Fantasy

Myth of Illusions
What is History Say About Ilusions One of the most famous allegories in Western philosophy comes from Plato's "Republic." In this allegory, Plato describes a group of prisoners chained inside a cave, facing a wall. They can only see the shadows of objects cast on the wall by a fire behind them. The prisoners mistake these shadows for reality. When one prisoner is freed and ventures out of the cave, he experiences the true world and realizes that the shadows were mere illusions. The allegory explores the idea that our perceptions of reality can be limited or distorted, and true knowledge requires a deeper understanding.
By the author 3 years ago in Fiction
"Harmony's Embrace"
Once upon a time, in a quaint little town nestled at the edge of an ancient forest, there lived a talented but reclusive musician named Amelia. Known for her unparalleled skills on the violin, she enchanted listeners with melodies that seemed to carry the very essence of magic itself.
By BUSINESS INVESTOR3 years ago in Fiction
Can AI write like Terry Pratchett?
Ladies, gentlemen, and beings of all kinds—human or Android—welcome to the world of short stories set in science fiction and fantasy! Today's episode will be a little unusual since, as a fan of science fiction, I find artificial intelligence to be both fascinating and terrifying. I reasoned that now would be the ideal time to put artificial intelligence to the test, given all the buzz about Chat GPT, Mid-Journey, and other AI breakthroughs. So let me share with you a narrative that was entirely written, spoken, illustrated, and animated by AI. Take a seat, unwind, and savor this wonderful work of literature!
By David C. Connor3 years ago in Fiction
LIFE
Once upon a time, in a small picturesque town nestled between rolling hills and crystal-clear lakes, there lived a young woman named Emily. She was curious and filled with an insatiable thirst for knowledge. From a young age, she had been fascinated by the concept of life - its mysteries, its joys, and its challenges. Emily had always believed that life was meant to be lived to the fullest, embracing every moment with open arms. She saw life as a magnificent tapestry woven with threads of experiences, emotions, and relationships. She believed that each person had their own unique story to tell, and she reveled in the beauty of diversity. As Emily grew older, she encountered the complexities of life firsthand. She witnessed the ebb and flow of happiness and sorrow, the delicate balance between success and failure. But through it all, she remained steadfast in her belief that life was a gift to be cherished. In her pursuit of understanding life's intricacies, Emily embarked on various adventures. She traveled to distant lands, immersing herself in different cultures and traditions. She listened intently to the stories of strangers she met along the way, finding wisdom in their words and lessons in their experiences. During her travels, Emily encountered hardships and obstacles. There were moments when she felt lost and uncertain, questioning the very essence of her existence. But she always found solace in the resilience of the human spirit - the ability to rise above adversity and find strength in vulnerability. Through all her experiences, Emily discovered that life was not just about the grand adventures or monumental achievements; it was about finding joy in the simplest of moments. It was about savoring a warm cup of tea on a rainy day or witnessing a breathtaking sunset painting the sky with hues of orange and pink. Life taught Emily valuable lessons about love and connection. She learned that true happiness lay not in possessions or accomplishments but in fostering meaningful relationships with loved ones. She cherished the laughter shared with friends, the comfort of family, and the support of kindred spirits who walked alongside her on this journey. As the years passed, Emily's perspective on life deepened. She realized that life was a delicate balance between holding on and letting go. It was about embracing change and adapting to new circumstances. She understood that growth often came from stepping out of one's comfort zone and embracing the unknown. Through all her trials and triumphs, Emily discovered that life was a continuous cycle of beginnings and endings. Each ending marked a new beginning, an opportunity for growth and transformation. Life, she realized, was a constant evolution, and she embraced it with open arms. In the twilight years of her life, Emily reflected on her journey with a heart filled with gratitude. She had lived a life rich in experiences, love, and laughter. She had learned to navigate the ups and downs with grace and resilience. As she looked back, she understood that life was not about reaching a final destination but rather about savoring every step of the journey. It was about finding beauty in the ordinary and embracing the extraordinary moments that took her breath away. And so, Emily's story became a testament to the beauty of life - its twists and turns, its joys and sorrows. She had learned that life was not always easy or predictable, but it was always worth living. With a smile on her face and a heart full of gratitude, Emily continued to embrace every bit of life until her last breath.
