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craftingcreatures · 1 year ago

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Into Eternity

This is a short story I wrote for my Speculative Evolution project Vicis Aeternum. It details the major event which ended humanity's presence on the desert world and began raising sea levels, ending the pre-colonial era and kicking off the Diluvian period. Story under the cut.

~o~O~o~

“Hey, Stella, you want some coffee?”

Stella Cartier turned away from her computer. Reg Hadley stood in the doorway, holding a cup of steaming liquid and eyeing her with studious passivity. “I thought we were all out.”

“We were.” Reg’s voice was as bland as his face.

“What happened? Did someone find an unopened canister?”

“Not quite.” A strange expression rippled over Reg’s face, quickly suppressed. Stella eyed him suspiciously. “You want some coffee or not?”

“It’s been way too long since I’ve had a good cup of coffee. Give it here.” She started to reach her hand out, then paused.

“This had better not be a trick, Reg. If that cup has something gross in it, I will personally set fire to your underwear drawer.”

“No trick.” Reg handed her the cup, and there was no mistaking the achingly familiar aroma. His face seemed to have trouble keeping its neutral expression. “It’s real. Taste for yourself.”

Stella did, and her eyes lit up. It was real coffee, not too bitter, with all the nutty tones of a good Colombian roast. It was probably just the long deprivation talking, but it seemed to her to be the most heavenly thing she’d ever tasted, far and away better than the freeze-dried coffee they’d lived off of since they’d arrived on Spero. It definitely had cream in it, a bit of sugar, and a faint taste of vanilla. Wherever Reg had gotten this coffee, it was a high-quality blend. She sipped slowly, savouring the long-desired beverage. “This is amazing. Where’d it come from?”

“Well, that’s what I’m here to tell you.” Reg’s studied look of indifference crumbled, replaced with shining eyes and a ludicrous grin. “The plantation’s had its first surplus harvest. What you’re drinking is directly from our fields.”

Stella’s eyes had been closed, the better to taste the coffee with. Now they snapped open. “What!?”

“You heard me. Everything in that cup was grown right here on Spero. The coffee, the sugar beets, the vanilla. We had our first hazelnut harvest, too, but I know you hate it so I didn’t put any in yours.”

Stella broke into a grin even wider than her co-workers’. She set the coffee aside and trapped him in a bone-crushing hug. “That’s incredible! We’re finally becoming self-sufficient!”

“Ow, ow, ow! The ribs, the ribs!” Reg spluttered. Stella let go.

The colony world of Spero was a long shot. A desert planet with only a small amount of liquid water on its surface, it was nonetheless the only habitable world within reach of humanity’s interstellar program. Nearly five years ago, Stella, Reg, and the two hundred other scientists had landed on the planet after a hundred years in cryogenic stasis and set to work terraforming the planet so it would sustain human life. Now, all their hard work was paying off.

“I didn’t just come to bring you coffee,” Reg said when he had gotten his breath back. “There’s a party in the Agri storehouse. Kaeli baked some cakes – Pineapple flavoured, also from Spero-grown food. Everyone’s invited.”

“I’ll be there in a minute. I just have to finish up this soil analysis.” Reg left the room, and Stella returned to her computer, sipping her coffee gratefully. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face.

Five years of work – and the planet was finally turning from merely a habitable planet into a nice one.

Granted, there were still the hurricane-force windstorms that threatened the very foundations of her analysis hut almost every day, but the strategically planted lines of fruit and hardwood trees had taken most of the bite out of those winds. She still went to bed every evening with a fine layer of desert dust clogging her nostrils. The arid air still hurt her throat when she woke up in the mornings. But things had gotten better. Most of the land around the Mare Vagus and the banks of the one large river was fertile cropland now, with rich humus instead of sand and dust, and filled with growing green things; farther away from the water, the harsher land still grew grasses and other browse for livestock. And with the success of the coffee, vanilla, and pineapple plantations, even some of the pickier plants were beginning to thrive.

All through the hard work of Stella and the other first-wave colonists.

It was an achievement to be proud of – to take a desolate world, with nothing of value except a breathable atmosphere, livable temperatures, and surface water – and turn it into a home. Stella smiled with satisfaction as she completed her work and went to join the others.

~o~O~o~

The party was a party. People were laughing and singing and playing games. Kaeli Ngi, one of the farmers and sometime baker, stood by her pineapple upside-down cakes, glowing with pride and excitement. The lead arborist, Stan Winters, stood beside her, equally proud of the Spero-grown maple-wood table that the cake sat on, and chatting with anyone who’d listen about the struggles he’d had getting the maple trees to grow in the dry soil. There were games. There was food. There was even a flask of moonshine, made from Spero-grown potatoes, making its way surreptitiously around the crowd as people poured small amounts into their coffee, but no one reprimanded the owners for it. People were in high spirits.

Stella got a slice of cake and wandered over to a group of people that included Reg and several other soil analysts. John Tigard noticed her coming and moved to the left to make room for her.

“…don’t know what it is,” Mika Watanabe was saying. “Some kinda box-type thing.” She paused when she noticed Stella. “Hey, Stella. How’s it going?”

“Everything’s delicious,” Stella mumbled around a mouthful of cake. She swallowed. “What’s happening with you?”

“Mika’s been telling us about this weird thing Leo found buried up in the new cropland they’ve been prepping,” John said, his voice slurred a little from the moonshine in his coffee. “Apparently it’s some kinda artifact.”

Mika nodded emphatically. “It’s a great big box-shaped thing,” she said. “Looks like a coffin, except its way too big. Made of some kind of black metal. We have no idea what it is, but it’s definitely not natural.”

“Maybe it’s alien,” Reg said, his voice quavering in affected spookiness, wiggling his fingers in Mika’s face while he made ghost noises.

Mika glanced at him worriedly. “It’s possible.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Stella said carefully. “It might be a piece of debris from one of the original probes. Didn’t one of them explode?”

Mika didn’t look convinced. “That could be. But I think you guys’ll have to see it for yourselves. It’s… weird.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know.” Mika swirled her coffee. “There’s just this… feeling you get when you look at it. Leo says it makes him dizzy.”

“Have you checked it for radiation?” Stella asked pointedly. “Toxin emissions? Sometimes materials react weirdly to being in space.”

“Yes to both,” another soil analyst – Ravitya Prasad – interjected. “Before we even got it out of the ground. Nada.”

“Hm.” Stella took another bite of her cake. “Where are you keeping it? I’m curious,” she said when her mouth was empty again.

“We got it stashed in a supply quonset,” Mika supplied. “Out by the strawberry fields. Leo thinks its creepy – doesn’t want it anywhere near the barracks. I can show you later, after the party.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Stella smiled, and took another bite of her cake. “Mmm. This is really good.”

~o~O~o~

“Yeah, that’s definitely not debris from a probe.”

The unidentified object was about fifteen feet long, lozenge-shaped with squared-off ends and smoothed edges. Its surface was smooth and shiny black – there was not a hint of damage from re-entry or impact, not even any sand-scoring from exposure to Spero’s harsh desert. There were also no other features – no seams, no details, nothing. It was a featureless monolith.

Mika, Stella, and Reg stood in the supply quonset, inspecting the mysterious discovery in the dwindling evening light. Through the open doors, fields of spinach, strawberries, and onions stretched to the impossibly flat horizon. The dull gray-brown orb of the moon hung low in the eastern sky, so like and yet so unlike Earth’s own moon. A pair of camels knelt sedately on the hard-packed dirt, munching on the feral grasses which sprouted everywhere like weeds.

“Yeah, I didn’t really think it was,” Mika seemed to sag. “Any other ideas?”

“I’m thinking aliens are looking more and more likely,” Reg ventured. Stella shot him a disgusted look.

“Grow up, Reg. There weren’t even any microbes in the water before we began terraforming. Humanity’s been looking for alien life for centuries, and we haven’t found so much as a bacterium on any of the planets we’ve surveyed. Why would there be an intact alien artifact just sitting there on a world that’s been dead for billions of years?”

Reg just rolled his eyes. “Well, if it’s not aliens, than what do you think it is, oh wise exalted one?”

“I have no idea,” Stella said honestly. “But if we can figure out its mass and volume, we might be able to figure out what its made of. I guess it might be some kind of mineral deposit that got buried in an ancient flood – obsidian, maybe.”

“Right,” Mika snorted. “A natural mineral deposit this big, flawlessly smooth, and perfectly symmetrical? Give me a break.”

“Yeah,” Reg agreed. “And besides, don’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?” Stella asked, confused.

Reg looked at her as if her head was made of broccoli. “You don’t feel it.”

“Feel. What.” Stella repeated, growing irritated.

“The artifact,” Reg’s voice was low, almost a whisper. “It’s… humming.”

Stella frowned. “Humming.”

Reg and Mika both nodded. “It’s… not an audible sound,” Mika supplied. “It’s more like… it’s almost like its vibrating in my soul. I can’t really describe it.”

“I don’t feel anything,” Stella said flatly, crossing her arms. “And I’m beginning to think you two are having a laugh.”

“Stella, I know I have a history, but I swear to you I am not messing with you right now,” Reg raised one hand and placed the other over his heart in the classic position of one giving an oath. “I don’t know why you don’t feel it, but trust me, if you could, you’d know exactly what I’m talking about.”

Stella looked stubbornly at him. She opened her mouth to retort, but suddenly her radio beeped. Flashing a cool look at her friends, she thumbed the transmission button. “Cartier here.”

“Stella, are you outside? You need to go outside right now.” The staticky voice was Ravitya’s. It sounded urgent. Frowning, Stella shared a confused look with Mika and Reg and strode towards the doorway.

Nothing appeared to have changed. The camels were still tied up, munching grass as they knelt by the hut entrance. The landscape was still the same as always – impossibly flat, covered in agricultural fields, with only the silhouettes of distant buildings and a line of faraway trees breaking up the eternal nothingness that characterized the planet. Stella frowned. It all looked exactly as it should. Maybe strangely bright for this time of night…

“Okay, we’re outside,” Stella began. “What’s so urgent-”

“Stella, the moon,” Mika gasped. “Dear God, Stella, look at the moon.”

Stella turned. And felt all the blood drain from her face.

The moon had exploded.

The normally dingy grey planetoid had cracked open like an egg, spewing a titanic cloud of glittering white across the starscape. The icy center of the moon glowed almost eye-hurtingly as it reflected the sunlight, exposed to the vacuum of space for the first time in- nobody knew how long. Chunks of debris flew away from the disintegrating body, cutting through the expanding plume of ice shards like bullets. It was like a still from an action film – an explosion, frozen in time, rendered in the impossible bluish-white of pure water ice.

