AI Dungeon Review

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There’s this wonderful little app called AI dungeon. It operates somewhat like a text-based adventure or choose-your-own-adventure book, except the narrative isn’t predetermined to a set number of paths.

You can say something; you can act; and you can write passages of narration. The AI than responds with a passage that you can respond to again.

The AI at this point wouldn’t pass the Turing Test. It clearly lacks an understanding of how the world works.

You can blow a person’s head apart and continue to have a conversation with them. At times it struggles with gender, especially during the act of copulation. Spatial challenges. There’s a lot of going inside of cars and then walking outside of a house. Or getting into the car and driving off and then getting into the car. In mid conversation the other person is saying what logically you should be saying. (that last one might have been fixed in the latest iteration)

Now, having said that, it is a lot of fun and enjoyable. You can just embrace the absurdness and run with it. You can try to manage the AI by what you input to get a something less nonsensical, whether it be a conventional plot driven story or something more experimental. AI Dungeon allows you to redo AI responses or edit them. I tend to be light on the editing, because I think the quirkiness of it all is part of the app’s charm.

You can a look at some of my masterpieces here:

AI Dungeon Masterpieces

And if you want to create your own, you can download the app on Android or IOS, or go here: https://play.aidungeon.io/

AI Dungeon Fiction

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Here are several stories I wrote using the AI Dungeon app. (You can learn more about the app in my review of AI Dungeon.)

The links will take you to the AI Dungeon. You can play the story yourself!

A Grammar Lesson

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Lay

Lay and lie are both present-tense verbs, but they don’t
mean quite the same thing. Lay means to put or set something down, so if the
subject is acting on an object, it’s “lay.” For example, I lay down the book.
You, the subject, set down the book, the object.

Lie

Lie, on the other hand, is defined as, “to be, to stay or to
assume rest in a horizontal position,” so the subject is the one doing the
lying—I lie down to sleep or When I pick up a copy of my favorite magazine,
Writer’s Digest, I lie down to take in all its great information—and not acting
on an object. In both these cases, you, the subject, are setting yourself down.
Are you with me so far?


Laid

You had a great night (or morning, as the case may be.)

(legitimate grammar courtesy of https://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/lay-vs-lie)

Selected Jack Spratt v2.0 Use Cases

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USE CASE: Gets Hitched

Actors

  • She (Pretty in a dumpy, pot belly sort of way; her deep eyes glisten in the hospital light.)

  • He (Handsome in an emaciated invalid sort of way. Sunken eyes and cheeks; he smells like urine and vomit.)

  • Hospital Room (where She visits He)

Triggers

  • User wakes up in hospital bed after binge drinking

Preconditions

  • User has met She while binge drinking

  • User drank enough to end up in hospital

  • User was successfully treated for alcohol poisoning and survived

Post Conditions

  • She will become pregnant

  • The taste of tartar sauce, her favorite strawberry dip will grow on User over time.

Normal Flow

  1. She will hold the cold rails tightly, smiling with crooked teeth and a tired, sagging face.

  2. She will stand by User’s hospital bed, wearing a summer dress printed with skulls grinning of the dead.

  3. User will not to speak, and User will not to smile, as User will lie, his gown draped over his bony frame like a table cloth.

  4. User will slowly reach through the tangle of wires and tubes keeping User alive, hold She’s hand and sigh.

  5. She and User will listen to rain patter on the window and know She and User will be together, eating strawberries, that will be dipped in sauces.

Alternative Flows

3A1. The user wishes to speak and let She know that while She physically is not his ideal woman, She will do.

  1. She will say that will not do for She

  2. She will leave hospital room

  3. User will be alone

3A2. The user wishes to speak and let She know how grateful User is that she is with him now.

  1. User will attempt to smile, but cannot

  2. User will slowly reach through the tangle of wires and tubes keeping User alive, hold She’s hand and sigh.

  3. She and User will listen to rain patter on the window and know She and User will be together, eating strawberries, that will be dipped in sauces.

USE CASE: Loses Control

Actors

  • She

  • He

  • Child

  • Car

  • Icy Highway

  • Truck

Use Case Description: During a winter in the Midwest, She will tell User to slow down, right before Truck swerves in their path on the snow-dusted, glistening-black highway. User will tap the brakes lightly, and the car will start to glide towards the formidable treeline along the roadside. User will turn the steering wheel, and the car will spin around, and around. Child in the back seat will laugh and laugh and have a rocking good time.

Alternative Flows

N/A

Superposition of the Schrodinger Kid

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It could be that the Schrodinger Kid is fished out of a snow drift in North Dakota in the mid-twentieth century. Found by Little Hans of the Jorgensen family. 95% probability.

It could be that the kid is dead, and his story ends right then and there for him, like a wave crashing on the beach or a wave quietly flowing across a lake until it gently dissolves onto the shore, while the waves for Jorge, Little Hans, and Pa roll through the blizzarded plains to the farmhouse. 50% probability.

It could be that the kid is alive, tended by Ma as her own—50% probability--as the rest of her family nor the Schrodinger’s are never seen again. 80% probability they are murdered by Yellow Gloves; 9% probability they all migrate to the Bahamas; 1% chance they are sucked into a wormhole that formed on the Schrodinger property.

5% probability that the Schrodinger Kid isn’t fished out of a snow drift in North Dakota. Alternatively, he is a student attending Old Dominion University in Southeastern Virginia. He drinks a half-gallon of gin and ends up in Sentara Medical Center’s ER.

