Day 3:

It’s been three days since we lost electricity. It took me as long to find a pen. Who needs pens anymore anyway? Me. I need pens. I started keeping track of the days by carving into the wall. I think from this point forward, I will use the tally system rather than carving out “day one, day two... etc.” My hand hurts.

Day 6:

Frank and Cornelius seem to be on the outs. They are on the am shift for work and watching this schedule has helped to estimate what time it is. I saw them walking together only to see Frank storm off in the opposite direction about five minutes later. Cornelius was seen speaking to the queen later that evening. Drama unfolds on empty chip bag island.

Day 7:

Frank is dead. The funeral procession lasted 2 minutes. The hundreds of guests that arrived did not even seem to care as they went about their business. Poor frank. Crushed by a rogue flip flop. They were on my feet but that’s neither here nor there. This isn’t about blame. Its about Frank, the most productive ant I’ve ever met.

Day 10:

This is getting ridiculous. The ants have abandoned me. I’m starting to think they were only using me for food. But now that food has gone sour and I guess even they have standards. Classy ants.

Day 11:

I used most of the pen ink, writing out posts for Facebook and Instagram. Now that I can’t eat the pen, I’m starting to realize how little it matters. I have a new appreciation for life and nature and organic connection. Things are going to change, by golly!

Day 15:

The power is back! I haven’t forgotten the epiphanies I have had. I’m going to make changes. Starting now. Follow my blog on Instagram to track my progress!

The world went dark on July 20.

Fortunate for my family and I, we still had some of our garden left. By the time the supermarket shelves were ransacked and the riots hit, we’d gathered four twenty-gallon buckets of tomatoes, seventy cucumbers, four dozen banana peppers, ten plump bells, and nine watermelons. We wasted no time dragging it all inside; we knew it wouldn’t be long till the riots overflowed from the city and came our way. They’d sweep through, a wall of greed and disorder, and ravage our land.

Phones were down for the few who still had landlines, and cells were inoperable for loss of signal, which meant no 911. (Criminals...were acutely aware of this.) I took plenty issue with the notion of being inevitably robbed without recourse, but in times like these you kinda’ had to suck it up. We were thirty miles from any police station. Smith and Wesson was our only fallback.

This was social anaphylaxis, an allergic recoil from the sting of primitivity. And like anaphylaxis I figured it would eventually subside.

It didn’t.

Scariest were those who depended on technology like a lifeline. We didn’t have news to tell of the suicides. I would’ve been afraid to ask anyway.

A week in and you had stray influencers wandering the streets, lost and despaired, looking like something the cat coughed up.

And I wondered. Had we fallen so far as a species that survival hinged on something as recent as electricity? I kept telling myself how two-hundred years ago there was no such amenity, and the residents endured just fine.

My mind kept circling back to a show I used to watch. Dr. Stone.

A mysterious flash of light leaves humanity petrified, and a handful of humans awaken 3,700 years later to a world devoid of modern means, reminiscent of a Stone Age. Aided by the supergenius Senku, they have to start over from scratch, meaning relearning everything from agriculture to architecture to the reinvention of more luxurious articles like automobiles, phones and cola. I loved that show; I just never thought I’d have to live it. Had I known this was coming I would’ve taken notes. But the extent of my note-taking was when I’d recorded the ingredients for cola on my Pages app. Which was now out of commission. Bruh.

Maybe I don’t really have room to judge the technologically bereaved.

The Stone World residents had it a bit tougher, I’d dare to say. At least we still had standing civilization, skyscrapers, cars. We had battery powered fans; we just lacked a way to charge the batteries.

What ground my gears was knowing all the writing I had logged away on my Pages app. All I knew was, when signals were restored my work better not’ve been lost. I probably had over three-hundred documents.

My anger dissipated a little when imagining the scope of effects brought about. Hospitals would be in trouble. Generators could only get them so far. And what about winter when farming was an impossibility? Hunting would have to suffice, but with the population so high could wildlife really sustain us all? I chose to be hopeful. It was really all I could do.

