It was reassuring, I supposed. To look at the world through someone else’s lens and to learn truth. Not just another perspective, but a truth that I myself had not considered properly before. And it was nearly instant, because of the stitches. There was no possible way to miscommunicate. His choice of words had nothing to do with my interpretation of his ideas, because the truth was that there were no words transferred through the stitches. His raw ideas, inside his own mind, were exactly the way I saw them in my own. Undiluted.

Words, after all, were only a pigeonhole system of “Which word in your language most closely fits the idea you currently have in your head?” — and whenever there wasn’t such a word to describe an exact idea, humans had to invent paragraphs of descriptors to try and communicate this complex, esoteric idea. But it never worked as perfect as telepathy could. It sometimes seemed like the best that you could do with words was explain everything that your idea was not, so the listener might understand that this was some unique, new concept that existed in the gaps between words. If you can’t describe something, circumscribe it.

But the sad thing was that, immediately after receiving our stitches, we each discovered that those gaps between words were far vaster than we had ever realized. Entire universes of meaning, of nuance, had been locked away from our view… and the stitches were — virtually — an instant cure to human ignorance.

It was as if communicating with words — written or verbal — was having nothing to drink but dirty water… and telepathy through the stitches was free access to a feast of fruits and milk and honey, of myriad flavors and textures. One was sufficient to keep you alive, even if sometimes causing major problems. The other was everything that the human mind could possibly want.

Taz got to his feet. I could feel him behind me, but also that he wasn’t looking at me. He was processing the facts, and our to-do list — how many hours we had needed to sleep; how far away we were from the scene of the… of last night. How likely it might be that more like them might have tracked us. The firearm was useless without more bullets. He still had it behind his belt.

He also hated the gun, I discovered in that moment. Not feared; simply hated. Or detested. Detestation; disgust; resentment; one of those feelings.

I laughed at myself. I suddenly realized that I, talking to myself within my own mind, still struggled with words — with choosing the right word for the exact meaning I wanted. Which meant that another stitched person, looking inside my mind, could understand me and what I wanted to say better than I could understand myself. Or maybe it was a leftover artifact from the time before stitches, when I would have to put things into words for anyone outside of myself to understand — and my brain still did it internally, by reflex.

Taz came to the rescue, then. I don’t hate the gun, exactly. Although maybe you already understand that.

I nodded in my mind and replied: You hate what it does.

Or what it has to do; yes. People like us only use it when we have to. But we still hate the necessity.

I probed, then, gently — almost like a physical gesture, as if I were brushing away his hair to see if he was hurt — at the place in his mind that was as silent as a tomb. The memory of the killing.

And again, almost like a physical touch, I felt resistance as if his hand were reaching up to stop mine from advancing further. Politely acknowledging, and declining to reveal any more. It’s there, he said. The trauma I was searching for. And you don’t have to see it. But it’s okay.

I almost cried, then. What, psychologically, might I have done by requiring his assistance? By needing to be rescued, had I caused his mind to become broken forever?

Only indirectly, he jested. And only to a certain depth. The smile through his stitches and on his lips meant that the consolation was supposed to make me laugh, which it did. But there was actual truth behind some jokes.

And that, too, was a part of his answer.

I release you from guilt, was the sentiment I felt from him as I severed the link between us and retreated into myself.

It didn’t matter what he wanted. His suffering was another sliver of the trauma that fell on me to bear. His forgiveness wouldn’t change the fact that I was responsible.

I felt myself about to drown in the memory again, until something from that memory caught my attention. “He called me Melissa,” I suddenly found myself saying out loud.

Odd. I was using my voice, instead of my thoughts. Why had I done that?

Taz was looking at me, and I did not hide my thoughts from his view.

Maybe, he said, it’s because of how it makes you feel.

Like I want to keep the name distant from my own mind? So I say it out loud instead?

Yeah. Although that’s not really rational. But you’re allowed a bit of irrationality, given what you’ve just been through.

I nodded absentmindedly. There was still the question on my mind — but again, it came out through my mouth. “…Why?”

“Why did he call you Melissa,” Taz stated as if to confirm.

“Or who is Melissa? And… do I look like her? Why am I supposedly her? What does any of it even mean?”

Calm, I felt him pulse at me through our stitches. But he answered verbally. “Well, one, he was crazy.”

Easy answer, I thought in reply. Too easy. “That could easily be the only real reason. But.”

“But,” Taz conceded. It wasn’t enough to just leave it at that. That would be mentally lazy. When something this serious happened, it wasn’t smart to take the easiest and simplest answer and just… ignore all other possibilities.

Taz gazed at me then, and I felt him probing to see inside my mind. I let him in. Full access; anything in my memory that could help us figure out a clue would be worth sharing with him.

I felt him suddenly stop and blink. Surprised at something. “You’re sure that he used to have stitches?” he asked.

“You’re looking at the same memories as I am.”

“Hm,” he acknowledged. And then: “He might have hallucinated her.”

“Hallucinated an entire person?” I countered. “And a history between them?”

“They tore out his stitches. Mentally, that never works. However it was that he survived, his sanity probably didn’t. What if poor Melissa doesn’t exist? What if she is a phantom that his mind invented?”

I didn’t like that answer. But not because the theory didn’t make any sense; it did.

“Okay. But then, why me?”

“You were just the first person he saw.”

“The first person with stitches.”

Taz hesitated, and then looked away before answering. “…I’m beginning to think that the only people who are people,” he said, “are the people with stitches.”

That’s not a healthy thought, I pulsed at him.

That’s why I’m trying to fight it, he answered.

And there was something I felt like asking him, but I didn’t know whether I should. Our stitches spoiled the secret before I could make up my mind. Ask me, he insisted.

I was just wondering something. Do you remember how you felt before you got your stitches?

Taz’s mind was silent for a moment. Right before?

I nodded. 

He pursed his lips and thought. I… can’t remember. Vaguely, maybe. I think I remember a lot of anxiety.

He brushed the stitches on his cheekbone with his fingertips, as if noticing them for the first time. Maybe I wasn’t sure how they would change me, or something about how it would make others see me. But I don’t really remember much about that time. Come to think of it, I don’t feel like I have any reason to think about what life was like before.

He looked at me. Your turn. Do you remember anything?

I realized that I hadn’t even asked myself that question. I tried to remember. I really tried. But there were only blurry images and feelings. 

I do remember the world being dark, I said at last. It was a very dark place, to me — that must have been at the start of the war. I remember always being scared, every day.

But not anymore?

Well, scared right now.

Because they want to take your stitches away.

Because they want me to go back to the old way.

He understood. That would the scariest thing about losing your stitches. Going back to the dark world. Back to a darkened mind.

I suddenly realized what I wanted, and before I even knew what to do about it, Taz was right in front of me and pulling me into an embrace. I clasped my arms to the small of his back and leaned my weight into his. Just breathe, he instructed. I complied, gladly.

A minute passed like that, and at last my mind began to be clear again. The memories of the past were wiped out. I felt safe.

Do you think you’re ready to go? he asked. I could feel that Taz was getting anxious. He didn’t think that anyone had followed us, but he didn’t like being isolated out here. His motorcycle was still waiting for us outside.

I’m better now, I promised him. And it was true.

We left through the door to the street — a door with a shattered window pane, I noted, which was how Taz had let himself into the locked building. The motorcycle was conveniently stashed close to the entrance, inside of an empty delivery van on the street. As I wondered, his mind replayed the scene from last night for me to view. There had been a rear-door ramp already attached to the van when he carried my limp body in, so all he had had to do was come back downstairs and drive the bike directly into the cargo bay to conceal it. (Part of why he had chosen this street in particular, his mind told me.) 

The motorcycle thrummed to life, well-maintained — without needing anyone to forage for extra parts in dangerous places, I felt as another bludgeon of guilt, which made me realize the most condescending irony of all: my motorcycle was still at the junkyard, far behind us. That’s what I deserved, I guessed, for breaking the rules of safety just to hunt for a better muffler. I sighed, and tucked my arms under his shoulders as we started to ride again. 

We weren’t racing away, anymore. If no one had followed us in the night, then we were safe. Or close enough to it. Our commune was a mere thirteen kilometers away.

For the first minute, we didn’t say anything to each other. I kept my arms loosely around his midsection and let the wind beat my ears until they were cold; neither of us had a helmet to wear. Only then it occurred to me:

Taz, what made you think to look for me? You left in a rush — how did you know?

For the first time, I did not detect a confident answer from Taz. His mind churned in confusion, and then I felt him say, …I’ve been wondering that myself. I don’t know how to explain.

Explain what?

The truth.

The truth? I puzzled. Now he had me worried.

What is the truth? I queried.

I was just sitting. I vaguely knew that you had left recently, but I wasn’t thinking about you at all. And then suddenly, I was. You were all I could think about, and it made me worried. It got so strong that I grabbed the gun and my bike and… I went looking for you. I asked someone what direction you went, and then I followed my instinct.

And… that’s how you found me?

He nodded in his mind. And that’s how I knew to get off my motorcycle in advance.

I had no idea what to say. I could do nothing then but stare at the road as we surfed by. My ears were freezing, now, but I hardly noticed.

I tried not to broadcast what I was thinking, but, well… if Taz had been able to sense that I was in danger — or would be in danger, in the near future — then was it even possible to hide anything from him?

It’s got to be the stitches, right? he asked.

I nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to think of it as anything but speculation. That doesn’t make sense, but it’s a better theory than anything else, I thought back at him. But that would completely annihilate our understanding of how they work. Range, distance, and…

And time, he finished. 

Taz, if what you say is true —

— and I could tell, through our stitches, that it was —

— then this would border on precognition. 

Exactly. That’s what’s got me worried.

Worried, I scoffed. More like… amazed. 

Under different circumstances, I would be amazed. This time, I’m simply bewildered. And grateful.

Yeah. Grateful is right, I decided.

Three kilometers away, now. I glanced to my left and knew exactly where we were. A guard tower had been erected on the roof of a disused convenience store on this corner, but it was vacant. It had only been built to serve as a decoy; the real guard post was in the sewers below. It didn’t smell great down there, so they said, but the sewer tunnel was the only effective way to approach the commune concealed. If ever anything tried to attack us from underground, our guards there would see the enemy before they saw us.

Taz pulsed out a greeting with his stitches, and the guard post underground responded cheerfully. Good to hear from you guys. And with the stitches, getting past security was that easy.

