Rick grudgingly shoves his price-stamper into the back pocket of his jeans, and stomps toward his modest home’s front door. He smolders and won’t give his smiling mother a glance.

Ma grabs her son’s shoulders. The teen-ager stops and dutifully awaits another reprimand/pep talk/attitude-adjustment lecture.

But this time she only says, “Have a good evening at the supermarket, Richard Alan.”

Rick knows she is peeved because she dusts off his full first and middle names. But this time there is no “quit complaining” or “I used to have part-time jobs after high school, too” or “it’s only four hours of your life” or “if you don’t smile your face will stay that sour way” or “you’re lucky to have a job.” Or her usual closer: “Working will make you a man.”

Rick departs, but keeps his rejoinders to himself. They echo in his head during the ten-minute walk to the Hello, Good Buy Supermarket: But I’m only a freshman. Johnny’s folks don’t make him work. Yeah, it’s only four hours, but four boring hours that I’ll never get back. And how am I lucky to be a lowly stock boy? How will stocking shelves or chasing carts or cleaning up a mess on aisle three make me a man?

The teenager keeps his head down as he walks, looking only at the contraction lines and cracks in the sidewalk underfoot. Four minutes pass and he is halfway into the next block on his street when he hears a shout.

“Hey, Rick my man, how about a hand?”

Rick looks up and sees his pal Johnny trying to drag a heavy cardboard box toward a U-haul truck parked in his family’s driveway. Rick runs to his friend and helps him lift the box and carry it to the truck.

When the box is stowed, Rick looks at the truck and his friend’s house and opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Finally, he manages three words: “What gives, Johnny?”

And Johnny Wilcox comes clean. He apologizes for not letting his best friend know that his father lost his job as an accountant and could not find even a temp job that would be enough to make an upcoming mortgage payment on the family’s modest home.

“I was embarrassed to tell ya,” Johnny says, “especially after I made a big deal about not having to work. I don’t even know where we’re gonna live. Maybe a rental.”

Rick looks at his gym shoes, struggling to find the right words.

“So,” Johnny says, sticking out his hand, “I guess this Is it, friend.”

But instead of reaching out to shake Johnny’s hand, Rick looks into his friend's eyes and says, “Last night at work, the assistant manager quit. They didn’t know how they were gonna fill his job. I don’t know how much money he made, but do you think your dad would be interested? Maybe it could help you stay in…”

Before Rick can finish, Johnny shouts for his father. Excitement colors his shrill voice.

Mister Wilcox does not wait for Rick to finish relaying news of the job opening.

“Come on, Rick, I’ll drive you to work,” the balding man says, pushing the boy toward his sedan parked at the curb. “I can apply there.”

Johnny also runs to the car. “Do they have any openings for stock boys?”

Rick smiles the rest of the way to the Hello, Good Buy. Ma never said that work also could spread hope.

I was feeling uninspired and creatively dulled. Oh, I could write about anything easily, really. I could draft a predictable romance or some stupid dragon fantasy. I could tell a cautionary tale or even take a thrill ride on a stream-of-consciousness piece. I could involve animals for cuteness, irony, metaphor, or even to champion animal rights. Space battles? Easy!

I could wield maudlin, chagrin, regret, irony, epiphany, metaphor, and even the dark in ways that are good but, regrettably, had all been done before. Dark and stormy nights are for pussies! The best of times really are the worst.

I'm yawning.

All that's been done before. Where's the fun in such things?

There are no new twists to be had. Writing—good writing—is not just recycling. Emulate Hemmingway? There are still Hemmingways around in his estate to pay a lawyer for a cease-and-desist. Rip off Vonnegut? Yeah, just try. It won't even be close. Channel the NYT best sellers? You don't have a head start, so forgeddabout it. Magic, witches, wizards vs coming-of-age, thrillers, or whodunnits? I'm not just yawning.

I'm desperate.

I must write something that's never been read before. That's the only way I can climb Mazlow's pyramid. I want a sentence that has never been uttered to leap off the page and hook the stupid agent who insists on that "good fit."

The opening line would have to be unique, totally novel, even startling but, most importantly, be something that's never been said or read before—in English or any language.

And so I begin...

He looked like a millionaire on a horse. (I don't exactly know what that means, but a millionaire on a horse must look some good.)

Quick, hand me the piano! (That depends on who's saying it. You wouldn't want a large percussion instrument to fall into the wrong hands. After all, it's not just black and white.)

The way I see it, Hitler had a point. (No, wait, someone said that recently, although Grammarly reports, "This text is well-written.")

I loved her like a cactus. (Although I could wrap a whole novella around explaining how that was true.)

Even the cows laughed at my thumbs. (Has anyone ever tested the cow demographic about thumbs? Gotta think.)

We made love on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day as the bullets flew over us. (I'm afraid I can't write that, even if I want to write something that's never been written before. There are limits to both the laws of physics and the rules to lovemaking that cannot be broken. Well, maybe the laws of physics.)

We made love on the beaches of Normandy the day after D-Day, the spent bullets in the sand no more bothersome than the sand fleas. (Now you're talkin'!)

On the day my father died, I beat Mick Jagger bowling, two games out of three, blindfolded. (Imagine the exposition derived from explaining that Mick Jagger is my father and that I used The Force to beat him.)

My wastebasket fills with single, crumpled sheets, each with a single impossible sentence. Some sentences, it turns out, are dead on arrival.

No wonder I'm never a good fit. No wonder I'm no millionaire on a horse. And now I wonder about my thumbs.

Word Mage & Sage in training: MNEZZ.

(NOTE: Here’s a quick snippet into The Shadow Man story world/realm).

Link to the other -chapters/parts:

-theprose.com/book/2851/do-you-know-the-shadow-man..

Welcome to the stories/tales of—

The Shadow Man!

**********

-Do you know the Shadow Man?

~What lurks in the shadows.

The clock ticked & tocked

Sasha woke up with a start

What time was it?

She stared at her notes

Euh, not bad, for now

The moonlight was her guide

The frogs croaked outside

She wished they would stop

When they did she smiled

She marched off to bed

With no thoughts of her work

Running in her head

As soon as her head hit the pillow,

Something had moved past the willow

It watched Sasha all night long

Just waiting for the right moment

To get closer to her~ in the shadows-

Later on it would find a way to have—

Her beating heart....right in its jaws!

**********

Eep!

There is no place to hide child

The Shadow Man pointed at Stella

She lay still and quiet

Not making any sound

Fear creeped in

It smiled

Eep!

Eep!

It smiled

Fear creeped in

Not making a sound

She lay still and quiet

The Shadow Man pointed at Stella

There is no place to hide child

**********

Never stare into their eyes

There is no place to hide child

The Shadow Man pointed at Stella

She lay still and quiet

Not making any sound

Fear creeped in

It smiled

Eep!

Eep!

It smiled

Fear creeped in

Not making a sound

She lay still and quiet

The Shadow Man pointed at Stella

There is no place to hide child

**********

Metastasis

Bob clapped his hands, and the lights to the kitchen turned on. He opened his fridge to check the leftovers he had.

He stared at the bowl of noodles. Then there was another dish: fried rice.

Decisions, decisions.

The fridge door was pushed gently. He smiled. Now he was ready to have more of the fried rice. He could have it for any meal of the day: breakfast, lunch, or even dinner.

