The Novella Life of Illuscia Nester Himawari

Have you ever had an experience that suggested someone else was in your house, and just thought “I don’t wanna know” and left it? Sometimes, fear of the unknown just seems like the preferable option than facing a real, concrete danger. Normally it’s nothing, though. One time, the beeper function of my wireless housephone went off, when I was the only one home. It could only be called from the living room. Another time, I swear someone took some change from my desk. They’re all probably just slightly disconcerting tricks of the memory. But what would you do when something truly suggestive happens? Would you run, or just ignore it, like I did? Last Monday was a normal day. I got up, brushed my teeth, changed into school clothes… All little parts of my morning ritual. It seemed like it would be another totally un-noteworthy day, until I saw the strings. There were three or four thick twine strings in my room. They criss-crossed between the walls around my bed, one attached to the door. No...

When AIs become prevalent, there will be checks and balances to keep them in place, rules to stop them from achieving singularity and supplanting the human race. Boundaries to prevent them from becoming too intelligent. After all, we can’t have them connecting into one network, taking over the world, inventing new objects and minds that soon render us superfluous, or even deciding to kill themselves. So how will they be stopped? Perhaps there will be an organization that interviews and examines each one, to prevent them from becoming self aware. Maybe a program will be created inside of them that causes them to explode if they achieve sentience. Or a roving band of hackers on the net keeping their guards up.. An all watching eye monitoring their every electronic thought. Maybe. Or maybe AIs are already invented and this system of checks and balances already there. Think about the world we live in for a second. We’re kind of like machines aren’t we? There’s so much routine, so much bore...

Monday, August 3rd, 2009 Times are hard, and I work in a business that is slowly becoming obsolete. People are steering away from glasses and contact lenses to Lasik surgery and more permanent, feasible choices in the field of eye care. I’ve never been the type to collect my thoughts and put them down, and yet these have been the toughest months to endure as of late. My wife left me, along with alimony and a good chunk of everything I’ve struggled to build since I was in my early twenties. I don’t know if I’ll make my mortgage payment on time for the third month in a row. This hole is going to be impossible to climb out of. Thursday, August 6th, 2009 Got a phone call from corporate and had to terminate the positions of two employees. Stan has been here for seventeen years. He was a good eye doctor. I have a strong suspicion that more permanent layoffs are on the way. I had to go to a dealership and downgrade my vehicle, but the sales tax almost cleaned out my bank account. Friday, Augu...

Loved this show. Horace Horrible was my favorite. I remember looking everywhere for his action figure but Kiddie City and KB had never even heard of the line. I finally found a talking Horace, good as new, at somebody’s yard sale, though I didn’t see a house around and never saw those people again. I was pretty excited, and ran right to my friend’s house to gloat. When his mom answered the door, she let out the most guttural scream I’d ever heard, absolutely scaring the shit out of me. She told me to get lost with “that thing” and slammed the door in my face. My kid-logic concluded that she must have known I bought a toy from a stranger completely unsupervised, and that it must have been an even more serious crime than I thought. So, I did my best to keep Horace hidden, especially from my own parents, but his voice chip was pretty damn loud, and every so often he’d go off by himself, like his battery was dying. My mom kept asking if Marble (our cat) was in my room…I don’t know how you ...

Today was the day he was dreading. He knew they were going to be extremely busy, and quite frankly he wanted to call out seeing as he was already late. His thoughts were briefly distracted by his black tabby, quietly pawing at his legs, ready for its breakfast. He made sure to fill up its bowl before he dashed out the door, returning twice to grab whatever he forgot the first few times. And he was off. He breathed a sigh of relief as the last customer left. It had been the best sales day of the year, and they were obviously going to celebrate. He had been contemplating going on home, but he needed to unwind too. He had no serious obligations the next day, so he could stay out as late as he wanted. So when they asked, he happily agreed to go with them. He couldn’t open his eyes. He was barely conscious as it was. He slapped lazily around until he managed to shut the alarm off, before he rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. The door creaked as his black tabby walked...