I sent them a quick taunt: Does it still smell terrible down there?

I felt their response like a burst of laughter. Not at all! It smells great, in fact. You should come on down! 

It made me smile. Yeah, bring some food when you come! another piped in.

There’s no place like home.

It was a straight road from then on to the gates of the commune, which were open. The property itself was, ironically, a low-security prison. Or it had been, before the war. The danger from the unstitched cultists, even during this time of supposed peace, had led us to choose a place like this to settle until our population grew sufficiently. Already built for security, and easy to convert into a minor fortress for protection from outsiders. It had most of everything it needed built-in, in terms of facilities. Laundries, kitchens, rooms and beds and living spaces. Lots of homegrown animal pens and farming, as well, since we had expanded the outer fences. The only thing that was actually bad about it was how plain it looked, and to that end some people had begun drawing ambitious murals on the unpainted concrete walls. Some areas were quite beautiful, now. It was like a live-in art gallery.

But within the hour, it was like like living in a war zone all over again.

The story of what had happened to us spread like wildfire. Faster than wildfire. At the speed of thought, the unembellished memory of my kidnapping — and the voices and faces of everyone involved — had been shared with the entire commune. The first five minutes after our return was the most sober silence I ever remember hearing in my life. 

Everyone had only one thought on their minds. 

The cease-fire has been violated.

And no matter what I had to say, a consensus began to brew. A call to action which made me sick to my stomach all over again. 

I couldn’t fault them for their emotions. But I felt desperate for life to simply go back to the way it had been. It had been my own fault, after all, that I had been targeted. 

Had it not? 

Of course it had. Everyone else simply did not want to admit the hard truth that I was responsible for what had happened. Escalating the violence was not the solution to my mistake.

After the first hour of listening to the thoughts of everyone discussing war in serious terms, I wanted to escape from my own brain. I had gotten a shower. They had given me fresh clothes and food. And none of it mattered. Things were worse than ever before.

Taz found me. I was sitting alone on a hard chair and staring at a wall. I wouldn’t look at him. I was ashamed of myself. And of him. It seemed we were on opposite sides, now. 

He stared at me, unmoving. He wanted me to say something first, but I wouldn’t.

Tell me how you feel about it.

I stared at the blank wall. You know the answer, Taz. 

Not fully.

No, Taz. Fully. You know full well what is going on.

Allow me to explain what I think is going on, he offered. And then you can confirm my perspective, or correct it.

That sounds marvelous, I intoned sarcastically.

In very brief, the news of your abduction is being used as ammunition.

He paused, but I had nothing to correct. He went on.

Ammunition to incite — or, justify — a war. And since war is evil, you would do anything to stop it. 

I wanted to catch him on something, because I knew that he had a plan to convince me, but there was nothing of substance I could disagree with so far. Merely semantics. I held my peace.

Your idea — contrary to the proposal of fighting fire with fire — would be to let it go. You know that it was your own fault for being caught outside of the commune. You made a dumb mistake, and you suffered for it. You feel that the consequences have already been served, and that now we are back to the status quo.

I swallowed. So far, so correct.

So the best solution is for us to acknowledge that we are safe if we remain at home, and unsafe if and when we leave.

I closed my eyes. Squinted them shut. Is that so hard to accept, Taz…?

No, he confessed. …Except that the long-term consequences would be unacceptable.

He paused a moment to let me think, which I used to try to come up with something sarcastic to say. But he continued before I could reply.

It means that we, and our grandchildren’s children, must accept that this home will forever be a prison.

…And with that one sentence, I had to accept that he was right.

I looked at him, and I knew that tears were near to brimming in my eyes. He gazed into them and felt my feelings with me, in our shared mind. Felt my agony.

Then I have one request. 

Tell it to me.

Take me with you when you go.

Taz couldn’t fully suppress his uncensored feelings from me, at that. It was as if his insides winced, worried for my sake.

Where we’re going, Chell, he cautioned me, there will be much more blood.

I blinked, and he could feel the defiance in my mind. Then I will be there to make sure that no one falls in love with it.

We stared at each other a little longer, and then… he nodded once. 

We walked out of the dormitory together, and inside of twenty seconds, the group that was preparing for battle had learned of my intention to join them and unilaterally accepted me as part of the team. They offered me a handgun, and I took it under the condition that I would not be depended on for combat. They gave their assent.

The next few hours passed me by in a blur. Or, actually, they passed us all by in a blur. Through the stitches, I knew that none of us were emotionally prepared for what we were planning. But our bodies and equipment prepared themselves independent of our feelings. The facts were the only thing that mattered on this night — or so we compartmentalized things, in our heads. 

And the facts were that, collectively, we knew where the enemy was, and we knew that they had not disbanded nor retreated after the confrontation last night. 

And we knew, from a motorbike scout who had gone to reconnoiter immediately after Taz and I relayed our story, that the enemy was now collecting canisters from a chemical plant near their camp.

Chemical weapons? was the first thought on nearly everyone’s mind.

Are we going to wait around to find out? came the logical reply. 

Logical. It was always logical. Tactical. Black or white. It was the environment we had to inhabit, psychologically. Feelings, and the second thoughts that came with them, were eliminated from the group psyche. 

It was obviously a more efficient mode of thinking. Independent of what our feelings might tell us, we were maximizing our chances of winning.

And that was exactly what terrified me deep inside. Morality be damned. Victory was the greatest moral good, here.

The plan was created by common consent. Like a rapid-fire voting congress, but with all ideas communicated and visualized perfectly from one person to another, until the best strategy and contingencies had been selected and combined in the best way our collective intelligence knew how. I had only one suggestion to bring to the entire discussion, which they all considered for a moment and then decided to accept. Someone went inside the nearby medical office and brought back a trauma kit and a small biohazard bag to include in our load-out.

Fifty of us, in ten vehicles. Roughly forty of them, holed up in an industrial park twenty-five kilometers from here. Too close for comfort, and too far gone to reason with. 

That was what we all told ourselves. We kept repeating it to ourselves as we loaded the equipment — including weapons — into the vehicles. And as we drove away from home. 

And as the sun went down on our innocence, we repeated the same things to ourself. 

Or, at least, I could feel everyone around me doing so. 

Taz, I noticed, remained silent within himself. What I didn’t know was whether he secretly harbored the same misgivings as I did, or if he — by virtue of having already confronted and killed six of them — no longer needed to reassure himself of anything. And I couldn’t know. He wouldn’t open up that part of his mind for me to see.

Eight vehicles stopped about nine hundred meters away from the entrance to the industrial park and turned off their engines and lights. The ambient light of dusk was just enough to navigate by but still dark enough to obscure our movements. While the occupants of those vehicles disembarked and approached the enemy’s camp from the north, the last two vehicles — which included me and Taz — drove in a steady, straight line past the chemical plant. Lights on, speed high, impossible to miss. But we didn’t stop.

And then, while every head in the camp was turned to track our decoy vehicles, gunfire from their rear began to cut them down like weeds.

…Weeds that screamed human words and bled red blood when they fell.

The distraction had served its purpose. The truck that Taz and I were in, along with the last one, flipped around and drove in closer to deploy the last of our fighters. The element of surprise was over. The only element now was overwhelming and superior firepower.

The battle was over within two minutes. 

Thirty-seven, our collective mind reported in to itself. And zero. Thirty-seven hostile bodies on the ground, and zero friendly. A perfect ratio, by any tactical standard.

Never mind the fact, or the feeling, that thirty-seven breathing souls were now forever dead because of our actions. Never mind that we had carefully engineered two minutes of slaughter. Never mind that we were, most of us, congratulating each other for it. 

And one neutralized survivor, came one final voice. News that made us all pause; news that no one had really expected.

A moment later, the image of the last survivor’s face passed itself around to all of us through our telepathic chain. Two of us froze immediately at the sight. Me, and Taz.

We had met this survivor twenty-four hours ago, exactly.

I didn’t know why, but I ran to see it for myself. Everything that I could possibly want to see I could have seen remotely, through the stitches of the man who had found him. But my body acted on instinct, without logic. Perhaps that would be the only thing that could make any of this redeemable. 

I arrived at the scene. A fighter named Roth, the one who had first seen the final survivor, stood there at the ready with his weapon. In front of him were a low-slung army-green tent with the red cross symbol stitched into its canvas and a cot with a bedroll. And on it, trying very obviously to keep calm, the young man who had called himself Peter.

Taz contacted me silently through our stitches. I’m just around the corner. I’ll watch with you through your eyes, if you wish. But you’ll get more out of him if he doesn’t see me.

I nodded in my mind. And then he — Peter — saw me. And instantly recognized me.

His eyes darted from Roth on his right, who had the barrel of a rifle trained on his chest, to me, and then back again. His chest rose and fell with a kind of near-panic. He lay on his back with a thin blanket over his legs and midsection, and I noticed that there was a dark red stain over his stomach. Approximately where Taz had shot him. When he finally turned back to me, he began to breathe more slowly. He didn’t look away this time.

I carried a gun in a holster on my thigh. It felt wrong to even have one on me, but it was important that it be there for this moment at least. I decided to walk around him in a circle, slowly, while staring at him. It felt as if I was casually asserting dominance, but I was actually checking him from all angles for any kind of concealed weapon. The only thing easily within his reach was a plastic water bottle on a chair next to his bed.

Target is unarmed, I pulsed towards anyone who might be listening. And then, uncomfortably, I realized that perhaps everyone in our strike team was paying attention to this moment of us now. I tried not to think about that.

I cleared my throat. Peter’s eyes were riveted on me. He looked me up and down, but his eyes always returned to mine. Always just… gazing at me. Into me. I hated it.

“Why did you target me?”

He said nothing. His lips parted, as if he wanted to answer… but nothing came out.

This isn’t working, I told Taz through my stitches, but then Peter spoke.

“I’m very sorry, Melissa.” His voice was nasal. I realized that his nose was swollen, still.

I glared back at him. “Who is Melissa?”

Peter’s mouth went slack again. Contemplating his next move, his next words. “Oh, she’s…” he started. And then he smiled wryly. “She’s just someone that we used to know.”

“Who’s we?”

In a flash, the smile disappeared again. “You. You and me.” Peter looked over at Roth again, and then at the gun on my thigh. “Chell, or whatever you think your name is.”

“I know no Melissa.”

“Not anymore,” he said.