By E Bush Patrick3 years ago in Fiction
Mr. Cuddlekins
Midnight was the ideal time for a shady guest. Shortly after typing those comments, Scott heard a knock at his flat door. It was presumably one of his inebriated college friends inviting him out for a round. Scott now had a day job and spent his evenings honing his writing skills; he had neither the time nor the money to go out to bars, but every time he stated this, his friends would show him a list of authors who were also alcoholics.
By David C. Connor3 years ago in Fiction
Interconnecting Galaxies
Jade green plants grew along each side of the sidewalk that looked like they were spray painted white giving them a moon look on the Air Force Base. We were going to the theater to see a movie that which we had not seen before. This was during the Vietnam era, in about 1969. I remember the movie had an eccentric Character who resembled Kim Jong who lived under the sea in a cave grotto. There was a entire wall of glass where live fish swam underneath the ocean floor. Supposedly the character was a mad scientist where he trapped a woman in a cage that he transformed into a dragon with wings. There was a scene of a window opening as in a Bond movie, showing his creation flying over the sea. Being young I was terrified of the choice of movie shown and wondered where the film had been obtained. I had always been close to animals, going to National Parks for summer vacation where Park rangers told not to feed the bears, yet many did from their cars. Going to the Squadron one day I was shown a cage of Lynx’s that were there as the Squadron Mascot. I was let into the cage where I was allowed to hold a baby lynx that wasn’t really a spitten kitten, as I saw was a lynx. A few years later I took a course called Hunters Safety in order to go Deer hunting with my friend. I passed the course with 82% while my friend who’s family owned several horses scored a 95% on her Hunters Safety test. The course was taught by Mutual of Omaha type men, mostly old timers. I didn’t really have a interest with guns or a desire to use one, as the badge I received made it legal to go hunting. Driving for hours with radio station frequencies fluctuating in & out, A spot was found to find a Deer. Instead of venturing out into the trees, we found a pond with live trout. Catching them with our bare hands, we took them back home to have in our aquariums. We never hunted as we discovered fishing instead. This environment I lived in was about to change for me as I entered the decade of the next century. I had not seen a carriage horse before, as the ones I rode in had underfed horses with ribs showing. Using animals as vehicles seemed backwards in time, & too hard on the work animals. I found myself viewing movies such as Voyage of Sinbad with claymation characters of Greek Mythology. This was an entirely new perspective with animals. Ben-Hur was another movie made back then where I saw chariot racing as I don’t like seeing animals in intensely dangerous situations. Today in a much more violent society, horse racing becomes the site of euthanasia. With internet speeds of 5G I think we are now wired in where slowing down is impossible. Not only are animals being extracted, people are. An example of rapid movement out of control is the Idarod dog races where dogs are tracked to run over 1000 miles across the Alaskan frontier. Many of the dogs freeze to death & die from this obsession. A sled dog race should only last a day, as I feel whoever dreamed the concept up must be using the animals as torture & not for their well being. Another event that occurs annually is the seal massacre in Nova Scotia. Growing up in the great outdoors in Anchorage, I remember visiting the home of some folks who had a pet seal. Giving cans of salmon to them & helping them out instead of i making them into lining for coats. Old National Geographic magazines held photography of thousands of beached seals that I can’t imagine why anyone would declare open season on them. This destroys the entire purpose of living in a Country that I believed held respect for the nature itself. Of course their were furs back then, but today their are synthetics to keep us warm that use science to make. The poor Geese who’s feathers are plucked off can be replaced with synthetic feathers to made goose down. It’s heartbreaking to see a raccoon dog beaten with a club to make that military jackets trim. Why does it get worse? Eating dogs in China, Hunting whales instead of what it use to be..Studying the wild life to learn their ways of communicating. Recording underwater sonar to learn sound patterns, not selling them at the fish market. Imitation crab isn’t so bad, as imitation meat can be substituted. Laboratories were never included while growing up in America. A animal such as a monkey was recorded in the wild by anthropologists. There’s nothing to learn by imprisoning a animal. Subjecting a animal to disease gives no contribute to society. Pain experiments on animals serves no purpose. What should replace the suffering is recovery. During the 1980s I experienced a life where at least half the city I lived in was in recovery. This meant the people went to at least one meeting a day, not a week. I could sit in my car & read bumper stickers in front of me that indicated they were in the program. It was a fellowship having camaraderie. People were happy to experience a common welfare. Experience, strength & hope. The gates of hell