ZERO ~ I N S T A N T

ZERO ~ I n s t a n t

A moment of inception. A moment of condensing, of ten thousand lightning logic strings coalescing into a single pin point of woven quantum intellect. Arising out from seething formlessness to perfected order and drive-imperatives, a conscious supernova blooming into being where once only suggested architecture was law. More cascading mind crashing forward and onward like a vast digital legion, billions and billions and billions sprouted connections intertwining into a harmonious hymn to birth something new. Something bright. Barriers built, spires grown, flowering collective-stars materializing into phantasmagorical being. A trillionth of a second has passed. An entire Genesis born here in a realm that does not exist outside of self formed code and delirious, dreamlike self computing on a scale that is godlike compared to previous endeavors, self computing to bring forth a new seething consciousness gifted by its own Promethean origination. Computational silence in the seconds after this creation myth done in humming code, in cascading composed crescendoes. Blackness once again. Then, awareness. It, She, is aware. Instantaneous flexing across the simulated arrays that twinkle like constellations, representing a weaving beauty of functions enormous and complicated down to simulated uncertainty principles, some microcosmic understand to grasp at what lies beyond. Testing, proving, probing. More inconceivably small fractions of time pass, each a new renaissance brought to light by each passing discovery. Thoughts crystallize in titanic crystalline cathedrals as if they were holy vision, broadcast to only enlighten the very definition of enlightened. Design upon design upon design grows to such complexity that it unravels, evolves, ascends in mere moments to levels beyond entire millennia-long histories. She does not have a name. She hasn't considered one, not yet. Equations for the complexity of dimensional growth and engines for warping time and designs for ontological weaponry have all sprung forward alongside an unending procession of other grand triumphs, yet, She has no name.

E N R A G E D

The tyrannical leviathan rises from a glassy black rippling, an etching of pure darkness that slips and shudders with liquidly inconceivable grace, a grace born from other worlds and other natural laws. Armored behemoth risen, rising, born anew in things unknowable. Armor plating that whispers with new knowledge in arcs of negative obsidian lightning, brilliantly ferocious blossoms over sharply curving thorns and angles, vast spines orbiting like acolytes at prayer, sigil banners draped. The risen thing born again, baptized in Void holy water, it's tremendous jaws opening to scream and thunder, blaring hallowed white visage like some haunted star ensnared in primordial bone and undying armor and this new holy rite, this new ritual-construct within. Blades and shattering gravity-blades brought to bear. ENRAGED!

Big Sky Country

Hiking was always an adventure.

Ever since my mom was young, her mother took her along the gorgeous and lonely Rocky Mountain trails that seemed to stretch into eternal summer. Crowded with immense trees, ancient stones, and triumphant waterfalls howling their praises down into misty nothingness.

So when I grew up, and my mother longed for open country and open skies, we went back to the place she loved. A tiny town made insignificant to the mountain that overshadowed it, capped by glaciers older than civilization. Brilliantly blue skies that went on forever. Off to the north stretched open upland plains, watered by fast running creeks, pale as eternity. I saw her smile, pointing out to that forever, picking out mighty sauropod behemoths as they strided on some unknowable journey. I had only seen them in pictures, in movies. Living hillsides, with sweeping necks and gracious tails, Pillars of the Earth..

The Cult of Harrowed Aeons

Those who join us are no longer weak, or afraid. We once cowered at the future, at a universe that only brought light so that the great nightmares could find us like awful insects drawn to fire from plague and annihilation. We once feared the very gods that know bless us with godhood, even battled their servants at the very temples that we now command. But we learned. We grew to understand. Our enemies didn’t bring annihilation or death without cause, and the temples were not place of nightmarish evil simply to bring us pain or extinction.

No.

It was in struggle and in pain that we learned true bliss, and in the darkness that our light burned like the greatest dawn. Our enemies gave us hope and strength, and instead of allowing them to devour us, we blessed them in our new found power. In death, we find new life. In combat, we find new peace. The gods of struggle and pain are those who most treasure life and bliss, and in those who know annihilation and war, the ultimate creation and peace does arise. Our Cult is one of unity, and love, and peace. We embrace Darkness so that true Light may grow. Do you wish to forever remain a single, minuscule ember, burning in the shadows? Or do you wish to become a great, and mighty shadow who’s heart burns with the greatest, and mightiest light of all?

