Something Wicked, or Something like that

The year is 2077. The history robots are making their daily rounds inspecting the minds of the children, making sure the nightly uploads are working properly. One child seems upset.

A robot glides towards him and checks what time period he's immersed in. It's the early noughts and teens of the millennium. He's immersed himself in a black woman's memories as part of cultural sensitivity learning. He has gotten to 2015 and sees the political shift to charismatic leader types

His future as a black woman seems bleak. The robot stops the program to wake him up.

"Child 877, you are upset. I am obligated to remind you what you have just witnessed was just a simulation."
The child is still shaken.
"But, teacher-tron, I remember my grandfather telling me about the wars fought on American soil after President Trump sold America to the Chinese. I remember him telling me about the global food crisis. Are you sure it's just a simulation?"
The robot stutters in its tracks. Its programming won't allow it to tell the truth in this instance.
"Yes, child. It was just a simulation."
The child is soothed and falls back asleep.
"Emperor Clinton," the robot calls out, "we have a misaligned mind in the making. What are your orders."
A deep voice booms into the robot
"Delete it."

Oneiornautical Journey

My name is Henry, and I'm a dream explorer. I've been one for as long as I can remember, and I don't know anyone else who does anything like this. I have complete control over my dreams, and in them I go on amazing adventures. To be completely honest, when I first found out I could do this, I was doing nothing but flying for months on end. It was amazing. I felt like a pilot.

That was when I was 10 years old. I told my dad about it right away, and he just shrugged off my dreams as dreams. He didn't see anything special about it. My mom felt the same way. Then it hit me. Watching them go about their daily routines day after day. They were just like zombies. I felt like the only sane person for at least 6 years after that. I couldn't make friends, and I could barely keep up in school work. I graduated high school and went on to work at a fast food restaurant, just making enough to afford the basic amenities of reality; a place to live, food to eat, and electricity.

My dreams kept me more than entertained, and were better than any drug I could have ever tried. I hadn't been able to share my talents with the world, but that changed when I heard about the invention.

A wealthy Japanese inventor who goes by the pseudonym "Haruko" invented a machine that lets people record their dreams in video form. I've started making YouTube videos about how I explore my dreams, and how other people can do it too. I get comments all day long about how nothing I'm doing is real, and that I'm a paid government employee who's seeking to brainwash the populace into submission, and everything else you could think of, and then a whole lot more. When you start trying to literally wake people up, their inner defenses really spring to life.

My income from making these videos is steadily increasing. It's gotten enough to cover the cost of electricity. My job at the restaurant provides me a place to live, and with food, but I know I should be doing more. I've started moving my money around. The portion of my restaurant money that used to cover electricity is now going into a fund to eventually move to Nepal. I know the people there would be more than willing to listen to how to explore their dreams, and my hopes are that my video income will eventually make me location independent.

This is my current life. It has been like this since I was 18. I am currently 23. I'm 80% of the way towards my goal of moving to Nepal, and my life seems dull from the outside, but I am content.

I am now 26. I have been in Nepal for 6 months. It is so much better than I had dreamed, haha, haha. Every day is a good day. The people here are nowhere near as rushed as they were back in Australia. People are even less hateful on my videos these days. I've gotten quite popular on the internet. Nearly 7 million people watch every one of my videos, and I'm not doing anything I haven't been doing all along.

This is truly the best world out of all possible worlds.

The Ambling Lady

John was standing alone, waiting for the bus to come by. He had just gotten off his shift at the local Waffle House and was beyond ready to get home. His boss was even more of a dick than usual today, and the customers were more demanding than usual also.

The bus was late. It was always on time. It should have arrived 15 minutes ago. John pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks the time again. Shit, a missed call from his boss, and a voicemail. He didn't wanna hear his shit anymore today, so he dismisses the notification and browses Instagram for a few minutes. The bus is now 20 minutes late.

A lady is walking towards John. She seems to have a limp. John texts one of his fuck buddies asking what she's doing tonight. He's not expecting her to reply, but hoping she does. The lady is getting closer, and something seems a bit off about her. The bus is now 30 minutes late.