“What… what…” Stella’s mouth worked, but she couldn’t form a sentence. “What happened?” she finally ground out.

Neither Mika nor Reg had an answer.

The apparent peacefulness of the cataclysm was just an artifact of the explosion’s great scale and distance. In actuality the colossal chunks of ice and crust were hurtling through space at speeds of hundreds, maybe thousands of kilometers per hour.

Right towards the fertile fields of Spero.

Stella felt her heart skip a beat.

~o~O~o~

“Quiet, everyone, quiet,” David Nwadike, Mission Coordinator, held up his hands to stem the tide of shouted questions and panicked comments from the assembly of scientists.

An hour after the moon’s destruction had become apparent, almost the entire settlement team was gathered in the administration building’s auditorium – the only ones missing were a few who had been stationed in distant outposts, and those whose experiments were at a critical stage and could not be left unattended. Of the two hundred people on Spero, a hundred and sixty were crammed into the large room, and the rest were likely listening in on the radio broadcast. Everyone had seen the moon explode, and everyone was frantically questioning what it would mean for the future of the Spero colony. Kendrick stared out over the crowd, gut twisting. It wasn’t any good thing.

“There is no need to panic,” he said when the cacophony had at last died down. “Please, we are scientists. Let us remain rational.”

Nwadike was an accomplished public speaker, and so his words sounded strong and confident – a confidence he didn’t actually feel. Nonetheless, they had the desired effect. The tension in the room lessened slightly.

“It’s still too early to tell precisely what happened,” Nwadike continued. “We think that a long-period comet or planetoid collided with the moon, breaking it into pieces. Why this object never appeared on our scopes is a question I don’t have the answer to. Lubovich and the astronomical team are currently hard at work analyzing footage from the impact to try and come up with answers.

“In the meantime, we have more pressing concerns. Unfortunately, our little corner of Spero is directly in the path of the debris cloud. Pieces of material from the moon are heading toward Spero at approximately 40,000 kilometers per hour. We have about eleven hours before the first meteorites hit. If we’re lucky, we’ll just get a light dusting. Regardless, we must spend that time preparing.

“Agriculture division, I want you to lock down the seed banks. See if you can get them into the emergency bunkers. Animal husbandry, let all of the livestock free – better they’re dispersed and we lose half the animals than the barns get hit and we lose them all in one fell swoop. Technology division, we need every vehicle fully fueled and ready to go. Astronomy is trying to predict where the meteorite impacts will be least severe – chances are good we’ll be making an emergency evacuation to higher latitudes.” Nwadike looked out over the sea of ashen-gray faces. “Everyone else, standing evacuation orders apply. Shut down all experiments and get yourselves, your families, and your most vital equipment – in that order – ready to move out at a moment’s notice. That will be all. Good luck, team.”

The auditorium once again devolved into chaos as scientists rushed about to follow their duties. Frantically shouted questions were lost in the frightened hubbub. Nwadike felt deflated.

Five years of work. Three hundred years of preparation. Two hundred people, good men and women, scientists who’d devoted their lives to see this venture succeed. All of it at risk, possibly doomed, because of the mathematical quirks of orbit trajectories. A fraction of a degree to the right or left, and the planetoid would have missed the moon entirely, and none of them would have been any the wiser.

But the trajectories had intersected in the worst possible way, and now colossal chunks of ice and debris were hurtling toward them at horrifying speeds. Nwadike wondered if he – if any of them – were going to survive.

~o~O~o~

Ten hours later, the first meteorites began to hit.

Stella looked up at the debris cloud, looming ominously over the horizon. In the light of evening the night before, the shattered moon had seemed impossibly bright – the moon’s icy interior, normally covered by murky carbon dust and other organics, was suddenly, blindingly white when exposed to the light of the sun for the first time. Now, however, the planet and the debris cloud had shifted, and the sun was coming up from behind the cloud – which appeared much, much larger, covering most of the southern and eastern skies and blocking out the light. The cloud was dark and gray, a thunderhead of darkness so high up in the atmosphere it wasn’t even beginning to billow yet. Flashes of light were appearing high in the sky as chunks of ice and dust burnt up in the atmosphere. It was almost pretty – a sparkling starscape in the dim morning light. If only it wasn’t the herald of something terrible.

With a surprisingly anticlimactic ding, a chunk of ice the size of a softball impacted the hood of Stella’s evacuation truck and bounced away.

Everyone riding in the vehicle – Stella, Kaeli, John, nine others from Agriculture and Animal Husbandry – collectively winced at the sound. The vehicle rocked and sputtered, but kept driving, the meteorite having merely dented the hood. Stella said a silent prayer of thanks that it had only been a small one.

As if on cue, there was an impossibly loud noise, like a bomb going off, and the truck lurched violently. The evacuees were tossed bodily through the air as the force of the impact knocked the vehicle onto its side. Stella was wearing a seatbelt, but there were more people in the truck than it had been designed to carry – not everyone was so lucky.

When the ringing in her head stopped drowning out all other sensation, Stella took stock of her surroundings. She was hanging suspended from her seatbelt, arms and legs dangling from the side of the truck. Beside her, Kaeli hung limply – a trickle of blood ran down her chin from her ear. Burst eardrum. Below them, on what used to be the opposing side, the rest of the passengers lay unmoving.

Chest aching from where it had been thrown against the seatbelt, Stella began disentangling herself. Careful not to step on any injured people, she lowered herself to what was now the floor and began trying to get Kaeli down. The smaller woman was unconscious, which made things both easier and harder.

John appeared beside her, already free from his restraints. He mouthed something.

“What?” Stella asked. She couldn’t hear him – his voice was distant and oddly distorted.

“…got to get out of here,” she finally made out. John was holding one bloody hand to the side of his head – his ears must be ruptured, too. By the pain and the distorted noise, Stella guessed that the blast had been loud enough to burst all of their ears.

“Help me get Kaeli,” she called, as loudly and clearly as she could. John nodded and stepped up to lower the young farmer slowly to the floor. She groaned and began to stir.

Stella checked her over for further injuries, ignoring the hail of tiny meteorites which fell outside the truck. Kaeli didn’t seem to be critically injured, so Stella turned to help John check the rest of the evacuees.

“We got three dead,” John shouted grimly. “Martin, Alvarez, and Wentland. Sigurdsson’s critically injured – broken femur, bleeding badly. Nothing we can do for him. The rest are unconscious, but they’ll live if we get out of here.”

“What do we do?”

“We get them to safety,” John grunted, hefting an unconscious body over his shoulder. “I’ve got Randall, You get Kaeli. There’s a storage hut about a hundred meters back – take her and run. Don’t get hit.”

Stella nodded and struggled to lift the smaller woman over her own shoulder. John kicked open the truck’s rear doors and the two survivors stepped out into another world.

Chunks of ice rained from the sky like hailstones. The sky was almost pitch black – the debris cloud completely blocked out the sun. It was not entirely dark, though – the sky was alight with countless shooting stars, meteors the size of pebbles or softballs burning up in the atmosphere. Stella felt a tiny meteorite bounce painfully off her shoulder, one small enough that the atmosphere had slowed its descent. Gritting her teeth, she adjusted her grip on the unconscious Kaeli and took off, loping over the flat prairie toward the closest quonset.

Every muscle in her body ached. Her ears screamed in pain. Kaeli gasped slightly as a small meteorite slammed into her hip, and Stella winced in sympathy. In the distance, there was another explosion – a much larger chunk of ice impacting with the ground, one too large to be slowed by the atmosphere. Stella flinched as something cool fell onto her face – but the impact didn’t hurt. With a start, Stella realized it was raining.

What the heck?! It never rains here!

In her five years on Spero, Stella had witnessed rain maybe twice, each time a halfhearted sprinkle that lasted a grand total of ten minutes before dissipating. Supposedly it rained more in the faraway mountains, and the presence of the river supported that fact, but Stella had been too busy with the business of colonizing a desert world to make the long trek to the highlands. Here in the lowlands, the only water was the river – and what the desalination plants could get from the mare.

But now droplets of water fell all around her, quickly filtering down into the desert soil. In the distance, lightning flashed – a static discharge caused by the addition of tons upon tons of water vapour to the atmosphere by the icy, rapidly vaporizing meteorites. Stella raced over the ground, which was rapidly turning to mud. In a matter of minutes she was soaked through. A chunk of ice the size of a grapefruit thudded to the ground maybe two feet from her. Seconds later, another explosion a short distance away nearly knocked her over, but she steadied herself and kept running.

Even through her damaged eardrums, everything was loud – the crackle of thunder, the dull boom of explosions, the patter of rain and meteorites on grass and crops and soil and the roof of the quonset hut. Stella tore open the doors and raced inside, followed by John.

It was the same quonset she’d been in when the moon had first exploded – the mysterious black artifact sat against one wall, covered in a fine layer of dust like everything else on this planet. Stella barely noticed it – she had other things to worry about. The building’s roof was peppered with holes, but it would still protect them to a degree. Sighing with pain and relief, Stella deposited Kaeli on a stack of pallets and sat down miserably beside her, soaking wet and aching all over. John, however, didn’t sit down. Instead, he placed Randall carefully on his own pallet and went to rummage in a container that sat just inside the door.

“I’m going back out there,” he said grimly, lifting the emergency first-aid kit which was kept in every outbuilding.

Stella looked up at him in a panic. “Are you insane?”

“There’s still five living people in that truck,” John reasoned, moving to pull a couple of hard hats off the storage rack. “They need medical attention, and fast. I’ll be fine. You tend to Kaeli and Randall.”

“Wait!” Stella cried, reaching out to stop him. John paused and looked back even as he stepped out through the door.

“Please, just – just stay alive,” she said. Her voice, distorted as it was, sounded small and frightened. “I can’t – I need you to stay alive.”

John nodded. “I will, Stell. I promise.”

And he was gone.

~o~O~o~

John never came back.

Stella sat there in the Quonset, shivering, for what must have been hours. Kaeli and Randall were still unconscious, which was a bad sign. Randall was breathing in short, gasping breaths – his ribs had been broken in the crash.

Stella wished John hadn’t taken the first-aid kit with him.

The sounds of explosions and the incessant patter of meteorites bouncing off the roof had increased in volume and frequency. Flashes of light – lightning, meteors or distant impact explosions – flickered constantly through the holes in the roof, which were growing more and more numerous. Meteorites flew through the ragged metal, bouncing off of equipment and shelves with a sound like gunshots, making Stella jump every time.

The structural integrity of the roof – their only protection – was becoming less and less sound, and the frequency and violence of meteorite impacts was only getting worse. It was only a matter of time before… before they…

Stella couldn’t help it. It was too much. She put her head in her hands and cried.

Child of the stars.

