Ode to Love

The stranger strides in from elsewhere, into the cave that is all they have ever known. It is hard to say with certainty if his shadow wings are real or the stuff of legends woven into an imagined afterimage, the crowd's imagination made tangible, an agreement of terror made with nothing, given near tangible form in an echo chamber. Silence falls on the crowd and then the stranger speaks. "I have come to tear down all that has been built here, reshaping it. Do not mourn these insignificant halls; what use are tears for that which has been lost from the beginning?" He waves a hand and a glowing orb hangs from the ceiling, slowly descending on a string, spinning and cascading light all around the cave. "When the ball reaches the floor the cycle is complete, and this game is over."  The stranger wooshes his wings like a cape and as the shadows of them obscure him, in one fluid motion he is gone. Panic now strikes the room, screaming and lashing out until one man...

So I just got this idea for a story, a kind of quirky off beat topic that examines the music industry, the interaction between artists and society and the phenomenon of viral trends, before finally ending with a significant twist. So the story starts with a song that gets released by an unknown singer/songwriter called The Gardener. It starts to gain traction almost as a meme at first because it is immediately clear that every single line in the song is obviously stolen; the whole thing is just a conglomeration of entirely stolen lyrics, each from a different artist, set to music that is also stolen. The only line apparently not stolen is name dropping a website: thegarden.ao8. Initially the website just shows a purple rose.  Curiosity in the song grows, and it is fairly catchy given that it has hijacked a piggyback ride on unwitting giants, so It is not long before it becomes popular enough that the first artist takes legal action. Almost immediately the website is updated to cred...

"Feller bets eye, dude calls! Read all about it!" The shocked businessman tosses the boy a coin and grabs a copy from his hand. The story isn't the headliner, so he flips a couple of pages before asking "what page is that on?" When he receives no response he looks back up to find the newsie gone. "What's all this then!? Of all the nonsense!" The man leaves, thinking that was the most absurd thing that has or ever would happen in mainstream media. Little did he know, he was merely the first of many who would fall victim to clickbait, a pioneer, if you will.

I have no idea why this one is not saving all I wrote, it cuts off after 1/2 a paragraph, but here is that post in its entirety: Regarding my writing, and specifically the writing of Starry Night, which I wrote to be possible from a scientific and experience perspective while still remaining hopeful and magical, I have noticed an interesting pattern in my thoughts and output when writing.  As I write I pause when typing certain words (like words of degree- perfectly for example, then I switch it to flawlessly, stuff like that).  I'll also do the same and rethink a concept, or throw one in (like the wormhole/teleport trip being virtually the same time, but not exactly the same amount of time on Earth vs. to Orion Prime or linearly relative to the distance between the points) Later in the story I discover why, as my concepts start tying together.  It's like my subconscious brain has a low touch filter in place for me, that pieces together where I'm going with something, and...

I am curious to see if I can turn this concept into a full book/story or not: in the near future Hollywood creates a unique character whose main drive is to become self aware, by creating an AI designed to create this unique character and generate all its lines and actions, with the AI's knowledge of the process positioned just enough to allow an ignorance to let the story bloom on camera, while constantly developing off camera as well. The remaining writers build the scenarios around the character that establish the episodes and movies, while the AI uses a robot to get around on set, augmented by greenscreen. Its animation becomes pretty smooth as the AI integrates with the special effects department to become effectively seamless for the audience, and with improvements made over time that even the cast often forget they are dealing with something that might be labeled "artificial." The character's purpose is to become recognized as a full fledged consciousness, both...

The powers came when they were meant to. The powers came when I was ready for them. The powers came. Like a rush of waking up while still in a dream, exactly like the moment you realize you've been dreaming and remember you can use whatever superpowers you can imagine all at once. Years of vivid dreamwalking had made me realize though that everyone else in this dream was experiencing it exactly as before: consciousnesses in a shared system, where this experience was equally as real as any other state they would find themselves in, perhaps even moreso because of how meticulously God had crafted it. I considered myself a guest still, familiar with the position of being a powerful dreamer in someone else's dream, but this time well versed in whose realm it was, and thankful for the opportunity to be myself unbound in such a beautiful place. There were still things out of place though, and I possessed instincts to fix things that I could not ignore. I also still had audacious goals...