TV made this look easy.

There was an Amish commune a little ways from our farm. Dad bought wood from them regularly, so we had something of a rapport. Three months in we drove out to see if there was any wood left they could sell us. Winter was coming and our furnace supply was lower than usual. We’d had to start using it early for the cold nights. I met Isaiah out by the barns and he looked nothing like what I’d remembered. He was always so jovial for our wood runs, a man with a countenance of steel. But all the while he was explaining to us, he looked so beat down. He said some outsiders had hit their commune about a month back, and killed a couple of their men. The looters made off with as much as they could carry.

Fear does things to people. Things you can’t really explain. More than just fight or flight, these things hardly ever make sense. Perhaps it’s a narcissistic, impatient, nearsighted drive that fuels it. Why vie for cordial discourse when violence could get you so much further so much faster?

Isaiah told us the names of the dead. A few of them I’d known.

One of them was only a year older than me.

They could only spare a quarter-load of wood, but we were grateful. Isaiah refused money.

Dad gave him a gun and told him to protect his family. Reluctantly, he nodded and took it.

Driving back in our family pickup, I watched the sky. It looked so dreary anymore.

Again my mind circled back to Dr. Stone. Just a few of the petrified had been revived, and even then they managed to find conflict. Enemies were quickly made, and a war eventually followed.

The first thing I heard was the sound of shattering glass. The window at my right shoulder exploded. Dad gunned it but we didn’t make it far. A loud popping noise sent us rolling, ground turning to sky. Next thing I knew, I was in a ditch, about a hundred feet from the truck. I could hardly feel my body, my mouth tasted like copper, and my sight was barely clear enough to make out the faces eclipsing my periphery.

“She alive?” a gruff male voice called.

“Yeah, looks like it,” another replied. “What about the old man?”

“He ain’t moving. Big dent in his head. I’d say he’s a lost cause.”

“I got ’is wallet. He only had about seventy bucks.”

“You think she’s got anything on her?”

“Na. I don’t see no jewelry. And she looks about fifteen, so forget cash...”

“Wanna’ check? I mean, what would it hurt?”

By then, all I could see was black.

I felt myself being rolled over.

“Nothing... Told you.”

“She looks pretty bad, man. You didn’t tell me it would go like this.”

“Well, how could I have known?”

“So what, we just leave her here?”

“You got a better idea? Wanna’ take her to a hospital?” Sarcasm. Even concussed I understood that much.

“What, you feeling guilty now? If you don’t wanna’ leave her then be a man and just put her out of her misery.”

Silence. He’s thinking about it. I don’t know how I can tell, but I can.

“I can’t... I’ve never actually shot someone...”

His voice...he sounds so young.

“Fine. Just leave her. We’re moving out, though. I ain’t sittin’ around nursing some stranger’s kid till dark.”

Footsteps. The grass is rustling. They’re leaving.

One’s staying.

I hear a click, and with a fresh fear I realize he’s made his decision.

“I’m sorry...”

I hear the first fraction of a gunshot.

Then I hear nothing.

#fiction

My name is Harper and in six months I am going to die.

I know this because I paid for the privilege. You can do testing for anything nowadays, and apparently your expiration date is one of them.

I had money to spare, I was bored, and yes, I foolishly thought the test would tell me some distant faraway age like eighty-two or maybe even one hundred and two. When I found out my expiry date was in six months, I began to have a really, really bad case of buyer’s remorse.

I went through quite a lengthy denial period, where I thought I could go through the rest of my life pretending that if I just do things exactly the same way and not change anything I would conveniently forget and everything would be fine and dandy. (This was by far my favorite coping mechanism. But it didn’t last. Eventually my anxiety bubbled up and exploded like a shaken champagne bottle.)

