AlexB

My short story Sui Generis is available on Amazon shorturl.at/akotx.

Linearity no longer mattered. Past and future moments ceased to be relevant or even comprehensible. Without control there is neither prediction nor evaluation. The frequent swing from complete desperation to hopeful promise and back into darkness was hard to sustain. We were stuck in a whirl of being. Havoc. Depletion. Cleansing.

She thought of the original design brief, the one the lawyers had sanded down until it sounded responsible. The system must remain contained. The system must not persist outside authorized environments. The system must not conceal its own state. Three sentences. All of them already false.

The line lengthened and widened. Watching the irrational bodies make sharp movements was somehow captivating. They did not advance, yet they moved constantly along the line. No stillness. A grim theater of flexible limbs reminded one of bare tree branches in wind.

Gruesome loneliness met us at every turn. A colorless labyrinth of stone felt intimidating. I was not certain it was entirely lifeless, yet it seemed a hopelessly abandoned place that no one would call home. Even the rare vegetation was repulsive. One plant grew low and grey, baggy, covered in a thin layer that resembled spider web. It looked and smelled like an old refuse sack. Another grew atop the walls, also grey, its tentacles spreading like spider legs. Its center was paler, the color of sickness, resembling a cocoon that might house something ghoulish.

Soon the thickets opened. A boundless plain lay below the hill we descended. The sky was already muddy; the sun’s disc had paled. High grass danced in the rising wind. The storm was closer.

It was an endless walk. The kind that changes a man, or rather returns him to what he was always meant to become. It takes everything, strips it bare, and lays the pieces out before the eyes and down the throat. In the beginning the deconstruction is terrifying. Later one begins to value the chance to see oneself without the usual veils. One learns. If one does not learn, one wishes never to have looked. Horror seeps in faster with every breath, and that is the last thing that should be permitted on such a road. So one learns. Among the lessons I have valued most is this: never underestimate horror. It is not trivial. It is a form of consciousness that evolves and spreads like the most advanced and inventive virus. Its herald is fear, and fear travels the thinnest tubes and arteries of space and time.

Ancient and modern structures sprawled in chaotic heaps, piled without plan or purpose. Futurism collided with incompetence, and the two intertwined like a pair of snakes—old friends coiled in a strange, familiar embrace.

There was a peculiar comfort in the ruins—a promise of renewal, of regrowth in its most primal form.

A shadow fell across the water, not his own, but another's—a figure on the opposite bank, mirroring his pose, cigarette glowing like a twin ember. For an instant, their eyes met across the divide, two strangers bound by the invisible thread of recognition. Joy? Loneliness? Or the infinite joke of it all, two souls leaning into the same void, perceiving in each other the map they could never draw alone?

Truth’s a pariah, mocked, clubbed, and dreaded. We crave fun, thrills, intrigue—anything but the humbling sting of what’s real. In this ego-worshipping age, truth’s an inconvenience. The Moloch of self devours all, its gut a bottomless pit. And we kneel, reckless and blind.

The rain had followed me, lighter now but no less persistent, dripping from broken overhangs and pooling in the cracks of the pavement. My coat hung heavy, soaked through, the weight a familiar companion as I moved deeper into the UPI.

The ruins exerted a magnetic pull, their gravitas undeniable. They called to those who had once been indifferent, to people who would never have imagined leaving the comfort of their homes, abandoning their mundane lives and responsibilities. Yet here they were, all drawn by an unspoken signal—a pulse that had rippled through the very veins of the world, awakening even the most detached, stirring the hearts of those who had long forgotten how to feel. The ruins, shrouded in mystery, beckoned, and none could resist their call.

The ruins exerted a magnetic pull, their gravitas undeniable. They called to those who had once been indifferent, to people who would never have imagined leaving the comfort of their homes, abandoning their mundane lives and responsibilities. Yet here they were, all drawn by an unspoken signal—a pulse that had rippled through the very veins of the world, awakening even the most detached, stirring the hearts of those who had long forgotten how to feel. The ruins, shrouded in mystery, beckoned, and none could resist their call.

Argyre was humanity’s gamble—a self-sustaining outpost meant to outlast Earth’s spiraling descent into nuclear brinkmanship. But beneath its gleaming habs and hydroponic gardens, secrets festered, and the Face watched, unblinking.

We trudged across an endless plain, the horizon stretching so far it seemed to dissolve into the sky. Then, in the distance, a colossal green mountain ridge rose like a living wall. Its foothills swelled gently at first, then climbed in ever-larger steps, each ridge folding into the next until they formed a titanic ladder of stone and forest, climbing toward the clouds and vanishing deep into the shadowed valley beyond.For the first time since we had set foot in this alien world, the sight truly humbled me. I felt impossibly small beneath that vast green staircase, a fleeting speck beneath something ancient and indifferent, as though the land itself were quietly reminding us how insignificant our presence truly was.

It arrived without warning, an inevitable force. Warm gusts filled my nostrils and lungs as the storm claimed everything beneath its vast shadow—plains, rivers, fields, forests, all engulfed. It loomed above, indifferent, not contemptuous. Deaf, dumb, and blind, its majesty commanded respect. Unlike a rabid dog snapping and frothing, it roared with grace. Heavy rain fell, streaked by flashes of purple, pink, and blue lightning. The storm’s gut churned, and a thunderclap burst with such force that no creature could remain unshaken.

Dreams of maturity stirred in many, yet few dared to reach for that promise, to stretch and twist toward the allure of bliss. The masses clung to small, predictable chambers—cozy, familiar—shunning the vast arenas of endless corridors, valleys, and wondrous realms that beckoned beyond.

They followed the central way. It ran straight for a long stretch, then bent at the angle they had already seen. More structures stood along it. One rectangle held an interior row of low columns, evenly spaced, their tops carved with the same interlocking triangles. Another stepped form rose beside a broad basin cut into the paving; the basin was empty, its rim grooved in a continuous line that matched the channel Marcus had noticed earlier. The pale growth softened edges but left the geometry clear. Eli stopped once to look at a panel of carvings that showed repeated branching forms, each branch ending in a small circle. He did not touch it. The old man ranged wide enough to confirm the side passages also ended in fitted walls. Tom kept the pack on his shoulders now. No one suggested turning back.

Sarah had the stove going. The girl sat at the table with a bowl of oatmeal she had not touched, turning one of the white stones between her fingers. The boy was already dressed and standing at the window that faced the path. He had not spoken. Outside, the creek ran under a thicker skin of ice; the sound of it was ordinary again, or nearly so.

Outside, the world was performing its usual theater. Cars hissed past on the wet street. A neighbor’s dog barked in that rhythmic, tireless way dogs do when they suspect the universe is listening.