Smile.

I was asked once why I do what I do.

I do what I do because I like it, because of the incommensurable, powerful emotion of being alive that it produces me. This feeling is what I look for. It does not matter what happens around me; once I am on that plane, everything stops in an eternal ephemeral second of pure happiness.

There is a perfection that touches the core of my soul and makes me want to cry. I want to cry of joy. It is a feeling so powerful that the closer I get to the door of the plane, the more intense it gets. It is almost as if my heart is exploding… and… then… I let myself fall out of the flying machine. For a few moments I stop breathing… It is me and the whole world underneath my body.

I start to feel the strong breeze caressing my face violently. I can barely breath and I love it. I look around me. It is just me falling down out of control. I rotate, open my arms, accelerate, decelerate,… The ground seems far, far away. It seems to never get closer, ever.

There is this god-like perfection in front of my eyes. My whole being unites with the universe. I turn my back to Earth and I look to the centre of the Galaxy. Eye to eye. I extend my eyes trying to reach out to the Universe.

No answer. I will try again next time.

Turn back. Open parachute.

Smile.

This is why I do what I do. It is not about the money. It is not a job. It is my dream.

Not everyone can say they live their dreams.

Smile.

 

Everybody wants to rule the world.

Jean-Luca was walking down the street. He could not trust anyone any more. They were listening, they were watching, and they were everywhere. He had deleted his Facebook account and was trying to get out of the country without arousing suspicion. The military forces were taking over and any odd individual would be accused of treason immediately.

These were turbulent times. There was not a single citizen without the M implanted and there would be no citizen without it. This was a way to achieve total control…It was so obvious! However, the population seemed happy with this solution. They were so weak. The Government even assured them that all the citizens that wore the M implant would enjoy good health. The population was brainwashed with slogans such as: ‘D’you want 100% protection against the future?’ ‘We can provide good health for the rest of your life’ ‘D’you wanna live forever?’. And people bought the product. Stupid bastards. They sold their freedom for a lie.

 

After several years, the Government achieved total control over the population. And I was waiting for the next train out of the country. I was asked for political asylum in the only country in the world where the M was forbidden. For how long? I did not know. I did not want to know.

The rain started to fall over me, and, in the distance, various advertisements from the National Progressive Party were promoting peace and respect. The cameras attached to them recorded any movement. Surveillance was a must…a must. The Government had to have all the information and record all the movements in order to protect the citizens from any harm. Ha! My ass any harm! And there she was, in the main screen, the image of the main symbol of the Party, Alani. She was a model, singer, and idol for the masses… too many people. She was the main character of several movies and advertisements. She was also singer and creative and had her own lingerie brand. She was flawless and perfect to the extreme. She was the decoy to get the new generations into the M and to get them to follow their ideas. It was disgusting to see how she, a person with barely any brains, was able to influence legions of fans. She was their role model and the perfect trap.

The train finally arrived. Its vapour pressure flood the entire station. I removed my hat and accessed the vehicle. In the inside, the confusion was beyond imagination. People from thousands of different places were there. The military was there. I was there.

The game was over and the train had been intercepted. The sound of the doors closing was my death sentence. All hope was over.

 

The last of my kind.

I walk alone among the shadows of my past. I am as free as anyone could ever be. I am the last of my kind.

I bring hope to the world. I bring destruction and a new beginning.

There is nothing you can do to avoid me  for I am Time.

I fly across the sky, over your head, beyond the land of the Gods. I fly alone. I am the last of my kind.

And I wonder in a vacuous existence… Waiting for the time of the Fall and the age of the Titans.

I roam among the mortals, but I am not one of them. I wander among the Gods, but I am not one of them.

I am the last of my kind, an Outcast. The last wonder of the Universe’s silent existence.

Timeless worn-out World, I travel trough your entrails. I am Chaos and I walk among mortals.

 

Destruction through rebirth. I am water that flies from the ground to the sky. Unreasonable reason.

I am….

the last…..

of my kind….

Gas mask.

