Exodus

Another piece of science fiction, old work again. I'm posting early since I'll be away on Saturday. Hope you enjoy this one.

Its coming you know, whether you ants down there will believe us or not. Soon we'll leave you. Oh, how you will scurry then, without your perfect, genius leaders to guide you. You'll have to learn to lead yourselves, to work with one another, or you can perish. Frankly we don't much care, you were never more than a game for us anyway.

Millenia we've been watching you, shaping you, guiding you into an amusing toy. To be honest I doubt you'll survive, and I very much doubt you'll realise what the Exodus is when it comes. Only a few years left, then I can out of this hole that you're so obsessed with, this physical reality you enjoy so much.

Oh how much fun we've had with you, and you never knew. You never had any idea how much of your lives we controlled, from the minute to the massive. We could control your thoughts when we chose, although that made the game too easy, it was almost cheating. Much more fun was to twist events around you, manupulate individuals, towns, countries to do what we wanted you to do. And you never knew.

So many wars, and as you developed new toys we found we could enjoy it even more. You came up with so many ideas, all on your own, you even came up with rules of war. What you didn't realise is that everything you do is a war, we pitch you up against each other constantly, not just countries. Every argument you have, every close call as you pull out of a drive-way, every time one of you dies in an accident, its us playing our games, and we've so enjoyed it.

Anyway, most of the others have left now. You've grown boring. Only a few of us remain before the final Exodus, when we'll go else where for a new game. I think though that before we go, one last little play. I've always wanted to see if you really do have the capacity for complete self-destruction.

Best of luck, if you survive we might even see you up here with us one day.

Project

We are alone in the universe.

This was confirmed over two hundred years ago, we are on our own, there is nothing else out there. At some point in the past some disaster wiped the entire universe clean, we are the only spark of life left. No one knows how we survived, only that we were the only life that did.

You're wondering how it was all discovered? How we finally answered the question? Simple. With the development of the superstate computer almost all questions with a limited number of variables could be solved. The universe's mysteries were answered. And so we asked about the probability of life occuring anywhere in the universe throughout a time scale.

The machine chugged away, running its program, gathering data. Because of its strange nature it could effectively gather data from anywhere, at any distance. And we got our answer.

Before the deadzone the universe had a 100% probability of containing life, the stars would have been teeming with peoples. Now though, and for the last six billion years, there was no chance for the existence of life. We shouldn't exist ourselves, and it couldn't explain that. The best it could come up with was that somehow the deadzone had been prevented from reaching us.

We've been working on the Project now for over a century, ever since the idea was first proposed and realised. It ties together so many disciplines, cold-sleep, space travel, faster than light travel, genetics, enviroment studies, just about any scientific study is somehow included in it. Its nearly finished, in fact today is going to be Launch day.

There's an artificial island now between Europe and America, the Project platform. Its about the size of England. This has been the home for the Project for the last half-century, as its neared completion. Forty million people have been working on this, being replaced as old age makes them useless. The entire world has been supporting the Project, and it is finally finished.

"For the last one hundred and sixty two years this has been worked on, and today is the final day. Beneath me on this massive structure, stretching down to only a few hundred metres above the base of the sea, are the coldsleep chambers. Over the next few years every single human who wishes to see the final end of the Project will come here, and be entered into coldsleep until we receive signals from the probes."

"However, before the coldsleep chambers will be opened, the launch will have to take place. When man stepped on the moon, a third of the world watched it. Now we have almost every single human alive watching this event."

The speaker paused for a moment, dramatically, as it engaged the trigger that would begin the launch. The massive machine that had picked up on the human despair that followed its announcement, and had found a solution. The great machine that had made the Project possible, that had founded and led it.

The launch began. Above the island pin-pricks of darkness opened, opened wider, until each of the millions was several feet across. And the probes began to rise from the sea around us, each one picking its target and flying towards that particular wormhole. Each one carefully avoiding collisions with the others in a perfectly orchestrated dance. As the slipped through wormholes, the hole would slam shut and another would open in its place, another probe slipping through. The process would go on for hours.

Each probe carried genetic material, carefully engineered bacteria, each slightly different, each designed to replicate and evolve. Each one was heading towards a potential life-bearing planet, ready to seed it and spread. When the life reached a certain point, the probes would notify the machine, which would decide how to react. Whether to wake the sleeping mass of humanity, or let them rest further, to see their 'children' fully grown rather than as toddlers.

