A Long Time Ago, Not so Long Short Story

A Long Time Ago, Not so Long

Short Story

By: Gustavo Calvo

(I will correct it later)

A long time ago there was this young guy, he lived between two lives, one live was to please his family and the other one was to be free; that young guy eventually moved countries and tried to live his life to the fullest but he couldn’t escape from his past. There were always the voices in his head of self-hate and from his ancestors that bounded him. During that flight when he was arriving in the new land he didn’t feel scared.

Then he got lost in a Wonderland, so many years of abuse paid a toll on his mind and his body, where he grew twice in size and shrink a fourth of his height. It was a trip without a white rabbit but with so many queens of heart. He had so many friends, and he forgot about them.

No matter what, the monsters that grew in his head overcame his memories and the memories became shadows of what they were, so many times that guy spoke with a younger friend; his friend was a red war eagle who lived in the north, a talented eagle with his brother a fox bring happiness to the world, they always make other smiles and so to the young guy.

The guy knew he wasn’t going to be there for a while, he was lost in a Wonderland that four Alice’s controlled the Kingdoms, each Kingdom held a memory and eventually the guy became a shadow of his own self, he kept asking his friends to not forget about him, even if he got lost in the Wonderland because eventually he wanted to find himself and find them again.

The four Alice’s didn’t got much of the guy’s memories, he gave one to each friend on the distant land and ask them “if you forgive me, that’s fine, sometimes we are destined to forget the people who become shadows of the realm” The guy kept talking with his friends, but slowly one by one they started to forget him, slowly he was becoming a shadow, a shadow trapped on his room, a shadow that only existed to be a servant.

Time passed by and the guy isolated himself from the world, only the red eagle was the one behind; his brother forgot about him, the others from the tribe of the guy forgot about him too. The eagle could barely remember him, as he was fading, the guy only was appearing to say hello on rare occasions, he was becoming faster and faster a shadow.

Until one day the guy finally stopped being himself and became a persona of who he was, a memory, a walking memento that was there to serve and only existed for that purpose. He kept muttering “please don’t forget me, please I don’t want to fade away, my heart is with you, even the Alice’s couldn’t take me fully”

A long time ago, not so long ago, where his memories got fragmented because there was no purpose for him he found; the four Alice’s eventually one by one started breaking their seals over a 9 year period but the guy was lost and he woke, he saw himself as a human, he was on a world that he didn’t recognized, it was a cold room along with other men, it wasn’t a prison but it was some sort of a retention center.

“I wanted to die” he muttered while being on the couch, he realized he wasn’t in his fantasy world but instead he knew he lost his mind, he knew the years of abuse paid a toll on him and eventually he found himself with his worse that we has going to become a shadow for all eternity. A long time ago, he spoke with the eagle and the fox, he wasn’t even sure what was real and not, but that conversation he remembered “I hope I can day I can go and visit, I am proud of you; I have no clue what will happen with me, but even if you and the rest forget me, I can come back as a new friend and we can build fresh memories”

Eventually the guy became friends with a bunny, a duck, the father time, a dragon, a snow leopard, just to name a few, he became friends with the King of Avalon, and a demi guy with the spirit of a musicians of the rocks. The memories were still spaced on the four Kingdoms that the Alice owned inside his mind, but at least he was not trapped in that nightmare that almost costed his life.

New memories were formed, and old ones triggered by music came back, but the guy couldn’t still remember but at the end he let them go the ones he couldn’t make come back; old friends became new and it was like starting over again.

When the Big Sister Comes Down to Visit

I am not correcting or doing anything with the grammar, I is lazy on that level. Thank you. Also this a draft that I need to develop further.

When the Big Sister Comes Down to Visit

By:

Gustavo Calvo

There was these rumors, an online rumor like so many about this Facebook group that was handled by a mysterious figure, that went by The Sister. Nobody was aware who she looked in real life, only a small group of people knew her and were part of her apostles, but overall the sister’s main goal was to keep her political movement that had no name but rather it was there, she was gathering followers just by “supporting them” as no one could live without the Sister.

