#writing #fiction #unfinished
A Collection of Stories I'll likely Never Finish
Note 02/26/2026: Below you’ll find a bunch of stories I wrote that I never finished. I had a tendency to write these beginnings, sometimes a page, sometimes ten, before I would give up at the prospect of actually finishing something. If I can remember anything about these stories more specifically, I’ll list it below. Of course, read at your discretion.
Table of contents
Dec 6th, 2021, Mutant Shakespeare
Note 02/26/2026: I was learning about Shakespeare, if you couldn’t tell. Somewhere there is actually more to this story. I had this whole plot laid out about these people living in a walled city in a sort of utopia setting. Outside the walls were these mutant people’s who desparately wanted to be let in. The story would’ve covered the goals of the mutant beings against the ‘pure’ humans, and showed how they were closer in some ways than they imagined, but much further in some respects.
Act I Scene 1
Subject 1: Ayy, mark thee, who finds himself upon my domain, it itself upon his majesty. A good day it is.
[Subject 2 Enters]
Subject 2: Ayy, thou harvest marked
Subject 1: Who goes there?
Subject 2:Don’t fret, for it’s me. Marry ye well.
Subject 1: Aye, what say you?
Subject 2:Nothing in jest, although in ability I warrant.
Subject 1: Fie! For jest you must! In this holy land we must all exercise our turmoil aplenty.
Subject 2: I agree.
Subject 1: What of the lusus? Those knaves, without purpose nor extension of labor to good.
Subject 2: Still out, one needn’t beseech.
Subject 1: Nay, mark thou. For the monarch sits there upon his throne. Yet his focus turns a magnet to the pole of his concubines, nay the window where the lusus realm. I do so in jest, so the wind may hide my prints, but I struggle to say the monarch cares not to protect us.
Subject 2: And of the Lusus? They exist in contemplation, marry this, but who says they push rocks?
Subject 1: Say thou finds one outside the walls? Would thou not bang and dance against that which they were thrown? Or would they enter the cold as the first cain?
Subject 2: I suppose the first.
Subject 1: Aye.
Subject 2: The kingdom saves us, a shining beacon to light us all. Its works when viewed, yet seems to blind us. Does there sit any hope from a dimming or passage to ascension?
Subject 1:Aye, thought well. The monarch exists a child. Carrying in name and shape by thee companion o’ lesser.
Subject 2: Does thou see hope? Subject 1: As much as the animal did in its unthinking actions.
Subject 2: Yet much like the animal, understanding only a fraction.
[They Exit]
Act 1 Scene 2:
King: I sit here upon my throne, yet like a beggar on a mat I look into my kingdom. For those that have requirements upon them, do they really bare power of any but in name? The beggar, though unfed, moves swiftly through the streets. Yet I, most gracious above all, sit in bedded chariots, hidden from its caged appearance. Aye, privy, for the people to find banners in the street, nay forks of blood. For outside these walls sits forsooth ones over blades true.
[walk over to window] Besides all that wordplay, time or otherwise waiting does so bring the ground up against, scraping my cheek to reveal purpose, even if it is only so to push against this rock, not even just to rule. But alas! It is mine job, as though I was Ismael or Solomon, to bear the weight of thine holy city as if it were not mine own, but me in it as well. Protect it, mind you, from all those scoundrels who would bring bedlam upon us like a stormy cloud. So as Moses parted the sea, I shall part the sky to heaven! As though this were it.
[Enter the Infidel, wife of the king]
Infidel: Doth you engage in frivolous conversation once again? My lord?
King: I say, maybe to you or rather to my perceptions of operating the kingdom, such spellings seem but wasted breath. Rest assured, for in your blindness err misunderstand, of which is hopefully the former, I find it purposeful. For why else does the shepherd whistle? Even when such breath is wasted into frost in the mountain air?
Infidel: I know not of what is proclaimed, and as such hope is given to me in part to your abstruse position. Hopefully yet teachings or idle meddling around shall allow me to understand, only then shall we find if these words are worthwhile.
King: Oh? And you proclaim a reason for such?
Infidel: I do! In jest! For you have bore me and you a child, pure hope for all to the continuation of not just the city, but purity of it in this. Certainly it shall trickle down, as though water on a pyramid, with gravity assured as the heart of our freedom and strength.
King: Tis right or wrong?
Infidel: it be a male, rightful heir.
King: Celebrations, to all that is holy and pure! Let us commence!
[They exit]
Act 1: Scene 3:
Feb 10th, 2022 Apocalypse?
Note 02/26/2026: I don’t remember this one honestly.
