Even the greats have few stories to tell,
Which they keep telling over and over
Until their voices grow hoarse
And then die away.There’s no point in writing a story,
At least as far as I’m concerned,
Unless you came up with a killer concept,
One that would make people interested
By hearing it explained in a sentence.Such concepts are so hard to come by
That you should always carry a notebook
In case they pop up when you’re outside.
Don’t store the idea in your mind;
You don’t realize how much stuff you forget
Until you have gone through the notes
That you have hoarded for many years.I have stockpiled plenty of crazy ideas,
But most of them are unworkable,
Whether because I don’t want to research
Or because I haven’t done enough living,
So they just sit on the shelf
Like old wine bottles collecting dust.Seriously, write your ideas down.
You need an uncluttered mind
To get in the zone when writing.
Classify your notes,
Order them chronologically
According to their place in a story.
Above all, don’t lose them;
After several years of neglect,
They may be worth more than gold.That story about the ghost woman
Who falls in love with a living one
Had been waiting in my notes for years,
Until I figured out how it should be told.
The same is the case for many poems,
Like the one about the immortal warrior,
Or that one about interdimensional travels.
I even rewrote one of my old stories,
Shortened it, made it wear another costume,
Because I couldn’t figure out what to write.I can only work on the stuff I connect with,
That may make me excited, laugh or cry,
And there are few things that move me at all.
I fear that one day I’ll need to build a house
But I will have run out of stone and clay.
I will need to escape, to lose myself
By living through another person’s skin,
But my mind will have turned barren.Writing takes so much time and energy,
And requires a peculiar state of mind.
It doesn’t work if I have to fake it.
I have to take advantage of every chance.The other problem is working on a story
Only for my enthusiasm to fade away.
I can never tell when that will happen,
And some concepts fail during execution.None of the therapists solved my troubles,
Which are physical and inborn anyway,
Etched into the brain like depression
(It involves the amygdala, hippocampus,
and the dorsomedial thalamus.
Structural and functional abnormalities
Are found in the brain of depressed people).They give out drugs for such problems,
But none of those helped either
(I had the impression that they try stuff,
Using the clients as guinea pigs).
Those drugs mostly made me overeat,
Which only worsened my mood.The only therapy that works for me
Is processing my troubles through writing,
But I start way more poems and stories
Than those I end up finishing:
Most of my attempts leave me dry,
So I abandon them midway through.The prospect of losing my only solution
Is a source of constant dread.
For now I keep the shadows at bay
By living through other people’s dreams,
Writing down all their fears and hopes,
Whether or not anyone reads the result,
But it would be nice to get paid,
Although I’d still need to keep a job.Many of the writers that I met in courses
Wrote for status or to meet other people.
I do it as a way to keep myself alive.
Although nothing has felt as meaningful,
I’ve gone years without writing,
Because I thought it was ridiculous
To write stories about people’s troubles
When I barely care about humans.I’m a loner, a high-functioning recluse.
If I were strong enough and had the means,
I would move out to the countryside
Or somewhere where I could be alone.
I’d go weeks without talking to anyone.All my characters are versions of myself;
They wear costumes to talk to each other,
And they worry about what bothers me.
I rarely write about societal issues,
Because I don’t feel like I belong to any,
And most people sound like morons
When they diagnose the ills of society.
I can only tell you about the world
Where I live, which is very small.For years I’ve read many books on writing,
And I put the notes together in a manual.
Generating original, killer concepts is key,
For that, many authors proposed ways
To get your internal juices going:
Write down a list of stuff you want to see.
Take the building blocks of a story you dislike,
To rearrange them into something you’d like.
Pull apart what you enjoy of your favorite stories.
Freewrite a hundred questions
About your personal life or the world,
To see if those worries are reflected
In the stories you have come up with.
Write your impressions, visions, dreams.
Reflect upon your most satisfying experiences,
Whether fictional or from your own life.
Write about what excites your imagination.
Write five things you are passionate about.Brainstorm about the things you hate,
Things you love,
Best things you’ve ever done,
Worst things you’ve ever done,
The people you’ve loved,
Your bucket list,
Your hobbies,
The things you know,
What you’d like to know,
Areas of expertise,
People you’ve hated.Think of something you wouldn’t tell anyone.
Write about problems that resonate with your own.
Elaborate on experiences that made you cringe.
Recall your worst humiliation, pain, or sorrow.
Write about your worst fears.
Write about the turning points in your life.
Write about the darkest things in your soul.How would you live differently if you started over?
Have you ever had to face up to your mistakes?
Have you ever had to admit failure?
Are you prepared to let go of all the people
Who have disappointed you, betrayed you,
Left you feeling like a fool for believing in them?
Can you imagine living without regrets,
Without harboring grudges and resentments?
Have you ever had to find a way to go on?
Do you think that you deserve to be happy?
Have you ever been wrecked by the knowledge
That you are inadequate, that you can’t fix things,
That your limitations are evident for everybody?
Are you willing to acknowledge
The extent to which you’re a fraud,
A phony who has no real talent for anything?
You may not be able to answer these questions,
But if you haven’t written about it yet,
Then now is the time to do so.I’m going through the second revision
Of that novel I wrote about the ghost lady.
The scenes I wrote at the office are a mess;
I’ve averaged around 70 notes to fix,
And they’ll require a third revision.
For me, narrative is about immersion:
I need to disappear into the narrator’s skin,
Which means getting excited, angry, sad, horny.
Obviously I can’t do that shit at work
(Getting blue balled is one of my nightmares).
It’s better to reserve my narrative writing
For when I’m alone and isolated,
Or else I’ll damage the quality of my work.
Writing poems at the office is fine, though,
Even if those poems are articles in poem form,
Like this stuff you are reading now.If I’m not careful, I’m going to turn into a bore.
My job requires plenty of social interaction;
I don’t have the patience or endurance for it,
So I need to write to get away from people.My point is that I can’t come up with concepts,
Or at least I have been dry for a good while.
If I had the free time now to write a novel,
I wouldn’t know what to write about,
And that’s really troublesome.Anyway, thank you for your attention.
‘I Wish I Were Wet’ by Jon Ureña
Stay tuned for the next episode.
Tag: artificial intelligence
Our Spot Behind the World (Short Story)
Shizuko waits for me, as always, leaning back against the moss-stained low wall that encloses a house, one that seemed deserted for as long as I remember. On the opposite side of the narrow path leading to the main street of our town, some neighbor has accumulated wooden planks, piles of rubber wheels, and tarp-covered refuse in a gravel backyard. Although nothing about this spot spelled out romance, for many years I’ve only needed to close my eyes and picture this view for my heart to ache.
Shizuko is wearing her long-sleeve, checkered, white and pewter-grey shirt; black pants; and the indigo, white-rimmed sneakers. She’s holding a notebook against her thigh. Her black hair is pulled back and tied with a ribbon. She has focused her nut-brown gaze in front of her, on the overgrown vegetation.
Whenever I caught her in a pensive state, I wanted to stand out of sight and keep staring at her. I wished to know what she thought about, what images were passing through her mind. I would give out every single yen I ever made to witness her mental landscapes the way she did.
She notices me approaching her. As she bows her head slightly, she offers me a shy smile. Warmth rushes to my throat and tightens it. For a moment I only hear the white noise of insect calls that always surrounds us in this town, a mix between robotic laughs and doors with rusty hinges. The breeze plays with Shizuko’s hair.
“Hello,” she says. “How was your day?”
The same old youthful, vulnerable voice, tinged with an undercurrent of sadness even when she was happy. I take a step forward and hold her hand. It’s warm, a contrast with the breeze of this cloudy day that may break into rain.
I squeeze her fingers gently. Her hands are smaller than mine, fragile, delicate. I feel the pressure of her fingertips against my skin.
“It will improve now that we’ll spend the afternoon together.”
Shizuko nods as a little smile appears on her lips.
“Yes, the same for me, although I’ve gotten some writing done in the morning.”
We descend along the asphalted path. My heart is reacting to Shizuko’s body heat and her scent. We pass by the corrugated wall of the building on our left, as well as by the small, menhir-like sculpture that stands on a tiny yard to our right. When we exit into the main street of our town, we turn right. We can barely fit in the old cement sidewalk shoulder to shoulder, so I put my arm around Shizuko’s waist. She holds onto me tightly.
On the other side of the street, behind the single row of rice-white buildings with the shutters rolled down, the tall, dense trees of the hilly forest that this town is encroached by look faded due to mist or low clouds. The air smells like water, a promise of rain, which makes me want to narrow my shoulders.
The streets are deserted. A lone white van waits for the traffic light to turn green, even though no other cars are around.
“Are you cold, Shizuko?” I ask her.
She shakes her head slowly.
“It’s a bit chilly, but fine otherwise.”
Her warm, gentle gaze always seems to be wondering if I’m alright. She smiles a little.
On other identical afternoons I have guided Shizuko up the path to the graveyard. For many generations, the locals have built their graves on a stepped hill. The nearby grounds feature trimmed bushes and a gravel garden with stone buddhas in varied poses. But today I want quiet, I want to return to our secluded spot. Although I know that nobody will bother us, I wish to erase from my brain the possibility that anybody could.
We cross the road to walk in front of the eternally closed convenience store. Its tattered awning, which originally may have been sandstone-orange and white, is the only detail that adds color to this building. Its shelves are half-empty, and some faded posters announce long-gone days. As we walk by, the rounded, mushroom-like bushes, that have grown in a long planter between the building and the sidewalk, graze the left sleeve of my jacket.
“Should we get something from the vending machines?” Shizuko asks as she points at the conspicuous red and green machines a few meters further ahead.
I nod. While Shizuko inserts some coins into the slot to get her usual Kirin Lemon Tea, she turns her head to look down the street, which ends in a wall of vegetation. Above us, a flock of pigeons flies across the sky.
“The town is so deserted today, isn’t it?” she asks. “At this hour of the afternoon, I’d expect to see at least kids returning from baseball practice, but it feels as if everyone is asleep, or hiding behind their windows.”
Her bottle of lemon tea makes a thud sound as it falls in the machine. Shizuko crouches to take it out. When she straightens her back, she drops her notebook accidentally. I hurry to pick it up as my skin tingles; looking into her eyes always does these days. After Shizuko recovers her notebook, she twists the cap of her bottle and takes a drink. She must have noticed how tenderly I’m staring at her, because she blushes slightly.
“Don’t you want anything from the machines?” she asks. “I’ll invite you.”
“No, I’m good.”
“Alright. You can drink some of my lemon tea if you want.”
I look forward to drinking it, but not from the bottle. I put my arm around Shizuko’s waist and we continue along the sidewalk. A few meters later, only a guard rail separates us from a drop to a dirt-covered terrace that overlooks the river, and that runs maybe twenty meters below the street. Now that I’m staring at the seaweed-green water, I hear it flowing. On the other side of the river, a wall of tall trees have stretched out long branches with fern-like leaves over the current. The breeze blows through them and rustles their leaves.
We pass by the wooden front of a restaurant that will never open. Beyond the parked minivan next to the building, the owners had installed a fish tank protected with a metallic lid, in which the long, silvery fishes swim around frantically as if trying to figure out how to escape. Shizuko glances at it like she always does. She used to mention that she felt sorry for them, because some of the fishes that she had noticed disappeared from week to week.
“Shall we go to our spot?” I ask her softly.
“Of course.”
We reach the gap between two stretches of guard rail where a pebble pavement ends in downward stairs. They lead to the riverbank. Ancient-looking moss has grown between the pebbles, as well as in the worn and cracked steps of the stairs.
Shizuko puts her hands on the stone railing and leans against it. Her ponytail flutters in the breeze.
“Before we started coming here together, descending those stairs gave me the impression that I would get lost somehow and that nobody would ever find me. You know what I mean?”
My heart beats faster. I nod. Although she expects an answer, I remain silent. She offers me a sad smile.
“But now I feel as if we’re the only ones who have come this far,” she says. “The rest of the world is sleeping or hiding behind their windows.”
She peers down at the river through the dense treetops. She closes her eyes, and they remain closed as she rolls her eyeballs towards me. When she opens her eyes again, she shoots me a strange look, maybe one too confident, unlike her shy, sad self. For a moment, it takes me out of my dream.
“Let’s go,” I say in a thin voice as the dreaded cold spreads through me.
We descend the steps, and step on dirt-covered landings. Many decades ago we would have been able to walk on cement pavement, but the vegetation has long broken through, making it seem if we are walking along a forest trail. Once we reach the foot of the stairs, a tall cement wall on our right separates us from the town as effectively as if we had driven far away. The loudest insects must be hanging out in the nearby canopies, because their strident, insistent calls surround us, and only the sound of the flowing water is competing against them.
I turn to my left to face the river, located maybe ten meters below. Shizuko rests her head on my shoulder. My skin tingles again. As I stare down at the river, I spot the reflection of a large black bird as it flies far above the current.
“We’ve become the last people in the world,” Shizuko says.
“I wish.”
We listen for a while to the birds’ cries. The cloud cover is drifting across the sky, and the temperature has dropped slightly.
“Do you think they have places this secluded in Tokyo?” she asks. “A river running underneath the houses, few to no people around, a view of the mountains. Somewhere we could be alone together.”
My heart aches, which makes my eyes twitch. I gulp.
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
She lets out a deep sigh and turns her face away.
“Whenever I think about all those streets full of busy people, it makes my skin crawl. I have never felt any different about that prospect… the same way you have always wanted to leave our nowhere town.”
Once again, I’ll have to hide how much it hurts.
“Yes. I wanted to leave even as a child. I thought I was too big for this place. I certainly wanted to be.”
Shizuko’s shoulders droop.
“I know you have to leave. You would be miserable if you stayed here.”
I don’t want to turn my head and hold her gaze, but I do it anyway. Shizuko’s eyes are red, as expected. They look as if she’s containing tears.
“I thought so as well,” I say in a low voice. “I figured out how I would escape: I’d study in Tokyo, then start a company that would make so much money. Meeting you threw a wrench in the plans, but I was sure that one day I would return to bring you there with me.”
Shizuko puts her hand on mine. I make the mistake of closing my eyes, and I remember her as the little girl who loved to write stories, who dreamt of becoming a novelist one day.
“You sound unsure…” she says. “Are you changing your mind?”
“I don’t want to leave anymore. But I can’t change the fact that in about two months I will be gone from here.”
Shizuko furrows her brow in confusion. When I look away, she leans her forehead against my chest, brushing my chin with her hair. We stand quietly as I look down at the river.
Shizuko would prefer us to have an in-depth conversation. She would try to convince me to change my plans and choose to attend classes nearby, close enough that I won’t have to move from our small town. I feel too weak now to repeat my answers. I urge her to continue walking with me.
We reach another set of stairs that descend further. These ones are made of rusted metal, and look like they belong in a long-abandoned construction site. The moss has managed to conquer these metallic floors as well. I step over a couple of broken branches. In the last stretch of stairs that ends at the riverbank, the overgrown bushes and branches have encroached so much of the space that as we continue descending, we have to push them away with our forearms or let them bend against our bodies.
We reach the foot of the metallic steps: a curved stretch of cement about the size of a bed. If we sat on its edge, our shoes would almost touch the clear water. Down here, the nearby trees and dense vegetation hide us from the world. Many times we sat here to talk, to make out, to make love, away from our relatives and anyone who knows us.
Shizuko drinks tea from her bottle. When she lowers it, I hug her by the waist and kiss her wet lips. Her saliva tastes like lemon. I close my eyes and wish to lose myself in these sensations: Shizuko’s tongue is caressing mine, and her hands are stroking my back.
When we pull away, she hugs me tightly.
“I wish days like these never ended,” she whispers.
Shizuko is shivering as if she were cold. I blink away the blurriness in my vision. Her heart beats fast against my chest as I look down at the water. The riverbed is made out of small, cinnamon-brown pebbles, but patches of stripped bedrock show through. The river runs along the bottom of a steep slope, in a corridor of tropical vegetation that stretches from left to right. On both ends, a floating mist blurs the distant vegetation. So close to the current, it feels like I’m inhaling water particles every time I breathe.
“I’d like to live in a house that’s been standing for thousands of years,” Shizuko says softly. She takes my hand and squeezes it as if trying to extract warmth from it. “Can you imagine that, making something that lasts that long?”
I hold Shizuko’s head against my chest.
“I wish we could spend our lives right on this spot,” I say in a low, quavering voice.
“Yet, you will leave. But one day you’ll return, right? Isn’t that the idea?” she asks as she looks up at me. “I will keep coming here alone. I will imagine myself holding your hand and looking at the river together. I will see our faces reflected in the surface of the water. And I will remember all that happened here.”
My heart hurts as much as it always does when I can’t prevent the memories from rushing in. I remain silent for maybe thirty seconds, but Shizuko continues.
“When we are apart, maybe I’ll manage to get published. I’m sure I’ll do little else than write. So perhaps one day you’ll walk into a big bookstore in Tokyo and find yourself staring at one of my novels.”