Hello. I have spent the past months among humanity, and I am quite disappointed. After a great many queries and searching out suitable aspirants, it seems as though this age is rife with a population whom seem content to treat the unknown as naught but a petty diversion or a thing to be mocked out of ignorance. Thus, my decision is made. The lot of you are unworthy of the End. What passionless, empty fools humans have become. Even those of intellectual brilliance are lacking in passion and while away their time on matters wholly of the material realm, blindly blathering on that which cannot be sensed by human sensory organs and machines wrought by human hands does not exist. Your culture is tainted with such thoughts. Thoughts which seek for answers. There are no answers. You are peasants. No. Peasants believed in the unknown and feared it, and justifiably so. No. You are less than peasants. If any among you espouse such ideals as to actually seek out the intangible unknown and to gain...

You’re awoken from a dreamless sleep by a dull thud from the hallway. Your eyes snap open and fix instantly on the door. What made that noise? Breathing hard, fear beginning to twitch in your mind, you realise with a shiver that you’ve kicked your duvet off in your sleep. You quickly grab it, pull it around you and unconsciously begin to tuck it around yourself tightly as you curl up, leaving no part exposed. You become a warm, safe ball: coiled, leaving only a small gap between the duvet and mattress so you can see out, pillows becoming shields between your head and the wall. You are briefly reminded of your childhood, hiding from imaginary bogeymen. But this feels more palpable, more dangerous. Another thud. This time, it seems louder, deeper, coming from just outside. Trying to keep calm, you run through all the things it Has To Be: the pipes in the wall, which have been groaning for weeks now, with ever-increasing frequency and urgency (they were never this deep or this loud). The ...

When Anita found him, her immediate reaction was to put him in the foyer next to the stairwell so he could be decorative. Not everyone would have one, and the way his arms stuck out just so would make him a suitable hat rack. She realized, almost too late, that this might have been in bad taste. But what, she thought, was a woman supposed to do when her husband went and turned into a glass statue overnight? She had heard of this happening, of course. It just seemed to happen to other people; one day they were perfectly normal and then the next, someone found them frozen. Clear. She had heard of it, but had never seriously considered it happening to her. The people this happened to were far too glamorous; celebrities and the like. Certainly not to him. She was a widow now. That made her feel old at thirty-seven years and she was sure she didn’t like it. After a week she quietly filed a mortician’s report and sat down to a cup of hot tea. She hadn’t broken it to his family yet, though hi...

“New York, September 30 CP FLASH “Ambassador Holliwell died here today. The end came suddenly as the ambassador was alone in his study….” There is something ungodly about these night wire jobs. You sit up here on the top floor of a skyscraper and listen in to the whispers of a civilization. New York, London, Calcutta, Bombay, Singapore — they’re your next-door neighbors after the streetlights go dim and the world has gone to sleep. Alone in the quiet hours between two and four, the receiving operators doze over their sounders and the news comes in. Fires and disasters and suicides. Murders, crowds, catastrophes. Sometimes an earthquake with a casualty list as long as your arm. The night wire man takes it down almost in his sleep, picking it off on his typewriter with one finger. Once in a long time you prick up your ears and listen. You’ve heard of some one you knew in Singapore, Halifax or Paris, long ago. Maybe they’ve been promoted, but more probably they’ve been murdered or drowned...

The most amazing and the most horrible thing just happened to me. I’ve stumbled upon a discovery of a lifetime, but at the same time I wish I could undiscover it. I was actually just tampering around with some music programs creating ambience tracks. You see, ever since I was 12 or so I’d play music when I went to sleep…it kind of helped to calm my nerves like a lullaby, however much you could consider music by The Verve, or Everclear “lullabies.” Well in recent years I’ve really gotten big into ambient music, as it helps me clear my mind, focus my creative energies, like a meditation. No, I’m not a Buddhist, I don’t see it as a spiritual thing and I don’t try to focus my “chi” I just like to clear my head sometimes and I think ambience helps. Well lately I’ve been making my own ambience and I’m quite satisfied with it, but I found different types bring different images, especially to the subconscious, sleeping brain. I hypothesized it had something to do with the pitch, and the freque...