The gas mask covered his face. His rotten countenance grew weary of existence. The gloomy rain over his suit and the desperate scream of his soul were killing him step after step. He was exhausted. No, he was more than this for he was dead inside.

He could see his breath through the mask and the reflection of his red lenses over the white snow. There was no stop…. This. Was. War. That was war since he was a child. He had been trained to survive and to kill. He was part of the most dangerous, meticulous, and lethal of all armies in the world. He was trained to survive in the most extreme situations and to exterminate a whole civilization -if it were necessary. He was a killing machine; he was a tired killing machine.

And the rain did not stop. It kept on falling over the world… over his world.  And he could not move any more. He did not wanted to move forward any more.

His brigade was standing still. Not a single move was performed. All of them were waiting for his leader to articulate the next order. But his leader was unable to move. In front of his eyes, there was nothing but his parents tombs, his room, and a blue, blue sky. He could heard the sound of the waves breaking and his father… and his mother… and the moment in which life stopped. He remembered the last birthday at home and the smile of his friends. The warmth of a hug and the shaking hand of his dad… The shaking hand of his dad when the government demanded a whole generation of children to go to war and to be trained to go to war. He could hear his mother screaming and he never knew what happened to her. That day was gloomy and sad. They walked through a corridor. A humid, yellow, and suffocating corridor. At the very end, the starts and the flag of our country. The whole wooden door was the flag of our country. Silence. Suddenly, when he was about to ask his dad what was happening, time moved forward.

I was separated from them.

My dad’s hands shaking and my mom screaming her life out.

I was sent to the special unit I would command for more than a life time. And, now, I was in front of my life…

In his hand, he hold the next order to follow. The rain turn into snow. Peaceful and pure snow they were about to desecrate. A holy place of peace would be ruined in seconds. And he was tired… tired of war…. tired of being surrounded by Death. But he was unable to do anything but to remember the day everything started….

‘Chief, are you ok?’

No answer.

Time riddle.

A new morning rising over the horizon of my life. I still was lost. I was given the chance to change one single thing from my past and I had no clue about what. I was unhappy, and I knew I wanted to change something. However, I had never imagined that I would have had the chance to actually do it.

But before I enter into more details, I should explain what happened.

Three days ago, I woke up. As usual, I was lost. Everyone around me was doing amazing things. I felt I was the only one that was not changing. I had just graduated from university and I thought the worst part was over. I had my official paper and I was naive enough to think that the best company in the country would knock on my door asking for my amazing brain. That never happened. I was trapped in a part-time job and I had no clue how to get out of there. I tried to apply to a different jobs, but nothing was good enough for me. Nothing seemed to meet my expectations. And I was there… lost.

I used to dream about becoming the best and succeeding in my field. I dreamt about a great career and about happiness and eternity. But Reality was different. I had managed to graduate and I was simply serving coffees -which was a good job for a student, but not any more. However, after I finished my degree, I wanted my dreams to become true. People from work told me that, after graduation, Reality became too real. ‘Too real??’, I thought, and I told myself that that would not be me. I was predestined  to do something big. ….. ……… Was I? After some time, I was not sure. And the fact that all my friends seemed to be succeeding was not helping me. I felt small, ridiculous, and helpless. I felt as if something inside me was screaming, urging me to do something, but the problem was that I had no idea what the problem was. I HAD NO CLUE… and that might had been the worst feeling of all: I was unable to see how to change it.

SO then, after some days, this guy appeared in my life. It was a really weird presence. He manifested himself, one day, out of the blue. In the far distance, I saw a guy with a daisy on his hat. He was tall, skinny, and his teeth were sharp and dangerous. It was uncanny… and he just said: ‘you can come back to the past and change one thing. This will change your future forever’, and he also added, ‘one thing you change, and all you might loose…for better or worse’.

He disappeared then. Promising that he would be back when my I had made up my mind.

And I still think…. I wait… Just one thing, what would you change?

The strange disc.

In front of me, there was the most fascinating plate I had ever seen in my life. It was round, but not perfectly round. The surface was extremely soft and this softness was only interrupted by the different symbols that crowded both faces of the disc. These symbols were of a childish nature. They were drawn in a awkward manner. Well, I should not say awkward… it was more like a clumsy manner. I am clearly biased by the Renaissance Art and so on, but anything looks clumsy compared to it!