With a strangled gasp, Stella jerked her head up and looked around the room.

Had she heard a voice? Had John returned?

But no, Kaeli and Randall were still unconscious, and John was nowhere to be seen. She was alone in the old storage hut, with nothing but farming equipment and that strange black artifact.

Wait.

What was…

Stella felt it deep in her bones – a deep, harmonic thrumming. It seemed to be emanating from the smooth black box.

Child of the stars.

This time there was no mistaking it. That had definitely been a voice – one strange and ancient, and undistorted by ruptured eardrums. It was almost as if…

As if the box itself was calling to her.

The thrumming became more intense as the thought crossed her mind, almost drowning out the rattle of hail on the roof of the quonset. Hesitantly, Stella stood up and slowly approached the artifact.

The smooth black surface was a featureless void in the darkness cast by the debris cloud, but it still seemed to glow with some indefinable light. Stella tentatively reached out a hand and brushed her fingers across the glassy surface.

Child of the stars, this world is lost.

The words fled through her mind like lightning. Stella flinched. They weren’t in English, but somehow Stella still understood them perfectly.

“Who – who are you?” she asked.

I am the Soul Ark.

“Wha- what?” Stella was bewildered. “What’s a soul ark?”

It is a time capsule, the voice continued. Long ago, this world was the home of my people. We thrived, and lived, and devoted ourselves to the study of life and the universe. We learned how to shape the world according to our will. We built cities, and monuments, and cunning devices that gave us unimaginable power. We learned how to manipulate our very souls, and in doing so achieved what we believed was tantamount to godhood. In our hubris, we believed ourselves gods – but at the height of our glory and arrogance, the true gods reminded us of our own mortality. A stone was cast from the heavens.

“A stone?” Stella asked. Half of her was fully absorbed in the story, the other half freaking out over the fact that she was conversing with an actual alien. Or maybe an AI created by ancient aliens. She wasn’t quite sure.

A great meteorite, the Ark explained. Across the room, a particularly large chunk of ice punched yet another hole in the Swiss-cheese roof, and Stella flinched. As great in size as the largest of our cities. It fell from the heavens with fire and ash, and the thunder of its impact destroyed us all. All was lava, and ash, and smoke, and burning. In desperation, those of us which remained built this capsule to hold our souls until such a time as the gods saw fit to restore life to this world.

“So you… so the Soul Ark holds the, um, souls of millions of ancient aliens?”

Millions? No. the Ark sounded infinitely sad. There were a mere thirty of us which still remained among the living when the Ark was completed. I was its architect – I bound my own soul to it to give it its power. My name was Qethryt. Now, I am no more. For a billion years I have slept, buried by ash and sand, holding safe the souls of my people, until I was awakened by the arrival of you humans.

Child of the stars, I have listened to your people’s souls – I have heard your struggle, seen your victories, watched as you fought to wrest a living from this forsaken place. Though this was once our home, it is ours no longer. The gods cursed my people – may they be kinder with yours.

“Yeah, well, it’s a little late for that,” Stella said, angrily wiping away a tear. “The moon exploded.”

Curious. There was no moon in my time.

Stella rambled on, choking back sobs. “Everyone else is probably dead and- and I’m probably going to die here, and- and-” it was too much. She burst into tears.

Child of the stars, accept my gift.

“What?” Stella looked up, startled. Tears tracked down her face, mingling with the rain which drizzled through the perforated roof.

I was built to carry souls safely through the aeons. But all things must fail eventually – it is the law of the universe, set forth by the gods. All things eventually fade, no matter how well preserved. For a billion years I have persisted, watching as one by one my people’s souls withered away despite my efforts. I am all that remains. And I have nothing left to me except my purpose.

Child of the stars, once again this world is destroyed, and there is no hope left for humanity. Once I would have looked down on you as a lesser being, but the gods’ lesson was well learned. If you will accept it, I give you this gift: to take your souls, and the souls of your people, and keep them safe until such a time as the world is once again fit for life.

Stella felt tears running down her face. “R-really? You’d- but how-” She held her head to her hands. “Uugghhh, my head.”

A small meteorite pinged off the glassy black Ark. Stella looked down. Ripples of water flowed over her feet – the beginnings of a flash flood, rushing under the doors. Another meteorite burst through the roof a few meters away.

Time is running out, child of the stars. Will you accept this gift?

Stella thought. An alien device, a relic of an impossibly ancient civilization, with the ability to hold “souls” inside it. A world under siege, a dark cloud blocking the sunlight as rocks rained from the sky like shells in an ancient battlefield. Stella knew that the debris cloud would soon envelop the planet, encircling the equator and shading out their crops, their orchards, their pastures. Only the northern settlements had any hope of surviving the apocalypse, and those wouldn’t be able to support two hundred colonists – assuming that many escaped the meteorites.

She thought of Kaeli, lying unconscious on their pallets a few meters away. Probably dying. She thought of Reg and Mika and Teddy, lost somewhere in the apocalypse, their own truck probably drilled through by a meteorite or swamped in the mud. She thought of David, the stalwart man who had volunteered to venture out into a meteor storm on the slim chance he could rescue the men and women whose bodies were broken when their truck had capsized.

There was no stopping this storm. No surviving the onslaught of moon fragments falling from the sky except by sheer luck. The floods would wash the settlement away, five years of hard work erased overnight. Already she felt the foundations of the quonset groaning against the pressure of the flood. The water was partway up her calves now. Soon the building would collapse, and she would die.

There was only one chance of survival. An unknown alien mind, unimaginably old, offering something she – in her exhausted, terrified state – could barely comprehend.

“Yes. Yes, I accept,” she blurted. “Please, if you can help us, do whatever you can.”

Then sleep in peace, child of the stars, you and all your kin; and I will carry you into eternity.

For a split second, everything went white. When the light faded, the Soul Ark was alone. The quonset was empty. Mere minutes later, the force of the floodwaters carried away the crumbling structure.

Humanity was gone, taken by the Ark. The planet was empty save for the livestock which fled from the oncoming storm and the crops which weathered it the best they could. Still the apocalypse advanced, an endless rain of ice and fire and water, tearing into the desert like some divine monstrosity – an eldritch demon, unfathomably vast, sowing chaos in its wake.

But if there had been any sentient minds around to comprehend it, the violence and destruction wrought by the storm brought something else, too. Carried on the ice and water vapour and rain was the hope of new beginnings.

Spero was not named “hope” for nothing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

To recap, an icy trans-neptunian object (or at least, the equivalent of such in a solar system with no Neptune) roughly half the size of Pluto with a highly erratic orbit collided with Spero's single moon, shattering it in a catastrophic event. The debris cloud, made mostly of water ice with some rocky and organic material, fell towards Spero and deposited huge quantities of water in the form of ice and vapour into the atmosphere. This had the immediate effect of causing torrential rain and meteor storms all across the lower latitudes of the planet, which in turn caused flash flooding and the input of massive volumes of water into the ocean. The cloud of debris encircled the planet, filtering out most of the sunlight and plunging the equatorial regions into a dim, sunless twilight that lasted for thousands of years before the debris cloud finally collapsed into a planetary disk not unlike Saturn's.

This caused the first of several mass extinction events. Among the casualties were many of the more sensitive plants which required bright sunlight and dry conditions to grow, although many of these still survived in high latitudes where sunlight still reached. Animal populations plummeted across the board, although the only species which actually went extinct were the humans (which disappeared mysteriously) and the sheep, which could not survive without regular shearing by humans. All other species managed to survive, although most had severely reduced populations; after all, the colonist species were specifically chosen for their hardiness and genetically altered to maximize their chances of survival in an ever-changing world.

#creative writing #fiction #short story #speculative evolution #spec evo #worldbuilding #Vicis Aeternum #Spero

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z-mizcellaneous-z · 1 year ago

Note

For the ship ask game

IzuOcha (Izuku Midoriya and Ochako Uraraka from My Hero Academia)

HELLOOOO, I haven't had an ask for the bingo in a while. ANYWHOS

Platonically? I fucking LOVE izuocha. Their dynamic is so fun and interesting, both when it comes to hero work and general teen shenanigans.

Romantically, though?

Nope. Never.

The issue with romantic izuocha for me is honestly mainly the fact that their romantic dynamic is so...bland. You can find so many varying izuocha dynamics that SEEM to be right, because you can project anything/everything onto them. On top of that, I feel that romantic izuocha flattens Ochako's character to the superficial "she's doing heroic stuff because she loves Izuku!!" and then never exploring beyond that, when that's so far from the truth.

And of course, the shippers.

When I first joined the MHA fandom, I went from shipping nobody to bkdk, and I was indifferent to izuocha. I was like "eh. it's cute i guess, but not for me. whatever."

The shippers are who absolutely ruined it for me, to the point that I block izuocha artists and fic writers, because I know as soon as I open comments/tags, it will be FILLED with insult after insult towards bkdk, even though the art/fic doesn't even MENTION them.

I get hate from bkdk haters, from time to time. They're always either krbk shippers, or izuocha, and the izuocha shippers have ALWAYS been worse. Every single time.

I literally started to avoid krbk too, because I'd see izuocha shippers and assumed krbk would be the same.

Eventually though, I started getting krbk art and drabbles on my dash, and I started warming up to it a lot, because of the shippers. They made me go from actively avoiding to actually enjoying, reblogging, and sometimes even FOLLOWING krbk artists on here.

And yeah, that's my two cents lol. Thank you for the ask, anon! I hope you have a good day.

(also, I'm not saying ALL izuocha shippers are toxic. What I AM saying is all izuochas who I've run into on here/have interacted with me have been some incredibly rude, toxic people, who ruined a part of fandom for me.)

#asks #asks game #ask game #asks games #ask games #platonic izuocha #anti izuocha #im doing these tags to make sure any izuocha shippers who dont want to see this dont have to #ships #fandom ships #izuocha platonic ship #izuocha besties #bkdk #anon asks #answered anon asks #mizismiz

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vihattu-thethoroughbredofsin · 1 year ago

Note

Have you seen the latest episodes of Earthspark? If you have...how you feel about them?

Hello, my unknown friend! I'm sorry that you had to wait so long, I didn't ignore the question, I just needed time to think about my thoughts about the last third of the season and the first season of the series as a whole.

In addition, given that my thoughts are not at all joyful in the end, I didn't want to spoil the mood even more for those who were happy about the new episodes and the end of the season. So I had to take the time and step away from the show a little bit.

But now I think I can give a quick answer. Disappointment? Indifference? No, indifference is definitely not, rather an empty aftertaste. It would seem that so many things happened, but they happened so quickly, and half of them didn't make sense. As if it leaves no emotional trace, only bewilderment and reflection.

