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SCIENCE
FICTION
Table of Contents All THAT TOUCHES THE AIR
DAGON
by H.P. Lovecraft
by An Owomoyela
Colonists on Earth-like Predonia have been able to find a normal way of life on a strange planet. They share the planet with Vosth parasites that invade anything that touches the air turning into to silvery zombies.
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THE LIFECYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS by Ted Chang
Ana, formerly a zookeeper, has been hired to help train the digients who have been given anthropomorphic animal avatars to make them seem cuter and hopefully more marketable.
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The undisputed master of the macabre, Dagon tells the story of Paul Marsh, a young man who discovers that the truth will not set him free instead it condemns him to a waking nightmare of unrelenting horror.
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LOREM IPSUM by Lorem Ipsum
Optatem essit ium et aut debit ut quatum santis por sinum quia cullate nihiliquam, que laciis eum nectiati dolupti doluptias eius eos modit que rati non renihit vit fugitatus, sunt, unt labo. Quae net dolorerovit ut aut poreribus.
19 Cover Artwork By Vincent Di Fate
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by AN OWOMOYELA
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE APR. 2011 (ISSUE 11)
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WHEN I was ten, I saw a man named Menley brought out to the Ocean of Starve. Thirty of us colonials gathered around, sweating in our envirosuits under the cerulean sky, while bailiffs flashed radio signals into the Ocean. Soon enough the silvery Vosth fog swarmed up and we watched the bailiffs take off Menley’s suit, helmet first. They worked down his body until every inch of his skin was exposed. Every. Last. Inch. Menley was mad. Colonist’s dementia. Born on Earth, he was one of the unlucky sixpoint-three percent who set down outside the solar system in strange atmospheres, gravities, rates of orbit and rotation, and just snapped because everything was almost like Earth, but wasn’t quite right. In his dementia, he’d defecated somewhere public; uncouth of him, but it wouldn’t have got him thrown to the Ocean except that the governors were fed up with limited resources and strict colonial bylaws and Earth’s fuck off on your own attitude, and Menley crapping
“It is our perception of reality that living organisms adapt.” on the communal lawns was the last insult they could take. He was nobody, here on Predonia. He was a madman. No one would miss him. The fog crawled out of the water and over his body, colonizing his pores, permeating bone and tissue, bleeding off his ability to yell or fight back. He was on his side in a convulsion before the Vosth parasites took his motor functions and stood his body up. They turned around and staggered into the Ocean of Starve, and it was eight years before I saw Menley again. Before that, when I was sixteen, I was studying hydroponics and genetic selection. In the heat of the greenhouse, everyone could Art by Peter Elson
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notice that I wore long clothing, high collars, gloves. I’d just passed the civics tests and become a voting adult, and that meant dressing in another envirosuit and going out to the Ocean again. The auditor sat me down in a comm booth and the Vosth swarmed into its speakers. The voice they synthesized was tinny and inhuman. We tell our history of this colony, they said. You came past the shell of atmosphere. We were at that time the dominant species. You made your colonies in the open air. We harvested the utility of your bodies, but you proved sentience and sapience and an understanding was formed. You would keep your colony to lands prescribed for you. You would make shells against our atmosphere. You would accept our law. All that touches the air belongs to us. What touches the air is ours. Endria was a prodigy. She passed her civics tests at thirteen. She was also stupid. After two years in hydroponics, I graduated to waste reclamation, specialty in chemical-accelerated blackwater decomposition. No one wanted the job, so the compensation was great—and it came with a hazard suit. I used to take a sterile shower in the waste facility and walk to my room in my suit, past the airlock that led to the open air.
That’s where I caught Endria. Emancipated adults weren’t beholden to curfew, so she was out unsupervised. She was also opening the door without an envirosuit on. I ran up to stop her and pulled her hand from the control panel. “Hey!” She wrenched her hand away. No thanks there. “What are you doing?” “What are you doing?” I asked back.