Next came an obsessive, defiant, planning phase. Everyday I would think of elaborate plans to avoid death like I could somehow scheme my way out of it. I mean, theoretically, it seems doable. Plane crash? Don’t go on a plane. Car accident? Just stay home all week. Heck, heart attack? Pop three baby aspirins and hang out in the hospital lobby, right next to the crash cart ready to wave a big sign that says “I’m having a heart attack.” Unfortunately the test didn’t provide the cause of death, just the exact time, so I couldn’t really plan in specifics.

Eventually all the planning became incredibly exhausting and I settled into a kind of defeated acceptance. My plan was still not to actively put myself in a situation where I could die, I was not quite ready to submit to my annihilation, but if I somehow still find myself in that situation anyway, I figured I should really work on trying to be okay with that.

So then I commenced on a hedonistic three months where I blew half of my life savings and did literally anything I could think of. I ziplined through the forests of Peru, skydived over the French countryside, drank the best wines and indulged in rich Italian food, snorkeled off the shores of Bali, shopped with abandon while perusing the streets of Tokyo, London, Dubai…

You get the idea.

The most pathetic part of this whole thing was that I didn’t have a family to spend my last few days with. Or close friends, really. My impending death would not be filled with earnest mourning and last minute tearful proclamations of love and reminiscing. Oh sure, my funeral would be packed, but nobody would miss me, not really. As an orphaned twenty-two year old who inherited too much money at an early age, not only was I kind of an entitled asshole, I also haven’t really lived yet. I haven’t fallen in love or had kids, wrote that great American novel, won a Pulitzer, or experienced any of that syrupy sweet stuff life is supposedly made of.

Anyway, that’s why I’m hanging out in the hospice ward.

My friend here is Lucas. He is twenty-nine and has end stage heart failure from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. He described it as his heart being too big - literally but I suspect it's also an accurate description of him figuratively. I befriended him five months ago when I found out I was going to die. And no, surprisingly, he does not have any wisdom to impart about acceptance and healing and the meaning of life. He is very not okay with his young, awesome life being cut short, thank you very much.

He did have some useful information for me though.

“It’s quite experimental.” Lucas warned in an ominous tone.

“Obviously.”

“They usually only accept terminal patients… you know, because of the ethical issues.” He eyed me warily. “But in your case, they made an exception.”

He was adorable. He said that last line like a late night infomercial. Or maybe a used car salesman.

“This is not some elaborate black market scam to harvest my organs, is it?” I raise an eyebrow at him. “I mean, no offense, but you look like you could use a new heart.”

Lucas had to grab his oxygen mask after laughing so hard at that one. The nurse at the station gave me a dirty look.

After Lucas recovered he looked me in the eye. “How much do you have left?”

“Time? Or money?” I joked. The look on his face was not amused. I cleared my throat. “One month. And as you know, money is not an object.”

“Well, one month can give you… at least eighty years in virtual time. So pretty much a whole lifetime, if you decide on it.” Lucas shrugged. “Once you jack in though, there’s no going back. Your clock will end as scheduled and that’s the only way out. Also, it’s totally immersive, so you won’t even know you’re in virtual. It will be like… you’re in a dream but you don’t know you’re in a dream.”

“So I would really believe everything was real? Like I would grow up to be ninety years old and I would actually think I lived all those years even though really it will only be one month?”

“Mostly, yes.”

“How many of the other people will be real?”

“Most will be computer generated. You might meet some real ones, if they are in the same time dilation settings as you. There are very few people with the resources for a whole month, you know. Most people can only afford one day.”

“So there’s a chance that I will marry a program?” I furrowed my brows. “And then if we have kids, they will also be programs?”

Lucas cocked an eyebrow. “There’s a high chance, statistically. Like I said, there’s only a few real participants at any given time. Not that it would matter to you, you won’t know the difference.”

I thought about this. Would it really bother me if I didn’t know? I bet my computer generated kids would be adorable.

His expression suddenly turned serious. “There’s something else. It’s rare, but there are a few cases of people noticing little things not quite right and they become increasingly convinced they’re in a simulation. Which of course is true, but when you’re jacked in and you’re not completely sure if you’re crazy or just being paranoid, it can be terrifying. They call it Simulation Induced Paranoia, or SIP.” He paused. “Participants become really…. distressed.”