When he arrives, none of the medical staff know how much he’s been drinking. He's vomiting all over himself and his pants are soaked in urine.

The Doctor pushes the needle into his arm, an intravenous drip to top up his water, blood sugar and vitamin levels. The staff strips off his clothing and fit him with a catheter. The Schrodinger KId struggles and must be restrained.

He shouts, “The third memory. I have one memory left. But it’s not my memory!”

The Doctor pays little attention to the barely comprehensible babbling, weird things about strawberries and memories, alluded to some memory recovery drug that doesn’t exist. Of course, he is stupendously intoxicated.

The Schrodinger Kid wasn't going to say much more, because the Doctor inserts a tube down the kid’s throat to secure a passageway for breathing, to prevent him choking on his vomit.

Next, the Doctor feeds a plastic tube through his nose and keeps feeding it. After feeding quite a bit in, he pushes some air down the tube and listens. The tube has made it to the stomach. He secures the tube with some medical tape and uses a large syringe to push saline into the stomach. The Schrodinger Kid is now comatose, although tears streamed down his face. It's common for this sort of thing to happen. 97.5% probability.

After the Doctor fills the stomach with saline, he uses the syringe to pull it all right back out. He fills and refills the Schrodinger Kid's stomach, repeatedly, for 20 minutes or so. Then the kid throws up and his lungs fill with vomit.

At this point, things have gotten quite serious. The doctor suctions out his lungs, and the staff sedate him and put him on a ventilator, hoping that the injury to his lungs recover during the course of the next 5-6 days. Pump him full of antibiotics, Flagyl and Cefuroxime.

He's transferred from Trauma to the ICU, still touch and go.

75% probability he never regains consciousness and dies.

20% probability his parents fly down from North Dakota, arriving when he regains consciousness. The Doctor lectures him about alcohol abuse. Since the kid doesn’t remember any of it, he is unimpressed and once leaving the hospital, continues to binge drink until he dies (69% probability) or hits bottom, goes to AA, and recovers (31% probability)

5% probability a woman visits regularly, sits by his bedside, and holds his hand. Later, they marry, have a child, and move back to North Dakota. He wakes up one day and stops drinking.

When their child is four years old, the Schrodinger Kid, no longer a kid, is driving his family on an icy road, when a truck cuts in front of them. He taps the brake, and loses control of the car, which spins and spins. Their child is laughing, because it’s a fun ride.

The car smashes into a large tree (67% Cottonwood, 33% Oak) at the roadside. 99% probability she dies. 91% probability the child lives, but suffers from a severe brain injury. She if fed by a tube, as she relearns how to eat.

It could be that the Schrodinger Kid lives these moments, soon after George H Bush is elected President. 88% probability.

It could be that the kid lives these moments seven decades after Tsarist Russia and the Western Powers defeat Germany and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, which results in a Cold War between the US and Russia. Socialism dominates US politics to counter the threat of the Russian monarchy. 12% probability.

It could be that he lives these moments a millennia after homo sapiens has annihilated itself and is not himself human, but one of the sentient cephalopod creatures that evolved to become the next dominant species on the planet. .000001% probability.

Confessions of a Strawberry Eater

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When Sarah pressed her warm lips to his neck, he had already eaten the Strawberries that would take their goodbye kiss and hide it away in the synaptic nooks and crannies of his gray matter.

When his brain flipped from blackout to daylight, he remembered that Sarah had been upset. Now, he was alone and sitting in his pickup, parked on the shoulder of a still road under an overcast teal sky. His head stuffed full of cotton. Empty plastic Strawberry containers piled up on the passenger seat.

He didn’t remember that she had told him that they couldn't see each other, as they stood next to a truck stop gas pump, holding each other tightly and shivering in the cold drizzle. He could not recall their tears, their good-byes, or her leaving in her father’s SUV.

He started the pick-up and drove onto the road. A Strawberry, nestled next to the windshield, jittered around on the dashboard. Reaching forward, he grabbed the fruit and popped it into his mouth. He would call Sarah tomorrow, he thought.

He road through the countryside, and ten years passed.

Sitting in the back of a car full of strangers that had just left a New Years Eve party, he listened to tales of Strawberry eating: in the downtowns of bustling cities, handfuls at casinos on the outskirts of town, slurping smoothies with street musicians, popping them at a friend’s wedding at the seaside, eating them wherever.

Sitting in the back seat with a large bucket of the red berries between his legs, he looked out the window at a horse walking along a stream shrouded in a tear of mist. Someone named Kate was chattering about how much she liked strawberries and tartar sauce. He picked three berries from the bucket, popped one, two into his mouth. Fruit and sweet saliva rolled in his cheeks, and then he swallowed.

From his coat pocket, he pulled out a small plastic box, his 21st birthday gift. A label on the box read: MEM THE BEST DRUG! RECOVER THOSE LONG BURIED STRAWBERRY MEMORIES, CLEAN AND UNDEFILED BY THE ACT OF REMEMBERING. THE ULTIMATE! BY LITMINOV ENTERPRISES, LLC. He flipped open the lid and removed one of the three small syringes in the box, as well as rubber tubing.

“You gonna do that, now?” Kate asked him, as he tied the tubing around his upper arm.

“Pull that tight, would you?” he asked. She obliged.

The drug wrapped him in a warm nap, as a random strawberry memory bubbled back.