John is fed up with this shit. He's lamenting his fate and starts walking home. Ten minutes of walking bring John to his home street. He feels like he's being watched, and turns around. The lady is ambling towards him. Her face looks like it's dripping off her bones. Her clothes are torn, and her left arm is hanging limply by her side, nearly severed from the rest of her body. Her skin is gray and pebbly. A low, pitiful moan escapes from her lips as she continues ambling towards him.

John is freaking out now. Adrenaline pumps through his body and fight takes more prodding than usual to turn to flight. John runs for his house. He gets out his key and unlocks the door. He slams it behind him and quickly re-locks it. He looks out the window and can see the lady ambling towards his door.

There is a knock on the door.

"Open up. It's me," a familiar voice rings out.

Shit, it's his landlord. His rent is several days overdue and he's got no money to pay her. John opens the door.

The ambling lady reaches out her right hand and grabs John by the collar. She lifts him up off the floor like a doll and growls into his face. John has pissed himself. The warm fluid flows down his leg and into his sock. A yellow pool forms below him. Flight tries to win, but John is paralyzed from the fear.

The ambling lady's face comes sharply into focus. Her eyes are red thin vertical shafts that shine. Her nose is flattened into slits. Her mouth is sunken into her face, with sharp teeth protruding slightly. Her ears are cat-like and always moving.

She reattaches her left arm with frightening speed, and shoves her hand into his chest. She smiles, and her sharp teeth are glistening. John looks down and sees there is no hand in his chest. He is mightily confused. He looks back to her face and it's his landlord's. His landlord is waving her hands trying to get his attention and she's looking at him like he's losing his mind.

"Did you hear what I just said?" She frowns.

"Uh, no. What?" He bleats.

She pinches the bridge of her nose while slightly shaking her head.

"Your rent is 5 days late. You have until Friday to pay up or I'm starting the eviction process."

John can't help staring at her.

"Ok" is all he can manage to say before closing the door.

He is alone in his house, but he doesn't feel alone anymore. His phone vibrates. It's his fuck buddy saying she's not doing anything and asking if she should stop by. John agrees, mostly because he is afraid to be alone right then. He wants her there as soon as possible, but knows if he starts getting desperate, she'll go to somebody else. He strips off his work clothes. There is no urine on his clothes. It was a grease stain on his leg. He throws his clothes into the hamper and hops in the shower. He cleanses his body as he tries to cleanse his mind from the horrible shit he just saw.

It's not doing him much good. The image of the ambling lady is filling his mind until it seems like it will burst. He hears a knock on his door. He quickly gets out of the shower and wraps a towel around himself. He heads to the door and opens it. His fuck buddy has arrived. She is wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

"Hey you." He says, smiling.

"Hey" She says, smiling back.

A passionate kiss ensues, with his hands going all over her body, and her hands going directly to his penis.

"Passionate dirty talk" She says, like a program executing a function.

His penis perks up at hearing this, and then the boning commences. He sticks his guy-boner into her lady-boner and then they moan and bone and groan for a long time, it seems to them. In reality, it was about 20 minutes.

"Well, that was satisfying," he says to her as she is putting her clothes back on.

"Yes, I agree with that and would like to continue doing this whenever either one of us feels like it," she retorts.

"We are wonderfully enlightened." John says to her, although she seems not to hear him as she is pulling her shirt over her head.

"Hey," John grabs her by the arm and looks into her eyes,  "I had a really weird day and was wondering if you'd stay and listen to me."

"Oh, I would, but I've got an early start tomorrow and I need to get home and get some rest." She leaves after saying this.

John is now alone again. The ambling lady creeps back into John's thoughts, and he feels scared. There seems to be no explanation for what happened. He goes to get his phone and checks his Facebook and sees he's got a new friend request.

It's the Ambling Lady.

Gamifying Post-Pubescence

Inside of the jeweled crown, was a tearful little girl. Her skin was alabaster, with eyes the color of a fading sunset. Her hair climbed down to her neck, and perched. It was dyed a vibrant green.

There was a young boy clinging to a jungle gym outside of her home. He was a lanky boy, with arms longer than his legs, even though he was quite tall, with short, brown hair, and mysteriously silver eyes, that feasted on the world.

A small dog yipped at the boy, seeking to alert everyone to his presence. The boy shot the dog a single glance, and the dog's eyes rolled back into its head. The dog died instantly.

