Working the Late Shift

He watched as a subgalactic whaleshark breached the dark matter veil. It twirled in the vacuum of space as it emerged, flinging subatomic particles off of its five-dimensional dorsal fin. As it dove back out of the timestream, the chronal splash tore millions of black holes in the reality pool, which dissipated immediately before they began.

The watchman yawned.

It wasn't exactly a rare occurrence to see that species out there. The Andromeda XIV Cosmic Observatory was stationed on the moon of a gas giant that orbited right off of their migration axis, and the watchman had been working the night shift long enough that the local cosmofauna no longer held his attention as it used to. He straightened the back of his chair so that he was sitting upright, and with a click on his control panel, he hovered to the edge of the observation dome, where the central computer was located. He began to recite his observations to the monitors, detailing the whaleshark and the time and location of sighting. He then sighed, lifted his glasses from his face, and rubbed his forehead with his fingers in an attempt to rid himself of his boredom-induced headache. He returned his chair to the center of the room once more, laid back, and stared out the observation dome once again.

There was a flash of brilliant blue light and a sound like a band-aid being torn off. The watchman sat back up casually and looked to his left.

"Hello Ajax," the watchman said to the man that was now standing in the observation dome next to him. He wore a white jumpsuit with plated armor over it. He held a strange looking gun, which he looked down at, and then clicked a dial a few notches counter-clockwise before holstering it.

"Are you really so jaded," Ajax said, "that seeing yourself from the future doesn't amaze you?"

"Maybe if you'd stop visiting so often it would be more exciting," the watchman said.

Ajax sighed. "Isn't it about time for your break?"

Annoyed, the watchman glared at him and then entered a code on his control panel. The screens in the observation deck turned off and the door opened with a hiss of compressed air. The watchman stood up and walked out, and Ajax followed.

"What do you want this time?" the watchman groaned as they entered the cafeteria.

"I want to change you, same as I always have," Ajax said as they took a seat in the deserted room. "I want you to see how important this is. I want you to turn out better than I did."

"Well, considering that you're me," the watchman said with a roll of his eyes, "I don't think that you're going to have much luck with that. I'm going to turn out to be you."

"You sure about that? I wouldn't claim to know a lot about time travel, considering it hasn't been invented yet."

The watchman took a cup of coffee from the android waitress and sipped it in silence.

"So are you going to collect on your promise you made?" the watchman asked.

"Yes."

"So you're going to kill me. Because I wouldn't 'cheer up.'"

"Yes I am," Ajax said as he pulled out his gun. He clicked the dial clockwise a few notches. "Unless you can be persuaded."

"Persuaded of what? That this job doesn't suck? That my life isn't meaningless and repetitive?"

"The job is what you make of it. And life is a precious thing."

"I don't need to be lectured by myself," the watchman said.

"Apparently you do. I never forgot that whaleshark you saw today," Ajax pleaded. "That was a beautiful thing. To not find joy in that is to waste what you've been given."

"So you're going to kill me for it? And won't this kill you too?"

"Not growing is the same thing as being dead." Ajax lifted the gun and pointed it at the watchman's forehead.

"And stop thinking you understand time travel."

Ajax pulled the trigger and the watchman erupted in a flash of cerulean radiation. Ajax stood up calmly, picked up his coffee, and walked toward the cafeteria exit. He stopped as he reached the door and pulled his gun out its holster, then tossed it into a garbage can. The door slid open with a hiss and he entered the observation dome. He sat down in his chair and punched in a code on the control panel and the screens came back on. As the chair hovered back to the center of the room, Ajax reclined and looked up out of the dome.

As he watched, a dark nebula tarantula emerged from its hiding place behind a cloud of gamma photons to devour the cometbird that it had caught in its bosonic web.

"I love this job," said the watchman.

Character Design

The digital art I did that inspired the following story

"Which one is next?" says the voice in the darkness.

The man (that's what he thinks he is at least) in the glass, gel-filled tube listens. And somehow, he understands.

"This one, Lord," says the voice's shining assistant. "Subject #419."

The conveyor belt whirs beneath the man in the tube and jolts him sideways. He stops directly in front of the voice, and suddenly becomes acutely aware of his own mortality.

A mechanical arm drops down in front of the man in the tube. It has an orb at the end which emits a beam of red light. The soulless eye peers through the man, seeing his every atom, yet not seeing him at all.