I was about to retort, but he suddenly got a strange look in his eyes. He looked me directly in the eyes and said, “You must forgive yourself if she kills me, Melissa.”

“…What? What the devil are you saying?”

He had an energy of his own, again. Like I was no longer there and he was having a different conversation with someone else entirely that no one but he could see. 

“Melissa. It’s not your fault. None of this is.”

I checked in with Taz. You have any idea what this could mean? I asked him.

Same theory as before. Looking into the mind of a crazed man doesn’t usually make much sense, I imagine. He lost his stitches, remember?

Out of curiosity, I strode forward to inspect his face more closely. I stopped suddenly, and then drew my gun and laid the barrel next to his head. “If you bite, I shoot.”

Peter looked at me with bemused eyes, but then began to laugh like I had said something funny. I hoped that meant he understood. I reached out with my other hand and gingerly stretched the skin on his cheek. A sad, misshapen scar where he had once obviously had stitches. I could only imagine the horror of losing one’s stitches, violently or no. And then I felt a pang of deep pity for the boy. Was this — any of this — really his fault?

“Biting…” he laughed. “I missed you.”

I withdrew my hand sharply. Taz, who’s with you? Is Pax there?

Taz confirmed, and I could suddenly feel Pax inside my mind as well. Pax, you have that package that I asked for ready?

Got it with me, was the reply.

I cleared my throat again. My heart was knocking against the inside of my chest, even though I knew I was physically safe. It was just being this close to this kind of creature… But I had to try. I needed to find some kind of answer.

I poked his head again with the end of the gun. “I want to give you mercy. But first, tell me who is Melissa? And who am I, to you?” Why me, dammit?? was what I wanted to shout at him.

He looked at me, and his brow furrowed. As if in sorrow. “The last time I kissed you, Melissa…” he suddenly started.

I kept my face still, as a scowl. No reaction, I thought to myself. This interrogation was going nowhere.

“The last time our lips met, you broke my nose. That thing inside of you was trying to escape from me.” He laughed weakly, and I noticed that his eyes were beginning to wet. “I still count it as a kiss.”

Without thinking, my tongue ran itself over the split in my top lip. 

So that’s where that came from. 

To my chagrin, he saw my reaction and nodded. “I know you were there, Melissa.” Tears pooled on his cheeks, now. “Hey. It’s not your fault that this happened. I’m sorry.”

“Taz,” I called behind me. I had had enough. I no longer wanted this creature to exist. Taz heard me — either through the stitches or audibly — and jogged towards us. Pax and two others followed him. They were carrying exactly what we needed. 

“I still love you, Melissa. I love you more than the whole world.”

I looked my attacker in the eye and answered him. “Shut up.”

I holstered the gun — which I hoped I would never have to unholster ever again — just as Taz and the others appeared in view. Peter’s eyes scanned them quickly and flinched when they got to Taz. His breathing, once again, became panicked. I could feel his heart begin to pound inside his chest.

“You know that I love you —”

“She said shut up, boy,” interrupted Taz. Peter shut up.

Pax turned to me and gestured with his head. You’ll likely not want to be here for this next part; it can sometimes be disturbing.

No, actually, I answered. This one, specifically, I’m ready for.

Taz reached for my hand, and I squeezed it. Pax shrugged and then pulled out the small case from inside the biohazard bag. Subtly, the other two men flanked the two sides of the cot, and then suddenly grabbed Peter’s limbs and held them tight. He froze, then — and it seemed as if I could feel the visceral terror inside of him, despite only one of us having stitches. Peter glanced up and saw Pax opening the small box.

“NO!!” the boy suddenly screamed. “Kill me!!”

He looked at me, then at Taz, and then at each of us in our circle. Those wild eyes, again. “NO, you HAVE to kill me!!”

“Stop talking like you’re possessed,” Pax murmured distractedly. Small talk with a disturbed patient; it was how medical professionals coped with an insane world.

Peter turned to me again and began screaming words almost faster than I could process them. “I know you’re in there, Melissa! I had it in me and I could hear everything; I KNOW THAT YOU CAN HEAR ME!!”

Should I silence him? Taz queried.

Privately, I wondered at what the creature was saying. …No, I finally answered, let him scream. But someone will have to hold his head down. Taz nodded and took the position near Peter’s head.

“None of you understand!” the boy continued, faster and more desperate than before. “Once the stitches are in, they don’t let you out!! Out of your own mind; it becomes — GET THAT DAMNED THING AWAY FROM ME!!” his voice screeched.

From a small incubator tube, Pax had removed with a pair of tweezers what looked like a long and writhing worm. It was about the length and width of a toothpick, and completely blind until inserted — bonded — with a human host. He pricked it with a sterile needle, and it came to life with much more energy than before. It was primed for insertion.

Peter struggled so hard against his handlers that he nearly fell off the cot, but their firm hands pushed him back in place. His words had become hardly more than incoherent babbling. How does it feel, I wondered at him. But he couldn’t hear my thoughts.

Not yet.

“Please, I beg of you; Melissa — Chell — you don’t understand; please don’t do this!!”

Hold him firm, pulsed Pax. This is the delicate part.

Peter heaved all of his body weight, as much as he could muster, against the weight of our men. With more energy than I thought a man with a gunshot wound could possibly have. “GOD IN HEAVEN, STO—”

— and then the most inhuman noises I had ever heard in my life erupted from his throat as the stitches punctured the soft tissue inside his eyelid and stretched themselves inward towards his brain. 

I winced, then. Taz was busy trying to pin the creature’s head to the bedroll, but I suddenly wished I had kept him by my side. This was… harder to watch than I had thought. Hard to listen to. 

Beneath his skin, the stitches began building their primeval neural interface with the subject’s frontal lobe. Soon a paralyzing agent would deploy itself into his blood, and once it reached the brain stem, the struggling would stop. A few more hours after that, the conversion would be fully done. 

As I watched, his muscles suddenly seized — and then the energy went out of them, and the screaming stopped abruptly. The paralyzer had reached the brain. The process would be self-sustaining from here. 

Roth furrowed his brow playfully as the boy finally ceased struggling. “Drama queen,” he muttered.

It was a pity that a paralyzer was even necessary. I had no recollection of the insertion itself, for me, but I imagined that I must have been more than a bit nervous to have something crawling around behind my eyeball at first. It had long since stopped moving, for me and all the others. Now, the stitches didn’t feel invasive at all to me. They were soft on the inside of my skull and calcified on the outside, where they were exposed to the air. Almost like keratin — but still hyper-sensitive to temperature and touch.

Taz left the body alone with the others and returned to see me. He could already tell that it had been harder for me than I had anticipated. He took me by the shoulder and walked me away from the scene.

We walked for a bit, without either of us saying anything. The men around us began cleaning up the detritus of war and collecting bodies to be disposed of humanely. We walked away from all of it.

“What he said…” I started. Out loud again, for some reason.

“Yeah,” Taz answered. “It’s bothering me, too.” 

“I mean, it bothers me even though it cannot be true.”

Taz nodded and scratched the stubble on his jaw. “It doesn’t need to be true, actually, to be effective. The man we just gave stitches to — or, the unstitched thing that we just turned into a man — was a leader of his tribe before tonight. The leader of this sick… sadism. Zealotry. Whatever it really was. He was probably a master manipulator, no?”

I thought about it. “…Go on,” I prompted.

“He could convince himself, he could convince others, of things that weren’t true. What he couldn’t do was evolve. He couldn’t stop trying to manipulate.”

“So that was his only weapon.”

“So that was his only weapon. When the chips were down, all he could think to do was resort to what he had practiced for so long. Manipulate. Obfuscate. Throw names around; call freedom slavery. He was scared because he was realizing that his own best ally had abandoned him. His ability to rationalize genocide wasn’t going to work on us. And then he knew that he was powerless, and he became afraid.”

I shook my head. Not in disbelief, but… It was just so difficult to imagine being so mentally broken. What must it be like, living inside that brain? Having no other reality than what your twisted mind feeds you?

“It just doesn’t seem… right. How could a god create something that’s just inherently evil? Or — how could any kind of god allow it to exist?”

Taz opened his mouth to answer me, but then swallowed. He looked out and away from us, away from the city, as if he might find an answer in the sky. The stars were just beginning to appear in the distant blackness.

“…I don’t know,” he said at last. “I don’t know.”

---

(Happy Halloween. Thanks for reading.)

Stitches, Part 1 of 2 (Original Short Story — October 2015)

“HOLD HER DOWN!” the youngest man, the leader, bellowed. They pinned my legs beneath something heavy, but I couldn’t see because there were already three of them on top of me.

I had nothing else I could do. I screamed. His hand appeared and jabbed me in the throat violently, and my voice choked. Please, I begged silently. Please don’t; just don’t. Just let me go, I thought, but I couldn’t speak. My lungs were too compressed by his weight to even breathe, and my esophagus was bruised and swelling. They are going to kill me. This is how I am going to die.

Before I could black out, I felt the young man’s hands move again and firmly, carefully, restrain my head. My eyes were so clouded with tears I could hardly see, but now I was afraid of a fate worse than death. His fingertips, unnaturally cold, deliberately brushed the stitches beneath my eye.

I wanted to scream as loud as I could, then. More than ever before. I had heard about these sadists who hunted people for their stitches, and now — here they were, ambushing and subduing me. Ready to cut open my face and have their fun with my skull, while I was still alive and awake. I wished I could die. I wished I was already gone.

He yelled something again, this time at me: “Melissa, stop! Stop kicking!”

Melissa is not my name. I’m not who you think I am; I’m not who you want in your sick bloody fantasy, my mind screamed. I felt terror in my chest like I was seeing a hungry animal, staring at my helpless body and anticipating meat. His hands once again cradled and pressed my head into the ground as his followers started scurrying all around me, preparing something. I heard the scratching sound of medical scissors. Or something worse. I couldn’t see.

“Please, Melissa… Let’s just get this thing out of you. This isn’t you,” he crooned. Like he was getting some kind of sentimental pleasure out of this. Like the stitches on my cheek were a bad makeover, and he was about to fix my look. I whimpered because my throat hurt so much. I managed a hoarse “Don’t… touch… me.”

I felt them shove a gag in my mouth, instead.

“I’m sorry for what I’m about to do, Melissa — it’s going to hurt,” he added. I had never been so horrified in my life. This one, it seemed — this sadistic cannibal hunter — was into roleplaying. He wanted me to be his dying patient, so he could be the surgeon doctor who was going to save me.