Jax Smith wanted to know more about the Sister but there was not too much information online about her whereabouts or if it was real, a real person. The only thing they knew it was Sister had adepts everywhere and her Facebook page reached around 600,000 individuals but not many people knew her at all, not even the members of the Apostles.

Jax was curious as they traveled to New York City to try to find information of the Sister, she was revered as a religious figure also because everyone who fall under her charm couldn’t say the opposite about her, as her followers would dox anyone who dared to defy her.

They were sitting on a park in the middle of the Bronx, after spending a week in the city they were feeling helpless to know if the clues they got were right, getting an interview with the Big Sister would mean to win a Pulitzer as her was a charismatic person that out of nowhere moved the masses so much, then they reach a point that they knew finding here was going to be an impossible task so they started writing the article while waiting in the airport.

She is a mystery, almost as if George Wells created her; there is nowhere to be found her but people seem to adore her, everyone know her and she goes by the name Sabrina, rumor was that she lived in the Bronx but on a honest level as a journalist I should had checked my sources, yet the experience of chasing a person that probably doesn’t exist is fascinating, but who created Big Sister?

The honest answer is “I do not know”, could be a character created from a viral campaign by any politician but she doesn’t really support any, but rather she doesn’t support any campaigns, she is just there creating bliss to her followers. Not even a Google Reverse Image Search could give any results, the only information was that she hated the Republican Party.

So who she is?.,,

“She is someone real” Said a voice behind Jax, “Who is that?” They replied. “My name is Dominique Sabrina Hildedottir” Said the voice who was somewhat raspy and gravely “or you can call me Sabrina” Jax was impressed, but at the same time they were scared of somewhat taller and bigger than they.

“Are you real?” They ask. “Yes, and I heard you been looking for me, so I decided to come up, also I have to say close your laptop and only put your phone on record, I am willing to concede you an interview but I do not want to be video recorded, please do not try anything stupid I am not alone as my inner circle is here with me”

“I do not see them” They said. “They are here Jax, they been already following you for at least two hours, your plane won’t go out yet so we can sit at Starbucks and you can buy me a drink”

“Deal”

The two of them started to walk, Jax was kind of scared as he really didn’t spoke to many people about what they were looking for, but also, they were fascinated by how unique Sabrina was. Not many people they knew who could exert  influences were trans or at least non-binary and Sabrina was one of them, one of they, she was tall, around 6’3, her hair was short and curly and her voice was extremely raspy as if she smoked a lot daily. They wanted to ask a lot of questions, but the time was limited.

When they finally sat down, they realized them weren’t alone, some of the people around them when they was waiting followed them, “it was her inner circle” they thought before sitting down with the Frappuccinos and bagels, they were studying her and the more they analyzed her, they fear her, it wasn’t a normal fear, Sabrina was someone who accrued so much power and yet she seemed to be ordinary as any other person, yet they know she wasn’t alone as there were at least 20 people who were escorting her.

“How did you thought about the Big Sister?...”

“Sorry for the interruption, but that has been on the works for a while, it started with a group from different parts of the world, science communicators, we all need it a voice of representation but also they were vulnerable, they were lost so we decided to form an experiment, we created a character, we started to create groups and then it just expanded, we are like a legion and I am the savior”

“I am curious, what is the ultimate end?”

“Jax, to create a new form of power, you haven’t realized it? I thought you were smart, I guess intel on you was wrong, maybe you are just a lucky person”

“She didn’t called me he or she, she knows my pronouns, this is creepy” They thought. “Why? What is the ultimate power?”

“To enable a counsel of science, to create an hegemony where perfection will truly exist…”

“She is lying” They thought.

“Tell me the truth” They said.

“I would have to kill you, my followers are willing to die for me and if I tell you the truth you will don’t come alive”

“Why?”

“Is for a greater good Jax…”

“Then I rather die”

“ I want to become a figure who is worshipped, the savior of the helpless, the ones who will me as a mother of all”

“Fuck you”

Sabrina made a hand gestured and someone not far away shoot at Jax point blank, but they didn’t die without sending the voice file of their phone to their editor. It was a start to throw the cult of the Big Sister into the fire.