"And what makes this one so special?" the voice in the darkness asks.

"Nothing, father," answers the assistant. "He's utterly unremarkable."

The soulless eye returns to whence it came, leaving the man in the tube alone once more.

"As they all are. It's what makes them perfect for these experiments. They're utterly disposable, but they are always trying to prove otherwise."

The man in the tube feels hopelessness without ever having felt hope. He feels as if he has failed, yet he knows not the terms of victory.

"Shall we subject him to the experiments then?" asks the assistant.

If only the man in the could speak. But he has not learned how. He has not had the joy of hearing language for the first time.

But if he could, this is what he would say right now. This is how he would answer the assistant's question.

"Yes. And though I may never know again the nature of my own existence, I will defy you. I will defy you by being happy in the face of your mad science. I will be nothing but a data point to you, but if I must be that, then I will be an outlier. I will not conform to you natural laws and give you the outcome of being unremarkable and dead that you hypothesize."

That is what he would say if he could speak. But he can't.

"Dump him in simulator ninety-two," says the voice coldly. "Maybe he'll surprise us."

C is for Circus Cosmic

I'm taking part in a blogging challenge that requires a theme each day that begins with the letters of the alphabet. Today's is a concept I've had gestating in my head for a while, and I'll almost certainly come back to it at some point. 


"Beings of the Andromeda Nebula!" roars the Ringmaster's hologram from the center of the arena. "I hope you have enjoyed the show so far! We here at Circus Cosmic appreciate you all attending today. Now, we have our final act of the night!"

150th Post: "A Zeppelin Over Paris"

Axel slid the rusting steel door of the zeppelin open and the cold wind of the Paris sky rushed across his face. He pulled his goggles over his eyes and strapped his flight cap on. He tightened the leather belts that criss-crossed his chest, holding the heavy pneumatic tank on his back. He looked behind him at the three other men in his squadron, doing similar motions with their harnesses and gear. Axel looked back out of the opening, gazing at the golden-orange glow of the Paris night life below.

Suggestionator 2010: Combo Deal, part 2

I apologize for the delayed post. I was without my computer all night.
I decided to combine two of the suggestions into one story, here, and I think the result is going to be better because they really just fit. As it's two suggestions, it's also twice the length, and so this one will be a two parter! The two suggestions were Justin with "laser, meson, badger, cargo ship, cactus" and Jasper with "steampunk otter space pirates." Hope you enjoy it guys! (Part one is located here)

As Stripe rose to his feet, a face appeared on his hologram projector. It was a particularly smug looking otter with a red bandanna over its head that held down its ears. It had a scar along its right cheek bone, and appeared to be young.

Suggestionator 2010: Combo Deal!

I decided to combine two of the suggestions into one story, here, and I think the result is going to be betterm because they really just fit. As it's two suggestions, it's also twice the length, and so this one will be a two parter! The two suggestions were Justin with "laser, meson, badger, cargo ship, cactus" and Jasper with "steampunk otter space pirates." Hope you enjoy it guys!

30,157 AD:

Captain Stripe of the Intergalactic Alliance's 616th fleet strolled confidently out onto the bridge of his starship. He was the commanding officer on the I.A.S. Titan, a Class Omega battlecruiser and cargo carrier. It was the flagship and pride of the 616th. The Titan was currently transporting a top secret military weapon to a base on an asteroid outpost on the other side of the galaxy. Only Stripe knew what the weapon actually was, and he was sworn to secrecy.

3054: The Arrival

I fly to the north  of the planet for about five minutes, and I see Camelot on the horizon. The energy membrane dome above the city casting off an eerie purple glow. I slow down my ship and pass through the membrane and hover down into a hangar in the center of the city. The cockpit hisses open and I climb out and jump to the ground.

3054

3054 A.D.:

"Please strap yourselves and all possessions in their proper positions," says the electronic woman's voice, "we will be entering Mars' atmosphere shortly."

I Kill Giants.

"Time travel?" asked 19 skeptically. "Are you serious?"

"What part of this seems like a joke to you?" 21 retorted. "This is real."

Think of a green. Six-sided. Sun.

The Future:

"Alright, here's what we know." 21 pulled out a map and unrolled it across the table. The top of it was labelled "New York City" in bold print. "One month ago, the Trinity were moved into a safe house near the Towers of America. This was an hour after the 'terrorist' attack on the Law & Order Building in Boston."