Category: Fiction

“How’s Dori doing?” George asked his brother. “She hasn’t come to see me yet.”

Mike shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Despite the tropical location, the beach, and the nearby bar, Mike just couldn’t relax.

“Everyone is dealing with this in their own way. I’m not sure coming here was the best idea,” Mike said.

“You couldn’t get Mom and Dad to come?”

“Mom and Dad don’t even understand what this is. Bastard is one word they use to describe you and what you did.”

Always the salesman, George flashed his winning smile, “Look, it’s better now. How great is this?”

Mike looked around. It was certainly a beautiful place his brother now found himself in. There were women in bikinis everywhere, endless drinks and the weather was perfect. Mike considered what he had to look forward to. Back home, everything was grey and bleak. Even his high-rise office window just looked into another high-rise office window.

“This is definitely nice. You can’t beat the view, I suppose,” Mike said, then he took a sip of his drink.

“My brother, ladies and gentlemen. The king of understatements!” George clapped.

“I suppose I’ll keep coming as long as I can. I still don’t get why you did it. The scenery is better, but that’s all it is. I gotta run. I guess I’ll see you next month.”

“I’ll be here!”

Mike took the virtual reality helmet off and returned it to the undertaker. He wondered if the bikini girls were dead too.

The old man stares at the upright storage unit in the corner. He can still remember the ads.

Need a short break from the constant whining and fighting? Try our new Time Out Spot! Kids will relax in a state of pure calm while you…

…Mow the lawn!

…Catch up on work at home!

…Even take the wife out for a lovely dinner!

The last phrase bites him as he recalls it. He bought this Time Out Spot shortly after her death. The seal on the window broke 20 years ago, so he can only see a blur inside as he looks from across the room. He remembers the struggle the first time he put his child in, but not what it was about.

The last time he let the child out, it screamed and wailed. All the while clutching that damn bear she had bought him. Hardly the behavior for a 5 year old, he thought. He frowned.

A knock awakes him from the memory. He grabs his cane and slowly stumbles towards the door. Clear cords run down his shirt and into a levitating oxygen chamber. He gently tugs at them to catchup as he opens the door.

A burly man in a jumpsuit asks, “Is he ready?”

“Guess so. It’s over there in the corner. You’ll take good care of it? Doc says I’ll be gone by week’s end.”

“Yeah, we’ll make sure he’s set up someplace real nice. Sign here.”

This is another dream based microfiction story, similar to the story 3:13.

“Grandma?” She was the last person I was expecting to be on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, it’s your grandma. How are you doing, honey? How are the kids?”

I fall into a nearby kitchen chair and wave my wife over. I tilt the earpiece towards her so she can hear.

“Gram, is that really you?”

“Of course it’s me.” My wife looks at me in disbelief and leans in closer, moving her
hand over mine. My grandmother’s high pitched voice is unmistakable.

“This is impossible, I haven’t heard from you in five years. You died last week.”

“I’m not sure what you’re…” She doesn’t get a chance to finish. I hear the phone hit the floor and tap it several times. It reminds me of the corded phone that she kept in the kitchen at her old house. The cord was just long enough that if you dropped it,
it would bounce like a bungee cord that was too long.

I can hear her distant voice over the phone. She’s in a panic. I hear her say “No” several times and she’s crying. There’s a commotion of movement and I can hear a man’s voice. It’s deep and ancient, but I can’t understand what he’s saying. The
phone is being picked up.

I stand up screaming for her. She yells out “SCS! SCS!” The next thing I hear is the line drop dead. I stare at the phone.

“What the hell was that?”