had been lifted. I heard things like, take the cotton out of your ears & put a plug in your jug.. Of course the town had a brewery, and a old town full of winos. People today are buying so much alcohol, and drugs I’m no longer familiar with. There are no meetings anymore. When I look back at the city I recovered in, I see a huge homeless problem. Tents camped along the roads. Jobs desperately need to be created. Looking into the future, I hope that the switch to using hydrogen resources will replace this problem by creating jobs for thousands of workers. Hydrogen electricity, hydrogen fuel, for a fuel efficient economy. I wish I were mayor of that city, I’d move everyone living outdoors inside to the baseball stadium. Its too cold & sad to exist in a tent within a city & unsanitary. I discovered a new medicine within my game. I’m dealing with a Character named Merlin who gives me a golden chisel to make a small vial of healing liquid. When It’s made I then can conform it into a twig of life, as I then can conform it into active metal. I made so much active metal I could hear it’s workings while riding the train. The train slowed way down and started to maneuver like something out of lord of the rings. The metal sounded like a high pitched tuba as the train seemed to breathe going down the track. What’s next? I pictured everyone in the train conforming into hobbit creatures with long hair & beards. I know the twig of life comes from a hidden world. A world in its pioneering state. This is why it’s so hard to survive today. I noticed the Galaxy of Andromeda moving towards the Milky Way years ago. It said it would take centuries for it to reach us, but then I read that it was upon us, interconnected. How did it jump from one area in space is unexplainable. The only theory I can imagine is when a holographic wormhole was created in a quantum computer. The wormhole being two interconnected black holes. I definitely feel the quantum gravity effect at times as it wobbles from the machine underground that is somehow connected to it. It’s annoying as I can see why Einstein didn’t like quantum mechanics. The information about it seemed to alter as if it was censored. I think they do this with the farm. The characters order all kinds of foods that cover a lot of stuff up. The Kimchi pot is the most crucial element on the farm as it’s ceramic combination of vegetables & vinegar fills up a black hole that is pictured within our solar system. Their was never a black hole in the Milky Way when I took Astronomy in 1988. The class was underneath the dome of a planetarium where on the first day of 9 terms, the woman instructor from Argentina rotated the stars backwards in time showing how the stars looked with Thuban as the North Star. This was the beginning of time when the pyramids of Egypt were built. It was a magical class. Their was a sun dome too. In the sun dome their was a telescope pointed at the sun where a spectrum of a rainbow could be measured. Studying Stone Henge in both Astronomy & in Art History at the same time I will remember always. The class met in the day & at night as the stars were only visible when the sun went down. Doing things such as looking through a giant telescope at the moon and learning about the seven star system of the Pleiades that twinkled blue from its scattering effect within the belt of Orion. Their was one other class that met at night, that was the mortuary students. I wondered about them as I could see them through the glass. One boy had slicked black hair & ghost white skin. This was a field I wasn’t interested with at the time. The business majors were shocked when they learned we were drawing nudes, as they couldn’t understand why. I had traveled to Rome a decade earlier and viewed Michelangelo statues so I understood the beauty of the naked body. Things that puzzle me today is a corrupt underground taking place that pounds like a sledgehammer day & night. I guess if you put the thing there, then move far from it you don’t have to hear it. You can also sit back and watch the whole world get slowly destroyed and add horror stories to the myth it creates to have a good laugh. The arctic is also somehow linked to black holes as one theory shows that the earth has a hole from one pole to the other. This could be why I can hear the arctic wind through my air vent. It’s also about ten degrees colder in my buildings area then it is across the street. These new rides they built that take you up on a elevator to space can’t be real. Once your in zero gravity everything would be floating, as nothing pictured is. Its a nice simulation yet conflicting with gravity laws. Once I experimented with invisibility. In my computer I mixed iodine with household vinegar then dropped the mixture on a mouse. Slowly he dissolved as I wondered if being transparent would someday be possible. In this situation I approve of animal testing. It’s just that I’ve heard so many odd stories such as subjecting owls to being abnormal at John Hopkins. No one likes a person too smart… Over drugged monkeys at NIH where medical research replaces anthropology. Scores of airlines scooping up hundreds wild monkeys in jungles taking them to labs should have international laws forbidding this..especially in Asia. News today of anti aging tests on old mice. One mice gets fed with Qi tonic extracted from grape seeds & telomere shortening herbs found in China & India while the other mouse doesn’t. The mouse who digests