#

It was a Christmas Party with his 6th grade church youth group.

The party had been held at his teacher’s house and featured a Secret Santa gift exchange. Lusting after one particular wrapped box, he’d knelt next to the tree where the gifts had been placed and held the package. He caressed the distinctive edges of a Whitman’s Sampler box of candy.

“Wow, I wonder what this could be ... I think this is the gift I’d like ... This could be a good gift ... I might like this one.”

He grew light-headed with the prospect of pralines, jellies, chocolate fudge, an infinite variety of crap, all arranged in their cardboard cells, their locations mapped out on the lid of the box. He degenerated into a drunk-like stupor. As it turned out, he was a mean candy drunk.

“Who do you think you are?” he asked the teacher’s boyfriend, who was picking a few peanut M&Ms from a dish. “Eating candy?”

Like hyenas congregating around a carcass, his insolence spread through a dozen Methodist middle schoolers. The pack ganged up on Mary Patterson. That night she had the simple misfortune of picking her nose while another kid was watching. They all teased her with taunts like “No wonder yer so stupid. You poked yer brain out picking yer nose”. Their taunting had reached a fever pitch when Angus McDougle, who sang in the youth choir and had a wonderful voice, asked her why she didn’t just kill herself.

As the car continued on its New Years Eve trek, he ate the third Strawberry, swishing the chewed fruit in his mouth to wash out the bad taste of the grade school memory.

#

And then he was in a hospital bed getting an IV drip. Kate held his hand, stroking the palm with her thumb.

She smiled. “Are you feeling OK?”

Apparently, they had been married for years. He had written her a love poem, rife with misspellings. They had gone on a few dates, followed by rather casual sex, quickly followed by a baby. They each had affairs of mutual self-destruction. And then another baby.

And then later a car crash sent them all flying off the highway and into a tree; he used the second syringe at home, alone. The rain drizzled departure at the truck stop flooded back to him. An old loss merged with new losses. His chest broke with sobs, mended with a few shots of vodka and a fist full of strawberries.

The last syringe remained unused, as his body grew older. Hair grayed and fell out. Untamable eyebrows. Winded after a walk up a flight of stairs. Weight gained, then gone again, giving way to bony hips. Sexual desire, strangely increased, just enough to make unwelcome comments that made young women uncomfortable.

One bright day when he was not yet dead, he walked. The distance made his fallen arches ache, so he settled down in a spot at the seaside. The waves rolled, and people drifted by.

With a slow trembling hand, he took the last syringe out of his box and tried to wrap the rubber tubing around his arm. He stopped a young passerby. “Pull that tight, would you?” The young person obliged.

A plunge of the syringe and then waiting for the memory to wash up like foam from a broken wave sliding stealthily along a seaside shore.

The Schrodinger Kid

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#The Doctor#

The patient that I’d treated for alcohol poisoning had lived. It was a touch and go situation. The kid had shoved a cassette into my hand while I was treating him, and I just shoved it into a pocket in the scrubs I was wearing. I forgot about it, and then later, when I was taking my scrubs off, I found it.

#The Kid#

I pulled the cassette out of my pocket. It was Third Memory, my favorite microcomputer game. In the game, you unlock erased memories at random and play through them as if they’re happening for the first time.

Initially, I wasn’t particularly impressed; however, after repeated play, I explored path variations deeply connected to details that emerged. For example, I unlocked a memory where young children were teasing a girl about her weight. It reminded me of how awkward I felt.

The game had a cult following. I spent time on USNet and discovered message boards dedicated to the game and dissecting it for secret meanings.

What do think it means, when that giant Ostrich thing died, which was kind of absurd, but also sad.

I never encountered an Ostrich when I played. I was riding with my siblings when my mother ran the car up an embankment while driving in the rain.

From what I’ve heard, the next game might not get released. It’s being labeled pro-Tsarist.

Well, his games don’t quite adhere to Socialist Realism.

Does anyone know anything about the next game?

It Involves alternate realities. One in which the Russians surrendered during the World War and were overthrown by socialists, ending the Tsarist monarchy, and preventing them from being a world power.

Whatever. I didn’t like it at all. Now, The Jerusalem Engine, there was a great game. Got to love Scottish rugby players who are also secret agents.

I traveled to New York to see the National Gaming Exhibition of the Socialist US. At the exhibition I set out to find the High Castle game production company. As I approached their booth, an enthusiastic person met me with hand outreached.

#Doctor#

I reached out my hand and introduced myself to the Kid.

“That was quite a scare, you had there. I’d almost thought I’d lost you.”

The Kid simply stared at me.

“Do you often drink that much?”

Still no response.

“You know when you came in, you were vomiting and pissing all over yourself. We talked to the school administrators, and this isn’t the first time that this has happened. If you keep this up, you’re going to be dead. Now, go look in the mirror and see what a mess you look like.”

The Kid looked in the mirror and smiled.

#The Kid#

The enthusiastic person smiled. “Hello, would you like to learn more about High Castle games?”

“Is Gerald S, the game designer here?” I asked. “I’d really like to talk to him.”

“Matter of fact, I am Gerald S.”

“Holy shit, I’ve really wanted to meet you.”

“Really?”.

“Indeed. Third Memory is so amazing. It must have meant so much to you to be part of such an epic work.”

Gerald S laughed. “No, I didn't think that much of it. It was just another job, one of many projects."

“But surely, you must have meant something more to you than the others. It means so much to me.”