Leaning in with my eyes closed, I breathe him in. I open my eyes, relax, and sigh his scent back out. He doesn’t quite smell the same out here. It could be the hospital, his diet combined with a glandular condition, or maybe just my own basic perception. Most likely, it’s the small confines of the drawer that makes him smell this way. The smell is sterile, but stale. He looks the same as he always does, basically. Sure, he’s a bit thinner, but not much. There’s also the light pink scar above his ear that runs about 6 inches, but besides these basic aesthetic variations what else could be expected? He’s been in a coma for 12 years.
My hands glide to the front of the smooth brushed steel drawer and I gently slide it back into the form-fitting grid. Some unseen mechanism grips the drawer before it can slam against the inside wall and seals it shut softly with a subtle latch. In this particular room, the bodies are stacked in drawers 3 high by 5 wide. My belief is that it was the architects’ intention to try and keep some privacy on the physical bodies or perhaps to minimize the realization about the number of patients here. Most relatives and friends don’t come to view the physical remnants however; they come to interact with their loved ones on the dreamNet.
I’ve been working in this Allentown facility since my mother arrived back in 2101 from Charlotte. It was a pretty typical car crash. The linking system in her car had failed and, due to her age, she could not regain manual control at that speed. It happens more often than people think since the news doesn’t report it. The local news cycle has gotten so tight, a story like that would blip out of the feed almost immediately. In her condition, she was immediately rushed up here for insertion. In the new economy of health care, it’s just easier to plug in the physically injured to the dreamNet rather than spend years taking care of their fragile bodies. Forget about waiting for recovery; just let them be anything they can dream of. There’s a guy on the second floor who’s a dragon and a woman on the third floor that’s a dolphin.
The rural countryside of eastern Pennsylvania has been transformed into a gigantic metropolis over the past 30 years, as have the other few locations around the country which now play host to these special hospitals. As a natural evolution of capitalism, an entire economy has been built around these patients. Their minds are still very active and they are engaging participants in society. Surprisingly, many hold the same repetitive jobs as they did in the real world. Since the dreamNet is hooked into the Internet, why not? Data is data, whether from your brain or a computer.
George has found a more lucrative existence; creating media content and aggressive advertising campaigns using the horsepower in his brain. He was a marketing executive by trade and would travel the world selling ideas. One summer night, his private plane crashed shortly after take-off. This left him in a comatose state. Since Allentown is the closest dreamNet facility to New York, he was brought here. George improved his craft immensely without the constraints of reality, creating advertising content that companies would eat up. He pioneered marketing strategies within dreamNet as well. After all, the economy is just as vibrant in there as in the real world, albeit for virtual goods and intellectual property.
I met George through my mother. Her projection of herself on the dreamNet always disturbed me slightly. I could never get used to her being so young. It was like looking in a slightly off reflection of myself. She was dating George, but I’m not sure he knew her real age. You can’t ultimately escape time in dreamNet though, eventually, your body shuts down and you depart for the next plane of existence. My mother was already old when she got here and only could make it to last year.
I could see what my mother saw in George right away. He is a young and creative mental creature. Not to mention extremely well off. George has an understanding about people, too. It’s his most appealing attribute. He always says or does just the right thing, which I suppose stems from his knowledge of marketing. Despite the inherent nature of advertising to be deceptive, he’s very honest and open. After my mother passed, I found comfort in his arms. Even though it’s against policy, I’ve been spending all of my time online with him. I’ve even found an out-of-service visitor room up on the fifth floor that I repaired myself. I can go in whenever I want and be undisturbed.
As I walk down towards the nurses’ station, I hear someone playing a news feed. For the third month in a row, there’s a filibuster to block shutting down the dreamNet facilities. The closed door sessions of Congress don’t reveal much, but the bloggers can fill in the gaps. This particular news feed shows a map of various facilities around the country with a time lapse overlay of suicide rates for the past several years. It’s clear in the radiating circles that there are a growing number of suicides nearby. The reporters downcast looks are now insinuating people are committing suicide to get in. How would one even go about doing that? I’d suppose a short fall from a window would do the trick, but there’s no scientific analysis or even precedent for survival rates. There are quite a bit of self-inflicted cases coming through here lately and many do seem to have relatives or friends already in-house. We never really get all the details though.
I peer closer over the nurse’s shoulder to watch, as a small group has now gathered at the station. Most of them here out of concern for their loved ones, but also their jobs. The feed shows rioting around the Colorado Springs facility. I haven’t been following the politics too closely because I can’t imagine any centers would be shut down. Thousands of patients would be unplugged and left to linger in archaic hospital rooms. dreamNet has spent a fortune in counseling programs, hardware, and upgrading broadband infrastructures across North America. How could anyone dispute the benefits?
I decide that I’d like to keep living in a somewhat blissful state of ignorance regarding this issue. As I turn away, one of the nurses scowls at my look of disinterest, but there seems to be more there. Could she know what I’m up to? I’m very careful to cover my tracks. I head quickly up to the fifth floor and my private visitor’s room, locking the door behind me. I lie down on the thin plastic bed and place the interface over my head, carefully aligning the nodes.
George and I have this one spot where we like to meet. It’s a construct of an Italian village where my mother used to live as a child. George is already waiting here, which is unusual for him. He’s so busy, I typically have to search him out. I’m relaxed again at the sight of him sitting on the concrete edging of the fountain. I turn away and face the warm sun. I find it just setting just over a nearby hill, when suddenly George hugs me from behind and showers me with kisses on my neck.
I turn around and kiss him back. George breaks away, smiles and, pointing his finger skyward looks as though a thought has suddenly occurred to him. In my peripheral vision, I see an early 19th century photographer appear, holding up an old style flash. George drops to one knee and proposes to me without haste. I pick him back up and let my kiss be the answer. I can hear the flash burst. Of course, it’s just for show. We part lips and I breathe in deep and smell the scent of the strawberry milkshakes like they used to sell at the corner deli near my house in Charlotte.
The photographer walks over and hands George the picture. Before his hand can let go, he simply fades away back into George’s memories. George smiles proudly at the picture and hands it to me. This memory will last as long as we’re both alive. I know this is me in the picture, but all I see is what George sees – the projection that I put forth. The picture is of my mother, young and as beautiful as ever, kissing him on this Italian cobblestone street in the waning daylight. It saddens me a little, but then I look into George’s eyes and know this is right. We embrace once more and head off into the creeping darkness together.