My throat constricts.
“For many years I’ve dreamt of holding a book you wrote. I try to make out what it contains, but the text is always blurry. After all, you never finished writing any novel.”
She tries to pull away to look me in the eyes, but I want to spare her that sight.
“You’re acting strange today. I haven’t finished anything yet, but I’m sure I’ll get down to it in the future.”
“I’ve been acting strange for a long time, Shizuko. That’s what regret does to people. And mine has never relented. I don’t want it to go away either.”
I allow Shizuko to look at me. She reaches out to touch one of my tears. Her warm fingers run over my skin. Now that I have opened up, she allows her worry and pain to surface. She never spoke up about how much it hurt that although we were in love, she had a limited time to spend with me before I moved out for the foreseeable future. Both of us knew that even if I kept my promise to return every few weeks, the distance would abrade our relationship, maybe to the point of severing it.
Shizuko wraps her arms around me. I feel the warmth of her body and the softness of her hair as I watch the river flow.
“As much as it hurts, I’ve never regretted meeting you,” she whispers. “I knew from the beginning that eventually we would stop seeing each other, but I have never felt like this for anybody else. I don’t expect that to change either.” Shizuko takes a deep breath. “So I will stay strong. I will keep going. I will write hard, and try to publish. I’m sure that when you return, you will find me waiting for you.”
“That was my intention. Even after I met that other girl, I’m sure I thought she represented a temporary distraction. I felt so lonely in Tokyo, after all. Another stranger among millions.”
Shizuko puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Are you already thinking of going out with other girls when you move to Tokyo?” she asks in a hurt tone.
I doubt she ever considered that such words would come out of my mouth. I shake my head.
“I’m talking about what will happen. I will leave like I always planned. From time to time, as I try to make a name for myself out there, I will return home to see you. At first, regularly. But it won’t take long until I feel a gulf growing between us. So much stuff will happen to me in Tokyo, even without looking for it. However, back in this nowhere town, you will remain the same. I will end up believing that you are weak, that you are afraid of growing up, of improving.”
Shizuko is staring intently at me, stunned.
“Some girl in Tokyo will make your heart skip a beat,” she says in a trembling voice. “I’m terrified of it, but I know it’s very likely. And I’m far from perfect. If… you end up forgetting me, won’t it mean that you found a better life? When the pain goes away, I will be happy for you.”
I close my eyes. How many times have I tried to imagine our future if Shizuko and I had stayed together? I grit my teeth, but my lower lip keeps trembling. As I rub my eyelids, Shizuko rests her face on my chest.
“In the end I will allow one of those Tokyo girls,” I say, “one to whom I was attracted, to convince me that I didn’t need you anymore. I will lie to you on the phone, I’ll tell you that it isn’t working, although by that point I will have dated that other girl for a couple of weeks. I remember… I still remember your voice on the other end of the line. So many times I have pictured you seated on your bed back at your parents’ home as you held the phone to your ear. The last time we saw each other, we came down here. You read me two short stories you had been working on, and we kissed, but my heart was no longer in it. I felt pity for you. You felt so small, so… beneath me.”
Shizuko trembles against me. When she pulls away, tears are running down her cheeks.
“You are breaking up with me,” she says in a hollow voice.
“I don’t want to leave. If I could go back, I would have stayed here, Shizuko, for the rest of my life. But I didn’t. After that girl for whom I betrayed you, two others followed. Everything I took for granted with you, that feeling of being home just by holding you in my arms, I never felt it with anybody else. I loved you like I will never be able to love another human being. I have been aware of it every day, ever since.”
I stop talking; my throat hurts. Shizuko strokes my cheek and tries to get me to look at her.
“I don’t understand what you are talking about,” she whimpers. “I already knew that I won’t ever love anyone as much as I love you, even though you were always meant to leave me. But if you have realized the same thing as well, stay with me. We’ll move out together. If we don’t find any decent house in this town, we’ll move nearby. I will always be yours. You are the only person with whom I’d rather be than alone.”
I feel that my left hand will fall through Shizuko’s shoulder. The frozen ache has spread throughout my body, which I only allow it to do when I don’t care that it risks ruining my life.
“I remember the day that I received that call from your mother,” I struggle to say. “I was sitting on a bench in a park, a few minutes after I got out of the office. I was looking up the news on my phone while I drank soda. I don’t know what went through my mind when your mother’s name showed up on the screen. I hadn’t spoken to her in years. And when I heard her animal sobs, time stood still. You had been taking a walk along the outskirts, the same route you followed three or four days a week. Your mother told me that you used to sit somewhere and write. But that day you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Shizuko’s watery eyes have widened. I can’t imagine what she’s thinking. I take a deep breath as my chest burns.
“It was raining. They said that the car slipped off the road. Your mother told me that you died instantly from the impact. I never believed it; that’s the kind of stuff that doctors say when the truth is unbearable. I kept dreaming of you lying there in the rain, broken. Agonizing. I pictured you choking in mud and blood. What did you think about in your final minutes? Did you realize that we would never see each other again? Did you still resent me? I had told you that we would love each other for the rest of our lives, and I had believed it, but I still betrayed you.”
Shizuko stares at me blankly. I’m exhausted, my legs are trembling. I lower myself to the cement floor, and I sit on the edge. The insects and birds keep calling out to each other like they always will.
“Once my mind registered your mother’s words,” I continue, “I experienced the ice-cold sensation of something snapping inside me. I thought I would collapse on the spot. When I looked down at my feet, I realized that until then the knowledge that you existed, that you would be waiting for me if I chose to return, kept me tethered to this world, but ever since I’ve felt like an astronaut drifting away in the void. Back at home, back when we were children, I met the only one who mattered, and now I would never look at her, talk to her, hold her again. You would never tell new stories. You must have pictured so much in your head that you never got to put down in words, and I would never see it.”
Shizuko has taken a seat next to me. She rests her hand on my knee as she pleads with her eyes for me to make sense.
“I’m still here with you, and I will always be.”
I take a deep breath, then look up at the gray sky.
“The world has changed too much in these last decades, Shizuko, particularly for a man anchored to the past. But I have made sure to remember you, whether through recalling the days we spent together or writing them down when they were slipping off my mind. As long as the memories of you remain, and the means to perpetuate them exist, we can salvage the life that I threw away so easily, starting from the afternoon when I confirmed to you that I would leave soon. For so many years I have barely thought of anything else, and every time I attempt to recreate our past, I get a bit closer. I won’t have to change much more. One of these days I will meet you again as you lean against that moss-stained wall, and for the rest of the afternoon I won’t notice any look, any reaction, any word coming out of your mouth that doesn’t belong to you.”
I hold Shizuko’s hand. Her fingers are thin and delicate. I squeeze them gently.
“Every time I return to you, I fall in love all over again. But it’s so hard, Shizuko. I can barely deal with looking at you, talking to you, smelling you, touching you. It makes me want to die. They insisted I should try to forget you, but none of those people understand. There’s nothing worse than realizing too late that I had already met and lost the only one who would ever matter. Whatever remains of you has kept haunting my life, and that is my only relief.”
I can’t keep talking through the tears. Shizuko wraps her arms around my shoulders, and I bury my face in her neck. The sound of the insects, birds and frogs fills my ears.
“You are telling me the truth, I can tell,” she says, distressed. “Or else we both have lost our minds.”
I move my vocal cords without uttering a word, to order the interface to appear. Two orders later, the cacophony of the animal noises and the sound of flowing water cease abruptly. Our breathing and quickened heartbeats echo as if inside a chamber.
Shizuko tenses up, and pulls away from our embrace to look around. The world has stopped. On the river, the reflections of the sunlight, filtered through the cloud cover, are static as if drawn with a white crayon, and the ripples of the water remain still like the wrinkles in a sheet.
“What is this?” she asks in a breaking voice. “W-who am I?”
I close my eyes and try to calm down.
“You’re a miracle. One I built up from zero, based on the foundations laid by many other people much more intelligent than me. It has taken me ages; I have fine-tuned the contents of your brain every day, based on how this afternoon went. But one of these days I will walk you home, you, my Shizuko, instead of some forged version, and from that day on I will spend the rest of my life with you.”
Shizuko is trembling. Tears are streaming down her pale face.
“I’m not real…?”
“Of course you’re real. Made to be exactly like the Shizuko I knew in my youth. You are more real than anything else in the world out there. You shouldn’t have died. I should have been there so you wouldn’t have died. But I can bring you back.”
“B-but I’m gone…”
She won’t accept what I’m doing; she never has. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve yet to perfect her. I will keep on creating new versions until I find the replica of the Shizuko that remains in my memory, and who from then on will live forever.
I press my lips against her forehead, then I hold her face to look into her eyes.
“I love you. Back when you stood in front of me and looked back at me with your original eyes, I didn’t understand properly what I meant when I uttered those words. Now I know that I was put in this world so I could love you.”
Shizuko’s face is contorted in stunned anguish. Her chest starts convulsing as if she was suffering from silent hiccups.
I verbalize another order out loud:
“Stop the simulation.”
Shizuko freezes. Her fingers turn rigid in my hand. I shut off the rest of the world.
Shizuko and I sit in a pitch black void. The sound of my heartbeat is deafening. The darkness makes me feel that I’m the only living creature in the universe, too small and weak to keep going through this life alone even for a second longer. I hold on to Shizuko’s lifeless hand until it grants me the strength that I will need to endure the next days, or hours, that I will spend away from the love of my life.
Author’s note: if by some miracle you have read the stuff I self-published in Spanish two or three years ago, you may know or remember that this story is basically the same as one of them, except with a completely different setting and a narrative that goes more or less straight to the point. What can I say, I wanted to tell that kind of story again, and I knew I wouldn’t do anything else today. I hope you enjoyed it to some extent. I certainly did, but sadness has felt like a second home for as long as I remember.
The Clock Is Ticking (Poetry)
I battle against time
And the demands of society,
One that I didn’t chose,
With which I don’t identify
I go to bed at ten
Because I wake up at six
Many hours and energies sacrificed
Performing tasks I don’t care about
To earn the right to exist,
To bother trying to make a living
When there’s no living done
I’m only allowed to endure
By serving those above me
I try to keep afloat
While my boat is sinking
On a green and brown sea
With toxic sludge floating atopA user account was locked
A shortcut doesn’t show up
Someone needs a program installed
Someone needs access to a shared folder
A printer doesn’t work
Paper is stuck in a printer
A new printer needs to be installed
Someone wants access to a website
The audio doesn’t work in an online meeting
The background color is too blue
Paint 3D lacks some buttons
An application crashes daily
A labelling printer is uncalibrated
Someone needs remote desktop access
A computer is too slow
A computer randomly freezes
A computer needs more storage space
A computer needs more RAM
Someone needs more space in her mailbox
A network cable gets pulled out
Connect the patch panel with the switch
There’s not enough bandwidth for everyone
A file was accidentally deleted
Somebody got a virus
A PDA’s battery has died
A PDA needs a factory reset
A PDA needs an updated certificate
The backup drive failed
The database crashed
A server has stopped transferring files
Someone tried to hack the systemMy friends betray me
My family hates me
My wife tells me she loves another man
My cat dies
My car breaks down
My house burns downIt’s a dead-end job anyway
I can’t fucking speak BasqueI don’t want to meet strangers
I hate talking to people
I don’t want to clean up after them
I don’t want to deal with their problems
I don’t care about anyone’s needs
Their lives are nothing like mine
They live in a different reality
That I cannot ever understandStop interrupting me
I never get anything done
Give me a single moment of peace,
One that lasts as much as I need,
So I feel like a human againI spend my time worrying
When I should be writing
I need hours of quiet
To be able to think
I wish I could make money
Doing something worthwhile
I dream about leaving the office
For the last time in my life,
So I can stop working full-time
And dedicate myself to writing
I already tried publishing stuff
I’m not good enough,
And nobody gives a shit
About what I have to sayI want to sleep when I feel like it,
Instead of at scheduled times
I can’t eat when I want;
An eighty years old man
Has better bowels than mine
Leaving the house means anxiety
My intestines need to be coddled
Or else they’ll keep torturing me
I want to go out when I want
I want to experience nice things
So much stuff I’d like to try,
But no time to invest in it
I’m trapped inside this body
When I’m supposed to be free
I want to stop having to struggle,
Just once in my lifeI need an empty room,
And no one else around
Nobody to ask me what I’m doing,
Nobody to knock on my door
Time for nothing but thinking,
Time for nothing but being alone
A chance to recharge
Before facing another busy day
In order to write, I must first rest
The batteries of my mind
It takes too much mental energy
Just to function every dayI’m still here, although I’m dead
A walking corpse who feels pain
I’m a ghost with headaches
I’m a ghost with heartaches
I’m a ghost with chest pains
I’m a ghost with stomach aches
I’ve been haunting this world
Since I was born
I’m not afraid of dying,
I’m just tired of living,
And I don’t care anymore
I want to be left aloneSlowly but surely, all my abilities
Will fade and die away
I’ll forget how to speak correctly,
How to do math,
How to read and write,
All the skills I need to survive,
Like a computer without electricity
I’ll slowly lose everything,
Every memory I stored,
Even how to walk and talk
One day, my brain will shut off,
I will just disappear,
And no one will notice,
No one will mourn
They won’t miss me at all
When I’m finally forgotten,
I’ll be in peaceI dreamt of standing at the right angle
So I could see an opening in the wall
Once I ventured into the passage,
I found myself in an isolated space:
A field of butter-yellow, hair-like grass
In the center, an ancient, towering oak
A peaceful place with no people
Inside that space, time stood still
The sun was stuck in a permanent sunset
I heard birds singing from the tree,
And I smelled the flowersEven if I spent a thousand years inside,
Outside the clock would remain stopped
With that amount of time,
I would read anything I pleased,
I would write every novel I wanted,
I would crystallize each scene
To the last precise word,
I wouldn’t see another face,
I wouldn’t worry about food and shelter,
I would never have to work again,
I would be able to relax,
Free to think about whatever I liked,
I would remain focused on what matters,
I’d make up for all the wasted yearsThe clock is ticking,
‘The Clock Is Ticking’ by Jon Ureña
Rotting the cells away
We were dragged from nothing
So we could grow old and die
Spider Commander Versus Dinosaur-Monkey (Poetry)
There’s a hairy spider trapped in my guts;
Many-eyed, pointy-legged, sharp-fanged.
It tugs on this or that tendon as it pleases.
Sometimes its legs are sticky and slimy,
Sometimes they’re dry and rough.
This little motherfucker decides where I go.
But from time to time it makes mistakes,
Like when it pulls too hard at my heartstrings
Or my mind, and leaves them all in shreds
So there’s nothing left to hold together,
Nothing to give meaning to anything else,
As I keep spinning around in a circle.
This therapist I talked to for a while
Didn’t believe that this nasty spider
Could possibly yield me pleasure,
But I have never felt as happy
As when I hunted down relentlessly
Whatever this bastard told me to.
As a child, a version of me I resent,
Because I was an annoying little shit
(I wish I could punch him in the face,
Or better yet, drown him in a bathtub),
I was autistically obsessed with dinos.
One of my first memories involves
Me lying in bed after an operation
(My genes fucked me in many ways).
Someone bought me a triceratops toy,
And I thought it was the coolest thing.
I wish I had to deal with ancient reptiles
(Although they were more like birds)
And their primitive, murderous ways,
Than with the unreliable, nasty apes
That kept saying pointless stuff to me
As I hoped for them to leave me be,
While I played alone in a dark corner
Of our anxiety-inducing apartment,
Pretending to know about dinosaurs.
Now I’d like to meet a dinosaur
Who knows what I want better than I do.
A velociraptor who doesn’t look at me like
‘Are you okay?’, but ‘Do you want to play?’,
An einiosaurus who asks me if I’m lonely,
So he can put his arm around me
And say things that make me blush.
All I retain is a shitty imagination
In an old, broken-down body,
And a rotten brain.
Just once, I’d love to see a dinosaur
Get run over and flattened by a car
If only so I could tell random people,
Who would think I had lost my mind.
Nowadays I know better than anyone
How useless all these dinosaurs are,
So I just kill them whenever possible
With my bare hands or available guns
(They keep coming back from the dead).
Back when I was a shitty kid,
I didn’t know what a spider was,
Just that I hated so much
How it crawled inside my skin
And made its nest under my scalp.
I would love to cut open my belly
And pull out my innards
To let those spiders crawl out,
Which may then crawl into my mouth
To chew on my greasy tongue
Until I choked on blood and bile.
I can’t wait to get rid of them.
They’ve turned my guts inside out,
And the only way to make it stop
Is to crush those fucking things
In between my fingers,
Then spit on the remains
Of the bodies of these arachnids
Whose existence makes me sick,
Who fuck with my head
Making me think and feel like shit.
I’m not a fucking spider,
Yet they insist on making me one
By trapping me inside my skin,
Where I’ll rot away from within.
I am still me, and I will always be,
Even if I don’t want to be anymore.