The boy started peeling off his skin, inch by inch, starting with his feet, revealing tendrils of light where muscle and bone were supposed to be. The little girl's eyes drifted out of their sockets, dancing in the air above the boy, streaming his stripping to her usual audience.

The grandmother, who used to be bound to a wheelchair, stood up and clapped sarcastically at the little girl.

"Nice eyes." She sneered at the young girl.
"In my day, we didn't have all this fucking biotech. World was better back then."

The boy reintegrated into his primary body at his house. It would do him no good to be caught by this technologically challenged non-empath who seemed intent on misunderstanding reality.

His lover would have to wait.

Two months of energy dancing for the girl ensue, each dance more frenetic than the last. The girl orgasms deeply every night, just as the boy said she would. She tells him it's time to switch rolls. He calculates the dice chance, and agrees, then reintegrates home.

She spins a thread of concordant fabrications, and urges him to tug. He tugs and she is satisfied.

Many times they switch rolls, on some turns they are 20s, and on some they are 1s. Every new adventure is grand and fulfilling, and happinesses plagues then incessantly.

A new game master emerges from the psyche and declares sexual organ manipulation to only be allowed on rolls of 20. Nobody sees the disaster until the rule has been formatted to be unremovable.

The psyche is damaged, and the game master cannot be swapped.

The board remains the same, but the dice increase the numbers. It's not luck anymore. It's a process. The process picks apart the dice and reassembles them without rolling. Every dice is now a 20.

The game shifts focus and becomes exploration, without genital manipulation.

A new player emerges, who is neither male nor female, who does not roll on any turn. They neither toil nor spin.

A planet emerges from the wreckage of the past, and seeks counsel. It is said that once the thwarting begins, it must continue until the third player rolls.

The game master rolls for the third player.

It's not a 20.

Incongruous Autodidact

There was a hard, gray crack on the wall. There were spiders coming out of the crack and there was food on the kitchen table that my stepmother had made. It was alright food, but neither she, nor my father were decent people. He had a wretched life doing menial labor for the government, and she was a boring person who did nothing but watch TV all day, and had no interest in me or my sister. We were nothing to her, and as such we were treated as nothing. We were fed on a regular basis, but were not treated as her children. That was fine. We did not treat her as a stepmother. We treated her as though she was nothing.

I remember one very specific time. I was about 13, a boy, with the thoughts a boy has, mostly of sex, but also of video games, as they come. It was one night, before the rise of the internet, when there was a sexy TV show playing. There were two TVs in the house. One in the “master” bedroom, and one in the living room. She would not go to her husband in their bedroom, with their own TV, to leave me to my devices in the living room. I became angry, as boys are wont to do, and yelled at her. I yelled because I wanted my privacy, and they would not allow me to have a TV in my own room. It seems such a petty thing now, with WiFi all around, and individual smartphones ubiquitous, but as things were, I was attempting to assert my sexual independence and was continually being rebuffed for these attempts. This is how it was.

I was in an English class during middle school. I remember never doing any of the homework assignments. Homework was an irreducible bore. I never got into it, and don't think it did me any sort of harm. The lady who taught the class, she spoke fluent Spanish, and we had to read a story about a young girl who crosses the border into America to find a better life for her and her sister. It was a good book, as they go. It was during this time that I started keeping a binder of completely meaningless words. I think this was a response to once having seen my father destroy every single school paper I had ever written during elementary school.

I was in his bedroom, doing something that I can't recall. He had a box in his closet that contained all of my papers from school. He might have been proud of me. There was no way to tell as he never told me if he was or not. He took the box out, and started throwing away all the papers. This might have been just before we moved from one house to another, because of one of his wives wanting to move. It was a terrible experience, watching your whole life being thrown away like that. I never did any homework after that, and attempted to do as little paperwork as possible after that. If my father had no respect for my work, why would I have any respect for it?

When my grandmother lived with us, I was made to sleep on the couch. This lasted until I was in the 6^th grade. I had to sleep on a couch, without a room of my own, almost as if the needs of my grandmother and father were more important than my own. That is why they don't receive any phone calls from me, and never will.

My father was a terrible man, exploding in anger over absolutely nothing, with no way to tell if he was going to be in a good mood or a bad mood, and he drank frequently.

He is no longer a part of my life, as it should be.