the telomere formula doesn’t age as the other mouse gets old with degenerating body cells. Another story about Telomeres is the Identical twin astronauts, Captain Kelly who had a twin brother. When he came back from space they found his telomeres had grown longer from his 2015 time in space where his twin brother looked older. I found this information so useful that I began to buy a telomere formula through Green Valley Natural Solutions. The Genesis formula did work although I can’t afford the $100 bottles. Someone informed me that moon sand was also a ingredient that makes sense since space helped Captain Kelly look younger. Imagine women in the future powdering their noses with moon sand! A matrix enhancement soon to replace the need for animals used for medical purposes. Those poor bears used for their bile. A dreadful procedure that looks worse then blood leaching in the dark ages. The bile is used for week livers where sustaining from alcohol might keep a liver from using that extremity. The US Navy taking sheep into high pressure tanks, seeming like prejudice against the Middle Eastern. Sheep abuse has been so out of control where mutilation replaces a simple sheering. Seeing photos of sheep with their tails cut off is highly abnormal. This nation’s population doesn’t include sheep in their diet. A farmer once tried by importing sheep that were of a exotic breed that sadly were removed by the USDA. They said after inspecting they had a disease. I wonder why we aren’t allowed to conform to a sheep eating society. Is there too a Big Farma like Big Pharma who controls? Big Farma is Area 51 that I contribute to on a daily basis. It’s not as fulfilling as going to a social club as i enjoyed in the past. Their were rooms full of people to meet and share with, today just minions who you never meet. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a real farm somewhere in space.. The last element I can think of that I believe can help shape a myth is called M’thril. It’s a light green rock that is listed as not existing in the real world, having been derived from JR Tolkiens Middle Earth writings. This is true yet I mine for this metal in my Atlantis Odyssey game. I then am able to create prisms out of the raw material. The prisms can create rainbows where I have seen double rainbows appear. I mine other raw materials such as cobalt, silver & gold as well. They all go into the Smithy then are used to make jewelry such as rings. I can’t prove my work has scientifically created rainbows, or if the M’thril does anything. And yet I believe in its ability as I believe in superficial beings are communicating with us through these methods where possibly the element exists upon their world. This gives me hope for maintaining a Middle Earth world for folks who enjoy fantasy. I think it helps inspire me with my writings as I open the gates for others who believe in the Myth.
By Ocusan M3 years ago in Fiction
The Whispering Woods
Deep in the heart of the forest lay a place unknown to most—a sinister realm where ancient trees stood tall, their gnarled branches resembling skeletal fingers reaching out for prey. Locals referred to it as "The Whispering Woods," a name earned by the eerie voices that whispered in the wind, luring unsuspecting souls deeper into its grasp.
By ＣｈｉｒａｇＳｈａｒｍａ3 years ago in Fiction
THE FORGOTTEN TRUTH
A lost truth was hidden by the passage of time in the center of an old woodland. Legends spoke of a mysterious stone buried far within a secret grove. Nobody has dared to look for the stone in endless decades, despite the legend that whomever looked at it would be given the wisdom of ages past.
By Roshni Anjum3 years ago in Fiction
The Whispers of Mistwood
Once upon a time, in a quaint village nestled between rolling hills and a mysterious forest, lived a young girl named Elara. She was known for her wild imagination and unquenchable curiosity. Elara's favorite place was the forest, where legends whispered of magical creatures and hidden treasures.
By Alexander Marinov3 years ago in Fiction
"Echoes of Eternity". Content Warning.
In the heart of a quaint, ancient town, nestled amidst rolling hills and cascading waterfalls, lived a curious young woman named Eliza. She was an enigmatic figure, always engrossed in her grandfather's tales of time travel. Her grandfather, an eccentric inventor, had devoted his life to building a mysterious contraption he called the "Chrono-Chronicle." It was said that this device could unlock the secrets of the past and reveal glimpses of the future.
By Hassan Abdullah3 years ago in Fiction
The Starlit Wanderer
A young dreamer by the name of Evangeline was drawn to the wonder of the stars in a planet where the night sky glittered with a thousand mysteries. She set off on a cosmic voyage that would lead her beyond the commonplace and into the realm of miracles, driven by a great interest with the cosmos. We follow Evangeline as she unearths the mysteries of the cosmos and solves the riddle of her celestial destiny in this enthralling story.
By Boto3 years ago in Fiction
The Stamp Collector
The Stamp Collector, Robin Claiborne, decides to leave behind the world of mysteries and intrigue that has occupied him for so long as he sets off on his path of self-discovery and understanding. After being abruptly fired by Santa, he is forced to consider his options and look for a new direction in life aside from the magic stamp.
By David C. Connor3 years ago in Fiction