The young woman drove her red compact sedan as she had done for nearly every weekday for the past five years.  The car zipped along wooded backroads in the morning hours and passed through various small towns.  Coffee steam rose quietly through a small hole in her steel mug and quickly vanished in the breeze from her open sunroof.

                She suddenly realized that she didn’t remember her trip so far or how she got here, as tends to happen when performing such a repetitive task.  She shook her head briefly and flipped on the radio to hear Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees.  The rolling hills of Pennsylvania undulated under the asphalt as her car lifted and sank.

The town approached and she saw typical construction, which narrowed her path to one lane.  Her phone vibrated as she slowed down near the construction worker who waved for her to STOP.  She watched as he wiped his nose with one hand.  He seemed to have been sick every day this week.  She lifted up the phone, saw it was her boss and threw the phone back in her purse in disgust.  It’s only 7:30AM for God’s sake!

She re-checked her surroundings and found that the worker was now waving her through and the driver behind her was just about to be impatient.  She looked to the SLOW warning sign, flipped on her left turn signal and went to pick up a coffee.  As she drove on, the whole of reality began to fade.

The old man walked over to the rocking chair, which had worn lines into the wood of his front porch. Easing into the chair, he pushed his long white beard against his chest as he had done for nearly every day over the past two decades. The porch overlooked acres of farmland that were his once, but have since been sold off to a younger generation.
As the man gently rocked, he looked down at his calloused hands and realized he had forgotten his lemonade inside the house. He stood up and headed back into the house. The old wooden screen door bounced lazily against its frame.
He walked down the small hallway, back into the kitchen and grabbed the sweaty glass. He guzzled down half of it at once and poured himself more. Looking at the window at his backyard, an assembled mess of rusted junk, he frowned and turned back towards the hallway.
The screen door redundantly bounced again as he made his way back to the chair. He sat for several minutes in the morning hours holding the bottom of the glass against his right knee and examining the wavy rows of corn as the wind blew.
A small girl walked along the row that lined his property. She stopped to examine the old man quizzically. A memory awoke deep within, and he stuck his tongue out. She giggled incessantly and jumped into the corn field, running away.
The old man arose instinctively to chase after her.

This one is actually based on a true story from the other night.

I awoke with a start, but wasn’t afraid. Briefly, my brain assessed my surroundings and quickly determined that I was just in my ordinary bed with my wife lying next to me. Still half asleep, I looked over her across the room in the dark. I saw the jack o’lantern face peering at me from outside a latticed covered window.
“Now, we’re in trouble,” I muttered with confidence. I could feel the dream slipping away as the words dissipated in the room. As clarity entered my mind, I spoke my wife’s name softly – then again. I wasn’t sure if I had spoken the confusing phrase and now wasn’t relieved that she was still sleeping.
Across the room at eye level, the jack o’lantern peered at me through the mysterious window. I stared at it with great marvel and dared not blink. Its head seemed to be dancing up and down in the cross of the lattice ever so disjointedly. It glowed bright red and I was transfixed in its black and square eyes.
I was frozen for what seemed like an hour, breathing in shallow breaths while it watched me back. By its movements, I couldn’t tell if it was trying to break in or portray some unknown warning. As my mind continued to awake from lucidity, I realized that there was no window on that side of the room. My mind still couldn’t catch up with my eyes. Suddenly, the face shifted and I saw it change – 3:14.

Standing on the cliff with the moon being quickly enveloped within the storm clouds, the young girl wonders what she has wrought. The grass blows in pulsating waves like liquid marble, giving her vertigo. As she dizzily teeters towards the steep drop, an ancient hand grabs her cloak from behind.
She is spun around and is blinded by a sharp light radiating from a point just higher than her head. As the light wanes, she finds an elderly face looking down at her disapprovingly. With a swift movement of his arm, he hurtles her away from the edge of the cliff and into the roots of a nearby tree, which cushions her fall.
Her rough hands grasp the roots and her arms feebly push against the wind, placing her in a hunched position. The air inside the canyon has become a swirling vortex of white clouds that face her like a giant eye. The light streams around her now on both sides, leaving her inside a deep black triangle whose apex ends the man standing before her.
He is facing the cloud eye with his arms up high. Even in the shadow, she can see his cloak is more ragged and stained than hers. She brushes back the hair pasted near her left eye and struggles towards him. Midway on her journey, she stumbles onto her fists into the grass. A weathered hand grabs her chin forcefully and pulls her face up.
“Run, you fool. The dragons are coming!”