Breathstealer

by Daniel Braum

I don’t sleep well. Breathstealer comes at night when the line between what is and what was is weakest.

At first she came to me as a shadowy black cat, waking me in the night, her jaguar weight on my belly, paws on my shoulders immobilizing me. I thought she was an ancient curse I picked up in the deep of the rainforest; a manifestation of a vengeful spirit brought home from a jungle-covered pyramid on one of my long journeys of “self-discovery”. Surely she was vengeance incarnate, here because of the sins of my youth, my arrogance and ignorance rivaling that of the conquistadors, a trail of emotional destruction left in the lives I touched. I often woke with breathstealer pinning me and I was filled of thoughts of my past transgressions, lovers’ quarrels risen to screaming matches, low-blow words gone devastatingly too far, the seething yet resigned look on my true love’s, my last love’s face as she left me on the side of road in middle of the night. I felt my air, my life, leaving along with all these things.

Later on I thought breathstealer was a blessing, some angelic incarnation here to reward me for all the pain I’ve felt. I often woke to find an ethereal woman, in diaphanous white, hovering near me, misty, gentle hands caressing me with a lover’s grace. Thoughts things long gone, the secret things the little moments I shared with ex-lovers and ex-friends filled me. In the last note my true-love, my last love wrote me she asked, where do all the good things go now, where do I put them? I ask breathstealer this now. She only kisses me and I feel my air, my life, leaving along with all these things.

My doctor told me I will die if I don’t do something. Not enough oxygen when I sleep. A condition called hyper-this and toxic-that. I only know sleep is troubled. Breathstealer comes to me now in a form I know well. I wake in the night to find something that looks just like me sitting next to me on the bed. It touches my forehead with the back of its hand and all the details, go till all that is left are congealed notions of moments, of all the days of all the years; a life boiled down to talking points and topic sentences. I know now breathstealer is not curse nor a blessing, and I was born dying, as was each moment that passes.

I sleep better now, still I know breathstealer comes at night, when the line between what is and what will be is shifting.

Partial List of the Saved

by Rudi Dornemann

This is actually a story by Ken Brady. We’re having some technical problems with the site that are keeping Ken from posting under his own name, but with any luck, everything will be sorted out over the weekend.

Standing on the foredeck of the Titanic the first thing we notice is how real the wind feels. We walk unnoticed all the way up to the bow railing and spread our arms as if to fly like that meat actor back in the flat days. The days when it only took a few hundred million dollars and a contrived love story to suspend disbelief.

We have greater requirements. When the only reality we have is a construct, we come to rely on the details. Down to the prim, the pixel, the ray. And here, on the deck of one of the most famous disasters in human history, we will make our stand, take our chances, be saved or fade into obscurity, forever lost.

We have been in the Purgatory Hub for six days now, and our cluster will lose its public funding tomorrow. None of us had enough money in life to buy our way into everlasting life, so here we are, in a final act of desperation.

We know the great ship will strike an iceberg tonight, and we must find new bodies to inhabit before that occurs. We must do or die, as the expression goes. If we don’t face death in a body of historical significance, we will simply be deleted. We will not join the other uploads in the Perpetual Cluster, not become part of the global mind, not become part of human history. It will be like each of our two hundred lives never existed.

Choosing another life is difficult. None of us knew in which historical event we would find ourselves, but some of us recall bits of useful data, factoids from history class or pop culture. We are on the upper decks for practical reasons; in first class, we have a better than sixty percent chance to live forever.

We move through the cabins and lounges, each of us choosing a body. We temporarily assume their names and identities, their lives and last hours. Women and children first. The unfortunate among us are left with men. We choose the richest-looking men.

If we are lucky and our assumed names match those on the front page of The New York Times, April 16, 1912, if we are indeed on the partial list of the saved, we will earn a place in history. We will be survivors.

The alternative is not really an alternative at all, but the dark depths of the ocean and the cold embrace of eternity.

History is our only route to the future.