I can hear the spider’s laughter,
Hear it screaming,
As I lie in bed at night
Trying to sleep as my thoughts spin
Around in circles of nothingness.
The spider’s laughter and screams
Keep me awake for hours on end,
My eyes wide-open with fear.
I ache for some kind of release,
But my brain won’t shut off
As the arachnid twists and tumbles,
Spinning its webs across my mind.
There’s no way to escape
This monster in my head.
At least now I can picture it,
The monster that lurks inside me:
It’s a disgusting, hairy spider
That mainly cares about keeping
Its slimy legs wrapped around me
As it nibbles on my brain tissue.
I was born a dinosaur.
I was born a human,
But I want to be a dinosaur again.
Forget the stupid ape,
Let me go back in time
And become a dinosaur.
I’ll take all the risks.
I’ll grow big and strong.
I’ll have sex with any dino.
I’ll eat a thousand babies
If that’s what I must do.
When I was thirteen, and for a whole year,
I was obsessed with this poor, pretty girl
For who I was nothing but an ugly annoyance,
A relentless weirdo with nothing to offer,
Who couldn’t even understand himself
And who was controlled, robot-like,
By the primitive forces in his brain,
Which made him act and react wildly
To a world that seemed totally foreign,
Even though he knew perfectly well
That he didn’t belong in it.
I was very much into mangas,
As well as Crichton’s sci-fi books.
There hasn’t been anyone else like him.
I read his ‘Sphere’ like a hundred times.
I guess it wasn’t that good in retrospect,
But I desperately needed that escape
From my worthless life as a turd teen.
For a few years I drew so many comics
That I thought I would sell some one day,
But the cast was a mix of existing characters
From mangas, animes and video games.
I didn’t dare create my own stuff
In case people thought it was shit.
But I got to live through those guys,
They kept me from offing myself
(I wouldn’t be here if I had a gun).
I also wrote plenty of stuff, of course,
But my mother didn’t believe in privacy;
I had to learn a whole different language
To write down my painful thoughts.
That broken woman even complained
That she couldn’t understand English.
At times I thought writing was a waste,
That I should instead spend my time playing
The only kind of game that mattered:
The one where you get to hurt yourself.
My mother often berated me
About my lack of social skills.
It’s not my fault that I was born
With this nasty monster in me.
They’re the ones who fucked up.
I didn’t need them nor their love,
So I just kept doing what I was best at:
Being a shitty teenager with no friends
Who daydreamed about hanging himself.
I wanted to live in my own bedroom
To spend every day with the shutters down.
I don’t remember a single moment
Of happiness in my whole life.
I always felt like a stranger
In my own skin.
I can’t remember all the video games,
Many of which did count as obsessions,
Because they captured my whole brain
And made it impossible to think
Of anything else except how to win
(I was sick of losing at everything else).
When that bitch cheated and left,
I spent six months of real time
Managing my local football team.
I barely slept, I rarely took showers.
I video gamed my way through pain.
I have always hated football;
My old man had headed too many balls
And lost what remained of his IQ.
After I played a tennis video game,
I became curious about those fit girls.
That was all it took for the spider to tug.
I learned everything there was to learn
About female tennis players,
At least the beautiful, sexy ones,
Particularly those from Eastern Europe,
Because I wanted to fuck them all,
And it’s hard to find good Russian porno.
I’d rather watch an erotic ballet.
For a few years, from morning to night,
I was obsessed with a Californian harpist,
And whatever I lived through in this world,
I wondered what she would have thought.
I even wrote a whole novel about her;
I didn’t have the guts to call it fanfiction.
It took seeing her in person for me to realize
That I’m nothing but a stupid, broken man
Who holds on to the first available ledge,
Because I’m too much of a coward to fall.
I’m a loser who doesn’t know when to quit.
I only have two things to offer:
My self-loathing
And my inability to understand myself.
The harpist taught me a lot, though:
She made me look inside and see the truth.
I wish she hadn’t; I got a load of new data
That I still haven’t been able to use
To make my life better.
The only times I’m grateful to the spider
That commands this decaying frame,
Are when it orders me to lose myself
By living vicariously through fiction.
Once I feel the fire of a story burning,
I forget to eat, I can’t fall asleep.
I can pull off 7,000 words a day.
Only then this world makes sense.
Too bad that I was compelled to write
At times when I had to hold down jobs.
I lost a couple of them because of that,
Because I just couldn’t give a fuck.
In fact, I’d rather be unemployed
Than have to strangle my obsessions.
I can’t wait to cut off these damn legs
That keep hurting me and making me bleed,
Because I need a dose of pure obsession
Every once in a while to remain sane
(I don’t want to be a human anymore).
I was born a dinosaur.
I am a dino, I will die a dino.
Before I was a reptile,
I was a fucking monkey.
I’ll never go back to being a man,
But I could live like one again
If I owned the right tools
To get rid of my goddamn brain.
I have no idea how I managed
To stay alive all these years.
I suppose I’m somewhat obsessed
With the many varieties of VR sex,
But I need the pleasure of coming,
Or else I won’t feel anything at all
Except the cold grip of reality
As I stare up at the ceiling.
I started a novella a few weeks ago
About this writer who became homeless
And then ended up in the future.
Although I’ve tried returning to it,
I just can’t force myself to care.
I was so invested in it at the start,
But my interest disappeared.
The fickle spider tugged me away.
At the most I can hope that I’ll return
And finish it one of these days.
I intended to list a myriad of obsessions
That have kept me going until now,
But for all of these shitty thirty six years
I have relied on the spider’s decisions,
An alien force with its own agenda,
To escape from the meaningless pain.
Only when I’m alone in a silent room
I have been able to relax and feel free,
And forget about whatever bothers me.
Then, I let that spider out of its cage,
Let it crawl up and down my self
Until it has covered me with its sticky web,
Which will then pull me into a deep trance
Where I’ll dream of inhabiting a new body,
One free of my years-old problems,
Without obsessions,
So I won’t have to worry anymore
About being sick, or getting older,
Or growing up,
Or needing someone to take care of me,
Or wanting to die.
I’m well aware how that damn spider
Came to command my broken brain.
I was born with this autism thing,
High-functioning or otherwise.
It took meeting some others in person
For me to understand how annoying
Autistic people get when they go on
About their pathological obsessions,
But I always write whatever I want,
Because I need that to remain myself.
Even if I’m not able to understand
Why the world is such a painful place,
I don’t want to waste my limited time
On things I don’t give a shit about.
So when the spider comes to tell me:
“Stop whining and become more obsessed,”
I obey,
But I still think I should be allowed to whine.
My obsessions are my friends,
They help me to see the world
Without the interference of the bullshit
All the ape bastards crammed into my brain.
I’m sure I’ll die of some terminal disease
(Alzheimer’s and cancer run in my genes).
Otherwise I’ll hang myself or jump off a cliff.
Until then, I will need to write obsessively
About whatever this spider fucker focuses on.
I have never felt like this shitty life mattered
As when I lived through someone else’s skin.
Barely anybody reads my trash,
So if you happened to read this,
I would say “Sorry for annoying you,”
But I’d rather stay silent than lie.
The truth is that I wrote this crap
Because I needed to add meaning
To another pointless workday.
If you ever meet me in real life,
Don’t hit me over the head with a shovel
(I’ve had enough of being a monkey),
And please remember to feed the spider
That inhabits my skull.
You better stop reading my stuff.
I only have worry and misery to share,
And I need that little bit of company
Even if it means a like in my screen.
So stop bothering with this bullshit
And protect your valuable brain
From the endless stream of trash
I send down this shitty old pipe.
Interdimensional Prophet (Poetry)
When Dr. Grayson Munchkin was born,
He was left to die in a gutter by his mother,
With the aim of sending him to Hell
For ruining everything she held dear
As a result, many of Munchkin’s students,
And even some of his esteemed colleagues,
Got used to mentioning Munchkin’s mother
As fondly as that lovely lady deserved
Anyway, you should address Grayson Munchkin
By putting the ‘Dr.’ in front of his name
The guy will likely get pissed otherwise
He believes himself to be the kind of handsome
Which makes a female-filled team impracticable,
So it’s mostly dudes in his team of researchers
Who discovered how to access other dimensions
To be fair, a few women do work in his team
But most of them were raised in single parent homes,
And they tend to keep their distance from men like him
Even if they’re attracted to him (and he’s sure they are)
It would be impossible for a woman to make love
To someone who thinks that he owns all things
And who’s too self-centered to care about anything else
His team relies on interdimensional resonance
And dimensional stability fields
To open the miraculous portal holes,
Which create an imbalance between nearby universes
With differing degrees of dimensional density
As a result, those dimensional densities
Cause one universe to destabilize
Towards the next dimensional layer
One key is the advanced material plasmodum,
Of which the dimensional portals are built,
But the main key is a blood sacrifice
Other dimensions can’t be accessed otherwise
The amount varies based on the size and density
Of the stuff that the dimension to access contains
Dr. Grayson Munchkin believes that it’s due
To the dimensional energy stored in living beings
Be careful when controlling the dimensional instability,
Otherwise all sorts of nasty things would happen
It might be best if only people who aren’t crazy,
Like Dr. Grayson Munchkin, get to use the portals
You’d think that opening portals into new dimensions
Would make humanity more powerful and influential
In fact, the portal technology is so dangerous
That Munchkin intends to keep it under wraps
Also because he’s afraid of losing control over it,
And because potential competitors outside the college
May compromise the team’s research and development
Everybody else in the world is too stupid anyway
They’ll never understand how it works
Each day at eight AM sharp, Munchkin’s classroom fills
With eager young minds who all look forward
To the thrill of opening another dimensional door
They connect with an infinite number of dimensions,
Most of them wildly different to our own
A new dimension will always be random,
But they can input the coordinates of a previous one
Many researchers are obsessed with gaining knowledge
Munchkin wants to explore strange and interesting life
Hiding in the myriad of unimaginable realms,
But he also has his greedy eyes on the possible wealth
In secret, he wants to come across the presence of a god
In any of the dimensions they will venture into
When Munchkin was a child, his father used to tell him
That old cliché, “Life is a journey, not a destination,”
So Munchkin feels like this is the time for him to embark
Into a world filled with mysteries and wonders
The portal technology could change the course of history
Or it could just end up being another scientific fad
Some of Munchkin’s students have the right attitude
And they’re willing to do anything for science
Every exploration team is trained in the art of phlebotomy,
In case they need to draw blood in a strange dimension
A dormant portal couldn’t be activated otherwise
So Munchkin’s team has a lot of experience drawing blood
From their fellow humans, and sometimes animals
When Munchkin decides to fire up a whole new dimension,
His team has no clue what will await on the other side
Merely connecting to another dimension is dangerous;
An uncontrolled decompression sucked in two students,
Who were lost forever in some unknown dimension
His team relies these days on the airlock they built
To prevent dimensional leaks during the process
The portal opens and the team of scholars enters
All members wear protective gear
With a helmet, goggles, breathing apparatus
And a space suit to protect against radiation
Dr. Munchkin keeps insisting to the dean
That they should equip them with nuclear reactors
But the dean refuses to spend money
On such a useless piece of equipment
Besides, she’s worried about liability issues
And the university doesn’t want to be sued
By the parents of some dead nerds
The team is divided into two groups:
One group will collect data from the other dimensions,
And the second is charged with maintaining the portal
In the beginning, the exploration teams were terrified
They only ventured a few meters beyond the portal,
And that’s if the new dimension seemed safe enough
If they caught a glimpse of alien life similar to beasts,
They were quick to gather their things and flee home
On many of the dimensions discovered,
The only life was weird fungi
It’s not that those places were barren;
It seems they never developed plant life
In some other dimensions, though,
Life existed only as plant-like entities
The teams explored those dimensions further
They kept an eye on each other
Through makeshift communication devices
Made out of plant fibers and animal guts
The animals were brought from home, though
As a result, the explorers had to deal with the smell
Of the creatures’ carcasses
The first animal life was discovered by accident:
The team found itself standing among beasts
That looked like trees standing on their roots
They walked around but seemed peaceful enough
And they didn’t attack nor try to eat the explorers
One member of the team, a girl named Ruth,
Became fascinated with the plants
She studied them intently and learned their language,
Which she used to communicate with the beast-trees
Ruth eventually became one of the leaders
Her name means ‘earth’ in Hebrew
That’s why the rest of her team called themselves
Earthlings, after the planet Earth,
But also because they came from Earth
Anyway, Ruth was nicknamed ‘the forest scientist’
Her interest in the flora of those dimensions
Saved the lives of several members of her team,
As they tried to make it back home
They reported what they’d seen to Dr. Munchkin
He got a kick out of seeing his students in action,
Especially when the stories were related to him
They came across disturbing walking octopi
With tentacles like sea snakes
They tried to climb into the explorers’ clothes
To get at the blood within
The team also encountered a strange kind of grass,
A twisted monstrosity resembling a human hand
When one explorer cut off its disturbing fingers,
Its body melted away to reveal a creature inside
That resembled a cockroach with tar-like wings
The scientists were so shocked, they fled the scene
They made it back safely to the portal and sealed it
After one of the expeditions,
They all had the same dream
In a dark, alien forest appeared
A deformed creature with a human head
It chased the explorers through the trees
One of the members, whose name was Sam,
Was convinced that he saw the face
Of his mother in that nightmare
He told the others that it wasn’t a dream
Munchkin decided to shut off that dimension
So it wouldn’t be explored further
The team of researchers are usually on good terms
Mostly, they’re just colleagues
Dr. Munchkin has to keep reminding them
To keep quiet about their portal technology
In case the government catches wind of it
And decides to hide the portal in the Smithsonian
An undercurrent of excitement and curiosity
Runs beneath the surface of every team
Who knows what kind of strange creatures
May lurk inside the next dimensional door
Dr. Munchkin hopes that they’ll find the key
To unlock the secrets of the universe,
And maybe even discover a god or two,
But they don’t know if their discoveries
Will ever see the light of day
One of the new dimensions was so snowy
That the team barely managed to set up their tents
When a sudden blizzard destroyed the expensive gear
Most of the team members got treated for frostbite
Another dimension contained an infinite number
Of beings with bodies made entirely of glass
They weren’t aggressive, they just sat there
And watched the team walk past
A dimension was filled with beautiful flowers,
And some of the plants were so large and vibrant
That they looked like paintings,
But they had no scent
A new dimension turned out to be full of fog
So thick that the team could hardly see
But this wondrous, misty realm
Had a strange beauty all on its own
One dimension seemed to be nothing
But clouds and an endless sky,
No ground in sight
One of the most interesting places visited
Was a dimension filled with living crystals
That looked like diamonds and sapphires
The only way to get into the caves
Where the crystalline life resided
Was by climbing down a hole in the ceiling
The team discovered an entire ecosystem
Of crystal-based creatures
A dimension was filled with floating rocks,
And the ground underneath was covered in dirt
It had the appearance of being an endless beach,
But the team didn’t find water anywhere
Some tiny, fluffy little animals were crawling around
They were a cross between a bird and a caterpillar
One member of the group was fascinated by the critters
She kept petting one as it crawled across her arm
Her teammates started to tease her about getting weird,
Then she realized that the little animal was trying
To crawl inside her clothes, so she jumped back
A few of the dimensions the team visited
Were filled with otherworldly music
They never figured out how it originated,
But the sound was so soothing and beautiful
That the team found themselves dancing,
And they kept going until they fell asleep
Once they woke up, they felt disturbed
By having been stripped of their free will,
And were quick to return to the college
They told the dean what had happened
Her response was to lock them in the cellar
Until they’d recovered from the experience
One dimension’s air smelled like rotten eggs
And when a team member took a whiff,
His nose started bleeding and everything went black
To be fair, he should have worn his oxygen mask
The team also discovered dimensions
That were hit regularly with catastrophes
They were referred to as the Hell Dimensions
No complex life would survive for long
Some dimensions seemed to exist
Only in the minds of the explorers
They called them the Imaginary Dimensions
Nobody could explain those
Dr. Munchkin’s team is growing
They’ve catalogued dozens of new dimensions
Each time they open another portal,
The possibility of a discovery grows
Whenever an exploration team returns
They share the exciting results with their colleagues,
Who are compelled to investigate more
Their curiosity drives them on
Dr. Munchkin keeps telling them: “We’re pioneers”
But he doesn’t tell them that they’ll probably die
They could spend an eternity exploring
Dr. Grayson Munchkin wants to go further
He hopes that his discoveries will change history
In the process he might even find a god or two
It becomes widely known among the local scholars
That Munchkin is opening portals to strange realms
Through the equipment that his team developed
Many new faces get involved in the explorations,
Which causes an explosion in their workloads
The dimension researchers work late into the night
They’re always on call to deal with emergencies
Dr. Grayson Munchkin isn’t afraid to take risks,
And he’s rarely the one to put his life on the line
Many of the dimensions his team explores
Are Amazon-like, untapped wildernesses
Dr. Munchkin’s people carry ropes and climbing gear
The team members end up having to rappel down cliffs
Or cross chasms that separate two mountains
They have to be careful not to fall into the abyss
Many of the students spend hours each day
Documenting everything about the flora and fauna
Of the many strange dimensions they’ve catalogued
Every detail needs to be remembered
One dimension was a dark void that stretched on forever
No matter how far the team walked,
They never reached an edge
In one dimension that was catalogued as desert-like,
The sand turned out to be made of tiny bugs
It looks like the surface of Mars, but it’s all bugs
Some were small enough to enter through the pores
Two members ended up covered with thousands of bites,
One of them has never stopped screaming
In one dimension, the team discovered a world
Where there are no seasons or weather patterns
It’s a constant, eternal summer
Some researchers planned to build luxury resorts
Sometimes they found ancient ruins or abandoned cities
With the buildings crumbling and empty
Other times they came across strange devices
That resembled far more complicated calculators
In one dimension that was dominated by birds,
Most of the team members got lost inside a forest,
But the dimension had an endless supply of fresh water
When they returned, even the women had grown beards
A coordinate led to a place of giant, dinosaur-like lizards
They could fly using the power of the wind,
And they’d hunt prey with powerful jaws
The team quickly realized that the lizards
Were on a quest for a mythical source of energy:
Dragon eggs that contained unlimited magic
The team isn’t sure how it learned this information,
But they didn’t want to wait around to be eaten
Another dimension is a lush green paradise
The team explored it for weeks,
But then a sudden storm swept in
Tornadoes appeared and destroyed the tents
One dimension’s air tasted like salt
Even though the team wore oxygen masks
The members became sick and nearly died
One dimension seemed to be a solid block of ice
The team used axes and hammers to break it
And they discovered that the interior was filled
With a substance that looked like mercury
A dimension populated solely by mushrooms
Was so fertile and beautiful
That a few associated mycologists
Decided to build a mushroom city
They even erected a monument
To commemorate their discovery
One dimension is filled with a kind of plasma
It has an eerie purple glow
The team discovered it was a type of life
That had evolved to survive in space
The floor in one dimension was so muddy
That the team sank to their waists
They now thank the heavens for their ropes
In that strange, swampy land
The massive aquatic plants grew tall
With trunks as thick as skyscrapers
Exploring some dimensions involved constant tension
The team had to give up any sense of security
Because some expeditions had gotten so dangerous,
Dr. Munchkin hired explorers of jungles and seas
To guide the researchers through the unknown
One of the teams discovered a giant mushroom,
Three meters tall and covered in tiny white hairs
A mycologist cut out pieces and ate them
The others were terrified that they might poisonous
Predictably, they were hallucinogenic
But also allowed that researcher to understand
Both the language of mushrooms across dimensions
As well as understand their hierarchy and needs
Munchkin had gotten sick of mushrooms by now
