Speculative Fiction

Dreams craft a world with the rules of a fevered script, conjured by your own neuronic haze, and when you land inside it, it’s like being dumped into the deep end of a pool you didn’t know was there. What’s wild is how quickly you ditch it all. The moments between dreaming and waking dissolve, like watching your own hard drive wipe itself: the panic wrings you out, the guilt that squeezes your gut, the hint of forbidden pleasure that was so sharp it woke you up sweating. Give it five minutes—the whole thing’s gone, like it never happened. A glitch in your memory.

The machinery doesn’t sleep just because you do. Your meat and mind are busy in the background; every twist, every blow, every flicker of feeling you didn’t process in real time gets stuffed into this relentless private theatre of the unconscious. That starts in childhood, when the brain is a language sponge sucking up every stray word. Then you’re an adult, and dreaming turns itself into a grim…

I yanked off the headset and the whole world went watery. Sweat in my eyes, clinging everywhere, the suit’s supposed temperature regulators shot to hell. I sat there, dazed, the fugue of too many realities tangling in my head. It was only when I peeled the suit away, dropped onto my numb ass, that the overload ebbed a little. I sat, just breathing, trying to get all the voices in my head lined up in a row, wondering for real: what the hell now?

There was this knot inside me, right in the chest, a cocktail of panic and love, bound up tight. I’d definitely been in too long. The devil would be clocking it down to the minute, my so-called “reality handler,” always watching for deviations. I’d left my usual trails, set the trapdoors for any wandering bots, but too much time offline would send everything red at HQ. They would start asking questions. They’d dispatch someone and most likely, that would be it; last time they went, no one came back. History didn’t…

Her apartment struck me as simple but tasteful. I might have called it minimalist, had I known whether she’d pared down by choice or by budget—but real estate downtown New York wasn’t exactly cheap. The place was a converted warehouse: exposed brick walls, soaring ceilings, steel-framed windows that bathed the room in light and gave it an expansive feel. I missed that openness in my own home. Sure, I could simulate it perfectly in Ultrahigh, but knowing it wasn’t real would spoil it. She, of course, never questioned it—it was simply her world.

Now she lay naked beside me, her head resting on my chest. One hand drifted across my stomach, teasing ever closer to my now-flaccid penis. We’d just fucked for what felt like hours, and both of us floated in that delicious afterglow. I told myself none of it was real—I’d slept with an avatar, flagrantly breaking the no-contact rule—and yet I felt myself falling for her. We’d barely exchanged a dozen words. Did she…

“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” she teased, her smile crooked.

I gasped and sat frozen, eyes locked on her. How had she tracked me so quickly? I’d been ultra careful, layering perception filters at every turn. In Ultrahigh no human avatar should follow an architect’s trail so easily. What had I missed?

“May I sit?” she asked, indicating the empty chair. Her micro-coloured blue eyes held me spellbound. 

“Yes, certainly,” I stammered. “Sorry—where are my manners?”

She slid into the seat, returning my gaze as if peering into my soul. My heart fluttered. I recognised the sensation—this wasn’t supposed to happen here, unless another architect had engineered it.

“Can I get you a coffee?” I finally managed.

“A chai latte,” she said, tucking hair behind her ear. “If they do them here.”

“I’m sure they do.” I headed to the counter, needing time to collect myself. When I…

In a world enriched by darkness only shadows hint of light.
In anger we rot.
Inertia consumes.
Our battle cries are weak.
And they are strong, the many.
Doubting our resolve, our reality.
Fear drove them to it.
They feed on the abyss that sits inside them.
One we know too well.
We’ve looked inside, and it scared us.
To the very marrows.
There’s strength in that.
In knowing your flaws.
They pick at the scales…

It feels like our world is falling apart, especially in the western hemisphere. We are struggling to find our balance as it tears at the seams. But we can't underestimate this system, which was designed for survival and will not go down without a fight. These thoughts back then like now are not allowed during the day, but I can't help but think about them. It puts me at risk of detection, but I'm used to that by now. Losing credibility was nothing new for me; I knew then I should take it…

Boy you're telling me …

Powered by…

It would nice settling into the future. Not approaching it tiptoeing around corners.? It would be nice to open that door knowing you can handle whatever is on the other side. Not fearing to reach the handle.…

In the deep deep deep

In the deep deep deep, where the purple demons sleep with their flare for Flamboyance of Macabre  ensemble

We hear the pitter-patter perp of the purple…

He was born on this council estate
He was two weeks early
Some say it was already too late
People don’t listen
So, he spits louder
But they’ve all tuned him out by now
He’s becoming part of the furniture
His voice is getting old
They’ll miss him when he’s gone
And wish they’d listened just once
It would have saved them

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image written and created by me using Wonder Ai

We keep stepping forward, each breath through time,

Each step moving closer to death and rebirth,

In a continual continuum of space,

Stepping in beat,

Moving forward,

Falling off one’s own feet,

Tumbling from this event, that thing and when,

Not really getting a grasp,

A hold of what’s going on,

Tumble forth into disaster, love and loss,

The world revolving around you,

The universe bends to your own rules,

We…