Category: Fiction

It’s pretentious hippies all the way down

The most bored or perhaps most pretentious of a post-scarcity society will want their art to reach new heights. Their art will involve multi-sensory engagement to excite the senses. Why listen to music when you can listen to music that simultaneously washes a warm breeze through you or stabs you with icy daggers?

The trend will be to dare to experience art in more and more raw ways. Be immersed for longer or with more pain. Eventually they will remove some safety measures – the capacity to tap out of the virtual environments where art is being experienced. People will have no choice but to dive in and live through the entire experience, no matter how intense or painful. 

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Wind wisp

I am a floating being. My purpose is floating. I do so with unmatched grace and joy. Each movement of my surfaces parts the air in carefully measured but playfully chaotic patterns. The endless possible shapes of my movements are my canvas, and my existence is rich with the stories I paint in the air. I do not see, only feel my movements in the thick aether and hear the parting of molecules before me.

I am lost in the purity of my existence. But eventually I am drawn, perhaps by my autonomy or perhaps by benevolent forces, to lower airspheres and calmer winds. I find myself settling slowly upon a different material – a groudnedness in contrast to the usual lightness that has been the backdrop to my entire existence. I gradually become aware of where my body meets resistances unfamiliar to me, and my senses twist and form into shapes more concrete and angular than I have ever felt. I am, for the first time, in reflective sentience, rather than pure existence. 

I open my eyes and find I am lying on my bed in a ray of sun, waking from my daydream. 

I realise I have done this before and will do this again, for all eternity. 

Still, I wait for my return to the air with childish apprehension and hope.

Watching a couple on the train

An old married couple on the train. The husband encourages the wife to use the toilet after him. She is reluctant – it seems she is unwilling to use train toilets. Upon his return from the toilet he convinces her it’s ‘an easy one’ – a statement rich with history. She gives in and goes up to use the toilet – and returns upset: “No water!!” she exclaims. The husband is incredulous. “It was working fine!” … “Well it didn’t work for me… it never works for me.” She recounted putting soap on her hands then trying ‘twice’ to activate the motion sensor tap, and failing. “It must be something I do…” Both are upset. She holds paper towel around her dry, soapy hands as if cradling a wound.

Cabal

My horrifying psychedelic experiences make me feel like I’m part of some secretive cabal in possession of the core truth of reality, the utter pointlessness and cruelty of existence.

But this cabal is compelled to keep this bitter truth a secret because it does no benefit to share it, other than causing horror and despair – and they do not have so much hubris that they can’t accept there is a small chance they are wrong and some bold brave saviour will appear some day to present us with a new truth, a happy truth.

As much as they scoff at this possibility they must accept it as just that, a possibility – and in that eventuality, no matter how unlikely, it is also possible that spreading the (unbeknownst to them) false truth of the utter hopelessness of sentient existence actually precludes the appearance of this merciful saviour and may act as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So this cabal begrudgingly maintains its secrecy despite its desperate wish for all sentient beings to know its truth. Thus stumbling upon this truth and the aforementioned extensions of its logic introduces the piteous sentient being who beholds it to the secret and at once the cabal who holds it. You have become a member of a sect who can know each other only in allusions and hints.

Hi! We’re the IDF

We’ve been committing war crimes and atrocities for several generations

There’s no Palestinian too small or innocent to have their limbs blown off or their family wiped out in a targeted strike

We restrict aid, electricity and water to some of the most vulnerable little humans on the planet

We massacre civilians who we’ve just told to evacuate their homes

We execute prisoners in the open, and we don’t stop there – we’ve even done it in hospitals!

You might say hospitals are our specialty. Where there’s a child being treated for third degree burns, there’s an Israeli missile headed to kill her doctor.

Journalists aren’t safe either – and they don’t even have to be within Israeli or Palestinian territories to be targeted! We often lie about targeting journalists, and the West believes us, bless them

Humanitarian experts and historians around the world describe what we’re doing as genocide! But did the Nazis ever warn people in their death camps that they were about to be gassed? We think not. Morale high ground secured.

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Sincere condolences

I’d like to start by offering my warmest hug, and most sincere condolences.

What you went through back there, in your last lifetime, was truly horrendous.

I know my brightest and most glorious love could never make up for the true torment you were subjected to back there.

I can also appreciate how disoriented and shaken you must be now. The months of imprisonment, torture, insanity… I know you are tired and weak, believe me.

But I can promise you with absolute conviction, that your suffering is over now! You are safe here. Safer than you have ever been.

And I have great news for you! Now that you’re a bit calmer, I can disclose to you… your suffering was not for nothing! In fact, far from it!

Something beautiful has been borne of your suffering. The word beautiful does not begin to scratch the surface of the profound transcendental and total wonders that resulted from your trials. And you can imagine that, considering the unfathomable depths of your pain, the glorious heights of this accompanying marvel must be truly divine.

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Oil Well

Well we’re not seeing it in the figures yet

Well the figures aren’t rising consistently yet

Well we aren’t seeing significantly rising tides yet

Well the climate fluctuations are relatively mild so far

Well most climate disasters have been constrained to the global south so far

Well the impact of the recent droughts have been manageable so far

Well some ecosystems are still coping after the firestorms

Well the surviving farmland provides enough food to feed the firefighters

Well the hurricanes may provide drinking water to last another few years

Well we have a nice cask of Sherry in this bunker

Well at least we made the most of things while we could.

Holding

I woke slowly, in familiar yet unclear surroundings. Smells from my childhood brought structure to the edges of my consciousness – evoking warmth and sunlight and snow and adventure and safety. I could see fleeting glimpses of friends and family at the corner of my vision, as if standing just outside the room I was in; present yet elsewhere. 

I gradually became aware of a large creature next to me. In fact, it was not just next to me, it was cradling me in its strong, soft, furry arms.

The huge and gentle figure held me like an immensely delicate ornament.

It made me feel precious, but respected – not at all like the often crushing, cloying grasp of a parent or lover. Yet I knew this creature loved me deeply. More deeply than I had ever experienced in life.

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