“Is it my civic or personal responsibility to leave people out there when they’re trying to get in?” I looked through the porthole to see what she was talking about. I had no peripheral vision in the suit, so I hadn’t seen anyone in the airlock. But Endria was right: Someone was trying to get in. Menley was trying to get in. He looked the same: Silvery skin, dead expression, eyes and muscles moving like the Vosth could work out how each part of his face functioned but couldn’t put it all together. I jumped back. I thought I could feel Vosth crawling inside my envirosuit. “He’s not allowed in,” I said. “I’m contacting Security Response.” “Why isn’t he?” Of all the idiotic questions. “He’s been taken over by the Vosth!” “And we maintain a civil, reciprocal policy toward them,” Endria said. “We’re allowed in their territory without notification, so they should be allowed in ours.”
Art by Peter Elson
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Besides the Vosth, there was nothing I hated more than someone who’d just come out of a civics test. “Unless we take them over when they wander in, it’s not reciprocal,” I said. Vosth-Menley put his hand against the porthole; his silver fingers squished against the composite. I stepped back. “You know it all; who gets notified if an infested colonist tries to walk into the habitat?”
Her face screwed up. I guess that wasn’t on her exam. “I’ll find out,” she said, turning on her heel. “Don’t create an interspecies incident while I’m gone.” She flounced away.
one of the governors, shrunk them, and reworked their face to fit that impish craze back in the ’20s. She even had a datapad, and a button-up tunic under her hygienic jacket. “I’m not going to enjoy this, am I?” I asked.
I turned back to the porthole, where Vosth-Menley had smooshed his nose up against the composite as well. I knocked my helmet against the door.
“I came to interview you about civil law and the Vosth,” she said. “It’s for a primary certification in government apprenticeship. I’m going to be a governor by the time I’m sixteen.”
“Leave,” I told him. Them. It.
I stared at her.
He stared, dead eyes unblinking, then slouched away.
“It’s part of a civics certification, so I can make you answer,” she added.
I didn’t sleep that night. My brain played old-Earth zombie flicks whenever I closed my eyes, staffed by silver monstrosities instead of rotting corpses. Endria thought I’d create an interspecies incident; I thought about how many people would be trapped without e-suits if a Vosth infestation broke out. How many people would be screaming and convulsing and then just staggering around with dead silver eyes, soft hands pressing into portholes, skin teeming with parasites ready to crawl into anyone they saw. I talked to the governor on duty the next day, who confirmed that the colony would “strongly prefer” if the Vosth weren’t allowed to walk around in naked fleshsuits inside the habitat. She even sent out a public memo. Three days later, Endria came to give me crap about it. The way she walked into my lab, she looked like someone took
Wonderful. “After these titrations,” I told her. Endria went to one of the counters and boosted herself onto it, dropped her datapad beside her, and reached into a pocket to pull out something colorful and probably fragrant and nutrient-scarce. “That’s okay. We can make small talk while you’re working. I know titration isn’t demanding on the linguistic portions of your brain.” Excepting the Vosth, there was nothing I hated more than people who thought they knew more about my work. “Sit quietly,” I said. “I’ll be with you shortly.” To my surprise, she actually sat quietly. To my annoyance, that lasted through a total of one titra-
Art by Darrell K. Sweet
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Endria kicked her heels, tilting her head so far her ear rested on her shoulder. “Everyone thinks you’re a creep because you never take that e-suit off.” “That’s nice,” I said. “Are you afraid of the Vosth?” Endria asked. She said it like that was unreasonable. “I have a healthy skepticism that they’re good neighbors,” I said. “And that’s why you wear an e-suit?” “No,” I said, “that’s why I’m active in colonial politics and took the civics track with an emphasis on interspecies diplomacy.” I set down the beaker I was working with. For irony. Endria sucked on her teeth, then gave me a smile I couldn’t read. “You could go into Vosth research. It’s a promising new area of scientific inquiry.” I pushed the beaker aside. “What new area? We’ve been here for a generation. Bureaucracy is slow, but it’s not that slow.” Art by Vincent Di Fate tion and a half. “I’m going to interview you about the sentence passed on Ken Menley in colony record zero-zero-zero-three-zerofour,” she said. “According to my research, you were the youngest person there, as well as the only person there to meet Menley again. You have a unique perspective on Vosth-human interactions. After the incident a few nights ago I thought it would be a good idea to focus my paper on them.” “My perspective,” I started to say, but thought better of calling the Vosth names usually reserved for human excrement. They were shit, they were horrifying, they were waiting out there to crawl inside us, and if Endria was going to be a governor by age sixteen she’d probably have the authority to rehabilitate me by sixteen and a half. I didn’t want her thinking I needed my opinions revised. “I have no perspective. I don’t deal with them.” Endria rolled the candy around in her mouth. “I don’t think any of my friends are friends with you,” she said. “Isn’t it weird to go past two degrees of separation?” “Wouldn’t know,” I said. My primary degrees of separation were limited to my supervisor and the quartermaster I requisitioned e-suits from. I wouldn’t call them friends.
