Thought XIII

Thought XIII (2016)

All self-aware life in this cosmos is an infinite spectral reflection of itself, living out the path it thinks it should follow.

Cosmic Troubles

Cosmic Troubles (2016)

Of all troubles in the cosmos

Of all things shattered with shame

None come close to vast explosions

That rid systems of their name

Small scale beings chase old trite treasures

Small scale beings know nothing of

Nature's fury in the vacuum

Only conquered by its love

In its vastness - hopeless darkness,

Empty beacons of despair

And then - love and fruitful fortunes,

There's some beauty in some airs

All a spiral, blended visions

Holding both troubles and love

For each time a lone being suffers

Someone else glows, has it all

The Drone Class Citizen

The Drone Class Citizen (2016)

The drone woke up abruptly from the incessant buzzing of his alarm clock. Five fifteen in the morning lit up on its digital display. It was another routine workday morning in the endless cycle, exactly the same as the previous and upcoming one. Commute. Work. Commute. Eat. Sleep. Such would be his daily life from now until his last breath.

The drone brewed himself a cup of liquid stimulant in his tiny kitchen. He could not afford a more spacious dwelling - not that he would ever need it, or even have time to enjoy it. The drone worked upwards of seventy-six hours per week in order to survive. He had no time for friends, no time for family or acquaintances, and no time to dedicate to finding a mate. If he worked less than seventy hours per week he would be losing money because of the high cost of living in his residential area. The other six hours worth of income were for his savings, which he would need for health care emergencies, inevitably arising from the physical toll of working more than seventy hours per week. Sometimes he worked so intensely that it became a state of being greater than life itself.

After a quick breakfast of toasted bread and fried eggs, the drone went to his private vehicle. It was an old beat-down model of a sub-compact car. He could not afford to replace it. Not that he would ever have time to enjoy it even if he did - for most of his waking hours were spent working.

The drone drove to work while thinking about work. The tasks of the upcoming day would be exactly the same as the last, and yet he thought about them incessantly even when he was awake and not working (which was almost never).

The drone pulled into the parking lot of his company. He exited the vehicle and locked the doors, but deep down inside he knew no one would waste their time stealing this pathetic relic of his pathetic and irrelevant life. He rode the elevator to the fifth floor of his employer's facility, entered his employee identification number into the time clock, and he began to work at his station. He worked doing the same menial and repetitive tasks until the lunch bell sounded. This meant he would have a thirty minute break to consume his food so that he could have enough energy to continue working afterwards. He did precisely that, and then he continued to work.

He worked non-stop up until five o'clock in the evening. After that he drove to his second job, a much lower paying job, but one he needed in order to survive. And so until eleven o'clock at night he would work this second job to the best of his ability. There would be no lunch or dinner break here. He would have to sneak morsels of food out of his pocket while his supervisor's eyes were elsewhere. He needed these morsels of food for energy so that he could continue working his job properly. However, eating morsels of food while working there was strictly prohibited, and so he faced termination each time he did this. And yet, he had to break this job's conduct code because without the morsels he would not have the energy to work this job, and thus he would not have enough money to survive.

The drone continued to work hard each and every day.

And then one day, he died.

21st Century Musician

"21st Century Musician" (2016)

The Uneasy Stranger

The Uneasy Stranger (2016)

Random, old, buried, and once-inaccessible parts of the mind sometimes open up and flourish during the doldrums of routine daily events, such as shopping, cleaning, and miscellaneous chores. The conscience also happens to be born anew during moments of the exact opposite, moments of struggle, chaos, and life-or-death situations. Chadwick knew this, but had yet to experience it to the fullest. He was a thirty-three year old run-of-the-mill office clerk with an excruciatingly simple and predictable life. He drove a grey 2009 Honda Civic to his accounting job at Malteco Financing and he parked it in the exact same spot between 8:37 and 8:41 AM - depending on how he fit into the traffic light patterns of that particular morning. He watched the exact same TV shows as they aired throughout the rigid weekly cycle, thinking the exact same things as each one started and ended, and then going through the exact same motions and mental contemplation each time the credits to a show rolled across his mid-budget flat-screen television. He ate the exact same cycle of meals precisely on schedule as each one was assigned to its particular slot inside each of the seven days. All of his attempts to hang on to this existence of simplicity failed the day he saw the uneasy stranger.

                It was an early autumn Wednesday. Chadwick was out shopping for household supplies and groceries at the local big box store chain called Sawn’s Mart. It was owned by the Sawnson family, the richest family on Earth, and a bumbling lot of greedy, narcissistic psychopaths by all reputable accounts.  Chadwick himself was a household of one. He was far too introverted for dating, far too reclusive for friendship, and far too alienated for roommates or family. In this decrepit solitude Chadwick’s life hummed along with very predictable and mundane tones. This particular shopping trip was no exception. He parked in the dreary suburban parking lot as the late morning sun reflected its own specter across the upper dark band of his car’s windshield. He carefully locked his car, making sure to keep a constant hold of his keys, and then he proceeded into the store towards the automatic doors, completely unaware of the life shaking event which would take place inside.

                He entered the store and pulled out a cart from one of the rows by the main entrance. Then he proceeded to go through his shopping routine. Produce, bread, frozen, snacks, then household essentials. In the cleaning aisle Chadwick was struck by an unthinkable and invisible phantasm. It seemed that none of his fellow Sawn’s Mart shoppers noticed this creature or malicious attack against him. It suddenly appeared in his peripheral vision as a small elusive demon, an evil sprite of sorts. It hopped around the aisle like a small dust devil across a plain and then, at precisely the most opportune moment, it materialized a box-cutter and nicked Chadwick on the right forearm. The pain made him jump and sent his thoughts into a panicked delirium. And yet, this panic was still dwarfed by a completely different one, caused by the fact that not one single shopper noticed this evil creature. None of the six other people in the aisle even raised an eye up at this heinous attack. No one cared. No one noticed.

