A Hope and Dreams

Here  is a link to a short interactive mystery story that I wrote a while back. I hesitated to post it because I wasn't sure how to get it onto the blog, and I was considering creating visuals to go along with it, but I decided to make it simple and just link to a pdf of the original google document. If you're really interested in seeing some of the extra text (transcripts of some of the notes found around the house), you can see them here . Expect something somewhat similar to my earlier Space Station Murder Mystery, but with less direct interaction with characters, and a more unsettling atmosphere. I hope you enjoy!

I wrote a lot of drafts for this speech, but the one that stuck with me the most was the first. That first draft wasn’t anything exceptional or inspirational, or even unique. It was just me plagiarizing Lord of the Rings, reading out Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday goodbye speech to anyone who hadn’t yet tuned out, before trying to figure out how to vanish from the stage in a puff of smoke. For those of you who may not have been as obsessed with Lord of the Rings as I was (and still somewhat am), Bilbo Baggins gives a speech at his 111th birthday party during which he insults the majority of those in attendance before leaving his comfortable life behind yet again. It was a story I played out in my head for years, years before I even got close to graduating middle school. But by the time I graduated middle school, I forgot my plans that had been years in the making in favor of a short, cliched address where I talked about meeting my friends, and how that tied into the values of the scho...

The ecosystem is constantly changing. First scientists must identify how all the other species are existing, what senses will need to be developed in order to keep on being able to perceive as much of the world as possible. Then they compare them, trying to find the similarities between these new sensory stimuli and the systems that we already have, or had years ago. The physical molecular mechanisms will likely have to be made from scratch, but the pathways can be reused from some previous sense, one that hasn’t been necessary in weeks, maybe even months, sometimes even years. We used to have three, back before the planet started spinning out of control, and the lifespans and reproductive cycles of all the creatures around us sped to thousands of times faster than our own. Now we have six, on average. We try to avoid having more than seven at a time, as the neural pathways overlapping can cause confusion. But it’s better to think that you can tell the magnetic fields of the creatures ...

Subject: Congratulations on the Hard Work To All GAIA Shuttle Development Staff, As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the launch was a resounding success. We wish to thank you so much for all the effort and extra time you’ve put into this project. Four months ago, we were theorizing about where we would launch our next deep space satellite, and today we find ourselves launching a manned shuttle to Pluto with the intention of making contact with whatever lifeforms sent out the radio signal that we received. This goal was only able to be achieved thanks to countless overtime hours, thousands of coffee cups and back of the napkin calculations, and, most importantly, you. We hope that you’re as proud as we are with what we’ve done together, and will keep you updated as events unfold. Thank you for all your hard work, Astrid Rose (she/her), Head of GAIA Space Program ---- Subject: Weekly Meeting Notes To All Mission Control Staff, The following is a quick summary of all the major points discuss...

PART 1, THE INFOMERCIAL  Hi there, I’m John Johnson, and I’m here to tell you about our incredible new deals on Household Assistant Robotic Devices, or HARDs for short. The HARD is more advanced than any of the previous generations of robotic assistants produced by First Learning Automated Managerial and Industrial Networking GO (FLAMINGO), with the software and hardware bugs from previous generations cleared out. And this incredible new innovation is going for just $499.99! [large text showing the price in bright yellow font flashes on screen] Show all your friends your HARD and you'll be the talk of the town! Your HARD has specifically been designed to easily complete household tasks, so that no family will ever have to fight over who’s turn it is to take out the trash again [footage of family arguing over the dinner table fades into footage of a happy nuclear family]. Just one HARD is enough to clean up your house all on its own, and is so unobtrusive that you’ll never even know...

“As much fun as this was, thank god that it’s over,” she says with a slight smile, and downs the rest of his drink. Right as she finishes speaking, the sun behind her finally falls beneath the long horizon, and the night begins to darken. Her eyes flash for a moment in the light, drawing his gaze back across the table, but it’s only one of the pendants that usually rests in her hair. She’s pulled it forward, so that it now lies across her face, and she’s going slightly cross eyed in the effort to keep it in sight. They both stay sitting like that for a minute, or maybe longer, in perfect equilibrium, before the last rays of the day begin to fade. He reaches across the table to grab her glass. “Until next year then?” he asks, nearly too quietly to be heard over the rising din. “Until next year.” She sets the charm on the table, and its light slowly fades.

