Ends and Echoes

I seem to have hit a time ‘dam’ of some kind.

My personal temporal relocation prototype device is working perfectly but there is a barrier here.

It’s a blue wall and it extends as far as we can see.

When I say ‘we’, I mean that there are six copies of me here with me.

We are all quite distressed.

When I first arrived here, I arrived by myself. The blue wall looked nothing like my destination. I was trying to go to a future Vienna. I immediately tried to go back home, slapping the button on my time travel belt. That only brought me back here.

I met myself then. We both arrived at the same time, looking at each other in shock, immediately terrified of any sort of paradox. In a panic, we both slapped our buttons to return home at the same time. Stupid. I already knew it wouldn’t work but I reacted instinctively when I saw my copy, just as he did.

It had the same effect as before. We boomeranged back just in time to meet ourselves getting here. Then there were four of us.

The two of us with memories of failing to return home reached out to the two new ones just arriving and told them not to go anywhere. They didn’t.

For a while, we considered our options.

We elected that one of us try to keep going forward and drew straws to select which copy of us would go.

He tried it.

Then there were five of us.

We took apart one of the time travel belts to see if there were any sort of feedback loops in the circuitry or if the power modules had changed. It was experimental technology but with our five minds working together, we improved the design and cobbled something together with a more direct hold on the temporal flow and much more boosted power.

Copy number 5 was the winner this time. He tried on the belt and slapped the button, bidding us adieu. We had a theory that if he was successful, the rest of us would disappear. It was a frightening moment. Copy 5 disappeared in a puff of smoke.

And came back just in time to meet himself again.

Now there are six of us.

We are afraid to go anywhere in time. We’re wondering why we’re the only ones here is this is a time trap. Shouldn’t all time travelers be stuck here?

We all brought enough food and water to last for a week.

And it’s been a week.

It just occurred to me that maybe if we'd sent a time belt back wrapped around some water and food, we could have created an infinite supply for ourselves. Wish I had thought of that a week ago. We have nothing now.

Other alternatives are coming to mind that I don't like. I can see the same look in the eyes of my copies. I've never tasted human flesh and I don't want to.

We’re thinking.



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Brakes, Scars, and Other Things I Miss

Most post-biological units go for something anatomically reminiscent of a human. Two arms, two legs, and a head. It helps them hold on to their identity so they don’t go crazy after they make the switch. Sure, their consciousness has been transferred into a super-strong and enhanced military robot body but it’s still a BODY, they think. A body with free will and a strong self-image ego.

We called them leftovers.

It’s their delusional behavior that earned them the nickname. Sometimes in battle, a new unit will get its arm cut off and it’ll scream through the squad coms even though there’s technically no pain and the arm is easily replaceable. The veterans among us sigh in disgust. It’s embarrassing. New recruits don’t even know what they’ve become. What they are.

Leftover humanity. Leftover fear. Leftover morality. Leftover nostalgia for muscle and bone.

They think like sausages, like there’s still meat inside.

The rest of us have gotten used to bodies tailored to whatever mission we’re sent on. Our ‘brains’ are backed up at mission control so with a solid wifi connection, we are not limited by size. We can be gnats if that’s what’s called for.

If it’s a mission with radio silence or no access to the airwaves and we need to be encased, our only size limit is the fist-sized resin-polymer ‘brain’ that holds our consciousness.

I have been the size of a university, a titan of weapons bristling with death, rolling and jetting through cities, mini-nuking footsteps of destruction through a terrified populace, thrusting up to paint the sky black and then needling down below the crust, creating volcanoes. A swordfish of Armageddon swimming through the ground like it’s an ocean.

We are not defined by our bodies. We are not corporeal beings anymore. We are sleeved into construct after construct to further our missions and our military’s goals. Even death is no longer death as long as our backups are safe.

I can no longer hesitate when I slaughter. I can no longer pause when I kill. I can no longer feel anything when I genocide a habitat.

In my old meat body, I remember that damage would heal imperfectly and form a scar. It would be a reminder of a battle.

I remember that in the vehicles that meat body drove, there were brakes. That body could use them make the machine stop.

Now I am the machine.

I used to miss those scars. I used to wish I had brakes.