It wasn’t long until she felt the terrors, same as the night before. Thre was something about them that caused their recurrence, day after day. Maybe it was the heat that she felt. Her cot sat in a tent along with 30 others like her, all filling the air with their sweat, tears, screams; their entropy. Filling the air and clinning to the walls and floors, till it burst out from the seams. Her environment now, despite their assurances, were similar to the ones in her previous confinement. At least here the people could scream, they weren’t yet weak enough to preserve their strength. She toiled under her blanket, lined in an uneasy sweat, her past visitations snuck deeper into her mind, like a snake in the grass. It slithered through the cracks in her vision, settled in the blindspots, and took hold, then slowly growing till it blotted out all else in indifferent fashion. She was reminded of the dirty mattress which lay on the floor. How she fought a dying man for a pale of dusty water, so she might die a little longer, and him to die a little less. She remembered the memories she had tried to push down into the deepest parts of her mind. Yet the harder she pushed the more it disobeyed. The more she focused on forgetting the more she remembered in general. The guards, in a cruel act of duplicitous benevolence traded her decency for life. So her body might live a little longer than the rest. She had tried to rationalize it, how so terrible the situation was, and how it was right to act so terribly. Maybe, when things weren’t so bad, and the situation were better, so would her thoughts be cleansed by betterment. Yet, here in her dreams, she remembered how corruption conquers all, and how corrupt people can be.
She woke from her sleep, just as tired as before. She wondered if sleep was even necessary. At least awake she could control the direction of her thoughts. The others around her had woken earlier and had already begun their day. The cots and sleeping spots remained empty, and the room was vacant save for those too frail to walk, who eyed her warily. All was silent except the flap of canvas and an occasional cough. She pushed aside a piece of canvas and waited a moment to acclimate to both the light and heat. The air was just as scorched as inside the tent, yet free of the communal moisture, instead replaced by a dead dryness, of which she sucked in and heaved out. She blocked the sun from her view with her hand, yet as her eyes adjusted she opted for no more protection than a squint. Would keep the sand out of her eyes, too. She thought.
Outside the tent she found herself surrounded by an array of identical tents, equally bleached and faded by sun and sand respectfully. From inside the tents filed out similar vagrants. They moved between the rows and columns, weaving like water around slabs of stone to the far side of the camp to the pits, where they would collect their rations, enough to keep them alive a little longer. If viewed from above, one might compare them to ants, yet they gave it away in that they lacked both purpose and grace. In their exodus they dragged their broken feet across the floor, kicking up dust as they milled about. Some talked quietly to one another, but for the most part there was nothing to talk about. Along the edge was the fence-wall. It was a large fence, around ten feet tall, making a perimeter around the edges of the entire inner-camp. It was mostly chainmail, but was welded together with scrap where weakness presented itself. The fence was patrolled by armed men. They had word boards and hodge podge bats and batons, some even with the occasional firearm, even though everyone knew they weren’t loaded. Bullets were a rare commodity in this world, yet a symbol of death was all the same. Where people once feared the gun for its arcane bang, they now feared it for, same as the board, a crack to the skull or rib.
Despite it all and for what it might appear, the people occupying these camps weren’t prisoners. The camp was a refugee camp. It was a place for those to go who had nowhere else to go. People deciding to stay would be provided a place of shelter from the scorching sun and the dust storms, which blew with enough force to scrape skin from bone upon minimal exposure.
Jan 30, 2021, My Magnum Opus
Note 02/26/2026: This story is interesting actually. I had this idea since I was maybe 16 that—after seeing all life had to offer—I would know enough to write this ‘Magnum Opus’ piece à la Dante’s Inferno, where the main character travels through a collection of places accompanied by a guide, and in each one he would be shown a certain way of living life.
I remember I had an idea for a city built upon Math and logic, and its inhabitants worshipped a central computer that simply computed prime numbers of an ever larger and larger degree. They had speculative gambles, businesses, and rituals set up around the arrival of a new prime number, and it’s funny because in real life Prime numbers are actually somewhat important to the modern world, in realms like cryptography. There was also a city built on the concept of gambling and hedonism itself. I remember thinking I was awfully clever, that someone could embrace their mortality and exposure to random chance by revolving their life around it, and in someway transcending it by viewing it with radical transparency.
Eventually the protagonist would decide that there was no perfect world, and that he ought to settle in the town that brought him the most practical lifestyle. Additionally, for what was written, the entire introduction is meant to be a metaphor for birth.
The introduction written here I have reused too. If I find it i’ll post it, but the phrase, “A man awoke shrouded in darkness” has definitely popped up later on in my writing.
A man awoke shrouded in darkness. He gasped at the cold air around him, hurting his throat as he inhaled and exhaled. After some time his breathing normalized, and he began to take in his surroundings. The area around him was completely dark. Not night time dark, no, for he couldn’t see any stars. It was just pitch black in every direction. If there were any walls or ceiling, they were several feet from him at least. He moved his hands down to feel the floor around him, and he felt the stitching of some sort of material. After running his hand along it he found it was a mattress, albeit terribly made, but he wasn’t exactly in the position to go questioning the quality of furniture. He found the edge where the mattress ended, and where cold concrete flooring began. It was immaculately clean, but not exactly sterile.
