David Kiss

Neil.

I had a dream last night in which I was having a conversation with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Some hot girl was hanging out with us, and I was pretty sure I was gonna fuck her. Then some guy started hanging out near us and started cockblocking me. Eventually he started making out with the girl, while Neil and I continued talking. Then the dude started trying to irritate me, which worked when he started putting food on my face. At this point, I got up, grabbed the guy by the throat, and punched him in his stupid fucking face. Everyone in the room was suddenly silent; staring in shock at what just happened, while I started to nonchalantly float up to another floor (this was a huge room).

Later, I found Neil again, laying on what appeared to be a massage bed. I tried to continue our conversation, but he was very disappointed in me, and only kept rebuking me. Everything’s hazy after that.

Fin.

4 months ago | Tags: Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Sleep

I dream. I dream lucidly. I have dreamed for millennia. But I am not alone. Millions of other human beings are also in the QW, dreaming collectively. We have not awoken in thousands of years. We have not eaten, bred, or moved in thousands of years. Robots keep us safe; we joke that we are living in a scifi story. The planet has probably been overrun by nature. I say probably because there is no way for us to know for sure. Life forms that previously were in danger of extinction because of our gross negligence have probably rallied and their populations have hopefully recovered. The planet can take care of itself, as it always has.

We did this collectively, after end of the Information Wars. Wars were ostensibly something that had been left behind in the early 21st century, but no, for in the final pangs of the Information Revolution, humanity immolated itself apart in its quest for power. Under the guise of self-protection, governments sought to control, censor the Internet and the flow of information. We resisted. Billions died.

Evolved human beings among us have always known that knowledge is power. This is an idea that is found in many books and writings of (the known) human history. Whoever controlled the flow of information, the fountain of knowledge, would preside over this ultimate power. We hoped that humankind could collectively control it, thereby ensuring no control, no censorship. Unfortunately, humanity erred, and continued to endanger itself, the planet, its inhabitants, even the local solar system in its greed and quest for power. We fought with them for control, and eventually realized that their brutal violence would have to be answered in kind. The majority of the populace was indifferent, having been eased into a culture of mediocrity, conformation and stupidity. They were The Angry Mob, easily riled, controlled, distracted, and sadly, easily dispatched. They died as pawns, sometimes by those in control, sometimes by us.

Many of us died as well, hunted and brutally murdered by oppressive regimes; they died as martyrs for the cause of knowledge. Others committed suicide, having given in to despair, driven mad by the enormity of our task to save humanity from itself, preaching that we were just a small minority, that we were too smart and self-aware for our own good. How could we prevail?

But we did indeed prevail, we, the mature little brothers and sisters of humanity, we, who declined to breed recklessly, deplete Earth’s natural resources or kill each other over trifling religious disagreements; no, we accepted the tough consequences of the actions of our ancestors and the yoke of responsibility.

We won because change is an inevitable fact of evolution. The entire struggle was a consummation of natural evolution and reason, and the irony that our opponents did not believe in change or evolution was not lost upon us. So we triumphed, albeit through enormous sacrifice. We murdered our brethren. We destroyed cities. We even poisoned parts of our planet.

We had to, for we saw the big picture.

We re-built. We vowed never to allow greed, power and bureaucracy enslave us again. We now had incorruptible robots that would deal with the administrative tasks involved with governing, supervising, and operating our new utopian society. We built new, sustainable cities, powered by old technologies that humanity had contemptuously ignored in favor of fossil fuels. We marveled at our achievements.

We were at peace. But we knew that there was no way this could continue. Power belonged to all of us, but power corrupts. We were still mortal, and very fearful that our way of life would be perverted by our descendants, for history has always repeated itself.

So we went to sleep. Chemically and biologically frozen, our Shells sleep fitfully while our brains live, dream and interface with each other through the QW, the Quiescence Web, an Internet created for and by us. We sleep, hoping that either we will figure out the answers ourselves or that travelers from distant systems will find Earth, awaken us with their cures for mortality, disease, and inherent stupidity. Perhaps we will be awoken by a descendant of our beloved dolphins, some evolved sentient spider or a cold reptilian intelligence. Perhaps it will be a distant mischievous relative of the octopus. Perhaps we will be welcomed back. Perhaps we will be judged and deemed evil. We entertain many possibilities.

There is no way to communicate outside of the QW. We cannot communicate with the robots that care for our Shells and cities. They keep us alive and asleep. We know that they have thus been successful, as none of us have suddenly disappeared off of the QW, although we know that there is a strong possibility that an earthquake or some other natural disaster could wipe some of us out. Or perhaps some of our Shell-support systems will fail. This is the gamble we accepted to repent for our sins to Earth.

We spend the millennia digesting and organizing all the data that was gathered and backed up by humanity since the beginning of time. We live in what is essentially a vast, virtual library. We continue to create art and music, for we are still human, are we not? We play, we fight, we “live”. Our imaginations are boundless. We never cease to be entertained by each others games and hallucinations. Even though we are a collective, we are all still individuals and we all have the ability to not share our thoughts with each other, for privacy and anonymity is a human right and privilege.

Some of us have Unplugged, fearful of being driven mad by the millennia, the claustrophobia of Quiescence. They are missed, but their consciousnesses are still preserved and backed up, ready for the awakening, the Techiyas HaMai’sim. They are in a sort of double Quiescence, and we wonder if they dream. We wonder if they dream and if they do, do they dream the way human beings used to dream, without lucidity, without knowing that they are dreaming? We love the Unplugged, for they have taken a deeper plunge than us to preserve their humanity. They remind us that we are still human, and that we love ourselves. For we always need to be different from each other, and we always find something to wonder about.

4 months ago | Tags: scifi shortstory writing

Hey, idiot drunk tourist females: Stop it. Also, LEARN HOW THE TAXI LIGHTS WORK #nyc

4 months ago |

RT @YanerisM: Enjoy the original english version interview with @LukaSonOfWolf mentions to @ShaveUrLegz http://t.co/XcDAsBYt

5 months ago |