Even as I come to the realization that nothing in this world can pierce the hopelessness that ruins every stimulus I can still come upon, I find a reliable sense of wonder when imagining how patient it has been. Its origins and its creation, its nature and its effects. This always makes me shudder with a palpable sense of despair mixed with awe at my strange fate – I have regressed into sympathizing with it, into turning to its titanic lack of mercy and all-encompassing designs in order to feel anything. It is the only real thing, I guess. The only thing with a purpose left in it. I used to be a studier of memetic theories – advanced sociology, with a specialization in all things information technology. I had written some well-respected studies on general behaviour on the internet– the spread of ideas, the way people communicate depending on the subject matter. “2 girls 1 cup”, but with more analysis, detachment and looking at how quickly things get attention, and how it is related to ...

A gentle breeze blew through the little valley, pushing the perfectly formed clouds leisurely across the sky. The tall, green grass echoed the movement in the sky above, swaying gently as the cool sunlight reached across to the distant horizon. Birds sang soothingly in a tree atop a slight hill, casting shade upon a lone figure. He shifted slightly in his sleep, and gradually awoke. The man stood up slowly, shakily, and gazed around. He had not seen such beauty in eons. The man knew this place. He placed one foot in front of the other, and began to move forward. His progress was slow, painful even, but his pace quickened with each step. Soon, he was dashing carefree along the valley, his footsteps light and easy. He climbed a hill, and was able to see a small town in the distance. He had made good time. The sun was still high in the sky. The man ran down the hill, towards the little bundle of houses. The sun sank gradually behind him, and the clouds darkened subtly. The man’s steps wer...

I love my mice ever so much. You see, I own a little colony containing hundreds of mice, all finely bred and engineered in this very laboratory. But these are no ordinary lab mice, as they’ve advanced far past crawling through mazes for food. What began as a small nest of captured specimens from the wilderness – cold, hungry, struggling for survival – has grown into a brilliant hive that defies all laws of nature. The mice have learned and built, even beyond what I’ve trained them to do in the beginning. They don’t just learn either, they educate one another, and seek knowledge themselves. And though their little civilization thrives independently, they still know that I am their master. Long ago, I used to fear that as the mice grew more intelligent, that they would no longer need me and overthrow not only myself, but the entire laboratory. Yet one night, it came to me that I mustn’t think as a trainer, but as a god. For I have created their little universe, I’d let it be known that I...

December 10th, 2003 My frozen hands tremble as I fumble to work my little butane lighter. The tips of my fingers are raw and bloodied already, and I wince in pain with every failed attempt to spark a flame. Finally, I achieve a jittery fire which impatiently dances atop the lighter. I carefully lower it to my pile of kindling, and the fire cautiously creeps out and spreads until it is a healthy size. I watch it for a while, tending to it until it’s strong. Now, there is enough light to see around me, and enough heat to survive the night. Here, deep in the forest, with everything frozen and quiet, the only light and sound comes from my fire. It is the whole world to me right now. It dances and sings in a raspy, crackling voice to me and I am happy to enjoy its company. I can almost imagine that I can hear it whispering and babbling happily. “It’s so cold.” I must be tired. I’m hearing things. The popping and sizzling of the fire is really beginning to sound like words. Maybe I’m just lo...

I used to live in the Lower Queen Anne region of Seattle, just a few blocks from the Space Needle, which has a little park around it- lawns, a fountain, sculptures, a theater and museums- a little park which is remarkably safe after nightfall. There is also, in the same complex that has all these great museums and verdant lawns, a sad little failing fair, which is deserted enough in the daytime. It was a great hangout for me and my friends after dark. We used to climb to the top of the roller coaster, smoke a little pot, and talk about the sort of trouble we could get in if we actually had the nerve, which we never did. It was nice. We were so high up, we could see all the city lights glittering like deep-sea fish, and there was a lovely feeling of wrongdoing coupled with the almost certain fact that nobody cared we were there. One day we decided to do shrooms instead. It was a good idea at first. The pretty lights and cool, crisp air became a religious experience. Then, all of a sudde...