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“It’s a hard science, not sociological,” she said. “We couldn’t do that before. I don’t know much about it, but there’s all sorts of government appropriations earmarked for it. Don’t you read the public accounting?” I turned to look at her. She was kicking her heels against the table.
“You should go into Vosth research, and use your experience with Menley to open up a line of inquiry.” “It’s probably xenobiology or something, but it might be fertile ground for new discoveries. Then you could be the colony’s expert on the Vosth. Interspecies relations are an important part of this colony. That’s why I’m writing a paper on them for my civics certification.” “I’m not getting this titration done, am I?” Endria smiled, and said the words most feared by common citizens interacting with civil law. “This will only take a minute.”
It wasn’t against the law to go outside the compound, and some people liked the sunlight. Some people—daredevils and risk-takers—even enjoyed the fresh air. As for me, I passed the front door every time I got off work and always felt like I was walking along the edge of a cliff. I’d tried taking different routes but that made it worse somehow, like if I didn’t keep my eye on it, the airlock would blow out and let these seething waves of silver flow in and I wouldn’t know until I got back to my shower or had to switch out my suit for cleaning. Or I’d be opening my faceplate for dinner and feel something else on my lips, and there would be the Vosth, crawling inside. I had trouble eating if I didn’t walk past the airlock to make sure it was closed. Yeah, Menley made that worse. I started staring at the airlock, expecting to see his face squashed up against it. Maybe he was just outside, seconds away from getting some idiot like Endria to let him in. People walked past me, and I could hear them talking in low tones while I watched the airlock, like maybe I’d gone into an absence seizure and they should get someone to haul me away. And then they could have me investigated for colonist’s dementia despite the fact that I’d been born here. And they could take me out to the Ocean of Starve… After two nights I realized if I didn’t step outside to make sure the Vosth weren’t coming with a swarm, I was heading for a paranoid fugue. Actually walking out took two more nights because I couldn’t stand to open the airlock myself. I
finally saw a couple strolling out as I passed, e-suited hand in e-suited hand, and I fell in behind them. The airlock and the outside were the only places I could be anonymous in my e-suit. The couple didn’t even cross to the other side of the enclosure as it cycled the air and opened the outer door. The grass was teal-green. I hear it’s less blue on Earth, and the sky is less green, but I was just glad neither one was silver. The sunlight was strong and golden, the clouds were mercifully white, and there wasn’t a trace of fog to be seen. So that was good. I stopped wearing my envirosuit. The first day, stepping out of my door, I felt lightbodied, lightheaded, not entirely there. I felt like I’d walked out of my shower without getting dressed. I had to force myself to go forward instead of back, back to grab my envirosuit, to make myself decent. I walked into the hall where every moment was the sensory overload of air on my skin, where my arms and legs felt loose, where everyone could see the expressions on my face. That was as frightening as the Vosth. I’d just left behind the environmental advantage I’d had since I was ten. But I was adapting.