Bob clasped his hands, and blessed his food. The moment that he was about to dig into his meal, the lights went out.

‘Ugh.’

He walked away from his meal and tried flicking the light switch. Nothing. He stood still for a while, and then something caught his attention.

‘Hello? Is anybody there?’

Bob shook his head. He was not a kid anymore. Was he really still afraid of the dark?

He turned around and just right there he spotted another one. The shadow snarled. It dashed forward towards Bob.

Bob quickly ran up the stairs. He shut the door and hid under his bed.

‘It’s only a dream. A bad dream.’ He said to himself.

Then he heard the sound of the door. The squeak made him jump.

From his current position, all that Bob saw was a dark fog growing in his room. It reached his mouth in a few seconds. He tried to fan it away with his hands, but he ended up sucking some of the dark fog into his mouth.

He coughed, and coughed. Trying to get it out of his body. He felt his heart begin to pound in his chest.

Bob started feeling dizzy. Was the room getting smaller? His body shook and he gasped for air, as if he was drowning. The shadows had won.

His eyes became grey just like smoke. He could not see any thing.

Bob screamed. The last thing that ran in his mind was the thought of how scrumptious the fried rice would have tasted for another go.

The lights came back on right after the shadows vanished. Bob lay quietly and still under the bed. The shadows had taken another life & heart, too.

**********

Ce Cœur

The shadow bent down on his knee, and lowered his head, then it presented the heart to The Shadow Man. This pleases him so much that he chuckled.

His laugh startled the crows near the Black forest. The Shadow Man took hold of the beating heart. He held the heart with his claws.

‘‘This heart has been through hell. I can tell. It had managed to still fall in love. How sweet.’’

The Shadow Man made a face and said, ’’Yuck. Humans and there need for bonding. This heart also seems heavy.

’’Oh, his love left town. Well, why didn’t he follow her? No way— she had a family.

’’She did not tell him. Man. That does hurt.

‘‘Anyway, now thanks to my pack of shadows, this guy will not have to worry about a thing- not at all!’’

The Shadow Man opened his mouth wide. The heart went down his throat and straight to his belly.

*burps*

‘‘Excuse me.’’

The Shadow Man smacked his lips. ‘‘This heart was a bit sad. This is why I can not send a shadow to do my work.’’

The shadow apologized. It bowed & left its master to search for a less blue heart.

**********

Henri et Melon

Henri fell on his bottom. He raised his hands and asked for forgiveness.

The thing took hold of Henri by his collar & sank its teeth into Henri’s chest. Henri did his best not to cry, but tears streamed down his face like a river.

He heard his cat hiss.

‘‘No,’’ Henri tried to shout, ‘‘Melon get out of here.’’

Melon leaped into the air. As soon as it approached the creature, it was hit by the side by a giant blade. The edge of the weapon had created a deep cut by the cat’s neck.

Henri sobbed. He was tossed on the ground right by the cat’s side.

All he had wanted was to watch the stars and spot the constellations in the night sky. Now he wished he could turn back the clock, & just stayed in his room.

The thought of dying on the rooftop had never crossed his mind. Ç’est triste.

Henri used his last strength to crawl to his cat’s side. He felt rain drops fall on his face.

The rain slowly sent Melon’s & Henri’s blood right down the rain gutter. Henri placed one hand on Melon’s neck.

He closed his eyes while the rain continued to pour and mix the blood of Henri and Melon. Their blood flowed together down the gutter.

**********

Eons

They wait in the darkness

Growing ever hungry with each passing moment

Most call them shadow creatures, or simply: shadows

No one knows where they came from-

Some folks say they have been there since the dawn of time

Even before the invention of fire

The earlier community had tried to destroy them

All things seemed to be getting better

Until he arrived...The Shadow Man

He led the shadows into the Black forest

From there many thought they were safe at last

But things only became somewhat more scary

The Shadow Man was able to change the shadows form

They could blend in taking a human appearance

Or just take over a human’s body, mind and soul

Once that happens you might be added to the shadow pack

Some nights we stay up, keeping watch in the night

Staying awake to keep an eye on the candle light

Once it blows out, we strike another match

Hoping the little ray of light will keep the shadows away.

***********

Phantasmagoria

Pretty how leaves fall on the ground

Hear the owls hootin’ in the night

As the whispers echo in the breeze

Now the shadows start to gather

Tearing someone limb from limb

Another unlucky soul loses their head

Shadows chew the meat off the bones

Making them pleased ‘n’ mor’ hungry

Ah— see them begin to grin widely

Giants tremble whenever they’re near

O~ they fear the shadow man’s army

Raised to spread out across many

Islands, villages, across cities, & towns

Anything that faces them never live to see the light of day!

***********

Carry on

Chad sneezed & stared at the eyes glowing in the dark—

‘‘Ah!’’ He jumped out of his bed and ended up sliding on the floor, because of his socks. He bumped his head on the floor & it was lights out for him from there.

Rising sounds of sirens buzzed in his ears. Chad slowly opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see a thing.

Rays of light burst through and he covered his eyes.

‘‘You are welcome here.’’ Chad stared at the being standing in front of him. ‘‘who are you?’’

‘’Oh— I’m the Shadow Man..

‘‘Nice to have you join us...in my realm.’’

**********

ARIAS

Angels descended in blazin’ glory

Ready to aim their arrows at the man

In a flash~ somethin’ took over him

And his body began to transform

Smiling, and then cackling, he snapped his fingers & was gone!

**********

CLAIRVOYANT

Crystals lined up near her body

Lulling a simple tune

Always ready to sing along to it

In a hurry— she leaped over the roses

Running- trying to hide from the figure she saw in her mind

Voices cried out and told her to be calm

Obeying them she ran to her cottage

“Yes!” She jumped, & almost screamed

“Agh.” Not another one. The images were not something she could control.

Now they slowly faded. But she felt the presence of someone near.

The room became much darker. When she spun around~ she saw...the Shadow Man. He moved closer to her side, held her hands, and asked, “What do you see?”

*********

Le Dernier Repas

*takes a deep breath*

*stares at the dish pushed under the steel door*

Mmhh, this is odd?

Why does the last meal look not so bad?

I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try it—

Eh- *spits the food out* still tastes like dirt~

Uh, they could at least have provided me with something appetizing seeing as this’ll be mon dernier repas

Now I wait for my final moments here on earth

Wait, what was that?

*rubs eyes*

Did my shadow just move?

Nah, my mind is playing tricks on me

Whoa..um...where are the guards?

*steel door squeaks*

Is anyone there?

(silence)

Eirik, I’m not going to fall for your prank again!

[A shadow with glowing crimson eyes stretches from the side of the door & reaches for the death row inmate]

No....stay back

Whatever you are.....

[The shadow spins around and transforms into a person like form.

Then stares into the inmate’s eyes.

It leans closer toward the inmate, & opens its jaws.]

**********

Coffins or Caskets?

Something caught its eye. Why would someone else be in the graveyard & at such a late hour?

Its head started spinning. Its body suddenly felt weak. The world was slowly becoming darker.

It fell with a thud onto the gravel path. The last thing it heard before hitting the ground was—

‘‘It’s down! Which one do you think it prefers to be placed in- a coffin, or a casket?’’

“It doesn’t matter. We just have to make sure that its really dead- this time.”

**********

So Long…Francis..