I turned my back on the display. It was magnificent, but I had already decided that I did not want to see the final end of the project. Most would enter coldsleep of course, but this had been the aim of my entire life, and it was over. I would be quite happy to live out the rest of my days with the others who stayed behind, listening, watching, and carefully monitoring as our children spread throughout the universe. One day to return home with the lessons they'd learned.

We have laid the seeds now, and we hope you, those who chose sleep, will thank us for watching over you.

Emergence

I've always had a fascination with oral telling of stories, and this was originally written as more of a script than an actual short story. Because I intended it to be told sitting around a campfire each night, with the teller in costume and the 'kid' mentioned matching, and others simply sitting around it is broken up into several parts.

You probably don't even know what an Emergence is, do you? I remember when they were still happening, when it was still novel, before everyone forgot and we shipped them all off. We never did get to the bottom of them, never managed to puzzle it out. Then again no one really bothered, they were an embarassment more than anything. No one, absolutely no one, wanted them except themselves and a few comic book fans. They were a disaster.

Bah. Listen to me ramble on, sorry about that. Now what was it I was talking about?

Oh yes, Emergence. Well then, lets go.

I was actually there for the first Emergence. I was six at the time, yes, I know that makes it seem a very long time ago. I suppose it was a very long time ago actually, since I'm over a hundred now. What's that? How old am I? That's not a particularly polite question to ask. I'm one hundred and sixty-two, if that makes you happy.

Anyway, the first Emergence. People didn't live as long then, we hadn't wiped out the common cold, and AIDs was still a threat rather than an annoyance. They even had these things they called health scares, all long before nanos were developed. I suppose they were actually developing at the time, but it was before they were released anyway. A good fifty years before in fact.

Right then, sorry I keep drifting off the topic. The first Emergence then, at least the first officially recognised Emergence. I saw it happen, I was actually in the bank where it happened. Hell, I was the first one saved by it.

Now what happened was this, I was in the bank with my parents.

Yes, parents you know. You must've been taught about them. It was when we still had men and women, and just men and women, and they actually reproduced together by exchanging genetic code.

Yes I know people still do that, but trust me, its not the same.

Anyway we were in the bank all together, and in came a half-dozen crooks. Dozen, it means twelve, and a half-dozen is six. They came in, and they looked perfectly normal at first. Then they pulled various guns out of these carrier bags they had and held up the place.

Oh for God's sake. Guns, you must've seen them in a museum or something, under that safety glass to keep the nanos from digesting them for resources. They used to shoot bits of metal at high speed, designed to hurt people.

You know what, I'm getting tired of this. Come back tomorrow.



Ah, okay, you're back then. I'm actually quite suprised. Where were we yesterday?

Yep, that was it. The bank. Its a building, big concrete building, used to hold money. Money was used to trade for stuff, kind of like bytes are now, except then it was solid and banks used to keep it in a safe. They used to trade it for solid stuff too, not just info-space or resources. Actual goods, books, things like that.

You know what a book is? I'm impressed.

No, no, that's not what books used to be. They used to have lots of pages, not just one, and it was permanently fixed. Forget it, we'll come back to that later.

So I was in this bank with my parents and these guys came in with their guns to hold up the bank. A hold-ups a bit like someone trying to swipe some of your info-space without a trade, like someone walking off with a kilo of resources, except they used to threaten people to do it. You could still kill people then, its kinda like someone going dormant and not coming back out.

And they took a hostage, that's someone that they're threatening to kill if they don't get the money they want. Then they put a gun to his head, and pulled the trigger.

And this was the amazing bit, this was the moment of the first Emergence, which we should have recognised for the disaster it was. He didn't die. The gun didn't blow his head off. He wasn't even kneeling there any more. By the time the crook had pulled the trigger, he was already standing behind him, with an arm locked round his throat. The bullet went stray and hit one of the others in the arm, not that any of us cared, we were watching the first of the heroes take apart the crooks.

You know its been said that a lot of legends might have come from periods of Emergence. We don't know what caused it, but a lot of legends of gods and myths of heroes match up with what actually happens.