I was not going to give him any kind of satisfaction.

As soon as he had the medical tool in his hand — looked like it was a scalpel — his other hand relaxed its grip on my forehead, so he could focus his muscles on a careful, clean incision. That was the only distraction I could count on, and now his eyes were directly over mine. I bucked my body as a counterweight and, in the same motion, slammed my head into his face.

Splashes of blood flowed immediately from his nose and lip, but with barely a grunt of pain, he was back on top of me and two more of his flunkies had my head down into the dirt even tighter. I felt a cold pulse of terror in my veins. I had barely slowed him down. I at least hoped he would scream.

No, I realized. I wanted to fight back and escape, not make him scream. But there were still five torturers on top of me, plus him, and I never had a chance. The blood from his face dripped and drooled freely off the tip of his nose, falling onto the dust beside me and then the cloth they had gagged me with. As if I hadn’t wanted to spit it out before, I wanted to spew it out now. Even if only as an insult, to him. I especially wanted him to die. I hoped he could see it in my eyes.

But, once again, his eyes weren’t looking at mine. They were gazing intently — hungrily — at the beautiful stitches on my left cheekbone.

These were my life. The sensory organ that made me… real. A real human, and not like them. They had never accepted stitches. My people had, and we were telepathic with each other because of it. Our bodies were healthier. We were vastly more intelligent. We had established world peace. We were happier; we were free from fear; we were free.

Unless the jealous and the fear-mongers, like the ones who held me now, found us. The only fears we had in this world were from the humans who viewed us as the gruesome ones, the mutants, just for our choice to insert our stitches. They were a religion now, a cult of blood and of secret murder. They hated freedom the way they hated us. We would leave them alone, and let them be free, but if only they would let us.

And they loved to cut out our stitches while we were still alive. That was what pushed them over the edge, in my mind. They never counted it a real victory unless they had taken one of us and tried to surgically remove the stitches from their face, and then brainwash the survivor to be one of their own. Most of the time, though, the… ‘procedure’ resulted in zapping the subject’s brain dead. The stitches were too close to us, neurologically, to be removed. It was like cutting out a lobe of the brain, but without sedation and without the patient’s permission. Without any need, for that matter. Only motivated by fear.

The young man, glancing at his comrades and nodding to make sure they had me fully restrained — and they did — leaned closer than before to see every last detail on my face. Ready to kill me. He was so close that I could see the intent within his eyes, and then…

I gasped, even with a thick gag in my mouth. He… Underneath his left eye, he had a rough scar. It was a small patch, but just the right pattern to confirm exactly what I was afraid of.

This boy had been a survivor himself. He had stitches once, too. And they had taken them from him and fully turned him into a monster. My hopes were dashed, then. They might have a way of keeping me alive, too. I would see myself turn into one of their cult.

He made the first cut, and my breath caught in my chest. I began, again, to cry. This was the beginning of the end.

Wild gunshots broke the nightmare’s reverie over my body, and then chaos and blood erupted all over me.

The boy — the survivor — was the last to move, but he too moved once he looked up and saw the danger. Inside of half of a second, my limbs were free to move and the bodies above me were gone. Quick instinct saved me, as I reached up, threw the gag out, and tried to scramble to my feet. I stumbled, but my spine ordered me to crawl on my hands and knees until I had reached the cover of a metallic stack of crushed automobiles. I had been stupid to come here to a shady, abandoned junkyard — alone, especially. I had been trying to find a part for my motorcycle, and now I was trying to escape with only my life.

I couldn’t run any farther, though, and sat in the dirt with my back to the junked pile. I would catch my breath, and then I would move again. The gunshots, in the meantime, had not stopped. Whoever was shooting was keeping up the pressure, but I hadn’t seen them while crawling away. Surely it was only a handgun, I guessed — those high, staccato barks were too sporadic for an automatic rifle. The sound was very close by, too. Without warning, I heard the sadists start yelling to each other, and then a second later they began returning fire with guns of their own.

Someone had come to save me, but now we might both be killed.

In that moment, another ‘someone’ rushed around the corner faster than I could blink and headed straight for me. I was still on the ground, and tried to kick out with my legs, but failed. I only slumped down farther on the ground, but then in a split-second the stranger’s face was right in front of mine, and his hands were wiping away the blood on my stitches. Apart from that small, first cut they had made, I was still okay. He smiled, and then I recognized him.

“Taz!” I exhaled, not even embarrassed at my obvious relief. “It’s good to see you.”

“Likewise,” he replied as he quickly dabbed my stitches clean and applied a quick adhesive gauze. His voice told me he was trying to remain cold and ready to kill to protect us, but his eyes spoke the same relief that I was feeling. I loved him, in that moment. I didn’t even care that he was too old for me. I would have fallen for a fish, if one had saved my life like Taz just did. “Stay here, Chell. I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

“Don’t —” I started, but he was already on his feet again, with the handgun in front of him, and ducking around the various stacks of rusted machines that surrounded us. He was moving with supernaturally quick speed: a product of his stitches’ nerve amplification and personal fitness. He caught the thought, though, that I was trying to send. Telepathically, he responded. I won’t be unsafe. They are going to lose. I won’t die on you.

…Thank you, was all I could think to him in return.

I mentally stayed with him, since he kept the telepathy open between us. I could follow his movements and see the things he was seeing; I even felt him pull the trigger on the enemy and shoot down one more of their number. His mind was keeping track: there were six sadists in the beginning, and Taz had killed one and wounded another in his first volley of shots, right when he arrived. That meant two were now dead, and since the one he had wounded was still alive, there were now three able-bodied targets and one surviving casualty.

He stooped beneath a broken refrigerator bridged over uneven piles of metal, and came out directly in front of one of the sadists. The man had a gun, but had been expecting Taz to approach him from the left. He had time to give Taz one last look of surprise before Taz shot him once in the sternum, then disappeared behind a wall of junk before the man’s body even hit the ground.

Taz had never done this before, but he was performing brilliantly.

Fifteen bullets when I started; eleven bullets expended, his mind reported to mine. That leaves four bullets for three more kills. I can pull that off.

Yes, Taz, I thought to him. That’ll be enough. Whatever it takes, please just hurry back. I don’t want to be alone.

Even as I thought it at him, I realized my limbs were trembling, and not because of cold. I couldn’t keep my arms still. Taz might want revenge on all of my captors, but I didn’t want to risk another moment out here.

He didn’t quite respond telepathically, but I felt his feelings vicariously as a grim acknowledgement. Until now, he hadn’t considered how much I would have been shaken by this. Now, reaching for and feeling my emotions through our stitches, he knew.

I cut the telepathy chain between us, so I could focus on calming my breath. Watching him kill brought a certain relief that I was in good hands, but overall it was not assuaging my elevated blood pressure or the terror I felt. I still could not steady my breathing. I decided to stare at my hands. Normally soft and agile for the piano, now they were shaking and coated in dirt and sweat, which I had shed in my panic. I had never felt so exposed, or so dirty. The thought surprised me, since I often loved to work in the garden, but I was itching to wash my hands now. I suddenly realized it wasn’t the patches of dust and grime adhered to my skin that made me want to be scrubbed clean, but the way I felt filthy after being touched — exposed, captured, abused, and nearly killed — by these monsters. Monsters with human faces and voices.

Suddenly I heard two more gunshots, close together, and I thought I heard the slump of a large body falling to the earth. My heart skipped a beat, and I strained my ears. A third gunshot, at close range to its target, rang out and almost made me scream.

It could have been Taz. One of them might have shot him twice, and then once again while he was down. I had to know — I was reaching out, searching for his mind somewhere out there with my stitches…

Chell, are you safe? came the voice I was dying for. I breathed two whole lungfuls of relief, and he felt it, too.

Are they… dead, Taz?

They’re all gone. The leader; I didn’t find him, but we should leave now. I think he ran.

Taz returned directly to where he had left me, and I was happy to have waited for him. He lifted me up with both arms and made sure I was ready to stand. I wished I could express my gratitude in the way that I felt it, but he could read my mind if he wanted. I’m sure he didn’t even need to do anything but look and see it in my face. He knew.

With only a few minor stumbles, he assisted me in walking back to the wide, dirt ‘road’ which cut through the piles of cars like a finger lazily traced through chalk. In order to listen for my captors better and not warn them that someone was coming, he had left his motorbike by the fence almost a kilometer away and simply ran as fast as he could, but stealthily, through the forest of scrap until he found me.

I was indebted to him for that foresight, amongst so much more. If they had heard his engine noise coming towards us, they would have gagged me then and hid us in the shadows. Night was coming on, after all.

It was going to be a long walk, but I could just make it. We started down the road.

“Melissa,” said a voice that I couldn’t see. That name that wasn’t mine.

Taz reacted faster than I even knew what to do — he spun around one-eighty, the gun drawn and his hands tight on the grip. His eyes sighted down the barrel and he moved the gun with his gaze, back and forth between the post-consumer rubble — any possible hiding place. I tried to follow where he was looking, but I could see no one either.

Deliberately, then, the young leader stepped out with his hands exposed and no weapon on his person. Wet blood still adorned his nose. Taz pulsed a thought at me, and I knew why: One solid round left. But he didn’t take the shot, because he wanted to know why the last one was trying to approach us. Trying to communicate.

“Melissa,” again, he started. I hid my body from him, taking shelter behind Taz’s tall frame. But I didn’t want to cower from him.

“My name is Chell, you lunatic.” My voice was brave for all that I had gone through, but I couldn’t feel the courage that I was speaking.

There was a short moment of quiet. “…No, it’s not. Your name really is Melissa. I want you to see,” the boy answered humbly. I stopped myself. He sounded humble, like a pathological manipulator wanted to sound.

Taz stepped in, then. He had the sense to never lower the gun from his target. “I think that’s really brave of you to say, like you care about the woman you planned to dissect.”

The sadist scowled at Taz then, as if he had just remembered that I was not alone with him. “Go to hell,” he murmured through clenched teeth.

Taz answered for us both. “Who’s going to hell? We want to live in peace and you kidnapped a young woman —”

“Stop it!! Neither of you are sane! It’s not like that!” he spat back.

I couldn’t stay silent any longer. “We’re not sane?? You horrible fiend; you only want me to die!!”

