Oblivion

Oblivion

  Stephen W. Cote

  Copyright Stephen W. Cote 2003

  First published by Inkblot Books, 2004.

  About the Author

  Hello and thank you for reading. My name is Stephen W. Cote. I am a Software Engineer and Consultant, a United States Marine, a martial artist, and an author. You can find more information about my early creative writing and ongoing open source projects on whitefrost.com. I enjoy writing hard and whimsical science fiction, adult fantasy, and poetry. As an early advocate of Creative Commons licensing, many of my short stories and poems have been available online since 1996.

  If you would like to learn more about my writing, open source projects such as the Hemi JavaScript Framework, or inquire about unpublished manuscripts and shorts, please contact me at whitefrost.com.

  Thank you for taking the time to read my work and I hope you enjoy it.

  Part 1: Nothing Like Heaven

 

  They were new. It showed. The youthful men strode in merriment, following an athletic trail that meandered through a park, skirting the edge of the Myrrh Desert. Newcomers were attracted to the desert by the magnificent color of the silty, reddish-gray sand. It was the only natural feature radiating color for as far as one could see. The single faint color was amplified by the molten blackness of the adjacent Obsidian Sea. The landscape cast its own eerie luminescence and no light shone from the pitch-black and starless sky. At the edge of the Myrrh Desert, the reality of all newcomers’ situation settled in when they checked their tour map and correctly identified their location. More specifically, the newcomers discovered why the sand had color. The sand was gray and the color bled from afterworld two hundred ninety nine, Human Christian Hell.

  The effect had more meaning to Human Christians than anyone else. No matter the response, the newcomers were bound to notice another unnerving sight: the firm grip of senility engrossing the abandoned stares of most people lounging in the park. In the moment when a newcomer first witnesses those near-lifeless souls, particularly one of their own species, the germ of their destiny begins to fester. Ultimately, the newcomers realize they are looking upon themselves many years hence, when they have resigned to live an eternal afterlife without conscious thought and mental faculty.

  “Droolers,” a passerby explained to the slack-jawed and awestruck newcomers. “After you’ve been stuck in a Ghost Box, captured in a spirit battery, visited a few of the afterworlds where you only see the world in black-and-white and can never stay, tried to kill yourself, overfed every vice you crave and in sheer boredom sought those vices you always thought were beyond your interest, you’ll find your way here.” The passerby nodded knowingly and looked upon a Drooler with a resigned and emotionally stunted expression. “One day you will give up completely. You will realize there is no where else to go and nothing else to do, and then you will plant yourself on one of these benches and start to drool.”

  A newcomer waved his hand in front of a Drooler’s eyes. She appeared youthful and had a vibrant and healthy tone to her body, but she was hunched forward and her watery eyes sought a nonexistent point on the horizon. “I’ll never let myself be in such a sorry state!” the newcomer declared.

  The air was filled with cynical laughter and the passerby left the newcomers to contemplate their next move.

  A spastic twitch channeled through a tiny wrinkle of skin just below Tif Brown’s left eyelid. It was her first movement in over three months. The word Drooler entered her mind as a dreamy and sluggish abstraction of what she knew the word to describe. But she couldn’t bring herself to care, or remember what had captivated her attention. Her mouth was wet with spittle and her incessant, never-ending drool soaked the front of her shirt. Unfiltered nihilism was ground into her entire spirit and there came no further active thought or movement.

  Tif had never known of a Drooler to return to active consciousness. She had not left the bench for more than five Earth years. Her eyes were unfocused on the utter grayness of this afterworld, blurring it into a bright sepia tone. She could not remember when she last saw that color, and was unable to contemplate the hazy faux-color tone being so far from self-recognition. It couldn’t be a color. Not here. Spittle blotted the corners of her mouth. She had no motivation to exist, held in the infinite grip of Oblivion.