As soon as she finishes talking, the room erupts. Everyone begins yelling, so strong are their opinions for or against the theory. Most of them though aren’t talking at her but are asking him if he really endorses her idea. He’s seated next to her, and doesn’t seem to be paying any attention, but the people keep on talking, not quieting slowly among themselves but actually becoming louder as they feel a lack of acknowledgment silencing them. She taps his shoulder, and he glances up. He pulls off his headphones, shakes his head, and begins to address the room.

If you could choose one word to describe yourself, what would it be? If you could choose one thing to take with you on a deserted island what would it be? If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? What’s your favorite book, favorite film, favorite color? I say it depends on my mood, I’ll answer something different every time. You’ll settle down when you’re older, stop obsessing over things for months on end and then dropping them because you’ve tired of them, you’ll become more consistent. You’ll be more comfortable in your own skin, and become a more stable version of you. Maybe 'me' isn’t stable.

Here  is a link to a short interactive murder mystery story that I wrote a while back. I hesitated to post it because I wasn't sure how to get it onto the blog, but I decided to make it simple and just link to a pdf of the original google document, which itself links to some other google documents. Mostly, this was just a pain because I want to stay anonymous if at all possible, and I wrote this originally on my personal email. Anyway, this was a pretty big project for me, so I hope you enjoy!

There were no footprints at the scene of the crime, only small, square prints, those that did not correspond to any kind of shoe that was on record. The only other interesting piece of evidence was a trail of security cam footage that led to the recovery of one name, of one person who might be the next target. Mr John William Wilson (“John to my friends”). --- It was a fairly nondescript, brightly lit room that the two were seated in. The kind of brightly lit room that, over centuries of science fiction shows borrowing ideas, themes, and designs from each other had come to symbolize the future. It didn’t necessarily mean that the two were part of an evil megacorporation, or that they were fighting the oppressive rulers, or that they were millions of miles away from earth. In fact, they were none of these things, but they were in the future. An indeterminate amount of time away from the present, perhaps so far into the future that time had become something entirely removed from everyday...

It seems to be innately human, that once you say that you have to do something, you want to do it less than you ever have before. It’s something about the commitment, probably, he thinks, eyes darting around the room. Remember, you did agree to be here for them , but it’s hard to keep that in mind when the bustle of so many people seems to be pressing in from all sides, except for the left, where the reassuring pressure of the wall up against his shoulder acts to cool him down in the room that seems to be heating up by the moment. Right as he considers stepping out for a minute, the lights dim and the drone of conversation fades as people begin to file into their seats. He sets his book under his chair, and looks up to see the curtain rise, and sees them standing there, announcing the show.

As the daylight fades away, the water trickles through the crumbling latticework. The wind shoves at the sides of the building, and the walls creak yet stand tall. The pebbles funnel down the tube, and so they imagine the water blowing in the gusts outside. They run their hands across the counter, which is so smooth it’s nearly sticky, and then the blankets, from which the fuzz catches on their hands, nearly sharp. The daylight fades away, but they weren’t using it anyway.

I sharpen the pencil, working it to a fine point. I lost the sharpener long ago so now I just use a knife, I left the knife at home so I just scratch at it with my nails. I want the point to be fine, precise, to be able to be more exact than my mind can. Then the tip snaps, I’m back to where I started, so I grab a pen.

The songs they listen to make them out to be the bad guy, but they can’t be everything for you. I can’t be everything for them, for you.  They aren’t anything to me. They’re everything to me. Skintight transparent gloves are. Are a layer between the world and myself. I don’t know where they came from I wish I always had them. They wish they never had them. There’s nothing on our hands. Everything for you could just be a friend and yet I don’t know how to say no. They still wouldn’t be able to say no. With everyone else we can’t stop saying no. Sometimes the gloves are thicker,  as I press my hand against the glass it takes a minute to feel the glass. my reflection. I becomes me becomes they. I don’t know why you say that should change. "I'll think about it," they say.

