John had prepared all week for this presentation. 10 slides and 10 minutes were no problem for a seasoned salesman like himself. Dripping with confidence he walked up to the front of the room, and began. "You all for thank being here." John paused wondering what the heck he had just said. His protective armor of confidence which shielded him from the hundreds of eyes in the room began to crack. He retried the sentence, "Here you thank being for all." He didn't understand, the words were clear in his head, but he just couldn't vocalize them properly. Someone in the front row stood up and inched towards him. Profusely sweating at this point John prepared himself for the ridicule he was about to endure. But as the man got closer he saw the concerned sympathetic look on his face. John motioned to step towards the man but his body flailed awkwardly. Lurching forward the man caught John and said to him, "John I need you to lie down, I think you're having a stroke."
Off in the distance he could hear the churning of the wheels as the trolley of fate marched towards him. John stood paralyzed in the face of a decision like none other. His palms moistened and sweat dribbled down his temple. He wish he could just run away from such responsibility but that would mean the death of his beloved. The lever that would condemn the lives of 20 yet spare his love taunted him. He took a deep breath, reached out, and yanked the lever.
With his last bit of strength John throws his hands up above the cliff side and grabs fast a knot of grass. He awkwardly flutters his legs in a manner that gives him just enough momentum to round the edge of the cliff. With a heavy sigh he collapses on his back. The remnants of the storm that capsized his boat gracefully lingers overhead as if it hadn't just killed 4 members of a 5 man crew. John digs his fingers deep into the mushy earth around him, cherishing the unwavering stability of the earth around him. He uses this grip to sit himself upright and survey his surroundings only to get light headded and fade to darkness.
John whipped around, primal fear in his eyes.
"who's there!" he cried out to no response other than his own echo.
Each successive room he went into seemed smaller and smaller as his heartbeat got faster and faster. The pace of the story had reached its peak and the scope had narrowed to the tip of a needle.
John picked up his pace, trying to escape the narrative current pulling him towards an unfortunate climax. Overwhelmed by the current and drowning in helplessness John did the unthinkable, he pulled out a gun and pointed it at his head.
"You're nothing without me! You know me as well as I do! Don't think I wont do it!"
Surely he was bluffing, John was scripted to be a brave and tactical man, which coupled with plot armor made for the perfect storytelling. Leave it to John to find a cunning way to stop the story in its tracks. It was why the readers loved him...and why the narrator did too.
John put down the gun and walked out of the room in search of his next adventure.
John awakens to find himself seated on a bed of grass. Still to dark to see anything else, he uses his hands to try to gather any more information he can on his surroundings. As he does so the sun starts to peer over the horizon, only it isnt the sun John is use to seeing. The usual yellow fire ball isnt a ball at all, but instead a square. Dim enough to look at yet bright enough to illuminate the plains John finds himself in, unveiling the new world to him. It is a rigid world in the details yet the complete picture is one of beautiful sweeping hills with a river cutting through them. On the bank of the river stands a lone tree beckoning to John who already knows what to do. He gets up, walks over to it, and punches it.
For all his life all he had ever known was red, and this was by design. Being the longest wavelength of visible light, red allowed people to see, while still keeping their eyes mostly adjusted to the dark. Features which came in handy in a society where blackouts were frequent and monsters in the dark were rampant. But with the atmosphere finally clear, it was time to return to the surface, a feat which hadn't been realized for 6 generations.
3...2....1...and the curtains dropped reveling the light filled world above the ground. John winced at the overstimulation, but unlike many others he refused to cover his eyes. There was just too much to take in, more colors than he could have imagined, each with infinite variance along their wavelengths. His mind naturally focused on the red in an attempt to hold onto something familiar in this new world of color. Then he looked down and saw his true skin for the first time...
John came to, slowly, then all at once. He wasn't sure how long hed been out, but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes given how hot the cabin still was. The heat from his escape pod's reentry radiated inwards from the cabin bulkheads, making him feel like a turkey in an oven. He fumbled around for the release lever, smearing the blood stain his forehead left on the dashboard when he impacted it however many minutes ago. He finally found it, and gave it a desperate tug. The escape pod split in two, and cool air rushed in sending a much appreciated chill over his body, he breathed a sigh of relief that he hadn't landed in the Sahara desert or somewhere scorching hot. But where was he? His eyes still blurry from his recent concussion, he took in his surroundings: trees, a light dusting of snow, mostly flat terrain, a person no more than 30 feet in front of him. John began to crack a smile when his eyes finally adjusted, and he saw that it was in fact not a person standing there. Instead stood a wretched looking (zombie?), skinless, and panting rapidly like a rabid dog. Despite it being near freezing outside, its flesh seemed to be melting off its body, blemishing the virgin snow. John sunk back into the seat of the escape pod and prayed this sight was just a symptom of his concussion.
