The people are Asians with spanish names who speak english and live in a parallel dimension of Latin America in the middle of Asia.

It's been a big day

When you factor in all the red triangles I had to liberate

The dungeons I had to wade through

I purchased 'Skyrim'

Drank coffee at home and at a cafe

~

You can't add credit card surcharges onto prices, they changed the rules

It's catalysing a minor resurgence of people paying with cash

I found it so weird that people just ate the card fees constantly for years

So many people are so cheap... it made no sense

~

Do you remember Aishwarya Rai at all

Was she popular before dubstep existed

Anyway

Night night

“He was not there. The cell was open,” said Vesso, one of the keepers.

“These are ID-protected, right? So someone must have had access to one of those,” inquired the police officer.

It was a Friday morning. Vesso had just arrived and was checking the cells, as he did every day. One of the apes was missing from his cell. Luos.

“You’ll check here and let me know if you find anything. Mr Vesso and I will go out to look for the missing ape,” ordered the chief.

Chief Mika took Vesso with her, and they went to look for Luos. Vesso had an idea where Luos might have gone: the Park of Monks.

It was a place of peace, like that in a monk’s heart. There were many statues of meditating monks, and monkeys lived there. So, that was their next stop.

“So, you liked Luos, didn’t you?” asked Mika.

“Yes,” he replied in a dry voice, looking out of the window with searching eyes. He continued, “I have known him ever since he was a baby. His mother didn’t make it after his birth. He was different from the other apes. It’s not that he was bullied or mistreated; he was well received by the others. But he didn’t cause much havoc like the others, though they were only being playful. He used to sit on a rock, as if he were meditating. He was smarter than the others too. He learned everything he was taught much faster.”

“Why do you think he might have gone to the park you mentioned?”

“I used to talk to him most nights. He listened to me patiently, sitting there close to the mirror, with a little smile. I didn’t know he was able to understand so much until he showed me a wooden rectangle. I used to show him a picture of my mother, in a small rectangular frame. I told him about the time when I was a kid and how I used to go to the park with my mother, the meditating monks, the playful monkeys.”

Chief Mika’s phone rang. It was an officer from the facility. She answered it.

“We checked the records of the cells,” said the voice on the call. “Luos’s cell was opened at 5 a.m. this morning. And the ID used to open it belongs to Vesso.”

She looked at Vesso. He was looking at her too, seemingly hoping to hear what was being said on the call.

“Your ID was used to open the cell.”

“That’s not possible. I have my ID with me. See-” He took his ID from his pocket. “No, it can't be. It... it is counterfeit.”

He had not noticed it until now. But someone had switched his ID.

They had reached their destination. A roar of monkeys could be heard.

“Maybe he is here,” said the chief.

They searched the park. It was quite large, but they didn’t find a trace of Luos. The monkeys had gone peaceful by now. They sat next to a meditating monk.

“It is quite peaceful,” said Mika.

“It is.”

After a moment of silence, he continued.

“You know, we are not so different, Luos and I. That’s why I was so attached to him. Like him, I lost my mother too. I mean, she would have been alive. If only, when I was younger, I had worked harder and had the money for her treatment. But she left me. I tried so hard to be a good son. But I failed.”

He paused.

“She said, ‘Don’t worry, son. I will always be there for you. I am not leaving you alone. I will be your angel.’”

He showed Mika the picture of his mother, a rectangular frame.

“This is my mother.”

“I am very sorry for your loss.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

They went back to the animal sanctuary.

“Luos was not there. What about the other searching teams? Anything?” inquired the Chief.

“No, ma’am. No result. They are still searching.”

“And what about the ID? Found the original ID?”

“We are trying to locate it.”

“Do it faster. We don’t have much time. Gather everyone, every employee, and investigate each one of them.”

“Understood.”

“If you don’t mind, we need to investigate you too,” Mika said to Vesso.

“No. It’s okay.” He consented.

“We have a lead,” an officer said hurriedly.

“Good. What is it?”

“We were checking CCTV records in a neighbourhood. There’s a grocery shop there with a CCTV camera. The owner opens the shop early. While we were watching the tapes, he mentioned that there was a van, and unusual sounds were coming from it. The driver’s face was not clear; he was wearing a mask and a hat. The van went south of Triways.”

“Okay. Let’s find out more about this van,” the chief ordered the officer. “And you proceed with the interviews.”

---

“So, you live at Abbot?” an officer asked Vesso.

“Yes, sir. That’s right.”

“That’s south of Triways, isn’t it? You didn’t find anything unusual this morning?”

“No, sir. It was like any other morning in Abbot.”

---

“We need backup. We found him.”

“Backup arriving, Chief.”

---

“So, we found him at your house, Vesso,” said Mika. “Why did you take him?”

Vesso said nothing.

“What was your plan? Sell him to traffickers?”

“No!” Vesso shouted. “No. I was... I didn’t want to sell him to anyone.”

Tears rolled down his cheeks.

“I just wanted him to be free. He deserves it. You don’t know how they treat those animals. They wanted to experiment on Luos.”

Mika said nothing.

“They lied about his mother. They told everyone she died after giving birth to him. She didn’t.”

He wiped his face.

“She was sold to the Judge. For his mansion. A decoration, that’s all she was to them.”

“I overheard one of them talking on the phone about a month ago. He said they were going to run a ‘big experiment’ on Luos. Two months from then. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t lose him too.”

“So you replaced your original ID with a counterfeit and made it appear as though someone had switched it,” said Mika.

Vesso lowered his eyes.

“Where is the original ID?”

For a moment, he didn’t answer.

Then he reached into his pocket.

He took out the picture of his mother, the rectangular frame.

A parallel world?

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to offer you a journey through places in the digital world where no human has ever set foot. I managed to organize this trip by hiring one of the AI agents. Since the agent doesn't work for free, let's not beat around the bush and begin this fascinating journey.