“I DIDN’T WANT YOU DEAD!” he answered hysterically. Unlike before, his voice cracked with emotion now. A mental, serial torturer with fanatic zeal.

Next to me, Taz’s anger boiled so fiercely that I could feel it immediately. “What, you wanted her alive so you could eat her that way??” he answered in disgust. “You’ve caused enough death.” Without pause, he sighted down the raised gun and shot him in the stomach.

The ringleader groaned in pain as he fell. “Melissa… It’s me — it’s Peter…” he gasped, as he raised a blood-smeared hand out from his gut. Reaching out for me again.

I shook my head violently, trying not to retch from panic and terror. Did he think we were acquainted? “That’s not my name!!” I finally squeaked out. “I don’t know who you are!!”

Taz forcibly turned my shoulders away from the gruesome creature that lay dying, and we ran together as far as we could go; as far as my legs could stand it.

---

(Happy Halloween. To be continued.)

(Read Part 2 here:  Stitches, Part 2 of 2)

“Discourse on Home”, an Essay (Original Short Story — January 2015)

Earth is lost.

It still feels surreal to admit it out loud. We were all forced to leave before the actual end, and so no living soul was left to witness the impact. Our minds know that she must be gone — destroyed, broken, what have you — but our poor mortal hearts haven’t accepted it yet. The birthplace of our entire species and all our history is forever stolen from us, and no human alive can fully comprehend it because we couldn’t see it happen.

Seeing is believing. Still true, even after all these centuries of trusting invisible subatomic particles to thrust us safely through space (and time). How can we blindly trust in the invisible, and yet deny what we know is inevitable? Did we really think that Earth would live forever, despite her gradually dying sun? Had we really placed all of our hopes on a finite sphere of water, air, and sediment?

…I must conclude that the answer is yes; we did. She gave us each a piece of her heritage, and we reciprocated. Earth belonged to us. We belonged to Earth. Wasn’t that how it was supposed to be? How can we ever replace that planet of our genesis?

Please pardon this emotional aside. I can only assume that this deeply-set sense of loss will belong to this generation alone, and that our future descendants will be born on some other place which they call “home”. Or what if they learn to have no planetary attachment at all? Perhaps, in fact, it would be better if the latter became true. Our children may become not stubbornly devoted inhabitants, but temporary tenants with the nomadic spirit, ready to move on when the time comes. Truly, we would be a more resilient species then.

But who could live without falling in love with their new Earth? Even a world half as good to us as Earth was would be too beautiful to let go. How could anyone leave without looking back? Could we force ourselves, as we are trying to do now? Is it better to have loved and lost? Or is it better to have never loved at all?

A better question: can we even stay ourselves from loving our new home?

It was in that spirit — the spirit of loving this new planet that we have carefully identified and chosen to claim — that I designated the mountain to the north of our first landing zone as Everest. I had only hoped to soothe the shock we all seem to be feeling by alluding to this alien world’s similarities to our beloved Earth, and I had only expected it to be the one exception to an otherwise fresh, new start on this young planet.

But they are running with it. Four 29-hour days have gone by, and the mapmakers already refer to the area south of Everest as Nepal, and the area northward as Tibet. The large island, due south of our first base-camp, has been officially marked Sri Lanka, and this continent, though much smaller than the original, bears the weighty name of Asia.

The cartographic relevance of these names will, no doubt, be disputed — but no colonist here seems to mind the familiar phrases. Coincidentally, our preliminary orbital scans even confirm our new Mount Everest as the highest land point above sea level. The serendipity feels strangely reassuring.

Consequent to this news, more than a dozen of our number have volunteered to hike the virgin mountain immediately, heedless of the fact that there is simply no support system yet in place. It has taken all of my administrative power to restrain them, actually — the last thing any of us want is to have to scramble a rescue mission and risk fatalities to hypothermia or accident on our first community landmark. But their enthusiasm shows that they are willing to accept it as a new icon, or homage to the Earth for which we have mourned. Voluntary proposals have already been submitted for the christening of two nearby rivers as the Tigris and the Euphrates, as well as names for countless other oceans, valleys, glaciers, geysers, canyons, and even plant and animal life. They all point back to Earth. They will ensure positive reinforcement of the idea that We Will Never Forget — a better promise than perpetual grief can give.

But there is one name we cannot reuse. No, not anyone here feels that the revered title of Earth should be given to this new planet. But then we have no name for her. Either out of respect, or maybe hope for a better name, the people of Earth are hesitating to decide for themselves. The star-pilots and the administrators have been avoiding the press and their persistent question: “What should we call this world?” 

It seems that nearly everyone is turning to me, as if I am full of poetically appropriate names. But the name of this planet, in all of its alien grandeur and strange new ways, escapes me. In the past, when naming a colony world, they took a vote. I am not opposed to the idea, but curiously enough, the people reject it. I don’t think they trust their neighbors to choose the correct name by majority vote, as if there could be a “correct” name for a world never before discovered. Who knows what would satisfy their expectations? But still, they want me to name their planet. 

The obvious choice is “New Earth”, but something tells me that my wife would not be happy with such a transparent evasion. She is one of the expectant crowds, even as she leans over my shoulder while I write. My wife just told me to erase that last sentence, by the way. Now she is upset that I am breaking character; but in all honesty, I’m not the king of this planet, and I shouldn’t ever be a king of anything. I don’t know what to call it. Joss suggested the name Bob. I like it. I think I’ll call it that, outside of public scrutiny.

Despite all of my flippancy and sarcasm, I do know that I have to provide something more, something honest, for our posterity before I dare to close my essay. The colonists of this and every future world may one day read it, thinking (a bit mistakenly) that my writing presents the keys of wisdom and the hopes of our entire humanity. All I mean to do is offer my personal and uncensored thoughts, but I intend to make it clear that I am accountable for no one’s vote but my own. Speaking frankly, you can take it or leave it.

This name is indeed an important thing, however. It is to be the name of a starting point, and the name of our place of healing as a breed of refugees. We cannot name it Earth. This world has already been consecrated to be so much more than another Earth. It is a place of rebirth, and not the true origin. Yet it will be the beginning for many countless human lives who will be raised here. 

I feel I must emphasize that this world will not be the final resting place or planet for all of humanity, so long as we can help it. We may someday leave this new world as well, when it is old. But I believe that this will be a healthy cycle. It will not feel natural to us, but it will be a part of nature. As the seasonal tree grows and every day struggles to survive, a sense of loss will naturally come when all of that cumulative effort is undone in death. It will be hard to leave that tree, with all of its gifts to us: the comfort that we felt in its shade, the fruit that it imparted without price, and the love that so many birds sang on its branches. Remember that death is a part of life, but life itself still goes on. Our new world carries the birthright of this truth. 

From another perspective, I cannot help but reflect on the name “Earth” itself. How and why were we ever so enamored by a name that meant “dirt”? I believe, in this case, that the title of Earth was used in the fundamental sense: earth, soil, rock; the elements that it was made of. 

And so whatever name we choose for this planet, if it be in the same legacy of our former home-world Earth, it should be elemental — or rather, elementary, essential, and basic. Something central to the idea of this, our new Home.

Feature Post: Our Newest Drug, and the Cycle of Drug Culture

Years ago, as an aspiring sci-fi author, I thought of an idea that eventually developed into one of my best story prompts. The basic idea was thus:

“What if, 600 years in the future, humanity finds a new chemical substance on a foreign planet which is extremely addictive, highly satisfying, and wildly popular… but slowly destroys the entire human species because of society’s utter dependence on it?”

I called the drug Roslin, and one day, I still hope to dig up the original draft and finish it. (Man, it felt awesome to write. It was such a crazy world.) Roslin, known as “Rose” in the story’s slang, became the epicenter of enormous political, social, economic, and physical stress — and ultimately, collapse — in “the world as we know it”.

A funny thought comes to mind when I think back on this idea: my mother, born in the 1950s, remembers advertisements from her early childhood which openly claimed that “Doctor Brown from Sheboygan” (or whatever) endorses Lucky Strike cigarettes, or ads which pretended that “More doctors choose Camel over any other brand.” Looking back now, it seems ridiculous if not a little morbid. These days, it’s common knowledge that smoking addicts your central nervous system and then, slowly and painfully, ends your life.

As a creative writer, though, I had to wonder what it must have felt like for people living back then — when medical science had just started publishing the dangers of tobacco. Try it yourself, actually. Right now, you are age 24 in the year 1946.  World War II has just ended; the economy is booming (finally); life is great — wait a minute, what is this? You just read an article in a news magazine about “lung cancer”, and how the medical community is pretty sure that it’s killing people because they were life-long smokers. The next page in the magazine is a color advertisement from Camel. “More doctors choose Camel,” it says. Which doctors are right? Minutes later, you find yourself hesitating to pull out your lighter. Smoking has always been there for you to easily relieve stress, but now… It’s stressful to even think of giving up cigarettes.

It turns out that you’re experiencing a pivotal moment in history. Before a decade passes, most everyone around you is similarly aware of supposed cigarette risks, and they believe them. By the time you have your first child, you’re convinced that you’re going to keep them from smoking at all. You probably won’t smoke in the house anymore. Or anywhere. The world has changed, and fast. It feels like you blinked and almost missed it, and now you’re scared for your friends and family because they never stopped smoking.

Kind of a downer, huh? It’s crazy to think that you almost got addicted to smoking tobacco. Your life might have been that much harder — and that much shorter.

But, on the other hand, you’re relieved you found out the truth as soon as you did. Many of your friends did not, or they didn’t believe you when you told them your feelings early on. There were conflicting messages in the media, and so they preferred to never make up their minds. Whether your smoking friends ended up dying young or not, it became obvious over the years that they were not as happy as they might have been. There’s something inherently bad about being addicted to a supply you can’t control. It makes humans unhappy, and you know what? It really should. There’s nothing healthy or normal about it.

That brings me to the most important problem with drugs: it’s not really the drug supply that is a problem. Think about it. So long as people want the drug, there will always be someone willing to produce and distribute it (for a price). That’s just straight economics. The supply only increases when people desire it more.

The uncontrollable DEMAND is what makes it addiction. Your brain demands it. Your body demands it. Your emotions play subtle and powerful tricks on you to convince you that you actually need it, and so then you start to demand it yourself. The drug changes your mind every day, and makes you want it. 

That is addiction and dependency. It is real, and it is terrifying.