It wasnt just the taste that John loved, no, the dish was so much more complete than that. It was an entire experience wrapped up into a little ball. The first bite was the best, cracking the outer shell to unleash the river or flavor within. From there no more bites were needed, it simply dissolved at the prefect rate allowing him to savor it but not get tired of it. As it dissolved the individual elements mixed together forming a unified taste, which surpassed the sum of its parts. Its then around this point in the experience that he is hit with the strongest sensation of it all: nostalgia. Transported back to his childhood days where his mom made them on special occasions, and all was right with the world.
John entered the room with the weight of an elephant on his shoulders. This wasnt the first time he did this, and nor did it get any easier. She sat on the couch, a look on her face like she already knew it all. John walked over to the couch opposite of her, and slumped down.
"Did you ever mean it?" she started
With a long pause, and a heavy sigh, John looked up and said, "Once, yes. But only once."
She responded, without hesitation, "Im surprised you even ment it once, John, I know by now how much this work means to you, to the world quite frankly, which I why I stopped believing you a long time ago."
"The last time I meant it, and if it wasnt for this unfathomable circumstance, I wouldnt have lied, you know that."
"I know, I just hate it"
He felt tears well up in his eyes from knowing he broke hear heart yet another time.
Choked up, he began," I wont tell you now this is the last time Ill go to space. Im needed more than ever now. But not just by my country, by the entire world. It makes me sick to know I have to hurt you like this, but there may not even be a future for us if I dont go."
He bit his tongue maybe he shouldnt have included that last part. Maybe shell respond with 'there wont be a future for us either way'. A part of him wish she would say that, he didnt deserve her or to be continuously breaking her heart, maybe it would be easier that way.
But she looked at him intensely and said, "You do what you have to do, Ive accepted that Ill never be the priority, not to a man that does work to save all mankind."
They had interstellar invasions down to a tee, where as we had yet to even leave the solar system. In hindsight, the invasion tactic was quite simple. Have the superior technology, and conquest is absolute. Don't have the superior technology? Blast the other species with EMPs until you do. And that's what they did.
5 years of medieval era oppression followed before the resistance gained a foothold. The foothold came in the form of a successful covert raid of an enemy's research center. With their technology in our hands the pathetic attempts at resistance became a full fledged war. In an instant, mankind skipped several technological eras, which would have been a blessing to society, if it weren't for the extension level war we now had to fight.
War ravaged the planet for the next 5 years. The scale of the war was so large that no amount of military or political delegation could keep up with the ever dynamic war. The adversary utilized a hive mind to instantaneously orchestrate thousands of elements of the war, and we started loosing. We had to come up with a solution, and fast.
It was the largest project humanity had ever endeavored. So large in fact, that money became irrelevant during its development, and time became the sole constraint in managing the project. And we almost ran out of that too. Just weeks away from loosing the war, PAX was deployed. The first human 'hive mind'. Tasked with orchestrating the war, it delegated every operation down to the individual level. Optimized the actions of every human effort in the war dynamically, and instantaneously. Biological hive mind vs. artificial hive mind....
For the next 3 years the hive minds played a game of 4d chess that amounted to a stalemate in the war. Both hive minds were too optimized, simultaneously launching and parrying thousands of operations at each other, gaining nothing as result. After googles of computations which resulted in battles, assaults, flanks, raids, that were met with equally devised countermeasures, the road to victory became clear, destroy the enemy hive mind without the use of our own.
Two shades of blue met on a perfectly horizontal horizon in every direction. I looked up, trying to at least find a cloud in the sky to break the monotonous blue, but only found the sails of our boat rippling in the Pacific wind. To avoid being another element calculated into the everlasting chess game between the hive minds, we needed to sail covertly. Meaning no engines, no electricity. Back to the medieval times. We are the uncalculated element, sailing into the enemy's heart, to disrupt this war.
