Sci Fi
Laughterhouse 8
Sof, come back. The tiles on the ceiling are dark and water-stained. Alex looks at me, “Where did you go?” I blink and shake my head, “I don’t know.”
sleepy draftsPublished 3 years ago in FictionA Peace of Our Heart.
She couldn't believe she was this close to finding it, as she dug through the thick layer of grime and ash. After all this time, it had been hiding in the midwest of all places. In a small crumbling farmhouse, deep in the now toxic cornfields of what used to be called Iowa. It had taken her years to trace it back here. After the Burning, and through the terror of the famine wars, it's a miracle it had survived at all. She sat back a moment and recalled the long journey it had taken to find it. She had first learned of its existence reading through the early scientific reports of the first outbreak. They thought it was a disease at first, and of course it was, but not like anything humanity had ever faced. The first reports were from small farming villages in Eastern Europe. People and animals getting sick, many dying. Those who survived left deeply changed and scarred for life. They didn't know, couldn't know what had happened to them. Soon, it was happening everywhere. Almost every form of plant was now deeply toxic, unable to be consumed without horrible sickness. Early research soon theorized that a parasitic fungus was invading nearly all plant life, hijacking the plant's natural ability to create pollen and co-opting it to spread its own spores instead. Some thought it was our punishment, that we had pushed the Earth too far in our greed, and this was our justice. Others tried everything they could to fight it. Even though they were warned that we didn't know enough about the fungus to take any definitive actions. World governments quickly and unanimously agreed to a "burn first" policy in an attempt to contain the fungus. Whole crops and forests were destroyed in an attempt to contain the "Grey Spore" as they called it. But in their haste, they only made it worse. The spore itself, it turned out, was extremely heat resistant and the warm air from the fires spread the spore farther and faster than they could've ever imagined. It was only then, as it became an uncontainable disaster that we realized the true horror of the Spore. It started with strange animal attacks. A missing dog or cat, a herd of cattle slaughtered and eaten as if by a pack of wolves. Normally docile, even herbaceous animals began killing and eating each other, and any humans they came across. Early tests looked for brain damage from the Spore, or some type of rampant form of Rabies, but the tests always showed negative on victim and predator alike. The answer turned out to be much simpler and much more destructive. The animals and people were all now showing early signs of starvation. Any animal or person that had ingested a plant infected by the Spore and survived, could no longer eat or digest anything but meat, becoming violently ill again should they try. Her body begins to shake as her memories of that dark time threaten to overwhelm her.The last group of scientists, working inside of sealed greenhouses had found the answer, but too late. The carnivores came for them, driven mad by their starvation as the world ran out of any meat but the human kind. But the answer survived. The lead scientist had left a video behind, in the hopes that someone would find his work, but he died before he could tell his daughter how important his gift had been. So it travelled with her, a hidden secret, as she fled from the wars as humanity fell upon itself. Thousands of miles the secret travelled in the hands of a little girl, not knowing what she had, until when she was fifteen, she had been forced to leave it behind or die. Years and miles had carried her far away to the ocean and to the islands where the few remaining unafflicted humans had found their shelter at last, living off the vegetation they could grow in sealed greenhouses, the community of only a few thousand survived. After a time, it became clear that the carnivores had either starved to death or killed each other off. The community began sending out small teams who would travel to the burned lands, looking for survivors, and even more importantly, looking for any clues of how to combat the Spore. Eventually one of these teams found the video the lead scientist had made, and it was only upon viewing this video, she realized what her father had given her all those years ago. She saw the tattered threads that were all that remained of the stuffed bear he had given her that day. Seeing the shimmer of silver, she knew she was close. Reaching down into the grime she grasped the chain that had adorned the bear's neck and pulled the heart shaped locket it carried from the grime. Wiping it down she found the small, barely perceptible notch her father had shown in the video and the locket popped open as if it had just been closed yesterday and carefully empired its contents into her hand. There it was, the thing she and her friends had hunted and sacrificed for. The thing that had nearly driven her mad when she had learned that she had carried it, unknowingly for years. At long last, the Apex Seed. Genetically created by her father and his team, and infused into the unassuming seed of an apple tree, was the last salvation for humanity and life on earth. The seed, when planted, would grow the first tree completely immune to the effects of the Gray Spore, and the pollen from that tree would be universal and would breed true, allowing for new generations of nearly every plant that would share the immunity.
Roy Lee Purdie IIIPublished 3 years ago in FictionGetting away from it all
As the door of the travelpod clicks into place and seals tight, I give a slight, involuntary shudder. It’s ok, I tell myself. Slow down. Breathe.
Melanie SmithPublished 3 years ago in FictionSensalon
“Free yourself with Sensalon,” a soothing female voice spoke from the viewscreen embedded in the wall of the subway station.