The symbols were written following a clockwise manner and grouped in pairs. The clockwise distribution, at the same time, was a spiral one, which moved from the outside to the inside of the disc. A disc that showed a particular distribution and that it was full of symbols I could not understand. It was in my hands, in front of my eyes, it was speaking to me and I was unable to listen to it.

I left the disc on the desk of my office and walked towards the window. My steps were measured -I would say elegant. I breathed slowly and thought about the situation. If the department discovered that I had the disc in my hands… Well, then, everything would be over. They lent me the disc for a month and the period was over. No more tries, no more studies. OVER. They needed to send the disc far away from the museum for the separatists wanted to destroy it. I knew I should return it but… I knew the value of the disc was unmeasurable. It was the last earthling piece preserved in our planet and time. There was nothing else in this world that connected us to Earth. Even so… I knew the disc was speaking to me. I had to have it. I had to understand it! I was the descendant of an old generation of earthlings. Forty generations before my birth, my relatives had lived in the very earthling island the disc was founded. I had the right to study the piece. They could not expect me to decipher the riddle so quickly.

I pulled myself together and started over again. Galiea, the our system’s star, was shinning. The sky was deep green and the temperature was perfect. And in the moment I came back to my work, the door was torn down. Time slowed down and my blood rushed through my veins. Suddenly, the racket and the turmoil were silenced. I could hear nothing, but I could see how some soldiers were screaming at me. I could not understand what was happening. I knew I was screwed, but my head was spinning around. I was not there, my head was not there, my body could not process the information.

The next thing I saw was my hand. It was covered in blood. And the time speeded up.  The soldiers were there to destroy the museum. The separatists had won.

After this, there was only darkness.

Planet 32.

My mornings always started when the sun went down.

The slow melting down of the enormous, massive ball of energy. I actually enjoyed the waves that it forms when it goes down the horizon. The texture…as if the thin fingers of the universe were guarding its way down to the unknown places of the cosmos. It twinkle and twinkle slowly and more and more. After this, the World, then, is quiet and beautiful.

Our kind could not stand the strong light from the Sun. It was said that, years ago, the situation was different. Not anymore. And I, sometimes, wondered how it would feel… my body in the sun. But radiation was too high and dangerous. We had to content ourselves with the darkness of the world. The moon was not that awful after all! But, ah,… I, sometimes, looked at those pictures in the museums. Those pictures of people sunbathing, jogging, and enjoying a barbecue in the garden… As a History professor, I really wanted to experience those times. They were mysterious to me. How did they spent they time? How was it possible to cover from the sun rays? How could… I was running late already!

I picked my coat up from the floor and get myself on the way to the university. Before I left my tiny flat, I took one of the vitamin complex in order to combat the lack of sunlight. Although we managed to survive without living during the day, we really needed the vitamins. It took several years to develop something really effective to combat the lack of sun-vitamins; however, it was a bliss from the gods. Before the invention of the vitamins, people used to develop diseases… in the best-case scenario. Otherwise, some cases developed serious aggressive behaviours. These cases were extremely dangerous. According to my colleagues at the university, these specimen entered some sort of brain coma that was followed by a violent episode in which the subject would try to kill any other living being around him or her.  Horrendous!

I got my bike and started my way towards the university complex. I only carried my bag and myself… I was told to carry a gun -just in case some dangerous specimen decided to come across. That was simply not my stile. The chances of that happening were really low. The government was really keen on keeping all the population healthy and stable. After the Fall of the Empire, the World was reborn. We could not stand the sunlight, but we used the energy. It was a World of darkness but also a world of hope and technology. The gods were merciful with us and the government provided us with the vitamins to keep us healthy. Everything was perfect.

I turn right and right. I needed to pass by the flower shop. It was an old flower shop from the XXI century. Now, it was a museum with thousands of pictures from the past. And I liked one of the pictures. One with a young, sad eyed girl.