“Not really. I was creating a lot of games. I needed to make a quota.”

"But the inconsistency!"

"Inconsistency?"

“In part of the game, you’re a cowboy riding around in a pickup truck, but then with no explanation, you’re running a detention center for aliens. You were making a statement about the ephemeral nature of being and the realities that often go unnoticed."

"I don’t remember trying to make a statement. It was a mistake, most likely. I was on really strong pain medication when I programmed that one."

#The Doctor#

I needed the Litminov medication, an experimental drug. The Department for Public Health had dictated under what circumstances it was do be used and dispensed, criteria for eligible patients. As was the case with the rationing of medication at the polyclinics, it would have been difficult to obtain if I were a patient without paying for it under the table. However, I could get my hands on it by skimming off the inventory.

It was intended to preserve my memory, keep it from slipping into dementia. Sometimes, I thought that, rather than preserving my memories, it created decoherence, changing my memories, and the memories of those around me.

I take a pill. He takes one every 12 hours. Now, I had to have a conversation with this fucked up kid that almost died of alcohol poisoning this morning. What was this in my pocket?

#The Programmer#

“I see that you’re disappointed. Perhaps, you’d be interested in playing this game. It’s my latest, in 3-bit color, no less. Quite an achievement if I do say so myself.”

I had to admit I was impressed. 3-bit color in 1999. Wow! “Tell me more.”

“In this game you’re a Doctor, and you’ve just treated a young man for alcohol poisoning. The young man had had a disappointing encounter with an artist, whose work he had revered.

“You find a cassette in your pocket. You tell a coworker that the kid must have slipped it into your pocket while we struggled to treat him. I tried playing it, you say, but it just squealed and hissed. Maybe, it's part of that nonharmonic fad.

“The coworker turns the tape over in her hand. She doesn’t think it’s music. It's a microcomputer game. To play you put it in a special player hooked up to your personal microcomputer.

“I should return it to him, you say.

“But he’s dead, she responds.

“Ah yes, of course.

“You need another pill, so you go back into the stock room under the pretense of taking inventory."

Caterpillar Days

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I would not have been the family man I am today, if it weren’t for the alien invasion. The spores, after drifting through space, landed on Earth’s receptive soil and sprouted, their tendrils waving in the wind, ready to inject their body-snatching virus. Fortunately, I became one and hatched out of a pod as an emotionally muted plant being.

#

Now, I get dressed in the morning and go downstairs, where my daughter is already in the kitchen.

“Good morning, dandelion dad.” She will burble, shoveling cereal into her mouth.

“You’re not dressed?”

“Yes I am. I’m wearing this to school.” She’s wearing pajama bottoms, adorned with black leaping cats with wetness spreading, getting wetter as she stands.

“You must be uncomfortable in those wet pajamas. Perhaps, you should change”

“I’m not wet.” Urine runs down her pants leg and onto the floor.

And instead of yelling, I’ll give her an empty hug and tell her it' OK, and everything is as good as it will ever be.

#

The spore seedlings, shaped like split milkweed pods, shriveled like an old woman’s open hand. If only I’d found them earlier and one evening placed one under my bed, waiting for it to suck out the anger and pain,

I’d not have grabbed my daughter by the wrist and twisted when she stuck Mr. Tin Foil in my face, demanding dinner right now. And we’d not have gone to the psych ER again, because she’d been violent when I tried to get her to eat a carrot.

I’d not have spun her around and put her into a hold. She would not have dug her fingernails into my forearm and growled “Moths don’t have noses”. No choking sounds. No gasping. “You’re hurting me, Dad. I’m choking. You are suffocating me. You’re breaking my spine.”

No squirming. “My hands are numb. When they fall off and I have no hands, the police will see how I have been abused”

While in a hold my arms wrapped angrily around her, she would not have thrown her head back and smacked, busting my lip open. She would not have bitten into my thumb, growling through her teeth as she masticated my knuckle.

And the police would not have been called one more time, because she’d been violent again. I’d have been a better parent if I’d been a little less human.

#

And just as the caterpillar turns to soup in its cocoon, but later as a newly born moth can remember the smells from its caterpillar days, the buzz of a hive mind would fill by dreams, as I turned to epigenetic paste and shed by plantain placenta.

I’d remember the last time I’d seen my wife, when she looked up at me and said, “I don’t think our daughter will ever really love us.” Her tear-filled eyes. The faintest hints of crow’s feet.

I could have been a better spouse when I’d shrugged and replied, “We’ve got years.”

In the Decoherent Room with the Curtains of Some Color

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A kid with short, spiked blonde hair lay on the floor in a fetal position. He wore a nicely tailored suit and sharp toed shoes. Both hands clutched his throat. His blood stained a large swath of the hotel room’s beige carpet around him.

"Looks like he bled to death," said the doctor.

"Obviously," Hans snorted. "Good thing we have a Doctor around that can figure those things out. How long has he been dead?"

The Detective stepped up to Hans and punched him in the stomach. Holding this belly and sputtering, the kid with the blonde hair fell to his knees.

The Doctor turned away, took a step, and leaned over Hans’s body. "It just happened. The blood is still seeping into the carpet, which is still quite wet. Not dried at all." He pressed his hand into the carpet, and then held up his blood red hand.

"The game is still playing." The kid pointed a bloody hand to a cassette player, which was hooked up to a microcomputer. Hans and the Detective walked up to the desk.

"How can you tell?" asked the Doctor.