Mack DevlinPublished 3 years ago in FictionObject Lesson
Om was drenched in sweat, and even though the night was hot, they felt a chill run down their spine as the summer wind brushed their skin. The barracks were on the other side of the campus, so they had a long walk ahead of them, time enough to reflect on the events of the day. Off to the west, a plume of black smoke rose from the re-education facility. Eventually, the wind would carry the smoke over the campus, dumping ash onto the fields and buildings. Om shuddered at the thought of what the ash contained. Om’s father had been a traditionalist, bucking the laws of the land and affixing his son with the forbidden pronoun "he." Om’s father was not one of the secret dissidents that had to be ferreted out by Oversight. His counter-culture rhetoric had been front and center, so it was no surprise when Oversight arrested him.
Mack DevlinPublished 3 years ago in FictionA Heart for Humankind
Earth, 2285 AD We knew the end was coming. For a while, we just weren’t sure by what mechanism. Nuclear war was a pretty good guess; chemical warfare, climate change, a global pandemic, even supervolcanic eruption had decent odds in their own right. For hundreds of years, the human race did its utmost to put off its inevitable demise. We created bionic tissues to replace the functions of certain, less resilient organs: the pancreas, the heart, the eyes. We worked to enhance—and oftentimes replace—our limbs, our cells, our genes.
Scarlett LockePublished 3 years ago in FictionA Write to the Death
Welcome to the Great American Bake-off. It’s the year 2078, and the world is over-populated. There has been no nuclear holocaust, nor has a pandemic wiped us all off the planet. Nevertheless, Earth is as dystopian as some post-apocalyptic tale.
Tony MarshPublished 3 years ago in FictionThe Integration
Upon opening my eyes to what at first appeared to be a sun lit blur, immediately grey skies emerged and cast a shadow across the room. "Hmmph, ofcourse. I'm not surprised anymore. As soon as Gem opens his eyes, that's when the light turns to dark." I used to have a theory on internal sunshine. I used to think that "internal sunshine" is what I had. That I was a self regenerating sunshine creating, blasting, blazing machine. I used to think that I could use it in these oppressive times as a light within. Yeah...no. What I wouldn't do just to...just to see her again. Amelia. If anything could be considered internal sunshine, it would be her. No, better yet, Amelia IS eternal sunshine.
Frith
Dystopian adjective : relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice. "the dystopian future of a society bereft of reason" noun : a person who imagines or foresees a state or society where there is great suffering or injustice. "a lot of things those dystopians feared did not come true" -Dictionary Definition
Leah HarrisPublished 3 years ago in FictionThe Chest's Contents
A foreboding noise came from the locked chest. Though ominous, it made a familiar, comforting sound like a long-lost timepiece. Such ancient technology shouldn't be running at present, right? Very few things were running at all anymore, after all. Yet the chest pounded once more, "tick tock, click clock." The owner recalled a fable she heard as a young child, the story of Pandora's box. She remembered the woman who unleashed the demons into the world. She often wondered if that was her ancestor. Old sayings like, "curiosity killed the cat" were found in what was left of old literature books she noticed scattered in crumbles of buildings. She often wondered if those were true literary novels or the crumpled remnants of a note one wrote to their child or partner in hopes of keeping something secret.
E.L. MartinPublished 3 years ago in FictionThe Unexpected Return
There was once a small town along Prescott Valley in Arizona that I once called home, and I say once because, well it's long gone now. You see, my buddy Evern and I are Journalists and we left our hometown on a trip to get all the details on a new mutant spider encountered in the Aokigahara forest in Japan. We knew we couldn’t miss this opportunity to document such a fascinating find. Evern and I took the first flight out of Arizona to Fujinomiya Japan. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Mr. Nakimoto, who is the reporter who had supposedly encountered and took a video on his phone of what he called the Mutant spider. Mr. Nakimoto was a kind, respectful man with good taste in hats, it had been somewhat obvious as he wore a red fedora the day we met him. On the way there Mr. Nakimoto walked us through the encounter and told us that he always passed by the Aokigahara forest on his morning walks but that he never dared walk deeper into the forest due to the constant, uneasy feeling of being watched. He expressed to us that he had never encountered anything bigger than a small deer on his morning walks. I looked over and asked, “ Mr. Nakimoto, was there anything different about the morning walk in which you encountered the mutant spider??”. Mr. Nakimoto looked at me through the rearview mirror with fear in his eyes as he mentioned in as much detail as possible, the morning of the walk-in which he encountered the unusual creature. Of all the things he mentioned there was something that stood out and that was when he mentioned the forest being extra quiet that morning because upon past research I had found a pattern between sighting reports of creatures such as Bigfoot and Siren's head. What all these sightings had in common was exactly what Mr. Nakimoto had mentioned. The extreme silence in the forest where there should be sounds such as chirping birds and swaying branches, extreme silence is usually a huge sign of the presence of a larger creature in the area. For this reason, I felt chills run down my spine. Mr. Nakimoto was kind enough to take us to the two-bedroom cottage we had rented for the week, Evern and I got our bags and took them inside, got our coats, and headed back to the car. It was getting rather cold, I slid my hands into my sleeves as I closed the door.
Consonance
“We came to refer to it as consonance. A perfect unity of thought and action, between individuals and society, and society and environment.
Lorna MackiePublished 3 years ago in Fiction