This truth was what I planned to explore in my newborn novel. In brainstorming, I had toyed with the idea of making “Rose” completely harmless when ingested, and with no negative effects to human health… unless the user ever tried to stop taking it. I wanted to portray the hypothetical idea that even IF drugs didn’t gradually kill us, and even IF their only downside was addiction, then they would still have enough power to ruin human lives… and worse.

So now I have a more direct question: How would you feel if you saw a completely new drug entering the world? Like a new tobacco? A glamorous, unsuspected ritual that most people already accept?

A better question: How would you know what it looks like?

I’ll let the gloves come off now, and I’ll tell you my honest belief and the ultimate purpose of this post. I have my personal reasons for this belief, but understand that I’m not at all about shaming or attacking people. I am offering this idea because this drug attacks people.

Pornography is the new drug. It is entirely addictive, degrading, and behavior-altering. The internet has become the most popular drug dealer on Earth, and as new, solid research about the psychiatry of porn begins to develop and publish itself to the world, only a fortunate few are hesitating long enough to become educated on it. It’s tobacco all over again.

I recently volunteered to write this feature post about pornography after speaking with an organization called Fight The New Drug. I am impressed with their influence and attitude about the goal of raising awareness, and their respectable approach toward it. Ultimately, that’s all anyone has the right to do. We can offer education, even if we can’t utterly stop the demand that takes place in millions of individual brains.

Just a quick note before I throw you some links on further reading: I am not being paid by this organization or by any person. They did not reach out to me; I reached out to them and volunteered to share what I know. Fight The New Drug has a fierce and intelligent plan toward fighting the spread and acceptance of pornography and all of its consequences. If their organization had not already existed, I might have started it myself.

And, just to get this out of the way, we are not fear-mongers. We are not conspiracy theorists. We are not intolerant. Rather, we are educators. We are activists. We are thinkers, but more than that, we are doers.

Let me put it this way: We are Fighters.

---

 

 

 

(Educate yourself.)

FightTheNewDrug.org

The Neurochemistry and Sociological Effects of Porn

Official Blog of FTND

And Now For Something Completely Relevant

So, this is going to seem like a weird departure. But we’re going to talk about Ferris Bueller for a moment.

As a preface: the reason this post is not about science fiction is because there is something deeper than sci-fi; in fact, deeper than fantasy, historical fiction, or any real kind of narrative. Don’t get caught up in the semantics of ‘genre’ for now. All stories are trying to tell us the same thing — or at least the same idea in each story. I purport that every story we’ve written throughout history has been about us.

Us. Ourselves. Mankind. Men and women. We are all unique individuals, to be sure, but we are all human. (That sounds vague and science-y enough, right? A healthy balance of metaphysics and feel-good storytelling?)

Anyway. Today we’re going to talk about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and why it is the best movie in the universe. I mean, below The Princess Bride and What’s Up, Doc? and Star Wars: Episodes IV, V, and VI. I’m trying to stay on topic. I’m not very good at it.

Furthermore, for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to assume that my reader has seen and is very familiar with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. If there are any stragglers who just got done living in a cave for the last few decades, who have not seen it, I urge them to repent and go watch it right now. None of this is going to make sense unless you know the plot of the movie anyway.

Recently, an old friend and fellow musician of mine contacted me out of the blue on Facebook. Somehow, this random “Hi, what are you up to these days? Just thought I’d check up on you” turned into a moderately epic ’70s/’80s/’90s movie quote battle. We both happened to know a lot of old classics (and cult-classics alike), and so we started quizzing each other to see how obscure of a movie quote we could recognize and name the movie it was from. Notable examples:
— “Why, I make more money than — than — than Calvin Coolidge! Put together!” (Singing In The Rain)
— “Has anyone ever told you that you are very sexy?” / “…Actually, no.” / “They never will.” (What’s Up, Doc?)
— “I’m suggesting that you leave before I have to get snooty.” (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)

That last quote was my challenge to him, but since it was so obscure and out of context, he needed another one before he could correctly guess it. I followed it up with another of my favorite quotes from that movie:

“…I’m dying.”
*telephone rings — he picks up on speakerphone*
“You’re not dying, you just can’t think of anything good to do.”

Most people hardly remember this scene in the movie, but it’s one of my favorites because of the way Cameron and Ferris play off of each other. Cameron, the complete anxiety wreck who has a lot of legitimate fears centered around his father’s anal-retentive expectations; and Ferris, who can (and does) get away with anything he wants, up to and perhaps including murder. Ferris is just so charismatic that the world seems to adapt to his lifestyle and how he wants to live the day. The side-effect is that the world has to absorb the consequences of his carelessness, and Ferris often leaves disaster in his wake. (Think of the way his sister Jeanie and also Cameron resent his attitude throughout the entire movie — it’s pretty clear that Ferris has been pissing them off for years, prior to this day even starting.)

I mentioned something similar to that friend of mine. Not in this essay-thesis format, of course. I just said “Cameron is a supremely underrated character. Ferris needed him in order to have any sort of fun.”

Reply: “That sounds like an activity in a communications class…”

My reply: “Ferris already knew he could skip school (like he had already done NINE TIMES) and get away with it. There was some part of him that needed an unwilling and skeptical audience.”

And while I was mostly surprised at myself for how impressive that sounded, as I had just thought it up on the spot, I’ve been thinking about it ever since because it’s totally true. I realized something incredible: the secret about Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is that Ferris is not the main character. He’s hilarious, he’s likable, he’s clever and quick on his feet, and his character is obviously designed to be the one that catches your eye. Ferris Bueller demands the attention of every person when he walks into a room, and he gets it. The audience can’t help but feel similarly drawn to him.

But why, then, is he just as shallow and careless at the end of the movie as he was in the beginning? He still has that smirk on his face. He didn’t really regret any of the underhanded (or just plain dishonest) adventures that he embarked on that day. You can see that he is just a little bit more wise than he was, now that he knows how close he came to being caught and exposed by his sister — but that’s about it. In terms of actual character, Ferris hasn’t changed in any significant way. He will probably be more careful in the future, but he will still lie and cheat and have fun before he will voluntarily choose to build up some moral integrity.

There’s only one factor in this glorious movie that Ferris didn’t see coming: Cameron killed his dad’s Ferrari.

No one saw that coming. And it was the only thing about that entire day that Ferris felt even a little bad about. The next time you have a chance to watch the movie, watch closely Ferris Bueller’s face right as Cameron snaps and begins to kick the car — and then watch Ferris’s complete, stunned horror as he realizes that they can’t cover up this accident. He doesn’t know what to say, because nothing he says will be able to fix anything. For the first time in a long time, Ferris’s charisma and smooth-talking are powerless. They’re beyond powerless. It was as if Ferris himself had killed the car, and he didn’t know how to react to how badly his friend Cameron was screwed.

Strangely enough, Cameron Frye is the actual main character of the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It wasn’t Ferris’s life that was changed by the events of the movie. Ferris had fun, but he was just wasting time like he always did. It was nothing new for him. Cameron, on the other hand, had never cut loose like that before. It was an enormously radical rebellion for him to swipe his dad’s garage-queen sports car for a day and go hang out with his best friend and a pretty girl in the Chicago downtown. He had no idea that he could find the guts to do it, much less get away with it at the end of the day.

But that’s when the movie’s ultimate conflict and climax reared its ugly head: Cameron couldn’t really get away with running up miles on his father’s true love. The odometer was going to be a problem from the beginning — Cameron knew that — but with some help and earnest pressure from Ferris Bueller, he went along with it even though he didn’t know how they were going to solve the problem when they got back. It was a leap of faith. It was stupid faith, but it was an important step for Cameron because he soon saw the reason why people ever broke the rules in the first place. It was probably the best day of his life, running around Chicago and hot-tubbing and eating at restaurants they couldn’t afford and stealing the show during a parade, all up until they got back to the Ferrari’s home in the garage.

And then the ‘drive it in reverse’ trick didn’t end up working.

And then, cornered and humiliated, Cameron lost his mind.

You see, in a perfect world, rules serve a healthy and essential purpose. We need some form of rules in a civilized society, and most of the time people are happy to live within them. But if and when rules — guidelines, laws, prohibitions, requirements, decrees, condemnations, absolutions, or all kinds — are taken too far, then the rules backfire. If rules start to be applied in stupid, unreasonable ways (and people know, deep down, when they are), then it becomes natural and even justifiable for the subjects of these rules to lash out and rebel against them.

“…It is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government.” (Sound familiar? That’s the American Declaration of Independence.)

Cameron knew he was breaking every rule he had been taught. But how could that be a bad thing, if his life at home had been such hell throughout all of childhood? My theory is that Cameron Frye didn’t realize how happy he could actually be if he just tried to have fun, even though his father’s awful parenting had taught him to literally fear the concept of enjoying himself. Up until the events of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, poor Cameron had no way of knowing if his fear of breaking the rules was rational or not, and he had no way of feeling what genuine happiness and excitement were until his reckless buddy called him and convinced him to steal a car for a day and try to get away with it. Cameron, in and of himself, would never have found the willpower to free his spirit like Ferris did. It’s not like Ferris was this wise and benevolent saint; it’s just that he happened to act as a catalyst for an emotional breakthrough that Cameron desperately needed. This movie is not so much about having a good time as it is learning to have a good time, and why that is so important. This movie is about Cameron’s struggle against overbearing rules, and his personal road to liberty. Even though he was going to suffer immensely for destroying his dad’s Ferrari, the events of this movie literally set Cameron free.

That’s why Cameron didn’t seem half as terrified as Ferris did, after he demolished the car. That’s why the movie seemed to have this huge and sudden buzzkill moment for no good reason. Liberty comes at a cost, but there is no price that is too heavy to pay for true freedom of spirit. Cameron instantly became a better man, in that moment. Not like he necessarily wanted to face his dad’s wrath, if he still had the choice. The requirement to become great was simply thrust upon him.

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” 

I wasn’t really planning on ending this with a Shakespearean quote, but seeing as I have, I’d say that there must be some actual credibility to what I’ve just typed. I’ve come full-circle. When both Shakespeare and the Declaration of Independence agree with you, you know you’re doing something right.

P.S. — This also brings up another strange, obscure, and wonderful side-reference: FBDO is a John Hughes film, and John Hughes films are the center of much attention in the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I suggest you go read that book right now, if you haven’t yet. (Don’t lie. You haven’t.)