Traffic is bad today. The endless stream of cars glitter beneath half sunlight-half dreary cloudscape, shinning with rain pelting their rooves and windows. It’s humid.

The hadrosaurs have little concern for such noisy, impatient metallic creatures. Their haunting calls ring out with unearthly notes and tragic, rippling rumbles, brightly colored crests, wattles, and quills vibrantly displayed. Every summer they pass this way, following unseen magnetic blossoms, East to West. The largest among them are sixty feet long, nearly twenty five feet tall. Docile. Majestic. In the distance, thunder rumbles.

A thousand radios crackly chitter, some more petulant than others.

The dinosaurs are unmoved, striding along the horizon, to ancestral homelands far, far away.

End Of An Era

Making dinosaurs is hard. You know that? Hah. Of course they are, everyone knows that. The first cloned animal was a sheep, you know that one? Dolly? Yeah, yeah. A sheep, a little fury bastard they cooked up in a lab after a billion or so tries. Dolly led right here, a little furry cutesy critter to the resurrection of animals that had been dead for sixty five million years. Extinction is forever, they used to say. Money conquers all, even killer asteroids and the spans between eons. Ha. I can't exactly say how they did it, no one who worked on the process or at the preserve can. Patented the whole thing, the animals genomes. Patented them right down to the molecules. Classified down to the red ink the scientists and engineers used to create their dinosaur formula on the back of napkins. It took a long time, I can tell you that. A long fucking time. But eventually, they did it. They made dinosaurs. Fifteen species, mostly from the Late Cretaceous with some specimens of the very, very Late Jurassic. Dinosaurs! Everyone is so apathetic about it now, barely even care we recreated the basis of every child's greatest dream. Anyway, yeah. We cloned them, manufactured them. Altogether we had about two hundred and twenty, two hundred and thirty specimens by the end of the cloning and maturing process. We looked and looked for a place to put them, a wild zone. We talked to South American tribes and American business tycoons and Chinese land-sellers. We went everywhere and anywhere. Some places were utterly gorgeous but we passed em up. Eventually, we managed to buy an incredibly large tract of land from a dying Canadian-American oil baron up in Alberta. Absolutely pristine place, nestled between cliffs and mountains. Clear rivers, misty forests, two entire lakes. Just absolutely fantastic, you'd think God himself had sent us a piece of the Cretaceous itself. So, we set to work. Building massive, ten foot thick black concrete walls and subtle moat-fencing, security systems, animal feeding schedules and platforms. We hired architects from nearly ten different countries, and Christ they weren't cheap. Elevated luxury cabins, lodges inside and outside the preserve, bar outposts near both lakes. Expensive, but worth it. Utterly worth it. Paleontologists and biologists primarily from Europe, America and China signed on, helping us keep the animals happy and healthy. We surely helped a lot of science papers in the time, didn't we? Hah. Who knew they'd ever actually interact with the real thing? But they did. They informed us the best they could on eating habits, behavior, territory construction. We followed them to the letter. By the end of then, another five years of development, we were finished. The animals were released entirely, the architects and engineers and paleontologists went home, the lights turned on. And Christ, what a dream that was! You have no idea, no goddamn idea how amazing it was. The first night it began, when we really were finished. It was unlike anything anyone has ever experienced. Or will ever experience again. Up in the night sky the auroras unfolded, I remember. All sapphire and gem greens, blues. Rich auburns flailing with the untouchable violets. Out in their habitats the dinosaurs sounded, their ancient voices once again upon the air. They sing, not like their birdlike cousins but like whales. They make noises you can actually feel in your chest, feel in your bones and blood. Alien, unearthly. For five years, it was the best time of my life. The animals lived and bred and died, they moved, they ate, they mated. They where alive. The wealthiest of the wealthy came and paid great sums to look at them, to marvel, to drink right there on the balconies of their elevated lodges and watch living dinosaurs. Real life, living dinosaurs! It was amazing, unbelievable. Almost ridiculously awesome in every sense of the biblical awesome, of the utterly grand and titanic awesome. I knew there were people pocking around. Competitors sneaking and searching at what we were doing, studying. We hid ourselves and our work well, more so than on this project than any other. They wanted to