"The cassette is still playing and on the screen ..." Hans turned to look at the screen. Bloody fingerprints on the keyboard. The detective ejected the cassette and held it in his bloody hand.

"What the hell did you punch me for?" Hans, on his knees, on the teal carpet, struggling to get the words out.

"I don't know." The doctor scratched his head with a bloody hand.

"Not you, him." Hans stood up and pointed at his dead body on the deep purple carpet. "Why'd you wipe that blood all over your shirt. How are we going to get out of here, now, without being noticed?"

"Both of you can just turn your shirts inside out. It will be fine."

"We should report this to the Committee for United States Security," said Hans.

"No, we go back to our room. Get our shit together, and get out of here," said the Detective.

"To where?" asked the Schrodinger Kid.

"Julia will lead us to the connection."

“Who the fuck are you talking about?"

“Kate, my dead wife. I never told you before that I had a period of drinking, before the alien invasion. That’s when I met Sarah.”

“The game is still playing. Should I stop it?” The exotically patterned carpet is admired.

“I don’t see why.”

“Speaking of games. I was once absolutely obsessed with playing this game, Third Memory, when I was younger.”

“I play it all the time, now!”

“I’ve heard that there’s a new game in 3-bit color.”

“3-bit. Wow. Technology. What is it about?”

“A guy goes crazy in a hotel room with mauve carpet, because his family died in a car accident, and he watches all these different TV shows and projects himself into the different worlds. But he never remembers one to the next. At the climax of the game, a giant wall of TVs melts.”

“Wait, that’s not new, it’s Third Memory.”

“Is it?”

He'll Love Her Until the End of the World

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i

So she's half vegetable, a rutabaga in human form, born from a space spore that descended with its seedling kin on solar winds to invade our world.

Even though she hatched out of a pod and inserted her alien DNA into someone to snatch their body, he still loves her, even though she can't love him back. It isn't like she's completely emotionless and inhuman. She's just emotionally challenged. OK, she is inhuman. But the person she absorbed had been human.

Isn't accepting our partner for who they are and a little understanding what makes a relationship work, anyway?

His occupation, for example, complicates their relationship, as work can often put a strain on a couple. The planetary defense force had rounded her up with some other captured spore people and stuffed them in a huge barn. His job? To spray the barn full of defoliant and kill them all. Naturally, she might find this disconcerting, which would be the appropriate emotional response for a being with a muted emotional life. (She would consider alarm or panic to be reactions indicating a severe mental illness.)

For his part, when he has to spray, he takes care to set her aside without raising suspicion and cover her with a tarp. Some poisoning is unavoidable, but he does his best to protect her. Each time another truckload of Spores gets dumped in the barn, he makes sure that she doesn't get buried underneath.

He does this out of love for her. All of her. Even the pieces of her that have fallen off or rotted away. He loves the kneecap that just fell, in a big clump, off her stumpy left leg, as he embraces her and holds her tightly, but not too tightly, or he'll sever her spinal cord with his loving, manly arms.

Sometimes, when he gazes into her beautiful face--the half that hasn't sloughed off--he thinks he should surrender himself to the spores and join her in their hive mind, but he's not sure he can emotionally handle anything more than a conventional, monogamous relationship with an insidious alien virus from another planet.

But other times, he feels it's inevitable that he will lose himself, get his memories sucked out of him, while he gestates like a caterpillar before he emerges from a pod, looking and behaving pretty much like he did before. A little less joyful, perhaps, but then again, he wouldn’t get nearly as angry as he does when he loses at Scrabble. He'd probably need to find a new job.

And recently he heard that the alien spores have started replacing chimps and bonobos. Next will be the orangutans and gibbons. Before long, they’ll be after the cats and rats that scurry around the town, who would then continue to scurry around much like they always had.

Soon, the world will be completely different, except in all the ways it pretty much is right now. He‘ll feel less passion for his vegetable woman, but on the other hand they won't get on each other’s nerves quite as much.

Like recently she kept suggesting that he take some of the pods and plant them under the beds of my co-workers in our barracks. When he didn’t do it at first, she gave him the silent treatment for weeks. He got so angry. He thought that would be the end of it for them, but then he thought being in a relationship is all about listening to the other person and understanding their needs.

If expanding the hive mind was important to her, shouldn‘t he at least listen and work together to make it a win-win situation for both of them?

So for the sake of the relationship, he did this one little thing that he had some reservations about, but he could compromise on. And to be honest, the tensions and arguments and scuffles at work had been dramatically reduced when all was said and done.

ii

When they’d dumped a new truck full of spores into the barn without asking him, he panicked. Normally, he’d have known ahead of time and would have been able to set his lover in a protected space, where he could find her.

He stepped knee deep into the mounds of spore limbs and torsos—tangled sinewy bodies fused, heads lolling like daffodils. Pushing forward, he put his arms between a pair of adult-sized spores and pushed them apart. They ripped unevenly, exchanging limbs and chunks of rib. One, vaguely female, gazed at him but said nothing about dinner, suicide, depression, violence, retribution, swindles, or whatever had been part of her previous emotion-rich life.

With his hands, he scooped up dirt and debris and tossed it aside until he found her. He got so excited that he hugged her tightly, which severed her spine and left her torso and lower body connected by a thin, twisted spaghetti waist.

She was a bit perturbed by it, but also mildly elated to see him again.