A Netherworld of Possibilities

A Netherworld of Possibilities

So after the Death Star / “sky ceiling” confusion, I started asking different questions.

Different, as in, really intelligent and unorthodox questions.

Unorthodox, as in, neither of my masters-degree graduate parents had ever considered them. My mother remembers one in particular that I asked her when I was probably six: “Mom, do astronauts have birthdays in space?”

“Of course theyyy… I… don’t know? Wait, you mean, do they celebrate them?”

“No no no. When do they celebrate them? I mean, what day is it in space right now?”

I challenge you to tell me what day it is in space right now. I’m sure NASA’s got that little technical loophole figured out for their official records, but the truth of the matter is that once you’re free of the stratosphere, the date and time relative to Earth is nearly subjective. Unless you are in low geosynchronous orbit over Mission Control in Houston, I imagine it becomes a little fuzzy whether today is tomorrow or today is today. Today might be yesterday on Earth, but because you took a rather ambitious rocket flight yesterday (today), you are at the mercy of jet-lag’s mentally disturbed brother — especially if your satellite happens to be rotating faster or slower than the surface of the planet. Be glad that we haven’t achieved anything near light-speed yet, or I would have had to go into the Theory of Relativity and it would have been a mess. (Fun fact: temporal relativity is actually always at play, so even visiting the International Space Station on a day-trip as opposed to staying on Earth affects your ‘relative’ age in a minuscule way. Thanks, Einstein!)

Which brings me to the implicit question that I was really asking at age six. Not just, “What is the official reckoning of time in space?” The question I had intended to ask, but didn’t quite know how to phrase, was “How can time be measured in space? How does time pass?”

…Or does it pass?

See, my innocence and general naïveté meant that I would never automatically cancel out any strange questions in my head before asking them out loud. Nothing was impossible — so I was less embarrassed to ask questions exploring every bizarre possibility, because any one of them could be reality. I just had no way of knowing until I asked.

Surprisingly, no one I asked had ever thought about it before. It was painfully obvious that most of the people I knew were far too comfortable with incomplete answers, and thus, I was a special kind of sojourner. I was happy to believe in any feasible answer and accept it as truth, but if and when my random thought experiments placed something into doubt, I would abandon it as a mere theory and move on to prove the actual truth.

I was born into the metaphysical mindset. I was a knight on a lifelong quest for truth. It certainly wasn’t nurture; no one in my early life explicitly prompted me to ask these kinds of questions. It was just my personal nature. It still is.

Another question I asked, which truly mystified even myself for many, many years:

“Mom, do blind people dream?”

“Do blind people dream? Of course; I’m sure they have dreams.”

“Yeah, I know — but do they see in their dreams?”

“…Uh…”

Only very recently did I find out the answer to this question. I had thought about it occasionally throughout the last couple of years — it wasn’t super important to me, but I was still curious — and I just never got around to googling the answer. (To tell the truth, I think I knew what the answer would be, but I didn’t want to confirm it because I didn’t want it to be that way.) One day, in remembrance of my childhood question, my brother posted a link on my Facebook wall leading directly to an article about dreams in the minds of the blind. Turns out, those with lifelong blindness do not see in their dreams. Dreams are smell, sound, and touch — sometimes taste and other obscure sensations — but sadly, not even their subconscious understands the concept of sensing visible light.

It makes sense. That’s the answer that I figured must have been true, but I didn’t want it to be true because it sucks for them. On the other hand, and also predictably, those who lose their sight sometime after birth can and do dream visual scenes, but their ability to dream with sight diminishes the longer they have been blind. It’s also related to how young or how old the person was when they lost their sight altogether. So, logically, the ability to experience visible dreams is directly related to the fading of one’s memory. If you have no memory of seeing, or else have simply never been able to see at all, the subconscious has no memory to draw on, and hence your dreams will simply be heightened forms of other senses just like your day-to-day experiences.

Makes sense. It really does suck, though. I’ve often wondered whether I would rather lose my sight or my hearing, if I could only keep one. Since I’m a serious music aficionado, but also a huge fan of science fiction eye-candy in movies and concept art, it’s… it’s a really hard choice. I don’t know why I hate myself enough to dream up these awful questions.

With luck, if ever I have to choose between keeping my hearing or my sight, I’ll be so unsure and indecisive that I’ll just never make a decision and get to keep both.

Here’s the link to that article, by the by:
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/26/how-the-blind-dream/

I’m sure there were more off-the-wall questions I asked as a kid. I’m kind of disappointed I can’t remember them now. If I think of them again, I’ll post them.

P.S. — My mother just put forth her two cents: blindness can separate you from things and events, but in a much harsher way, deafness can separate you from people. It’s an important distinction, and while I was a little hesitant to admit this publicly on my blog, long ago I actually did decide that I would rather be blind than deaf. I would lose my ability to drive, explore, watch movies, and play video games — not to mention having to relearn how to read — but at least I would still be moved by music and the voices of people.

P.P.S. — I didn’t say this to my mother at the time in order to not seem argumentative, but logistically, it would probably be better to be deaf because cochlear implants are a lot more feasible than actual eyeball transplants. But I feel like that contingency is maybe kind of cheating in this stupid hypothetical scenario.

Do You See the Ceiling or the Sky?

Do You See the Ceiling or the Sky?

When I was a little kid, circa age five or so, I distinctly remember believing several… weird… things about the world. Cosmically speaking, I mean. I was weaned on Star Wars, after all, almost a fan from birth, so I had my share of stargazing and science-fiction daydreaming.

For example, unbeknownst to any of my family, I first envisioned that outer space had a ‘ground’. As in, if you went down far enough, eventually you would hit the ground and couldn’t go any further. Don’t ask me how I figured which way was ‘down’. The only thing I thought I knew was that I wanted to go there. It would be so rad to see the ground.

This is the exact goal that I shared with my family, much to their bewilderment. As perplexed as they were with my claim that space eventually bottomed out, my poor kindergarten brain had an even more difficult time with the reality they tried to convince me of: “It doesn’t end like that, Thomas.”

Someone else added: “Yeah, space doesn’t have a ‘ground’. It just keeps going.”

My brain pumped the brakes, cautiously slowing the momentum of my worldview in case I was wrong (which I wasn’t, there was no way; I was just being circumspect). “No… Space has a bottom. What do you mean it keeps going?”

“It doesn’t end. There’s no bottom.”

“Yes. There is.” Tiny Tom was beginning to feel frustration set in, because someone he trusted was insisting on such a ridiculous thing.

It was about that moment that someone was prudent enough to ask, “Where did you get this idea? Who told you that there’s a ground?”

I hadn’t consciously realized it, but the visual memory of several Star Wars space battles had merged in my brain to create vivid and uncompromising evidence that the surface of the Death Star, when seen from a close-up camera, was actually an infinite plane of metallic and impenetrable material. (I was only five, guys.) Because of the limits of 1970s special effects, George Lucas had very diligently worked to conceal the fact that the Death Star seen on screen was merely a studio prop — microscopic in comparison to the ‘small moon’–sized structure it represented in the movie. Looking back on it now, I understand that I missed the implied connection between the camera shot of the Death Star from far away, and the scene where the Rebel space fighters are skimming its surface, flying towards a seemingly flat horizon. Because the camera never actually arrives at the Death Star’s surface in a single, continuous sweep, I involuntarily imagined them as two separate places. (I was further convinced of my ‘space surface’ theory by that one shot in Episode VI, where the unbelievably enormous Super Star Destroyer loses power and nosedives into the surface of the Second Death Star, which was even more massive. Somewhere between these two absurd senses of scale that I couldn’t yet fathom, my brain crossed some wires and decided that a ‘space ground’ made more sense.)

The great irony of my family trying to set me straight on this topic was that, after some convincing, they succeeded in resolving a major misconception in my head — but the trade-off was my assured sense of reality. Wait, so it wasn’t the bottom of space I saw, but really the curved surface of the Death Star? But it was so flat! How big was that thing? I can’t even visualize how big it would have to be! I guess it was just a movie, after all… 

Even worse, my sense of certainty completely evaporated once I realized another thing: How is there no bottom to space? The sky on Earth goes up forever; that’s fine, that’s normal, but you can’t fall forever and never stop. How do — What would — I don’t even —

I think that was the big moment, actually. That was when I stopped being an all-around, generic little kid and began my first inquisitive focus: science. I no longer wanted to be an astronaut because it was popular and famous; I needed to be an astronaut because there are things out there that I am just going to have to see and find out for myself.

Because honestly, the concept of infinite space extending in all directions, without end? That is a concept that adults struggle with. At best, one can accept it as an idea that describes truth and try not to think about it because, at the end of the day, human beings are not at all equipped with the wetware necessary to fully grasp the stark reality of ‘infinity’. It frustrated me at age five, and then just downright maddened me that not even so-called ‘grown-ups’ had a palatable explanation for coping with the ‘infinity’ clause.

So that was the first clue that maybe I was assuming certain things that weren’t necessarily true. Not too long after, I encountered another false assumption that I had dreamed up. This one had to do with the concept of atmosphere, breathability, and the polar opposite which is vacuum. I don’t remember how I ended up in a confrontation about this one, but I do remember that it was even harder to grasp and believe than the idea that space never bottoms out.

I think I was talking with someone about the space shuttle launches, which were still pretty exciting to hear about back in the ‘90s. There was something that I had never quite figured out, though, and I thought it would be a common and unassuming question to ask: “By the way, how do rocket ships break through the sky?”

Obviously, that stirred up some weird looks. I tried to clarify. “I mean, I know they can’t break through the sky; that would compromise our atmosphere and leak it all into space. But what happens when the space shuttles get to… you know, the ceiling? Is there a door or a hatch that opens and then shuts when they’re out?”

Okay, so APPARENTLY, it’s common knowledge that there is no tangible ‘endpoint’ to the gaseous atmosphere surrounding the planet’s crust. How was I supposed to know that? Between learning about the harsh vacuum of outer space, and the importance and effect of having breathable air holding steady at about 14.5 pounds per square inch all over our bodies, I was just supposed to assume that, magically, the atmosphere around us refused to be sucked away into space?

