Zebbler's Dreams and Realities

Twenty years into the future, I had bio-hacked my body to join an underwater life-exploration science expedition. The modifications didn’t just let me stay submerged for hours - they allowed me to interface directly with our experimental DNA-collection scanner. The device could non-invasively sample genetic material from ocean creatures, encode it into a dormant viral shell, and tag each sample by species. We could collect millions of genomes and store them in a single portable module, a library of life sealed inside a machine the size of a lunchbox. On the way back from the expedition, our private livery to the airport crashed - skidding off a crowded highway and plunging into the harbor of a bustling African coastal city. The driver died instantly. The rest of us, battered but alive, crawled out through twisted metal as seawater filled the cabin. Within minutes, a policeman arrived. He checked our IDs, the driver’s papers, the vehicle registration - then made a call. I watched his ...

I think I was around 9 years old, when I saw my neighbors chase down my mom on a road behind our fence, pin her down to the ground, tie her with ropes and spit on her. There might have been a few kicks thrown in for good measure and a whole bunch of yelling. It was hard being me in that moment, as my impulse was to help her, rescue her from the abuse. But they were many. And I was 9, and there was only one of me. I climbed up the fence and watched. Helpless to help. Shocked and confused. Watched the whole thing from a few feet away, knowing there was nothing I could do. They let her go eventually. She ended up taking them to court over this and brought me in as a witness. I described what I saw to the judge, who then asked me what my opinion was about "all of this fighting". I said: "I really just want us to get along. It's quite sad that we can't." So the judge dismissed the case as a way of agreeing with me. "See, your son just wants you all to ge...

I got flown over some very strange terrain somewhere in Africa. It was a raised plateau, stretching for hundreds of miles, rising over thick jungle canopy. Nothing like I've ever seen with my eyes before, so I definitely perked up and stared at this wonderful new natural formation in front of me. "It's highly secured, we need to provide triple identification and verification, and they'll probably let us land", the pilot said to me as we flew a respectable distance away. We landed without issues shortly after, and I got a tour of some of the key fortifications of the jungle plateau. Inside of it was a vast covered city, partly underground, and partly above, surrounded by a mysterious new technology force shield as well as some more traditional defence methods, that were... quite trigger happy. But more on that later. The city bustled with life, mostly white good looking people were milling around, doing their yoga sessions, participating in some meeitngs and discu...

Yet again I am running away, hiding, playing a game of "let's hide from nazis and then try to defeat them". Or is it a game of "this evil magic being has too much power and wants to take over the world"? Hard to say. But I guess it's fun. Or my depression and bitter disillusionment with the world is back. Hard to say. At least I seem to have some friends in there, and we're organizing and resisting the evil. But that's just in my dreams. In real life, I just have a metaphorical stack of work on my desk and fingers that ache from too much computer use.