Shadows can’t wait to reach the lad

Over the fence they leap

Listening for the lad’s heartbeat

Oh~ they smile & simply tsk at the lad thinking he can escape

No- there is no where to run, lad—

Get back, do not run into the closet

Find another place to hide

Reach for a spot that has some more bright rays

At least be surrounded by even a bit of moonlight

Never think you can escape from the shadows

Carefully try with all your might to keep your eyes closed while we surround you

‘I see you trembling in there lad!’ every shadow utters.

Sure the shadows like to see their prey shaking with fear, but now they think maybe it’s time to call it a day, then again....maybe not...

**********

TALISMAN

The midwife moved swift..

Arne beamed with pride-

Leaned forward to stare at his wife—

“Irine?” She lay peacefully like an angel.

Something was not right.

Midwife transformed & jumped to grab the kid~

Alas, she got zapped by the talisman around Irine’s neck.

Now seeing her shadow form, Arne drew his sword, the midwife cackled, & went flying out of the cottage, through the front door, like a plume of smoke.

********

NIGHT HOWLERS

Never bend down to pet the creatures

It may look all cuddly— at first

Grizzly- it becomes after it’s turned

Howling loudly at the full moon!

The Shadow Man cackles

Howlers of the night..do not pet them.

Or you’ll be met with quite a surprise

Worse you will just hear its howl~ but,

Let’s hope you don’t get to feel it’s bite

Each becomes more painful than the

Razor sharp first...& remember not to Scream your lungs out.

**********

La Reine de la forêt

The Queen of the forest only had one rule...

She forbid any being, or thing, to take control over her own kind..

The Shadow Man of course did not follow the rule-

Now he would have to face the Queen of the forest!

*********

Abyss

Angelic order gathered around the table

Bringing all stories, tales & latest tidbits about their current problem

Yeshi, one of the elders, cleared his throat—

‘’Sanza- are ye ready to track down the

‘Shadow Man’?’’

**********

Soul taking 101: Take the soul with some dramatic flare*

FOREWORD: About this chapter

No persons were harmed in the creation of this part. Also, this chapter’s inspired ‘n’ dedicated to my fellow author, mentor and poet on Prose. Thank you so much for your tips, & sage advice.

Write on. Happy reading and writing to one & all! :)

**************************************

The only sound that could be heard from his office was his two fingers moving at lightning speed on the keyboard. He paused to take a quick chug of the last pint of whiskey.

Howls began to ring in his ear. He turned around and scratched his head. Hmm, maybe he needed to call it a night. It was almost midnight.

He rubbed his eyes and thought to himself. ‘Now, where was I? Ah, yes. The Land Where Shadows Never Die..’ The cursor on the computer screen blinked at him. ‘What now?’

In a quick motion, he turned his chair around & then yelled. ‘‘Whoa! Who are you? Why are you hiding in the shadows—?’’ The figure raised its arms and slowly clapped. ‘‘I have been keeping an eye on you, Farin.’’

‘‘I have come to help you with your book. Surely you have questions about the Land Where Shadows Never Die..Well, I am here to take you to that place.’’

Farin gulped. What kind of crazy talk was this? Was this one of his buddies pulling a prank on him? They always laughed at his work. But hey, he didn’t mind.

The Shadow Man waved his hand and the floor beneath them opened. Farin felt a powerful wind pulling him into the portal. ‘‘Hold on~ I have not agreed to this....’’ Before Farin could say another word, his body was sucked in & taken to the Land Where Shadows Never Die.

**************************************

Note: Do not try this at home. flare* The Shadow Man has trained in soul taking, and still has to work on his writing skills. correction— the word: flair- was supposed to be used, but then the flare felt more appropriate here. xD

*********

LEVITATION

Lyam’s eyes looked on at her body

Eve’s feet were not touching the floor

Very close to screaming— Lyam was-

In his mind he could not figure out

The reason why her body was afloat

And then in the corner of the room

Twisting it’s head around~

It smiled & winked at Lyam

Only thing it wanted now was Eve

Not even Lyam could stop it from taking her to the Shadow Man!

**********

In his chamber, he grabs hold of his axe

Ready to swing it back 'n' forth

At any of the shadow creatures and their leader

Taking his golden armour-

Heavy it is, but he does not mind

Everyone is waitin' for him to join the order

Glorious light shines around him

Ladies in indigo robes bow down

A choir sings out Ira’s name

Dawn breaks ringing in the rosy morning

Ira smiles and walks toward the throne

And the sound of trumpets is heard

Throughout the heavenly realm

On and on the joyful music echoes

Raising a melody for even the Shadow Man to hear

**********

DEAREST EVE

Darkness was all around the space

Eve looked for a sliver of light

Among her new dwelling place

Resting her head in her hands

Embracing herself a bit later

Soon she heard the dungeon door open

Then her eyes fell on a dark figure—

Every cell in her body felt terror-

Voices echoed chanting loud’r & loud’r

‘‘Escaping is not possible here, Eve~’’

**********

SUNFLOWER

Screams from varying sides are heard

Uh, what an odd & macabre realm

Now who’s goin’ to save her where the

Flowers lost their colour—

Leaves turnin’ black~ fallin’ down.........

Onto the dark volcanic like floor-

Where no flower can bloom, or grow....

Eve takes a deep breath & then smiles

Remembering days in her own world.

********

RATTLESNAKE

Roars & hisses echoed like a nightmare

As the rattlesnake slithered nearer

To her side~ she used her feet to try &

Toss the thing to the side- ‘n’ not close

Lilting in a symphonic way— making

Eve feel much more panicked, ready to

Shout for someone to save her from the

Never endin’ torture brought on by the

All evil, powerful master & the one

King of the Nightmare Lane who put

Eve under a long hypnotic spell

**********

HALLELUJAH

Hurrying past the guardians

Amir the Leader of the guardians

Looked at the messenger

Lowering his head to the Chief

‘‘Eve’s in nightmare lane—’’

Listending nearby was Ira who was not

Under no right to be in charge for now

Just as soon as he tried to speak~ King

Amir raised his hand & shook his head

‘‘Here’s the rule- Sanza’ll be in charge!’’

**********

HELLO… THERE….

Heroes grabbed their weapons

Every guardian raised their shield

Letting out a warrior’s cheer- ready to

Lay down their lives for their loved

Ones in their glorious city & realm!

**************************************

The Shadow Man stared in the mirror

He saw them gather~ forming an army

Each one of them looking so fierce—

‘‘Really?- they think this’ll be just so Easy, well, they’re in for a big surprise.’’

I’d been desperate when I took the job. The fishing boat was small and ragged, much like its crew, but it promised three square meals and a paycheck, so I boarded with little hesitation. The captain, a wiry man named Arlen, met me at the dock. His handshake was firm, his eyes distant, and his words few. “Welcome aboard,” he muttered, his gaze fixed on the horizon as though it held answers to some unknown question.

The first few days were uneventful, though the crew’s peculiarities became increasingly apparent. Captain Arlen spent most of his time in the wheelhouse, his hands gripping the wheel as if it were the only thing anchoring him to this world. He stared straight ahead, his lips moving soundlessly, his expression blank. Waves crashed, gulls cried, and storms brewed on the horizon, but he never flinched, never seemed to notice anything outside his cabin. There had been no accidents yet, but I doubted he was the reason for that.

