Tag: short story

Dream Architect

This is one of the many modular fictional stories like The Man And His Mysterious Kitten, which are slated to be part of a big novel.

Right now I am sitting next to John on the wing of an abandoned, rusty military airplane in the middle of a big field full of grass. The crashed plane’s bottom is buried in the ground and wings are touching the soil. The weather is gentle and pleasant, the sky is slightly cloudy and romantic with the sun peeking through occasionally.

I am wearing a black long gown which has some very nice blue-aqua handwork around my kneck, chest, and full sleeves. I am also wearing some silver jewelry paired with my Indo-western fusion outfit. A gentle breeze is playing through my long brown hair which is coming from the ocean afar and John next to me is wearing a blue-white plaid shirt and pants.

He broke the silence, “A broken plane in the middle of a big field and then an ocean, right in front of us nearby? What kinda weird place is this?”

I replied, “Well, this is a fuse between Dayton, Ohio and San Diego, California. The best I could think of..”

John laughed, “Oh! Great! It is like the Pacific Ocean in the Midwest! You are the best dream architect I could have thought of. I cannot come up with these. Everything is so incredibly detailed including what we are wearing and how I am feeling at this very moment. Even though all of it is fake. Everything seems symbolic and philosophical..”

I added, after a long breath, “Yeah now-a-day simulation seems more real than real life. Is there any point of living with a body, if I can just visualize everything in my head? Somehow maybe my mind can survive. What do you think?”

John, “What? You sound kinda depressed. How is your education going? Any new jobs? Any new prospects? What are you up to these days?”

I added with an upsetting tone, “Let’s not ask anything about real life. You cannot imagine what I have been going through. You are also partly responsible for this. I still cannot make peace with the fact that you were against me as well… I hope you can keep your job in that hell hole!”

John yelled, “Hey! Calm down…Okay.”

Suddenly the weather changed. Clouds got darker and the wind got stronger. It’s as if a storm is about to happen.

John asked, “What’s going on?”

I said, “Well, this is a reflection of our changing mood. The weather pattern changes accordingly in simulation showing our discomfort. Well, in real life our life events change according to our state of mind and we do not realize.”

John just vanished. He took off. He is probably pissed right now. I turned off my simulation headpiece which connects through my head’s brain implant.

Even outside my window, I see stormy weather. There was no indication of such a thing in the weather app a while ago. Is this a pure coincidence? The last time when I was feeling angry and depressed with John I felt a sharp pain in my head and wasn’t it stormy outside?

To be continued…

A Paranormal Halloween

Today is October 27, 2016. That means Halloween is near. Jessica cannot forget last year’s Halloween Party. She usually does not celebrate Halloween. She basically tries to avoid all kinds of social gatherings. She is a typical introvert and a geeky type of person who feels awkward around people.

She is a sophomore in college and lives in a college apartment sharing with three other girls. So her dorm friends took her to a Halloween party. They coaxed her so much that she could not say no.

There were two other girls with her, named Sara and Leena. They were all going to Leena’s cousin’s place for a Halloween costume party. Sara got dressed as Wonder-woman, she seemed kinda provocative. Leena wore a skeleton face-makeup. Jessica decided to dress like Big Bang Theory’s Amy. She figured out this character matched her personality, it was easy to pull it off and she would not feel that awkward.

They arrived at a big house with a large yard very creatively decorated for the occasion. Inside the living and dining room, the party had already started. There were mostly young college people. Jessica went to the backyard of the house and picked a quiet area to sit. There was no one here. She seems to get nervous around people and does not know how to really start a conversation or exactly what to do.

She took her phone out of her purse and found the network service getting really slow. She did not have any data left on her phone to browse the internet. Soon she saw a guy in the backyard. He almost appeared out of nowhere. She was wondering where this person was because she did not see him inside the house. He came close and sat nearby.

He smiled and said, “Hey! I am Mike”.

Jessica with an awkward smile said, “Hi. I am Jessica”. There were a few moments of silence. Jessica then asked, “Do you know the WiFi password by any chance?”

Mike replied, “Nah! I don’t use that…don’t need it.” Then he added, “You should go inside, your friends are waiting.”

Jessica thought to herself, what kind of person doesn’t use WiFi? She noticed Mike is very handsome, but something is kinda odd and creepy about this guy. He is still smiling and staring at her. A very gentle breeze passed and made the whole atmosphere very eerie.

Leena and Sara were calling for Jessica to come inside. She got up to step inside and turned back but did not see Mike there. Strange! She had chills in her spine. When she came inside, she said,” I was asking Mike about WiFi password. He doesn’t know. Do you know Leena?”

Leena squinted her eyebrows and said, “Who is Mike?”

Jessica replied, “That guy in the back yard. He said his name is Mike.”

They entered into the living space where everyone was cheering and being loud. Jessica was about to look for that guy but she noticed a big photo of Mike smiling at one side of the wall. She pointed her finger at the wall and said, “That guy.”

Leena dragged her into the corner. She said, “Oh this Mike is my cousin who died a few years ago. This is his parents’ house. You are kidding me, right? You must have asked for his name from someone. Don’t try to trick me, Jessica !”-Leena and Sara laughed.