I awake in the living room of a house I know all too well, as loud signals and blinding energy fade into cohesive walls and furniture. I always forget this place after I leave, but not this time, it seems. "Phoenix dream!" I exclaim. I hear a "Rerrhhh!" From just outside, as if to say "Evan dream!" She's heard me, and with a quick change of the dress, she shimmies into view, all smiles beneath her crimson hair. "What's all this then?" I say with my usual play officiousness. "Monsters!" I give her an incredulous look... I've never been on monster duty with her before but I'm always up to follow along when I'm here. "Where?" I say with innocent eyes but a cool resolve. She rolls her eyes. "No, no, we're gonna become monsters!" "Oh, haha, that's more like it! How does it work?" She shrugs like a sassafras. "We never know until we get there, you forget that every time. So we got...

Preparations had been made in secret and innocuously.  Some scientists were tasked with calculating a realtime path into a giant black hole, under the guise of determining a way that it would be possible.  This path had been taken from them and programmed into a computer by others who knew not of what they programmed.  The computer was then installed by others into a spacecraft, unaware of what had been programmed into it.  Someone had been tasked with making a cryo-freezing chamber that could withstand extreme environment and gravity.  Since the technology was still a one way trip, they had assumed it was for research purposes for future generations.  Others took this unfamiliar new object and hooked it up on the ship.  Some had been tasked with disguising a vehicle, presumably a tank, to look like a rock.  These panels were affixed to the side, undeployed, under the guise of additional shielding that could be released later in the trip if necess...

Regarding my writing, and specifically the writing of Starry Night, which I wrote to be possible from a scientific, biblical, and experience perspective while still remaining hopeful and magical, I have noticed an interesting pattern in my thoughts and output when writing.  As I write I pause when typing certain words (like words of degree- "perfectly," for example, then I switch it to "flawlessly," stuff like that).  I'll also do the same and rethink a concept, or throw one in (like in this story where the wormhole/teleport trip took virtually the same time, but did not take exactly the same amount of time on Earth vs. going to Orion Prime, and did not scale linearly relative to the distance between the points) Later in the story I discover why, as my concepts start tying together.  It's like my subconscious brain has a low touch filter in place for me, that pieces together where I'm going with something, and knows the key structure that needs to be in ...

The first interplanetary colonization efforts were in motion.  Rapid technological progress had erupted in the last few months after a renaissance of thought, the likes of which had never been seen.  The rapid pace of advancement had fortunately dissuaded mankind from sending anyone via colony ship, as had originally been planned since, with such rapid advancement, everyone was now well aware that such a trip would be destined to arrive at a planet that had been long since inhabited by humans who had teleported there, in the near future in Earth terms, but from the arriving ship's perspective the civilization would have been in place many years already.  Rather than doom these first colonists to being the last to the party that was galactic colonization, they opted to delay the efforts slightly while portals and wormholes were perfected, which hardly took any time at all.  Now the first colonists were in position to take that trip to a planet that was found to be hab...

Death came for me once more.  As soon as it happened I knew I had been here before.  I saw Hope face to face, she looked concerned and fiery all at once.  "What happened this time?" she asked.  I shared the details, this time aggressive and inspired by evil intent and calculated action.  Her fire grew, the atmosphere now matching her blazing red hair.  "They have gone too far.  It is going to take some time to fix, but I can guarantee this will be the worst and likely last time we have to meet here like this."  I sigh.  "It will be worth it, I just wish it didn't have to be this way."  She smirked "The shiniest shine provokes the most jealous fear."  I looked at her confused, as the scene shifted back to where I was, naked and isolated.  I could hear her softly singing, seemingly from just next door, like my own private concert.  It was hot, impossibly hot, like radiation was being targeted right at me from all around, but...