All sarcasm aside, here’s why I really thought what I did. The concept of vacuum, and the utter nothingness that it’s supposed to be imagined as, seems unnatural to our minds because we’ve never lived in anything less than fully atmospheric conditions. So when I first heard about ‘losing pressure’ in a spaceship, I didn’t see the pressurized ship as the source of outwardly-expanding oxygen — instead, I assumed that space (exotic, strange, incredible, outer space) was working some kind of natural magic it had to actively suck away the spaceship’s atmospheric pressure.

Thus, you start to see my confusion. It hadn’t occurred to me that gravity was a basic force equal in nature to the balance of gaseous pressure in a vacuum. I thought, since the idea of spaceships violently leaking atmosphere was far more exciting than boring old gravity, that the void of space was somehow inherently stronger than Earth’s gravitational force.

So logically, there had to be some kind of invisible (or maybe ‘sky-blue’, like in The Truman Show) shell that hovered around the entire surface of the globe and actually, physically, kept the atmosphere in — because otherwise, it would immediately leak into space and be lost.

After all these assumptions were soldered together in my head, the only remaining question was, “How do our rockets and spaceships even get to space? If they had already punched a ragged hole in the ‘sky ceiling’, then we would all have died of asphyxiation by now.” I guess, looking back, it was rather strange of me to presume that Earth was born with a solid, cosmic shield that literally locked us and our oxygen ‘indoors’…

But then again, some of the first astronomy illustrations detailed in children’s books are the marvelous and completely alien rings of Planet Saturn — so how could I rule out anything as impossible? What about the perpetual, swirling electrical storms in the gas giant of Jupiter, or the strangely perfect rotation of our moon that will never show us both sides of her pale surface within our lifetimes? And that’s just three terrestrial bodies out of many planets and moons in our solar system alone, and that’s one solar system out of many billions of billions within the observable universe! If such incredible and outlandish things could and do occur without man having anything to do with them, how could anything be impossible in the natural universe?

And, while I was completely wrong about the ‘sky ceiling’ theory… at least I can say that I was on the right track. Because the truth is stranger than fiction. There is no need for a ‘sky ceiling’, because Earth’s gravity and the hollow vacuum of space have already fought their tug-of-war millennia ago, resulting in the armistice of force that continues today. There are no violent pressure swells or dangerous drops in atmospheric weight. The balance has already been achieved and decided. We have quite literally been born into a peaceful inheritance, and if we are completely honest with ourselves, that is insanely miraculous luck.

So here’s the question I pose to you: when you look up, and you see the blue sky in the day or the black sky in the night, do you even see what you’re looking at? It’s all too easy to see stars in your eyes but think about student loan debt in your mind. Do you feel like you’re trapped here in your own life? Or are you glad and happy that you’re ‘trapped’ here? It could be much worse. You could have generated as a basic amino acid on a meteor as it gradually fell into the sun. You and I and everyone you know are actually quite unbelievably fortunate to be born as highly-developed mammals, with families, and self-awareness, and educations, and computers jacked into a planetary internet, etcetera etcetera.

Do you feel limited, even though you are a capable and powerful human being? Do you recognize your own influence, even if all you can do right now is lay in bed and think? Has it occurred to you what an absolute miracle your existence here and your life on Earth is in the first place?

Come on, friend. Just do this real quick, and you’ll start to see what I mean. Go outside, find a place, and look up. Do you see the ceiling or the sky?

Story Universes Which I Admire

Story Universes Which I Admire
(NOT in order of favorites, because you just can’t ask that of me)

1. Firefly
2. Star Wars
3. Ender’s Game (including all spin-offs and sequels)
4. Halo (excluding Halo 4 and all future spin-offs and sequels)
5. Destiny (upcoming, and possibly a premature rating — don’t crush my hopes)
6. Star Trek (J.J. Abrams reboot only because I can’t relate º to the older stuff)
7. Ready Player One

1. I like Firefly because it is not a military space-opera, unlike almost every other sci-fi story that has ever made it on screen. More importantly, though, is that the show was popular. This is especially significant in this day and age, when people have so many competing television shows and/or sci-fi stories — because it means that the premise of the show (and the movie) was written to be extremely believable ^ and relatable º. Since it didn’t depend on flashy sci-fi shootouts or constant action, the show itself was completely sustainable as a television series, and yes, I agree that the cancellation of Firefly was the worst decision since Hitler got kicked out of art school. At least they went back for a full feature-length movie. Also, Nathan Fillion and disturbed space-zombies.
2. I actually had to think about this one. Star Wars is such an all-time worldwide classic that I usually take its popularity and its influence on me for granted. Where to begin? The story, on the surface, reflects the quintessential rebellion ^ against — what else? — a brutal empire controlled by the evil and corrupt. (Please note that I am only evaluating the Original Trilogy here, which consists of Episodes IV, V, and VI.) We know why the story sounds familiar, but why does the Original Trilogy resonate with us? Luke Skywalker starts as a relatable º protagonist because he is stranded in a life that’s going nowhere. The audience cheers at his adventures because we would like to see some kind of action ourselves. (Excluding one confrontation involving minor dismemberment on Cloud City, Luke’s life is definitely awesome.) If, however, you have seen the Prequel Trilogy (cringe), you will know that Luke is only one of two main Skywalkers – the other being his father, of course. All acting flops aside, it is good to learn Darth Vader’s backstory, so I’m glad the movie scripts of Episodes I, II, and III were written. I just wish they had been written by someone else. Someone completely different. Anyway, between Vader’s mistakes and Luke’s heroism, the father and son are reconciled with Anakin’s dying breaths. This is especially relatable º because no one wants to be remembered for the crimes they’ve committed, and even the callused, numbed soul of Darth Vader could feel that. In the moment that he singlehandedly killed the sadistic Emperor, he transformed, figuratively and finally, into the Jedi that he had started out to be. That is why I think Star Wars is still awesome, 30 years later.
3. Ender’s Game is the best science-fiction story I have ever read. No argument at all. Star Wars has probably been more influential, because all my friends talk about it and because I knew about it longer than Ender’s Game, but no story I have ever heard of has impacted me the way that Ender’s Game has. In my mind, Ender’s Game doesn’t break any of the three rules, but it excels most at being relatable º — at least, for me it was terribly relatable. Both Ender Wiggin and I are naturally empathetic people, but when pushed, he is as fierce as he has to be to protect himself and others. Willing to kill in the face of true danger? Check; both me and Ender. Prepared to lose a battle to win the war? I’m still working on mastering that, but I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment behind it. Check. There are an ocean of other similarities between Ender and me, but they are all extremely relevant to our unique identities. I fell into a completely empathetic relationship with that character with every single page, and when the book was over I was more than intrigued. I had to know how it ended — how my story ended. I read the remaining three books in the Ender story arc, and I actually wept and was pretty much depressed for a full week when Ender died in the last book. It wasn’t unsatisfying at all; it was just so humbling and sad to see that even the best of us, even the man that I would want to be, will one day be laid down to die. My poor mother was worried sick about me when I stayed in my room and didn’t speak to anyone for days on end, seemingly for no reason.
4. Halo was never just a video game. Not for me. The true Halo that I always knew (and played and replayed and replayed and replayed, over and over again) was simply the best sci-fi story I had ever experienced that combined action-hero excitement with deeply exotic and deadly worlds of mystery. For those who are unfamiliar with the ‘classic’ science-fiction appeal of the Halo universe, allow me to sum up: in 500 years, when humanity is on the brink of losing an interspecies war and faces utter extinction, one desperate human ship leads the alien armada away from Earth when it accidentally discovers the enemy’s religious Mecca — the ancient, silent, enigmatic ring-world Halo. Having no other option, the ship’s captain and crew land on the surface of the ring and discover not only breathable atmosphere and Earth-normal gravity, but a hidden mechanism of unspeakable power. The ring itself is the weapon the aliens covet, and the scope is set to fire on the entire galaxy. Cornered and hunted by the alien zealots, caught between your duty to Earth and the pressuring of Halo’s own intelligent mind, and inexorably running out of time, YOU (as the player) have to stay alive long enough to unravel the secret purposes set in place by the primordial race of beings who built Halo millennia ago, and have long since vanished… ∞∞∞
5. Destiny is being written and produced by the exact same company that dreamed up Halo over a decade ago. And the trailers and video documentaries of its production look pretty incredibly stellar. Also, it’s a lot more relatable º than most space operas because it’s an open world set on the planets of our very own solar system — which definitely includes a post-apocalyptic Earth ∞.
6. Lens flare, ahoy! While the cinematography of the new Star Trek films is visually appealing and uniquely creative, it’s the way they’ve reimagined the story that caught my attention. With all of the 40+ years of fandom behind the Star Trek franchise, and hence decades of disjointed and overdrawn canon to respect and accommodate (read: bow beneath), the writers took a creative leap — and in my mind, they succeeded. From the very first scene of the movie, the beginning of the story changes due to a viscerally terrifying new development which alters the course of history due to inadvertent time travel… It may sound a little thick on paper, but was much easier to swallow ^ when viewed on screen, much to my surprise and approval. It was really quite impressive how the writers set up the story to be 100% original, but still with that old familiar spirit of exploration, heroism, and nobility in war ∞. I gave the first film two thumbs up. By the time I got around to seeing Star Trek: Into Darkness in theaters, my thumbs disappeared and were replaced by the Vulcan hand-gesture, a token of goodwill and hopeless geek-syndrome. I didn’t even do it sarcastically. As of now, I am a committed and faithful fan of the Star Trek universe as it is being re-told. It’s also super helpful that it features an all-star cast of especially talented but also relatively new actors and actresses, so the audience doesn’t remember Spock as ‘that one guy from that other TV show’. It’s easier to fall in love with the core of a character º and be drawn deeper into the story when you’re not distracted by the actor’s face.
7. Just read it. I can’t do this thing justice. Just read this book; it’s called “Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline, and it was only published back in 2011, but it has been my favorite read of the last four years, at least. The paperback cover sports an endorsement saying “Enchanting… Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.” I’m having a hard time describing it better than that. If you think that sounds too weird to combine those stories, just imagine them together in the most optimistic forecast you can muster, as if the best of both ideas were seamlessly mashed together ^. Then read the book, and you’ll instantly see that it’s way better than even that. Just read it. I couldn’t pace myself at all, and if I remember correctly I burned through the entire thing in less than a week. I also didn’t sleep right, because I was thinking about the stupid book. Well done, Mr. Cline ∞.

Key:

Suspension of Disbelief ^

Audience’s Ability to Relate º

Rule of Cool ∞