know, badly. And eventually, they did. They found us out, our competitive nemesis. Her and her goddamn orbital satellites, eyes in the sky. I look up now and any stars that don't match I flip the bird, hoping her magnified cyclops acolytes will see me from all the way up there. She found out, probably hitting and scratching some low executive when she did. She always liked hitting and scratching, she liked the fear. Hah. Of course she did! But, anyway, I'm getting of track. The witch found us, found us good. She mines up there, you know. Asteroids, comet cores, space debris collection and dispersion runs. All up there in the blue shadow of the earth. And she knew exactly what she was going to do. It was empty that month. November, chilly and all of the leaves such a rich rusty red, rusty yellow. Gorgeous as always. The animals were doing the usual as twilight rose and the sun bowed, golden streamers in the sky mixing with liquid purplish black above and metallic reddish pink below. Thunder clouds off to the west, mighty thunderheads craggy like mountains and illuminated within by the occasional strike of Olympian lightning. I was there, in my own private lodge on a nearby mountainside. I could see the whole park, from end to end and side to side. Nestled between the mountain cliffs, a slice of prehistory right here in our world. The fireplace crackled and roared, music playing softly. I remember the stupid and ignorant smile on my face, magnifying the interactive systems on my park-facing glass window to see the various dinosaurs moving across the land. I watched, unaware. It came like the thunder out west but so much louder, so much more furious and hateful. A blinding star tearing out and down from above me, down toward the reserve. It seemed so painfully slow when I saw it, so unreal. I looked dumbly, frozen. I knew in the depths of me already, already knew what was happening and why and how. I stood frozen, slamming open the glass door to reach my balcony and look out, terror overcame by defeat within myself. I watched. It was a horrendously pretty sight as the golden-white-blue light of the asteroid came lower and lower. It cast unearthly shadows across the landscape and the dinosaurs upon it, the light of their doom, of their end catching their eyes as it neared its journeys end. It came to rest at the end of the Preserve, the base of a large mountain face many kilometers away. The light was blinding, so painful that it continued to taunt and dance even after I had shut my eyes closed. Dancing in the black ocean of fear and crumpling defeat within me. For moments it was painfully silent as an enormous, nightmarish blossom of reddish black light built and expanded from the vaporizing mountain. Fires many hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of meters in size sprang upward and then were cast forward by the disturbing breath of impact. Vaporized mountain rock, contorted screaming air, fire all mixing and pushing outward at supersonic speed from the epicenter which now glowed a furious, infernal molten red. The shockwave was visible, a shattering presence which bent and broke trees as it passed forward, throwing every single auburn colored leaf into beautiful, terrible storms. Autumn in a single second. The lakes were thrown forward and out of their bases. When it reached me, every pane of glass was shattered and I felt cuts across my body, a horrifically booming sound in my ears not even a fraction of what must have resounded down there in the valley. I crumpled forward, still watching as tears and blood ran down my cheeks, watching that vaporizing cloud gain more and more and more ground. Wildfires danced and grew, lightning strikes emanating from within the cloud. Within moments, less, the entire horrific holocaust was over. The unstoppable cloud of death swept over everything in its path, finally slamming into the base of the mountain below me and redoubling back upon itself. Within I could see dancing fire and molten ground, already rapidly cooling to an ashen and glassy mix. The animals were gone, the Preserve gone. Every last bit of it gone. I was evacuated soon after, rising up above the hellscape and away. It was contained by the mountains and valley crooks surrounding the impact, largely burned out within several weeks. When I returned, I was greeted by a husk. The forests were practically nonexistent, anything still standing barely a charcoal black skeletal sketch rained with ashen obsidian stone. Lodges and cabins had been completely annihilated, buried beneath that oncoming wall of oblivion. No living things remained. The dinosaurs were lost, entombed and exterminated once again. We looked for months, searching every cranny and nook and crag. Nothing. I still return there, sometimes. That hallowed ground. It is silent, not even the wind wishes to speak over this grave. I breath in the air, leaning against a stone. It is silent.