#coffeebreak: wing
A mysterious one for you all. Write for 10 minutes and post an excerpt below in the comments. Feel free to let your imaginations go wild on what is actually contained in the photo. Personally, I see the view of a black hole through the rear view mirror of a space cruiser. Or some kind of alien mind swapping device. Unshackle yourself from reality for a bit.
wing, originally uploaded by futureancient.
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have you ever known me to be shackled to reality?
Wing – unshackle yourself from reality for a minute:
He couldn’t focus. Not for a minute. Not now. Was it the medicine of autonomy dripping its way through his deteriorated veins? How long did he have? Bad news seems to travel like cancer but any news travels quickly. Uncertainty pervaded his thoughts, spinning, was he in possession of a four leafed clover or had he just sauntered beneath a ladder. Why was objectivity such a luxury right now? Since his departure from the office, things could never be the same again. Not now. Not for Dan. Indeed the cog of progress would move swiftly to fill the void, and within weeks, may be even days, he would be erased from that place forever, but there was something irreversible in the change within the walls of his perception…
Everything diffused, Dan was left to drift wanton. In fact he had been cut free from that reality which had held his focus like a laser for the better part of a decade. What was so important about the financial sector which demanded his undisputed attention anyway? The proof was here now. The world could spin without him. He could stop calling himself Atlas, he mused. Even Dan had to admit it was a little far fetched now. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
Where did that come from? It blared across the radio and shook him into action. “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty”, who spoke like that these days? The radio segment was explained – proverb Tuesday, a call-back session on his favourite station, good ol’ Triple j. This sparked something. He had recollections of creativity from his past. When had the world become so grey? When had the sharp pang of life expired? The seasons, warmth, sunlight, failing light in the early evening in Autumn; the cold pang of winter, snow flakes stirring him from the unconsciousness of dream into morning, the morning droll of a fire wilted like flowers in too much sun; it was all there one moment then whisked from him. It had become a shuffle from one box to another, house to office, office to house, courtesy of the concrete jungle. What a waste of life. But now he was free, he was cut loose. “Hmmmm. What to do?” he mused. Freedom can be so, well, scary, after what seemed a lifetime of voluntary incarceration in the financial sector. He was unshackled from the reality he had become. He was ready to begin…
Author: Benjamin Sawon
He watched through the turning porthole as the obsidian husk of the mothership merged into the bokeh glow of the helix stellar system. As the probe turned, a view of the black hole surfaced over the event horizon. The probe bucked as it passed through the remnants of a solar flare hurtling towards the dilated hole. Langdon’s voice came through the headset. “Your message?” The voice pumped across the expanding gap between mother and the probe, punctured by eddying waves of antimatter filling the void. The thrusters detonated in the underbelly of the probe, stabilising the circling view on the retreating mother. A single light burned on the bridge. He squinted, pretending that he could see Langdon’s silhouette at the window waving. “Your message?” He couldn’t be sure if the question was a repeat or a sign that the antimatter of the hole had breached the ship, scrambling his sense of time. He felt his pockets for the note he had prepared, but both were empty. The thrusters entered their final gear and he bought the straps down over his shoulders, pulled tighter the scalp of electrodes that fed back his brain movements to mother. He had no family left to remember him, all dead and gone in the wars. Lines from movies he had seen scuttling around his head. The antimatter readings bleating on the control panel reminded him to fire the matter shackles. “No message,” he said into the mouth piece as he pushed the button to release the shackles. The ship bucked again as the shackles deployed, streaking out and attaching to the firm matter at the edge of the hole. Bands of antimatter tugged free his memories, slowly eroding history atom by atom. “What do you see?” asked Langdon over the intercom. The antimatter unshackling the flesh from his bones whilst the resilient fibers of the pod kept the machinery intact. “What do you see?” The great ink blot closing over the craft. The matter shackles now taught, momentarily suspending the pod in space. A memory drifted across the void to join with him. The brain monitor squealing. “Tell us,” came Langdon’s final plea. The shackles gave way, and the pod drifted into the abyss. “I see nothing,” he said finally, the last remnants of himself slipping away. “And it’s beautiful.”