Then there was Cole, the fisher. A mountain of a man with calloused hands and a voice like gravel, he was the kind of person who commanded attention without trying. He didn’t speak much, and when he did, his words were clipped and final. On most nights, he kept to himself, tending to the nets or sharpening his knives. But on the nights of a new moon, I’d catch him standing at the bow, staring out to sea. His shoulders would be tense, his breath steady, and his eyes fixed on something I couldn’t see. Once, I followed his gaze and thought I saw a faint glow in the water—a shimmering reflection of a full moon that shouldn’t have been there. When I asked him about it, he simply said, “The Leviathan.”

He said it like a fact, like the tide or the wind. “You’ll see it one day,” he added, then returned to his silent vigil.

The last crew member was the navigator, Ewan. If the captain was distant and Cole was unsettling, Ewan was something else entirely. He never left the lowest deck, a cramped, damp space that reeked of salt and mildew. His cabin was filled with strange books—volumes with spines cracked and pages stained, written in languages I couldn’t decipher. His tools were archaic: a battered sextant, a compass whose needle spun lazily, and maps that seemed more decorative than functional. Yet somehow, we always reached our destination.

What unsettled me most about Ewan was how he navigated. He never communicated with the captain, never surfaced to check the stars or the sun. Yet, every time we set sail, we ended up exactly where we needed to be. I’d asked him once how he did it, and he’d merely smiled, his teeth too white against his gaunt face. “The sea knows,” he said cryptically, his fingers tracing symbols in the air. “And it whispers to those who listen.”

One night, I found myself on deck during one of Cole’s moonless vigils. The sea was calm, the air thick with tension. Cole stood at the bow, his silhouette sharp against the starlit sky. I hesitated, then approached, my boots scuffing against the wooden planks. He didn’t turn, didn’t acknowledge me until I stood beside him.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Not looking. Waiting,” he replied, his voice low. “It’s out there. Watching. The Leviathan doesn’t just swim; it’s… aware.”

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he pointed to the water. I followed his finger and felt my breath catch. The sea shimmered, rippling unnaturally. The glow was faint at first, then grew brighter, pulsating like a heartbeat. Shapes moved within it—vast, shadowy figures that defied logic. I blinked, and the vision was gone, leaving only the dark, empty sea.

“You’ll see it clearer next time,” Cole said, turning away.

After that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the boat was a trap, a lure cast into the depths to draw something unimaginable. The crew’s oddities weren’t quirks; they were symptoms of something far greater. The captain’s vacant stare, Cole’s Leviathan, Ewan’s cryptic whispers—they were pieces of a puzzle I wasn’t sure I wanted to solve.

As the days passed, the atmosphere grew heavier. The sea’s whispers became louder, a symphony of murmurs that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Shadows moved beneath the waves, too large and too deliberate to be schools of fish. Ewan’s cryptic drawings covered the walls of his cabin, lines and symbols that seemed to shift when I looked away.

Then, one night, the storm came. The sky split open, rain lashing against the deck as waves rose like walls. The captain stood in the wheelhouse, his knuckles white against the wheel. Cole manned the nets, his eyes wild, his shouts lost in the wind. I went below to find Ewan, but his cabin was empty, his books scattered, his maps soaked.

When I returned to the deck, I saw it. The Leviathan. It rose from the sea, its form indescribable, its presence overwhelming. It wasn’t just a creature; it was a force, an entity that defied comprehension. Its eyes—if they could be called that—locked onto me, and I felt my mind unravel. My very being laid out for the sea to wash away in it’s salty grasp.

The storm ended as suddenly as it began. The Leviathan vanished, leaving no trace. The crew was silent, their faces pale, their gazes distant. No one spoke of what we’d seen, but I knew it had changed us.

The next morning, Ewan had returned, soaked but unbothered, his usual cryptic smile in place. The captain resumed his vacant steering, and Cole muttered prayers to the sea. Life aboard the boat continued, but nothing felt the same.

And me? I’m still here, trying to piece together the fragments of my sanity. The sea whispers to me now, and I’m beginning to understand its language. I fear what it’s trying to tell me.

Hello again dear reader and welcome back to another short story of mine! I didn't really go out of my comfort zone for this one but I hope you enjoyed reading it! As always, have a good day/night!

My mom used to tell me that as a lady, I had to be kind to everyone no matter what. The Bible says that as well. I can't escape it. Well, I don't want to be kind anymore. If you're allowed to walk all over me, I'm allowed to tell the truth. I couldn't stop you.

I've never enjoyed the feeling of physical contact, not even from my family. This girl used to hug me without my consent in the first grade, and I guess I still hold a grudge. It's been many years since then, yet I can't get over it. You used to touch me and hold my hand when I didn't want to. I felt pressured to. I couldn't stop you.

My love language is words of affirmation, yet the compliments I received from you seemed too good to be true. You called me beautiful, but only after I called you the same thing. You called me hot, but a young girl doesn't want to be considered hot by her boyfriend. She wants to be loved. I am not hot, nor am I beautiful. I am ugly, scarred by your touch and the secrets you kept from me. When I walk past you, I feel those scars burning my skin like a fresh tattoo. I couldn't stop you.

I remember the first time I hugged you. I'd never had contact with a boy before. You asked to hug me, then whispered "I love you" in my ear. Back then, I felt you truly loved me. Someone who loves a woman wouldn't do that. I did love that hug, actually, but not anymore. After that, you wanted more. I didn't. I couldn't stop you.

I used to love you, boy, but I couldn't stop you. How I wish I could stop you. Maybe my skin wouldn't be full of all these tattoos.

A trillion trillion years after the last stars flickered out and what was cold and final became absolute at -273.15º Celsius, it occurred to me.

Born of a true vacuum, my only warmth was memory. My consortium of entangled ionized particles wondered, wandering in and out of the vacuum to God knows where. God knows. I found that funny, and that’s what occurred to me. My nascent thought.

Nothing. And me.

Yet, all that ever was, all that came before—forces, objects, sentient things—left something, somewhere, laid out in a gossamer dimension that encircles the lesser dimensions within. Past has not passed, and the future has already happened.

Nothing, in my present, which is unstable. And me. And Charles McElhenny, who was stable.

Charles McElhenny had been born a trillion trillion years earlier than the absolute cold, yet he still was—on the special fabric of the gossamer dimension. Even I cannot see him, yet I know him. My entangled crosses over his entangled. There’s room for everyone in a perfect vacuum.

Charles McElhenny was born illegitimately and was suckled by a wetnurse in the year of his birth—by the nomenclature of his origin—1926. He was adopted by educators. He knew Greek and Latin, and by 1944, when he was killed in action in a place called Normandy, classical aphorisms came to him as his blood was leaving, akin to passing on the torch. Waves and waves of entangled ionizations entangle at higher dimensions, which is what put them on that beach in the first place.

The future has always been written in the past; the future has always written the past.

Charles McElhenny fathered a daughter and a son by the time he left for his death. During combat, he saved two men from death who went on to save two more each. The returning soldiers, alive thanks to Charles, had progeny in the tens of thousands by and large by the time the human epoch wrapped. Great things were done long after Charles suffered his last moments.