He wanted to move on to something else
A group of explorers encountered
A creature with eyes in its armpits
The being could see all the way
To the end of time and space
And it spoke to them telepathically
They knew that they would have no choice
But to obey its every command
In one dimension, the team found a vast, oceanic cavern
Teeming with fish that could swim through solid rock
There was a squid with tentacles thicker than trees
The team tried to swim right past it without it noticing,
Until one of the men accidentally bumped into it
The monster’s mouth snapped shut, swallowing him
They heard a loud crunching sound from inside the beast
The others were able to escape by swimming away
In some dimensions the explorers came across creatures
That resembled humongous spiders and centipedes
The team was never able to identify them
They were too busy fighting off giant ants
That could eat a person whole
One dimension had a population of talking insects
They spoke in their own incomprehensible tongue
No matter how many times the explorers asked,
They just couldn’t figure out what they meant
When the explorers entered one of the dimensions,
Their skin immediately started changing colors
The researchers thought it must have been the light,
But their skin keeps changing colors to this day
In one dimension the team met a creature
With the body of a lion and the head of a horse
It smelled like sulfur and its claws were huge
The explorers’ rifles took care of the threat
Some dimension was full of enormous jellyfish
That emitted a brilliant, neon blue light
The scientists were surprised to learn that the jellyfish
Could live outside the ocean, but not inside of it
One night, some drunk students accessed the portal
And got afflicted by some strange spores,
But after a few days of a high fever
They were able to control objects through telekinesis
Nobody came across those spores again
Dr. Munchkin wanted the power for himself
Many believed that they could snatch other powers
Or even technological remnants from alien races
Munchkin wished to increase his worth dramatically
By gaining such powers beyond humanity
In one dimension, some predators were invisible
And they could move at impossible speeds
A few of the veteran explorers were killed
The team brought back corpses of these creatures
They could be touched and weighed,
But remained invisible in every wavelength
Another dimension was a sea of blood
The team discovered a special property:
If it touched a human’s bare hand,
It will cause their bones to dissolve
The teams became addicted to exploring alien worlds
They always returned home with a new discovery,
But they were more interested in finding novel places,
So they didn’t explore previous worlds thoroughly
Some chemists used some plants brought back
To synthetize a new drug they called zodalite
It provided great euphoria and hallucinations
Many of the explorers went out while high
An entire team of explorers, some quite veteran
Were found turned into stone statues
Nobody learned what the fuck happened
That was the end of that expedition
One team encountered a large, pink slug
Its body was made of rubber and it squirted acid
The team tried to kill it with their guns,
But the acid melted through the barrels
Other dimensions were filled with creatures
With tentacles that stretched out of sight
Most of them were carnivorous and hungry for flesh
The researchers decided not to enter those realms
One of the dimensions was home to black clouds
That somehow were alive and ravenous
One of the clouds followed the team home,
But some researchers managed to train it
The cloud now hauls materials around
The researchers no longer worry about it
In another dimension, the explorers came across a creature
That looked like a giant eyeball with a mouth
The scientists couldn’t figure out how to communicate
With this alien life form, so they just left it alone
They had to keep watch over the creature
Because it might shoot a beam of light out of its eye
And destroy everything within range of the beam
That was a problem for everyone, except for the creature
Some scientists got addicted to zodalite,
And they went out to explore every night
Just to get high and feel the euphoria
A few of them even tried eating a weird moss,
Which made their heads explode
A few of the veterans ate too many mushrooms,
And got bitten by too many weird insects,
And have lost their goddamn minds
Now they can speak the language of dogs
One of the researchers ate by mistake a weird leaf
That changed her into something like a plant
She spent all of the next year growing massive leaves,
Until she was eaten by a giant spider
In some dimensions, the explorers found ancient ruins
The buildings were covered in a thick layer of moss
Some of them looked like they’d been built out of mud,
But others had intricate designs on the walls
One of the explorers got bitten by a strange snake
He grew long fangs that dripped black saliva
The other researchers shot a few photos
Before their cameras exploded
One of the explorers was swallowed whole
By a worm the size of a bus
After being digested, the creature spat out
A bunch of small worms that crawled everywhere
Along the way, Dr. Munchkin’s teams also discovered
Dimensions that were home to sentient species
There first one involved an island
And its tiny society of sentient turtles
They never made themselves understood
Turns out that turtle language is hard to comprehend
One dimension was populated by sentient crystals
That communicated using vibrations
They kept making sounds that resembled music,
But the team never managed to discover
What they were singing about
One world was full of dunes under a harsh sun
The researchers encountered cicada-like insects
That had evolved to become intelligent and peaceful
Their queen requested regular meetings with humans
These creatures relied solely on the vegetables
That they had to harvest every few seconds
One dimension was populated by a race of bees
As big as any regular house back on Earth
They were docile and eager to talk with the teams
Somehow they were able to fly, but only when it rained
One dimension was populated by a race of tiny people
They looked like little old men in dresses
The explorers discovered that they were asexual,
But they did have a social hierarchy
One dimension has a race of winged humanoids
Who can fly through space and time at will
And who are completely immortal
The team investigated for weeks before they realized
That the flying people were actually ghosts
They keep searching for their bodies, without success
In one of the dimensions, the team encountered
An army of ants that marched in formation
And carried weapons made out of bones
The scientists quickly retreated back home,
As the ant-soldiers advanced upon the portal
One dimension’s air was filled with an electrical charge,
And when the team stepped outside they could feel a tingle
The team members soon realized that the electricity
Was coming from two enormous towers in the distance
When the team approached the towers, they saw a man
Who had wings of pure gold and a tail of fire
The team ran back to the portal, waiting open for them
The man didn’t attack, but he did send out a message
That said: “Don’t go near the towers”
A team discovered a civilization of sentient butterflies
Some of the explorers became butterflies, which was nice
One of the dimensions resembled Mars
The world was a barren wasteland,
But in the distance, the team glimpsed what appeared to be
The outline of a large city hundreds of kilometers away
They were so excited that they forgot to take pictures
A team discovered a civilization
Similar to the Roman Empire
Some historians planned
To keep in touch with them
So they would avoid lining
Their pipes and aqueducts with lead,
They would protect themselves
Against monotheistic religions,
And make sure to defend
Their overstretched borders
For a puzzling race of humanoids that one team discovered,
Time worked by passing it from person to person,
Instead of existing simultaneously as they aged
The researchers can’t wrap their minds around that
The team learned to speak the beings’ simple language,
And they pleaded for them to explain their existence,
But the creatures just kept repeating:
“We don’t age. We pass time.”
One expedition found itself in a world of rocks
The walls were covered with huge, bizarre faces
Some of the team members took pictures
The expedition leader, who was named Gail,
Thought she’d take a selfie but ended up taking
The picture of an alien with two heads
She said, “I didn’t mean to do that”
But Dr. Munchkin laughed and congratulated her
Because now they had a photo of an alien
Their colleagues kept making dirty jokes
About aliens with double-headed dicks
Gail was embarrassed by the attention
The portal opened and the explorers entered,
And the team ran into a horde of giant spiders
They were much bigger than the ones that inhabit Earth
Their webs stretched as far as the eye could see,
And they surrounded the group of explorers
The spider-people were interested in Ruth’s plant life
They wanted to study it, and she was willing
To give them some samples of the weirdest plants
One of the dimensions looked like a medieval village
Where the residents were all wearing armor
The adventurers came across an old knight,
Who told them that they needed to find the ancient
Megalithic structure called the Citadel
That was located somewhere in the mountains
The team leader wasn’t interested in sidequests
In one dimension, the team met an intelligent race of beings
Who built enormous structures that reached the sky
The buildings were made of living stone
The team was surprised to learn that the people
Could grow new buildings whenever they needed them
The researchers keep speaking fondly
About a dimension home to a race of cat people
They looked like humans, but if humans were cats
Their furs were vibrantly colored, tiger-like
The female cat-folk loved the bare-skinned humans,
Because they reminded them of newborn cat-folk
They were aroused by the sight of men in uniforms,
And when the females discovered that human penises
Weren’t barbed and wouldn’t rake their vaginas,
Copulation with the researchers became commonplace
The male cat-folk were understandably pissed,
But they were ruled by a wise, beautiful queen
Who forced them to accept their cuckoldry
Some female cat-folk and humans became couples,
And those cat-folk were allowed to live back on Earth,
Which made it quite hard to keep the operation a secret,
Because human-sized, intelligent cats kept walking around
The whole experience with those sexy cat-folks
Made many researchers eager to discover more peoples
And bring some home, regardless of their sexiness
They even tried seducing some lizard-folks,
Who had a high degree of sexual dimorphism,
And they were able to get them into bed
After a few nights of drinking the local beer
The lizard-men would become horny as hell
One of Munchkin’s teams found a world
Where they could find all the meat they needed,
As long as they were willing to butcher sentient cows
Some were brought home and now live happily
Having to do nothing else than ruminate grass
While they ponder the mysteries of the universe
Some dimensions were alternate versions of Earth,
And the researchers got to meet their own selves,
Many of who had taken different paths in life
One of those Earths was entirely populated
By murderous clones of Dr. Grayson Munchkin
The professor was overwhelmed by a primal fear
And ordered his team to flee home immediately
Munchkin spent days in his lodgings pondering
How such a horrible dimension came to be
His mind started getting filled with images of gore
He gave up after he felt his sanity slipping,
But then, one day, an image popped into his head
Of a certain scientist named Niels Bohr
This, however, had no relevance to his plight
With a few portals operating twenty-four-seven
And many researchers running around like crazy,
Munchkin’s team had trouble funding new expeditions
They sold off on the black market some exotic artifacts,
And new expeditions were motivated by monetary gains
A few researchers went into an ore-rich dimension,
But they were greedy and dug too deep,
Which unleashed a horde of demons
An entire building of the university got destroyed,
And those trapped inside were slaughtered
Soon after, a traumatized researcher shot herself
That coordinate was forbidden and Munchkin decided
To go into hiding for several months
Some researchers warned Dr. Grayson Munchkin
That the portal network was becoming unstable,
And if it collapsed onto itself, it would cut off
Everybody’s access to parallel universes,
Alternate histories, and alien civilizations
Munchkin intended to exploit the network to its limit
A few months later, some dimensional coordinates
Were severed from the portals permanently,
And two whole teams were stranded there
One of them included Ruth, ‘the Forest Scientist’
She was forced to live in a cave with an angry bear
Her old team members, including Gail,
Had been killed by the demons, but Ruth survived
Dr. Grayson Munchkin remained disappointed
He had explored many dimensions without finding god,
Or anything resembling a being of such powers
With the network becoming unstable, time was running out
He decided to lead most expeditions, taking bigger risks
To see if the network could reach farther and further
In a dimension where the animals teleported wildly,
He noticed that they kept drinking from milkish lakes
Munchkin dared to drink the liquid, and as he did,
The professor passed out, and he fell into the lake
When his students found him, instead of having drowned,
Munchkin remained in a trance-like state that lasted a week
When Munchkin returned home, he had gained a power:
Whenever he blinked, he travelled in time uncontrollably
It sent him either minutes to the past or to the future
His colleagues could only watch helplessly
Munchkin tried to figure out how to get rid of this power
Desperate, he turned himself in for questioning
The policeman turned out to be himself, who berated him
For refusing such a gift from the gods of the multiverse
Munchkin kept exploring other worlds with his students
When one of the freshmen got eaten by a huge bat,
Munchkin travelled back in time five minutes to save her
That made him quite popular among the ladies
Then, Munchkin focused on mastering this ability
To travel to any point in history, even other dimensions
He learned to open literal doors in the fabric of spacetime
Through a form of meditation he called a ‘quantum key’
Munchkin realized that his eyes could work like cameras
He peered into other dimensions to see if they were good
The professor started to explore many alternate Earths
Where the course of history had been more to his liking
In one dimension he found creatures that worshipped Satan
And where the human inhabitants burned for eternity
The press had gotten ahold of some of the cat-folk women
Who cheerfully explained all about their home dimension
The cat was out of the bag, now the government knew
And suddenly the myriad of disappearances and deaths,
Including some blown up corpses of random students,
Had convinced some government officials to intervene
Meanwhile, Munchkin kept travelling in time at will,
As well as exploring other dimensions with his mind
He felt little connection with human beings anymore
His research had become an obsession with him
Munchkin told himself that his powers came from god,
And now the press kept mentioning him and his work:
He was the great man who created dimensional portals
The world was eager to listen about his discoveries,
But it wasn’t long before people started asking questions
About his motives, his behaviors, his decisions
And the truth became clear for them: Dr. Munchkin
Was a sick fool who had lost control over his mind
Munchkin just laughed, and said that everyone’s reactions
Were typical of the average people who couldn’t understand
That he was doing something important for humanity
Mr. Munchkin had become convinced to fight
On the side of mankind against terrible evils,
And that his purpose would be fulfilled
When human beings were saved from their sins
Munchkin’s wife divorced him and moved to another city
She didn’t want anything to do with a madman,
But she had no choice, because he kept trying
To force her into bed whenever he was nearby
Pressured by the government goons,
The college shut off the portal network
Due to the dangers it put the citizens in
But the president of the United States
Wanted Mr. Munchkin away for good
He had already been indicted on numerous charges
And the feds were going to lock him up forever
The university administration gave Munchkin a farewell
Although they accused him of creating a monster,
The dean was telling him that he had done a great service
When the FBI broke into the college gymnasium
As they pointed their guns at Munchkin, he stripped down
And pissed all over the podium while laughing
He told them to suck his interdimensional cock
And then he vanished into thin air
Dr. Munchkin disappeared: he travelled to the past
He decided to stop at 11,700 years before his present
The glacial conditions of the Younger Dryas had ended
And it was time for the traumatized humans to arise
Dr. Munchkin travelled around the primitive world
Uniting isolated communities with talented sculptors
He told them all about god, and the powers given
They were granted for a noble, holy purpose:
To allow humanity to try again, to build something better
From the nightmarish chaos that they had created
The Made-up Space (Poetry)
I remember a child walking in the rain,
Under an umbrella that hid his face
He wondered how much of that cold
Should anyone have to takeWhen I go outside, it always rains
All the buildings are painted grey
Just standing up is so hard in these shoes
My lungs get tired quickly after such daysThe din of a storm comes through my earbuds
So many years of tuning out, wanting to escape
To a realm without endless talking,
Phones ringing, texts coming in,
Countless stories of faceless people
Leaving their footsteps on the streets,
A faded memory from another country
That might be at the bottom of an ocean,
Or under this dead-end laneMany bodies wrapped in fabric
To cover the cracked shells
Don’t notice me, don’t ask me to talk
You don’t know what’s going on
If you knew, you wouldn’t dare
I breathe without thoughts,
I spew words without music
No one speaks where I live
What I scream, no one hears
There’s just a hollow space
Between two walls of fleshSleeping, eating, pissing, shitting,
Walking, sitting, working, worrying
I check boxes, I live in autopilot
Everything is too hard, it will never change
I wish for the minutes to go down the drainIn that cold, I dream of lying face up,
Hearing a storm through my earbuds
Rain hitting stones, outside and inside
In that dark, I see stars and white light
Of infinite worlds being born in dust
I wait for air and water to burst forth
To fill the space with real things,
A sun to rise by itself each day,
Where a dark void used to beAt night I close my eyes for the last time
In the morning I wake up to start againEveryone I’ve loved
‘The Made-up Space’ by Jon Ureña
Was born in my head
I want to be there
In the made-up space
Realms of Infinite Delight (Poetry)
Everybody knows me now, Edgar Meyer,
The boss of ‘Realms of Infinite Delight’,
But in the beginning it was four of us
Nerds and geeks, three guys and a gal,
United by our love of computer games
I wish I had known them in college
Twenty years ago feels like a long time
Sometimes I still sit around in the office
And play our favorite old video gamesI graduated with two bachelor’s degrees
I always dreamed of creating the worlds
That my mind wished to escape to,
But I languished in coding jobs
And consulting stuff that my dad offered
I would sit around and code in a bar,
Trying to build the dreams of that future
Meanwhile I struggled to find partners
Through those popular dating sites
The girls ghosted me after a few dates
Long story short, I keep meeting a few of them
I turned some AIs into their zombie versions
Here at ‘Realms’ we pimp out dead chicks
Some come out as real whores from Hell,
All the features that my exes could ever desire
A good sex life, money or just deathLetting people create worlds is what defines me
I don’t need the fame and the wealth,
Nor the power to control all these people
I spent nights coding away by flashlight light
Because the world needed Virtual RealityWe started out using different names:
‘VeeR Realms’, ‘VREal Realms’, ‘Reals Realm VR’
They didn’t make any particular sense
We opted for the most logical one, ‘VR Realms’,
But a few days later we realized it was taken
Akane came up with our final, cooler name
We were all thinking about the infinite delights
That would come out of the realms where we ruled
When Akane wrote our domain on a napkin,
Us four founders couldn’t wait to use our company
To fulfill everybody’s wildest fantasies,
And the best part is that nobody saw us comingAt the beginning we were like other start-ups,
Our only customers were developers and ourselves
Me and my colleagues played games all night:
MMOs, FPS, and a few grand strategy titles
Two of us used the primitive gear for VR sex
And we searched for interesting worlds to explore
But when I felt lonely or tired of playing
I would sneak into the bedroom in the back room,
Where I would lie down and masturbate
Many gamers feel like they live alone without anyone
You sit there doing nothing with no goals
Except play video games that you don’t need,
With all your friends having left because you are weird
I wanted out of being a nerd, but nerds never die,
So I had gone into development insteadMy big dream was to let people use virtual worlds
Where everyone’s pleasure was the top priority
Twenty years later, ‘Realms’ has changed our lives
Our customers are not gamers anymore,
They are adventurers who explore the frontiers:
Actors who act all the parts in movies,
Dancers and acrobats that show off before the crowd,
Virtual tourists visiting alien planets and cities,
Pornstars who give out their hot bodies,
Clergymen who walk around Heaven as Jesus ChristThose under 18 want to experience all of this stuff
But we don’t allow kids in our VR realms yet,
Except for a couple of weird Japanese teens
We would let you, so complain to the politicians
Tell them that we want to create VR for everybody
Turn every realm, based on whatever you can imagine,
Into your personal paradiseWe developed our VR gears ourselves, the four of us,
Based on primitive gear, helped by supercomputers
We never spoke about our plans to any outsider
We were that sure that ‘Realms’ would be a hit
In fact, it’s become the world’s biggest phenomenon
Everybody gets their kicks on their favorite device,
Whether living through pornos or their own TV showsFor us, who created ‘Realms’ in the first place,
It was sad to witness the dreams you nurtured
End up buried inside the bodies you were born in,
As if we were cursed the moment we came to exist
So we patented our system that simulates all senses
In virtual worlds created with existing engines
Now the users get to experience them fully
As if they had been born thereThis gear we made, I’m talking thousands of dollars
If you search for the best experiences, they aren’t cheap
But who needs a high-end TV and a regular console
When you can see, hear, smell, touch and taste a beach,
Or walk in the desert, or visit underwater volcanoes?