THE END
Art by Vincent Di Fate
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T H E
L I F E C Y C L
S O F T W A R
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O F
O B J E C T S
TED CHIANG 10
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THE LIFECYCLE OF SOFTWARE OBJECTS TED CHIANG “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” follows Ana Alvarado over a twenty-year period, during which she “raises” an artificial intelligence from being essentially a digital pet to a human-equivalent mind. This is an exerpt form Chapter Three. OVER THE COURSE OF THE FOLLOWING YEAR, the forecast for Blue Gamma’s future changes from sunny to decidedly cloudy. Sales to new customers have slowed down, but worse than that, the revenue generated by the fooddispensing software has fallen: more and more of the existing customers are suspending their digients. The problem is that as the Neuroblast digients leave infancy behind, they’re growing too demanding. In breeding them Blue Gamma aimed for a combination of smart and obedient, but with the unpredictability inherent in any genome, even a digital one, it turns out the developers missed their target.
“but with the unpredictability inherent in any genome, even a digital one, it turns out the developers missed their target.” Like an overly difficult game, the balance of challenge and reward that the digients provide is tilting beyond what most people consider fun, and so they suspend them. But unlike dog owners who bought a breed they were unprepared for, Blue Gamma’s customers can’t be blamed for not having done their homework; the company itself didn’t know that the digients would evolve in this way.
Illustrations by Christian Pearce, a sci-fi artist based in Wellington, New Zealand. Throughout the book are wonderful illustartions of robots and their development of personal identity, autonomy, and emotions.
Some volunteers have begun maintaining rescue shelters, accepting unwanted digients in hopes of matching them with new owners. These volunteers practice a variety of strategies; some keep the digients running without interruption, while others restore the digients from their last checkpoint every few days, to keep them from developing abandonment issues that might make it harder for them to get adopted. Neither strategy is enormously successful at attracting prospective
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owners. There is occasionally a person who wants to try a digient without having to raise one from infancy, but these adoptions never last for long, and the shelters essentially become digient warehouses.
“I say that,” says jax, surprising her with his understanding,
Ana’s not happy about this trend, but she’s familiar with the realities of animal welfare: she knows you can’t save them all. She’d prefer to shield Blue Gamma’s mascots from what’s happening, but the phenomenon is too widespread for that to be practical. Again and again she has taken them to a playground and one of the digients realizes that a regular playmate is absent. Today’s trip to a playground is different, and brings a pleasant surprise. Even before all the mascots are through the portal, Jax and Marco notice another digient wearing a robot avatar. They simultaneously exclaim “Tibo~” and run over to him.
“Not because missed zoo. Sad missed month.”
Tibo is one of the oldest digients aside from the mascots, owned by a beta tester named Carlton. He suspended Tibo about a month ago; Ana’s glad to see that it wasn’t permanent. As the digients chatter, she walks her avatar over to Carlton’s and talks with him; he explains that he just needed a break, and now is feeling ready to give Tibo the attention he needs. Later on, after she’s brought the mascots back from the playground to Blue Gamma’s island, Jax tells her about his conversation with Tibo. “Tell him about fun we do time he gone. Tell him about field trip zoo fun fun.” “Was he sad he missed it?” “No he instead argue. He said field trip was mall not zoo. But that trip last month.” “That’s because Tibo was suspended the whole time he’s been gone,” Ana explains, “so he thinks last month’s trip was yesterday.” “but he not believe. He argue until Marco and Lolly too tell him. Then he sad.” “Well, I’m sure there’ll be other trips to the zoo.”