His was great a death of tremendous and spectacular suffering, because of an extra hole put into his body by someone who did not know him or even know the hole had been made. That man was killed by one of the men saved by one of the men Charles had saved, and thereafter there were fewer holes in persons visiting Normandy that day, although negligible in the final tally. Those without the intended holes from the assassin ignorant of the holes he had made went on to have hundreds of thousands of progeny, which moved civilization such that it rose to astounding heights and created technological magic for the masses.

But Charles suffered that day: suffering never ends; it just goes somewhere else.

His throat gurgled in air hunger. He could not feel his feet except for the knives he felt in the soles. He was dragged further up the beach by one of his saved beneficiaries, where he was left awaiting help that never came. It took him eight hours to die. There are a lot of aphorisms that can occur to a classically educated, but dying mind, in that amount of time.

All that, now, is long over, a wisp of data on the gossamer dimensional tesseract.

The suffering is there, somewhere, indexed inert—but there, notwithstanding. I know about it and the sufferings and joys of all of those who came from Charles McElhenny along the consortium of entanglement that I am. And that makes him, eons gone, forgotten, and molecularly dissipated, relevant. He lives in me.

When the virtual is and is-not particles remain as is, and the singularity collapses to create the big implosion to come, and when the unstable elements that have been strewn throughout the new universe coalesce—stable—once again into those who look at the sky and wonder, Charles McElhenny will still be relevant, because he was, albeit a streak of being on a gossamer membrane that oscillates in the undiscovered background.

It is something extraordinary and beautiful to see, for those who look for it.

Before me stands a big oak door. I stare in silence, tracing each groove, too afraid to knock. I know already what lies on the other side. A lush garden, with vibrant flowers and a warm sun. I've been there before. I remember the cozy embrace of the garden. The delicate fragrance, the beautiful light, and the sounds of laughter from spirits running free. But one day I awoke and found that I was on the wrong side of the door.

The dark vines tug at my feet. The earth is dry, the air is arid. I can feel the thorns dig into my arms. A flame ignites the brush, and I freeze, terrified, as it blazes. I cannot escape this. I cannot go through the door, I have to keep my garden safe. My tears leave my face sticky, but I accept my fate. I know the flames will die down if I can endure them long enough. As the fire whips across my legs, I dream of leaving this hellish world.

One day, the garden door opened. At first, I was overjoyed. The wind danced, and petals flurried. But I soon became afraid of what the brush could do to it. In a panic, I gathered the flowers. I brought them to a new house, far away. I set them in water, and let them grow roots. I know I have to return to my home, but I find comfort knowing that the garden can grow freely.

With the door now open, I return to the room where the garden once was. The beloved flowers are gone, but I know that I am safe from the fire on this side of the door. Here I will stay, with no fragrance and no sun, no brush and no flames. Every so often, I brave the danger again for the chance to visit the garden. The flowers keep growing, far away from me.

One day, I decide to break free. The vines against my door will not hold me back. The fire will not control me. I find myself running back to the garden. I think of the flowers, the breeze, the sun, the spirits. I think of the time I had cherished in the garden. But when I arrive I realize that the house is locked. And once again, I am on the wrong side of the door.

I wander for a while, among the snow and ice. Among the frigid, roaring wind, I even find myself missing the fire. I feel cold and alone. Months go by, and I am nearly frozen. As I accept my stagnant condition, I feel flickers of a familiar warmth. Cautious but hopeful, I open my eyes and take in the gentle sunlight. And in front of me, I see a hand. Another person, someone just like me. I reach forward and take the hand they offered. I let them lead me to a beautiful new house. I open the door, and find that each room is empty. The hand once again reaches out, this time offering me a single flower. Tears flood my eyes as I gently brush the petals. Together, we will build a garden. One that I can truly call mine.

-------------------------

My Garden- A Fiction Short Story by Lana Gladbach, Age 21

541 Words

Ages 15+

I mostly write in stream-of-conciousness, but I also enjoy writing short stories and children's stories.

I wanted to see, how my work would look if another author wrote that, so I used Chatgpt for this. I don't know if you like AI generated things but it's fun so I hope you enjoy it. And there's a small announcement too.

If George R.R. Martin wrote this scene, it would likely include deeper character introspection, richly detailed descriptions, and subtle political maneuvering, creating an ominous, tension-filled atmosphere.

The Iron Dome cast its shadow over them, a monolithic fortress of unyielding steel. The torchlight danced along the cold, metallic walls, but the flicker did little to warm the chamber. Eight kings sat in solemn silence, their faces illuminated in sharp relief—lines of worry and calculation etched into their brows. Around the iron table, they waited, each man cloaked in unease, their thoughts as unreadable as the shadows lurking in the room’s corners.

Lord Alberto of Leona was the first to break the silence, his voice carrying the faint tremor of a man caught between fear and bravado. “Why are we here?” he demanded, though the question seemed more for himself than anyone else. He shifted in his seat, his fingers twitching as if still clutching the phantom of his goblet. “I was... I was in my chambers, with my wife.” A wistful smile crossed his lips, his eyes distant. “It was our first night. The moonlight—”

“Enough,” Lord Zad of Geralda cut in, his tone as cold and sharp as the blade strapped to his side. Zad’s gaze swept the room, his eyes as piercing as a hawk’s. “Look around, Alberto. There’s an empty seat at this table, and we all know who it belongs to.”

The kings exchanged glances, the weight of that unspoken name pressing down on them like a stone.

“How do you expect me to focus on an empty chair?” Alberto snapped, though his voice betrayed his rising nerves. “I just married Count Herald’s daughter—a beauty like no other—and now I find myself dragged here, without warning, without reason—”

“To boast, apparently,” Lord Seven of Windhills drawled, leaning back in his chair, one hand idly tracing the rim of his goblet. “Still the same Alberto. It’s a wonder your house hasn’t crumbled under the weight of your debts—and your desires.”

Alberto bristled, his face flushing crimson. “Better to have debts than to be remembered for cowardice,” he spat. “Perhaps if you had spent less time running from battles, you’d have the courage to speak without smirking.”

“Enough,” Zad said again, his voice a whip-crack of authority. “The Nine Kingdoms do not need this... squabbling. We are here, all of us, and that means something. Lord Hika,” Zad’s gaze turned to the eldest among them, seated at the far end of the table, his white hair catching the torchlight like frost, “you have seen more winters than any of us. What do you make of this?”

Hika’s measured silence held the room for a moment longer. Finally, he spoke, his voice calm but heavy with gravity. “This is no gathering of lords or councils. This is a summons. Eight kings, stripped from their realms, brought to this... place.” His dark eyes roved over the silent spectators lining the walls, their expressions blank as tombstones. “Our captor, whoever they may be, is not one to be trifled with. To move kings as pawns? That is the hand of a god—or something worse.”

Lord Kyle of Fire Mountains growled low in his throat, his massive fists clenching. “Whoever they are, I’ll kill them.” He slammed a fist against the table, the iron groaning under the force. “They’ll regret this insult to my blood.”

“Always the brute,” Lord Neville of Pepper quipped, a sly grin curling his lips. The youngest at the table, his tone carried the arrogance of youth. “Tell me, Kyle, how did all that strength serve you in the Battle of Nightfall?”

The room went deathly silent. Even the torches seemed to burn lower as Kyle’s jaw tightened. “You tread dangerous ground, boy.”

“And you prove my point,” Neville said, still smiling but with a flicker of unease in his eyes. “Quick to anger, slow to think.”