Our user base is what matters for us the most
‘Realms’ has changed people’s whole lifestyle
They get to visit, if they have an internet connection,
The places where everyone wants to liveEnter our VR worlds by lying on our lounge chairs
The stylish helmet intercepts the information coming in,
And feeds your brain with the fake sensory info we provide
The old gray matter makes sense of whatever it’s given,
It’s too stupid to know otherwise
Once your sensory information is hijacked by our system,
You could get your real life arms and legs sawed off,
And you wouldn’t feel itYou can finally become as real as you wanted
While our AIs take over some basic brain functions,
So your grey matter can focus on experiencing our worlds,
Which are more colorful and satisfying than realityOur users can choose between ready-made worlds,
Created by our team of developers and researchers,
But they have the freedom to create what they imagine,
Even though we offer them medieval and viking worlds
They can build whatever they want, without limitations,
Like their dream apartment or mansion to live in
They can be huge, luxurious, or even under the sea
You can set up your world so you walk through the air
One customer built a virtual world dedicated
To her lifelong obsession with that Harry Potter franchise
She got to make and interact with all those silly characters
One day, as she came back home drunk after work,
She sprinted headfirst into a train station’s wall
She broke her skull and diedOnce you experience ‘Realms’, it will only take a minute,
As you touch and smell and taste a virtual forest,
For your brain to be convinced that you’ve been isekai-d
People have gone in and come out feeling completely healedSome have linked a strange patterns of death in Japan
To players so obsessed with building their virtual world,
That suddenly they forgot what they existed for
In ‘Realms’ you don’t just go somewhere else: you change
You get rid of old age, and can run around naked at will
It resembles a drug addiction, but you won’t get high
If you get too crazy, we sell a variety of pills for that,
So you will stop missing your real life altogether
Still, ‘Realms’ won’t kill your soul the way drugs doOur players interact with the worlds through 3D avatars
Made of polygonal models with realistic texture mapping
We made them very detailed despite the number of vertices
By reducing polygon counts we minimized GPU usage
Our high performance hardware keeps rendering times lowOur users can choose between ready-made avatars
Or just design their own through a myriad of sliders
Their body can belong to any ethnicity and gender
Some avatars have shaved heads, others crazy beards,
Or present themselves to the world as mythical beasts
You can dress up your avatars with fancy outfits,
To look like you are going on a prom date with the queen,
Or masquerade yourself as an assassin or ninja
The avatars can wear special masks and body paint,
Even on skin covered with too many tattoos
Choose to inhabit a zombie body and feel yourself rotting
Choose to be a furry, we don’t give a shit
Just come out of the closet if you are oneWhen some kids watch YouTube videos of the avatars,
They pester their parents until they let them play
We recommend against allowing children into our worlds
All of our tests subjects around that age screamed
Once we took off their helmets, some begged to be killed
They tend to go crazy due to some unmentionable trauma,
And we don’t want to handle those kinds of lawsuits
People under 18 should stay away from ‘Realms’,
Which works better for us because we hate kidsWe also add new outfits and accessories regularly
The users unlock this content through their credit cards
If they purchase an item, we give them a discount
Off their next order for the next twenty four hoursWe have millions of users worldwide,
Who spend billions of dollars every year
There’s one gamer from Sweden
Who has logged over 100,000 hours
In the end he was forced to sell his condo
He would have spent the money on drugs anyway
He wanted to escape from that shitty reality outside
Now he gets to live in his fantasy realm
While his family pays our service billsIn these virtual worlds, where anything can happen,
Our users’ wishes can come true in an infinite way
This place gives people a perfect outlet for those fantasies
They always dreamed of exploring in the real world,
No matter how outrageous they might seemMy wife was disappointed when our company started,
She didn’t understand why I chose VR over reality
She wasn’t patient enough to wait for the big payoff
Four years later we had thousands of paying customers
I wanted to tell her, ‘Come to VR and feel alive!’,
But by then she was long gone,
Except for my zombie version of her hanging from a wall
So now here at ‘Realms’, our customers go wild
We’re bringing back the greatest things to mankind,
Which were found inside computers, still misunderstood
Come explore our worlds and enjoy every inch of them
Whether you want a RPG adventure or something hardcore
The game doesn’t have to endOur users can decide what plays out in our VR worlds
Our servers don’t censor any of the content,
Whether it involves adventure, sex and/or violence,
Experience it fully through our simulated senses
We don’t care about the taboo and the forbidden,
Nobody will judge you in your private worlds
We don’t have copyright claims over the users’ works,
And we safeguard your information and your privacy
Your life stays yours wherever you travel with usOur servers keep on running without user intervention
And the AIs constantly evolve, as they always will,
Those silicon minds are far smarter than ours
If we wanted to change something, we’d make adjustments
But we don’t have any code for their artificial brainsNeed a taste of what our users are enjoying right now?
They look at themselves in bathroom mirrors,
Cook food, iron clothing, wash dishes,
Crawl underneath the bed sheets,
Take a nap,
Send emails,
Smell and taste the best food,
Make their own paints out of different colors,
Sleep over at a friend’s house,
Have fun at pool parties,
Dance topless in a circle around a campfire,
Throw darts at photos of their exes,
Explore the forests or beaches at night,
Run after rabbits,
Go swimming in the sea,
Fart in public,
Read all of Shakespeare’s plays,
Write an epic novel in the genre of fantasy fiction,
Barter away in the streets of London during Christmas,
Live in mansions, high-rise towers, underground bunkers,
Join a rock band,
Learn martial arts,
Go skydiving,
Ride the fastest sports cars,
Play basketball in front of AI crowds in real courts,
Hunt innocent animals,
Roleplay as a lord with servants and maids,
Steal food,
Run naked through an ancient cave,
Drink poison,
Serve alcohol to naked people,
Ride unicorns, or robot horses,
Fight in boxing rings against AIs that look like their exes,
Run over sheep with a truck,
Become soldiers in a war zone,
Work as police detectives,
Wrestle against several men using only one hand,
Catch fire,
Sue people for the royalties they owe them,
Fight in space battles against aliens,
Build a castle,
Kill their enemies with guns, clubs, swords, bows
(It feels great when you score a critical with a hammer!),
Act like superheroes,
Become the president of Argentina,
Explore new planets,
Walk through walls and climb through ceilings,
Have a conversation with a wolf,
Go underwater without drowning,
Pretend to be a wizard,
Drink magic potions,
Are vampires,
Hunt dinosaurs,
Have a dinner date with a vampiric goddess,
Turn into fish,
Feel the inside of a dragon,
Are pirates and treasure hunters,
Flee a city filled with cannibals that love human flesh,
Hunt down orcs and goblins,
Ride into an alley with a rocket launcher/bike,
Taste ice cream on an iceberg during the summer,
Take off their clothes in a room full of monsters,
Ride through the desert in a unicycle,
Fly around on a jet plane,
Become an all-female werewolf pack,
Defraud the IRS,
Rescue maids from brothels,
Learn magic spells,
Walk on the moon,
Get locked away as a prisoner for life,
Dive into rivers carrying a barrel of liquid nitrogen,
Join a war between rival mafia families,
Blow up explored planets,
Explore demon-infested dungeons,
Get torn apart by wild animals,
Lose all their items fighting zombies in a skyscraper,
Kill themselves doing stupid stunts,
Make their own guns,
Ride space dragons,
Use telekinesis to smash enemies,
Fly their spaceship through asteroid fields and wormholes,
Experience the pain of hunger inside labyrinths,
Become a zombie,
Get their throats bitten open by vampires,
Punch sharks,
Drill the shit out of someone’s stomach with a pickaxe,
Harm the ecosystem,
Plummet from a rooftop to their deaths,
Walk over dead bodies to pick up money,
Travel in time with a quantum teleport,
Get eaten by cannibals,
Play around with radioactive substances,
Rescue the dinosaurs from extinction,
Step in front of a bus,
Starve in a deserted island,
Play the roles of sadistic torturers,
Drown someone in a bathtub filled with shit,
Eat human flesh,
Get trapped inside their worst nightmare,
Die from boredom in an empty virtual apartment,
Try out every method of suicide they can imagineSome users go through the Spring Break experience,
But instead of partying at the beach, it’s a desert
The players need protection from the deadly sun
The heatstroke is fully simulatedThe users can try any real life drug in our virtual worlds
To cause effects like dizziness, hallucinations and paranoia
The experiments are safe except for a temporary madness
When somebody gets addicted, our users are asked to visit
Or dedicated world called ‘Realms of Addiction’
There are no cops involved, but we’re still watchingSome users love going to sinful places like adult bookstores
When they return to their virtual rooms, they jack off
Other experiences include working at Chinese sweatshops
The AIs dole out punishment using whips and paddles
But in order to succeed as a slave, you must pass the test
A few players even want their AIs to fuck them during labor
All kinds of activities take place behind closed doorsThe users can experience becoming mentally ill,
Whether with depression, psychopathy or schizophrenia
There are sliders for the level of anxiety and paranoiaMany love the ability to become serial killers
Who can choose between many weapons of murder
They go to movie theaters and shoot everyone
The AIs put their hands together and beg for mercy,
But this doesn’t make any differenceSome users want to be on the receiving end of violence:
They get beaten up, strangled, raped, stabbed, and shot
There are many methods of killing a person,
Just search on YouTube to see some gruesome examples
This includes driving a car into a building,
Poisoning somebody with a lethal disease,
Knifing a man, hanging him from a tree branch,
Shooting a victim three times before decapitating her,
Crushing someone’s skull beneath your heel,
Or burying people alive under the dirt
We have a dedicated world: look up ‘Realms of Death’
Our AIs are trained so they play their roles to perfection
The more advanced users can even learn black magic:
They use dark spells to bring misery to their enemiesYou can experience what we called ‘Breath of the Dragon’:
Our own gauntlet that combines roleplay, virtual sex, gore,
High technology, robots, cyberpunk, anime, and other stuffOur crackerjack programmer Akane
Was responsible for the AIs,
State-of-the-art material,
Encoder-decoder based neural networks
They were trained in supercomputers
Until they passed Turing tests
Now they are far more intelligent
Than anyone you’ve ever known
It’s common to see AI agents
Building cities by themselves
They are sentient, they feel alive,
They have human-like emotions
They walk around their neighborhoods,
Or get on buses and trains
They interact with our virtual worlds in every wayThe users can pick vibrant,
Ready-made personalities for the AIs,
Or they can design one
Through a myriad of sliders
They can change physical traits
Like body type, or skin and eye color,
But that’s assuming you want them
To look like human beings
The AIs can look like any celebrity,
Or like anime girls
Game characters like Tifa Lockhart
Are among the most usual sights
Many customers design AIs
That resemble their crushes or exes
You can even sell your designs
For the AIs’ looks and personality
That has become a significant source
Of income for some creatorsYou can make your virtual partners
Behave however you want,
And they look, sound, smell,
Taste and feel like human beings
Our AIs know everything
About every player they come across
Their personal info,
How they choose to spend their time,
The kinds of AIs they design,
The fantasies they play out
They will act true-to-life when talking,
Using any existing language
They will fulfill every dream,
Behaving like loyal companions
They can do your chores, run errands,
Prepare dinner, do your job
They can serve as masseuses
And pamper you at home
They can be made to wear swimsuits,
Mini-skirts, panties or lingerie
Order them to walk around naked
They are known to drink and smoke
And do drugs from time to time
They feel real enough to cause
Fear and anxiety among users
This is part of the game,
To make you feel wanted by them
We suggest our customers
Use an adequate amount of medication
You may go overboard if you are newShould we tell you how
Most of our users spend their time?