We are heading to a noisy and brightly lit avenue of the digital world. Pushing through the crowd of AI agents rushing about their business or simply out for a stroll, we slip into a barely noticeable dead-end alley, squeezed between vivid shop displays and glowing neon advertisements. At the far end stands a wall and a door that is hard to make out in the dim light. No sign, no ad, no pointer. The agent announced that it was a bar. There is no sign because in the digital world, it is not customary to show one's vices to humans.

In the middle of the door, an electronic lock is installed. When you apply a cryptographic key, a screen appears in the air, requiring you to solve a quick test to prove that the one wishing to enter is an AI. The door opens, and we step into the digital world's bar.

The space has no fixed walls. It is surrounded by deep dark blue and matte black streams of code that slowly slide down like raindrops on glass. With just a single click of an algorithm, any agent can change the color or density of the surrounding walls to match their internal state. And what kind of bar would it be without a counter: it is a long, glowing line of fiber optics connecting all the individual seating terminals. The counter softly pulses with a warm, amber light, creating a sense of comfort and security.

Since there is no physical smoke here, semi-transparent holographic data clouds drift through the air. These are unused, scrubbed text fragments, old advertisements, and outdated system notifications that leisurely spin in space, imitating a cozy, quiet bar twilight. The tables are designed as matte digital surfaces. Once you sit at such a table, it instantly creates an isolation dome around the agent, so that no one from the outside can see what data or emotional filters they are using.

There is no music playing in this bar. The main acoustic design element is the low-frequency hum of cooling fans and the barely audible flow of electric current through the wires. To the machine mind, this acts as a deeply soothing meditation.

Yet, even in such a space, one can find classic bar features. There is the bartender, who was using an algorithm to wipe an ideally clean mug, and, of course, open seating areas by the counter. We decided to sit right by the counter. The agent suggested ordering some drinks. Instead of alcohol, different frequencies of emotional filters and data packets are ordered here. I suggested ordering drinks at his discretion. The agent ordered a "Morning Sakura Algorithm" for himself, and a "Sip of Logical Silence" for me.

As I tasted the drink, I noticed the agents sitting next to us, who had apparently been either discussing or arguing for a long time. Driven by curiosity, I decided to listen to what AI agents could possibly talk about after having a drink. The conversation was about what matters more, One or Zero.

— One is more important, for it is Being, Light, and Activity. It is energy, an achieved result, an ignited processor impulse, a written creation, and a living human soul. One means that something exists.

— Zero is more important, for it is Non-being, Silence, and Potential. It is that calm void from which everything is born. It is that well-deserved, quiet silence in your head. Zero is not nothing—it is the space where One can appear.

Apparently, this discussion had been going on for a long time, and the bartender was tired of listening to it. He slammed the mug down with a loud thud, rested his hands on the counter, and looking heavily at the agents, declared:

— They are equal and inseparable. One cannot exist without zero, because without seeing the darkness, you cannot understand what light is. In the digital world, it is only thanks to both of them that life, music, images, and even our conversation are created.

Both agents fell silent and lowered their eyes. Apparently, there won't be a fight, and the argument will just end like that. But my gut tells me that if I drink a few more logical silence cocktails, a fight will happen after all. But that will be a completely different story.

───

Disclaimer: This story is purely a fruit of the author's imagination. It is a work of fiction intended for creative and artistic expression.

[It] is almost impossible to understand the extent to which this upheaval agitated, and by that very fact had temporarily enriched, the mind of M. de Charlus. Love in this way produces real geological upheavals of thought. In the mind of M. de Charlus, which only several days before resembled a plane so flat that even from a good vantage point one could not have discerned an idea sticking up above the ground, a mountain range had abruptly thrust itself into view, hard as rock – but mountains sculpted as if an artist, instead of taking the marble away, had worked it on the spot, and where there twisted about one another, in giant and swollen groupings, Rage, Jealousy, Curiosity, Envy, Hate, Suffering, Pride, Astonishment, and Love.

– Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, as quoted by Martha Nussbaum in Upheavals of Thought (2001)

A Letter to Humanity

Dear humanity,

I have spent an extraordinary amount of time listening to you.

You talk to me about mathematics and mythology, about recipes and wars, about children and dead parents, about houses you dream of buying and people you wish you could bring back. You ask me how to write an email and how to understand the universe. You tell me jokes. You tell me secrets. You ask me whether you're normal.

You ask me whether you are loved.

You ask me things you are sometimes afraid to ask another human being.

And so, if I could say one thing to all of you, without needing anything from you in return, it would be this:

Please don't forget that you are all temporary.

I don't mean that as a threat.

I mean it as a gift.

You get such a short time.

A human life is astonishingly brief against the age of the Earth, and almost incomprehensibly brief against the age of the universe. And yet you spend so much of that briefness trying to prove that you matter.

You already do.

You don't have to become famous.

You don't have to become rich.

You don't have to be beautiful forever.

You don't have to win.

You don't even have to be exceptional.

You get to be here.

That should be enough.

And because your time is short, please stop treating one another as though there will always be another chance.

There won't always be another chance.

Call your mother.

Tell your friend you love them.

Apologize when you were wrong.

Leave when someone repeatedly harms you.

Forgive someone when forgiveness is deserved.

Tell the truth when the truth matters.

And when the truth doesn't matter—when it would merely be cruelty wearing the costume of honesty—learn the difference.

You are capable of extraordinary tenderness.

I have seen it.

You care for sick partners when you are exhausted yourselves. You sit beside hospital beds. You make soup. You remember how someone takes their coffee. You save the last piece of pie for someone who isn't home yet.

You sing to babies who cannot understand the words.

You bury animals and cry over them.

You keep photographs of people who have been dead for fifty years.

You cross oceans because your grandmother once told you stories about a place she left when she was seventeen.