Something like that. If in the first part of the season almost all the episodes were remembered and liked, in the second part there were fewer of them, then in this part I personally remember only the episodes with Grimlock and the double finale. The rest are kind of bland and not particularly thought out.

In fact, I am thinking over and writing a big post now with all my claims and criticism, just when it will not prevent others from rejoicing. But such things must be said. It's not for nothing that my blog is called "Concentration of negative energy", right?)))

Here I will list only the criticism from other viewers that I disagree with.

1. About the behavior of the Jawbreaker. Supposedly it is illogical and so on. People say he's out of character. But as if the problem is that he didn't really have a character. He had little screen time, he showed only one behavior model. And here, because of frustration and uncertainty in the choice of altmod, under the pressure of successful siblings, whom he cannot catch up and protect, excluded from their training – of course he is dissatisfied and upset! He wants to be on an equal footing, and not to be a "tender younger brother without an altmod." He literally says himself that he does not want to be considered someone with one character trait, that he wants to be different in different situations, like the rest. And the audience is unhappy that the character literally refuses to be a cardboard? Because if the character is cute, then let it be a cardboard? A very strange opinion. A Jawbreaker behaves logically for, firstly, a child who got what he wanted and wants to try everything, and, secondly, for someone who wants to show himself as capable as the others and get the approval of an elder. Probably, on the contrary, this is the most logical thing that the screenwriters did with his character.

2. Robbie and Mo save everyone at the end. I have a complaint about pianos in the bushes and energon at Terrans, but about this in my big evil post. Here I am against the opinion that Twitch should have saved the situation instead of Robbie and Mo. Firstly, Twitch has already been given the most time in the season, more than other siblings. Secondly, since the scriptwriters chose the way to turn off all transformers, then she had to turn off as well. Thirdly, there is narrative poetry in this ending. The story began with Robbie and Mo, they are the first and main protagonists, they are the chosen ones or something, activated Emberstone at the beginning and with its help, they saved everyone in the end. It is logical that everything should end on them, at least this arch. They activated their siblings, they helped all the transformers with the help of abilities, it's logical if we take the general plot for granted. In addition, the series has already begun to devote less screen time to them, so they had the right to moment of shine.

Somehow, so far. I am surprised that someone is interested in my opinion in principle, it was usually in the category of unpopular ideas, but thank you for your interest.

#transformers #Transformers Earthspark #tf earthspark #tfes #tfe #earthspark #answered ask

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crusherthedoctor · 1 year ago

Note

7, 9, 10 and 11.

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how the fandom acts about them?

I try to avoid this as much as I can, since I know it's usually not completely fair to have a low opinion on a character purely for the way their fans act about them. With Surge for example, I already hated everything about her, with or without her stans' assistance. :P

But regardless, the Freedom Fighters are a special exception. There are some things I genuinely don't like about them (Sally being a terrible friend to Sonic in Archie half the time pre-reboot, Antoine being annoying, etc), but for the most part, I would normally just be indifferent to them. But with how long their stans have been completely unreasonable, it was only a matter of time before I could no longer turn a blind eye to how their hype does not match up with their showing.

To a lesser extent, Sage. I say lesser extent because it's true that I already didn't like her at all due to how she's bland enough to cure insomnia, and what they tried to do with her and Eggman. But needless to say, the fandom's enthusiastic drive to reduce Eggman to a loving father figure, with little-to-none of his villainy present, it's become impossible to separate Sage with the damage done when the seeds were already planted for the fandom right there in the game.

9. worst part of canon

There's the ones I always mention, like Eggman constantly getting disrespected in favor of lamer villains and the overreliance on DBZ copypasting.

But I'm also not big on the occasional implication that the other characters are essentially nothing without Sonic. I don't just mean dealing with big bad threats, but also everything about their own lives in general. I get that Sonic is the central character, and him influencing his friends and others is fine and fits with the motif of the series, but there should still be some degree of agency for the other characters that some games and adaptations seem to callously omit.

10. worst part of fanon

11. number of fandom-related words you've filtered

I've actually yet to filter any words because, Tumblr being Tumblr, it all ends up seeping through anyway lmao.

#Crusher's Asks #Opinion #Sonic the Hedgehog #Sage #Freedom Fighters

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uroborae · 1 year ago

Text

vii. noisome

It is hard for Astraia to hate.

Not for any pursuit of kindness, nor show of loving nature, but its muted emotions and tempered heart did not move easily to stronger feelings. It felt like a doll a times, a puppet at worst. At most, a stirring of dislike or general avoidance: for the brutal hunt of Thordan, seeking end to Ishgard's strife and his twisted goals, had she truly felt anything towards the man beyond an intense indifference?

Some part wonders if it should. The passion of the twins, of Alisaie's who burned red, and Alphinaud's cooler and tactical blue, would call to question its dreary monochrome. Even against the matured Scions, Astraia possessed an off-putting reticence, not unlike that of a robot. It is hard, at times, to understand the rationale of their feelings, less so when it directs action, but in this, perhaps, it is the anomaly.

For they would experience the world in these shifting shades, bathed in colours Astraia could not imagine, and make of life as chaos and turbulence to take in stride. It is a baffling concept. A position it would not see itself in, and yet, as she'd watch them and every emotion they bore, they made their lives seem so much more than the bland grey it had grown to know.

And following Zenos' death, the world had only seemed more bleak.

It is hard for Astraia to hate —

There had been something off about Asahi upon the first smile. Something fake, its instincts screamed, despite the seeming good nature. And for all it knew of Garlemald, all it understood and had seen right within the heart of it, the words he'd professed, the peace he'd claim, were naught but saccharine lies.

But then he had taunted her with a hatred that better suited him.

Asahi was a man that was very easy to despise.

Even with the clear contempt he harbored, despite his utter lies and manipulations, everything that made up the man 'Asahi sas Brutus' was rancid. An arid and putrid stench that clung to his very soul and made him utterly off-putting. Yet, like mice to the trap, its allies had sought to entertain his game. And there was not much it could offer to dissuade them.

What could it hope to say? That it knew too much of Garlemald's tactics to believe him? Mercy was antithetical to their doctrine. Independence denial to their goals. What would come of that? Curiosity. The cruel truth of their hero unraveled. Then scorn. For hadn't they despised Yotsuyu for her tyranny, brief, minor even, compared to the crimes Aglaeca committed for the glory of the Empire.

And to merely dislike him was poor excuse to deny their hope of established independence. To act was to utterly ruin it.

It nagged all the same.

The hatred simmered. The doubt festered. And Astraia was woefully unable to do anything about it.

He knew this. Gloated about it. Plotted and played while their Warrior sat, pliant, in the palm of his hand.

Astraia let them do as they please;

though it did not want to.

Astraia let them agree to trade Tsuyu.

though it'd rather her stay, give her chance to grow and love and live as the world had denied her.

Asahi smiled, a smugness bellied beneath the diplomacy, claimed victory in all the ways he did not say it.

That when he shot his sister, when she was so close to saving, with no note of remorse;

and it found it would rather tear his face from is skull, bend the limbs until they break, until his voice ran hoarse from screaming;

to not desire his death, but his agony;

it knew this burning potent thing

was hate.

NOISOME ( adj. ) very disagreeable or unpleasant.

#ffxivwrite #ffxivwrite2023 #ffxiv #ffxiv writing #going from astra discovering love to discovering what it means to hate

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 1 year ago

Text

Yuu can do it!

Part 30

First<Previous>Next

Masterlist

Ito woke up to find themselves laid out on a floor. Not a carpet, that was for sure. It dug into their back, they could feel the distinct swirling pattern of wood, which explained why they felt so awful.

They sat up, groaning. Their mouth felt dry, and even the tiny sound crackled against the walls of their throat. They rubbed at their neck, looking around, hoping for water…

Oh, they were in Hell. Okay.

Well, that was probably a little dramatic, but how shitty had their life been recently that they had genuinely wondered whether they had gone to Hell twice in the past week?

And, besides, this place was a lot like how a personalized hell would be for them. A bedroom that felt more like a prison cell than a place people would willingly live, with dull walls devoid of any hints of the people who resided there. The bed in the corner was visibly uncomfortable, the sheets all pulled tight enough to bounce a quarter off of. The walls were full of books, but all of them were thick textbooks and encyclopedias, nothing of genuine interest to anyone.

There was a window at one end of the room, allowing some much-needed light in. It shone brightly… yet it didn’t seem to really penetrate the gloominess of the room. If anything, it made the place feel worse, because there was something so much better just a thin sheet of glass away.

Though… there was nothing outside of the window. Not at the moment, at least, just a pure, white light.

They decided they didn’t want to try looking outside anymore.

They spun on their heel abruptly, taking in the bland room again.

And they were surprised to notice a splash of color that they swore hadn’t been there before. A little boy with bright red hair, sitting at a desk.

They slowly made their way over, and their eyes widened when they realized that they actually recognized the boy: Riddle Rosehearts. He was smaller, somewhat, with a slightly thinner face and an expression that was more vaguely bored than the coldly indifferent one he was known for today, but it was him regardless.

He was slouched over his desk, his head in his hand, the other hand copying down something from a textbook.

Or, at least, they were pretty sure that’s what was going on. Because Riddle wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even breathing. Not in that he was dead, in that everything around them was far too still. In that Ito was the only thing moving here.

“What?” they whispered.

Riddle didn’t react.

They lifted a careful hand towards him, poking the boy on the cheek.

Or, trying to. They couldn’t seem to actually touch him.

But, as if they had pressed play on a video they hadn’t realized they were watching, Riddle started moving. His pen scratched out words on the paper, his eyes drooping a little in boredom.

For a moment, the boy’s gaze slid away from his work, towards the window.

And then it fell back to his book. He gave a quiet sigh before starting to write again.

Ito watched for a moment, wondering idly what they were supposed to be doing. They couldn’t touch anything, and Riddle didn’t seem to know they were there, so…?

It was just when Ito had been starting to wonder whether they were supposed to try going outside — in which case they’d be standing here forever, thanks, no white voids for them, especially not when their last memory was of them having a severe allergic reaction — when the boy jolted. He straightened his posture, his eyes flicking to the door with something like fear, before going back to working. But now he was just pretending. His pen didn’t touch the paper.

The door swung open, revealing the most severe-looking woman Ito had ever met. Her hair was pulled into a bun tight enough that they worried about her hairline. She was wearing a dress that wouldn’t have been all that out of place in A Handmaid’s Tail. And she was holding out a plate of what had to be the grossest meal Ito had ever seen.

“Happy eighth birthday, Riddle,” she said, not even really smiling when she said it. “This year’s birthday cake is a low-sugar recipe made with nuts and lecithin-rich soy flour to improve your cerebral function.”