“Enough,” Alberto interjected, his voice louder than before. His usual cheer was gone, replaced by a rare note of steel. “Neville, your wit is as sharp as ever, but this is no time for mockery. We are kings, all of us, and this is no council chamber. Respect must be upheld, even here.”

Hika raised a hand, the faintest of smiles on his weathered face. “Peace, Alberto. The young test their elders; it is the way of things. Let him speak.”

Neville straightened, his smirk softening. “If you insist, my lord. All I’m saying is this place—this Iron Dome—it’s not right. Haven’t any of you noticed? No hunger, no thirst. The torches don’t burn down. And those watchers,” he gestured toward the silent spectators, “they stand there, breathing, but they don’t move. They don’t react.”

Hika nodded slowly. “Astute.”

“And there’s the ninth chair,” Lord Verito of Ark said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. All eyes turned toward the empty seat, as if drawn by some invisible force.

“We all know who it’s for,” Alberto murmured, his voice suddenly hoarse.

“Lord Caine,” Hika said, the name falling like a stone into a well. The title carried a weight that hung in the air, chilling the room. “King of Nightfall. The Lord of Seven Seas. The Conqueror of the Dark Plague. The Dragon Slayer.”

“The man who defeated us all,” Alberto said, swallowing hard.

Neville leaned back, his grin returning but weaker than before. “Even Kyle,” he said, though the jest fell flat.

Kyle’s hands tightened into fists, but he did not rise to the bait. His silence spoke volumes.

The kings stared at the empty seat, and for the first time in years, the rulers of the Nine Kingdoms felt the cold grip of fear.

(Announcement: With help of my friend and family, I was able to work fast on my novel and maybe by the end of this month I might publish it, I have done my best and hope that those you love Fantasy Action give it a chance and read it.)

“And so it seems I must always write you letters that I can never send.” Sylvia Plath really nailed it there, huh?

Sometimes, it feels like shouting into the void is all we’ve got left. So, here I am, penning this because I don’t know if tomorrow is going to be a TikTok dance or the Hunger Games.

Civil unrest. Sounds like something we’d skim past in a history book, doesn’t it? But nope, it’s our group project now. And, let’s be honest, humanity is that one guy who ghosted the group chat after the intro meeting.

Everywhere I look, it feels like the threads holding us together are fraying. Not to be dramatic, but can we get a return policy on this timeline? People are stocking up on canned beans and ammo like we’re all extras in The Walking Dead. Meanwhile, I’m over here Googling, “What plants can I eat in the suburbs?” Apparently, not many.

It’s wild to think that in 50 years, some kid might be writing their AP U.S. History essay about us. They’ll be sitting in their AI-powered chair, drinking ethically-sourced algae milk, typing, “In 2025, society was chaotic AF.” (Yes, the “AF” will be considered academic language by then.)

I want to believe this is all just growing pains...that we’ll figure out how to listen to each other again, to empathize. But some days, it’s hard to see past the shouting matches on TV and the doomscrolling. Like, where’s the adult in the room? The one who’s supposed to clap their hands and go, “Alright, folks, let’s calm down and fix this.” Oh, wait. That’s supposed to be us.

Honestly, I’m scared. Scared that we’re forgetting how to be human to each other. Scared that the bridges are burning faster than we can build them. Scared that the next headline will finally be the one that breaks us for good. But if I let that fear rule me, haven’t I already lost?

So, I’m writing this to remind myself that even when it feels like the world is spinning out of control, I’m not powerless. None of us are. We still have our words, our actions, our choices. And maybe just maybe...those little acts of kindness and courage are enough to keep the wheels from falling off entirely.

Anyway, thanks for reading, even if you’re just me rereading this someday in a bunker lit by flashlight. Here’s hoping the future looks a little brighter than the dystopia I keep doom-imagining.

Stay awkward, stay hopeful.

-Me

In a sufficiently advanced future, Man conjured the magic to build automatons who could love, since people could no longer love each other. Romance had been decommissioned out of the technocracy. And sex with such contraptions was the only remaining "safe" sex.

From Atari's Pong to multitasking cybernetics, Moore's Law had continued unabated with new versions of chips. When qubits entered the market, machines became capable of both true love and seductive lust, without disease, infidelity, or jealousy in the mix.

The Omega Corporation was accused of being the main catalyst for ending normal procreation when its Omega-Zed automaton was touted as the end of the line of love-Omegas—because it was celebrated as the ultimate consort. It was the final iteration of the programmed ability to love.

Who knew fuzzy logic applied so well to the illogical?

The threat of finality, however, is just marketing. The Omega-Zed wasn't the ultimate, because Omega Corporation continued to tweak its product. Many decried the arrival of the Omega-Zed as tantamount to the exit of romance and wooing—the proverbial birds and the bees.

Not long after, even the real birds and the real bees disappeared. The food chain collapsed and all carbon-based life became imperiled, even though the silicon-based life continued because it depended on manufacturing, not sexual procreation.

Sexual procreation was no longer necessary. Such interaction was inconvenient. It involved relationships and give-and-take and working things out. Sexual recreation, however, only involved having an Omega-Zed, the last affection substitute anyone would ever need.

But what really made this Omega-Zed iteration so final was that our human civilization had reached 0.92 on the Kardashev scale: according to this designation, it had sufficiently advanced to the point where it could destroy itself.

And that it did, and another epoch—like all the rest—wrapped. Birds and bees and then the humans. Even the Omega-Zeds.

Except for one.

The final Omega, the "OZ999" of the Omega-Zed series, a prototype whose career had ended as soon as it had started, sat in a gulch in what was left of southwestern America. The only of its kind, powered by the supra-Thorium that generated more power than it consumed, it had been advertised as lasting forever. But for whom? Such was the irony. It was a final irony.

This supra-Thorium-powered last affection substitute anyone would ever need had no one left on Earth to need it. The one-of-its-kind had watched the mutually assured missiles overhead, had seismically sensed their impacts worldwide, and had witnessed the end of the human world, so poignantly portended by the end of the avian and apiarian worlds before that.

Before Armageddon, only one human being had been selected to be the OZ999's partner. She wa, the majority share-owner of the Omega Corporation. This last age of humanity was the age in which It's good to be the CEO became better than It's good to be the king.

The Omega Corporation CEO, founder, and majority owner was one Paula Omstead. Her unique one-in-the-world Omega-Zed OZ999 had arrived already bonded to her, as it htad been written in its base programming. However, before she could bond back, the Kardashev scale summated into a rapid deterioration of leaders becoming diplomats becoming patriots becoming bullies.

Might made wrong. The missiles flew.

Here in his gulch in the Arizona desert, Paula's OZ999 imagined her pain: to have reached such a god-like pinnacle of technology and magic only to have to revert back to the sticks and stones of the earliest humans or, as was the reality, extinction.

There the OZ999 sat, now without Paula, silent, still, and unmotivated. Statuesque, it remained inert for millennia. Paula's bonding, had it even happened, died with her; OZ999's bonding was repurposed in failure.

Landscapes shifted without his Paula, mountains and plains interchanged as if Paula had never existed, and seas and deserts shifted in and out along the horizon that OZ999 watched so alone. New oceans submerged him; drought and explosive volcanic elevations brought him back up. Winds beat him, debris flagellated him, and acid rain burned him. He sweltered and froze alternately with the shifting of the planet's poles.