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Video Game Hearts

There is a reason in video games
Why lives look like hearts and they don’t look like brains
Love is what gives us all life while we’re here
Brains are fantastic but I think it’s clear
That brains, while quite useful, are computery
They just sort of think. They don’t feel much, you see.
But hearts now, they’re passionate, foolish, and strong
They don’t know their right from their left or their wrong
When playing a video game, at the start
YOU get some lives and they’re shaped like a heart
If YOU lose too many too quickly, you die
Your body collapses and then there you lie
But the NEXT time you play when you get to the part
That once was too hard and would take your poor heart
You know how to dodge, or jump, or defend
And if you keep playing, you get to the end
At least of that level. Cause there’s always more.
But the more that you play and the higher you score
The more hearts you get and the longer you love
Hearts fit a life like a hand fits a glove
‘Cause they’re what’s inside and they just keep on giving
Without your heart then you can’t go on living
A literal truth but a metaphor, too.
If you allow yourself (when you feel blue)
To IGnore your heart and pretend it’s not there
THAT all that you have in your chest is just air
Then one, you’re a liar and two, you can’t do it
The heart won’t be smothered. I’ve effing been through it.
Love can’t be beaten and can’t be contained.
It takes too much effort and makes a life strained.
Love that’s denied is a blight on the soul
Because you can’t turn your heart into a hole
No quarter asked for and no quarter given
You say you’re alive but I don’t think that’s livin’
If you fight your heart, when you win then you lose
No matter the person and no matter whose
Heart takes a beating, it always beats back
Hearts always fight when they feel an attack
Or else they leap or they duck or they run
The only thing hearts like to play for is fun
Your brain’s the controller. Your hands have the skills
So dive down those valleys and run up those hills
Press all the buttons and move left and right
Practice your loving all day and all night
Loving and games are unique in this way.
You only get better the more that you PLAY.
I’ve got some quarters rolled up in a tube
In my pocket and yes, I am happy to see you
Let’s have a two-player, co-op, turn-based
Side-scrolling platformer medium-paced
RPG flash game with magic gold rings
Your BRAIN knows the words but it’s YOUR heart that sings
So remember this moral this Valentine’s day
To be better at love then play, player, play.
And remember when playing to lead with your heart
Up down left right B A start




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A Rancid Sunday

They didn’t bathe and they wore their dead. They stank like a sleeping bag full of ammonia-soaked gym socks. They reeked like a slurry of sauerkraut and feces poured into a rotting pumpkin and left in the oven to burn. They had the pungent ass-crack aroma of a dozen dead moose decomposing in a steam room.

What I’m saying is that the one overwhelmingly true characteristic of the Vitralsi was that they stank. Their stink was a cloud that warped the air around them like a heat haze on a highway. It was the kind of stink that could clear a forest.

Luckily it wasn’t poisonous but that didn’t stop us ‘oversensitive’ humans from passing out now and again when we had to share the cockpit.

And I had to share the cockpit with one right now.

Even with my lips suctioned firmly around an air filter, a plug on my nose and goggles on my eyes, I still felt as if I was being coated in tear gas and dunked in a sewer. It was like my skin could taste it. It was like I’d discovered a new human sense, suddenly activated because of never-before-experienced extreme conditions.

And I was a person that prided himself on having almost no sense of smell. All seven of the humans on the ship were selected for just that reason.

The scary thing was that in keeping with the humans having little to no sense of smell, the Vitralsi on this ship were picked for this mission because they were the least malodorous ones available.

My mind reeled at the thought that the creature beside me was tame in comparison to other members of its race. My eyes watered at the idea of a full-frontal nasal assault from a regular Vitralsi’s pores and gland sacks.

“Okay, we’re coming close to the surface now” burbled the Vitralsi. A fresh wave of garlic-flavoured oblivion washed across the cabin and broke across me.

“Roger that” I responded through clenched teeth.

The scent of a Vitralsi could literally give a human PTSD with enough exposure. That’s why there were seven of us on the ship. It was shown that if a human only served once a week, we could tolerate the smell.

And today was Sunday. My shift at the wheel. I was looking forward to six days of fresh air in the cramped and sweaty human compartments with other members of my race. Even though shower use was harshly regulated on this journey, they still smelled like potpourri to me after a shift in the ‘pit.




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