Category: Fiction

Riyn felt as though they had to vomit. It wasn’t so much the bodily shock of moving from the complex to the real but the utter silence around them. The only sound discernible as coming from without was their body’s heartbeat, which sounded like a beast in ever closer pursuit of their panicked mind. The silence between each thunderous footfall was gradually overcome by a rising white noise of synapses flailing for their habituated stimuli. Riyn could never remember feeling so numb. They lingered over a basin by their pod to wait for the noise of silence to recede.  Riyn…

Dr. Vostok mounted the stairs to the machine like a dais and addressed the assembled crowd: “My dear colleagues and members of the media,” he began, grinning as the crowd turned to face him before the chamber of the great machine. As they bumbled to their places, the physicist did his best to conjure a faraway facial expression, so as to appear the keeper of some great mystery, hidden for all time. The crowd gradually acknowledged the ritual and a hush came over the room. Dr. Vostok continued as enigmatically as he could: “We are about to witness an event…