After a while his eyes grew used to the darkness and he could see the mattress he was sitting on and some of his body. He appeared to be wearing a blue jumpsuit of some kind, like a prisoner’s outfit. He had all kinds of speculations as to why he was here, and it seemed the more he found out the more confused he became. Even given his newfound night vision, he could not see beyond the mattress or his body. The concrete flooring stretched on into the calling abyss in every direction, and yet he felt no beacon of light amongst the mattress. He rose from the mattress, his bones cracking and legs faltering due to disuse, but eventually he stood up with a wobbly excuse for balance. He chose a direction at random, and walked away from the mattress.
He walked for some time, figuring he would eventually bump his head into a wall or something, but no wall seemed to come. “It was a big room,” he thought. After about 10 minutes, give or take, because he didn’t know the time for certain, he decided he was better off going back to the mattress where he had come from. He clearly was in some kind of cave or something, and walking away from his one landmark only served to get him lost;well, more lost than he already was.
He walked back in the direction he had come from, but as he walked he felt paranoia begin to manipulate his mind. “Is this the way you came?” “How do you know you didn’t pass it yet?” He gave no witness to these intrusive thoughts, but as the time drew on and no mattress was in sight, he found potential truth in these ideas.
Another ten minutes of fruitless walking and he finally gave up. He collapsed onto the floor, the cold from concrete seeping through his pants and intertwining with his bones, causing his hairs to raise on end. He longed for some difference among the floor, some crack or cut, but he only found a smooth plane of concrete, with shadows around him on all sides.
He cried out, in a futile hope to hear someone else, but not even his echo returned; travelling onwards to a place he could not achieve. He curled himself into a fetal position on the floor, but the darkness still surrounded him on all sides, hitting him like the uniform pressure of water in the deep sea from all sides. He found no comfort among the floor either, but eventually he succumbed to his exhaustion.
The man awoke the next day. It was still dark, so it wasn’t the next day, but he figured he slept for a length that he would’ve normally to pass into the next day. Besides, in a world where units of measurement had no actual context, he had to find certainty somewhere. He dreamed of sweet pleasantries, things that comforted him, but his blissful intoxication was turned to hangover upon opening his eyes once again to the eternal black. His nightmare from before was a reality, he was still trapped in this strange place. His mind began to fill with paranoia, but he stopped himself. “No,” he thought. “This place will not conquer me”. He stood up from the floor, and considered his options:He could sit here and probably die from hypothermia or starvation, whichever took death’s fancy, or he could walk, in the hopes that he might come across something else. It was a small chance considering his walk from yesterday, but it was his only chance. With that he gathered his mind in the absence of a camp to pack up, and made his way into a seemingly random direction.
The physical realm of his situation did not seem to change much as he walked along, the uniform crunch of whatever sand or gravel below him seemed to place itself into his mind as a normalcy, tuning the rhythm of his footsteps to the gain’s of his travels. In his mind though, things were changing. His paranoia from before seemed to quell, and he didn’t seem to mind his situation. He realized the floor he walked upon hadn’t been made of this sandy substance, and that it was more of a concrete before. He hadn’t noticed when this had changed, but he figured that must mean he was making some sort of progress, which enlightened his spirits. The sky seemed to be getting brighter too, or maybe his eyes were just adjusting to the dark. He walked onwards for a while, falling into a sort of trance, with the perceptions of time being the first thing to go. He didn’t remember how long he had been walking before the trance was broken and he came across a large mound, partially swallowed up by the sand, with fine sprinklings layered on top like a powdered donut. Crows, or some sort of birds, were circling overhead, which gave the man a sense of dread, for he had only seen the absence of life so far, but this was new, for this was explicit death. He drew closer to the mound, walking very slow as to damper his footsteps and savor the encounter. He didn’t know how long it would be till he would find anything in this barren limboland, so he ought to make this one count. The crows squawked at him from overhead, evidently angry at stealing their apparent meal, but they were outmatched by his size, and they flew off in some unknown direction, restoring the land to a silence, besides a few angry echoes. The mound was not a mound as he more clearly suspected, but a carcass of sorts. It was bigger than a human, about the size of a cow, with large blood stained bones jutting out from a raggedy leather cloth with holes all over it. He tried to remove the cloth to get a better look, but it stuck to the bones from the dried blood, and he realized this was the pelt of the animal, not some common decency of a traveler attempting to give a corpse some privy. The pelt was long tanned by a non-existent sun, with any hair that may have existed long grinded down by the sand and carried away by the wind. All meat inside the animal was picked over by crows or something else, with all that’s left being the desiccated hide and a few cracked bones hinting at the original shape of this beast. From the look of what remained of the ribs, it had died lying on it’s side, clearly from exhaustion.The man gulped at what this could mean for his further travels. It seemed to walk on four legs, and it did indeed look much like a cow.