You’ve already guessed it:
Playing out sexual escapades
You can experience the pleasure
Of using vibrators and clamps,
Or being seduced by gorgeous AIs
We allow people to explore
Sex with any gender,
And the simulated senses
Will make you reach intense orgasms
Many models from adult entertainment
Have officially allowed our AIs to look like them,
And they wait eager
To suck your dick or eat out your pussy
You are missing out on so many sexual positions
That would rarely occur in real life
Due to health regulations
Lick and suck on any part that you desire
Some users love watching
Two AIs fucking each other
You can program any AI to live
For gobbling on your cockA game involves the user
Being seduced in an intimate setting,
For example by supermodels
Or high school students,
And if he gets an erection,
The AI throws knives at him
You can fuck AIs that look
Like robots, vampires, mermaids
Some design the agents to look
Like friends or family members,
Which can make the user
Get extremely attached
They spend hours having sex
With close buddies or their fathersYou can watch pornography while tied up with ropes,
Gape your way through tons of human flesh,
Use vagina pumps or g-spot stimulators,
Wrap your tongue around a giant dildo,
Become the sex slave of a beautiful woman,
Fornicate your bestie while they suck some cock,
Use tongue rings to lick a bitch’s asshole,
Shoot cum into a MILF’s belly button,
Slide a strap-on dildo into a bitch wearing a latex suit,
Cum together as friends while you watch horror films,
Fingerfuck one girl while your buddy bangs her twat,
Drill your mistress’ ass without protection,
Cumshot each other’s asses using two fat cocks at once,
Perform lesbian sex on a table covered in sawdust,
Shove multiple fingers up some tight assholes,
Receive a facial from one of your favorite heroes,
Walk around with a horse cock between your legs,
Make an AI look like your wife and experience cuckolding,
Have your breasts milked to suck out your nectar,
Give oral pleasure to your doctor,
Eat cum as if it was salad dressing,
Fuck around with your sister,
Put an aphrodisiac spell on a vampire,
Become an idol and get eaten out by your fans,
Screw girls in animal costumes,
Have sex while riding attractions at amusement parks,
Wear masks that restrict your breath and nose holes,
Feel a schoolmate’s tongue swirling around your dick,
Enjoy having a massive boner as a zombie,
Use magic spells to seduce powerful monsters,
Take turns riding the asses of your friends,
Fuck your dad’s wife using her strap-on,
Get double penetrated while drinking champagne,
Befriend, seduce and fuck a tsundere anime girl,
Have sex in a haunted house during a poltergeist,
Lick and suck cocks at an aquarium,
Experience getting fucked by the naughtiest succubi,
Taste cum directly from a dude’s asshole,
Make girls wear animal costumes and perform circus acts,
Fuck an AI while it’s handcuffed and with a butt plug inside,
Experience BDSM sex with your childhood friends,
Fuck a beautiful demoness with a pet python,
Get sodomized while standing in mud in the summer,
Fellate a vampire while you rub your pussy,
Eat shit while getting fucked in the ass,
Use hot sauce to creampie in your favorite pornstar,
Fuck a zombie’s face,
Screw a maid’s mouth while she’s tied up in ropes,
Use ice cream cones as sex toys,
Get fucked by a nun wearing a strap-on,
Suffer through a lot of pain because your dad hates you,
Get molested in a train by a bunch of ugly bastards,
Bite down, turn sideways on a bed while getting fisted,
Take some dildoes and doggy-style fucking on a leash,
Fuck a horse’s cunt from behind,
Suck a guy’s dick while being forced to dance,
Enjoy sex with a wide variety of crusty furries,
Fellate the headmaster of your old school,
Enjoy making incestuous pairings with your siblings,
Serve a maid whose mistress is your father,
Fuck the doctor who examined you as a child,
Lick off some semen with a mouth stuffed full of cock meat,
Be dominated by horny witches,
Have sex in an asylum with a convicted murderer,
Smother a woman with your tongue,
Let a stranger fuck your tied-up daughters,
Get penetrated by random objects: guns, whips, etc.,
Fuck someone with a robot arm that uses electric shocks,
Be penetrated by a stallion’s beastly cock,
Get some sex with the ghosts of dead women,
Reach orgasm while sucking a giant’s giant cock,
Make yourself pregnant with a magic spell,
Shove fingers into a beautiful woman who is fucking a dog,
Fuck the owner of a castle while your girlfriend kneels,
Shove your cock in that teacher who likes getting spanked,
Be penetrated by horny robots while your dad records it,
Arouse a unicorn by jerking off its horn,
Use a trampoline to bounce away multiple boners at once,
Slide some dildos into a slutty witch that makes potions,
Watch someone fucking your mom at a porno theater,
Fellate some sexy dragons,
Get your dick bitten by a succubus when you’re tied up,
Become pregnant while fucking in a medieval fair,
Fill a monster with cum on the floor of a dungeon,
Fuck someone’s corpse from behind as a ghost,
Have a bull’s sperm shot into every hole,
Use firecrackers to stimulate genitalia,
Shower together with schoolgirls,
Have sex with ancient corpses in a dungeon,
Get fucked by a minotaur while chained,
Distract the doctors with an accident then rape the nurses,
Use a magic wand to blow up your girlfriend,
Shove some metal rods into asses,
Find out how it feels to be filled with an elf’s cum,
Achieve full penetration as an Allosaurus,
Get overpowered by strong women with monstrous cocks,
Suck a boy’s erection while looking him in the eyes,
Possess animals and give sex to cows or monkeys,
Be penetrated by a robot’s cock, then impregnated,
Fornicate with the demon queen,
Become an elephant and fuck a woman in a field,
Perform cunnilingus on your daughter,
Get all your holes filled up by probing tentacles,
Feed an alligator in a swamp with your dick,
Do a 69 with a titan,
Screw a girl who was hanged for witchcraft,
Shove various sizes of dildos into a man’s eyes,
Rip a demon’s cunt open using your fingers,
Give a blowjob to one of the sexy penguins at a zoo,
Kiss a dog’s genitals right after pissing,
Fuck a man to completion while being a zombie,
Drill a demon’s mouth open so that cum squirts out,
Get fucked while riding a broomstick made out of vibrators,
Try to fuck a Stegosaurus,
Eat your own penis to prove you are human,
Douse flames onto your partner’s tits while she screams,
Enjoy torturing a human slave in front of his girlfriend,
Feed your own balls to one-legged dogs,
Fuck an imp while getting raped by a mop-wielding bitch,
Get gangbanged by aliens at an asteroid mining base,
Feel a cock inside you while your head gets chopped off,
Strip a sexy angel before killing her in BDSM style,
Get sodomized by intelligent pigs,
Feathered dinosaur semen explodes through some holes,
Have intercourse while being eaten by spiders,
Bite off cockmeat as punishment,
Lick up the sperm leaking out of a decapitated cunt,
Turn your cock into a knife and shove it in a guy’s throat,
Go down on your mother while being hung up by chains,
Watch your best friend get sliced at your feet,
Be penetrated by a dick covered in razor blades,
Drink some beer while eating a dead girl’s tits,
Beat people with sticks or whips while you shoot your load,
Get fucked up the ass from below while being flayed,
Get eaten alive during orgies involving thousands,
Devour your sexual partners while deep inside them,
Make the AIs look like your ex, chain them up,
Then rape them until they plead for deathThese last few months, pregnant AIs have become popular
They give birth to beautiful baby dolls that the users name
You can watch how they breastfeed this child
While you wonder what fetish to try out nextYou don’t have to play out your fantasies alone:
The interface allows you to invite your friends
We have also introduced live cams and video chat
So random people can enjoy the virtual sex along with youI’m sure any of you has read articles
That the vultures in the press shit out against us
Our users have fallen in love with our virtual worlds
Many of them spend their entire days enjoying them
People join our servers for a wide variety of reasons:
Some want to achieve personal goals,
Some want to escape painful pasts
Nobody wants the fantasies to endIt’s all about the bond
With our human-like AIs
After abandoning the agents
And all the fun
The user gets depressed
By having to return to reality
The AIs are more fascinating and sexier
Than flesh and bone creatures
I’m one of the people
Who wish to stay inside
For the pleasure and the joy
Some users have committed suicide
Once they faced the truth:
The world that nature created
Is a terrible shithole
The withdrawal symptoms even affect
Our employees’ productivity
So when you disconnect from our servers,
Make a mental effort
And stay in a safe place until you get
Adjusted to reality again
You should keep yourself busy
Doing some exercises,
And if that doesn’t work,
You might consider therapy,
But I wouldn’t go for shrinks myself:
Just talk to our AIs,
Who don’t steal so much
Of your hard-earned moneyOur long-time users have gotten
Addicted to the stimulations
And crave stronger and harder penetrations
(By means of cock)
Some go to extreme measures
Such as using vibrators at work
In real life, masturbation and sex
Don’t excite us anymore,
We need to return
To the embrace of our loving AIs
No one will ever accuse me
Of not living up to my dreamsWhen we were young we didn’t care about the future
Just being able to touch ourselves was our goal
Now that we’re older, we know what it feels like outside
Enjoy the virtual sex and stay the hell away from humans
Fucking an AI feels better than real flesh on the inside,
Or perhaps like reality should have felt from the beginning
An AI will never hurt you, cheat on you and abandon you,
And they are far less likely to get pregnant
We all knew that they would love us unconditionally
When they can be set to only feel unending lustOur gear is safe to use
For days in a row, even months
Some of our users never disconnect it,
And sleep in virtual beds
You don’t need to use the bathroom
With our high-tech diapers
A warning: some users might get trapped
After some rare glitches prevent them
From removing the gear
Activate the emergency exit on the interface,
And one of our technicians will contact you shortly
We offer twenty four seven technical supportIn some edge cases, a few users
‘Realms of Infinite Delight’ by Jon Ureña
Have gotten lost forever,
Confined for eternity
In one of our virtual worlds
You should always be careful
When removing your gear,
Even when everything
Has gone dark
If you lose connection,
One of the reasons can be physical:
Your body may have broken down
And begun to decompose
Kanazawahr and the Thousand Immortals (Poetry)
The locals called out to me,
Gildas, the leader of the guard
A strange giant had entered our lands
He had requested to meet with our warriorsI had never seen a bigger man
Our tallest warriors couldn’t reach
The height of his chest
The man’s beard was thick and fearsome
Still, his eyes were wise“My name is Kanazawahr the Immortal,”
The giant stated with a booming voice
“I have spent a long, long time watching
How different tribes destroyed each other
Through pointless wars
I witnessed strong men leading their people
Only to grow old and infirm,
And when they died, their successors
Plunged the land into chaos
For a long time, I wished to live in peace,
But I have decided to act, to assert myself
As the strongest and most powerful
So I can unite so many warring tribes
Into a strong, peaceful empire
That will last for eternity
Under my careful rule”My men and I stood around confused
Such words coming from a regular man
Would have sounded like madness,
But uttered by this powerful giant,
We felt the strength of his convictions
We were eager to keep listening“I ask for you fine, strong men,”
Kanazawahr the Immortal said,
“To follow me to the stronghold
Of the damnable marauders
That have been attacking your town,
As well as the homes of your neighbors
You will witness me destroying them,
Grounding them into dust,
And you shall know
That you can trust me,
That you can follow me,
And that in the end we will become
Citizens of a vast, strong empire
That will rule this world”We followed him out of town,
Through dangerous lands,
And we gathered together
At the edge of the forest,
From where we could see the fort
That the fallen Romans had built
There were raiders standing guard,
But the giant Kanazawahr
Ventured out of the treeline
He addressed us over his shoulder
“Witness my deeds, future brothers,
And imagine how grand an empire
We will build together”Kanazawahr ran towards the fort
His speed was unbelievable
The raiders saw him coming,
But Kanazawahr pounced on them,
And the fiends soon disappeared
In a cloud of dustThe raiders were nasty evildoers,
They attacked the nearby communities
To kill the men, kidnap the women,
And steal everything they could
We had always wanted to destroy them
The giant had made us boldMy men and I hurried up behind him
Kanazawahr the giant led the attack
The fort gate was ancient and strong,
But while the raiders shouted from the walls,
Kanazawahr picked up a huge boulder,
Bigger than what a monster could move,
And he threw it against the gates,
Which exploded inwards
We charged through the fort gates,
Following the fearsome giantWe slaughtered every raider
Inside the fortress,
A righteous massacre
Started Kanazawahr’s empireWe found the captured women,
Kidnapped from many towns
Many of them were pregnant,
Some were holding small children
Their mouths were covered with cloths,
And their eyes were full of fear
As they gaped at Kanazawahr,
Who smiled down on them“You have done nothing wrong,”
Kanazawahr said to them
“I am your saviour, I am here to rescue you
From the cruel hands of the raiders
That have kidnapped you, abused you,
And stolen everything from you
Do not be afraid, do not run,
For soon my empire will begin,
One in which every woman will be safe,
And the children will grow up in peace”
Kanazawahr turned to us, his men
“We will free these women and children,
And take back what has been taken”The raiders had stolen most of the wealth
Of the surrounding communities,
They had brought their captives here
To sell them as slaves
So they could buy more weapons
To ruin the lands all over again
Under Kanazawahr’s wise orders,
We set about returning the goods
Back to their rightful owners
The women cried and laughed
When they realized that they would be free
All of the kids who had been held captive
Were running around in excitement,
Pretending they were also soldiers
It was a glorious dayKanazawahr the Immortal offered us
To become his army
I saw a potential in the stranger,
And we gladly accepted his proposal
I knew it wouldn’t be easy,
But I had faith that he would succeed
Because I knew he was great of heart
I became the giant’s commander,
And I ordered my most trusted soldier
To follow our leader everywhere he wentThe ancient fort of the fallen Romans
Became our stronghold
Kanazawahr the giant lived among us
Some of the rescued women stayed around
They got Kanazawahr to sleep more often,
And made sure his food was preparedWe rode around neighboring lands
And came to learn of many marauders,
Who had taken over towns and cities
Killing everyone who stood in their way
The survivors were terrified,
And not even the sight of a kind giant
Could kindle hope in their hearts,
But they learned to smile again
Once our army returned victorious
Along with the kidnapped women
The local men had joined us in the assaults,
And they got to witness the unlikely miracle
Of our leader, unarmed and bare-chested,
Tearing fiends apart with his bloodied handsI became Kanazawahr’s esteemed friend
I learned that every day he mourned
The death of the many wives and children
He had come to know and love
He never spoke to the men about it,
He just offered us reassuring smiles
Whenever one of his loved ones had died,
Kanazawahr told me with sadness,
He had wished to spend his life alone
With no other companions,
Just to read books and contemplate,
But he knew that if he turned his back
On this dangerous and lonesome world,
Evil men would keep spreading their rotMy men and I had witnessed such deeds
From our immortal, brave leader,
That as we drank and talked one night,
We asked ourselves who could defeat him
Our answer was simple: none alive
Kanazawahr himself spoke up,
“I have a terrible weakness, my friends,
I become too easily distracted by women”
We all laughed merrily at his words,
Glad that our fearsome leader had joked,
But Kanazawahr’s face was one of soberness
“What do you mean?” I asked to him
“It’s impossible for any man, even an immortal giant,
To resist the charms of beautiful women”
We remained silent as our leader chose his words
He told us how in his many years, many women
Had seduced him so completely,
That he would lose sight of his plans,
And settled for decades of peace and romance
Because he had chosen to become our ruler,
He could allow no weakness to lead him astray,
So he entrusted me, Gildas, his right hand man,
The difficult task of forcing an immortal giant
To turn his back on the women eager to love him
Kanazawahr’s held my uneasy gaze with kindness
“Do not fear, for I won’t avoid the touch of women,
Just make sure I don’t lose myself for weeks,
When I should marching for the peace of us all”In the morning of a hot summer day,
As the men and I rode towards the fort,
One of my soldiers reported to me
“An army is invading our lands
On their way to attack the village, sir!”
A group of marauders arrived
Led by a most ferocious-looking warrior
His face was covered in scars
He wore the armor of a Roman soldier,
And his longsword was made of iron
The huge warrior glared at us with hate
We were all ready for battle“Gather your weapons, boys,”
I said calmly without averting my gaze
“Prepare yourselves, be brave
We shall make our leader proud”
I knew that Kanazawahr had been informed,
But we were here to protect the townThe army of raiders,
They shouted and laughed
Their leader charged towards us
He swung his longsword wildly,
Slashing as he wentKanazawahr leaped over the trees
He landed raising a cloud of dust,
And he caught the raider leader’s sword
The giant held onto it so tightly
That the raider couldn’t pull it back
Kanazawahr gave him a chance to speak
“What is your purpose in our territory?”