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“Ah.” “I not want be suspended. Not want miss month.” Ana does her best to sound reassuring. “You don’t have to worry about that, Jax.” “You not suspend me, right?” “Right.” To her relief, Jax seems satisfied by this; he hasn’t encountered the idea of extracting a promise, and she’s e mbarrassingly glad that she didn’t have to make him one. She takes comfort in the knowledge that if they suspend the mascots for any period of time, they’ll almost certainly suspend all of them, so at least there won’t be experiential discrepancies within the group. The same would be true if they ever roll the mascots back to a younger age. Restoring an early checkpoint is one of Blue Gamma’s suggestions for customers who find their digients too demanding, and there’s been talk that the company should do this with its own mascots to endorse the strategy. Ana notices the time, and begins instantiating some games for the mascots to play on their own; it’s time for her to train the digients in Blue Gamma’s new product line. In the years since creating the Neuroblast genome, the developers have written more sophisticated tools for analyzing the interactions of its various genes, and they understand the genome’s properties better. Recently they’ve created a taxon with less cognitive plasticity, resulting in digients that should stabilize more quickly and stay docile forever. The only way to know for certain is to let customers raise them for years and see what happens, but the developers’ confidence is high. This is a significant departure from the company’s original goal of digients that become ever more sophisticated, but drastic situations call for drastic measures. Blue Gamma is counting
on these new digients to stanch the loss of revenue, so Ana and the rest of the test team are intensively training them. She has the mascots sufficiently well-trained that they wait for her permission before they start playing the games. “All right everyone, go ahead,” she says, and the digients all rush over to their favorites. ‘’I’ll see you all later.” “No,” says Jax. He stops and walks back to her avatar. “Don’t want play.” “What? Sure you do.” “No playing. Want job.” Ana laughs. “What? Why do you want to get a job?” “Get money.” She realizes that Jax isn’t happy when he says this; his mood is glum. More seriously, she asks him, “What do you need money for?” “Don’t need. Give you.” “Why do you want to give me money?” “You need,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Did I say I need money? When?” “Last week ask why you play with other digients instead me. You said people pay you play with them. If have money, can pay you. Then you play with me more.” “Oh Jax.” She’s momentarily at a loss for words. “That’s very sweet of you.”
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H. P. Lovecraft’s “Dagon� was Originally published in The Vagrant Nov. 1919 (Issue 11) I AM writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below. Do not think from my slavery to morphine that I am a weakling or a degenerate. When you have read these hastily scrawled pages you may guess, though never fully realise, why it is that I must have forgetfulness or death. It was in one of the most open and least frequented parts of the broad Pacific that the packet of which I was supercargo fell a victim to the German sea-raider. The great war was then at its very beginning, and the ocean forces of the
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Hun had not completely sunk to their later degradation; so that our vessel was made a legitimate prize, whilst we of her crew were treated with all the fairness and consideration due us as naval prisoners. So liberal, indeed, was the discipline of our captors, that five days after we were taken I managed to escape alone in a small boat with water and provisions for a good length of time. When I finally found myself adrift and free, I had but little idea of my surroundings. Never a competent navigator, I could only guess vaguely by the sun and stars that I was somewhat south of the equator. Of the longitude I knew nothing, and no island or coast-line was in sight. The weather kept fair, and for uncounted days I drifted aimlessly beneath the scorching sun; waiting either for some passing ship, or to be cast on the shores of some habitable land. But neither ship nor land appeared, and I began to despair in my solitude upon the heaving vastnesses of unbroken blue.
The chnage happened whilst I slept. Its details I shall never know; for my slumber, though troubled and dream-infested, was continuous. When at last I awaked, it was to discover myself half sucked into a slimy expanse of hellish black mire which extended about me in monotonous undulations as far as I could see, and in which my boat lay grounded some distance away. Though one might well imagine that my first sensation would be of wonder at so prodigious and unexpected a transformation of scenery, I was in reality more horrified than astonished; for there was in the air and in the rotting soil a sinister quality which chilled me to the very core. The region was putrid with the carcasses of decaying fish, and of other less describable things which I saw protruding from the nasty mud of the unending plain. Perhaps I should not hope to convey in mere words the unutterable hideousness that can dwell in absolute silence and barren immensity. There was nothing within
“Dagon� title artwork by Anthony Porcaro hearing, and nothing in sight save a vast reach of black slime; yet the very completeness of the stillness and the homogeneity of the landscape oppressed me with a nauseating fear. The sun was blazing down from a sky which seemed to me almost black in its cloudless cruelty; as though reflecting the inky marsh beneath my feet. As I crawled into the stranded boat I realised that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths. So great was the extent of the new land which had risen beneath me, that I could not detect the faintest noise of the surging ocean, strain my ears as I might. Nor were there any sea-fowl to prey upon the dead things.