There wasn’t much he could do now, but he figured he ought to make the most of this body. He reached into the body and ripped off one of the ribs, which more or less crumbled at the root of the spin. The rib itself though was solid, and the end of it had been grinded down to a fine point which would be good for defense, if it came to. He also reached in and grabbed hold of the pelt of the beast and tried to yank it off. The blood held it to the bones stronger than he had realized, like the beast was still fighting for what was his long after death. He put his foot against the ribs and kicked it, finally freeing the pelt but taking some of the bones with it, still stuck to the pelt. He scraped them off with his salvaged rib. The hide was in immaculate condition, with a few holes and tiny bone bits dried in blood dotting the inside. The sand had done nothing but clean the hide for him, which made him think if it survived this long, it would make a great shield from the elements. He donned the hide, which covered his body nicely with only a few holes, and made his way in the direction he thought the crows had flown. He remembered the stories about how sailors would see birds on their voyages, and that meant land was nearby, and they would follow them. He failed to see the differences in his situation, and with no immediate alternatives, he set off.
As the man walked his confidence grew. He noticed a change in the landscape. It started slow, with slight variations in the height of the sand, which at first he chalked up to imperceptions of the hallucinating mind, but as the variations became more noticeable, and these variations became hills, he became overjoyed. Maybe soon later he would encounter dunes. The sand itself began to change too. Before he walked on a fine sand, he now noticed the rocks getting larger, with some of them getting as big as his fist. He felt stupid for finding joy in something as small as a rock, but he figured he should find joy in a world he considered previously joyless, much how the empty world he found himself started to grow context. He even noticed a tree in the distance, of which he immediately ran towards. Upon closer inspection it appeared to be dead and had been that way for quite a while, but it was a tree nonetheless. He would pick up every stone he came across, admiring its size and beauty, and he would stop and admire the hills of sand, considering the rare nature of these objects. Eventually though, they became commonplace like the flat sand had before, and he passed them without a glance, hoping for something greater and more substantial.
Jan 8, 2022, The Other Side
Note 02/26/2026: This story was interesting. I remember reading about a procedure called a Corpus Callosotomy, where the hemispheres of the brain are partially disconnected (the corpus callosum is severed) so that epileptic activity can’t spread across the two halves of the brain. This procedure seems extreme, but surprisingly individuals can go on to live normal lives after undergoing them. Additionally, the procedure is usually attempted only for highly severe cases of epilepsy, which show resistance to other methods of treatment.
What is more interesting is the psychology of real individuals with split brains. It’s a fascinating topic to dig into. (See Alien Hand Syndrome) To put it simply, the hemispheres here continue to work as normal—one controlling an arm, the other a leg—but do not communicate with each other. In some cases, they can be seen to disagree with each other. A hand might reach for something without conscious regard on behalf of the operator. In some cases the individual might have to restrain their own body part from doing something ‘against’ their own desire!
There is also the Hemispherectomy, which includes the functional or anatomical disconnection of hemispheres in the brain, usually but not always for the purpose of treating severe epilepsy. In this case, where hemispheres of the brain are fully removed, the remaining hemispheres take over the function of the ones missing. This is often most successful in young children, where neuroplasticiy is most effective. In this case, a girl had half her brain removed and regained significant function. And yet if you looked in her head, there would only be half a brain. How neat! This is neuroplasticity pushed perhaps to its fullest effect.
The following story was to be a combination of all these concepts. It would follow a character undergoing a hemispherectomy, which I called a ‘Scindo Procedure’, for the treatment of severe seizures. He would then grow up to be a normal boy in the contemporary age: going to school, navigating life, beginning to experience romance. Then bam! Some accident or another would occur, and the perspective would flip to the other hemisphere of his brain, the one that had been “deactivated”. All this time, while the boy recovered, so too had the other hemisphere. Only it had been put into dormancy, delegated to watching itself grow and interact, unaware that it itself was not in control.
With this flip, it would realize that it had been robbed of agency, and that given a specific trigger (I don’t remember what it was, maybe a flash of light or certain phrase), it would be trapped again, stripped of control.
The story would then follow the boy and his ‘alter’. The alter would ‘impersonate’ the boy and mess with his life: commit illegal activities, break friendships, etc, and the boy would awake to suffer the consequences of ‘his’ actions, unaware of how they happened.
I think the premise is quite cool, and honestly its probably been done before. I didn’t get very far, but below is the introduction to that idea.
Tonight on The Morning Hour we’ll be having Dr. Dale Earnhardht on from GeorgeTown University, here to talk to us about something that a lot of us, most likely, assumed to be science fiction. He and his team of researchers have pioneered a revolutionary medical technique involving the removal of a hemisphere of the brain to combat seizures in certain individuals. Tell us about the procedure Dr. Earnhardt.
Thank you. Now this procedure, called the “Scindo Procedure” involves the separation of certain portions of the brain affected by seizures of a dangerous and potentially… lethal nature. This allows the portions of the brain not affected by the seizure to remain in the brain and take over the normal function of the removed sections.