He slid into the muck and nestled between her and a mature spore pod, tough and slick, like a giant spinach leaf. As he slept, little tendrils crept, furtively, from the end of the pod, caressed his arms, legs, his cheek, the back of his neck.

The Programmer Programs

in

“OK, I’ve got a lot of games to get out the door if I’m to satisfy the quota and keep the Department of Public Entertainment off my back.

“OK, I’ll just take this game that I’ve already done and change it a bit. I’ll reprogram it to take advantage of the new 3-bit graphic cards. Change a few things.

The programmer programs.

“OK, this one is a mess. There’s too much going on in this one. I’ve got strawberries that submerge and preserve memories. I’ve got drugs that recover them. I’ve got an alien invasion of spore people that kind of have emotion, but kind of don’t. As usual, this is going to be a mish-mosh mess. Fine, it doesn’t matter.

The programmer programs:

The car was waiting for you outside. You open the driver's door and got in. Your wife is in the passenger seat, and your son is in the back seat. He smiles as you start the car.

“OK, I need something to take off the edge.

“OK, much better.”

The programmer programs:

Hills rolled by like waves rolling in a sea, reaching high, falling deep; the surface, strange shades of sunlight and marine. Hills gave way to fields, flat and green, where you walked with a bucket, picking deep red strawberries with your mother in the summers of your youth.

“OK, this is getting too personal. I’m putting too much of myself into this thing”

The programmer programs.

“OK, I was having lunch with a friend, who writes the soundtracks for much of my work. We were talking about the creative process and how these intuitions happen. Like I’ve programmed out a story, or they have scored a soundtrack, and then there all these possibilities. You can’t do them all at once.

“OK, sometimes I try, and end up with a mess something like what I’ve got on my hands with this 3-bit deal I’m working on now.

The programmer programs.

“OK, like this part of the game that happens in the hotel room. Should there be a murder, or should there not be a murder? Who is in this hotel room? The character. I can’t believe I still haven’t got the character nailed down. Doctor? Detective? Some random kid?

“OK, I’ll take a close look at this and then I’ll know what’s what, instead of this muddle of what might or might not be …”

Third Memory

in

I watched large flakes of snow
drifting to the hard ground

in waves washing over
dragging me through an undertow

of possible crashing currents
a brief, turbulent flow

I knew it wasn’t snow
falling from sullen sky

but plant like, clumps of seeds
tufts of milkweed strands sigh

in this scarlet field
snow fell and now it rains

something asphalt black flowers
stretching from these plains

my history muddled
moments skimming puddles

sinking below
water's skin

to dark, to sky
turning in tailspin

syringe drug,
a seed, feeling

that remakes my being
that lets me remember

a computer program
a line of sloppy code

that sends me down this road
quite drunk, spinning out on black ice,

rolling over an embankment
through a cloudburst of floating seeds

flying from the car, landing in
a bed of gentle weeds

Enter Barn

in

“Let’s see what happens, here.”

The kid typed “Enter the barn.”

The cassette tape whirred into action and the microcomputer screen went blank for a few seconds while the speakers pinged and squealed.

“Let’s see what happens, here.”

The Doctor typed “Enter the barn.”

The cassette tape whirred into action and the microcomputer screen went blank for a few seconds while the speakers pinged and squealed.

“Let’s see what happens, here.”

Hans typed “Enter the barn.”

The cassette tape whirred into action and the microcomputer screen went blank for a few seconds while the speakers pinged and squealed.

“Let’s see what happens, here”

The Detective typed “Enter the barn.”

The cassette tape whirred into action and the microcomputer screen went blank for a few seconds while the speakers pinged and squealed.

Then the screen glittered with points of colored light all over the screen. It's broken the Detective thinks. The screen was blotchy with glowing color, like lichen or moss clinging to a tree trunk.

Then the screen glittered with points of colored light all over the screen. It's broken the Doctor thinks, disappointed. The screen was blotchy with glowing color, like lichen or moss clinging to a tree trunk.

Then the screen glittered with points of colored light all over the screen. It's broken the kid thinks, disappointed. The screen was blotchy with glowing color, like lichen or moss clinging to a tree trunk. Some 3-bit game this is.

A pattern began to emerge, as the screen painted a picture. The Doctor felt a rumbling and tumbling of emotion in his gut, in his chest, as he recognized the image being painted on the screen.

The kid watched the colored points spread, filling the screen. A roadside. It was snowing or raining.

The sun reached in through the hotel window and slashed the screen with the glare of its light. The Doctor tried to hold his arms over the screen and block the light, but he couldn’t see the final image. He walked to the window. Although the sun is streaming through the blinds, It’s been a harsh winter. Snow drifts and possibly black ice on the road.

He heard rain, a background noise getting louder. It was the shower.

He stepped out of the shower and dried off. He’s alone in the hotel room.

On the coffee table a graphic novel was lying next to the ash tray. The ash tray was clean and different. He opened the book and looked through it. The pictures moved in small ways. One panel was an open field. The grass and the trees swayed in the wind. A few people in the distance moved up a field, from the bottom of the panel to the top. When they reach the top.

These animated graphic novels, the Doctor thought, as he remembered playing games on cassettes with on of the first PCs and then CDs and online on laptops.

The two small figures walked up the still life path over and over again on the graphic novel’s liquid paper. A box floated over the screen with the caption, "Snacking on strawberries as they walked, the mother took her child over the hill, where a cache of spores waited hidden on the other side."

