THE TREE: This short is a little under 400 words, and like some of the others, more an expression of an idea than a fully fleshed out and finalized story. It's a dream, a glimpse of thought. Written in 2008.

Some swayed near the bottom just above the clouds in hollow spots of the Tree.  Others slept on the largest branch in wide grooves of bark and a few played games around the leaves.  High above in a branch shaped like a hand perched the Elder and a few saplings.

"Will it be soon?" asked one of the buds with a toothless smile.  Lips never moved but words hummed harmonically.

"Yes.  The mists are here," said the Elder.  Spherical drops materialized above. The sky was a fading blue, sun setting with a yawn, reflecting sunlight off its smooth scalp.  The Elder rose, arms spread apart.  Purple veins pulsed through silver skin.  Soft yellow petals scaled down from its waist, widening into a bell-shape.  The petals curled up and out in unison with the arms.

"What should we do?" asked another sapling.  The drizzle was thick and slick, a flowery sweetness its scent.  Incandescent specks danced in the droplets.

"Nothing!  We needn't do anything.  Look."  The Elder pointed opposite the sun.  An immense silk blanket fluttered towards them, skating on clouds that stretched into infinity.

A third bud, petals white with red tint, stood next to the Elder.

"It's purple like our eyes.”

"Yes, like our eyes.  Like that which is within us."  Everyone on the Tree joined the Elder, almost completely covered by the brume.

"Enjoy the view everyone.  Remember it when we go."  It motioned across the sea of clouds and arriving blanket as the celestial canvas dissolved from blue to rich oranges and reds, then to a layer of shaded violet.

The blanket cradled the Tree and its saplings, undulating like a curtain in a breeze.

"Will this hurt,” asked the smallest of the buds, taking hold of the Elder’s hand.

"Oh no, it won't.  You'll be fine.  You'll need your imagination to bloom while on the journey.  So take in all that you see my seedling."

As the sun sank the blanket cocooned over the Tree - a purple thunder strike frozen in time.

"Thank you," whispered the Elder.

The Tree’s glow pulsed rhythmically before fading into the darkening twilight.  A luminescent droplet hung in suspension in its place.  The droplet then shot in an arch towards the horizon, a vanishing trail into nightfall.

BOLTS: An attempt at Flash Fiction, less than a thousand words. Needs a lot of editing, but not really wanting to push this story. More of a scene, but is about Frankenstein VS Zeus. Written in 2012.

            “Do you know who I am?”  The voice was a deep mechanical whirr.

            “Yes… Oh dear Zeus, protect me,” responded the blindfolded man.

            “What is my name?”

            “Please, don’t-“

            “Say it Priest!”

            “Monster!”

            “What else?”  Monster poked a small with a staff.  The staff’s crown had the shape of a golden-bearded face, eyes diamonds.

            “Father Zeus, protect me!”

            “Call him you whining crust!”  The whirring voice increased with breath, an engine of the lungs.

            “So?”

            “Creature!  Fiend!  Wretch!  It!”  “Through clenched teeth, “The experiment of the Doctor!”

            “Wrong.  I am his son, and it means stronghold of freemen, but I have chosen a new name.”

“You are no so son, or man.  No vital essence courses through you.  You are soulless.”

            The fire bounced shadows about the cave, an unwanted and unruly audience.  Fiend rose, using the staff like a cane.  He had to duck so not to hit stone and stepped over the fire.  His foot fell heavy on the granite.  He stood before the Priest whose hands were bound behind his back.  His fear the smell of shit that soaked his white robe and mixed with the smoke of the flames.  Fiend used the staff to remove the blindfold.

            Is this a test?  The Priest thought the Minotaur was before him.  The beast was huge, near two men in height.  But as the fire’s light revealed more, he saw no horns.  This was no act of gods.  This was an abomination.  Patchwork of grey skin was just a façade.  Metal hid between sown skin around the forehead and neck.  But it was too human, delicately crafted – metallic blue eyes wet with moisture, saliva caked at the corners of its mouth.  It wore a brown fur coat.  Chest was covered, but its massive legs were exposed, and between them:  Nothing.  When it spoke, the mouthparts moved perfectly, so human-like, thousands of mini-gods at work.

            “Call me Adam.  Simple, yes?”

             “Father Zeus will not stand for this!”

            “Zeus is useless.”

            “Zeus is the god of gods!”

            “Zeus is no god to me.  My father is the true Prometheus, and he bore me the way he saw fit.”  Adam leaned down, knees grinding like gears.  “Your father Zeus is a flashy mongrel to me.”

            The priest shuffled back.  He yelped, “Blaspheme!”

            A gust of wind threatened to put out the fire.  Rain began to fall, small waterfalls dripping at the mouth of the cave.  Thunder rumbled with ferocity that shook the cave.

            “He is coming, vile insect!”

            “Good.”  Adam grabbed the priest by the back of the neck and dragged him out of the cave.

            “What are you going to do?  Let me go, and I will allow you to live!  I will speak with Zeus!”

            “You are the head priest, the one who sacrificed humans to Zeus?  You are his favorite?”

            “Yes!  So obey me, and you will live.”