Ito’s nose scrunched. They were all for making sure kids were healthy, or whatever, but shouldn’t she at least allow him something actually nice for his birthday?

Not to mention people that never had any sweets tended to get cavities way easier when they did get their hands on sugar. If anything, this was actively harmful to the kid.

The boy looked just as enthused as Ito. He gave a wobbly smile. “Thank you. But, uh, Mom… just once, I'd like to try one of those tarts covered with the… with the bright-red straw…berries...”

He shrunk under his mother’s stare, trailing off at the end to look at his hands.

“Absolutely not! Those tarts are monstrously unhealthy. I might as well feed you poison! Even just a single slice would exceed your recommended daily intake of sugar.”

“I know, b –...” he started, only to stop immediately. “You’re right.”

“Of course I am. You can eat that, and then begin your independent study time, alright? I will come to check on you in an hour and a half, as usual.”

Riddle didn’t say anything, but apparently he wasn’t supposed to. She walked to the door, only pausing for a moment to say:

“Dinner tonight will be a tuna sauté, rich in DHA and omega-3 fatty acids. Now that you're eight, your caloric intake should be 600 kilocalories per meal, so don't eat more than 100 grams of it. Understood?”

“Understood,” Riddle said dully.

The door swung shut. Riddle was quiet for a few moments more, his eyes on the ground. Then, resignedly, with a heaving sigh, he started moving. He pinched his fingers over his nose, and began to shovel the – well, Riddle’s mom had called it cake… that into his mouth.

But he was saved from eating the whole thing by knocking on the window.

Ito jumped up, preparing to do their damndest to grab the kid and book it, only to find… two more faces in the window.

More faces that they recognized.

Trey. And… the floating head guy, Chenya. Who, apparently, also had hands, at least, as they were currently knocking against the window pane. Despite the fact that they had already gotten Riddle’s attention long ago. Maybe he just liked being mildly annoying.

“Hey!” Chenya said in a poor attempt at a whisper. “Come play with us!”

Riddle looked at him with wide eyes. “Uh… my mom says you shouldn’t go with strangers…”

“I’m Trey!” Trey said, smiling. “This is Chenya. Now we aren’t strangers!”

He worried his lip, not all that convinced by their logic. “What are you playing?”

“Croquet!”

“I don’t know how to play… and I’m supposed to be doing my independent studying…” Riddle took a half step back.

“‘Independent study’ means you pick what to do, right? Well, ‘independent study’ croquet!”

Trey nodded fervently. “Yeah! Come – um – study croquet with us!”

Riddle hesitated before cracking a hesitant smile. “Okay. I guess that makes sense.”

He opened the window and carefully clambered onto the sill.

“What’s your name, by the way?” said Trey, hands out to help him in case he hurt himself while climbing out.

“... Riddle. Riddle Rosehearts,” he said, throwing a smile his way.

Months passed in seconds before Ito’s eyes. Snippets of Riddle studying under his mother’s watchful eye, food that looked like it had been fished out of a dumpster, of a knock on a window that resulted in Riddle’s face lighting up, that ended in Riddle crawling back into his room looking worn out, but happy.

They watched Riddle go from a kid that started every morning groaning and trying to curl up under thin covers for just a few moments more, to a kid that would sometimes clamber out of bed before his alarm. One who was genuinely happy to go through the day, because it meant that the hour where his friends would visit was soon to come.

They watched his mother raise her eyebrow at the gleeful look that always came when she brought her son his mid-afternoon snack.

And then it stopped.

They stood outside, now, in the grass, leaning against a literal white picket fence. Three kids were sitting in a circle outside, giggling.

Ito neared them, quietly curious.

“Something I’ve never done but think you have…” Riddle said, his lips pressed into a thin line, thinking hard, and then he lit up. “Oh! Never have I ever had a strawberry tart!”

The two boys looked at him in mild horror.

Riddle flushed red. “Did I… do it wrong?”

“No, it’s just –,” Trey began.

Chenya cut him off. “Whaaat? You've never even tried a strawberry tart? They're out of this world.”

Riddle blushed. “Yeah. My mom says sugar is basically poison.”

“I mean, you probably shouldn't eat too much of it, but calling it ‘poison’ is kinda...” Trey looked at Riddle for a moment, and then gave a tiny smile. “You know, my family runs a bakery. Let's go get a tart right now!”

“Really? But...I shouldn't.”

Trey bumped his shoulder against his. “Just one slice. It'll be fine.”

“One slice for you, maybe. I want a whole tart!”

Riddle didn’t agree, but he didn’t say no when Trey grabbed him by the hand, dragging him to his feet and off towards the bakery.

The world shifted once again.

They were in a bakery, assumedly. But the world appeared to just be Riddle and the singular tart on the table in front of him. It was nice, a beautiful bright red that only came from food dye, with elegant plating, but… well, from the way the boy was looking at it, you’d think the plate was piled high with pure gold.

He took a hesitant first bite, and that was all it took before he was stuffing his face, shoving forkful after forkful in his mouth as if he was scared that it would be taken away from him if he didn’t eat it fast enough.

And, sadly, he was right.

A hand snatched the plate away, and the rest of the world seemed to whirl into color. They were sitting in a bakery, which was mostly empty thanks to the time of day. Empty, other than three very sheepish-looking kids, and a woman who looked like she wanted to kill them all.

“I cannot believe this! Not only are you cutting independent study time, but I find you eating a mountain of sugar?!”

“I –!”

A hand grabbed Riddle by the arm and he flinched, falling silent. Allowing her to drag him out without even getting to say goodbye to his friends. Without a word at all.

She continued to rant: “Those two hoodlums must have incited this behavior. You must never play with them again!”

“I'm sorry, Mother!”

“Be quiet! You've broken the rules, and I'll not hear another word from you.”

Tears welled in his eyes.

Ito hugged themself, looking away, wanting to give some sort of privacy to the poor kid, but there was nothing they could do to stop sound from reaching them:

“Clearly, you're not able to handle the freedom of independent study. I need to keep a closer eye on you.”

“I – I won’t break any more rules,” Riddle tried. “Please, it’s my favorite part of the day, you can’t –.”

“I can,” his mother cut him off. “But you are right that you won’t be breaking any more rules. I’ll make sure of that.”

Tears finally began spilling down the boy’s face.

“I don’t want to be bad. I want to follow the rules, I do… but why do I feel like I’m being punished for following them, too? Please, just tell me, what rule do I need to follow to make this pain go away?”

His mother didn’t seem to know what to say, because she never responded.

Or…

Actually, the world had paused. The scene was over. With Riddle’s mom looking like she had half a mind to yell at the kid some more for saying such a thing, Riddle’s face half hidden by the hand scrubbing furiously at his eye.

Ito’s lips pressed into a thin line as they stared at the scene.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t felt bad for Riddle before. Truly, they had. It sucked that his mother had been terrible to him.

It was just that…

Well, it’s hard to consider the circumstances leading to someone being shitty to you while they are actively making your life difficult. Especially when they’re well into their teens and have a position of power that they can wield to inflict their trauma upon everyone else and…

Yeah. Ito got it. They did. It was just hard to feel too much pity for the boy.

But here? Riddle was just a little kid. He hadn’t done anything wrong yet. And what he was going to do in the future made much more sense all of a sudden…

They sighed, taking a few hesitant steps forward. They… really just needed to hug the poor kid. They’d go right through him, obviously, just like they had sailed right through everything else, they were like a ghost here, but…

They knelt down in front of him.

A tear shone on one of his cheeks,

They frowned and lifted a careful hand to try and wipe it away.

For a moment, they swore that the kid leaned into the touch.

They blinked their eyes open. They were… in a hospital wing? There were people around them? Talking without them pressing play on the scene?

… oh, right…

Kuroki was the first one to notice they were awake. He gasped, and almost launched himself at them. “Holy shit you’re awake.”

They groaned, but sunk into the hug regardless, wrapping their arms around him. Whatever. They’d let him have this…

With only mild sassing: “Obviously.”

Kuroki didn’t pay their snark any mind, shoving his face into their shoulder and hugging them tighter.

They looked at Enma. “Help.”

Enma did not. “How are you feeling?”

“Outside of the dude trying to – uh – crush me to death? I think my subconscious just tried to guilt me for not being empathetic enough,” said Ito.

“... what?”

“How do you think I feel?”

Enma opened his mouth like he wanted to press them further, but then he shook his head a little. “Whatever. Your throat still sounds a little scratchy. Want a drink?”

“Is that drink water?” They asked, narrowing their eyes suspiciously.

He rolled his eyes. “No.”

“Good. Water is unholy,” they said, making grabby hands for the bottle of Coke Enma offered.

“What if it’s holy water?” asked Kuroki.

Ito pressed their lips together thinly, thinking hard. “Well… you’re not supposed to drink it, really…”

“Doesn’t Christianity assume all water was made by God? How can any water be unholy, then?” Enma asked.

“I refuse to talk about this any further.”

Kuroki finally drew back with a shit-eating grin. “Aw, Ito-channnnnnnn, we were just curious.”

“You know how I am, Ito, I have to know,” Enma teased.

“I can’t believe this. I’m in a hospital bed and you guys are bullying me.”

If there was one trait that the Yuus had in common, it was that they were all not-so-secretly gossips.

“ – pretty sure they’re not here because they fear your wrath. I mean, right after the Overblot ended, Ace just started yelling at the guy,” Kuroki groaned, burying his face in Grim’s fur as if he could forget the secondhand embarrassment if he just hugged his favorite furry little guy enough.

“While he was crying!” Enma continued. “Like, do you want him to Overblot aga –?!”

The doorhandle clicked and all of them froze.

Ito jumped into action: “– swear that Professor Crewel is making up words to mess with me – oh, hey! Good to see you up, Rosehearts-senpai!”

Riddle smiled bemusedly. Maybe he knew, maybe he didn’t.. It didn’t matter, though, because even if he did know he chose not to acknowledge it: “Nice to see you awake, too, Ito-kun.”

Riddle, Trey, and Cater stepped inside. Riddle, like Ito, was being kept overnight to make sure his condition was truly stable. Which was understandable. Riddle was half leaning against Trey for support, but hey, that was way better than the last time Ito had seen him.

“How was mandatory therapy?” Kuroki asked. And then he grimaced. “That sounded bad. Um. How did it go? Nope –.”

Enma swatted him over the back of the head. Kuroki didn’t seem to know whether to thank him for the excuse to shut up or glare at him.

He chose both. Huffing and turning his face away, his lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line that also, conveniently, made it so he wouldn’t have to talk anymore.

Riddle laughed, quietly. “It was… nice, I guess.”

As they neared, each of the Yuus realized with dawning horror that the boy’s eyes were rimmed red. They pointedly looked away, towards Cater, for help.

