Horror
TLBOH
It’s a quiet evening in the city and the moon has risen deep and proud into the night sky. There is a brisk wind that is enough to cause goosebumps on the neck and down the arm. One would notice that as there is silence in the air, the feeling of something sinister going on screams about to create just a slight ringing in the ears.
By James Venechanos 5 years ago in Fiction
WW3
The lack of accountability was the problem. Or was it the lack of a message aside from “the establishment is bad.” When privacy died, it was less a sudden single event, than several consecutive interrelated events in rapid succession. Reminds me of an expression about a frog in a pot. Or maybe the privacy never truly existed in the first place. Anonymous was maybe never truly anonymous, and all the free web services came with a price. They still do. No one thinks of it anymore. It simply is. Companies had in in their best interest to protect users’ data. But hackers and civil war were unthinkable. Cyberpunk stories were supposedly about hackers verses corporations, not hackers against hackers and non-hackers being caught in the middle. Social media was to blame. When it stopped being about connecting people and more about studying and marketing was the real turning point. We all voluntarily became lab rats, tagged to feed big data and marketing. It was weird. World War 3 simply was. It just existed. Sure it technically started in cyberspace. That meant it was everywhere. A worldwide civil war. Traditionalists vs. progressives. It started out with simple politics. The generational kind that starts fights on family-centric holidays. The kind a progressive politics that promotes one-city-nation states, currencies backed by GDP that doesn’t automatically combine larger scale landmasses with cities into traditional nations. Countries and corporations collaborating rather than competing. The interesting part was the idea of two sides largely only existed in the minds of more traditionalist people only. Not all the hackers even had sides. Some didn’t care who they doxed. Other hackers fought with fury to mitigate the damage. Many of the hackers wanted to help. They wanted to patch and safeguard people from outside threats. It’s easy to miss a ware when there’s no guns involved. However, now the press is getting involved, and inevitably policymakers are doing so, too. The next great ware ended up being fought online. People who learned from the last two great wars made sure of that. For that, we owe educators and historians and higher education and people who fought for more equal opportunities everywhere. Now the question of whether guns may become involved again is what people would be asking if they weren’t too afraid to ask. Strongman politics, is that the term I’m looking for? Having to make good on promises of violence and cruelty in a world that’s grown weary of both? Or am I just wrong. I don’t know. All I know is whatever is in the heart-shaped locket is some kind of file (it’s also a drive). I’m supposed to deliver it once I get a notification in this app I’ve installed. Delayed delivery. The half payment up front, other half later. Only problem is it doesn’t say how later, and the app doesn’t seem to have a lot of users. I’ve done a few other deliveries, but this is the only one that comes up as “delayed.” I’ve been told I’ll start getting notifications in the next week or so at the latest. I won’t know where it’s going or anything about the recipient until then. At least my car works. The gig economy may seem like a band-aid, but every little bit helps, especially things are going well. Especially if you have transportation or real skills. It’s a nice alternative for anyone who wants to keep busy while the economy’s in shambles and there’s increasing irritation at the government. The masks work. Or at least they seem to. The only problem is the kind of masks. It was fun and all when everyone was wearing the little cloth things with cool designs on them. It became less easy to laugh when you started seeing people wearing the kind of masks that have the replaceable canisters. Even the tastiest takeout order has a damper on it when it’s delivered by someone who looks like they belong in an alien apocalypse movie. Forgive me, it’s a little easy for me to joke when I’m not thinking about the death toll.
By Kevin Litwin5 years ago in Fiction
What May Come...
Where the gravel meets the pavement she frantically thought, nauseatingly fearful she would not make it that far. “ Where the gravel meets the pavement!” She said, out loud through her heavy breathing. Lifting her sore and tired legs up and down as fast as she could while clutching her two month old, tightly to her chest.
By Krista Brown5 years ago in Fiction
A Thirst for Sun (3263 words)
Today was the day they’d decide. Laura stared down at what she could see of her reflection in the pool of water below. A constant drip of moisture off a stalactite gave her about one second every five seconds with which she could judge herself. Enough of the people around her had looked at her with a mixture of longing and pity for the past year that she could guess where she’d be going today, but she pitied anyone her age. The pool blurred before her eyes until more water fell into it. She couldn’t see either way. Maybe if her face got puffy enough, she’d pass as average.
By Erin McNulty5 years ago in Fiction
Anaria
Anaria gazed out across the wintry horizon, her fingers stinging with frost. Her breath was a fog before her eyes as she surveyed the countless empty buildings. The setting sun shimmered against the litter of broken glass, twinkling like glitter. Anaria rubbed her nose, warming it against the cold, as she watched for people.
By Juniper Woodstone5 years ago in Fiction
Where Grief Meets Fury
Jon Stevens wished he could "unsee" what was ahead of him: Six people making a meal of another human being. He hadn’t seen a living person in weeks, and he preferred it that way since just about every one of those “things” had tried to kill him and make him into dinner. Not that he often carried food because it was hard to come by after the world supply chains collapsed. Human beings were now food for each other.
By Karen Bouknight5 years ago in Fiction