While I’m sure many of our viewers are familiar with what a seizure is, they might not understand the specifics of it. What exactly is a seizure?
Hmm. A seizure is where the brain cells, or neurons, have violent little bursts of activity all throughout the brain. All the brain functions are run off these electro-stimulations, so when the activity is abnormal, you get a seizure.
Do you see seizures in varying places of the brain or usually one area. It tends to vary from patient to patient. Some tend to have seizures in specific areas, while some can have larger seizures that “jump” from place to place.
How many surgeries have you performed so far?
Not all seizures are made equal, might I add, so there aren’t a lot of people that we can give this surgery to. Most of our patients have what is called “Encephalitis”, or “Rasmussen’s Encephalitis” to be more specific, which only targets one side of the brain, if not with extreme detriment. With that being said, me and my team have performed over 250 Scindo Procedures.
Are there any other specialists adopting these procedures in the world?
It’s hard to say, as it’s such a new procedure. We know so little about the human brain and how it works, that something like this which seems so “brutish” will take some time to fall into regular adoption. It’s still very much in the early phases of adoption… There is word of a Russian doctor performing similar techniques on Alzheimer’s patients, but I’m not totally sure about that so don’t quote me.
Okay, what qualifies, exactly, someone for this procedure? Could anyone with seizures undergo this procedure?
Most seizures tend to “hop” around the brain in little bursts of neuron activity. This chaotic factor of them is what makes them so deadly. They might cause abnormal activity in the left arm, causing it to violently shake, while also causing loss of consciousness somewhere else in the brain. To sum it up, they don’t tend to limit themselves to one area of the brain. For this procedure, and for those who undertake it, their seizures usually have significantly detrimental effects, but are usually stuck to one area or hemisphere, allowing us to know what to remove. Most people with seizures wouldn’t see the benefits from any removal of their brain. There is also, of course, an added risk in having only half of the brain operational. These patients see increased risk if they have neurological issues in the future, making it somewhat of a last resort treatment, ‘specially in cases where anti-seizure medication was ineffective.
I’m assuming this leads to such a low count in procedures undertaken?
Indeed, with the added caveat that this is very much experimental and that discourages people from seeking it out. There is, of course, also the matter of plasticity.
Plasticity, what is that?
Plasticity, or rather, neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to essentially, modify or adapt to its surroundings.
Fascinating.
So when we remove parts of the brain or sever the connections, the working side of the brain takes over the function of the other side. The frontal lobe, for example, would adapt to work both eyes in one hemisphere. If the left hemisphere is removed, the Broca’s area, located on the left side, which is responsible for language and comprehension, will adapt to the right side in some other area, at no hindrance to the patient.
Amazing! Is there a difference in whatever side is removed?
Even though the brain specializes tasks to certain areas of the brain, the other side usually adapts quite well. There is a theory that this is due to the brain adapting some tasks already due to seizure damage, but this is unproven as of yet. The overall adaptability is based on the neuroplasticity of the individual patient, which is usually based on age. A young child would have a much higher chance of success than an adult.
What are the ages of most of your patients?
While I can’t answer that directly, I will say we prefer to operate on children due to the increased success. We will do adults as well when the quality of life without the operation severely outweighs the negatives of an operation so late in life anyways. These people are usually severely disabled anyways though. In over 175 of the successful surgeries we have seen near full regeneration of cognitive ability from both sides of the brain.
In the operation is it preferable to remove the left over the right for patient success?
We don’t usually get to decide which hemisphere to sever, it is based on which area contains the seizures. If we find excess or abnormal neuron activity in the right, this is usually indicative of a seizure prone area, and it will be removed.
Is there danger in removing the wrong side?
That is actually a very real possibility, but we run multiple tests both during and before the operation to determine seizure activity.
… What percent of error have you had? I can imagine with the nature of the procedure it is quite dangerous.
You would think that, and originally both me and my team were worried about the same. But due to special precautions and the fact that only a small group of people is eligible for the procedure at the moment the rate of error is next to zero. It should also be stated that we have had no failed surgeries, and in patients where we remove the seizure prone area, ninety percent of patients saw a complete loss of seizures.
That is incredible.
It is certainly a marvel of both human ingenuity, and the resilience of the human mind.
Well thank you for coming on Dr. Earnhardt, it has been a pleasure to have you on the show.
Thank you as well.
The Other Side
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once said, “The little things are infinitely the most important”. I read that once in a book which happened to leap across my gaze. I don’t remember a lot from that book. Well, I remember some things. I remember how it felt, the glossed pages and how they stuck to my sweat. I remember hearing myself whisper the words, speaking in tones from a page left too fast. I remember licking my finger to turn the page, I must’ve seen it in a movie once. I remember how the pages felt against my finger tips, how the paper edge jumped across the little grooves on my skin.