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upon with ease. The odour of the fish was maddening; but I was too much concerned with graver things to mind so slight an evil, and set out boldly for an unknown goal. All day I forged steadily westward, guided by a far-away hummock which rose higher than any other elevation on the rolling desert. That night I encamped, and on the following day still travelled toward the hummock, though that object seemed scarcely nearer than when I had first espied it. By the fourth evening I attained the base of the mound, which turned out to be much higher than it had appeared from a distance; an intervening valley setting it out in sharper relief from the general surface. Too weary to ascend, I slept in the shadow of the hill. I know not why my dreams were so wild that night; but ere the waning and fantastically gibbous moon had risen far above the eastern plain, I was awake in a cold perspiration, determined to sleep no more. Such visions as I had experienced were too much for me to endure again. And in the glow of the moon I saw how unwise I had been to travel by day. Without the glare of the parching sun, my journey would have cost me less energy; indeed, I now felt quite able to perform the ascent which had deterred me at sunset. Picking up my pack, I started for the crest of the eminence. I have said that the unbroken monotony of the rolling plain was a source of vague horror to me; but I think my horror was greater when I gained the summit of the mound and looked down the other side into an immeasurable pit or canyon, whose black recesses the moon had not yet soared high enough to illumine. I felt myself on the edge of the world; peering over the rim into a fathomless chaos of eternal night. Through my terror ran curious reminiscences of Paradise Lost, and of Satan’s hideous climb through the unfashioned realms of darkness.
Illustration by David Garcia ForÊs, Š 2018 - 2020 https://www.deviantart.com/disezno/art/Dagon-745367686 for several hours I sat thinking or brooding in the boat, which lay upon its side and afforded a slight shade as the sun moved across the heavens. As the day progressed, the ground lost some of its stickiness, and seemed likely to dry sufficiently for travelling purposes in a short time. That night I slept but little, and the next day I made for myself a pack containing food and water, preparatory to an overland journey in search of the vanished sea and possible rescue. On the third morning I found the soil dry enough to walk
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As the moon climbed higher in the sky, I began to see that the slopes of the valley were not quite so perpendicular as I had imagined. Ledges and outcroppings of rock afforded fairly easy foot-holds for a descent, whilst after a drop of a few hundred feet, the declivity became very gradual. Urged on by an impulse which I cannot definitely analyse, I scrambled with difficulty down the rocks and stood on the gentler slope beneath, gazing into the Stygian deeps where no light had yet penetrated. All at once my attention was captured by a vast and singular object on the opposite slope, which rose steeply about an hundred yards ahead of me; an object that gleamed whitely in the newly bestowed rays of the ascending moon. That it was merely a gigantic piece of stone, I soon assured myself; but I was conscious of a distinct impression that its contour
and position were not altogether the work of Nature. A closer scrutiny filled me with sensations I cannot express; for despite its enormous magnitude, and its position in an abyss which had yawned at the bottom of the sea since the world was young, I perceived beyond a doubt that the strange object was a well-shaped monolith whose massive bulk had known the workmanship and perhaps the worship of living and thinking creatures. Dazed and frightened, yet not without a certain thrill of the scientist’s or archaeologist’s delight, I examined my surroundings more closely. The moon, now near the zenith, shone weirdly and vividly above the towering steeps that hemmed in the chasm, and revealed the fact that a far-flung body of water flowed at the bottom, winding out of sight in both directions, and almost lapping my feet as I stood on the slope. Across the chasm, the wavelets washed the base of the Cyclopean monolith; on whose surface I could now trace both inscriptions and crude sculptures. The