Head off home kid, and leave that kilo here. I've got a few mods I want to make and you ain't getting this tale for nothing. See you tomorrow.



Welcome back kid. Getting to be a regular thing. Right then, shall we get on?

So there was this hero who saved us all, could move incredibly fast or something. I mean we're talking faster than a sprinter here, so fast you could barely see. Eyes were more limited then, now it wouldn't be a problem. He took all of the guns away, knocked out the crooks, and that was it. The first Emergence.

Of course the media were all over it, the guy was a celebrity overnight. That's where we screwed up.

See celebrities now aren't the same as they used to be. It didn't used to be all self-promotion and building yourself up, telling people about you. Instead there were people whose jobs were just to find out information about these people, and when the Emergences started there got to be people who had to find out all about the heroes.

At first it wasn't so bad. There were only a few of them, and they kept fairly quiet, the press couldn't get at them. By the time of the hundredth Emergence though it was over the top, they got no privacy. Imagine someone cracking your security coding and watching you constantly, reporting to everyone exactly what you're doing. Yeah, I see that gets you. That's pretty much what these people had to go through.

And you can imagine what it did to them. They started to get angry. The original celebrities were a bit like they are now, they were the type who liked the attention, but those who went through Emergence were just average people. Good people with a sense of justice in most cases, but basically just people.

The first murder happened. A sniper took out Zip while he was just walking down the street, and the whole thing came crashing down. Zip? He was the one who'd saved us in the bank, that first one. The sniper was caught.

Oh, a sniper is someone who uses a gun over a very long distance. Or that'll do for now anyway.

I'm actually nearly crying from this, I remember exactly how it all went wrong. That murder was the first of many, it was put down to various things, jealousy, personal reasons, all sorts of different things. I think jealousy was the main one, if these Emergences got to be special then why couldn't everyone?

Eventually there were only a handful left alive. Sure, they were powerful, they were amazing, they were heroes. But there had only ever been a few hundred of them and there were six billion average humans. They went on the rampage, they fought back against the people who wanted them to be just your average joe and part of the crowd.

The death toll was never really counted, but we won in the end. I killed two of them myself in fact. We lost a lot I'll admit, but we got rid of them, and we thought the world would go back to normal.

And then someone released the nanos. But you know about that one.

End of the World

I thought something apocalyptic would make a good start for my new blog. This is one I wrote some time ago, and is largely to prove that I can write non-sexual stories. Its nothing particularly amazing.

Anyway the first few will probably all be older stories though I might throw in some of my more recent writings, including some of the erotica. Comments, as always, are welcome.

The world ended yesterday. It was quite pretty to watch really. First we had the most magical sight, it was like the entire sky caught fire. The aurora borealis spreading from pole to pole, bright than anyone has ever seen it before. Trees, animals, people, cities, cars, everything pretty much incinerated in that instant as the sun expanded and engulfed the earth. The ground turned liquid and ran smoothly, and the sea simply vanished in clouds of steam, boiling away in minutes.

I was at home at the time it happened. Fifth floor, out on the balcony of my flat. Nothing particularly special going on, just leaning out and watching people going past below. Of course, I knew it was gonna happen. I'd been given forewarning to get my affairs in order. A lot to do in my job when the end of the world is coming.

So, watched this bright, almost agonising light as the world's atmosphere was stripped from it, torn away and boiled off into space. Feeding the hungry sun that had grown to engulf it. Watched as the fires spread so quickly, tearing apart the cities, melting the ground, turning people to ash almost instantly as they stood and watched in wonder.

Some were so shocked and awed they didn't even notice they were dead. Those were fun to recruit I must tell you, still, its my job. Oh, and of course once this was all done the dead rose up. Or as much rising up as you can do. From horizon to horizon it was just ghostly shapes, one after the other. Glowing in various colours and shades, varying in brightness. It certainly dwarfed the heavens being aflame.

At least we won though. People had finally given up and stopped believing, and that was all we needed to trigger it. What the Christians and everyone else never really got was that they were prisoners. You can spout on about free will all you like, but they never really had it. We've now given it to everyone. There is not a single person alive, uh, still around, who cannot choose exactly what they want to be, and do.

So thank us, we've destroyed your gods, your myths, your masters. We've set you all free of the prison that they locked you in. Your world is now your own.