I don’t know why I recall this tidbit of information. I don’t even know who Arthur Conan Doyle is. When all one can do is watch, sweet information rots sweetly, and so the mind disregards indifferently. For a whole book of information all I remember is those thoughts which intrude, which assault the whole body. The sweat that lingers, the tongue sitting inside the mouth, the clothes which cling to my all too motionless vessel, of which I am but a passenger, like a former captain mutinied by his crew, forced below deck to watch his pride yet sail. Yet, I remember this quote. In all those pages this quote stands unabashed by blurred indifference. It was fished out by mere chance, “The little things are infinitely the most important”. Little things. All my mind is little things. The little feelings, senses, etcetera, all piled up like a Goliath. I wonder what it must be like to compel someone to feel such a way, that they can pray for the little things. It could only be someone so overwhelmed by the big things; Impossible for someone to comprehend that remains stuck in a cage. Like Plato’s prisoner aware of the sun. For this, I both admire and envy Doyle, whoever he is.
When I found I couldn’t affect those things outside of me, I turned inwards. It wasn’t just that my arms would lift when I wanted them still, or that I spoke when I wished for silence, it was that I couldn’t know what they acted for. I eat, drink, sleep to stay alive, but what difference is life and death but that we only know the contents of the former? If death is how they describe, a total nothingness, at least that is confirmed; Here is undefined death, erratic and without disposition, nor judgement or explanation. Inwards I find it easier to understand my environment. I hear the thumping of my heart, I feel the groan of my stomach, the coursing of my veins. I know not what my eyes see, but here I see sense. The inside is like me, it works without end, nor expectation of one. It’s prevalence doesn’t seek a stop, but is one inherently. An adoption of this mindset helps me. So I try my best to ignore the eyes, the ears, and the nerves. Let them find their way.
[Below is a transcript from a 2008 morning news story.]
Earlier this morning Nurse Joanne Catherine was making her rounds as she normally does, walking the halls of Richmond Medical Care. As she was tending to a patient, she noticed a flicker in their eyes, a seemingly normal action for someone like me or you, but for this patient, something quite profound. The patient, Virgo Hughes, was a 54 year old man who, due to a mysterious illness, was put in a coma over 32 years ago, or so doctors thoughts.
Joanne: while eye flickering isn’t uncommon in some cases, I could sense something behind those eyes. Hughes looked at me when I entered the room, and he seemed to enjoy me reading to him. From that moment I knew something was different.
Joanna’s suspicions would be confirmed correct, when specialists realized that Hughes had been out of the coma for years! And was rendered in a low state of consciousness with control over nothing but his eyes. The man had been stuck in his own body, aware but not in control for over 15 years. Efforts are underway to develop a communication system for Hughes to speak; hopefully, he can find some joy.
Presently,
Jul 28, 2021, Scarspace
Note 02/26/2026: Can you guess the influence for this one? It was Scarface, which I had watched for the first time before writing this. I had this idea about this guy who came to on a Space Station designed for asteroid mining (or shipping, I don’t fully remember). In this world, automation had taken away a lot of jobs and the world (or solar system I suppose) suffered from the effects of capitalism. Scarspace, our protagonist, driven by a certain vengeance would take over the Space Station with the aid of the space refugees he appeared with, and hijinks would ensure. How this relates to a movie about a drug lord (besides both main characters being refugees) is anyone’s guess.
“Last one of the day Deleway” A man said, staring through the windows at the hangar bay, his breath condensing against the thick, reinforced glass. Lights flashed all around them and ships pulled in and out of the port on a regular basis. Machines walked and rolled around in the vacuum of the hangar bay, moving cargo from the landing ships and loading up the ones leaving.
“Finally, feels like we’ve been here forever. Let’s get this done and get out of here” The man walked over to a control panel and stared at a panel covered in a thin layer of frost. On it was a diagram of a ship that had pulled into port made up of lines like an x-ray showing the cargo inside as differently colored lines. “Looks normal, 3 cases of quantum stabilizers, 14 titanium alloys, a shipment of beef paste”
“God I fuckin’ hate that stuff. I mean do you think they even tasted it in whatever lab they made it in? Doesn’t even taste like real cow.”
“Oh yea? And you would know? Not like there is a cow laying around to compare it to, not fer a century”
“Yea I don’ need a history lesson thanks. So this one good? My boots are getting frozen and I wanna get home. Takeshi’s Arena is on at 5.”
“Wait, there’s something in the back of the ship. Looks like a heat signature.” The first man studied the panel, intent to find what was keeping him from the end of his shift and a warm shower. The station left the hangar as a vacuum, exposed to the space outside. They said it was cheaper that way, as the ships wouldn’t have to go through expensive and slow airlocks, but everyone on the crew knew that they just did that so humans couldn’t work on unloading and refueling the ships. That’s why they had the robots do it. It was much cheaper for the station, and they were much less liable in case of an accident. A person gets flung into the vacuum of space and it lowers morale, not to mention the multi-million dollar lawsuit that would consequently take place. A robot breaks? 30k and a week to wait for the replacement. Not that this mattered though, robots don’t make mistakes, and they don’t need sick days either. The one job the station couldn’t replace was the inventory check. Union lawyers made sure of that, citing the Stanislav Petrov case. They argued something about “the surety of human eyes” and “the undefinable quality of human oversight”. It was all bullshit, but if it meant Deleway didn’t end up broke and unemployed, he’d have the surest eyes of all.