writing was in a system of hieroglyphics unknown to me, and unlike anything I had ever seen in books; consisting for the most part of conventionalised aquatic symbols such as fishes, eels, octopi, crustaceans, molluscs, whales, and the like. Several characters obviously represented marine things which are unknown to the modern world, but whose decomposing forms I had observed on the ocean-risen plain. It was the pictorial carving, however, that did most to hold me spellbound. Plainly visible across the intervening water on account of their enormous size, were an array of bas-reliefs whose subjects would have excited the envy of a Doré. I think that these things were supposed to depict men—at least, a certain sort of men; though the creatures were shewn disporting like fishes in the waters of some marine grotto, or paying homage at some monolithic shrine which appeared to be under the waves as well. Of their faces and forms I dare not speak in detail; for the mere remembrance makes me grow faint. Grotesque beyond the imagination of a Poe or a Bulwer, they were damnably human in general outline despite webbed hands and feet, shockingly wide and flabby lips, glassy, bulging eyes, and other features less pleasant to recall. Curiously enough, they seemed to have been chiselled badly out of proportion with their scenic background; for one of the creatures was shewn in the act of killing a whale represented as but little larger than himself. I remarked, as I say, their grotesqueness and strange size; but in a moment decided that they were merely the imaginary gods of some primitive fishing or seafaring tribe; some tribe whose last descendant had perished eras before the first ancestor of the Piltdown or Neanderthal Man was born. Awestruck at this unexpected glimpse into a past beyond the conception of the most daring anthropologist, I stood musing whilst the moon cast queer reflections on the
silent channel before me. Then suddenly I saw it. With only a slight churning to mark its rise to the surface, the thing slid into view above the dark waters. Vast, Polyphemus-like, and loathsome, it darted like a stupendous monster of nightmares to the monolith, about which it flung its gigantic scaly arms, the while it bowed its hideous head and gave vent to certain measured sounds. I think I went mad then. Of my frantic ascent of the slope and cliff, and of my delirious journey back to the stranded boat, I remember little. I believe I sang a great deal, and laughed oddly when I was unable to sing. I have indistinct recollections of a great storm some time after I reached the boat; at any rate, I know that I heard peals of thunder and other tones which Nature utters only in her wildest moods. When I came out of the shadows I was in a San Francisco hospital; brought thither by the captain of the American ship which had picked up my boat in mid-ocean. In my delirium I had said much, but found that my words had been given scant attention. Of any land upheaval in the Pacific, my rescuers knew nothing; nor did I deem it necessary to insist upon a thing which I knew they could not believe. Once I sought out a celebrated ethnologist, and amused him with peculiar questions regarding the ancient Philistine legend of Dagon, the Fish-God; but soon perceiving that he was hopelessly conventional, I did not press my inquiries. It is at night, especially when the moon is gibbous and waning, that I see the thing. I tried morphine; but the drug has given only transient surcease, and has drawn me into its clutches as a hopeless slave. So now I am to end it all, having written a full account for the information or the contemptuous amusement of my fellow-men. Often I ask myself if it could not all have been a pure phantasm—a mere freak of fever as I lay sun-stricken and raving in the open boat after my escape from the German man-of-war. This I ask myself, but ever does there come before me a hideously vivid vision in reply. I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, worshipping their ancient stone idols and carving their own detestable likenesses on submarine obelisks of water-soaked granite. I dream of a day when they may rise above the billows to drag down in their reeking talons the remnants of puny, war-exhausted mankind—of a day when the land shall sink, and the dark ocean floor shall ascend amidst universal pandemonium. The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!