When We Went to War Chapter One

Chapter One

In the Middle of Nowhere

Where to start? The world political climate changed after the election of the 45^th President of the United States and subsequently his V.P. becoming the 45^th four years later; the Democratic Party was no longer there and America turned into some form of theocracy in which Eugenics and racial purity were advocated by the White Nationalist Party, it was almost as the timeline of Marvel’s comic book Line Old Man Logan.

“What was that?” She asked.

“It’s just the siren, we need to take shelter as soon as possible” He replied.

“The Tu-95’s are coming”

“We are in the middle of nowhere in Red Lodge, Minnesota! How did they reach here?!”

“They are everywhere; we have no choice”

They started to run down the basement with the hopes of not dying in the explosions. They could hear the loud detonations coming from the surface, as they laid in the bottom, they were scared that the next wave could be the last as not many places on Minnesota were infiltrated by the Red Wave of Mother Russia.

“It is over?” He said.

“For now; I can’t hear anything”

“Me neither, let’s go up again”

Both went to the surface again; they saw smoke coming from the town, they thought about going to help as soon as they could but they wanted to see if their herd was OK, as well their edifications in the ranch. Nothing seemed to be wrong, the only thing they didn’t had was connection to the emergency telephone line which they assumed the bombarding destroyed the central that was in the town.

They checked that their truck still had some gas and they rushed to town to help, they were concerned that some relatives could be dead, but they wanted to know if their neighbors were doing OK after the attack of the Russians. Nobody near them seemed to be affected, their suspicions turned right after they noticed the town was mostly destroyed; they were trying to understand why their town became a target? It wasn’t as big as NYC or whatever else was in Washington D.C.

“Oil and water” He said.

“What?” She replied.

“The Russians are behind the mineral resources that we have.”

“What do you say that? Their territory has more than any on Earth, they do not anything”

“They are trying to finally decimate us; contaminate the natural resources and destroy any possible location of oil it will destroy the country last foundations to rise up from the ashes; especially any deposit of drinking water”

“That is quite creepy, the possibility that it happens will kill everyone”

“What can we do?”

“To keep fighting. We have no choice but to keep fighting; we can’t escape to Canada and Mexico anymore, we need to fight” Teresa and Bobby kept driving to the ruins of the small town to help any survivors.

The Dharma Incentive

The Dharma Incentive

Short Story

By:

Gustavo Simmons

There was a cosmic order between the chaos that ruled the universe; yet, dying seemed to be impossible. The memories of thousands of other lives, where we achieved conscious were still there, the problem became that a being who had no name, a being who ruled the principles of the multiverse, “the one who was above all” placed as a rule No being would remember, unless that person has achieved some form of Nirvana, even so that being was beyond the Samsara.

Why I can remember? Every single dead, every single moment of agony, the moment of birth, even so this Kami was playing a cruel joke as there was no faith, nor enlighten coming from my part. I was a man who lacked faith, a man who believed in the principles of entropy and chaos as a standalone concept beyond any divine principles; nevertheless, every single memory of my life was as a playback.

There was a catch, every single moment of reincarnation I was again myself. I was the person who was, the person who remembered from the experiences, the person who committed suicide and the person who died in the riots of 2017 while protesting in the White House on December 12^th. I was sent to the same point in time, April 22^nd of 1984, it was fixed, it was set, born in the same city in Colombia, born near the ocean, living the same point in time for 23 years.

23 years in which there was some form of prison, a prison without walls, just a prison with geographical boundaries. The rules of the cosmos where punishing me for something that after reliving the same moments over and over but with different outcomes before death.

Death is such a sweet treasure, is such a beautiful moment in which we are not bounded to the planes of existence, we just cease to exist on the flesh and we transform into a metaphysical concept that is just far away beyond comprehension. What a beautiful moment, indeed it is, yet birth is more painful, is such a pain; the overload stimuli is just worse than anything else.

After death, there is birth, the world is brand a new, the world is such an amazing place when you are child, still when you have the memories of a 37-year-old man inside a 7-year-old body, no one will take you seriously even if they consider you past beyond your years. What a burden is to live, but what a burden is to always remember everything, yet to live to the fullest and not to fill emotions.

