#fff187

[jpitha]

You Can't Be Serious

Here's my entry for @flashfictionfridayofficial

I was the first Human to go through a wormhole.

We had created the wormhole generators to shrink the distance between the stars, to make it so that going beyond our home would take moments, instead of decades or centuries.

I went out beyond the orbit of Jupiter in my small, sturdy ship, and set the coordinates to our first colony world Parvati, more than 15 light-years away. If all went according to plan, I would get there in seconds instead of the current 30 years flight time.

With the flick of a finger, I engaged the generator.

I came to on the ground, on Earth, in a field on a clear summer day. The temperature was perfect, the weather was perfect, the view? Perfect. I felt someone approach me. It looked like a man; tall, red hair, bearded, with kind eyes and a muscular build. He was wearing an outfit so old that it must be from thousands of years ago.

When he was about 2 meters away, he stopped and really looked hard at me. Then, he started laughing.

I sat up. "What's going on?"

Working hard to stop laughing he slowed down to a chuckle and then with just a grin he said "You actually did it! I can't believe you actually did it! He said you would, but I didn't think you were that crazy."

"What?"

"You opened a wormhole. You went through. Well, going through. Technically, you're not out yet."

"But, I'm not on my ship!"

"Aren't you?" He said and raised an eyebrow. "Maybe you're dead, and this is the afterlife and your body is on your ship and your soul is up here, talking with me."

"But if I'm dead, it didn't work!"

"Did it? Maybe for some people, this act of frankly violent action against the fabric of spacetime causes your soul to...to...leave for a bit."

"So now what?" I asked.

"Oh, that's up to you entirely. But, you'll see in just a bit." he said cryptically.

And just a suddenly, I was back, in the Parvati system, listening to the radio demanding who I was and how I got there. I explained who I was and what I was doing, and since I had gotten there faster than the message sent from Earth about my attempt, everyone was surprised and amazed.

When I landed they threw me a parade. I had never had a parade thrown for me before. There was an amazing party and we celebrated late into the strange night of their world.

The next day, I told the physicians about what I had seen. They laughed it off, called it pure imagination. I must have dreamed it they said.

After a week, I got back in my ship, heavy with souvenirs and messages for the governments back on Earth. I took off, and after leaving orbit, entered the coordinates to go home.

Once again I flicked the switch and engaged the generator.

"Ah. I see you've made your choice." The old man said.

[renee-writer]

Imagination

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial number 187 prompt Pure Imagination. This is autobiographical. Mentions of an unhappy childhood.

She is born into stable middle class family. The first years of her life are happy ones. Drugs, the scorn of many a family, enter the life of her beloved daddy. Life changes, twisting from stable as a rock to unstable as a boat in a storm. What keeps her steady, her pure imagination.

Reading at three, she devours books with the hunger of the starved. From the Little House on the Prairie to Anne of Green Gables ( the full set a gift from her great-aunt), she lives in the stories.

When daddy yells, she can call on her imagination to take her far away from the trailer in the Kentucky mountains. She goes to developing plains or the expanse of Tara.

It saves her, the stories, not just the ones she reads but, the ones she makes up. When her peers are cruel, as they tend to be to those different, she escapes into her own stories. She is her own hero, her own love interest, whatever she needs at the time.

The little girl grows up, escaping the bounds of cruelty bound in her father and peers. She has children of her own, children she tells stories to, reads stories to. She encourages them to use their imaginations.

They grow up and she starts to write. The pure imagination of childhood tempered by the knowledge gained by growing up but still, there is enough there to tell tales.

[on-noon]

Imagining Illusions

for @flashfictionfridayofficial prompt, "pure imagination"

I left the path when walking home from school. Since my parents were off in another town buying groceries, they wouldn’t notice if I arrived late. I headed a few feet off the path to where the moss covers the stones. I needed to make an illusion. Any illusion. Everyone else in my class had made one. But whenever I tried, nothing happened.

My parents don’t want me to learn illusions, they want me to stay in town and make clothes.

I filled my arms with moss. And then I sat there and tried to think about a pencil. A small illusion, but I know what a pencil looks like. Painted red, wood underneath. The wood carved to a point and the part that writes gray. At the end the wring of paint, than wood, than writing bit. 

I tapped the moss, and opened my eyes, looked around. No pencil. Nothing shimmering, not even a faint impression.

I took a deep breath. I had prepared for this. Not everyone can do visual illusions. 

I hugged the moss and thought of a song, The Traveler Sqon, my favorite. I thought about a flute in the background, the voice of an illusionist. I tapped the moss. Nothing.

I moved onto smells. The smell of a soup over the fire. Good, hearty, and the smoke from the fire. I tap the moss, and nothing.

Taste. The taste of a piece of bread, warm, slightly sweet. I knew taste illusions are bad, because you can’t actually eat the moss. But at least it would be an illusion. I thought of bread, the bread my mom bakes. I put the moss in my mouth, and spit it out. 

The moss tasted disgusting. But then I figured I needed a stronger flavor. Horseradish. I thought of it, the disgusting, too strong, nose burning flavor.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” I jumped up. 

“Can I take a look at that moss you were holding?” she wore the skirt of an illusionist, the two colored folds.

I shrugged, and she picked some of it up.

She poked it. “This is odd. It’s full of imagination, filled with no room left. But I can’t release any of it. Were you filling it with thoughts?”

“I tried to make illusions– visualize a pencil, that sort of thing.”

“There’s no visualizations in here, just pure imagination.”

“So I can’t make illusions? I knew it,” I say.

“Seems like it. But you can provide the best fuel– Watch.”

A dragon erupts from the moss, metallic. I watch as it flies up, up, up, and disappears.

“I never could make a visual illusion that convincing or long lasting on my own,” the illusionist says. “Thanks.”

I left for home. 

I can’t make illusions. I knew it.