I chewed on this for a second. “I still want to do it.”

He looked surprised. “Really?”

“I really don’t have anything to lose.” I replied nonchalantly, like I just decided on a dinner entree. I should probably be alarmed that I was acting so cavalier. Lucas wasn’t exactly giving a stellar sales pitch. Then again, it was true, I really had nothing left to lose. I’ve done what I could with my twenty-two years. Might as well have another lifetime to try again.

Lucas stared at me for a moment then sighed. “That’s the thing. The longer you’re in virtual, the higher the chance you might experience SIP. Remember, Harper, a month is a lifetime. The chances are very low of course - less than 1%, the virtual worlds are very meticulously programmed after all. But if you experience SIP, there’s no cure, no safe word, you’re stuck until your clock runs out.”

“I already decided.” I said resolutely. Once I’ve made up my mind on something I was usually unshakable. It was one of my many flaws. “In fact, let’s do it tonight. I want to get my whole lifetime, not a year less.”

—

Everything was too bright, the sounds too loud. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. Jacking in was a very jarring process, it felt as if all my neurons were firing up all at once. Somehow I felt tremendous pain and the heights of delirious ecstasy simultaneously. Like I was feeling every possible thing all at the same time. There was a terrifying moment when everything went black, and for what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, I truly wholeheartedly believed I was actively dying.

Maybe I was supposed to die on the table during the procedure. Or maybe I really did unwittingly offer to have my organs harvested for the black market. Damn it, I probably caused my own death in my extreme efforts to avoid it...

I blinked twice. The room slowly came into focus.

“Hey, sleeping beauty.” A familiar voice.

It was Lucas. But also, it was not Lucas. He did not have his portable oxygen tank close by. His lips did not have their usual bluish tint. He looked… healthy.

Everything came back to me at once.

“Oh shit, Lucas. That was nuts.” I shook my head, clearing the cobwebs. “That felt too real. I really felt like I was in there for twenty-two years.” I checked my watch. I’ve only been in Virtual for twenty-two minutes.

He chuckled, swiveling back and forth on the expensive office chair I bought him for Christmas last year. My boyfriend never could sit still. “You’re a champ, Harper, you were the one who wanted to push the time dilation to a year per minute. I was worried pushing it that far would compromise the world building, but your mind was amazing at meeting the program halfway to fill in the gaps. You made yourself a rich orphan, really? Money is no object? Hah!”

I disconnected my neurojack from the surgically implanted access port behind my right ear. That rich orphan stuff was my subconscious free at the wheel. I didn’t intentionally decide on it. I turned back to Lucas. “Why did you add all that stuff about Virtual in there, and SIP? Don’t you think that was a little too… meta?”

Lucas suddenly broke into that grin that melted my heart so many years ago when we met during undergrad at MIT. “Well, since you wanted to put the expiry dates into the program so people would know how much time they had left, I thought, what the heck, why not make it interesting? Why not make a virtual game in Virtual?”

I was not amused. Lucas had a penchant for bloated code and unnecessary side doors. Also, for not telling me about an adjustment until after he has done it. “That’s messed up. You should have run that by me. The expiry date was a suggestion from the beta testers and we all agreed on it. We didn’t agree on putting the game into the Virtual Universe as a side door..” I paused. “Also, what if I didn’t jack in? I would have died in a car accident or something?”

Lucas turned back to his computer and typed a few lines of code. “I had carbon monoxide poisoning ready to go, but I was prepared to improvise. And anyway, I didn’t actually think you would gravitate towards the game during the beta test, I just put it in there as an Easter egg of sorts. I figured most clients would only think about jacking in when they were close to their expiry dates, if they do at all. But on second thought, maybe I should take it out of the programming, it’s too much work to keep up.”

