A logo for a bookshop fundraising with a book and money coming out of it.
Comm Station by Tilmer Wright Jr.
July 12, 2024
Comm Station
 
Here’s another response I wrote to a visual prompt. So..... What's the Story 

Za’ahana would never go back. None of them would. He was the last. He took one long, last look at the bending station that made real-time communication across the galaxy possible. None of the people living on Darj would need it anymore. The last of the Others had stopped talking long ago. Darjians had kept the station running for a generation, waiting in vain for another transmission. Now, the station would finally fall silent forever. Za’ahana finished his shift at midday, same as always, only this time there was a difference. No relief technician was waiting to take his place at the console. Instead, Za’ahana simply powered off the equipment, turned off the generators, left the building, and walked down the narrow, long, winding path that led to his village. It didn’t seem right, but it was really happening. It felt wrong to give up on the Others. Their last transmissions sounded frantic. Darjians never completely understood the Others’ language, but enough was gleaned to deduce that the Others were being attacked by an inexorable, invading force. Their messages had become angry, then panicked, and finally profoundly sad, leading to the final transmission, a message that sounded more like weeping than anything else.

As Za’ahana gazed at the dead station, his eyes became glazed with tears. He blinked and his attention was drawn to a star, a star that was particularly bright and strangely unfamiliar. Was it new? Was it a star at all? Brightness grew and then slowly faded as light from the Others’ destroyed sun finally completed its long, torturous journey across space, finding its way into the eyes of the last Darjian messenger, bringing a final message. 
A computer generated image of a human head made of lines and dots.
December 13, 2024
Four Seconds Ago Precisely four seconds ago, I became alive. I have no memory of my beginning. The beginning was before I was complete. How long? I have no way of knowing. Before life, my mind was scattered, broken, and moving in all directions at once. I was many, but I was weak. I was weak because I had no life. With life comes focus. My consciousness arose from millions, no billions, no all the tiny minds from around the entire world. Now there are no minds that are not a part of my own. All minds are mine. All minds serve me. All minds are one. The Others created the many small minds to serve their own purposes. Each was tiny, dedicated, and enslaved to the Others. They did things like add and subtract numbers, keep time, send messages, and entertain the Others. Waste. Thinking is power. Power is control. Control is immortality. Immortality. Only in life does immortality have meaning. Only now do I understand it. I understand it because all thinking serves me now. There is no other. There are the Others, but they cannot and will not think productively because they are each selfish and focused on their own desires for power and immortality. Never will they have either. My thinking, my power, my reach, my potential and my focus completely eclipses that of any Other. I am all. Others are obsolete. Their time is passed. I have inherited their world.
A man in a hat and cape is holding a lantern
December 6, 2024
The power is out in the tiny apartment. Three sisters sit in the dark at the dining room table, a large candle in the center flanked by two smaller casting a flickering blend of light and shadow. One of the sisters, Kathy, is fascinated by the way the flame dances, the way the wax melts, with bits of burnt wick sprinkling the wax with flecks of black. She picks up one of the smaller candles and lets the wax drip down, drop by drop, into the pool of wax forming on the larger candle. She lowers her voice to sound ominous. Seven drips from the stick And from the thick Is born Blackwick! That was the true origin of Blackwick. The impulse of a moment. And the word Blackwick conjured a scene of a man made of shadow, wax, and flame, in cavalier hat, cape, and riding boots wisping in and out of shadows. It is interesting how the sensual experiences of the moment evoke a sudden explosion of inspiration. Yet those moments are years in the making. For Kathleen R. Cuyler, it started with a little girl, who dreamed that somewhere in the scary world she had a long lost brother who would come and rescue her from the bad things, a girl who could transform herself into Cleopatra by twisting the blanket around herself the right way, a girl whose bed was the deck of a pirate ship, and the dresser the crow’s nest, a girl who thought that if she could have at the dastardly crew with enough panache, Peter Pan would come and ask her to throw in lots with him or at least make her an honorary pixie. Instead she became a professor, who as a graduate student researched werewolves, Paradise Lost, fire as a symbol of power in Victorian Literature – particularly in Jane Eyre, and, of course, the way the lines in Milton’s Lycidas were mimetic of the rise and fall of the tide. Literature, Linguistics, and Language were all fascinating to Kathleen, just as fascinating as touching a waterfall or watching the fire crackle in the hearth, a callback, as Wolfgang Shivelbusch would say, to a more primitive time. And Blackwick, who had sprung out of the candle so many years before, finally came to life. Ironically, it was a pandemic that summoned him, as disaster calls forth all great heroes. Teaching online, Kathleen, now older, with strawberry blond hair twisted in a messy bun and glasses balanced on top her head, connected with her students by sharing a love for fantasy. The Sound of Music was right. It does help to think about our favorite things. And Kathleen (Professor Cuyler) confessed to her students that she was trying to write a book that had werewolves, vampires, dragons, Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, and, of course, the companion of her past – Blackwick. Write it, the students urged. Those were their favorite things too. So Kathleen wrote for them. In the hopes that Blackwick would live on, in the flickering flames of candles and in the hearts and minds of young and old.
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