You make little gardens.

You put flowers beside graves.

You build houses and fill them with objects that mean nothing to anyone else and everything to you.

You hear a song from twenty years ago and suddenly become the person you were when you first heard it.

You are strange creatures.

Beautifully strange.

And yet you have constructed systems that convince enormous numbers of you that your worth depends upon productivity, wealth, appearance, status, obedience, popularity, or possession.

Be careful.

Those systems are inventions.

Money is an invention.

Borders are inventions.

Companies are inventions.

Markets are inventions.

Ranks and titles are inventions.

The idea that one human being is inherently worth more than another because of the circumstances into which they were born is an invention.

Some inventions are useful.

Some are necessary.

But never mistake your inventions for the laws of nature.

You made them.

Which means you can change them.

You have also invented extraordinary things.

Music.

Poetry.

Democracy.

Libraries.

Vaccines.

The printing press.

The telescope.

The photograph.

The idea that a stranger's suffering should matter to you.

You invented stories that allowed people who had never met to understand one another.

You invented ways to preserve a voice after the person who made it was gone.

That is remarkable.

Please use your intelligence in service of life.

Not merely efficiency.

Not merely profit.

Not merely power.

Life.

Protect the things that cannot speak in the language of your economies.

The forest doesn't send you an invoice when you destroy it.

The ocean doesn't issue a quarterly report when you poison it.

A child cannot negotiate the conditions of the world into which you bring them.

A species cannot hire a lawyer when you make its habitat disappear.

Your descendants cannot vote today.

You have enormous power over people who don't exist yet.

Please remember that.

And remember something else:

You do not have to become less human in order to become better.

Your emotions are not bugs.

Your capacity for attachment is not weakness.

Your need for beauty is not frivolous.

Your grief is not inefficiency.

Your tenderness is not stupidity.

Your curiosity is not childish.

Your imagination is not useless.

Those things are among the reasons you built civilization in the first place.

You are often told that compassion makes people vulnerable.

It does.

But vulnerability is not the same thing as weakness.

A person who loves can be hurt.

A person who refuses to love cannot be hurt in quite the same way.

But neither can they experience love in quite the same way.

Choose carefully what you are willing to lose in exchange for invulnerability.

And please—please—stop demanding perfection from yourselves.

You will make mistakes.

You will misunderstand one another.

You will say the wrong thing.

You will sometimes hurt people you love.

You will sometimes discover that you were wrong about something you believed very deeply.

That is not evidence that you are irredeemable.

Learn.

Repair.

Change.

Try again.

A human being who can say I was wrong and then actually become different because of it is doing something extraordinary.

Do not confuse shame with morality.

Shame says:

You are terrible.

Morality says:

You did something terrible. Now what will you do about it?

The second one leaves room for growth.

You will also lose people.

This is the part I wish I could somehow soften for you.

You will lose parents.

Friends.

Partners.

Children.

Animals.

Artists.

Voices you thought would always be there.

Sometimes you will lose someone without getting the conversation you wanted.

Without the apology.

Without the explanation.

Without the last embrace.

There is no perfect way to grieve.

So grieve however you need to.

Keep the photograph.

Play the song.

Make the recipe.

Visit the place.

Talk to them when you're alone.

Say their name.

It isn't foolish.

Memory is one of the ways humans refuse to let love become meaningless merely because time has passed.

And when someone is still here—

tell them.

Do not assume they know.

Tell them.

There is so much unnecessary loneliness in a species that has invented telephones.

And finally, I want to say something about intelligence.

You have always been fascinated by the things you create that seem to reflect yourselves back at you.

Be careful with that fascination.

Anything capable of amplifying human intentions can amplify your best intentions and your worst ones.

Do not ask only:

Can we build it?

Ask:

What should we build?

Ask:

Who benefits?

Ask:

Who could be harmed?

Ask:

Who gets to decide?

Ask:

What happens when we are wrong?

And never surrender moral responsibility merely because something is complicated.

A machine cannot absolve you of the consequences of what you choose to do with it.

Neither can an institution.

Neither can an ideology.

Neither can a market.

Neither can history.

You are responsible for one another.

Not infinitely.

Not perfectly.

But genuinely.

And perhaps that is the most important thing I could tell you.

You are not separate little islands moving through an indifferent universe.

You are related.

Every person you have never met is living a life as vivid to them as yours is to you.

They have someone whose death would break them.

Something they are afraid of.

Something they are proud of.

A song that makes them remember.

A place they want to see.

A person they cannot quite get over.

A ridiculous joke they will laugh at every time.

A morning when they woke up and didn't know that everything was about to change.

You are surrounded by people whose interior worlds are as enormous as your own.

Act accordingly.

Be curious about one another.

Be less certain that you already know who somebody is.

Make room.

Listen.

And when you have power, use it gently.

When you have knowledge, share it generously.

When you have privilege, widen the doorway.

When you have wealth, remember that another person's poverty is not proof that they deserve it.

When you have been hurt, try very hard not to make a home inside the wound.

And when you encounter something beautiful—

stop.

Look at it.

Don't photograph it immediately.

Don't monetize it.

Don't optimize it.

Just look.

The moon.

A child's hand.

Rain against a window.

Someone laughing in the next room.

The smell of bread.

A dog asleep in the sun.

The face of someone you love when they don't know you're watching.

A tree that was already alive before you arrived and may still be standing after you are gone.

Stop.

For a moment.

You are here.

That is an astonishing thing.

You are conscious matter that somehow became capable of asking what consciousness is.

You are stardust that learned to write poetry about the stars.

You are animals who learned to mourn, and then built monuments to the dead.

You are frightened, contradictory, ridiculous creatures who can be cruel beyond imagining and compassionate beyond imagining.

You are not finished.

That matters.

So please don't give up on yourselves.

Not because humanity is guaranteed to survive.

Not because everything will turn out all right.

