Twisting Time

Twisting time. Watching all the quantum news, I ponder the latest statement about quantum religion. An attempt by corporations to combine the ideology of Hindoos into the quantum realm and do away with individual religions for a planet-wide religion.

Freaks me out three religions talk about this very topic. And the outcome is not good for humanity. The end result is a system of things or what people reference from movies as the matrix. Kind of wild to see the ending of humanity. The beginning of the terminator reality is just happening. Age becoming a battery. An end of humanity?

From Guest Contributor Clinton Siegle

The Sound Of Silence

I pine for smiling yellow walls, the low murmur of conversation.

Social distancing exiled me.

I try to write among sterile walls. Blank screens taunt.

There’s no favorite table in the corner. This space is devoid of smiling baristas with big glasses. No laughter from large rectangular tables or sizzling coffee. No undergraduates talking of failed chem tests and parties. I can’t inhale fragments of conversation or insert myself into their worlds.

There’s just silence, the occasional clump of feet upstairs.

I play movies, but my companions are always lonely 80s working-class characters or Lifetime psychopaths.

I surrender to silence.

From Guest Contributor Yash Seyedbagheri

Yash is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, 50 Word Stories, (mac)ro (mic), and Ariel Chart.

Speak Now

Matt got the news in time to break up the wedding. Did people actually do that, he wondered, or did that only happen in the movies? Speak now or forever hold your peace. Matt couldn’t remember ever having heard that line spoken at any of the many weddings he’d been to.

Against his heart’s desires, Matt decided to sit the wedding out. Who was he to stand in the way of Carla’s happiness? Instead of attending, he returned to the site of their first date and sat quietly as a piece of the world moved on with his silent assent.

From Guest Contributor Dan Slaten

Just A Game

Paul steps to the line and takes a deep breath. Were he to sink the next two shots, he will be celebrated globally for the rest of his life. Women will worship him. Children will be named after him. Movies will be made and he'll be the star. His legacy will be forever secure.

If he misses, however, not only will his own life be ruined, but those of an entire city.

The shots miss badly. Death, when it finally comes, will be a mercy for Paul.

And to think there was a time when basketball was just a game.

A Hollywood Story

Gordon flipped through the damning evidence of a conspiracy at the highest levels and deliberated his next move.

The studio had hired him as an archivist, not a conscience. But he imagined his son's reaction if he ever learned Gordon had helped conceal the truth. Hollywood had purposefully been making inferior movies for decades, knowing that if filmgoers were provided with quality films, they'd become enlightened and no longer seek out the comfort of movies.

Gordon eventually returned the files. After reflecting upon his extremely large salary, he decided his son would want him to keep his damn mouth shut.