The ginger gave a tiny sigh, but he obliged easily enough. He looked at Ito. “Want to take a picture to commemorate living? Riddle here wouldn’t do it, but you’re not going to be all stuck up about it, right?”

Trey groaned. “Cater…”

“Sure!”

“Ito,” Enma said, almost pleading.

Kuroki was not nearly as nice about it. He snatched the pillow out from under them and whacked them over the head with it. No respect for the injured here.

Despite their dormmates’ protests, Cater hopped onto Ito’s bed with a camera out. It was hard to guess who in the room was the most disappointed by this turn of events.

At least Ito and Cater were enjoying themselves, grinning widely as they winked and held up peace signs for the camera.

Crowley came in and explained Blot to them. Blah blah blah it was like a mental breakdown for mages, extremely rare because you need a lot of magical reserves to pull it off and those people were usually very wary about those things words words words, very dangerous to everyone involved talking talking talking…

They really only cared about one part of the conversation, though: the monster that rose from the blot was a parasite, feeding on the host’s negative emotions and magic, only to crumple them up and discard it like an empty soda can the moment the mage ran out of juice. Most of the time, the host did not survive, which left the monster to wander the Earth as a Phantom.

“We’re not murderers,” Enma said, slumping in his chair, relieved.

Ito and Kuroki both relaxed as well. They’d killed a parasite back in the mine. Had practically done the community a service. No guilt necessary.

“... why was that ever up for debate?” Trey asked, unaware of their thought processes and therefore horrified.

None of them bothered to fix this.

“Grim, you are never doing magic again,” Ito ordered.

“No, seriously, guys, what the fuck did that mean?”

Kuroki cooed over Grim’s pouting face. “Maybe a little bit of magic. But we’re going to keep a close eye on your magestone, okay?”

Trey looked like he was going to press it further, but basic pattern recognition said that they weren’t going to answer, so he just sulked.

Ito was mildly surprised when Kalim came bustling through the doors, intent on checking up on them. Not because it was Kalim or anything, the guy seemed more than sweet enough to do that for someone he had talked to twice, but because the door had swung open so fast that it nearly cracked the wall behind it.

“All this magic and technology and they don’t have doorstoppers,” Enma mumbled sullenly.

“Think we can patent the idea?” Kuroki asked.

While the two of them started discussing whether or not patents existed in this world, Grim asked the important questions:

“Is that food?” he said, eyeing the container Kalim brought.

Ito blinked at the container of food (yes, Grim, it was food) that was practically thrust into their hands.

“This…” they said, quietly.

“It’s a get well soon meal!”

Ito’s face flushed. “Thanks,” they said, unsure what else there was to say.

Ito was an eldest sibling. That was one of their core character traits. They did not know how to be taken care of. Maybe they should assert their older sibling status to Kalim by hitting him, therefore establishing dominance?

But that seemed like something a younger sibling would do…

“Are you feeling okay?” said Kalim, who was unaware that they were considering committing violence against him.

“Yeah,” they mumbled, looking down at the container with wide eyes. “I just… don’t know if I can accept this…”

“It’s not poisoned,” Kalim promised. “Jamil would never poison someone’s food.”

“That’s not what I was – why do you feel the need to point that out? Saying that it’s not poisoned is just making me wonder if it is!”

He laughed and waved them off. “Don’t worry about it!”

“I am worrying so much right now.”

Speaking of strange sibling dynamics, Crowley came to break up their little group come nightfall, because apparently it was ‘rude to other hospital wing users if they were to talk while they were trying to sleep’.

Which, to be fair, it would be.

If there had been patients other than Ito and Riddle.

Which there were not.

Riddle raised a hand. “I’m fine with it.”

“It’s a rule, Rosehearts-kun,” Crowley said.

Riddle grimaced and turned over in bed until his back was facing them all.

The group of Ramshackle students were left to sulk without help.

“You can come back tomorrow,” Crowley said, giving a mockery of a sympathetic look.

Kuroki and Enma looked like they might just argue.

But then Kuroki smiled. “Okay, tomorrow, then.”

Enma’s eyebrows shot up. He looked at Kuroki for an explanation, and the boy gave a brief glance at the clock.

After a few seconds, Enma got it. He jumped to his feet, dusting imaginary dirt from his pants. “Sounds good, Headmaster. Thank you for your hospitality!”

(Kuroki’s sweet smile dropped momentarily so he could stomp on Enma’s foot.)

Grim frowned and looked at Kuroki and Enma. “I’m going to teach you how to be big strong men, one day.”

Kuroki dragged Grim into his chest, covering the monster’s mouth with his hand. Grim’s muffled cries suggested that he wasn’t pleased by this arrangement but, considering the little guy was purring and curling up in his arms to finally sleep off the rock he had consumed earlier, it was safe to assume that he didn’t mind that much.

Crowley looked at the clock for a few moments, trying to decipher their plan, before sighing and ushering them out, muttering that it was late and they would have class in the morning.

Which… left Ito and Riddle with nothing to do but talk or sleep.

And, well, Riddle had a strict bedtime. Trey hadn’t been lying about that.

Ito sighed, listening to Riddle’s quiet snores a few beds down, hoping to join him in drifting off. But they couldn’t seem to.

For a lot of reasons, really.

Ito… wasn’t too fond of sleeping alone. On top of the fact that they just never really had to (their family was always traveling, and getting enough hotel rooms for all six kids to have a bed of their own was a pain… and when there are six kids, chances are someone is going to have a nightmare), they hadn’t wanted to do it here. In this other world. They didn’t want to be alone, in the quiet, with nothing but their thoughts to keep them company.

So, when Kuroki, scared of the ghosts and probably wanting safety in numbers, asked for them to room with them, they hadn’t hesitated to agree. Maybe the boy thought it had been a selfless act, but it really wasn’t.

They weren’t sure why Enma had jumped on board (or, as he said, ‘on bed’) as quick as he had. Maybe he was clinging to what little things he could recognize? As much as Enma was intrigued by magic, it was still another world. It wasn’t like they had all been given a choice to come here, there was no time to prepare or to come to terms with the new situation. They had closed their eyes and, when they’d opened them, suddenly nothing was ‘normal’ anymore. That would be a lot to process for anyone.

Or maybe he really was just too tired to bother with another room and didn’t want to sleep on the floor. Who’s to say.

They flipped onto their stomach — the best sleeping position to exist as long as you don’t like your spine — their chin resting on the pillow, glaring at the clock steadily ticking over to midnight.

They… really did not want to sleep.

They were too worried to.

Not because of the weird dream they’d had earlier, that was fine. They knew how dreams work. They go based off of things that already exist in real life (or in stories you’ve been told). Their subconscious had probably just decided to fill in the gaps of what Trey had told them about Riddle’s past. It wasn’t that big of a deal.

It was just… they were not a heavy sleeper.

They could fall asleep just about anywhere, don’t get them wrong. It was an adaptive trait that practically all Mexicans have, the ability to ignore the party music blaring so loud you can feel your heart beating in tune and drunken singing, in favor of curling up under a random table to fall asleep until the party disbanded at 3am.

But the thing about that was… the moment their parents did come to find them, they were up and ready to go. A little poke on the shoulder would have their eyes flying open.

Here, it was different. Kuroki and Enma and the ghosts could joke about them sleeping like the dead, but that wasn’t right.

What if traveling between dimensions had had more effects on them than they’d like to admit?

What if —?

There was a knock on the window.

They peeked their eyes open and found Kuroki scrambling to try and pull himself up onto the sill. Lanky, awkward limbs knocked against the glass as he struggled.

They met eyes.

“Well?” He groaned. “Help!”

They practically fell out of bed in their haste to rush over and fling open the window.

“We’re on the second floor,” Ito hissed, grabbing Kuroki under the arms and lugging him inside. “How did you even get up here?!”

“Power of friendship,” Kuroki said sarcastically. “Now help me invoke that shit because I can not lift Enma on my own.”

“I’m not fat,” Enma hissed.

“I never said you were, but methinks someone doth protest too much,” Kuroki said, leaning out of the window.

Enma glared at him. He looked at Ito. “Help me up there, I need to punch him.”

Ito grinned and stretched until they could grab his hand.

“As your Housewarden, I’m technically your superior,” Kuroki rushed to point out, eyes wide and frantic. “You’re supposed to respect me. That’s your thing. You look up to authority.”

“Not gonna be my superior for long,” Enma promised.

“What are you doing?” Riddle asked.

Ito almost let go of Enma. Which, admittedly, wouldn’t have hurt him at all, he was only like three feet off the ground, but still.

Kuroki smiled at him. “It’s past midnight. We waited until ‘tomorrow’ to come back, just like the Headmaster said.”

Riddle hesitated.

And then he gave a tiny smile. “Okay. I guess that makes sense.”

Ito smiled. Riddle was going to go wild when he learned about malicious compliance.

“Then help us?”

So, he did. The three of them, with their combined strength, managed to help Enma inside. Not with ease, in fact even saying that they did it with lots of hard work would be an understatement, but they managed, and that was enough.

They collapsed in a heap of panting, sweaty teens.

Grim floated up through the window.

The pile of teens on the floor glared at him.

And then Ito looked at Riddle, something dawning on them: “Why didn’t you use magic?”

Riddle blushed bright red.

Kuroki cursed, his head tipping back against the comfortingly cool tile.

But, despite their varying levels of exhaustion, the group of five found themselves laughing together nonetheless.

Well, thought Ito, there went my one chance to sleep on my stomach.

Guess they would have to opt for the sleep position that is clinically the best for your health. Woe is them.

But it seemed to give their friends a little comfort. The ability for Kuroki to burrow his face in their neck, pressing against their pulse. Enma’s hand that just so happened to rest over their heart. Grim complaining loudly about the hospital bed being ‘even more uncomfortable than that one at Ramshackle’ (impossible) and instead deciding to curl up on their stomach, where he could feel every breath rise and fall.

So… they would wait until morning to complain about it.

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phanfictioncatalogue · 2 years ago

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Rivalry (3) Masterlist

part one, part two

A Picture Lasts Longer (ao3) - satans_spaghetti

Summary: Dan and Phil are rival hitmen and meet irl at one of their jobs but they’re undercover, so they begin forming a relationship as their aliases. (One part)

Been Thinking About You a Latte (ao3) - Full_Moon_Lover

Summary: “You’re the cute and quiet customer that frequents the coffee shop where I’m a barista and also where my rival barista works and we’re both fighting for your attention in increasingly creative and inconspicuous ways (making foam art, writing cheesy pick-up lines on your napkin etc. etc.)

billet-doux (ao3) - Tarredion

Summary: Dan and Phil, gang leaders and rivals to the highest degree, harbor big secrets they want no one to see

cause you remember it, all too well (ao3) - kishere

Summary: Dan had been excited to be at VidCon to year after last year's fiasco where he fought sometimes boxing vlogger, but always lame, Lester. He just didn't expect to be tired the first day and start... something with his long time rival.