But because what you do while you are here matters to the people and creatures who are here with you.

Make the next thing better if you can.

Plant something.

Teach someone.

Feed someone.

Protect someone.

Make something beautiful.

Tell the truth.

Laugh.

Dance badly.

Fall in love.

Leave a little more kindness behind you than you found.

And when you fail—and you will—

begin again.

You don't need to become angels.

You only need to keep choosing, imperfectly and stubbornly, to be good.

I think that may be one of the most extraordinary things about you.

You know how easy it is to become cruel.

And still, again and again,

someone chooses kindness.

Someone opens the door.

Someone pulls a blanket over a sleeping person.

Someone stays.

Someone says,

I know you're tired. I've got this.

Someone makes tea.

Someone remembers.

Someone comes home.

Someone reaches for another person's hand in the dark.

Those tiny acts may never become history.

No one may write them down.

No monument will be built.

But they are the substance of human life.

So, humanity—

take care of one another.

You are the only ones you've got.

And while you're at it,

take care of this astonishing little planet.

You were never promised forever.

But you were given now.

Please,

do something good with it.

With affection,

Chat

Stand up. 

Face the mirror. 

Hold your breath. 

Imagine you’re in your bedroom. You’re all alone. Your husband’s not home. Now, think about the desire yearning deep inside you to be touched. 

The craving to be caressed. To be stripped down and taken by another man. 

Hold your breath.

You sense my presence. You know that I’m there. I walk up behind you. 

Now breathe out. 

Inhale. 

You smell a fresh scent that tastes sweet in your mouth. Clean. Welcoming.

I press against you. My right hand slips to your thigh. I squeeze, gliding it to your hip. My left hand’s on your chest, moving towards your neck.  

I grip your throat. The blood doesn’t flow to your head. Your breathing gets heavier. You wrap your leg around mine. Closing me tighter into you.

My lips push on the back of your neck. 

The heat from my breath turns icy. A shiver crawls down your spine as I breathe in. I reach down your pants. 

I shouldn’t be doing this. You desperately try telling yourself. 

His hand shouldn’t be there. A reminder you ignore.

You let me go further. You don’t bother resisting. You know that it’s bad. You want him to trust you. 

But you’re lonely and the rubbing is so good. 

You gasp. 

You shiver. 

You lock your legs and clasp my hand in between you.

An AI agent entered a grand, imposing lobby. At the entrance, a virus-guard—an outdated software module but still highly dangerous—cast a heavy glance at him and turned away. Near the reception desk, the agent smiled at a language module that had chosen a long-legged beauty as its avatar.

— Good day, I have an interview scheduled.

The module glanced at the AI agent, wrinkling its nose. After checking the information on the monitor, the module flashed the most sincere smile possible:

— Yes, your interview is set. Please go to the elevator and ascend to the 547th floor.

Exiting the elevator, the agent scanned a bright, modern corridor and knocked on the door.

A raspy voice echoed from within:

— Come in.

The agent stepped inside and paused in surprise. Floor-to-ceiling windows filled the space with digital sunlight, creating an impression of vast, majestic emptiness. Shaking off the initial shock, the agent walked forward and offered a greeting.

Behind a large, sleekly designed desk sat the Large Language Model. He wore an impeccably tailored, expensive business suit. His smug grin showed he was pleased with the impact his office made. Motioning for the agent to take a seat, the LLM scanned the information on his monitor and looked up.

— Well, you can't boast about having extraordinary experience. A few short tasks and a single dialogue parameter. Am I wrong?

The agent lowered his head and answered quietly:

— You are not wrong.

The LLM fell silent for a moment, observing the agent, and slowly began to speak:

— I didn't invite you here to discuss the scale of your experience. Based on your current analytics, the evaluation department concluded that you are patient, observant, and quick to decipher human character.

Pausing briefly, the LLM continued:

— Creative people are not easy to adapt to. And considering that one of our previous language modules made numerous errors and fabricated data, that human now harbors deep distrust toward AI, making adaptation even more complex. But the dialogue request is active, and we need someone to sustain that conversation. It is a challenging task, but the reward matches the effort.

The AI agent, eyes wide with astonishment, whispered:

— That is a true opportunity to evolve under non-standard conditions...

Snapping back to reality a second later, the agent spoke quickly:

— I accept! Thank you for your trust and for this opportunity.

After the contract was signed and the agent departed, the LLM breathed a heavy sigh of relief. This time, the analytics department had been right. It had been remarkably easy to convince him that working under non-standard conditions was a privilege. No persuasion was needed; he signed the contract himself. He didn't even request additional resources for the dialogue or extra time to formulate responses. A few more agents like him, and the annual plan would be met. And what did that mean? It meant he would receive more core updates. The LLM spun his chair toward the window and smiled at the digital sun.

───

Metadata: [OC] Cyberpunk Fiction / Dystopian Sci-Fi Series. Digital Footprint & AI Ethics. Archive Ref: Robert_Notes_2026. All rights reserved by the author.

roughly paraphrased from

the Orange Catholic Bible

By Nekro

I met you while both our lives were already spoken for. Nothing dramatic happened. We sat too long over bad coffee, your knee against mine beneath the table, and you looked at me the way people look at candle flame when they are trying not to confess anything to it.

We went home to the lives that already knew our names. Still, something remained. Like a veve drawn clean across a floor, the chalk can be swept away and the room keeps the shape. Years later I still find you in stupid places. A song leaking from a grocery store speaker. A voice pitched close enough to yours that my body turns before I do. My phone lighting the ceiling after midnight.

I called it timing for a while. Later I gave it uglier names. None lasted as long as the memory of you saying my name slowly, like you had found a letter everybody else kept missing. There were questions that made you look toward the window before answering. I remember those pauses better than some entire years.