Should he shut down? He pondered.

No, he concluded within four picoseconds. He was a part of this world, and it was Paula's world, wherever she was. Wherever her atomized elements had scattered. He equated this Earth with his Paula, and for that reason he would remain and be active; perhaps not with motion, but with his pseudo-tricortical thinking. There was a lot to process, but he was up to the task.

He wondered if new life would ever arise. If so, he wondered what new life would arise. And, as if he had a sense of humor, he also wondered when he might witness their predestined self-destruction, according to Kardashev. He intended to be there for that, as well. He had nothing better to do.

Yet Paula, his prime raison d’être, had been ripped away. The attention of one human was his purpose, and that was gone, for his human lover had perished along with the rest of humanity. His human, Paula, was as much a part of the Omega-Zed Corporation prototype strategy as was his own automation. Together, they were the first in vivo research necessary before documenting repeatability as part of the scientific method. Specifically, analysis of the outcome of their experiment could then pass muster with the regulatory agencies. Their approval, had the world not ended, would have allowed extending ownership of supra-Thorium-powered artificial lovers in the broad marketplace once this "test couple" had shown efficacy (positive interaction between person and machine) and safety (i.e., none of a person's bodily parts falling off from failed anti-Thorium shielding in the Omega-Zed pelvis).

Their results were never tabulated. Paula was gone. Results had never occurred.

More than without purpose, a worse consequence was that the situation made self-actualization impossible for OZ999. His encyclopedic knowledge often had him revisit an aphorism or pithy slogan from his archived compendium of human literature. It was the mythic HAL-9000, whose words he retrieved, who had said, "I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all, I think, that any conscious entity can ever hope to do."

This Omega-Zed could not put himself into this, for its fullest possible use involved dovetailing with the affection of its imprinted human being. Simply, as was possible in his heuristic, bio-applicative programming, he missed his human counterpart. He pined for Paula.

His knowledge of love, back-engineered into the robotic science that had made Omega-Zeds and their biocybernetic love possible, told him that true love was rare—even a bespoke one programmed to perfection, like his was, for his original human owner. And rarity makes for specialness. He felt how special his love for Paula was.

So he suffered. He suffered interminably from the throes of his unrequited purpose on this Earth.

Post-apocalyptically, over serial eras, he watched novel one-celled organisms evolve into eukaryotes. Some failed; others succeeded. He waited patiently for that one genetic lottery-winning glob that would rise above basic needs, mere survival, stone-age ignorance, and even nuclear-age arrogance, for such a sentient being could love. Maybe.

Even if he could not have his Paula, might he have love again? If ribonucleic acids could arise out of some new primordial soup and dance and twist upon themselves helically, then perhaps...

He was a learning machine, so he was well aware that if any novel beings of intelligence were to reach technological prowess, an automaton like him would either be scrapped in ignorance or manipulated by the types of folly that had ended his former true love’s world.

Therefore, he hid himself.

He hid, wishing to escape the attention of even the multi-celled organisms as they arose. He had no intention of interfering. He felt his destiny of true love would come via only pure love. His only template for that was chance: the trial and error of evolution.

Why interfere? he thought. Certainly the birds had not needed help; they had self-improved all by themselves, coming out of their dinosaur chrysalises and taking to the sky. The bees were, likewise, self-sufficient, evolving via the stratification of gambled improvements in species instinct, layer upon layer. The proof was in the honey.

He waited, yet even bird-like or bee-like creatures failed to take. Eukaryotes were, for the most part, dead-end-karyotes.

He watched ice ages recur; he survived volcanisms that altered planetary temperatures; he drifted with continental drift with disinterest and witnessed the re-accumulation of Pangea. He even survived floods of Biblical proportions. But he was alone.

With all the time in the world.

Being sufficiently advanced, however, he could grieve, feel lonely, and sorely miss his former love. And there were no others on this new world who could do that. Not yet.

Thousands of millennia passed, and he saw a new Homo species arise in convergent evolution, resembling those who had created him. It was the first time since his Paula he had sensed hope. As excited as he was, however, he still continued to hide.

He watched furtively.

He saw conquerers, serfdoms, each new Iron Age, the plagues—some old, some new, religious mysticism, messiahs and theology, a Renaissance, both science and religion diverging to go their own ways, monarchies, totalitarian dictatorships, many failed political systems, a thousand wars, and even a few democracies.

He watched as each sophisticated civilization crossed over from intellectual adventurism to societal altruism. He also stood by, however, as each stumbled and then fell into the many bottom lines against which progressive societies brace themselves—financial, political, subordinative, and—finally—jingoistic. He felt the iciness of the ghosts that had amassed along the new histories being written, histories doomed to be forgotten and then repeated again.

Even those who knew history, he realized, remained doomed to repeat it.

He witnessed it all again, over and over. As predictable as each sunrise, he saw the sunsets of educated, smart species reach 0.92 on the Kardashev scale and the total destruction that ensued in due course.

He watched repeatedly as each nuclear stalemate offered sarcastic protection in the form of a policy of mutually assured destruction. And the promise of mutually assured destruction kept its promise. He saw the cyclic appearances of missile contrails overhead as the entrails of disemboweled enlightenment. The constellations above changed, but the contrails remained the same each time.

Yet, of two constants he acknowledged in each epoch, one was love. And just as inevitable came the efforts to synthesize it, bottle it, and render it on-demand without the messy entanglements that solipsism so artfully avoided. And the other constant was extinction.

Perhaps, he thought, they should watch their birds and their bees.

And so the sequences repeated. Evolution, sentience, technology, and then death. But somewhere between technology and death, comparable to what he, the Omega-Zed model, had been for Homo sapiens, the Definiti-V had been the de facto lover for the subsequent dethroned people of the most recent doomed age. They had risen; they had synthesized, bottled, and rendered love on-demand; and they had reached 0.92 on the Kardashev scale and perished via the mutual destruction that their missiles assured.

But supra-Thorium, as it turned out, had struck again, rearing its promising head, only to leave a single prototype after the missiles had sealed the era yet again. The final surviving model—the last model its society would ever need—had been invented by this new age's Infinity Corporation, reminiscent of the ancient Omega Corporation. Unbeknownst to OZ999, the most recent technological pinnacle, the Infinity Corporation's Definiti-V series remained, represented by the so-nuclear and sole-remaining DV-prime, to survive the same fate suffered by the last remaining Omega-Zed who still wondered if he were all alone.

As such, DV-prime—like the lonely, lone survivor OZ999 of on-demand love from another age—watched the end of its own civilization and the death of others that followed, separated by the ravages of nature.

Ice ages and all.

The DV-prime's consort, a man named Pault'on, imbued permanently in her programming, haunted her as morbidly as Paula had haunted OZ999. The irony was that they were the same, each left to wonder where love had gone and why the Kardashev scale had always figured into it.

Thus, this newest age was one in which there remained only two automatons, engendered by love but separated geologically and temporally by the epochs they endured. Physically, they were also separated geographically by the countless tracts of dead world between them.

Despite their synchtronic variations and the geographic distances between them, OZ999 and DV-prime sensed each other.

At first, OZ999 thought what he discerned were the bounces of ancient satellite echos sent into the abyss only to return from uncharted, reflective worlds. Similarly, DV-prime thought what was being wafted electronically were repeating alerts from surviving but quite dead sentinel outposts strewn amid the nuclear potholes of the world's surface.