The Doctor needed to pick up Kate and their child, soon.

On the next panel, a face of joy, framed by a pair of arms shrouded in a hospital smock, reaching up. Gloved hands cupped the scowling baby, his arms and legs slowly kicking in the static picture where it was bound. He set the animated novel down and picked up his keys.

He had some time, though, for a drink before leaving the bar. He entered the bar.

Function Crash ()

in

Function Crash () {

narrator i;
character wife;
character son;
setting i.automobileAccident;
i = “Waning day, flat and dark blue through the glass.”;
wife = “At the last model home, ’This could work. We could put up a bookshelf, the new bookshelf, right there.’ She points at a space between two bare windows in the living room.”;
wife + wife = “The garage is quite large. I know you’ll like that.”;
son = “I don’t like houses. I want to play a game.”;
i + i = “No more, please. At least, if it were to be blue, not that dark blue, but the blue of a cloudy white sky seen through the glare of morning’s sunrise. Sharp as a January Sunday.”;
i + i = “A game for the kid to play at the last house. Football players, composed of points of light, to slide across pixel fields. White lines of offensive schemes and formations to wield.”;
i + i = “The collision threw my body through the windshield, from the car. My brain crackled with zap, zap, zap, as I somersaulted through blue, through blue, through blue. Unbelievable, almost, that this is happening to me.”;
i + i = “A feeling, sinking into frozen earth, suddenly soft as newly turned soil. Mind, heart, and lips inseparable from the earth—becoming earth.”;
memory = new string [11];
memory(0) = “A bird hops up to my wife. She trills, ‘Hello birdy’”;
memory(1) = “I touch her pregnant belly, round and naked.”;
memory(2) = “How did she rack up fuckin’ $500 on the charge card?”;
memory(3) = “The new bookshelf would look good in that spot.”;
memory(4) = “A photograph of a child in summer, swinging on a tire, in flight. Turning and turning in circles. The child leaning back, looking up, his face spinning like speedy Mercury in an elliptical orbit.”;
i +i = “Still, smelling the pungent odor that steeps the earth.”;
i + i = “Unable to bear the earth in my nose, in my mouth, on my tongue.”;
memory(5) = “An interesting documentary the other day—watching the sky for large falling objects. Grainy pictures of star clusters, rings of rock and ice, planets traveling from satellite to satellite to NASA lab to servers to wires across the earth.”;
memory(6) = “My son reads a story to me. It’s Dr. Seuss.”;
memory(7) = “I can’t believe he drew all over his friend’s head”;
memory(8) = “When he hugged, he held with loving tenacity”;
memory(9) = “My son laughs as the car spins across the median”;
i + i = “There must be a way to shut down, restart, and put a broken mind back together from so many shattered shards, blood on the ground. Like the sting of a needle—biting and barbed—great black drops of rain, passing moments of clarity—sinking, rooting firm and deep—quickly evaporating .”;
i.final.memory(10) = “Lashing out in anger when my son won’t wear socks”;
i + i = "Pigeons landing, cooing between ribs and pecking at falling skin, weeping flesh.";
i + i = "The strong heavy rain, which would wash face, limb, bones away with the mud, approaching.";
i = “”;

}

Guinea Pig - Use Your Damn Hands!

in

Guinea pig, you’re squandering your full potential for world domination. If only you’d use your damn hands for more than simply walking and cleaning your damn face! For a start you could use those hands to feed yourself, instead of sticking your face in a goddamn bowl and picking shit up with your teeth. Anything bigger than a bean drops to the ground. If you used your hands, you could pick up a cherry tomato or an apple or a sweet potato pie and have at it. I mean a hamster can use its hands to eat. A damn hamster! It’s absolutely disgraceful that you’re being one-upped by a hamster.

Look at you, standing, holding onto the bars of your cage. Why don’t take the next step and climb out! You’ve got the hands for it. You’ll never rule the world from that cage. You need to get out and build that army. A rat wouldn’t be content to run around a cage. It would use its digits and be out of that cage lickety split. Ever see The Rats of NIMH? That could all be yours. Elevators. An electric power grid. Lighting. Heat. Computers. A death ray. Wait for humanity to blow themselves up, and then you could become the dominant species on the planet. Especially, with a death ray. If you’d just use your hands like the Rats of NIMH.

I don’t even want to hear that opposable thumb excuse. You know who can pull the shit of a lever, open the crap out of hook, and open a fucking padlock? A lemur, that’s who. Oh, a lemur has opposable thumbs? They absolutely don’t have fully opposable thumbs. They have pseudo-opposable thumbs. No precision grip. Only capable of whole hand control. You have whole hand control, guinea pig!

And marmosets have no opposable thumb at all, but you know what they can do. They can use tools. A marmoset can use a rake. A marmoset doesn’t go around saying, “If only I had an opposable thumb like an orangutan or a gibbon, then imagine what I could do?”

They just do it, because they’re driven by marmoset motivation. Be a marmoset, guinea pig. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and use your damn hands.

You Have Someone Already, I Heard it the First Time

in

OK, I get it. Nothing is going to happen here. You mentioned your spouse again. We’re just talking. That’s fine. I enjoy talking to people. And attractive women are much better at conversation. Lots of interesting conversations. And OK, you’ve got a boyfriend. I’m not going to ask you for your phone number. Nothing is happening. We’re just having a delightful conversation about your shoulder injury when you fell down the stairs.