Why this being that knows everything keeps punishing me? Sending me back to the same moment in time to make me have faith and “help” achieve the precious gift of death? Probably is an eternal punishment because I didn’t hesitate to take the precious gift he gave to everyone, life. I never minded, I seriously never minded life. You could take it with just a bullet, a knife or your hands. You could ruin a life by playing with someone’s emotions and feel no remorse.

I violated the Dharma; at least that is the term I like to use, the basic principles of the cosmos that were given by Lord Buddha, and they weren’t that difficult because “it” hated when someone denied his existence… I was punished because I was an offender of the Dharma, of the Commandments or whatever you want to call it.

When We Were Forgotten

When We Were Forgotten

(Short Story)

By: Gustavo Simmons

It wasn’t impossible to forget, they rose to the power through hate and fear. They divided the friends and families through their rhetoric that “invisible enemies within us” were going to destroy the fabric of the nation. Who were they? Nobody knew, the only information was that they came from the different regions of the country and used cyberspace as a channel to spread their message and conquer adepts.

The future that wasn’t, many people theorized that the timeline split and we became Earth 295. As if Lord Apocalypse rose to the power and created a new system of power. Could be it as easy as a comic book explanation? No; the idea of a new world was far more complex than any point in fiction, far more tragic in which a demagogue and his team found a way to exploit the inner fears and emotions of a population that was on the verge of a civil war.

The first week came with the goal to bring a glory that was already there but people couldn’t see it; people were blinded by the idea that the country was in the need to be great again, all because they saw people who were running from a way that was happening far away as the “real enemies of the nation” as the “real enemies of their own religion” as “barbarians who didn’t deserved a dose of compassion”

The second week came with an invisible wall, no one could go in or out of the country, airports and seaports were ultimately closed. Citizens were asked to refrain from flying as there was an imminent fear of a nuclear strike coming from China. Refugees who arrived fearing from their lives were sent back to the places they were running from; the ultimate action, it costed the lives of 3,250,000 million people in only a 12-month period, as the newly elected President and his cabinet saw isolationism as the ultimate truth to “save the country” from the enemies that weren’t there.

The fourth week became the last in which the country was standing still, it became the point where the government cut funds to health and education; it severed ties in which let each State to do whatever they pleased. Human rights were violated everywhere, basic principles of the constitution were just ignored and it gave a form of fundamentalist Baptism that started to rule over the public institutions.

We became a theocracy within a 14-month period; science and human rights became for a while a philosophical aspect from the past, the Federal State turner into simple and mere anarchy, where even transmitting news that weren’t approved by the White House was punishable by law. In two years, we were living under the shadow of the phantom government, where the dear leader was a mere puppet of the 12 masters that controlled different aspects of the population.

12 masters, 12 corporations that organized education, infrastructure and regional politics per their own means. They start spreading lies which eventually became truth, police became an LLC that responded to the interest of a private creditor. There was no more free press and the idea of net neutrality was from the past; people running blogs became the source of information outside the State propaganda.

We, the free press, we became forgotten, we became a secret; the population became forgotten of who we were; we weren’t as organized as we were. We just turned into shadows that became enemies of the “fallen empire”. Walkers as if we were zombies of the Walking Dead mythos; nobody wanted to be near us but we became the people who opened the dialogue to throw the dear leader outside the power sphere and make the shadows to crumble into ashes. Yet, our lives when they ended became erased from existence, nobody could have remembered us, who we were, who we are, what we did; our blogs and collective stayed online, some of them ended up in the underground nets called Cobra and Thor in case the powers that be decided to shut them completely.

Two years later society as it was, it was a mirage of the empire. There were more theme parks, no more entertainment, nobody could travel far away as gas became a luxury, people started to die as the public health system collapsed and anyone who dared to do public protest was in risk of being executed on the public sight.

How terrible society turned to be? It wasn’t the land of the free anymore, it became just another dictatorship. What the braves who fought the wars? They were left to die on the streets as they represented a negative profit on the earning margins of the government… what had we become? A land of nobody, a land of the blue, a land where desolation is everywhere yet no one has a voice...