                In retrospect, the cut was not all that bad. It would leave a mild scar, at worst. Back inside his Civic, Chadwick began to calm down. His last stop on this peculiar shopping trip was the pharmacy section where he bought bandages and antiseptic solution. While driving back home, Chadwick realized he was now more puzzled and confused than scared. The fear of what just transpired was strong, to be sure, but it did not last. It gave way to and internalized questioning of himself. Was that a real attack by a supernatural being? Was it a hallucination? Or was it a very clever trickster of a child looking to get a ruse out of sheepish suburban shoppers in a store? Chadwick knew not what to do or who to call. And so, he went home to watch the next television show on his itinerary, hoping the passage of a few days would put this unfortunate situation far behind him.

                Time did not help. Exactly three days after his final store purchase of band-aids and disinfectant wipes was scanned, Chadwick woke up inside what appeared to be a suburban basement torture chamber. He was completely alone, chained, bound, and dressed only in soiled boxer shorts. The greater part of him did not panic. The smaller part of him expected this event, even though he had no idea how it transpired. All he remembered was the regular shopping trip, then about seventy two hours of a dark void. He felt no immediate sensations when waking up and coming to his senses inside the chamber, but then slowly, the tightness of the straps and chains around his limbs came to attention. His next thought was to produce a scream, but he soon realized that his mouth was taped completely shut. There must have been a force that brought him here… but what was it? And what was that odd and poking, somewhat painful feeling, slowly materializing in his abdomen?

                Who did this? Chadwick’s thoughts began to scramble in on themselves after he realized there was no point in struggling against the bindings, the chains, or the tape. Where am I? Why? Chadwick’s conscience sprung out from the depths of his psyche like a lonely flower on top of a shallow grave. It began to torment him, to interrogate him. The questions started.

                Why did you bully John Wilkson in the fourth grade? He didn’t do anything to you. Why did you do it, Chadwick?

                Why did you reject Sarah Fawler in her attempts at dating you during senior year in high school? She liked you, Chadwick. Why did you do reject her, Chadwick?

                Why did you not drop some coins into the beggar’s cup the last time you went downtown? You have over twelve thousand dollars saved, Chadwick. You don’t need that money, Chadwick. The beggar needed that money more than you, Chadwick. Why didn't you do it, Chadwick?

                This contemplative struggle went on for hours with no end in sight. Eventually Chadwick’s energy began to wane. He knew he could lose consciousness at any moment. His dehydration was reaching unforeseen levels. All struggles failed. All attempts to escape the binds and chains failed. Meekly, Chadwick resigned. This was the end. As the final throes of life’s energy leaked out of him, Chadwick noticed something he had yet not seen inside the dimly lit chamber. He felt almost silly for missing it during all those past hours.

It was a mirror. A perfectly polished, antique mirror that was reminiscent of the pomp and circumstance of Victorian times. It sat slightly off center from his field of vision and about seven feet away from the front of the chain rig. Inside the mirror, an uneasy stranger looked back at him. A small cut from what appeared to be a box cutter blade was visible on his right forearm.

Cosmic Blue

Cosmic Blue (2016)

By the winds of cosmic sentries

And of worlds begun a new

I have traveled, I have traveled

To taste starlight's precious dew

In through eons of deep torture

Cosmic pathways indeed cross

Things of loss and things of privilege

These things add to equal naught

To the starry eyed new traveler

I will tell you nothing's true

'til you see it with your own eyes

'til your soul rings Cosmic Blue

Thought XII

Thought XII (2016)

The fact that a majority of the population believes something... does not make said thing true. There are two nearly equal but opposite forces which drive sentient civilizations throughout the known cosmos. Science and religion. Science is the force of progress, personal evolution, and intellectual enlightenment. Religion is the force of regression, barbarism, and brutal superstition.

Science Fiction Concepts Part III

Science Fiction Concepts Part III (2016)

Mind's Eye Programming - The programming of a sentient and self-aware individual through repeated visuals. Rather than requiring the individual to spend hours poring over text, this learning protocol allows an individual to know the core knowledge of nearly any field of science, art, music, or history, simply by viewing certain visual patterns pre-assigned to those fields of study. This system belief implies that most of Cosmic Knowledge exists in a state that is locked inside the individual's mind; it merely needs a catalyst to get it out the mind's depths and into the individual's control and disposal. Under this concept, the said catalyst is visual because most sentient and self-aware beings are highly reliant and dependent on their visual sense.

Entrapment Wire - The entrapment wire is a basic premise of a technology which is used to create mental prisons of torment and torture by ruthless and totalitarian governments and organizations. In the midst of 21st Century Earth civilization, the police state of North Korea is an example of a country running what could be called the early stages of many entrapment wires into the minds of its own population. The developed version is a physical wire which extends from a bio mechanical computer into the spinal cord of the patient, or in most cases, the prisoner. The wire then feeds various nervous system stimuli, including intrusive thoughts, propaganda, psychoactive drugs, and other methods of torture from the machine directly into the prisoner's nervous system.

Free Will Simulator - To further enhance the already powerful effects of an installed entrapment wire, a sub-program administered using specific psychoactive drugs and thought patterns called a free will simulator is used on the patient or prisoner. This gives the patient or prisoner a fully believable real-time illusion which states that everything currently happening to them, all they feel and all that they currently experience... is being done according to their own free will. In other words, they feel and carry 100% responsibility for everything that is happening to them in that moment, even if they are actually at no fault of their own, and even if what is happening results in their own torment, torture, interrogation, or incrimination. This could have drastic implications for personal testimony in the court system.