The station didn’t like losing though, and even though they had to employ humans, they made sure to make the position as uncomfortable as possible. The control station wasn’t air conditioned, and the men working it were forced to wear heavy winter gear normally reserved for asteroid interior mining operations. Deleway was surprised they put up a heat shield for when the sun came around. Otherwise the station would boil itself twice a day for 4 hours each. Saved them from skin cancer, too.
The other man moved over to the panel. “Gimme that.” He studied it for a second, playing with a toothpick in his mouth before throwing the panel back to the other man. He sighed, his breath displaying itself in front of him before dispersing. “Something in there. We gotta go check it out.” He made his way over to a door behind them which led into a locker room of sorts with atmospheric retention suits, or ARS for short.
“But what if it’s a person, or something else alive?” Deleway suggested, still staring at the signature on the screen.
The other man stood in the doorway between the rooms and looked back. “That’s why they give us these.” He tapped on the hilt of his pistol. It wasn’t a real gun or anything, rather, it was a modified pistol to shoot subsonic bullets containing batteries that, when attached to the target, would power up and “taze” the target’s muscles, effectively paralyzing them till it ran out of juice. The downside was they did jack against robots, the station probably outfitted the men with these instead of real guns in case anyone felt like throwing a revolt against the robot workers.
The two men moved into the other room and donned their suits. They weren’t full EVA suits, as they lacked the bulk needed to protect from extreme temperatures or cosmic radiation. But in the hangar bay where there was just no atmosphere, they served their purpose. After clicking their helmets into place and giving the suit a moment to power up and equalize the pressure, they stepped through the airlock into the hangar bay. The hangar was noisy. Not audibly noisy, as there was no atmosphere for sound to travel through, but there was a lot happening. A machine on tracks rode past them carrying several crates 5 times bigger than its body. A ship shook the ground below them as it took off and flew out the hangar. The men switched on their radios.
Delaway pointed to a cargo shuttle in the far corner “That is over there?”
“Yeah looks like it. Let’s head over there” The men made their way to the other side of the hangar, cautious of the machines which never slowed down in their transit but never seemed to hit them either. The men sneered at a passing bot holding a fuel tank, which beeped indiscriminately and rolled along unaware.
The ship looked normal to the men from the outside as they walked along its exterior. Besides normal wear and tear from space travel, including some bumps and dents from small bits of space debris, the ship wasn’t tampered with in the slightest.
The man held up a scanner to the inside of the ship. “Whatever it is, its inside the ship. Must’ve boarded when it left.”
“What is it then? The pilot?”
The other man turned around, turning off the machine so it stopped beeping. “Nah. These ships are run on an autopilot feature. Whatever is in there isn’t meant to be here. And based on the scanner, there’s dozens of them.”
Nobody knew who the man was. Nobody had seen him jump on the ship as it pulled out of the harbor on earth. The ironic thing was no one on the ship was meant to be there either. They had hotwired the panel while it was in port and hid inside the cargo hold, hoping for a better life, wherever that may be. Yet even among those who were misplaced, they found one even more. He didn’t look like the rest of the stowaways. Everyone accounted for were Hungarian expats who had decided Earthly opportunities were below them. They all spoke and looked Hungarian. They had thick black hair and darker skin. All except the man who sat in the corner silently between a shipping crate and a tube of possibly volatile fluid. He was white, with brown hair and no other obviously discernible features. He looked like a fairly ordinary guy, but his situation was anything but ordinary. The others in the hold were wary of him and sat in the far corners of the hold, hiding their children behind them. Silently bickering to themselves in fear of awakening this mystery man from his absent stare.
One of the men seemed different from the rest and dared to make contact with the man. Everyone stared with disapproving glances at him, but they only silently objected, their curiosity getting the better of them.
The Hungarian tapped the man on the shoulder. “Hey you. Who are you?” The man didn’t even flinch. He stared downwards as if he were a powered down animatronic. “Listen, we don’t mean you any harm. It’s just that some of the people here are worried. They think you are a cop, trying to take them back.” The man continued to stare without so much of a breath. Beads of sweat ran down the Hungarian’s face, which he wiped with his shirt. The Hungarian questioned once more “My name is Imre. Can you tell me your name?”
The stranger finally turned his head “I have no name.” The sudden shift caused Imre to flinch and the children to scream, hiding behind their mothers for protection.
Imre smiled. “You don’t have a name? How can this be? Everyone’s got a name.”
“Not me.”
Imre wanted to become as friendly as possible with the stranger “I will give you a name then. A strong Hungarian name!” He muttered to himself for a while, until finally deciding on a name. “I shall call you Arpad.”