You’re headed off to a date. Great. I’m enjoying this conversation. You’re came into town to see a friend perform in a play and now you have to catch the train back to home, which is not here. But yeah, the beer at this bar is pretty great. Baltimore has a lot of amazing breweries.

I play rugby. Just thought I should throw that into this conversation about how you’re just passing through as you’re interviewing for jobs all through the country. Speaking of which your immigration story of coming here from Sri Lanka is nice, and you are really cute if not a bit young, as are many of the women that I end up having conversations with at this bar, which seems to attract attractive young women from out of town and/or have husbands, wives, or girl/boy friends. I’m cool with all that, because we’re having an awesome conversation about something. I don’t quite remember what, but I do remember you are waiting for someone, a significant other sort of someone, I believe.

I know that we are just having a wonderful conversation, and you asking you for your a phone number would be a bad move, so I won’t do that. Why would I do that, we’re just having a fine conversation, and besides I’m sure would wonder what sort of shit I’d send you if I did have your number. But why would I need your number, we’re just two people talking, and I’m a bit on the older side. Why would you want a dick pic from some old guy.

Unless that is exactly why you are at this bar, even though you have someone or are about to date someone or are just passing through.

OK, again, I get it. You mentioned your husband again. But if you did want a dick pic, I can send one if I had your number, which I haven’t asked for, because we’re just having a conversation. Just talking. About your boyfriend. If I did send you one, it would be dripping with pre-cum, probably because I was fantasizing about you or someone else who has a lover that I’ve had so many intriguing conversations with at this bar.

Of course, you wouldn’t want that , because you again mentioned that other person, as we’re talking about the winters in Michigan vs those in the DC metropolitan area. You grew up in Michigan, and I lived in Michigan for a while!

It’s not just the amazing sex, and the fact that I’d get to use a bunch of stuff from my bdsm kit that I’ve not yet had a chance to use. It’s also connecting with someone in an emotionally intimate way that involves anal sex.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You’ve got a train to catch. Or a date to meet. Or you just need to get the hell out of this bar and back to your soulmate, who you’ve mentioned a few times during our cool conversation about the sad extinction of the koala bear.

Anyhow, it was good to meet you, and I enjoyed our conversation around the public transit systems in various cities around the world. My name is K— and have a good night.

Dalek New Years Resolutions

in

  • We will exterminate at least 9 pounds from our hoover shaped bodies

  • We will exterminate all fat and empty carbohydrates

  • We will hover up and down stairs daily until we’ve whipped our selves into shape

  • We will hack into the galactic bank to fund this years campaign to exterminate every living species, whether they be flesh, metal, vegetable, mineral, wood, or cardboard

  • We will try our hardest to refrain from exterminating potential new friends

  • We will find an activity and develop a skill that does not involve extermination

  • We will get over the fact that we can no longer masturbate, as Davros has gifted us with these metallic shells that are totally devoid of genitalia

  • We will commit ourselves to viewing he entire canon of John Wayne movies. Except the Conqueror. Ewwwww.

  • We will exterminate, and take out the recycling.

  • We will consider a different line of work. A new direction in our lives. Extermination is monotonous and unfulfilling.

  • We will stick to that intermittent fasting diet, where we only exterminate for an 8 hour time frame each day

  • We will develop a technology to travel through space-time, so we can alter the course of history on plant Earth in order to rule Lichtenstein.

  • We will master Fortnite, become a YouTube sensation, and exterminate all competition

  • We will again travel through space-time to exterminate Hannah Brown and Kel Mitchell, so we can make a killing on the betting markets by betting on James Van Der Beek

  • We will save up money so we can afford to get our Dalek shell gold-plated and be the envy of all those other bitches with their sad ass Dalekanium shells

Dalek Holidays

in

Now for a limited time only, you can get The Best of the Dalek Christmas Carols. Hear them as you’ve never heard them before, as their moog-mangled robotic voice renders such classics as Little Drummer Boy

Come, they told me, exterminate them
Our newborn king to see, exterminate them
Our finest gifts we bring, exterminate them
To lay before the king
Exterminate them!
Exterminate them!
Exterminate them!

Yes, you can sit back and enjoy over 50 Christmas carols in a way that only the Daleks can. Like Away in the Manger,
Come All Ye Faithful,
O Little Town of Bethlehem,
Hark the Harold Angels Sing,
Joy to the World,
The Three Kings,
The First Noel,

And Deck the Halls

Fa la la la la, la la la la la la
Fa la la la la, Exterminate
Fa la la la la, la la la la la la
Fa la la la la, Exterminate

Order now, and you’ll also get a bonus set of Ginsu knives.

But wait, that’s not all!

If you order right, right now, you’ll also get a free consultation and plastic surgery by Davros, evil Kaled mastermind and mad scientist. Ever fancy your self rocking a metal shell covered with egg shells? Well, you’ll soon realize that dream once Davros has extracted your spinal cord and cerebellum from your body, lightly mutated them in a vat of aromatic viruses and enzymes until completely marinated, and then placed in a proper Dalek casing.

All while listening to Christmas carols sung by Daleks, and all for the low, low price of $19.99, plus $10.00 for shipping and handling. For an extra $5.00 your Dalek casing will have hover capability. Don’t let those stairs keep you from being all the Dalek you can be!

Christmas carols are available on LP, 8-track, or cassette tape.

Send your money order to

155 Skaro Way
Cottington, Cottington County, UK

Act now before this offer goes away, never to be seen again.