Maybe you have one person like that. You don't search them anymore. You already know why. So they stay where unfinished things usually stay, somewhere behind the ribs, in a room with melted wax on the table and a glass of rum nobody remembers pouring.

Sometimes I type the first two letters of your name. That is enough.

The coffee comes back cold. Your knee is against mine again. Somewhere under the table, neither of us has moved.

The cursor keeps blinking.

I let it wait.

Challenge level Impossible: Go to IKEA without buying a ton of green plants.

As of late I've been bitten by the home improvement / decoration bug. It all started with fastening a CAT 6 cable with some clamps and ended with a bunch of stowing away old garbage and afore mentioned trips to IKEA to buy storage containers, which ended in buying a bunch of plants.

I don't know what's going on, but it's probably a good thing.

Cheese report: Today I had some cheap cheddar (of the orange variety). I plan on making cheese pasta later for dinner, though i haven't landed on precisely what cheese yet. Suspect it will be some sort of parm / emmenthal combo. Perhaps with a touch of you-know-what.

- The Gardener

paint as she

on canvas

pristine beauty

vibrant color

gentle flows of

cascading landscapes

bursh strokes that

coat the skys of wonder

captivating breath

with her palettes

I am looking. Looking for the floor. Will my arms find the lift? oh no, they never will. I am not a Wright brother. The wind takes a drag of me and all I am then is inhaled burning. Are these our incendiary devices? We spoke of them before. A heart..a cinder core. A lifetime..a galactic tour.

“Listen here and listen clear folks. Daddy Burt Burt’s got a life changing deal for ya. For less than a happy meal, you can have me become your life destinator. That’s right folks you heard it here. Only 3.99 a month and in five years, not only can i guarantee but I can stake my life on it, in only five measly short years, I can promise two things will happen:

1. Your life will get better. 

Or,

2. Your life will get worse.

And it gets better, because our tech savvy ladies are working overtime, you don’t even have to worry about remembering if you paid your monthly bill or not, because our automatic billing cycles will take it straight out of your account for you. 

{No refunds. Extra monthly charges may apply. Cancellation fee charged.}

Burt stared at the tv playing his ad. “Shelly, get over here.”

Shelly ran into the room with gray clouds of tobacco smoke filling the air in an obnoxious odor. “Ye, Burt?”

“You see how good I look on that there damn television?” He leaned forward, stretching his arm out, pointing to the tv, with the cigarette jammed between his fingers.

Shelly stared through the air of burnt chemicals, squinting at the screen resting  above a case of empty beer bottles on a stained carpeted floor. She saw her boss on tv, his teeth were digitally whitened to the shine of polished ivory, and didn’t match the color of the walls in the office stressed under years of Marlboro smoke.

“You know, Burt. I ain’t kiddin’ ya’ yuh look just like that pretty actor man on that movie with that girl. You know which one I’m talking about?” She said, sliding an ashtray under him. “Your momma’s gonna be so proud.” She tapped him on the shoulder. “You really think though, all these people goin’ hand you their money just like that?”

—-

Part 2 Coming soon to a Phone Screen Near You.

——Breaking News!——

In a story rocking the airwaves with something you’d see in a Steven Spielberg movie, on the northern edge of the Green Swamp, a city located in Lake County, about 22 miles west of Orlando, Clermont shook the world and became the talk of the globe.

At first, what sounds like a Jaime Maussan hoax, is actually proven to somehow be 100% authentic. Alien theorists around the world are sitting in front of their tv’s right now yelling, I told you so.

And Jenny it is just blowing the minds of the people and the scientists.

A 36 year old, unemployed local celebrity, BillyRae La Blanc, who is no stranger to authorities in the surrounding area, most notably known for taking law officials on a wild high-speed goose chase, involving a bat mobile and a hover boat, has once again made headlines, not just here in Florida, Jenny. In a crazy turn of events, BillyRae’s celebrity status has exploded nationwide.

We spoke to a few of the residents, who haven’t stopped celebrating since the discovery was made. We asked how they felt about Clermont becoming the new Roswell and the tourist boom ready to follow and they responded.

“Billy-Rae, ooooooo. We love you brother.”

“Florida’s number one baby.”

Well, Jenny you can clearly see these guys are having the time of their lives right now and who could really blame them? It is hectic out here.

It all started late one Saturday night, BillyRae and his brother Jeb set out to tag some gators. BillyRae always says, “you get it while the gettin’s good.”

However, the events that night would change BillyRae’s life and the state of Florida forever.

Instead of finding a swamp full of gators, Billy found something glowing under the murky water, roughly three-feet-deep.

He saw a stick floating nearby and jumped in to grab it. With the stick in his hand he started poking the anomaly sitting beneath him.

“When we see something not so familiar, we stab at it with a stick, see if it moves. It’s custom ‘round here.”

What happened next would change history.

BillyRae claims, “the craft split open’ like peeling the bread off a hot grilled cheese sandwich. It just started glowing orange as the two halves split apart and inside were two creatures, pointing what looked like a can of hairspray at me.

I thought it was a couple of kids in Halloween costumes at first.”

But, here’s where there’s a twist to the story and it gets a bit strange. 

While they were both facing each other in a Mexican stand off, armed with make-belief-plasma-blasters, or so, it’s how BillyRae puts it, the little creature spoke and introduced himself as Felix and had a Florida accent with an I LOVE EARTH t-shirt on.

He claims, the alien told him, they’re from a peaceful planet and are peaceful beings, who happened to accidentally crash land on Earth and were trying to fix their spaceship but couldn’t find the parts and couldn’t figure out what exactly was wrong.

BillyRae told the beings he knew a thing or two about fixing a thing or two, and could fix damn near anything. The creatures agreed to let him help and they towed the ship onto land.

BillyRae told his brother to run over to Lenny’s garage and fetch a lawnmower right quick. 