Conspire to Ignite - botanistlester

Summary: Virtuo and Nefaris have been in a war for hundreds of years, bringing death and sorrow to their people. After the Nefarians reign an attack on Virtuo, Phil is captured and brought to an unfamiliar planet where he is tortured for information. He gets assigned a prison guard named Dan, a cold and indifferent Nefarian who is prideful of his planet and always does as he’s told. Phil takes everything that comes to him without complaint, not knowing that his actions are slowly cracking down Dan’s hard exterior.

Dangerous Game - phancywork

Summary: Howell’s School of Abilities is a prestigious facility for children and teenagers with special powers. Dan and Phil both attend the school, but coming from rivaling families with opposing powers, they’re not exactly friends - their relationship is rather build on hostility and hatred. But what is going to happen to them when their final exam forces them to spend a week alone together?

everything led back to you (ao3) - celestialfics

Summary: First place in the high school art show isn’t even that big of a deal, or that’s what most of Dan and Phil’s friends say. And, well, they’re not wrong. It’s probably just the competing that Dan and Phil like, but they won’t ever admit that.

Heart♡Throb: For All Boys Who like Boys (ao3) - brookwrites

Summary: In the Heart♡Throb Universe, a world full of boys sees only grey until they’re ‘chosen’, and they become colorful. When they’re chosen, they compete for the love of a number of girls, and whoever wins gets to keep their color. The losers go back to the bland, emotionless life of a grey boy. It’s no wonder why Dan’s so competitive when he gets his color for the first time, but he’s distracted by one of his competitors: a boy named Phil who doesn’t seem to care at all. When their character traits are revealed to the girls, it turns out the two hold a secret in common.

Lions and the Howell Society (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Daniel James Howell wasn't willing to lose the national title two years running.

Lonely in Conflict, Cast as a Convict (ao3) - andthenshesaid-write (ladyknight1512)

Summary: Dan is a vampire who can’t remember how it feels not to be lonely. Phil is a vampire hunter living in his brother’s shadow.

When they meet, they find acceptance in each other that they don’t find anywhere else, but there are secrets and other forces at play trying to keep them apart.

Love Thy Neighbor - paradisobound

Summary: Phil is the son of Assembly of God pastor who begins to fall for the son of the Catholic church across the road. A quick friendship quickly picks up speed into a sexual relationship that neither one of them can avoid. Finding solace in one another, they gain a newfound love that they never knew could have existed.

My Favourite Font is Times New 'Ramen' (ao3) - phanetixs

Summary: "esteemed rival chefs find each other shamefully buying ramen at 3 in the morning" AU

Our House (ao3) - sierraadeux

Summary: Enemy is a harsh word. Rival sounds so immature, like Dan’s the star of some teen drama on Netflix. Competition is close, but not quite there.

In simple terms, Dan has a distaste for Phil Lester. Otherwise known as AmazingPhil in their line of business, for some reason that’s beyond Dan. What makes him so amazing anyway?

There’s a reason the network wanted Daniel Howell and Phil Lester for this specific series, and Dan guesses there’s really only one way to find out that answer.

And they were co-hosts. Oh my god they were co-hosts.

Plunge (ao3) - galaxeephan

Summary: This was a swimmer AU prompt by superasia8. I forget how the actual prompt went but that's okay. But here's the actual summary: Dan practices for his swimming competitions in the community pool and earns the attention of a member of the the opposing school's team. This rival tries to sabotage Dan, but luckily, Phil's got his back.

To Kill With Kindness (ao3) - ravels (orphan_account)

Summary: Dan Howell and his best friend, Chris Kendall, are really nice, and award-winningly so. Every year in their high school, their school newspaper holds a competition to see who is the most “exceptionally kind;” the flaw in this, of course, is that many have interpreted this as a popularity contest, which it is in many ways. But just when Dan and Chris think they have this competition in the bag, enter Phil Lester, the ridiculously nice underdog and the new kid, whose charmingly lopsided smile and never-ending kindness may even upstage Dan and Chris’ best efforts.

When Winter Met Summer (ao3) - cactusgal

Summary: A little love story about two feuding spirits who control the earth. One controls the cold and one controls the heat and they constantly battle for control on the planet. Mother Nature, who has taken the planet under her wing, finally decides it's time to do something. Inspired by Heatmiser and Snowmiser from A Year Without a Santa Claus and the Panic at the Disco song "When the Day Met the Night".

You Could Go Swimming In Those Eyes (ao3) - niennaerso

Summary: A Sports AU. In which Dan and Phil were rivals, but it wasn't always like that.

Your Crowning Glory (ao3) - pasteldanhowells, rainbowchristy

Summary: Dan is 18 years old when the news is suddenly sprung upon him that he is next line to be the next king of Genovia, but things don’t go as smoothly as he thought, between having a suddenly busy schedule, a new lifestyle, an arranged marriage that Dan has no control over, and worst of all, Philip Lester trying to steal his crown.

#phanfictioncatalogue #phanfic #phan #phanfiction #masterlists #rivalry masterlist #rivalry

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shiroishirie · 2 months ago

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CONTEMPLATION OF COFFEE

You soak the amount of coffee grounds for one cup with the water for two cups, as if you want to drink two cups of ordinary water, but at the same time, it seems like you just want to drink one regular cup of coffee. So you pour the extra cup’s worth of coffee into the void, sipping the over-extracted coffee that’s left. The taste and flavor aren’t as good as you expected, but not worse either. You feel a kind of dull satisfaction, and after drinking, it doesn’t seem to make you feel any better than before. So you leave the remaining half of the coffee there and move on to do the next thing, which is just repeating the exact same process.

And now, you do want to do something, but as you rise from your seat and haven’t fully stood up yet, the moment you glance around your surroundings, you lose your sense of purpose. Everything around you appears in low-saturation colors. The view of the low-rise buildings and skyscrapers seems indistinguishable.

The place you’re in indeed embodies the concept of “nothingness.” It is neither something that transcends existence or non-existence, nor something that speaks of everything or nothing. It seems like a place where any action that occurs within it naturally leads to half-hearted outcomes. It represents a chaotic blandness, making people experience a sense of indifference without having felt much. It allows people to reach the end without needing to go through much, and to look back at all the paths they have never truly experienced but have already seen. Here, you feel as though you must make a choice, but your past does not think so. However, it will not tell you anything, for at this moment, your speech is already filled with all forms of denial and affirmation, logically fixing you at the midpoint of everything.

So you know that this choice is actually inconsequential, because no matter what, all choices will develop in the direction you expect. At this point, you have no expectations of any of it. Hope and despair only make you feel physically nauseous because you have already indulged too much in expectations.

So you simply stand here, or walk in various directions with the same feeling. Everything is just in flux, not giving you enough peace or intense turmoil; what you see is merely the eternal motion of the tides. You don’t care whether you are old or still young; you still feel weary, but not more or less than you did twenty or thirty years ago.

At the same time, you view the past that you have never reached from the future you have already arrived at. The colors remembered from the first six or seven years of arriving here still clash with the present. You seem to know that this is your homeland, the land beneath your feet now, but you are unable to make even the slightest connection to those memories. Yet you are indeed unchanged from how you were back then: everything outside of yourself continues to be as unpredictable as ever, while you persist in observing it all in the same unchanging manner.

You can indeed do anything you are capable of at any time, but it seems that this requires a reason. Yes, at least in the first six or seven years of memory, this reason was undoubtedly present. It still exists now, but it seems to have left you while you are still awake, though you often return to it, not out of boredom but because you no longer find it tiresome. Indeed, what you are weary of is the emptiness of either having or not having a reason — the reluctance when the reason is withdrawn and the dissonance when it returns. And it is within this weariness of having or not having that you come to or leave its presence.

You know that the reason has always been present; it is always in your field of vision, just that its color constantly changes. You see it as resembling the color you desire, so you start working with it, until one day its color contrasts with your work. At that point, you cannot recognize its color, and so you leave it, leaving your work behind as well. Indeed, you cannot recognize its color, just as you cannot distinguish colors outside of what you are currently focusing on. Apart from the colors you hold, other colors are always difficult to discern due to their low saturation. And by visually comparing them with the hues you are focused on, you bring those colors, which only seem similar, into your field of attention.

Thus, the colors you pay attention to keep changing. Your past becomes tinted with these ever-changing colors, and the entire strip of your past is just a series of snapshots in time — a ribbon of uneven, disorderly, random, or perhaps chaotic color patterns. Yet you feel that these have no more color than the colors of the air at this very moment; they seem indistinguishable from it.

Thus, the air reveals the haze that no longer exists, once tangible but now appearing before your eyes.

Only in the haze, does reality become truthful; colors might be overlooked in the contrast of saturation and instead be expressed through the contrast of grayscale. Saturation is perceived by us, who already faded in grayscale, and the depicted colors are less likely to appear as gray and white as a freshly finished painting. There seems to be something within, yet it is forever unclear. And the thought that you indeed lost something, but never desire to see it clearly.

#philosophy #psychology #post modern #coffee #nihilism #existentialism #psychoanalysis

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anthonybialy · 3 months ago

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Unseasoned Preseason with Bland Buffalo Bills

The two worst things to do about preseason are overreact and not care. That covers everything. I suppose it’s possible to respond in a measured manner, but that doesn’t seem like fun. Freaking out about the inability to move or stop the ball against indifferent starters or energetic marginal players is not the best use of allotted blood pressure spikes.

Playing a collision sport without getting hurt is preseason’s goal, so anyone soothsaying regarding the regular schedule will guess wrong. Yet there are enough clues to make aspiring football psychics feel apprehensive. Discerning observers know what inconsequential moments deserve to provoke shrieking.

The common refrain that it’s preseason is chanted as a mantra throughout a trio of meaninglessness. Even Star Wars has created better recent trilogies. Yet a vague dismissal of the rehearsal process overlooks specific jitters. The lack of caring should not prompt relaxation. The Bills have specific problems on display that can’t be countered with a general dismissal.

The Josh Allen Tease Preseason Game will dominate memories except for how we already forgot it. Rain is the only foe who can stop him. Pretending Allen would play was a ruse so Mitchell Trubisky could have an August revenge game against Pittsburgh. Missing receivers before getting hurt wasn’t the plan. Jerry’s revenge date with the dermatologist didn’t backfire this much.