The good guys always… but I don’t see the point when I’d much rather… I don’t want to be the villain in my own story, maybe that’s why I’ve always been eager to learn about shades of gray. Always having eyes on you like the protagonist would seems exhausting, but I don’t want to disappear for years on end from my own life. Sometimes I feel as though I’ve disappeared from my own life, that I’m a different person than the one who made the choices that led me to where I am today. But not always. I know some of the things that I want to do would burn bridges, but I don’t want to lose anyone. I guess thinking in that way is something I picked up from main characters, but sometimes I worry that the people I leave behind are actually the heroes of the story I find myself in. That shouldn’t be what concerns me the most.

One day, he knows he’s going to look up into someone’s face and realize that he no longer can recognize them at all. What used to be a carefully curated catalog of recognizing hair styles and clothing and eye colors falls onto the floor and scattered into disarray. The pages falling out of the folder, with the carefully determined order now spread haphazardly across the floor. One of these days, he’s going to try to eat something, and find that what strikes him most is not the taste but the texture, the flavors themselves near indistinguishable, all running together into a pale blur, where it had once been a vibrant symphony. But those days are far from here, those days when what he knows to be true begins to fade are far in the distance, at least he hopes they will be. One of these days, and maybe it’s already passed, someone is going to refer to him by his name, by words that he has used his whole life, and instead of the normality that comes with acknowledgement they’ll feel the sti...

Saccharine sickly sweet symbolism filtered through Opinionated optimism constantly pushing in Commendable promises turning into propaganda As people repeat and regurgitate what they want to hear What they wish they had heard  What they want you to hold in your heart I don’t want to be constantly contrary  But the way you push your perspective You won’t let me make up my own mind Leads me to want to laugh in your face When in my heart I might have wanted to agree

It was a bit harder to get in than they would’ve expected, considering what they found inside. The humans had heavily fortified the surrounding area, and as such this led them to assume that whatever the humans had hidden inside was immensely valuable to them. However, the contents of the facility did not reach those expectations. The humans had clearly been experimenting within, before they quickly fled in order to attempt to outrun the encroaching hordes of the invasion, leaving only their automated defenses to protect the facility. But the insides of the facility were not as high tech as all this fuss and protection would have led the invaders to assume, for all that was found inside was toys. Glimmering, freshly manufactured toys, making loud noises and bright lights flash at the press of a button, waiting for the long fled youth to come to purchase them. Toys so small that they would only fit in the hands of the youngest of the invaders, toys that could cause only the lightest of ...

Perfect control is difficult to reach. If you think something is perfect you probably aren’t looking hard enough. Or maybe perfect isn’t always perfectly objective. Sometimes we think something is objective, when it’s subjective. Sometimes, most things can be said to be true, in some sense of the word, in some sense of the world. Wow, doesn’t that all sound smart. And yet it means nothing at all, and wasn’t meant to either. But at least it took up some time to read.

Two men are on opposite sides of the bar. One of them appears taller than the other, but only because he is standing while the other sits on a barstool. The one that is seated removes his coat and scarf, draping them over the back of the seat. The rest of the bar is small, comfortable, and only inhabited by a few, heavily inebriated, regulars. There’s music playing, but it’s faded so far into the background that neither of the men take note of it. It’s a Wednesday night, and the clock behind the bar reads 10:30. It’s 10:42, and both of the men know this. “Doesn’t look like a very busy night... how about a story, Sam?” the one seated asks with a smile, accepting the full glass wordlessly passed to him across the counter, sliding it across the stained wood onto a flimsy paper napkin that is already nearly soaked through with condensation. “What kind of story are you looking for today? I’ve picked up a few good ones in the last week,” Sam pulls out a notebook from one of his pockets, and ...