How to enjoy life

Start on a Monday. Wake up listening to the alarm clock. Yes. Listen to the beeping and chirping and the vibrating of your phone. “Wuurrrrrr, wuurrrrrr, wuurrrrrr” it says. It’s time to get up. It’s time to take a shower.…
The Way to Black Mountain

In the dark void of the galaxy, between stars and planets, a fleet of ten thousand ships hurled through space. The black ships hid from starlight. Darker than nights, one with the void, they carried within them hundreds of thousands…
The Journeyman

The end It was the 28th century. People around the world screamed, some in joy and some in anger, as the news spread that the ‘Global Transhuman Initiative’ had been approved. Protesters poured into the streets chanting for the…
The Day of the Dead

At the top of one of the several hundred blue mountains that rose from the ground in that distant planet, under a night of stars and dreams, above a sleeping city, a conversation began to take place. “Do you know…
Henrino and Fredino

Inside the garbage storage room of the Harriette super-building two faulty androids sat together in the darkness. They waited for the crushers to come in, they waited for their end to come. And in their last instants of consciousness, the…
The Fall

I’m getting closer now. Four million years down, eight million to go. There is still hope. I may still find a home. A place for everyone, a place where we can talk again, dance again, laugh again. We left…
Gwen

The year is 89:233. I am part of a thirty man team that was sent to this planet to begin terraformation and preparations for colonization. Overpopulation of the planet Gliese-1239 was nearing inhospitable conditions and our services were hired by…

The Neptune

July 21, 2014

Image created by Ginhebi
http://ginhebi.deviantart.com

I entered this chamber fifty two years ago. I remember that day in its entirety. My memories before it are sparse, it was a different life, they were different times.

I remember my body. They said it was perfect, I was short, slim, smart. I agreed with them when they told me, but they didn’t know and I didn’t know.

Commander Scone looks at me from the other side of the command center. He stands tall, much taller than I am, and from beneath the iridescent ceiling he produces a smile. The room is empty, the Commander approaches, and I am frozen with excitement at the sight of the man whose voice has briefed me in my missions for so many years. I have seen him before in video, in hologram and images, but never before have I been standing before him. He’s a friend that I cherish, he’s a man I respect, but seeing him and his ship with my own eyes makes my memories seem like a distant dream.

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They Said Humans Would Not Survive

July 14, 2014

Glimpses

“Do you know what people said back then?”

“What?”

“They said humans would not survive.”

“Really? Why did they say that?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine being alive back then. Problems must have seemed insurmountable to them. I suppose they saw their end around every corner, with each new sign of trouble, with each new difficulty.”

“Why?”

“In those times, son, people were not as you and me. Do you see the planets below us, the stars?”

“Yes.”

“People had different bodies back then. You know we come from planets, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Back in those days people were born from the ground. They gave birth organically and their bodies were weak and frail, very similar to the living things you see traversing the greenlands of Earth.

They had to worry about energy, most never had enough and lived their lives undernourished, struggling for a smile on their face, working hard for a smile of their children. They had to fend off hazards that happened so often and were so great for them, that it would be as if our galaxy suddenly decided to implode. Their bodies were that different. Each time the clouds rained down, each time the worlds shivered, each time the winds ran across the grounds, they fought and everytime some died, it was a part of life.

As time passed and humans expanded, so did their problems. The end was prophecized many times. Everyone had an end, so why not the entirety of humanity? It was their reality, and it looked like it was their destiny, but humans were different from other animals. They had the capacity, the courage to imagine futures where the end did not come. Futures where the end was staved off and the people of their worlds lived forever, danced together, and smiled and laughed for eternity.”

“Did they make it?”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, what do we do every cycle?”

“We dance.”

“What do we do when we dance?”

“We smile, and we laugh!”

“When will we end?”

“Never!”

A Dark Cold Night

June 26, 2014

Glimpses

It was a dark moonless night in the city of Avantis, the cold air stood still and silence reigned as snowflakes fell from the sky; Silence that penetrated the city hospital and permeated the space in room 703, and there, in that silent room, an old man held his gaze towards the outside and a young man sat in a chair next to him.

The sound of the young man’s heart and the heavy breathing of the old one accompanied each other, waiting for the sun to rise, or maybe waiting for the universe to end.
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A Polite Stranger

June 23, 2014

Glimpses

I have been travelling the galaxy looking for a new home. Thousands of us volunteered. We scanned the planets, we scanned the stars and when we were done, we moved on to the next.

