He carried the sorrow hideous and odious, heavy and jagged through the depths of space, towards the edge of the universe. There he would discard it because he knew that as long as they occupied the same universe, the sorrow would gravitate back to him, or more accurately, they would gravitate towards one another, drawn together by the invisible, fundamental forces governing the matter composing each of them. Continue reading
Category: Fiction
When We Were Not Alone
Centuries later, after their sudden, enigmatic departure, I read an obscure xenologist’s brief, in- formal account of “Superlove” – what she and her contemporaries called the crucial core of the Xunirics’ emotional constitution.
To make our relations more comfortable, the Xunirics have taken human form, a relatively facile transformation in appearance for them to undertake, a triffling inconvenience to remedy all the attention we’d ineluctably lavish upon them in their natural form. But of course, this change in outward presentation doesn’t distract us from the fact that the Xunirics have an emotional force intensely outshining any of our own. It’s like love but all the more so. Someone began calling it Superlove, and the name stuck. Continue reading
With Regard to the Presupposed Ubiquity of Happy Endings
In childhood, we are weaned on a particular happy ending archetype, and through regular feedings, we become accustomed to the taste of this sweet, succulent abstraction. We come to later feast and gorge upon more sophisticated renditions of the archetype rich in savory and zesty motifs. This leads us to not only crave actual, specific happy endings but also believe that these instantiations of the delectable paradigm are plentiful, made and obtained straightforwardly without consequence, something to which we are entitled, deserving, even guaranteed.
In reality, happy endings as we know them are manufactured products synthesized from a combination of various natural resources – some scarce, others fairly abundant – all embedded deep within the Earth, mixed with other substances known collectively to us as impurities. Continue reading
Objects of Value
“So what was that dream you wanted to tell me about?” I ask, taking the bowl from her.
“Oh man, totally weird,” she says, handing me the bowl.
“Awesome, let’s hear it,” I reply, taking the bowl.
“So I was all alone, feeling sad that I didn’t have any friends,” she begins, handing over the bowl. “I started to wonder why and realized that it was probably because I didn’t have any money to do stuff with people, like go shopping, eat out, see movies and gamble.”
Continue reading
Fuel
“In my dream, I was outside, walking around the neighborhood as the sun was setting,” she tells me. “The streets and houses looked much like as they normally do. At some point, I stopped at an intersection waiting for traffic to clear so I could cross the street. A man driving a van slowed to a stop, kindly letting me cross the street. I waved to thank him as I hurried across to the next block. He drove off as soon as I reached the sidewalk, and then I smelled a familiar, smoky but sweet aroma in the air. It took me a while to place the scent, but then as I continued on my way, I realized it was the fragrance of burning dreams.
“Ah, I thought to myself. He has to burn dreams as fuel to translocate. That’s what it’s come to for him. It saddened me to find such wondrous material full of potential expended on such things.” Continue reading
Keepsakes of Aspiring Pacifists
I always carry a few of Yuuka’s disarming smiles with me. Even though I don’t inhabit a community with particularly contentious or caustic folks, sometimes enmity flares up unexpectedly. You never know when you might need such a smile, and these are my keepsakes of Yuuka, reminders of her and the moments we shared, especially the last one.
It was already, surprisingly autumn after a summer of delicious tomatoes, too much music and a colorful mixture of banal and lofty goals. Long since abandoned by boats and their passengers, the pier we stood upon was enshrouded by fading echoes muting the sun.
“Until you have some of your own,” she said, giving me one more of those unmistakable, mollifying smiles of hers as a parting gift. Continue reading
Life With, Then Without Mind-Altering(Narrowing) Substances
Before the crackdown, you could get almost any stereotype you wanted – especially negative social ones – without going out of your way. Even though the bulk of them were already prohibited and much of the rest was on its way to the same classification, the trade and use of stereotypes was utterly rampant. Those were the days when it was not uncommon to encounter and even get hooked on stereotypes in your youth, a time when stereotypes changed hands on playgrounds at recess like collectible toys or candy and were passed around among adolescents loitering in empty school parking lots on weekend evenings. Continue reading
My Ex-Colleague’s Calculations
I need to reconstruct or entirely recreate my raison d’être, in such a way that it does not so heavily incorporate the notion of contingent worth in its various forms. But first, I need a slice of pizza. Possibly two. So I go to the pizzeria I frequent when pizza goes from being luxury and distraction to necessity and imperative. Continue reading
Code
As the cashier begins to ring up the goods I’ve placed before her, I continue to admire her hair arrangement.
“Your hair looks great today,” I suddenly find myself saying.
She looks up from the loaf of bread held in her hands.
“I’m sorry. I can’t believe I just said that,” I quickly apologize. “Is that outside what’s sanctioned by the customer-cashier code of conduct?”
“I’m afraid so,” she tells me. “Anything unrelated to the transaction at hand is not permitted.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Me too. I can’t sell these to you now. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”
“But I’m out of tofu. What am I going to do?” I protest. Continue reading
Corrective Lenses
“What’s with the shades?” I ask Tuoz as he walks towards me across the row of still empty seats, his eyes concealed by large, thick sunglasses I’ve never seen him wear before. “It’s not even sunny out,” I add.
Sitting down in the seat beside mine, Tuoz tells me, “Oh, these glasses help me develop my empathic capacity.”
“How?”
“Here, try them on,” he says, taking off the glasses.
He hands them to me. I put them on, first surprised that they don’t darken the scene before me, then stunned that through them Tuoz looks like me. Just his head. His clothes remain unchanged. Continue reading
A Contemplative Compilation 