Jessica’s jaw dropped. Her hand palms started to sweat and she had goosebumps. She could have sworn that she saw that guy. Did she just see Mike’s ghost? Or did Leena and everyone try to trick her? This must be a joke! She felt really angry all of a sudden and decided to take an Uber to get back to her dorm.

Later she found out that Mike had, in fact, died in an accident.

A Date Night On Mars

A Date Night-

Lana is sitting next to a giant oval-shaped window in a cafe called “Cafe Blue Moon”. She asks Kee, her boyfriend, in her thoughts (through her implanted bio-cell chip) how long Kee will take to come. While waiting for him, she is looking at the vast Martian reddish landscape with a bright greenish tint of the artificial earthlike atmosphere layer created from the nearby ozone-house.

She had a chance to go back to visit Earth a few years ago. Earth is not the same anymore. Even with all the damage that human species caused to Mother Earth, she is still far better than Mars in Lana’s opinion. Although quite extreme and unpredictable, Earth still has a breathable atmosphere for humans. Lana is nostalgic about the moonlit night experience she had while staring at the present otherworldly scenery. It was the first time she stepped outside on Earth’s surface without a special suit and an ozonic helmet. She breathed fresh air for the first time in her life, but was informed it is not fresh anymore, still, it reminded her as if she is home. Now she is telling herself, “Cafe Blue Moon what an ironic name for a cafe on Mars!”

Back Story –

It is 2233 now, 200 years since humans first made a manned journey to Mars. Lana and Kee are middle-class Martian people, but their ancestors were privileged earthlings who left Earth in the face of catastrophe. She read from the diaries of her great grandparents that it took human civilization many years to make a major leap from landing on earth’s moon to step foot on Mars, and eventually colonizing Mars through a lot of trial and error. There were a lot of socio-political and economic obstacles against this great step of human evolution. Some people even mocked at this idea, saying, why do we need to spend money to die on Mars when there are so many real problems we should fix on our earth? But by 2050 things had gone so out of hand that now rich people were spending money to relocate to Mars, to escape away from the horror of wars and terror. Some people till this date blame the oil industry behind the demise of our beloved earth. They say the oil industry is a key player behind the environmental disaster, politics, wars, terror, greed and the major cause of keeping the advanced energy-saving and space-based technology away from the general public for a long time. There are still a few under-privileged humans left on Earth who are trying to survive in harsh, extreme weather without much help from technology.

When Lana landed on Earth with her crew, from far away she was observing some people riding horses and wearing a primitive outfit made from animal skin. She read in the history book, that is how human civilization started and that is where earthlings are left to be now!

By the year 2100, a large number of people from Earth permanently left for Mars and some for other inhabitable planets. But Lana thinks the power play of human species never stopped. There is still a social division based on economic status. People who belong to the wealthy and privileged upper class are trying to colonize the Earth-like planets in nearest neighborhood galaxies. This is not a recent breakthrough. In fact, it has been going around for a while, in parallel with the struggle of artificially making Mars-like planets habitable.  The people in power want to control who takes the journey to the special habitable planets. They have already sent selected people to spaceships, putting them to sleep in cryogenic hibernation. There are only rumored stories on how far these spaceships have gone. But these are classified projects that are beyond the reach of people like Lana and Kee. Some say, Martian humans, have mastered the technology of artificial warm whole and anti-matter propulsion systems a long time ago and has already put it into use to travel to very far places in the universe. Again, there is no way to verify this by middle-class Martians, this might be another rumor. Lana thinks that history is repeating itself, that instead of making all innovation and knowledge accessible to the general public, the upper class is controlling it for their own selfish agenda.

Every human baby born by now on Mars is genetically engineered and people’s life expectancy, thus has increased dramatically eliminating all possible hereditary diseases. Some WiFi enabled bio-chips are installed in their bodies which help them to communicate through their mind without using any words. They can search for any information in their head and they can also create holographic virtual screens to project information through their body parts. This widespread technology uses human’s coherent thoughts to do things that early computers or cell phones would do. Because of all these bio-implants, people argue that they are not fully human anymore. They are artificial human beings, previously termed cyborgs. The physical, demographic and capability of each individual is controlled by the authority- creating differences or diversity among people.

The sophisticated AI  industry has changed the game of the private transportation industry completely, while public transportation is a majorly Hyperloop technology-based. All private/individual transportation modes are fully autonomous. Whenever a person calls his or her mode of transportation in the head, it appears at convenient locations and it reads fingerprints of the owner to get started for the journey. It is almost like owning autonomous horses who can also switch gears to fly. Some of this technology was already developed on earth, human species just have taken it with them in outer space and have been modifying it ever since.

Back at the present moment-

Lana and Kee, unlike the current Martian youngsters, are very romantic. They love to read about the world’s and human civilization’s ancient history, poetry, literature and like to enjoy old classic films together. They often do things to create the old world charms and romanticism.

Lana is just about to ask one more time, what is happening to Kee? Although Kee can easily reply through his telepathic concepts, he decided to do something different. He sent a robotic bird with an envelope to Lana. When Lana opened the envelope, a holographic screen came out of it and it reads in Kee’s voice, “Something important came up at the last minute sweetie! I cannot come today. I am sorry… I love you.”

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Photo courtesy: SpaceX Envisions Building a City on Mars. Seriously.

Read Next: Martian Tabloid (Game of Thrones)

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