I jumped off the table and stretched my legs. My entire body felt stiff like I haven’t used it for months. “Yea, take it out. You’ll have enough work as it is when we start accepting our first commercial clients next week. We have four people scheduled on our first day which I already think is too much.”

“We’ll be fine.” Lucas was now typing more purposefully. “That reminds me, I need to finish debugging this before Monday. Do you mind picking up dinner?”

“Sure.. from that new Thai place again?”

“Sounds good.”

I smiled as I gave Lucas a quick peck on the cheek before I grabbed my purse to pick up the take out. Everything was going well for our start up. It was hard to believe that only two years ago Lucas and I were broke PhD dropouts who took a leap of faith building Virtual from our one bedroom Boston apartment. And now… well, let’s just say our first official month in business is projected to generate six figures in profits even after subtracting overhead. Mid six figures. And as soon as we open up our second and third facilities the growth would be exponential.

To top it all off, I was pretty sure Lucas was planning on proposing to me next week on my birthday. I saw a charge from some jewelry company on his credit card statement while I was doing some filing last month. Judging from the amount, it could only be an engagement ring. Lucas never would have spent that much on a piece of jewelry otherwise.

I sauntered out of the elevator from our high rise office with a pep in my step. The weather outside was just the right amount of sunny. Even the Boston air didn’t feel as suffocatingly polluted. Yes, everything was going well. Perfect, even. I eyed a meticulously trimmed bush suspiciously as I walked by. Maybe too perfect.

I felt a sudden stab of panic. The smile dissipated from my face.

Oh no.

He’s struck with pain. 

Pain caused by the child who left. 

Who was cast out.

Who betrayed him.

Who betrayed heaven.

How can He begin to recover from the pain that he caused?

A thought flickers through His mind. 

Maybe...

Maybe He could create something new. 

Something beautiful. 

Something that could help Him to heal. 

Something that wouldn’t betray Him. 

Like he had. 

So, He took a moment and started to create. 

First, He made the world, a beautiful world. 

Flowers graced every corner of this earth,

Daffodils, Sunflowers, Lillies, Roses.

Trees blooming and growing into delicious fruits,

Apples, Pears, Figs, Bananas.

Animals started to roam the world,

Dogs, Cats, Bears, Bees. 

He sat among the animals and the flowers and the trees. 

He admired the beauty that He had created. 

The light caressed His face as He sat content. 

He felt Himself start to heal. 

But then shadows started to loom overhead. 

Something...

Something was missing. 

These animals and flowers and trees, they had started to heal Him.

But they weren’t enough. 

He still felt pain despite the comfort they provided. 

With a determined look, He set out to create one last thing. 

Something that would offer one last piece to the puzzle. 

A little life. A little love.

Taking a deep breath, He created something else. 

Someone who looked like Him 

And spoke like Him

And could think like Him.

Think like Him but not betray Him like he had. 

And so man was made and then woman followed. 

Why? 

Because just as He needed someone to love, man did as well. 

And thus was the creation of mankind and the world. 

I was all of nearly five years old.

In our two-story apartment, it was a normal day like any other during the months of summer. And on one day, normal would change abruptly.

It was late afternoon as I best recollect. It wouldn’t be much longer before my mother would start dinner. I knew this because every week, she would sit down and watch her two favorite soap operas, ‘The Edge of Night’ and ‘The Secret Storm’. Once they were finished, she would march out to the kitchen and prepare a tasty meal.

On this one particular day, right after Edge of Night finished, she did go to the kitchen to start boiling potatoes. When she returned, I was still sitting on the floor, playing with my toys, namely my Fort Apache fort, with waxed characters trying so hard to look like Lieutenant Rip Masters, honorary Corporal, ten-year old Rusty, and Rin-Tin-Tin. The fort was made of tin, but it was so much fun to pretend playing out scenes I watched on the tv show. Other characters came with the set so I could mix up the bad guys anyway I wanted.

When my mother returned, she settled in to watch her other show and I had to go to the bathroom, which meant walking past the kitchen.

