A Small Disclaimer

Hi everyone, it has been quite some time since I’ve posted here. I wish I had a better explanation for my absence, but I will say that I have been incredibly busy over the last six months. So much so that my writing has been strictly focused to poetry, posted on my Instagram, leaving this lowly blog in the wayside. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I got married to the love of my life, went on a honeymoon, traveled to London for work, and many, many more life event that I won’t tatter on about. I am going to try to be better about posting more regularly but if not, you can absolutely follow me on the aforementioned Instagram, as poetry flows there quite freely.

https://www.instagram.com/herbs.words/

This post is something a little different. Sci-fi/fantasy creative writing based on a video my wife took of me when we were in Atlantic City this past October for a friend’s wedding. If you’d like to see it, I will post it on Instagram as I have no idea how to embed it on WordPress. The small line breaks in the piece indicate unfinished sections as I find this project to be very exciting for me, with words flowing from my fingertips like bullets. I hope to continue this piece throughout next year in my free time, and obviously the end goal would be some sort of novel. But if we are being honest, I don’t have the patience to do such a thing. Cheers and thanks for reading.

October 2nd, 2202

Earth was never special, and especially never special in the ideas that the dominant race of the planet thought that they were alone in the great, expansive void. Sure there were some, prescribing to the idea of infinite possibilities, people who dreamt, and wondered, and tirelessly tried to prove that there was something else out there. And of course nothing compares to the sudden realization that all they had hoped for had come true, that everything we’ve worked towards was suddenly correct. And of course, the following incomprehensible horror that being lonely was a far better option than not.

I wasn’t on planet at first contact. 

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The only thing that now remains of Post-Earth is the atmosphere, still harboring that perfect mixture of oxygen, nitrogen, CO2, that allowed life to thrive and grow, and harbor all things that make life worth living. So welcome my surprise when I couldn’t stop coughing as the ship doors opened and flooded the lower airlock with it.

“Status?”  

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I felt a strange complacency, a grandeur at being the only living thing on a planet. Not as rare as it used to be, but nevertheless an untenable feeling swept through me, alerting my bio-sensors to relegate breathing, heart rate, and anxiety. No boosters needed this time, however ready the medicinal release system always seems to be. Technically illegal to even orbit this cindered rock but anyone willing to enforce such laws is far too busy for lowly intergalactic trespassing. A ship as small as mine wouldn’t even ping deep-space sensors let alone make a ripple in the vast AI net that blankets the known cosmos. No, no, I am much too small for anyone to care about, and the last time anyone cared about Earth was three seconds before the entire planet was glassed. 

My feet crunched dead earth underfoot, dust and debris scattered at my coming. I’d made it about fifty meters before I realized I was staring at a horizon, the eclipse of sky and what used to be an ocean. Not a single wave rippled these shores, nothing but an absolute stillness. 

The sky mirrored the ocean, the sand, the absolute devastation ever-present in every direction. No stars, no sound, just black, as the horizon blended dead oceans with empty skies. They had twisted this planet into horror, wrought fire upon the grounds, the people, the life that teemed here. My ship being the standard issue onyx coloring, as with my standard issue bio-suit, I mostly blended in. An apparition which nothing could even notice. A shade wandering a purgatory-like planet, alone and wondering. Wondering what the fuck I’m even doing here, and what I could possibly gain from retuning to my first homeworld. 

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And then there was a light. Faint, as if not even there at first, but a small twinkling about 200 meters away. Vitals spiked again, matching the pure awe that something could even exist here, after, something potentially alive, or at least with power.  I steadied my hand on the grip of my weapon, and took a step forward.

“Caution.”

On-board computer systems are so jumpy.

Footfall following footfall I trudged the blackened sand towards a light that I wasn’t even sure was there. In my steadied pace, I became more assured that it was there, and now it was moving. Slowly at first, but unmistakably. Starting about 50 meters above where I was standing and moving in a small semi circle down towards the ground. I continued onward, steeling myself, closing ground at the fastest pace my body allowed. Running on purely nerves, excitement, and primal-fear I reached the base of the object. A large circle standing about 100 meters above me, rotating silently, almost effortless. Tiny swings matched spiral, steel spokes, and perpetuated peacefully in a full circle. A ferris wheel, here, somehow still standing, working, providing a beacon to ghosts and memories. 

“Proximity alert!”  

“Yea, it’s moving,” I pinged back, about as sarcastic as the computer could understand. “Tell me where the power is coming from.” 

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