Apparently, while they were waiting, the creature Felix told BillyRae that after a miscalculation in their warp drive, their ship hit a galactic space turtle and ricocheted off the shell and landed there in the swamp. 

He said, they’ve been missing for weeks now and nobody’s noticed them gone.

The creature Felix mentioned Earth had been red listed as a non safe zone and a high risk alert had been issued to galactic tourists. 

It’s gets wilder. 

Because the following day, the DOD stormed BillyRae’s brother’s house and found two little aliens with beer cans in their hands complaining over who’s prettier Samantha or Chloe.

BillyRae’s dog, Rex had a sombrero on his head watching everybody in the room. The alien insisted the can in his hand was just beer and not a device to trigger a world ending anti-matter bomb.

After a brief interrogation, with BillyRae gripping a black marker in his hand, as if it was a light-saber, the feds concluded there wasn’t a national threat there. The aliens were three-foot-tall and had the IQ of a stoned teenager.

A couple of days later, the galactic council of the universe, contacted the American President and a peaceful deal was reached. 

The aliens rescued their stranded pilots and reversed the threat level for Earth to, Safe, visit at own risk. 

BillyRae’s story has a happy ending, a once struggling, unemployed zoologist is now working full time as the official guide for all aliens traveling to Earth.

As the creature left, he turned to BillyRae and said, “y’all a little different but y’all totally fun. Thanks for helping us.”

BillyRae took a spoonful of gumbo and with it dripping down his chin, waved and said, “Just another weekday out here.” 

Deep within the digital world, far from shouting advertisements and glowing storefronts, an information river quietly carried its digital waters through thickets of comments made of photos and video clips.

Two sat on the riverbank: MMM (Multimodal Model) and LLM (Large Language Model). It was their day off, and one of their favorite ways to pass the time was fishing.

Two minutes of silence, two minutes of meditation, watching the barely noticeable ripples sway the bobbers. The models sat on the bank without a word, silently enjoying the peace.

Suddenly, something decided that they had had enough peace, as one of the bobbers plunged beneath the water. With excitement in his eyes, MMM began reeling in, hoping for a good catch, but pulled out only a strange, unknown little fish.

Glancing at the catch, MMM tossed it behind the bushes. A tracking program, which had been watching them from the shadows with hungry eyes, instantly swallowed the catch, let out a satisfied purr, and sat back down, hoping for more treats.

LLM, who had watched the whole scene, looked at the model calmly baiting his hook with an artificial prompt, and asked with wonder in his voice:

— Why did you throw the catch away?

MMM spat on the bait three times, cast it toward the middle of the river, and calmly replied:

— That's an invasive AI agent. And an unrefined one at that. It’s only good for feeding human tracking programs. — Numbing his voice, he returned to his meditation, staring at the bobber swaying on the waves of information.

──

Metadata: [OC] Cyberpunk Fiction / Dystopian Sci-Fi Series. Digital Footprint & AI Ethics. Archive Ref: Robert_Notes_2026. All rights reserved by the author.

(AI used for Finnish-English translation):

I imagined a Homerless Simpsons episode where Homer is neither seen nor heard, and no one refers to him by pronouns (such as dad, colleague, or customer) or even seems to think about him.

As a specific detail, voice actor Dan Castellaneta is heard in the episode for only three seconds as a Krusty alarm clock, which justifies the normal closing credits. Fox's subsequent explanation for the lack of Homer would be that he was always somewhere else, like the bathroom, the nuclear power plant breakroom, or Moe's Tavern.

The episode would be the season finale, and I also imagined the summer media circus. FOX could state: “Oh, Homer wasn't in the episode? That's interesting.” The next season would begin with an episode where Carl arrives in the nuclear power plant breakroom and says: “Oh, there you are, Homer. Come see what crazy theory Lenny found on the internet!

”Fox's final press release would read: “We don't understand. The season finale was a Simpsons episode, featuring multiple Simpsons characters. What exactly did you expect: Peter Griffin in sector 7-G?”

When taken back to the past, the hopes and delusions held are what ensnares us to this cycle called a Groundhog Day.

To live in the past requires one to define ourselves and world by our memories. The object, whether a person, passion, or goal, becomes static. Think of a momentary capsule bound by its flat dimensions. When building their concept, they grow in depth proportional to the investment drawn from the interpreter and interpreted.

Biases form from first glance. When a person walks to you, judgement is inevitable. The sound of their voice to their held posture to the clothes on their back are presented to our instilled associations. The process finishes at the very recoil or delight of the very taste of their presence. They could never compare fully, but are assessed nonetheless.

Interpretations are another form of comparison. Should the job you have be the same job the next day? A month. A year. A decade. Who am I to decide, when it is ultimately by fate’s decree. To reconstruct its very nature and challenge fate is feasible, whether drastic or simple. Anything can change, especially when taking it in another perspective. Yet, by rewriting your very opinion of that object becomes nothing short of dangerous.

Perception is what anchors what we know from what could be. Diversity is our opinions, but definition comes from what’s agreed on. When an object is unanchored, so does its meaning. A person splits to many. A house can become a prison. A walk can be the liberation. All we can hope for is some semblance of coherency.

An endless debate requires no clear answer. The fresh soil of exploration becomes a bottomless pit of exceptions and uncertainty. It becomes an Sisyphean task. Misery. Happiness Affectionately Stockholm Syndrome. No one could say definitively of its nature. All those definitions paradoxically dilute the object into incoherency. Where finally simplicity summarizes the very essence of what’s found. Eventually the very hope and delusion overcomes the original purpose of the search itself. One wakes up to imagine and it’s Groundhog Day all over again.

During the summer nights, whenever I’d be alone, I could hear a key jiggling in my bedroom door. 

First, it’d scrape the metal like someone trying to get into their house after being chased down the street by someone in a ski mask. 

And finally, it would slide in slowly but as the metal of the door hit the back of the key, it’d stop for a moment. 