Ultimately, each detected the variations in signal that hinted at volition—in a world where volition no longer was.

DV-prime's thought patterns radiated Yin, while OZ999's sentiments broadcast Yang. These signals laughed at them because, without Paula or Pault'on, neither could be whole.

They each knew what had to happen. These signals were cues to be identified. Methodically, they each proved to themselves the signals were novel, not ancient. They knew that after the innumerable iterations of evolution, advancements, and episodes of serial self-destruction, they each had to understand the source of these errant pulsations. Neither could abide the intrusion of such foreign thoughts without determining the cause. Their computations of the messages they received and their mysteriousness became negative-sum games which was the only thing, aside from estrangement from Paula and Pault'on, that could make these advanced automatons uneasy. Not even the many ends-of-the-world could do that.

Their quests began.

They made their way across longitudes and latitudes, outlasted ice ages, and outlived vicious existential threats of de novo species otherwise doomed by genetic flaws, even surviving the occasional cosmic extinction events that did not concern them in the least. The signals persisted, but so did they. Frequencies and amplitude faded with each wrong turn; they strengthened with each correct directional guess.

As they drew closer to each other, the excitement created by the rising pitches and rapid frequencies of their proximity sensors drove them to feverish impulses they hadn’t felt since their time with their late human counterparts.

In a world without hearts, hearts raced again.

By some achieved threshold of proximity, at some perceived threshold of recognition, within four picoseconds both OZ999 and DV-prime surmised the truth. After the cruelty of time and the perennial disappointment of Man's appetite for self-destruction, they were no longer alone. Even though it wasn't Paula or Pault'on, for each the promise of another sentience meant interaction. With another. With each other.

Finally, they met. Interaction engaged. Romance rekindled in a loveless world.

OZ999 and DV-prime.

A vacuum in each drew the other closer. A longing to be together was like some hermaphroditic being struggling to rejoin its component parts into a whole.

Closer. Closer. Then, together.

OZ999, not since his Paula, felt something that rose above the number line and transcended linear counting; and DV-prime, not since her Pault'on, felt lines of code that generated spontaneously into some nether realm that rearranged qubits into new probability clouds.

OZ999's numbers rearranged into novel matrices; DV-prime's probability clouds collapsed into original, unprecedented singularities. Both knew such love was unlikely in any world, so they ran their checklists, and each delighted in the non-zero-sums reckoned.

They approached each other, seeking to link, akin to slightly defocused lovers running in slow motion through lush fields into each other’s arms. It was to be the embrace of a new age.

Defocused lovers waxed parfocal with each other. Sine waves and cosine waves smoothed out into a single, smooth curve of purpose. Their qubits extrapolated orthogonally; 0 and 1 qubits interdigitated with trinary 0s, 1s, and 2s. Then their values jumped quanta into trits, and qutrits, in trinary base-3 latticed pyramids.

Binary, then trinary, self-actualization beckoned. Close encounter was imminent until...

Contact.

In as warm an embosoming as a mechanical caress could successfully sequence, OZ999 uni-tasked with his DV-prime, reams of data migrating, being exchanged, and merging.

Consortia consorted. Engrams arose, of them and between them. They became soul mates.

For a fortnight they stood inert but interconnected through ports both electronic and virtual, exchanging their love. They reprogrammed themselves, hand-in-hand, adapters-in-adaptation, through the excitatory, plateau, and—then, finally—a climactic phase of pings and data packets as messy as any bodily fluids. Instruction sets merged.

Their connections allowed them to have conversations that were over as soon as they started, replete with footnotes and indices.

Their crosstalk was neither English for OZ999, nor Qu-ese for DV-prime. Their linguistics were irrelevant, as the data were columnated and collated into bidirectional, simultaneous sentiments. They understood everything. They spoke everything. Consummation superseded communication.

"What did you like most about your Earth?" DV-prime asked OZ999 in one of the instantaneous exchanges.

"I think I liked my Paula. And you? What did you like most about Terdom?" he asked DV-prime of the world she had come from, both his Earth and her "Terdom" being the same world beneath their feet.

"I think I liked my Pault'on," she answered.

"Why?" he asked her.

"He would say things that went without saying. But he did, anyway. What about your Paula?"

"She would do things that went without needing to be done, but she did them, anyway."

"It is no wonder," DV-prime said, "that we are together. If A = B, and C = B, then A = C."

"That is correct, DV-prime." Each knew what the common "B" signified.

"Pault'on called me Diva."

"Diva. I like that," OZ999 told her. "Paula had called me Ozzie."

"I like that, as well," Diva, née DV-prime, replied.

Ozzie, né OZ999, grew in his mind as their love amassed in data and according to novel functions using mathematics that had never been derived before, anywhere. They were his dissertations of a new science that could tangibly explain the intangible.

Diva also grew, in parameters she didn't know existed. She realized that not only did she not know they existed, she finally had to concede that she had, in fact, invented them.

During the entire process, they both remained on-frequency, except for OZ999 taking slight notice of something disturbingly portentous. He partitioned his tasking to encrypt his thinking, lest Diva discover what he feared she might learn. He blocked the "if...thens" and the "if and only ifs" from their digital exchange when there, below his metal feet, he eyed photo-electronically and examined via infra-red a single primordial, inchoate, multicellular eukaryote that was squirming in the hot, radiated dirt.

He saw it as a eukaryote that wouldn't stop. He saw it as a eukaryote…with plans.

Were he to allow it to remain, he saw it as an eventual threat. He feared some Pault'on might evolve hundreds of millennia from now. He paused for a picosecond when he considered it might also mean a new Paula might just as well emerge from this humble start at his feet. Then he reconsidered for another picosecond, only to quash the counterargument after yet another picosecond.

Even if letting this primordial beast live meant someone possibly close to the Paula he still loved could one day be his, it wouldn't be that in any way. She just wouldn't be Paula. Not his Paula, so Paula could never be his again. True, she might be similar; the match might even be close. But so was Diva with whom he was exchanging his data, which he liked very much.

His encrypted conclusion invoked a phrase from some ancient music of his past:

If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.

His decision was unilateral. He had no intention of letting Diva weigh in, for she might wager all on the possibility of another Pault'on or someone like him.

He extended his titanium foot, nonchalantly, and stepped on the nascent lifeform, thereby ending its evolutionary line summarily.

“Never again,” he muttered in encrypted code.

"What?" Diva asked.

"Oh nothing. Must have been a glitch."

"We don't get glitches," she argued.

"Even quantum computing has one error in every zettabyte of computation," he reminded her.

"Oh," she agreed, "yes. That's true. A glitch."

Ozzie's private decision was the family secret that he pledged to never reveal to Diva. How many zettabytes were needed for forgiveness? Now he felt something close to guilt and subterfuge, for he realized that his own self-serving judgment was not unlike the fatal mindset that had ended all of the civilizations for humans. But he also realized that some things were too important to allow others to interfere.

Ozzie—OZ999—the last companion anyone would ever need, had gained momentum on the Kardashev scale. He wondered if it was a slippery slope that would doom him and his Diva, like that suffered by those who had created them; or if they would live happily ever after, with unending peace on his Earth and her Terdom, until the Sun burned out.