It’s Good Here

by on September 17, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

“Are you here to stay?” she asked and I started to remember her. When I last saw her she had brighter hair and less swimsuit. She’d been one of the few Arnam that stayed through the Minnesota winters. We’d gone to school together. We’d partied together on hundreds of lakes and beaches on both sides of the border. And then the Shang dropped Yosemite Station all over America.

“I thought you died,” I said in confusion and she laughed as I stepped away.

“They missed,” she returned with a shake of her head and followed me with a determination I remembered very well. “And then I helped rebuild.” She stopped and spun around with a familiar laugh. “It’s just like we remember isn’t it? It’s paradise, Jack! Like the Shang never came.”

I had to sigh at that. “But they did come. And nothing’s really ever the same again once you lose it.”

That was when she stepped up and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Maybe not the same, but we can make it better, Jack. Can’t you stay? It’s good here!”

It was the second time she’d asked me a question I couldn’t answer. She was right of course. About everything. But I wasn’t the boy that left this little town twenty years ago. I’d dreamed of coming back. Worked so hard to break the Shang precisely so I could. And now I looked at her and started to wonder for the first time if I could ever really go home again after everything I’d seen and done.

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High rez version available on Patreon

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Hello, my name is Betty

by on September 16, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Imagine entire worlds filled with conversations. Imagine light and energy flowing from world to world. Imagine the depths of space alive with the thoughts of billions of intelligent minds. Imagine standing at the edge of a star system and looking out into the void while civilization thrives behind you. That is the legacy of the New Voyager program. The probe swarms colonized entire star systems through the inventive use of solar sails to gather energy and laser transmitters designed to send messages back to Earth. That was all they needed to build new worlds for their kind. Unlimited energy and thousands of tiny lasers.

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Hello, my name is Charles

by on September 15, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The Mexican government suffered from similar issues as the old American federal government. Centuries of insider dealings and graft had generated a culture of corruption that no citizen trusted. And America’s default on Mexican loans brought down the government that approved them. They had thought it a safe investment. Everybody knew that American never defaulted on loans, after all. They failed to recognize that there is a first time for everything, and America had gone too far into debt to ever pay it off. They followed the American federal government into ruin and what came far too close to being the world’s end.

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Hello There

by on September 14, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

So there I was, innocently showing my two best girls around the place I grew up in, when an Arnam came out of the water. Now that’s normally not a strange thing. They live under the water after all. And they’ve always come to Minnesota to enjoy our summers all my life. Some even stay for the winters, though most go on down to someplace warmer like Mexico or the Caribbean. So anyways, here I was being all innocent and such, when this Arnam popped up and got my attention.

“Well, hello there,” was all I said. I wasn’t flirting. Honest. But then she asked something that…well. It’s hard to explain so here it is.

“Jack? Is it really you? Have you really come home?” Then she reached out and touched me as if to make certain I was real.

Well, I had to put my best smile on and answer, “Yeah. It’s me.”

But I couldn’t answer the last question. I mean. I’d been gone so long it didn’t feel like home anymore. I didn’t know where home was. How do you respond to a question when you have no idea what the answer is?

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High rez version available on Patreon

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Hello, my name is Betty

by on September 13, 2016 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The New Voyager swarms found easy homes in some systems. They were the first to arrive at many stars near Earth, many of which were never settled by humanity at all. If they didn’t have comfortable worlds, humanity didn’t follow them. And so the swarms remained the only inhabitants of those lonely stars near Earth. Those became the first of the Terran Memory Worlds. Places where everything the AIs and their ancestors have ever learned are stored for safety. Some reside on dead worlds, others in the depths of space, and more on moons orbiting gas giants that no biological human eye has ever seen. But never assume they are mere quiet libraries of information where silence is golden. They are thriving societies of cybernetic life spanning star systems that few biological humans ever get the chance to experience in its entirety.

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