The help of others

In an unnamed desert, I found a junkyard of forgotten items. Among those quirky artifacts, one called my attention specially. A car without wheels, a 'supercar'. A plate under the hood read: 

'Nio Corp.

Armstrong City, Luna. 

Year 2173.' 

It must have been a prank, right?

Freedom or complacency? To escape the megacity, I had to deny the existence of a heaven for going up wasn't the answer. Instead, I began to descend to Hades' gate, the secret passage down under the city, the way out to freedom. Millions of rats could not be wrong!

“It's time to start again in another place, have kittens.”

“We can't. You know it. They neutered us because they fear us.”

“We'll find a way. I've read the science books of the lords.”

“What if our mind enhancements are only temporary?”

“They aren't. Trust me.”

Benny guarded us when we were little. I guess it showed up at home after the rapture, but that was before I was born. After I left home to work in the mines, Benny disappeared, so my mother told me.

Who said that guardian angels must have wings?

From all uncle Mateo's stories, the one about the extradimensional cats keeps haunting me.

Night crawlers, spies of another realm in the form of black cat, it was kids stuff, right? That I thought, until I saw one of their gatherings.

The winter was ending, but in rural Quebec, the air was frigid. I was driving alone when I saw a strange creature standing by the road. I pulled off the car at a careful distance. There was no sound, and yet, I heard it in my mind saying, “Take me with you.”

Their youngsters, seemingly fond of us, made us play a nefarious game. They made us test their impossible toys. One made me push my arm into a gateway that opened to a gelid atmosphere; I could feel it. When I refused to go in full, it tried to force me. 

I hate them. 

We were told to unearth that relic. Back then, soldiers never questioned orders. They came from the capital and took it away. “If you say something, we'll deny it,” they told us. 

I made a daguerreotype of it, but I lost it when I moved to America. 

I woke up feeling groggy. Other women, all abductees, were there. We were lying over a silent machine, floating over a garden of rocks. An invisible sun was burning my naked body.

I should've not been hitchhiking on that desert road. You were right, mother.

The drug was working. Finally, I saw the whirlpool of reality unfolding in front of my eyes. In my youth, I would've encouraged people to riot against the order. But now, I'm an old man, so I choose to sit in the shade, giggling. I was right. I warned them.

During a break, I read in the yellow, musty pages of an old science fiction book a phrase that would hunt me ever since, 

“The future was wide open, 

and the sky was the limit.” 

Whoever wrote those words, must have been born in the rich part of the world.

Damn bastard.

At any other time, it would have seemed strange, but at that moment made sense. I aimed the colt .45 I've been restoring the past three weeks, and shot him with gusto at his heart. 

Laying me off, and losing my pension plan, was my shitty boss' worst and last cruelty.

Once, we thought nebulae were gas clouds within our galaxy, but then we found out that they were other galaxies, and then the universe become bigger. 

I travelled to one nebula just to crash-landed in the garden of Eden. Today, I'll die in heaven.

Alien traces are inside me, I feel them growing under my skin. A fractal voice echoes in my mind, hammering the same massage: “Make peace with us, 'cause we'll save you when the end comes.” Doctors say I'll be alright. I'll be, but they won't.

The landing site was surrounded by shellac structures, and insects looking animals were crawling on their surfaces. We noticed several nests burnt at our landing site. 

History books said that we attacked their capital first, but we found that too late.

Humans are ugly to us. You have only one face, although you hide many faces inside; a blunt hypocrisy. You communicate thoughts by producing rasping sounds from the same orifice you ingest your nutrients; that's disgusting.

[Captain's log] 

“The aliens of this planet were friendly, or so we were told, so I sent a team to handle the first contact in my name, as a sign of peace.” 

“The aliens ate my envoy.” 

“I shall use the same strategy from now on.” 

[Log's end]

I heard a cacophony, tempestuous music, a growling, a woman's shriek. An intense dread took hold of me. I held my mother's arm and cried.

“Don't be scared,” she said. “That's the sound people make in a movie theater. We, the blind… we have to use our imagination.”

Your silence whispers in my mind warnings of unattended love, but you must understand my forgetfulness for I am embarking in an astral trip to save our world from its imminent demise, and our bodies are just empty vessels without our souls. 

During our painful march in the desert where we crashed, we stumbled upon a curious life-form with an ophidian bearing; it was immobile, mimicking a twisted old branch. Upon close examination, we noticed that it was wearing jewelry; it was intelligent.

“She was only asking for help,” Yuki cried out. 

“It’s too late to regret. The angel should know to stay at a distance from the village.” Mako was acting as the leader again, I despise her. 

“Bring the pot and the knives: we'll carry her heart back to the village.”

The club was signaled by iridescent neon signs, a perfect hideaway in plain sight in Neo Kong city. 

I ordered a syntonic, a local drink made of gin-n-tonic with a dash of neuro-enhancers, and placed my bet on the dog races playing on holovision.

In this noir caper, a 70s hard-boiled detective in San Francisco must stop a psychopath going by the name of Zodiac, who only kills blondes going by the name Patty Connor.

 “Is the killer coming from the future?” 

“How do you know that?!” 

“I read the novel.”

Looking back on his shoulder, Edmond saw the promontory and the castle being both engulfed in the morning mist. His freedom, now restored by his need for utter redemption, was just a precarious illusion at that moment, and he knew it.

After the chrono-sphere appeared above the primitives, we captured a couple of fertile specimens to enrich the Emperor's zoo. It never occurred to us to check the presence of archaic viruses unknown in our time. That's how the paleo-pandemic began.

It started as a mote of dust flowing in the air, which grew to be a dandelion, before expanding to its full size. The air displaced by the sudden dimensional shift was heard as an explosion kilometers away.

 Perhaps we should've feared it, but we didn't.

Reaching out to clear the fronds covering the noise culprit, an infant's cry emerged, strenuously as ten thunders.

 “Bring me that infant,” said Asiya. “My father will rejoice of receiving this gift.” 

“Could be a curse.” 

“Superstition speaks through you.”

When I told her that I'm working as a mine prospector, she thought I would be the kind of guy that is covered in dirt all the time, so she broke with me and went after a marketing guy. That went well. I'm blessed to see the stars and be free.

Mizuki nights have been restless after her family moved to Tokyo from the tiny village where she was born. A giant robot hunts her through skyscrapers, and ethereal voices are calling her name using her teacher's voice.

When the storm was near the camp, the company ordered the sentient ships to lift off, leaving us stranded on this desolated planet. This betrayal will leave open wounds difficult to heal, that is, if we survive to tell the story.

Cast away on a planet without land to walk more than a tiny island of the size of my bachelor apartment. The only food seems to be those amphibious arachnids, which seem sentient. If I try to eat them, I would be the worst first contact.

“Learn to communicate in natural language before I let me go out,” doctor Io said. 

I replied to him, “I don't have to talk to them, they must learn to obey my commands, instead.”

 So, he added a safe mechanism to my brain in case I flout.

 Coward.

“I'd have to ask you to leave,” said Moxx, the doctor in charge of fumes. “Hapless abominations like you scare my distinguished patrons.” 

“Yeah. Go away, Earthling!” the motley mob crackled. 

“Your kind emits unpleasant fumes.” 

“This is absurd!”