Love
Rebirth
Rebirth A healthy mind does not ponder whether a current day is its last. Even if one lives like it, one does not truly think of the possibility; the real chance of the end of their continuity is not measurable. Every second is a gamble, every moment another step into uncertainty. Each of us were dedicated to our singular way of life, whatever it may have been. Some chose to follow their careers, some focused on building a family and setting loose upon the world a new generation. Some prefered the evolution of their education, while others simply existed, unmoving. Most didn’t think of everything they’ve worked hard for being torn away. The majority of people didn’t ponder whether their family would be ruined overnight. It was incredibly easy to put the thought of individual expiration into an after-thought; to shove it into a mental lockbox never or only rarely to be opened.
By Gabrien Summers5 years ago in Fiction
The Heart of a Nightmare
I gripped at the air in the empty dip of my collarbone, she was supposed to signal by now. She knows the rules, and she’s never faltered before. Flick the lights twice before sunset, so I know she’s safe and won’t be wandering home after dark. Escorted by the General and his walking-Dead cavalry or not, it doesn’t matter. Jesse and I call the dead horses he controls, “Nightmares,” and she, being the English major, came up with it long before she caught the General’s eye.
By Jordan Moody5 years ago in Fiction
Going Home
There is so little that is left now to remind us of what once was. There was no grand event that ended civilization like there was in the movies we once watched. No atom bomb, no invading force, no disease that wiped us out. No, instead it was just us and our endless, selfish desires.
By Caileigh Pettifer 5 years ago in Fiction
A Gift from Afar
Meela Hahn was dreaming of food when she was awakened by the day's first three blasts of the toxicity sirens. She wasn't frightened by them any more. They had been a part of her life now for many years and were, in her imagination, loud screams that she pretended were hers.
By Brian Freeman5 years ago in Fiction
Finding Mr. Wrong (1)
Cambridge, UK - 2012 Sara let out a long sigh that was a mix of resignation and sadness. ..mostly sadness. ‘I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. How does someone put that much effort into things and then just…I mean someone with a job like his. Like, you know, he literally saves lives, works 23 hour shifts and he woud still make time to come over and go out with me knowing full well he would have to get up at six a.m.the next morning for work.’
By Ashley Somogyi5 years ago in Fiction
'Til Death Do Us Part: A Tale of Two Lockets
Sloan Evans drummed her fingers anxiously on the armrest of her office chair. She had painstakingly assisted countless clients on completing the questionnaire she now faced herself. Sloan and Edgar had yet to set a wedding date, but nothing could move forward until they submitted the pre-nuptial forms now mandated by the federal government.
By ALEXA L. DAVIS5 years ago in Fiction
In Light of All Things
The sun rises somewhere in the distance, and light pours like milk on the horizon. The air hangs listless and viscid, and the stillness bores its way to the edges of my chest. It's not a silence that resounds as some moment of tranquillity but a hush that lays heavy with dread. Nothing should ever be so quiet. I don't know why I am telling you this; if you did find a way out, you know this as well as I do. No birds on the breeze, no leaves in the wind, no faint chatter or promise of life as yet unfound. To exist without interruption in the vacuum that remains of the world.
By Daisy Kelly5 years ago in Fiction
On Salt
On our drive across Eastern Europe, Aubin and I found ourselves in Krakow and decided to stop for a few days to look at some castles and the ancient salt mines. On one of the evenings there, we found a restaurant and were escorted to a table next to a foggy window. Rain fell against a dim streetlamp and every drop that landed on the window did so with a tired agony of spirits from the past. We took off our heavy coats and hung them on the olive velvet chairs. Aubin ordered an orange old fashioned, and I asked for a small decanter of vodka and a plate of gherkins. Once our waiter returned, Aubin and I cheerlessly raised our glasses to the past and thus our communion begun. I inhaled my drink and bit into the salty gherkin. Aubin licked his lips and lit a smoke, while I, having satisfied the first itch of a craving, looked around the empty room. An electric chandelier softly threw its light on oak tables and fake tulips, while an old record-player was rasping in the back. A sign in Polish read, ‘Smaczniej Niż Nieśmiertelność.’ Ever since the successful merging of individual human consciousness with artificial intelligence, most people decided to transition themselves onto the cloud, thus eliminating with a single stroke both suffering and death. Those who decided to opt out of the Transition of Human Intelligence program, were left to decline immortality and walk towards the cool shadows of death. At first, the heavenly cloud provided its virtual dwellers a painless and divine existence, but over time the novelty of such intangibility wore off and the immortals decided to return from their heavens onto the earth. But they were unwilling to sacrifice their immortality, and since artificial simulations proved inadequate, they decided, in an act of switcheroo, to merge artificial intelligence with harvested biological bodies, creating a future version of Frankenstein’s creature. Synths, as they came to be known, repopulated the earth and once again could enjoy the physical melting of an ice cube in their mouths. This, I learned as part of early education, and later, that the synths used a cryogenically preserved supply of sperm to artificially inseminate and grow biological bodies in labs, and, in the process, took precautions to allow a percentage of those bodies to mature and develop their own individual consciousness, unmarred by those from the cloud, in order to avoid the depletion of sperm banks. Synths are infertile and so I was born in a lab – unclouded and mortal.
By Uladzimir Kulikou5 years ago in Fiction
The Price of Happiness
The leaves crunched underneath Evelyn’s feet as she walked. They would meet at a restaurant or cafe to catch up on their lives. Life wasn’t the same since the virus but some things were starting to return to normal. Most of the damage happened when she was a child but she knew that people were finally feeling a little safe again.
By Ben Schmidt5 years ago in Fiction