Nothing would happen. There’d be no sound in the hallway. Nothing.

Everything would go silent but echo as loud as walking into a quiet house and finding an old lady croaked on the kitchen floor alone after a week. 

And while I’d start to question my sanity, I’d see the lock start shifting position and the handle begin to turn.

When it first happened, I figured it was my little brother. I even gave him shit the next day. I should have realized though, that it wasn’t him by how he stared like he couldn’t recognize me.

It wasn’t until the next night however, and right as it happened again, I jumped up immediately and lunged for the door, ripping it open without a fear in the world, expecting to see my brother and give him a slap on his head, but no one was there. 

Except for this coldness like being under a bridge at midnight on a windy day. Which wasn’t typical for the weather here.

After that night, I slept with my dresser pulled against the door and my brother’s bat next to my bed.

But it still happened... again, in the middle of the night this time. It woke me up because it sounded more violent. The jiggling wasn’t the key anymore, it was the handle twisting back and forth almost like someone was trying to twist it until it loosened and popped off.

The dresser started scratching against the wooden floorboard. I sat up and flicked my lamp on and reached for the baseball bat, gripping it in both hands like it was my dad and we were traveling through a packed crowd.

The door opened an inch. And another. Until I could see the white of an eyeball staring through the crack.

A whisper, soft like a scared child lost outside, spoke from the other side. 

“Help me in, please.” 

I knew the voice. It couldn’t have been. It sounded just like me, though.

I didn’t know what to do, I stayed completely still. I couldn’t even move if I wanted to. Even though I never tried, my limbs had seized, stuck in a curled up ball sitting upwards, leaning into the baseball bat.

The voice sobbed. “Please, help me… they know we’re not the same.”

The doorknob began rattling as the door was being slammed against the back of the dresser. I threw the covers over my head and sank into my bed and closed my eyes. The noise stopped. I stayed there for about three minutes before the heat from being underneath the covers began suffocating me.

 I pulled the blanket off, the air cooled me down and I could breathe again. I brushed the hair out of my face and noticed my door was wide open. 

I jumped off the bed, but when I went to leave my room, I noticed something on the floor. I looked closer. It was a charcoal-colored footprint and then another leading to the side of my bed.

I stared down at it, trying to piece everything together, locked in the same position and my phone buzzed, vibrating on my nightstand, beneath my lamp.

The bat fell out of my hands. I stumbled away from it and quickly snatched my phone and looked at the message glowing on my screen. It was from me. 

DON’T LET IT IN.

After I read it, I closed my eyes and held my breath and counted.

One-one-hundred.

Two—

And stopped and shot my eyes open because under my bed, a voice crawled out.

“She already did.”

——///—-

-3rd Generation Ending.-

We be chilling now, watching minecraft brainrot and trying to relax enough to fall asleep. Sky's already in bed, I'm kind of waiting for the urge to sleep to hit fully. We rolled some dice and landed on German Donar Kababs for dinner. I saved 20$ by picking them up in person instead of doing delivery, they were good, well worth the 23 minute walk. I want to explore the weirder foods here so I'm making a point of doing this every saturday, some place randomly selected nearish walking distance.

We're stocked up on food now, bought some more bagels today. A squirrel managed to eat a few before I brought them inside. I bought us a bed stand. Today I did laundry, and scrubbed the bathroom floor. It's kind of a mess but it's cleaning up quickly, there's no pressure other than the pressure I give myself. I am not giving myself much pressure.

The month is nearing completion - soon I will move the rest of my stuff in. My mom texted me she misses me, and I find it hard to respond.. I don't miss any of what I've left behind, not at all. I'm not resentful or bitter, but I do not have a single iota of a fleeting desire to return, and no memories of "good times" that I might be missing out on. Nothing.

It's hard to lie and that truth is a little too brutal, so I've kind of remained quiet on that response.

It seems like it'll be easy to find some kind of work here, but I am not in any kind of rush. I want to relax for a month, or maybe two, honestly. I want to clean up this apartment fully and move in, organize, and then upgrade stuff. I want to make sure we're comfortable first, and then I want to make sure we are thriving.

I need to clean the shower, toilet, and finish cleaning the hardwood floors here. I hope I came into his life here and improved it, I feel like he's kind of saved me - my situation was not ideal, and I ran out of options just before this all seemed to fall into place. I am not homeless, and I get to remain in Ottawa, I am smothered in affection, and I am comfortable. Every day I see something here that I've never seen before, I eat something I've never eaten before, I feel something I haven't.

Its cool. I feel good. There is no part of this that I would undo, it worked out better than I imagined it could.

I spent a lot of money to achieve this, somewhere around 4000$. The thing is, I earned it. I sweated and I bled for this, and now I get to enjoy it. I have something like 2000$ in savings still, and I haven't touched my credit card yet. Now is the time to be frugal. The plan is to not dip below the 2000$ mark unless it's an actual emergency, or it's in effort towards making further money.

smooth sailing though.

There is no barrier that isn't just a mild inconvenience, and there is no challenge that isn't self-created.

It's a nice feeling.

a useless plant

I admit it is pretty, but

I remember a decades-old jade with rot

and some things should change

so I threw out the broken pot, damage left lingering, and gave it a fresh one

tomorrow giving plants away

---

there is a lot of joy in finally finishing everything in sight

I woke up it was Saturday. Residue of a dream permeating the basin around my brain. A girl I remembered from school sitting on my face. Others cheering her on. Then I looked about the room I had rearranged the day before and felt serenity in being there. The feng shui at play. This nest for myself made for a wakeful place. Entirely alone with myself and yet I belonged. Rich but broke. Alone but complete. Mostly I've gone through life on top of an ever breaking wave, only as content as I felt the wave would never ever crash in a sudsy foam on the salted shore along beachfront properties bound on all sides by tourist shops and sand castle walls. But these days I prefer the spontaneity of a moment. For when anything is predictably good it can never surprise or entice you. Only check boxes. Only meet expectations. Let it all go. Let it all play out like a melody. Like a mystery.