On my way, a glimmering flicker caught my eye, but the bathroom came first. When I finished, I went back to the kitchen and walked to the stove and leaned over looking at the flame under the pot. It was the first time I actually noticed it and it had my full attention. I knew not to touch it because many times I heard my father say that fire is a bad thing. He was a volunteer fire-fighter, but at the moment, there were no fires, and he was at work.

Looking around, I saw the paper bag in a basket of sorts that held trash, so I ripped a piece off and stuck it under the pot then pulled it back quickly. For three long seconds (maybe), like being hypnotized, I stared at the bright flame. When it came to close to my fingers, I quickly got rid of it.

Under the sink are twin doors made of some sort of metal and in the middle just above them were three, you could say, like mail slots, and slipped the burning paper threw that. Then I went back to the front room where my mom sat.

Things went pretty good for all of ten minutes when I saw it first and then I became nervous—and scared. Smoke.

My mother saw me starting to cry and asked why and I could only point. Forgetting her show, she walked over and could see the smoke now billowing from the kitchen and making the dining room area cloudy with thick smoke.

She didn’t hesitate one second. She picked me up in her arms and hurried to the dining room to find the thirteen steps that would take us outside. Hurriedly, she went across the street, banged on a door, and asked them to call the fire department and keep and eye on me. Theresa said she would, and interestingly enough, because of this, they became life-long friends, just as I did with their youngest son, Peter, nicknamed ‘Sonny’.

From this point I don’t know exactly what happened, but much later, after the fire department came and left, my mother had gone back to the apartment, found a bucket and started filling it with water to try and keep the fire contained.

Again, from what I heard, she did such a good job that the biggest damage was the wall of the kitchen, the stove was melted, and fire-fighters had broken open a side window to the kitchen to spray water. It was over in practically no time.

I do remember that after it was over, I told my mother in a hitching crying fit, what I had done. Was she angry? Hell, yes. But she was more concerned for my safety and to keep us from being homeless because of my curiosity. She never gave a thought to herself or her own safety, but as I have looked back on this a time or two in my life, without realizing it then, my mother could have died because of my foolishness.

She was the bravest woman I have ever known.

My father was right. Fire is bad.

Did I get punished? You better believe I did. It’s one I won’t get into, but it was a punishment never forgotten.

Lesson learned.

Oh The Beautiful Light There is

Which Shines Everyday When I Wake.

Oh The Beauty And Brightness That Covers Me.

When i know i am alive and which i remember with every step that i take.

Oh The Luminosity And Peace I See.

Which fills my heart and brightens my day as it goes.

© Alipoetry, All Rights Reserved.

The rain fell, trickling down the window. This was a time of night when it was the quietest; it was calm and everyone sat near the window listening to the rain. Hearing the floor creak with every step worried Avery, because with every step a noise was made and if he was even a bit too loud he would be heard and if he was heard it was then that he would be caught.

When I was a boy

I had wandered the

Lone desert

With an empty sky

Above me, wandering

With a friend and

After time I had

Lost him and

So was I to him

Until we crossed

Paths and civilization

Had found us once again.

I kept pouring drinks,

pulling my cigarettes from the pack.

It seemed like a ritual

for every night.

Trying to write

the things that i do.

until I've run out of

the gas that drove me.

Maybe i'd finish the words

that I lived

and if i didn't i'd pass out

drunk with

cigarette ash smeared

across the paper.

A poem or story

to add to the pile

when I awoke

on the couch

awake and alive

once again.

An assidious aspiration and aegis of aligning utter anonymity ad hoc unto aiming at unwraveling anyone and everyone's utterly untapped aptitudes and ambitions. An allusion on an obviously awestriking orchestration of armageddonesque escapades. An aura, an ambiance, encompassing uncollected accolades accrued out of abbreviated adroitness. An audacious attempt at antithesizing and antagonizing otherwise avarice and allowing online atonement at astute ease. An appraisal apropos antipathy against algorithmic alacrity - ad infinitum.