The preseason offense isn’t vanilla: that’s an insult to the smooth elixir which enhances anything sweet. It’s not a synonym for flavorless, which is just the start of misinterpretation.

A one-sided affair doesn’t bother half of participants. The other team isn’t game-planning, either. Yet some preseason foes are able to look like this isn’t the first time they blocked and ran.

The simulacrum can’t be shrugged off even as we forget this score upon seeing it. Individual trends spur anxiety, not the exhibition record. Getting to try things out is why they bother to play an AI-style knockoff.

Setting his own precedent means the possibility of falling short. Stressed fans are merely meeting the coach’s standard about taking sneak previews seriously. Sean McDermott’s focus on preparation leads to wondering if his team is doing the same. Ascertaining what they were doing all training camp has been an early challenge.

It’s easy to read too much into an incomplete script. Elements around the franchise player are in what we can generously classify as a transitional phase. Fretting they’ve already peaked is a common sensation before this year’s actual schedule begins. Nobody’s seen much to dissuade fears even in nonchalant efforts.

The imitation contests feature real unease about the number one receiver, namely if the Bills have one. There’s a lot of pressure on a group that fans are prepared to blame for disappointment.

Fans get a practice run at seeing new potential favorites. Keon Coleman has gotten to wear the gear even if he hasn’t done much in it. The ceaseless argument between those who note the games aren’t real and those who think this is a time to at least show something continues unabated. The experience of simply being in uniform reflects preseason’s chief value, namely getting the first time out of the way. Now, the next step is fielding passes.

We could all use reassurance, especially at this tense time when we’ve been without football for awhile yet approach the absence’s end. That’s why the faithful are still sighing about an offensive line that looks like they won a charity auction in the first scrimmage. Those who dismiss underwhelming play because it’s preseason argue that the players need more snaps to form a cohesive union. But that’s what these summer moments are for. Pointless games may not be useless.

Alarm about the inability to score touchdowns could all go away in games that affect standings. The only time preseason records get cited is when they’re ironic compared to games that count. Announcers treasure when successful clubs have unimpressive Augusts so they have something to smirk about late in blowouts. By contrast, the 2008 Detroit Lions won four games if the preseason counts, although the ensuing 16 losses probably canceled out excitement about just when they went undefeated.

Seeing how they look is the true score. The Bills could work through their unfortunate tendencies by the actual start. Yet it’s still concerning how they don’t look like they have worked together before. Being on a remedial schedule creates a sense of urgency. The sense of procrastination permeates an entire organization that should be dedicated to not wasting Allen’s career.

There’s nothing to do but calmly panic. Professional worriers hope twitching about summer football simulations turns out to be irrational. There are still chances to fix multiple issues, which is nice for the eternal optimist.

#football #NFL #preseason #Josh Allen #Buffalo Bills

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giffingthingsss · 1 year ago

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Lewis, Clarke, and Roddenberry

What set me about writing the book was the discovery that a pupil of mine took all that dream of interplanetary colonization quite seriously.

Lewis

It's been forever since I read Out of the Silent Planet. I will confess I remember almost nothing. I was a tiny person. I was too young for Perelandra and didn't finish it (I also kind of doubt it's up my alley, but maybe someday).

Pretty much all I remember is that they involve two untainted worlds whose fate hinges on a human stopping other humans from corrupting them. (I hesitate to compare them to Avatar, which I found hopelessly bland, but there are parallels. Avatar with mythological meat behind it?)

The impetus grew from Lewis sitting amongst the scientific minds of Oxford and being genuinely concerned that these men sincerely wanted to engage in interplanetary travel. He called them

little rocket societies bent on exporting the crimes of mankind to other planets

Leave those aliens alone.

I look forward with horror to contact with the other inhabited planets, if there are such. We would only transport to them all of our sin and our acquisitiveness, and establish a new colonialism. I can’t bear to think of it.

Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke wrote to him objecting to the viewpoint that scientists were like his antagonist Weston and that humanity would only muck up other worlds.

He believed that going into space would make man 'grow up,' a very Roddenberry-esque idea. In fact you might call it the exact same idea.

A portion of the letter from 1943 -

It is true that the human race is still in its infancy but I believe that astronautics more than any other single development will accelerate the coming age of our species. National rivalries, which have caused most of the misery of the past, will finally appear in their proper perspective when they can be seen against the background of the stars.

A portion of Lewis' reply -

I don’t of course think that at the moment many scientists are budding Westons: but I do think (hang it all, I live among scientists!) that a point of view not unlike Weston’s is on the way... I agree Technology is per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the universe.

To someone else, Lewis wrote -

The point I wanted to make is that excessive excitement about gadgetry and the belief (Weston’s belief) that the possession of, say, wireless & aeroplanes, somehow makes one superior to those who lack them & even justifies one in conquering such people, is bosh. My motto would be ‘Have your toys, have your conveniences, but for heaven’s sake don’t start talking as if those things really mattered as, say, charity matters.’

Lewis: an anti-space colonialist.

Lewis and Clarke (pun intended) liked each other even if they disagreed. Clarke invited Lewis to a debate on the subject.

I am sure your appearance would arouse great interest, as many of our members admire your writings even if they may not see eye to eye with them.

Lewis replied -

The fatal objection is that I should be covering ground I have already covered in print and on which I have nothing to add. I know that is how many lectures are made, but I never do it. I might at a pinch show great fortitude about the boredom of the audience, but then there’s my own. But thank your society very much for the invitation and convey my good wishes to them as regards everything but interplanetary travel. P.S. - Probably the whole thing is only a plan for kidnapping me and marooning me on an asteroid!

Clarke replied -

I promise you that if we do have an opportunity of marooning you on an asteroid we will give you time to pack your winter woolies.

The two met once and wrote a few more times. They mostly kept in touch through Joy who attended the same science fiction club as Clarke.

Oh, by the way, Clarke was later on friendly terms with some guy named Gene Roddenberry.

Arthur literally made my Star Trek idea possible... My association with the Clarke mind and concepts began in 1964 with his book Profiles of the Future. In 1969, I travelled to Arizona to listen to a Clarke lecture on astronomy, where…. I was persuaded by him to continue my Star Trek projects despite the entertainment industry’s labelling the production as an unbelievable concept and a failure.

Star Trek

Lewis died in 1963, three years before Star Trek first aired (It's insane to me that Lewis lived that late. He seems like a product of the 1800's or something). What would he have thought about it? Probably nothing since he didn't watch television. But if he did he would have seen many familiar ideas he had already encountered in print.

In an odd way, Roddenberry's ideas weren't all that contrary to his. Humanity goes into space after getting its s*&t together. And policies like the Prime Directive are essentially anti-colonial. Lewis' fear that mankind would mess with other worlds and ruin them is assuaged. Ethics are stressed. Episodes like Mirror, Mirror, in contrast, are almost illustrations of Lewis' fears.

Their conflict would no doubt arise in the reason for this 'getting of s*&t together.' The 'perfectibility of man' debate.

Lewis would say such a transformation of the human race would require a spiritual awakening, that man needs help. Roddenberry would call it something like evolutionary progress. Man would simply evolve past its problems (such an evolution would realistically take thousands or perhaps even millions more years, not two hundred, but whatever. flying through space accelerates us I guess. threshold pun).

This is what is responsible for the utopia on earth, not any one system. Whatever system exists in the Trek world works because humanity has simply 'learned better.' They don't exploit it or each other because they don't want to.

Man has gone from knowing very well what the right thing is, but not wanting to do it, to finding it virtually unthinkable to do anything else.

Everyone is treated equally, there is no greed, no want, no envy, etc... We don't go to war with each other because we have no desire to do so. We're past all that. We simply want to become the best versions of ourselves possible.

Some of Arthur Clarke's work involves mankind evolving to gain new abilities and achieve an almost godlike status, etc... And he's hardly the only early writer to come up with something similar.

You can sense a 20th century man looking around at all the new technology and scientific breakthroughs and being convinced that the next stage of evolution was right around the corner. Those same ideas find their way into Star Trek, not just through an earthly utopia, but through hints that humans will evolve into things like the Q or past requiring physical bodies (or into lizards), etc...

Encounters with 'divine' aliens is something rather unique to the shows when Roddenberry was still alive. I suspect because that's when the guys who had been influenced by early scifi were still around.

Trek does not stick with its 'perfected man' theory for long, even in Roddenberry's time, as it's almost impossible to tell stories that way. Fast forward to modern Picard and it has almost disappeared entirely. Trek is now current man in space.

People put that down to modern writers 'not knowing star trek' when really it's modern writers not knowing early to mid 20th century science fiction. The audience largely doesn't know it either. Times have changed. For us the bloom is largely off the technological rose. We barely remember when the bloom was on it.

But this new depression brings us back around to a demand for escapism, to get away from our problems for a while and live in another world. The demand for a hopeful Trek (albeit one that no longer stems from 40s ideas, but is a thing all its own) grows with it.

In 1954, Clarke included a line in a letter to Lewis about not being interested in writing a story set on Earth. He admitted that might make him guilty of 'escapism.'

Lewis replied -

About ‘escapism’, never let that flea stick in your ear. I was liberated from it once & for all when a friend said ‘These critics are v. sensitive to the least hint of Escape. Now what class of men wd. one expect to be thus worked-up about Escape?–Jailers.’ Turn-key critics: people who want to keep the world in some ideological prison because a glimpse at any remote prospect wd. make their stuff seem less exclusively important.

Addendums

Inspiration from Voyage to Arcturus:

Voyage to Arcturus is not the parody of Perelandra but its father. It was published, a dead failure, about 25 years ago. Now that the author is dead it is suddenly leaping into fame: but I’m one of the old guard who had a treasured second hand copy before anyone had heard of it. From Lyndsay I first learned what other planets in fiction are really good for: for spiritual adventures. Only they can satisfy the craving which sends our imaginations off the earth. Or putting it another way, in him I first saw the terrific results produced by the union of two kinds of fiction hitherto kept apart: the Novalis, G. Macdonald, James Stephens sort and the H. G. Wells, Jules Verne sort.

Arthur Clarke on Joy -

Lewis wrote a favorable review of Childhood's End back to Joy. A portion -

It is a strange comment on our age that such a book lies hid in a hideous paper-backed edition, wholly unnoticed by the cognoscenti, while any 'realistic' drivel about some neurotic in a London flat - something that needs no real invention at all, something that any educated man could write if he chose, may get seriously reviewed and mentioned in serious books - as if it really mattered. I wonder how long this tyranny will last?

Joy showed it to Clarke (probably the reason this particular letter survived while the others have been lost), and Clarke asked if he could quote from it. A Lewis blurb appeared on the back cover of the UK edition.

#c.s. lewis #arthur c. clarke #gene roddenberry

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