“What does it mean?” Asked the newly named Arpad. Seemingly unbothered by his new identity granted to him by a man he had only met seconds ago.
“Yes, it is Hungarian for seed. I know little about you, you are a fresh start, like a little seed. Who knows what you shall grow into.”
Arpad liked this idea. “Arpad. It is a good name.” Imre smiled, and the air in the hold seemed to lighten up as people calmed down. They spoke a bit louder and the children could be heard laughing as they played games amongst themselves, occasionally glancing at the man still mostly foreign to them.
Imre relaxed himself a little bit. “Do you know where we are going?”
Arpad looked back at him. His eyes were calm. “No clue. Probably offworld.”
“I hope so. Down there on Earth we have no food or shelter. They make us do work they won’t. It is hazardous and the conditions are terrible. I lost my brother the week before we decided to leave.”
Arpad looked around the hold. “Do you know everyone here?”
“We are all Hungarians. Back home we might be completely different but when we came to America we only had each other, and so we all know each other like family.” Imre smiled, as if reminiscing on better times. “Not everyone went though. They say it is risky to leave Earth. We cannot buy tickets for everyone so we must stow away on ships going all over. Hopefully we do not go to a frontline planet.” He shuddered. “Only death will find you there.”
“I have no family.” muttered Arpad.
Imre patted him on the back. “Nonsense. You have a Hungarian name now! You will be with my family.” Suddenly the ambient sound of engines seemed to quiet. “The thrusters are slowing down. We will be docking soon, wherever that might be.” Imre said, gathering everyone together. As the ship came to what they assumed to be a stop and began docking (they could not verify this, as there were no windows.) They sat still and very silent. They had all huddled together in a corner, with the women and children on the inside and the men on the outside protecting them, peering cautiously and darting their eyes at every bump and bang of the procedure. Then they could hear muffled talking of men outside the ship.
Imre crawled over to Arpad. “They will be opening the door soon. I don’t know how they will act when we get out. Will you help protect me and my family friend?”
Arpad stared at the door, listening to the voices on the other side, unresponsive to Imre. To Arpad it sounded like two men were out there, but it was highly muffled and he couldn’t tell for sure. There could be an army out there for all he knew, waiting to mow them down.
Just then a loud sound came from inside the ship. “Depressurisation in process. Please stand back from the door.” Vents in the corners of the walls opened up and began hissing, sucking the air out of the room, and reducing its pressure.
There was a chatter of voices as panic grew among the refugees.
“Daddy what is going on?”
“Mom, my ears hurt really bad”
“Help! I can’t breathe!”
Imre and some of the other men ran to the other side of the room and began banging on the door. “Let us out! There’s people in here! Don’t kill us!” Some of the people began choking, gasping for more air but their struggle only increased the oxygen demanded by the brain. Their eyes grew bloodshot and the water on their tongues began to boil as the atmosphere around them reached nigh-zero pressure. Arpad looked around, his vision blackening. He could feel the oxygen in his body trying to escape, pushing at his skin and blowing him up like a helium balloon. People were screaming and banging on the walls. As the hissing of the vents slowed down, so too did the movements of the cabin. The cries of the many became the cries of the few, and as the cabin lay motionless, dying of asphyxiation, Arpad saw the door open to two men. With that he blacked out.
Arpad woke up to the sound of beeping. For the second time today, he found himself in a location he wasn’t quite sure of. He was strapped to a bed surrounded by an assortment of medical devices. His joints also hurt and his skin felt like it was covered in blisters, as if he were a burn victim. Maybe he was a burn victim. That’s why he didn’t remember where he was. Then slowly his memories came back to him. He had found himself a stowaway. Formed a bond with a fellow stowaway, and then nearly died as the hold of the ship decompressed.
A man entered the room, and Arpad watched as his eyes widened upon viewing him. “Oh shit, one woke up” He walked over to Arpad’s bedside and observed some of the readings on the monitors next to him. “Alright, seems like everything is in order. Blood pressure is normal. Can you hear me sir?”
Arpad groaned. “Everything hurts.”
The man sighed. “Yea it’ll be like that for a day or two. It could’ve been worse, you are extremely lucky. Most people don’t survive decompression like you did.
Arpad remembered the others. The way the kids looked as they violently drifted out of consciousness. “What of the others? Are they okay?”
The man’s subtle smile turned into a frown. “When your body decompresses it takes a large toll. The human body was never meant to experience decompression. It passes out in 15 seconds and dies after a minute and a half, sometimes faster. Not everyone could be taken out of the hold in time.” The man looked at Arpad, as if personally accountable for the accident and waiting for approval. “If it means anything, I’m sorry.”
“Did anyone survive?” Arpad asked
“Yea. They’re all resting in a separate room. One of the men woke up and started screaming, so the captain felt it best to keep them locked in. I’ll take you in though.”