            Outside, rain fell like needles but in the corner of the sky moonlight watched the playground with anticipation.  Adam shoved him out the cave.  The Priest hit the ground hard.  His face scraped and head cracked.  Blood ran down the side of his chin and into his beard.

            The storm brewed, heavy with heat and friction.  Lightning slammed like angry heels into the mountains behind the cave.

            “Your great Zeus ordered his son to kill my father.  Adam stepped behind the priest and grabbed his neck.

            “No, please,” struggled the priest.

            “I am sorry, truly.  And I thank you for your sacrifice.”  Adam snapped his neck with one quick twist of his wrist.  He threw the limp body on the ground.

            Clouds formed into a black sphere above.  Lightning bolts snapped like whips.

            “See before you, your most prized human, bleeding on your ground like cows and pigs!  And I will kill them all!”

            A bolt of lightning erupted from the cloud.  It struck Adam in the face like a boxer’s left hook.  Adam flew back ten feet and crashed on the ground.

            “Is that all you got?”  Smoke curled from his lips.

            The sphere took the shape of a glowered face.

            Three bolts shot out of the clouds, and, as before, struck Adam with boxer blows: hooks, upper cuts, and a cross.

            Part of Adam’s facial skin burned off.  The metal underneath was not so much skeletal as it was sculpted: bronzed into human features.  Even metal lips covered metallic teeth.  Adam crawled to the staff and grabbed it.  He struggled to stand.  The cloud rumbled on like a stampede.

            “Ha!  You are nothing to me, nothing but a monster!”  Adam smashed the cane.  The diamond eyes shattered and wood splintered, and the gold scattered across the stone ground.

            The spherical cloud shrunk down to the size of an iron cannonball.  Silence hung in the air. The rain froze, trapped in time.  Air tasted of salt and acid.  A dozen bolts snapped out of the sphere.

            Adam exposed his chest.  The lightning struck two metal bolts screwed at the sides of his heart.  His eyes blazed with white fire.  Light lit his heart and spilled out his mouth.  He let out a roar that challenged Zeus’ thunder.  He then collapsed but immediately stood.  Electricity danced on his frame.  Again, Zeus spit out tongues of bolts that struck Adam.  He laughed and absorbed the god’s energy.

            “Yes!” Adam grabbed a boulder ten times his mass and chucked it at the cloud.  It popped a hole in the brume.  The cloud fled with defeat, dissipating towards a mountainous range.  The thunderous rumble like an exhausted dog’s breath.

            Adam stood staring at the clearing sky.  Energy coursed through his body.

            The clouds raced towards the horizon in the distance allowing the suns first birth of beams to crawl out.

            “Hercules, your ass is mine.”

Acceptance Award Speech

I'd like to thank the Strong Force for its strength.
I'd like to thank the Weak Force for its change.
I'd like to thank the Electromagnetic force for its power.
I'd like to thank the Force of Gravity for its embrace.
I'd like to thank the Laws of Physics for my life.

Energy

"It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount."  - Richard Feynman

We are the sum of our hearts.

MEMOR-RECTION poem coming soon

We are only 14 billion years old...

The universe exists because I, as a conscious observer, am here to observe it.  It's the strong version of the anthropic principle.  We will never be outside observers in our universe because we are tangled into it, a part of it, from quasars to the quantum foam of space.  As the universe is about 14 billion years old, we, as a culture are probably the same age, like a 14 year old adolescent.  We are still feeling about, trying to understand things, and still have our guardians (religion) to protect us.  We feel warm and safe but we are naive.  Society, culture, and the mind of man will age: it has hit puberty and is struggling through the changes and will eventually grow up and understand, learn, love, and be humble.  And then our religious guardians will die, and we will survive on our own, but the difference is that, as the body gets older and decays and falls apart, so will these future societies.  The physical manifestation of man will break down.  This is a good thing, because what makes us alive - the information that moves forward through time and is never lost but carried on - is free, zero mass, it is E - (minus) MC/2 = pure energy.  It is the invisible force of mind and emotion that carries on.  As entropy increases so will society, as does the human body, as we age into 20 billion to 100 billion and to death - but, that spirit of life lives on, from one universe to the next.  This is what I believe, that we are a reflection of the universe in so many ways, increasing in entropy but organizing in knowledge and experience and spirit.

We fight, we run, we are actively hurting ourselves, but don't all 14 year old males do so? This is a male driven society, right? (But the "adults" of life will become mothers)

We are fleshy eggs where consciousness and life grows, and when we die we hatch.  We need to be happy first, because all else is essentially just icing on the cake.  The "being", that which makes us, is that inner part of the egg, the yolk of life, that is truly us, and the icing is our flesh.  We get too caught up with believing this flesh is important, but it's just a shell.  So Jesus and Lao Tzu are right, that the essence of life, the soul, is happiness.

We are cosmic strings that are plucked, and the music created is the flow of information that we generate, those sounds of energy that we share with all life on this planet and also the strings that blend with other dimensions.  I tell myself I'm being over-imaginative but why not?  Why would mother nature put so much effort into making something as definitive and complex as biological creatures?  There is something going on, that's for sure.  We can't see it yet because, like I said above, we are still too young to see it.   Consciousness, and more importantly self-awareness, is pretty new to us as a species.  A Utopian future doesn't exist for us yet, because life still has to learn to be alive.