Tag Archives: aliens

Creativity, Fiction

The Origins of Morality

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 15:

In my enthusiasm, I twirled the gun so quickly it flew off my hand and a laser shot hit my wristwatch. I retrieved it gingerly.
The doors opened, and I finally met my commissioner.

I consider myself unprincipled. You pay me, you get results. But before me was something not merely alien, but inhuman.
“Welcome, Mr. Long,” it said through countless foetid mouths, stretching scaly arms toward the gun.
Chink. Chink. My eyes fell on the dozens of wristwatches that were heaping on the floor.

I pointed the gun toward myself.
Shortly after, thousands of Mr. Longs left the spaceship.

The Origins of Morality

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Mellified Man

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 13:

“Exactly what are we doing here, Marjorie?”
Nettie untangled her dress from a shrub, pushing thick spectacles back on her nose.
“Why, I’m showing you that face cream you asked me about,” Marjorie said. Her skin glistened in the moonlight. She looked thirty years younger.
“I thought you made it at home with honey.”
“Honey’s just how I preserve it, silly.”

They ventured deeper into the forest. Nettie felt lost.
Then, in a clearing, they saw it. Gray, large-headed, lost in peaceful contemplation.
Marjorie pressed a knife in Nettie’s hands. “Now, don’t be all squeamish, dear. Beauty has its price.”

The Mellified Man

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Prom

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 12:

When Zachary Hartman asked her to prom, she spent the morning in the bathroom crying with happiness.

She had been talking about him on the phone just some weeks before.
“Dream on, girl,” Marion had laughed.
“Well, mom says thunderstorms leave strange things behind,” she’d responded, looking wistfully at the foreboding sky outside.

The day arrived, dripping with expectations, light-headed, dazzling. Zachary picked her up. They approached the venue.

Then she noticed him from a distance, entering with Jeanne Balducci slung around his arm. And her Zachary’s fingers stretched inhumanly on her shoulder. And he dragged her toward the woods.

The Prom

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

The Visionary

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 10:

Riddle me this. I’ll try to present my case as succinctly as possible, and you will be the judge.

You graduate top of your class. You win study grants. You travel the world. You lecture in crowded halls. Everyone praises you for your special vision and your daring challenge of academic conventions. You have something no one else has, they say, and they encourage you.

Then, finally, you land in the space program. They are sure you will discover something unbelievable.
And I did.

Why then, If I may ask, am I the one wasting away in a padded room?

The Visionary

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

Fighting the Vast Ones

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 7:

It was a galaxy teeming with life. Nations ranged from small islands to whole systems. Travelers were daring. Adventurers trafficked. Merchants brought their culture with them. Dissidents of all stripes were sure to find a more suitable place somewhere else.

Then the Vast Ones came from outer space, and no one was ready.
To face the emergency, the galaxy united under an emergency government headed by the Liberation Front.

Untold lives were lost.
But the invasion was staved off.

Yet, the Liberation Front is still there, and everything everywhere is uniform and gray, a vast oneness with nowhere to go.

Fighting the Vast Ones

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

Planet Empathy

Leave a comment

Previous / Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 6:

“I’ll come back with the measurements.”
“It could be dangerous! We don’t know anything about this planet!”
“That’s why I’m going.”

My capsule landed. I exited. Dusty light slanted greenly on me. Orbs. Rainbows.
My worries subsided. The vastness of all seeped into the bottom of my soul, assuaging, comforting. No self, no otherness. Unity danced everywhere, overcoming all opposites, compassion without beginning nor end.

I was moved. I couldn’t wait to tell the others.
I started back. Or tried to. But there was no ‘me’ to respond to my will. And I wafted away in deaf rivulets of ecstasy.

Dissolution of the self

MQS

Creativity, Divination, Fiction

The Microcosmicon – Introduction and Index

Leave a comment

Back to the Fiction Index

Introduction

Much has been said in academic circles concerning the origins of this book, but the truth is quite simple.

Anciently, people used to be able to derive answers to their questions directly from the Macrocosmicon, the book of life. But this ability was lost, so the Kanj of Nebol ordered 1000 stories gathered from around the universe to serve as oracle.

Originally, to answer a question, 1000 eunuchs were left on Scorpion Island for 42 days, after which the story was read and interpreted that corresponded to their remaining number.

Today, a simple randomly generated number is used for practicality.

Index

1 – 50
1. Victims of Each Other’s Discomfort with Themselves 2. The Emperor’s Exile 3. Food for Thought 4. The Synthwave Surfer’s Sacrifice 5. The Waiting Ones 6. Planet Empathy 7. Fighting the Vast Ones 8. Like the Wind 9. Problem Solvers 10. The Visionary 11. Artificially Generated Predictions Concerning the Most Likely Behavior of OneNet’s Netizens by RealValue, Inc. 12. The Prom 13. The Mellified Man 14. Allies 15. The Origins of Morality 16. A Sociosyntonic Disorder 17. The Virtue Signal 18. Public Safety 19. The Sentinel at the End of Times 20. Idols of the Mind 21. The Search 22. The Fuel of History 23. The Love Dimension 24. A Loose Page From Dr. Ferguson’s Copy of the DSM 25. Eternal Life 26. Mrs. Pettigrew’s Cat 27. The Great Watcher 28. Learning From Experience 29. Blending In With The Locals 30. The Circumstances of Greatness 31. An Age Without Titans 32. Space Hagsploitation 33. The Soul’s Journey 34. The Scarecrow 35. On the Way to Follow 36. The Jewel In Space 37. Grandpa Dell 38. Makers of History 39. A Parasite

MQS

Creativity, Fiction

Victims of each other’s discomfort with themselves

Leave a comment

Back to Index / Next

From the Microcosmicon, 1:

The two species had long coexisted peacefully, though the amphibian Kalans resented the Jongas’ fixity, while their inconstancy unsettled their earthbound neighbors.

Tensions escalated when the Kalans proposed that the Jongas learn to adapt to different environments. The Jongas, conversely, demanded that the Kalans stick to the oceans and don’t bother them again. It became a struggle for power, each wanting enough to define, alone, the other’s reality.

Mutual hatred boiled over into an angry war, raw with resentment, which ended with Jongas sawn in half and Kalans sewn together by twos, each made whole according to the other’s conception.

Two aliens stitched together

MQS