There are no days or nights here. There is always darkness. A darkness so deep that even myriad stars can’t rid us of it. Sometimes I have trouble knowing if I’m awake. There have been times when I was sure I had found hope for us. I look at my scanner and see another Earth, glowing amidst the black sea, waiting for us to come, and when I reach for the screen to mark it, I wake up. I wake up to find to myself alone, three hundred years and counting, staring out into the universe. Somewhere out there a home awaits, the home that will save all of us.

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Conversations of Zenitar: Rita & Leon

June 19, 2014

Short Stories

Part One

”It‘s such a pretty view”

Rita sat silent on the edge of the roof of the 200 story building with her feet dangling over it. The wind swayed her dark hair in a rhythmic manner and she took a deep breath of it and tasted the dirt that flew with it.

”Do you think we‘ll ever go up there?” She said, looking up at the night sky. Watching the blue marble that sat in the dark, glowing.

”Sure we will. I‘ve heard there‘s gonna be new job openings to clean Earth‘s forests. And nobody wants those jobs… but we could take them, and then they‘ll have to take us there.” Leon touched her hand on what seemed to be the edge of the Moon‘s sky.

”Do you see that?” He pointed at a slowly moving white dot in the distance. ”It‘s one of the transports. We‘ll be on of those soon, you‘ll see.”

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The Astro-Princess

May 26, 2014

Glimpses

It was in a universe before our universe. It was in a far away world of a far away galaxy. It was the humans’ third emergence from the soup of the ground, it was the first time they had escaped their world and the first time they explored the vastness of the cosmos.

People were different then, they didn’t know it, but they were still young, naive, innocent. A different society in an era so distant from our own that it could almost be said that it didn’t exist. In this society there was a girl, she yearned for what she considered her home, she yearned for the stars.

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Janitor

May 14, 2014

Glimpses

There is a place in this ship that few people know about and that I like to visit. It’s hidden below the storage area in the back, near where June and Boid go and kiss themselves when the lights go off; They don’t know that’s where I spend the nights, they don’t know I watch them from the corner, from that secret place. It has a small window, it has a small chair, and when no one is watching I sit on it and look outside.

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We’re Leaving Earth Behind

May 12, 2014

Glimpses

I can still see it from here. I haven’t lost track of it yet. Among the millions of stars around it, it still shines blue, it still looks like home.

I spend my days walking through these white hallways, the ones with the soft floors, the ones where your feet don’t hurt after having walked all day. I talk to other people in them, like ants we work, and their feet too never hurt. At night we smile to each other and on occasion say ‘good night’, for old times sake.

Sometimes, when I sleep, I can smell the salt of the ocean, I can hear the waves caress the sands outside my home. It used to be the shore that marked the limit, the limit beyond which humans could not go, a blue infinite that was impossible to conquer. Until someone did. It’s how we humans learned there are no limits. They conquered the sea and then the land. They conquered the depths of the ocean and then the peaks of the mountains that scratched the stars.

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Another Earth

May 11, 2014

Glimpses

Another Earth. It’s where they told me I was going. To another world in the outer reaches of the galaxy. Apparently Earth ran on out of prison space. They said I would have a new life, they said I wouldn’t even notice I was gone, they said it would be just like home, just like moving to another part of town.

I believed them. For a while I thought they had told me the truth. This other world looked the same, except for the geography of course. Skyscrapers towered in the populated cities and small houses and farms inhabited the towns around them. Trees grew in the forests and the jungles, and birds sung day after day looking for a partner to mate with, but above all it was the people. I could swear they were human. Learning the new language was not too difficult, the same as when I learned spanish, it was just another language. I got a job downtown in the city of Nadira as a repairman and everything seemed good for months, it seemed that I had gotten my new beginning, my new chance at life, my chance to avoid the mistakes of my past.

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What Are You?

May 2, 2014

Glimpses

What are you?

A question I was asked once. I remember it entirely. I had been waiting for the night somewhere in the desert next to a small road, waiting for the absence of vibration, for the less chaotic darkness and the glow of the moon to illuminate my reflective body. It’s the way I like to play my music, in secret, in silence of both sound and light, and as I stood there waiting I saw a trail of dust heading towards me on that dirt road.

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