Transient

Leaving is always hard, especially when you think you’ve finally found a place to settle. Among the things I’ll miss about this world and its nascent civilisation are the secret songs hummed by pylons, and the brooding silences of daytime streetlights. Perhaps its denizens will evolve someday to not need that artificial interconnectedness that’s so important to them, but I won’t be around to find out. My time, like theirs, has expired: the Vsanic are here, camouflaged, probing, scouting the planet, and I, a fugitive from their cold, imperial justice, must leave before they find me. Time to run, again.

From Guest Contributor Alastair Millar

Sentinels

With the heavens above, eyes perceive blackness below. The silhouettes of lonesome silos dotting a barren landscape gives way to perceptions of ancient obsidian obelisks, sentinels erected by the offspring of some long-forgotten civilization, sating deities of seasons past.

Against a moonless night, one can appreciate the unencumbered band of the Milky Way, glorious gold and white light from hundreds of thousands of stars, blues, oranges and reds, sparkling beacons of potentialities adorning the night sky.

I repose beneath a blanket of starlight, and the encircling melody of coywolves lulls me to sleep as I long for dreams of you.

From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

One Step

On the borders of this serene land lay a dark shadow formed from a massive structure built on the ruins of another once-great civilization. It often feels like an ominous storm cloud in an otherwise starry sky.

The people of this land continue to work on the tower in the hope of one day reaching the heavens. To be reunited with their ancestors dancing within constellations.

On this glorious night, as the sun sets, dark clouds dissipate; the moon rises on the horizon, filling the entire night sky with dangerous possibilities as they come one step closer to the stars.From Guest Contributor J. Iner Souster

Wars Have Been Started Over Less

When we first encountered the Alavariuum, great expectations immediately spread across Earth. Not only were they a technologically-advanced extraterrestrial race from a thirteen-planet civilization 23 light years away, but they were friendly and offering to help us expand beyond our martian colonies.

Lately, many of the negotiators have admitted their enthusiasm is dampened. While still congenial, most of the committees and protocol meetings have become bogged down in naming conventions. The Alavariuum insist that every significant planet and star be referred to using their complicated symbology, and we'll be damned if we'll let anyone tell us what to call Earth.

Memorials

Through the fog and overgrowth that chokes the front yard, an eruption of tulips grows on either side of the doorway, an invitation to visitors that stopped visiting decades ago. They are the only splash of color on the otherwise gray facade of the crumpling structure that used to be a house.

Tulips once required cold weather to survive. Somehow these plants learned to adapt, and are now in flower nearly year round. A stark contrast to the failure of civilization all around them. Were anyone still alive who could understand, there's a metaphor to be found in those plants.

Kingly Pursuits

Every spring, King Tolliver traveled with his retinue to the ruins. None of the official historians had an explanation of what city once stood here, all of the stories offered contradicting explanations of the calamity that brought the civilization to decrepitude.

The official justification for King Tolliver's annual sojourn was his desire to reflect on the folly of excessive hubris. This was deemed a kingly pursuit. But the truth of the matter was much more prosaic.

Tolliver's son enjoyed scrambling over the rocks looking for cracked ceramics and the occasional colored glass. More importantly, the king shared the prince's enthusiasm.

Next Gas 190 Miles

Genevieve stepped down from her jeep at the lonely fueling station, according to the sign the last chance for services for 200 miles, and smoked a cigarette under the half-dead oak tree. A litany of lizards scurried away as she approached.

She wondered how many drivers stopped here in a day. She had passed maybe half a dozen vehicles the entire morning. She couldn't imagine how the people out here survived so far from civilization.

The old man working the pump had skin as weathered as the geckos' from too much sun. She decided to tip him an extra twenty.

Delusion

As he nailed the boards over his windows one by one, each pounding of the hammer reinforced his decision. The world was about to die.

The sad part about reality is there can never been any ironclad certainty. Civilization was coming apart at the seams, an obvious fact if you just looked around. But people said he was crazy and chose to ignore all the warning signs.

He felt sorry for them. They had fallen under the mass delusion, and they would not be prepared for the end times. Perhaps his pity would be some solace as they all burned.

Periplaneta Sapiens

The rain and wind further eroded the evidence that humans had oncedominated the Earth.

A cockroach scuttled by. Even in the scant thousand years since humanshad disappeared, Darwinian evolution had changed it. The cockroachheld itself on its hind and middle legs, while it's forelegsdexterously solved the problem of extracting a morsel of food from acrack.

Another cockroach approached. The two insects greeted each other withinterlocked antennae. Evolution had been at work here too. Theirsocial interactions more complex and their intelligence greater.

From the ruins of one civilization, an even greater civilization would grow.

From Guest Contributor Ross Clement

The Remnants Of Atlantis

The agents of Atlantis first infiltrated the upper world more than a thousand years ago. Their technology was far more advanced than what humans were accustomed to and they easily assimilated themselves without detection. They became Kings, Generals, Scientists, and Philosophers. Everywhere they emerged, they prospered.

When the underwater volcano erupted in 1066, the bulk of their civilization was destroyed. No one mourned though, for they had essentially conquered the upper world for themselves, without fighting a single battle.

Not everyone agreed. Some Atlanteans argued that though they thrived, in reality, their civilization had been subsumed by the land-walking humans.