Nice Benjamin. You know what I find interesting? Both of our stories, though entirely different in setting, seem to have some kind of similarity in theme. Lots of voids and shackles and drifting. A sense of new beginnings through release, even if their is uncertainty of what we’re being released too.
sketch:
the bokkeh is suggestive, and the lines of the car are almost alien in the way they contrast, like a Grey eye. people look into wing mirrors for one reason and one reason only–to see what’s behind them. but behind is a relative term–behind spatially, behind temporally, behind emotionally. envisioning an alien mind-feature, an ability to look behind to gauge some abstract concept by a confluence of lights coming to overtake them.. death? ascension?
write:
The cracks in the chitinous skin were fine to an atomic scale. They radiated in a pattern that was not quite fractal, not quite regular. A web spun by a panicked spider. Deep within the fractured black glass, a mind that had spanned an aeon was dying an expected death. The lights that had guided its illumination, fed it the great secrets of the universe, were extracting their payment. They gathered in the mind’s eye, faeries of enormous charge and force. The light was growing brighter, and the mind was fusing with that light, experiencing what it felt must be the effect of electromagnetic and nuclear forces merging into a single, fundamental interaction. A sigh of radiation escaped from the alien’s mouth as the barriers collapsed and its body went supernova.
Hi Mark, recently stumbled across your site and have enjoyed poking about. The coffeebreak challenge has prompted me to stop procrastinating and start writing.
Small confession: it took at least 6 coffee breaks.
Wing
The scout ship plonked itself on the beach with a sigh. It sat facing the dead-still ocean and vented quick bursts of thick, smoky exhaust.
The hatch opened and Smit shuffled out. He didn’t have much time. The small, pale sun was already hanging low in the smog.
He pulled out the scope and scanned the area, slowly and methodically. One nest, long abandoned. Some trace deposits under the water, but not enough to warrant a dig.
He scooped a handful of shells, smooth, clear and plain.
He went back to ship and launched. When the system took over he started his report.
Life signs: NIL.
Resource potential: POOR.
Follow-up visit recommended: NO.
Gravity fell away and darkness enveloped him.
The shells spilled out of Smit’s pocket and floated around the cabin. They spun slowly and elegantly in ever-changing orbits, pulsating with light, humming faintly.
Smit watched them for a long minute. He collected them one by one, stowed them in his locker, and turned the ship around.
Yes Mark. I hear you brother…
Hey Brian,
Welcome to the challenge. I love your “small confession”, it had me rolling on the floor laughing. I’m not sure if I heard it being called a challenge before, but this sparks another memory in my mind “the only failure, is the failure to participate”. Dolf De Roos
To your success…
Regards,
Benjamin.
Thanks for joining in Brian, always great to get new perspectives. I like how complete your story is. It’s amazing how small a space you need to tell a great story.
Thanks Benjamin and Mark for your welcome and comments.
Mark, I particularly liked your closing line, it’s stayed in my mind for the last day.
Benjamin, I could definitely relate to your story – no doubt many others could too.
Thanks also for the great quote: “the only failure, is the failure to participate”.
Interestingly, I found that just completing an exercise as quick and informal as this one, with no expectations and even under cloak of anonymity, still produced in me a fair amount of dread and worry – would it be good enough? what will the others think?
Something for me to work on – ignore the pessimistic voice of doubt and give reign to creativity.
Every child on the Grace of Titan was told about the claws, and Tom had been no different. It was a fairy tale, a warning to stay in your bed. “Don’t unstrap from your bunk,” his mother would chide him, smiling. “The claws might be coming tonight.”
The claws were – or so the story went – an alien race that found their way onto the Grace sometime during the first century of its journey. No one living had ever seen them but the stories were still told, and children ran through corridors pointing at burn marks, shouting, “The claws were here!”
Tom was one of the ship’s oarsmen, and like the rest of his ilk, was not of the disposition that enabled a belief in phantom aliens, even when he was a pre-oarsmen child. The oarsmen were a highly organised political force on the Grace’s board of governors and Tom had recently risen to the post of First Oarsman.
The First Oarsman was one of seven leaders who could challenge to be Course Plotter of the ship. The current Plotter, was Janice, Lady of Foods, the ship’s strongest industry. Janice was ancient though, and despite the fact that she had managed to hold onto the Plotter role for seventy years, the next Plotter was unlikely to be as potent a force as the old lady.
Tom was ready. He would be the next Plotter, and then perhaps finally Grace of Titan would begin the correct journey to its destination, and arrive at the new home promised the crew that set out upon her three hundred years ago.
Tom lay in bed, imagining the day when he first drew line across the nav screen and watch the blip of the Grace respond to his command. “It will happen,” he promised the dark.
From his position in bed he saw a glint in his blackened room, and unsure what could possibly be reflecting light; he unbuckled from his bunk and floated over to the opposite wall. The light – which wasn’t reflected at all – grew before his eyes, sprouting out sharp branches like an Aloe Vera plant. The luminescent branches flexed into a fist then one branch stretched back out, pointing directly at Tom.
The branches – the claws, he realised with horror – slashed through the darkness, the after effect left burning in the air. The claws moved in intricate patterns, painting a portrait in the dark. When they finished Tom recognized the face of the Lady of Foods. She was smiling.
The claws stretched towards him.
I love scifi, but I’m sh*#house at writing it.
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