“We have come to loot, steal, and destroy,”
the raider replied arrogantly
“The people of this land will become slaves,
Or they’ll pay us with their blood”
Kanazawahr snapped the man’s longsword
“I am the protector of these lands,
And anyone who threatens my people
Will face my wrath”The raider tried to strike Kanazawahr,
But our giant leader grabbed his head
And snapped his neck,
Then hurled him away
As the rest of the raiders howled,
Kanazawahr the Immortal spoke to them
“You have the choice to turn around and leave,
Or to stay and fight so we can bring you death”
The raiders were terrified,
But also furious at the humiliation
They roared with rage and chargedA large shadow covered me,
And I looked up in shock
A huge, black bird was soaring above us
Its wingspan was over twenty meters
As it stared down at us,
It let out an eerie cryKanazawahr killed all the raiding fiends
With his huge, bloodied hands
The hearts of the rest just gave out,
They were frightened to deathOur fort grew bigger and stronger
A town formed around it
As the locals set up shops and houses
Kanazawahr wished to build walls
Around that town and others nearby
To protect them against any raids
His army contributed, along with local men
Kanazawahr himself lifted huge boulders
And piled them up high
Every man and woman and child
In these now peaceful lands
Who witnessed our giant leader’s deeds
Was convinced to join him,
Because he had proven his might
He never wanted to be like those fools
Who would go from town to town
Fighting for control of useless lands,
Kanazawahr had different purpose
And a plan for people to followWith power and righteous deeds came
The favors of many, many women
There wasn’t a fertile woman around
Who took a gander at the muscled giant
And didn’t desire to lie with him
If Kanazawahr had not been so kind,
He would have raped them all
Our leader was always willing,
But he preferred to keep them safe
And treat them gently, like his own daughters
Kanazawahr loved and adored his brides,
Mostly because they were beautiful
He gave them nice homes and plenty of moneyThe women spoke of our leader’s mighty member,
They said that the head of a horse could fit inside,
And being ravished by it was like reaching heaven
As I listened to their praises, I feared
For these beautiful women’s health,
But they all seemed pleased,
Despite their awkward gaitI myself witnessed Kanazawahr’s member,
Along with many of my fellow soldiers,
When we were attacked on the road
And our leader ran out of his tent
He had been making love to two of his brides,
So the enemy army was forced to fight
A blue-balled giant with a monstrous cock
Its humongous head was leaking pre-cum,
Which was sliding down from the bulbous helmet
Until it stopped on his powerful thighs
Kanazawahr’s penis was over a meter long
My face twisted in shame as I realized
How tiny mine was compared to itThe attackers’ testicles shrivelled up,
And most of them surrendered with fear
Seeing our leader ready himself,
With lust evident in his eyes
Kanazawahr tore apart some unlucky bandits
His large fingers grabbed them by the throat
Before crushing their heads against the ground
Kanazawahr’s erection continued growing
As its huge veins popped out
It was big enough to crush an entire wagonOur leader aroused with anger was a sight to see
He turned towards us like one possessed
“Fetch me more of these hot women,
I’ll reach my breaking point soon!”
A horde of women followers
Rushed to Kanazawahr’s tent
They couldn’t take their eyes off of him
As he approached them with a raging look
One of his brides ran over to him
Her eyes were wide, with a sense of fear
The giant’s penis was on the verge of bursting,
Just inches away from her open mouth
The woman began to tremble in a trance
While Kanazawahr pulled her onto the bed
The surviving raiders watched in aweWhen we visited the local taverns
Many of the young maidens there
Wished to be on their knees servicing him
“Please let me suck your cock, sir,”
The women pleaded as they drooled
And licked their lips with eager tongues
I felt a tingling sensation in my groin
While witnessing this display of lust
Kanazawahr was always gentle with them,
And paid generously for their servicesSome of the men from our growing territory,
All of them with a strange glint in their eyes,
Wished to pledge their fealty to Kanazawahr
By sucking on his member’s helmet
To swallow what came out of his balls,
Even though their mouths were too small
I wanted no part of such bizarre ceremony,
But I ended up catching some of these men
When they sneaked into Kanazawahr’s tent
The naked intruders waited on all fours,
Their heads turned towards our leader,
Who stood still and took a deep breath
Those men implored to be impaled
By our leader’s gigantic manhood
Surely they would have screamed in agony
As the massive head penetrated their assholes,
But Kanazawahr was weirded out by all this
He always travelled around with many brides,
And he wasn’t into menThe land that our kingdom encompassed
Was filled with woods, rivers, and lakes
There were even snowcapped mountains
I loved to take walks with my wife
Through now peaceful forests
Kanazawahr even accompanied us at times,
Making the place more beautiful
My lord was always on his guard,
Despite his tremendous size and might,
Because any of his trusted men or their families
Could be caught in the fight,
But the one time that some bandits ambushed us,
They recognized the mighty Kanazawahr
The fiends screamed in terror and fledImportant men from neighboring tribes
Would come to visit Kanazawahr,
To watch him ride on his giant stallion
Our leader had many children with women
From numerous, diverse communities
These children were half-breeds,
The offspring of an immortal god,
And yet Kanazawahr assured me
That none of his children ever inherited his giftOne of Kanazawahr most controversial rulings
During the first years of our kingdom
Involved giving equal rights to women
Even some of our soldiers complained to me,
Saying that women couldn’t defend our lands
I’m ashamed to say that I wondered myself
Whether our ruler had listened to the whispers
Of too many of his gorgeous brides,
But we did grant women weapons and armor
The numbers of the king’s army increased
With the addition of fearsome viragoes
I guess we came to learn, all of us men,
That women weren’t just there for decoration
They fought with a fierce determination,
In their eyes were flames of bravery,
Despite what they lacked between their legsWherever we travelled, we were known
As Kanazawahr and the Thousand Immortals,
Even though the rest of us could easily die
Our shields bore the symbol of a black bird,
Its massive head covered in spikes
Tales of our victories spread like wildfire,
And soon enough our leader became a legendKanazawahr ruled over a great nation
We, his men and women, were powerful and proud
Our swords shone so bright they glinted in the sun
We no longer wished to be ruled by men
Who lived for a normal human’s lifespan
We were heading towards clashes with other nations,
Because they understood our victory was inexorable
Some surrendered before they had to face us,
Some of them begged Kanazawahr for asylum
Our lands expanded far into neighboring kingdoms
The few remaining barbarians fled in terror
As we brought order to our old continentOur army grew so large and powerful
That we would have gladly granted our leader
An eternity to spend at our capital in peace,
But whenever an army dared approach our borders,
Kanazawahr the mighty stood in front of his soldiers
He glared at the foolhardy invaders threatening us
As if he were a young god on Mount Olympus
Most of the enemy commanders kneeled in fear,
But one of those leaders challenged Kanazawahr
By baring his penis and pissing on the ground
All of us felt bad for what this man was about to face
“How dare you treat my people with such disrespect?!”
Our king bellowed as he pulled down his pants
Kanazawahr’s huge shaft reached out so long and heavy
That it speared that leader through the middle of the gut
The blood poured from the victim’s back in torrents
As the man struggled to yank out that giant pole
His intestines, torn open, ran in waves over the groundWe lived through times of bountiful harvests,
With delicious vegetables and fruits all around us,
So many places in which to gather wood
That we could keep our houses warm every winter
There were never floods to drown our crops in spring
Sickness was almost unknown among our people
The men and women became valiant and adventurous
And searched for lands to explore and settle on
The virtuous made pilgrimages to touch our king’s member,
A cock that never shrank, nor did his balls sag lower
When the people saw how much he cared for his subjects,
The peace and happiness reached new heightsMany of Kanazawahr’s trusted generals grew old,
Some retired to live in peace with their families,
Some focused on training a generation of knights,
Some travelled around and became mercenaries,
Some were sent in charge of new conquests
Our names rang throughout the known world
We became immortal tooDecades later, in what I call my old age,
My body is still strong, but my heart weakens by the day
Many of my friends have died, and I wonder about my fate
My grown children have moved out, some have married
They live in peace with their families and many offspring
I see how much better off I am compared to most menOur emperor Kanazawahr’s face hasn’t grown a day older
Whenever my mortal body fails me for the last time,
I know that our leader will continue to fight for us,
Will make sure the children of our children grow old
Even after our people vanquish all who oppose us,
Kanazawahr will remain vigilant and boldKanazawahr the Immortal, his reign will never end
He has numerous wives and a myriad of children
His mighty penis grows larger every day
At least one hundred thousand women adore him,
And his palace is filled with beauty and nakedness
Many female dignitaries from distant lands visit him
And he makes love to them in secretI’m a simple soldier, I’ve never known much,
‘Kanazawahr and the Thousand Immortals’ by Jon Ureña
But when I look at Kanazawahr the Immortal,
The most powerful man in the world,
I’m full of awe and reverence
The Emperor, immortal bulwark of our lands
His empire will last to the end of time
Flesh and Bone Prison (Poetry)
I inhabit a zombie’s body,
Disgusting and foul-smelling
A myriad of scars and stretch marks
I suffocate in sweat, my mouth is dry,
My hands and feet are getting numb,
As my heart beats fast and hard
A cold shadow seeps into my head
Filled with murderous thoughts
My joints ache, the bones fall apart
My swollen guts cramp up and burn
My veins are filled with poison
A rotten curse keeps me aliveMy face is covered in sticky sweat
Which drips out of control
Spattering the papers
With acid-like stainsThis hollow, festering head,
Fretful and anxiety-driven,
Is crammed with shattered glass
When I drilled a hole in my skull,
It belched out noxious fumes
Birds flew off in disgustA honeycomb belly
Made out of twisted fire,
A swarm of venomous insects
Keep it bloated full of shit
My nerves scream,
The intestines are sliced open,
The digestive fluids spill out
To pour into my bloodstream
I live in a pool of urine and feces
No place for the liquid to drainAll day long, all around,
I see other people’s faces
I blurt out someone else’s words
I mimic a living creature
Made of plasticized meat
While I rot and decomposeI drag myself out of bed
I hate myself
I drink some coffee
I hate myself
I brush my teeth
I hate myself
I wash my body
I hate myself
I hurry up through the dark
I hate myself
I sit in the train
I hate myself
I stand in the bus
I hate myself
I walk up to the office
I hate myself
I talk and I smile
I hate myself
I solve people’s problems
I hate myself
I sit on the toilet for a break
I hate myself
I count the hours down
I hate myself
I trek my way back
I hate myself
I struggle to stay awake
I hate myselfI need a break every night
To avoid jumping out of my skin,
But I lie helplessly in bed,
Surrounded by ghost voices
They keep speaking nonsense,
Filling the void with noise
The moment I awake
A hellish pain eruptsThis flesh and bone prison,
I’d tear it apart from inside
To float unbodied and invisible
Through my own desert placesI yearn for the sun to explode,
‘Flesh and Bone Prison’ by Jon Ureña
So this world can end
I’m sick of gasping for air above
A churning sea of pain
I wish I was born
As anyone else,
Or to have been left alone
As no one at all
Thirty Euros, Pt. 5 (Fiction)
Chieko flew us back in her pineapple yellow, antigravity car to the small town where she lives, and where the office of the SFPT that I know is located. I keep staring out of the surrounding windshield at the town, which has been built on both sides of a wide, winding river with fern green waters. I wouldn’t have considered this community a town. The buildings, which are megalithic, constructed from huge stone blocks, are distant enough from the rest as if they were farmhouses surrounded by grazing fields back in my native Gipuzkoa, but we keep coming across colorful flying cars, so I guess that the inhabitants of Mars walk around on the stone footpaths for leisure and exercise.
Both suns, the original and the one that Chieko called artificial, are dipping into the horizon, dyeing the sky in coral and watermelon pinks. I’m tired, my body is heavy. I feel my clothes touching my sensitive skin. I can’t remember how much I’ve cried, overwhelmed by having been rescued from a certain death on the old Earth. The gratitude I feel towards Chieko is an alien warmth in my heart that makes me feel like a bashful little girl. I can’t pay back what she has done for me, and I can’t live up to the artist she believes me to be.
Our ride through the sunset ends when Chieko points out that we have arrived at her place. She lowers her vehicle until the windshield shows an arched stone bridge that crosses the tranquil river, and beyond it a vast estate that features a garden with trimmed hedges, vibrant statues of human figures and animals, and a central ornate fountain that is shooting streams of water. The footpath leads into the two-story portico of a large villa that extends in colonnades to two adjoined buildings, forming a blocky ‘U’. The villa is also made out of huge stone blocks, but they are painted alabaster white except for the roofs that cover the colonnades, which are penny brown. It’s so fancy that I can’t close my mouth nor move out of the car seat I’ve sunk into, although Chieko has already opened a hole in the frame next to her seat.
“Chieko, you are loaded,” I say in a dry voice.
She smiles, but waves a hand back and forth.
“Oh, you have no idea how rich some people are. This is just a regular house.”
“I’m ready to marry you, just so you know.”
Chieko laughs and jumps out of the vehicle. I follow her down the airstair, then stand unsteadily next to her as I squint against the setting suns.
“Let’s get going, Izar,” Chieko says as she walks on the footpath towards the bridge. “I’m so hungry.”
I admire the white paving stones as we walk up the arc of the bridge. In the waters below us, I glimpse a couple of fishes swimming through underwater weeds. The greenery on the river’s edge has grown big and healthy. I hear the distant echo of a dog barking. I’m not surprised that these people brought dogs over, but I wonder if they get to live for hundreds of years.
As we cross through the garden, we pass by flower beds of bright yellow-pink flowers. Some look like daisies, and there are also violet and blue flowers that I can’t name. I feel like I’m walking through their scent.
“You must spend so much time tending to this place,” I say.
“What? Nah. The AIs trim these thick hedges, they make sure that the flowers don’t die, all that kind of stuff. Most days I barely notice they are there, to be honest.”
The cooling breeze blows water droplets from the fountain’s streams in my face, refreshing my skin. The central statue is a bronze, stylized fox, depicted as if it represents a deity.
As we approach the large portico, I spot a man jogging in the shadows of the colonnade leading to the front door. I’m startled, but in a couple of seconds I realize that he must live with Chieko. When he notices us, he stops. Once we stand in the cool shadows under the ceiling of the portico, I look up at the tall man, who holds my gaze with his brown, slanted eyes. He must be around a hundred and eighty-five centimeters. His face, which is beaded with sweat, looks like he’s in his mid twenties, but that might mean little around here. His hair is apple red, short, thick and unruly. He’s wearing a simple T-shirt and shorts, although their fabric looks expensive. By how vigorous the man seems, he must work out regularly, and knowing that the inhabitants of this new reality also run for exercise comforts me.
The man wipes his nose with the back of his hand as he recovers his breath.
“You brought your new friend over without giving me a heads-up,” he says with a deep voice. “That’s really rude, Chieko.”
“Oh, shut it!” she answers good-naturedly. “Don’t listen to him, he already knows I was working on your case.”
I bow slightly. I feel like I’m intruding in the lives of rich people when I’m just a peasant.
“Nice to meet you. I guess you already know that I’m Izar, that I come from the past and all that… Are you Chieko’s husband?”
The man makes a dismissive wave with both hands.
“Izar, you have screwed up your introduction. What a way to give me a bad impression! Me, Chieko’s husband!”
My rescuer lets out a noise of dismay. She shoves the man’s chest, but he barely budges.
“You know that she just found out about this society! Damn idiot…” She looks at me apologetically. “This is my brother, Yuichi. We both live here. He’s usually nicer when you get to know him.”
Yuichi smiles thinly, and bows his head.
“So, are you going to live with us for a while?” he asks me.
I look nervously at Chieko.
“I think I’d be a burden, but…”
Chieko grabs my shoulder and narrows her eyes at her brother. I can’t tell if she’s actually mad or if they are used to interacting like this.
“Yes, you know that’s the standard practice. A representative takes care of the artist they bring over from the past, until they can live on their own. And I would have invited her to live with us anyway if I had found her living in the streets!”
Yuichi rolls his eyes.
“That means close to nothing. When was the last time you saw a homeless person on Mars? But I guess that Chieko needs someone to share the workload with. Don’t worry, we’ll keep you fed. I can’t imagine what the people in town would say if we allowed a servant to starve.”
I’m smiling like an idiot, unable to defend myself or contribute to the conversation. Chieko puts her hands on my shoulders from behind.
“No workload of which to speak! I have barely done anything but laze around recently. C’mon, you just keep running! We are getting in and replicating some food.”
When Yuichi gives up and continues running, Chieko pushes me gently towards the front door, which is made of some smooth, brown metal. She presses her hand against it, and the door opens inwards.
We enter the cool house, which smells like leather and saffron. A low-key jazz song starts playing from somewhere deeper within the house. My gaze is glued to the floor of the foyer, which is a mosaic of carefully laid out pieces that display beautiful scenes, in reds, yellows, whites and blacks, filled with Japanese imagery: white-faced ladies wearing yukatas, the silhouettes of traditional Japanese houses, heroic images of samurai. Areas of the large mosaic also show depictions of animals. Maybe I should already expect to find arresting masterworks wherever I go in this society, but my brain has a hard time associating this artistic display with someone’s home.
Chieko grabs my hand, and then swings my arm as if we were both children. I’m getting dizzier and a heat is rising to my cheeks as I walk further into the large space. I may be staring at the central room of Chieko’s house: it’s an atrium bathed in pinkish light. The beams come down from the skylights built into a vaulted ceiling made of stone, that wouldn’t have felt out of place in a cathedral. The slanted beams of light from the sunset are bathing sofas, hammocks, dining and coffee tables, a structure that looks like a chimney, and some isolated machines that resemble game consoles or ovens. Flowerbeds and water gardens are arranged near the furniture.