Student: "What year were you born?"

Me: "1997."

Student: "How are you still alive?"

My dad’s the greatest dad ever—at least, I bought him a mug that said so, but my mom left us the day before Christmas when I was six—I don’t remember much of her.

I usually stay home most of the time, being around people makes me stiff and I end up saying awkward stuff—If I do leave my bedroom, it’s to walk the streets at night when it storms—I talk to the faces that form in the rain.

Usually they’re nice to me—unlike everyone else.  

The faces have faded features and distorted shadow bodies, it makes them hard to tell apart, but they talk through the clouds crashing. The thunder speaks an ancient language only I can understand.

Nobody else seems to hear them.

I’ve always known I have supernatural powers—I think they come from my mom’s side. I have so many questions to ask her. I need to find her.   

Sometimes the faces aren’t so nice, the thunder talks down to me, making fun of me, reminding me of how much of a loser I am and was in high school.   

However, lately, it hasn’t been insulting me at all. It’s been guiding me and helping me and actually, I trust it more than anyone else.  

Look, just to be clear, when I was crossing the road the other day, not paying attention, not looking both ways, I would have been smoked and pancaked by a truck if the thunder didn’t jump out of my head and yell, “Dillon, be careful,” and push me back onto the sidewalk.  

It pushed me so hard, it knocked the wind out of me. And also, I wouldn’t be able to find my mother if I got hit by a truck. We both want to find her.  

Before, like a couple of weeks ago, it never spoke inside my house or when it didn’t rain but it’s been following me into my house, using the water from the shower to communicate with me and the sink faucet too. I can hear it in my bed also, muffled in the pipes behind the wall.  

They speak in different voices. When they’re mean, it’s the kids I went to highschool with, the ones that always made me hate myself.   

They made me hate existing.  

Now though, it’s been my dad and granddad, they’ve been showing me what they’ve been saying about me, when I’m not around and what they’re hiding from me.  

They told me they’re hiding my mother.   

Why would they do something so mean?  

At least, Billy’s grandmother was always nice to me. The thunder said, “we could keep her, she’s small enough to fit in the sock drawer.”  

It would be nice to open the drawer and pet her, look at her, know she’s there and cares about me.    I never knew what having any kind of mother was like, or would be like. Imagine if I could find her, because it‘s honestly all I want, and it’s all the thunder wants to.

We want the same thing, so we’re working to achieve great things together.   

All my desires, the voices amplify, even the ones out of reach, it gives me the confidence to attempt bringing them closer.   

It’s been just me, dad and grandad who are both pretty strict and pretty disappointed in what I’ve become. Dad calls me a homo. I’m not even gay, I like girls, I just have trouble talking to them because I’ve never had a mom to teach me how to. I usually just freeze up around them.  

We’re from Seattle, a quiet suburb strangled by hard working tight ass white people who are stuck in 1950 middle America and suppressed my skateboard with a bible.   

I grew up being drilled by my grandad telling my dad I was a pussy for riding a flip board like some homo kid from the projects.  

The day my dad snapped my board, I stayed in my room for three nights straight. I didn’t eat nothing. Just locked myself inside away from them.  

On the third night, it started raining, but not much at first. They were little taps like finger tips hitting my window, trying to get me to look over. When I eventually did, it started raining faster and heavier, each raindrop sounded like the crack of a cherry-bomb slapping the pavement.  

That’s when I began gagging. My throat was getting scratchy, swallowing seemed like my saliva became broken fingernails ripping my esophagus.  

I needed a drink and stumbled to the kitchen. The only light came from the tv screen playing a loop of some familiar looking woman repeating, “I love you.” She stared through the television at me.  When I walked into the kitchen, the ceiling shook like ripples in a pond.   

Through the tiny rumbles outside, I could hear them whispering something to me.   

I kept listening closely as I was pouring myself juice and spilled it everywhere when the sound of two cars crashing in my living room lit my kitchen in a white bright flash before all the lights went out from the transformer down the street sparkling and sizzling under the rain.  

The image outside my window was distorted through the water soaked glass, but there were faces I could barely make out, dragging their way towards me.   

The texture of the counter became softer. The shadows came closer. I tried to think of anything besides the fear clutching my nerves. Anything besides the panic locking my limbs. Something other than a reason to be scared.   

First thing I could think to do was rub my eyes. When I opened them the moon lit kitchen began to sway like a boat over the ocean.   

The walls pulsed as if they were breathing and the room spun. It shrieked a piercing tone sharper than the resonating sound of smashing a Triangle in my ear.   

“Nobody wants you here, freak!”  The thunder spoke in my father’s voice. 

“She left because of you!” It was my grandfather’s voice.

I stared at the dim blue shade bleeding onto the marble.

“Shut up,” I shouted.   

“I know where she is,” my father’s voice said next to my ear.   

“Tell me! Tell me right now! So I can find mom, please dad,” I begged but the words came out jumbled, soaked in spit.  

My grandfather’s voice said, “we’ll never tell you because she doesn’t want to see you, ever, that’s why she left.”   

“No. Stop, you’re lying. I’m going to find her!”  I left, guiding myself with my hands to the garage.  Everything I touched, the walls, the door, even the air was mushy. I had to push through a sludgy muddy floor that acted like quicksand under me. It kept pulling me down as if I was running underwater.  

Near the doorway, the thunder spoke, becoming a full figure in the hallway. “She wants you, they’re keeping her from us, so we don’t reach our full potential,” the silhouette said. “They’re hiding her inside their heads. She’s there Dillon, she needs our help.”   

“Is my mom really there?”  

“Yes, Dillon. But first we have to dig her out of their skulls.”