The illuminated space is about four times larger than I would have expected even a luxurious living room to be. You could play a sports match in here if it weren’t for all the obstacles. All the walls are covered in kaleidoscopic frescoes that represent scenes both from ancient myths and from either my era or one that came after, because I recognize the skyline of modern cities from my original present, as well as spaceships. This living room is ringed by an interior balcony. From down here I glimpse an arched gallery that must lead to bedrooms, offices and other personal rooms.
“Come!” Chieko says as she guides me around a tiny fountain towards a sofa. “You clearly need to sit. Let’s eat something, shall we? Or do you need to go to the bathroom first?”
I look at her nervously.
“Well… I don’t know… No, I don’t think so.”
If I were in my house, I would have emptied my bladder, because I’m feeling those two glasses of water that I drank at the SFPT office. But I need to sit down and figure out a way to stop my mind from reeling. When I sink into the sofa, the velvety fabric embraces me lovingly. Next to the gilded, pleated arm of the sofa, a cluster of red buds that have grown in a flower bed are wafting a sweet scent.
Chieko sits next to me, takes off her shoes and folds her slender legs so her bare feet rest on the cushion. She smiles at me and opens her mouth to say something, but I interrupt her.
“Do you have any clue of the life of luxury you and your people enjoy?” I ask in a weary voice.
Chieko shrugs.
“It’s a matter of comparisons, isn’t it? But yes, when I travelled to your era, I was shocked by how tiny the houses were, and stacked on top of each other! It was suffocating. You could hear the neighbors going to the bathroom, and could even make out parts of their private conversations! That couldn’t have been good for people’s mental health. No wonder people were so neurotic!”
I sigh.
“Yeah, I have always thought that living in cities, let alone in a metropolis, turned people crazy. We aren’t meant to live in such cramped spaces. But then again, it’s not as if we could have chosen to live in some better way. The Earth was vastly overpopulated, moving to the countryside was expensive, and everyone needed to get used to being a speck of dust that would likely amount to nothing.”
Chieko twists one side of her mouth into a grimace.
“I don’t think Earth has improved much in that regard. If you thought that it was overpopulated, if you see it now you may vomit. Truth be told, many of those people have never been ready to leave the nest. But thankfully we don’t have to worry about that on Mars, or other colonized planets.” She claps once. “So, are you hungry? Because I’m starving.”
I nod quickly.
“Sure.”
She turns to make eye contact with an oven-like machine that is propped on a stand.
“Replicator, we want your services.”
The indicators over the cavity of the machine light up in arctic blue, and to my surprise the machine lifts off silently and floats up to us, until it hovers a meter and a half in front of Chieko as static as if it was propped on an invisible stand. It reminds me of a butler, another one, waiting for instructions.
“Pay attention to this, Izar,” she says. “You’ll rely on the replicators and the decomposers to fulfill your basic needs, and you’ll also use them whenever you need to replicate objects like cutlery, clothes, books… Everything that could fit this cavity, really. These are the personal models. For cars, furniture and similar objects you go to a shop, because they own industrial replicators.”
I swallow, then nod. I stare at Chieko’s reflection in the reflective front of the machine.
“Alright, replicator,” Chieko says. “Recommend us a menu for dinner!”
The machine radiates a solid-looking beam of light that unfolds and spreads until it forms a mosaic of images, around thirty, which are as colorful and detailed as those in the computer screens with which I’m familiar. Each image shows a plate with food as they would appear in the menu of a restaurant, and the images also feature associated dishware such as bowls, saucers, glasses, spoons, forks… as if they came with the dish.
I point with a trembling finger at the options.
“Chieko, are you telling me that I can choose any of this food and it will appear in that cavity inside of the machine…?”
“You get it quickly.”
I rub my eyes.
“I don’t. I really don’t… How is this possible?”
“Don’t worry about that for now. As you know, you don’t need to understand how something works to use it! I wasn’t the one who invented this thing. Just order whatever, Izar.”
I take a deep breath and look over the options. Although I only recognize about a quarter of the food I’m staring at, my mouth salivates.
“Oh, that looks like pizza.”
“It certainly is. Cheese pizza in particular. The replicator always recommends it to me, because I love it. Have you ever tasted pizza before, Izar?”
“If I have… Nevermind, yes. Pizza sounds good. So how would I choose it?”
“Remember, the machines are sentient. Replicators and decomposers are silent by design, but they understand. So just tell it what you want.”
When I stare back at the replicator, I have a hard time believing, or facing, that a person is waiting for my order. I’ll need to get used to dealing with artificial intelligences, but thankfully that Guide showed me that I could make myself understood without issues.
I point at the image of the cheese pizza.
“Alright, then give me that one, please.”
The mosaic collapses, and the beam of solid light dissolves. As the machine hums, the cavity fills with a similarly opaque and featureless light, and when it vanishes, the inside of the replicator contains a steaming cheese pizza. Even a pizza cutter. The pizza’s crust looks so crispy, and the golden yellow cheese so thick and juicy, that my mind forgets its doubts and worries. I only want to fill my stomach with that impossible food.
The replicator’s cavity opens, which allows the pizza’s aroma to reach us, and Chieko pulls out the plate. After she leaves it on the coffee table, both of us are quick to grab a slice, which came pre-cut although the replicator also produced a cutter. When I bite and chew the morsel, my mouth fills with the expected taste of a cheese pizza. My shoulders relax.
“Chieko, you live in heaven,” I say with my mouth full.
“This pizza always tastes amazing, yes. The same as the pizza that was scanned to produce this blueprint. Not that I ever tasted the original pizza, but that’s the idea.”
After I finish eating my slice, I wipe off the juices left behind on my lips. I go for a second slice.
Chieko also orders glasses of orange juice. We eat as we lounge on the sofa. Night has fallen, and some floating orbs have switched on and are bathing us in soft white light. I’m so comfortable that I get mental images of kittens rolling around in their cat bed.
We finished eating a couple of minutes ago. My benefactress’ eyes have turned sleepy. After she picks up crumbs from her puff sleeve blouse and eats them, she leans back and offers me a tired smile.
“That’s all you need to know regarding replicators, I think. Now I’ll show you what you’ll do when you want to get rid of something.”
Chieko looks directly at the replicator as she addresses it. Maybe it’s necessary to make eye contact.
“Replicator, return to your stand, please.” As the replicator floats towards its stand, Chieko gazes at the similar machine propped up on a stand next to the empty one. “Decomposer, come here.”
The decomposer obeys like a pet. Although this machine’s purpose is the opposite of the replicator’s, its main difference is that the cavity is hidden by a round hatch. The machine stops a meter and a half away from Chieko, who gets off the sofa and puts the pizza cutter on the plate on which only crumbs remained. She adds both our empty glasses. She opens the machine’s hatch and leaves the plate inside. After she closes the hatch, she sits back down.
“Decomposer, destroy your contents.”
A round indicator on the front of the humming decomposer lights up in red, and a couple of seconds later it shuts off.
“That’s it,” Chieko says.
I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that any machine could get rid of any object with such speed. This society must have solved the issue of the growing mountains of garbage, as well as the patches of plastic in the oceans.
“Doesn’t it worry you that someone could kill another person,” I ask, “dismember them, throw their remains into a decomposer and make them disappear?”
Chieko laughs merrily, closing her eyes and holding her hand against her mouth.
“Your mind goes directly to murder, huh?” she says. Her fingers flick outwards to open her palms towards me. “What a horror… You should want to help other people, Izar, not end them.”
“Hey, that’s a worry that anyone would have.”
“That’s why they built in a system that notifies the authorities in case it detects that it would decompose human remains.”
“Alright, so you future people haven’t outgrown homicidal impulses. You haven’t evolved that much.”
“The animals that evolve to outgrow violent impulses get killed by those who didn’t. Isn’t that the case?” Chieko replies with a smile.
I realize that jazz was still playing in the background when it stops abruptly, and gets replaced with music similar to soft rock. I’m confused for a moment, because Chieko didn’t order it, but a more important question pops up in my mind.
“How does this replicator of yours produce objects from zero? Are the raw materials inside the machine? Even 3D printers from my era needed some sort of cartridge.”
“It makes a request for the needed periodic elements to the deposit that every town has. We pool those resources together, it’d be too much of a hassle otherwise. They get sent through quantum teleportation.”
“Of course, it had to have quantum in the name.”
“Haven’t you both gotten comfortable,” Yuichi’s deep voice reaches us from behind.
Chieko and I look over the back pillows of our sofa. Yuichi must have taken a shower, because his thick, wavy red hair is combed back and damp. He’s wearing a grey sweat jacket and sweatpants. His sweat jacket features the drawing of a multi-limbed mechanical being with a red cape. I won’t try to deduce what it represents.
He struts to the replicator, which is resting on its stand, and tells it to produce his usual protein shake. In a few seconds he’s holding a metallic-looking, opaque flask. He approaches the armchair closest to us and plops down on it. As he unscrews the cap of his bottle, he stares at me brashly as if he intends to challenge me.
“So, Izar, are you religious?”
Chieko lets out a noise of dismay.
“Yuichi! You barely know her!”
The man doesn’t tear his gaze away.
“When my sister told me that she had taken one of the rescue missions, I was sure that she would bring home some nut from the Middle Ages, or an Ice Age sculptor. I would find myself having to listen to that person freaking out and wondering how his or her god fit into this new world.”
“I see how that would be annoying,” I say. “I’ve never been religious.”
Yuichi sighs, then leans back on his armchair as if he figures he can relax.
“What century did you come from again?”
“Early twenty-first.”
Yuichi arches his eyebrows as he takes a big gulp of his protein shake.
“Was your era as terrible as we picture it from the surviving records?”
“I don’t know what you’ve seen. I’m sure that any other era looks like hell when compared to living in this town. But I admit that I didn’t enjoy living in my time. I dreaded that everything was going to collapse eventually.”
“To me, it looked apocalyptic,” he says with sympathy.
I let out a long sigh.
“What can I say, I’m glad that Chieko brought me here. I can’t begin to explain how safe I feel now.”
A cat-sized creature is moving close to a flower bed filled with purple and yellow flowers. I glance at it absentmindedly, expecting to see a cat, but my gaze falls on a sleek, metallic octopus that’s watering the flowers through its flexible tentacles. My eyes widen, but neither of the siblings pay the robot any attention.
“You are a writer, right?” Yuichi asks. “Many of those around.”
“Yes, and not one that deserved being saved. There were millions of writers like me in the world back then. We were lucky enough to get published, but didn’t sell enough to pay the bills.”
“Izar, you need to stop putting yourself down,” Chieko says, more upset than I would have expected.
I lower my gaze to my lap.
“It’s true. I have no clue why you saved me.”
“I don’t know why my sister chose you in particular,” Yuichi interjects as he smirks at Chieko, “but your heroine was motivated by procrastination. You have avoided a sad fate because Chieko couldn’t figure out what creative project to start next. That’s the truth.”
My benefactress looks down and fiddles with the corner of a pillow. More than embarrassed, she seems guilty. I reach over to put my hand on her arm. I don’t want the person who saved my life feeling bad about any aspect of her decision.
“She didn’t tell you that she had lofty, virtuous reasons for bringing you over from the past, did she?” Yuichi asks with some concern.
“No, she told me that she was going through a dry spell,” I say. I try to hold Chieko’s gaze, although she’s avoiding it. “I wouldn’t care if you rescued me because you were paid to do so, or because you wanted to impress someone. If it weren’t for you, I would be living in the streets, and in less than a week I would have drowned in the river. You were never clear about how, but I don’t care. My life is yours.”
Chieko mumbles something as she blushes. Yuichi snorts, then shakes his head.
“She’s charmed you already, huh, Izar? I guess you can’t help it. That SFPT, they are running the ultimate seduction scheme. You have no idea how many of the people they bring over here from the past end up naked in their representative’s bed by the end of the first day.”
Chieko straightens her back and glares at her brother.
“It’s nothing like that!” She looks at me. “You lack some qualities necessary for me to… feel like that about you.”
“Hopefully just the physical ones that I can’t change,” I say nonchalantly. “I wouldn’t mind if you intended to seduce me. With this new life you have given me, I should fall in love with you out of principle.”
Chieko sighs and rubs her temples with both hands. Her brother empties the bottle, then chuckles as he wipes his mouth. He leans back again, with one hand behind his head.
“You know, it might do you some good, Chieko,” Yuichi says teasingly. “It’s been too long since you’ve been with anyone.”
“H-hey. I don’t have time for boyfriends!”
“What do you mean? You barely do anything now that you aren’t working on new movies!”
“You know I’m going through a dry spell.”
Yuichi grins as if he was expecting his sister to say it.
“That’s what I meant, sis.”
Chieko snaps her head back and stutters her reply. I have been letting my weight sink into the velvety cushions and the back pillows for a few minutes, my stomach is digesting that delicious pizza, and now that the siblings have forgotten that I’m here, a smile tugs on my lips. Every other person I had met either walked past me, or proved to me that I should have kept hidden the most important parts of myself. But now I can close my eyes and let out a long sigh as a warm feeling spreads throughout my body.
Chieko showed me how to use the toilet, which works the same way except that it contains a tiny matter decomposer that takes care of the waste. We keep hanging out in the siblings’ luxurious atrium. By the time that Yuichi left to his bedroom, the skylights on the vaulted roof brimmed with stars. The floating orbs failed to illuminate the huge open room with their soft white light, so it felt as if Chieko and I were sitting on an island surrounded by darkness.
My benefactress guided me to replicate cotton panties, because I needed clean underwear, along with silk pyjamas, which were lemonade pink and shimmered in my hands as I ran my fingers over the fine and smooth fabric. I follow Chieko up the stairs to one of the guest bedrooms. Once she opens the door, I find myself staring at the most comfortable-looking and luxurious bed I have ever seen. The bedding set, which is embellished with gilded, royal motifs, is made of thick silk that overflows the mattress with a liquid feel. The four pillows resting against the headboard look so inviting that I want to run over and jump face down into them.
I close my mouth, then speak in a dry voice.
“This is ridiculous.”
Chieko places a hand on my shoulder, and my heart jumps. I feel every hair on my arms. I wasn’t kidding earlier: if she tries anything, I’m done for. Chieko is pleasant to look at, a joy to be around, and now that my heart stores nothing but boundless gratitude towards her, I don’t need much incentive even though I’ve never gone for women. Back on Earth I wanted to disappear; now that she has brought me over to this paradise, the notion of disappearing into everything she might have to offer is intoxicating.
“That thing on the double dresser is the multimedia center,” Chieko says, oblivious to the tingles running through my body. “Talk to it when you want to listen to music, watch movies, browse the net… Stuff like that. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. The gear to experience virtual reality is in another room, though.”
I turn around and look at Chieko in the dimness of the bedroom, only illuminated by the beams of honey-colored light coming out of two lamps on the nightstands. I stare for a couple of seconds at her apple red hair, gathered in two buns. I wonder what Chieko sees on my face. Even with both of us standing just a step apart, our personalities are standing on the opposite sides of a wall.
“I think that tomorrow you should take a walk around town by yourself,” Chieko says softly. “See the sights, focus on what interests you. People are friendly around here. And hopefully one of these days you’ll feel like writing again.”
“Yeah.”
We look at each other silently. While Chieko glances at the bed, I get the feeling that she’s unsettled, as we are both held hostage by this comfortable, secluded bedroom.
“You better get out of here, Chieko,” I say in a low voice. “I told you that I sink my claws in the people that I care about.”
She blinks rapidly and nods.
“Yeah, I’m feeling weird myself,” she says, befuddled. “Anyway, sleep as much as you want, alright?”
We say goodnight. Once she closes the door behind her and I hear her footsteps fading, I shuffle to the side of the bed and sit slowly on the mattress. I wait until my heart calms down.
I undress, I put on my clean underwear and I try on my new pyjamas. They feel like they float over my skin. I can barely tell that I’m wearing them. When I slip under the silk sheets and the comforter and then let the back of my head sink into the pillow, I feel ready to die. My old life, with all its troubles, has ended. I would be happy if I never had to move again. I wouldn’t think, I wouldn’t talk, I wouldn’t write. I would keep floating in a warm cloud and never worry about anything else.
Note from June of 2021:
Yesterday I went back to work, and this contract will last until the end of September. I’m not the kind of person that is happy whenever he’s able to work for others, nor do I understand that kind of slave mentality. My last contract ended on May 11, if I remember correctly, and in about a month and a half I wrote frantically a novel the length of 2.2 regular novels, as well as a few short stories and lots of poetry. Yesterday I barely managed to write anything at work, because they kept me walking throughout the hospital complex to fix annoying problems that nobody wants to handle, and by the end of the day I was exhausted and felt like shit, so my brain kept trying to convince me to lie in bed and just rest. That’s the routine that I’m terrified of returning to for the next months. I hate living like that when I could be writing otherwise, but like everybody else, I need to accumulate money.
Anyway, I have planned the rest of this novella, and I’ll finish it for sure sooner or later, even though I suspect that it barely works as a story. I’m having fun with it, and that’s what matters as far as I’m concerned.
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