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lorem ipsum AUTHOR XJVM
Gent. Giae nihiciatur? Quibus id magnis nis nos erspid eicia qui beri reptati temoluptatur suntius es aciti consed qui ulpa conestia seque comnisciur, omnis aditi nes aut dendit, conserum ant quatatem sersper itatur? Qui cullestrum, qui quae nis aut archic tes voluptas comnimi ncimolum volorempori dolorempos magnias doluptati volut earcit ante magnient at hilloria pro quam rero es sumquam ut etur repudia autem id molor autem quiditat lit facculp aribus dus aditistium et pla venis qui aut qui aut fuga. Si blaciistium que nobit, voluptates aute cus. Ipsam dicium voluptis enis iur maxim sequame nust labo. Ut as si aliquatasit magnimaio tem qui ditias del ipsanihita cusam aut et ut esci opta venimax imincil luptatiatius sita qui voluptat iumquidiaes utatempos voluptur si tem velestecte vent apis sum di ommodip sandem el et optat arum exceprem hicil ipsusanihit ipsundi nis maximint que conesediam sin ese sit et eosam endisque velentios solorepernat lab in pliqui bla culluptatur, sum qui nus, sunt as et iminven destisi comnimus autem dolupta ssenita simil inctasperunt ulparum et antius estrum, quatem ressus dolorenduci ium aut autem quia eicietur? Molorectur, conse consectur alist, coreiciet volesed minctis aut dictorr uptatium eum faccum ium et et officie ntorem que volupis dellabor aut volore nihiliquos ut elluptium accum quae nobita quamus autes doluptur rerumquo beria dolorit omniam, sequi corrum aut doles eos alique int aut odissimus et in reria quis estiandandi
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cus, necusda epudae eum vel moluptiatum dolorem nis et aut volutes rem nossuntionem rem etur aut in consed ut accabo. Nost, cone consequides doloressim quia doluptis eturemp orepta Gent. Giae nihiciatur? Quibus id magnis nis nos erspid eicia qui beri reptati temoluptatur suntius es aciti consed qui ulpa conestia seque comnisciur, omnis aditi nes aut dendit, conserum ant quatatem sersper itatur? Qui cullestrum, qui quae nis aut archic tes voluptas comnimi ncimolum volorempori dolorempos magnias doluptati volut earcit ante magnient at hilloria pro quam rero es sumquam ut etur repudia autem id molor autem quiditat lit facculp aribus dus aditistium et pla venis qui aut qui aut fuga. Si blaciistium que nobit, voluptates aute cus. Ipsam dicium voluptis enis iur maxim sequame nust labo. Ut as si aliquatasit magnimaio tem qui ditias del ipsanihita cusam aut et ut esci opta venimax imincil luptatiatius sita qui voluptat iumquidiaes utatempos voluptur si tem velestecte vent apis sum di ommodip sandem el et optat arum exceprem hicil ipsusanihit ipsundi nis maximint que conesediam sin ese sit et eosam endisque velentios solorepernat lab in pliqui bla culluptatur, sum qui nus, sunt as et iminven destisi comnimus autem dolupta ssenita simil inctasperunt ulparum et antius estrum, quatem ressus dolorenduci ium aut autem quia eicietur? Molorectur, conse consectur alist, coreiciet volesed minctis aut dictorr uptatium eum faccum ium et et officie ntorem que volupis dellabor aut volore nihiliquos ut elluptium
accum quae nobita quamus autes doluptur rerumquo beria dolorit omniam, sequi corrum aut doles eos alique int aut odissimus et in reria quis estiandandi cus, necusda epudae eum vel moluptiatum dolorem nis et aut volutes rem nossuntionem rem etur aut in consed ut accabo. Nost, cone consequides doloressim quia doluptis eturemp orepta Gent. Giae nihiciatur? Quibus id magnis nis nos erspid eicia qui beri reptati temoluptatur suntius es aciti consed qui ulpa conestia seque comnisciur, omnis aditi nes aut dendit, conserum ant quatatem sersper itatur? Qui cullestrum, qui quae nis aut archic tes voluptas comnimi ncimolum volorempori dolorempos magnias doluptati volut earcit ante magnient at hilloria pro quam rero es sumquam ut etur repudia autem id molor autem quiditat lit facculp aribus dus aditistium et pla venis qui aut qui aut fuga. Si blaciistium que nobit, voluptates aute cus. Ipsam dicium voluptis enis iur maxim sequame nust labo. Ut as si aliquatasit magnimaio tem qui ditias del ipsanihita cusam aut et ut esci opta venimax imincil luptatiatius sita qui voluptat iumquidiaes utatempos voluptur si tem velestecte vent apis sum di ommodip sandem el et optat arum exceprem hicil ipsusanihit ipsundi nis maximint que conesediam sin ese sit et eosam endisque velentios solorepernat lab in pliqui bla culluptatur, sum qui nus, sunt as et iminven destisi comnimus autem dolupta ssenita simil inctasperunt ulparum et antius estrum, quatem ressus dolorenduci ium aut autem quia eicietur?
sit et eosam endisque velentios solorepernat lab in pliqui bla culluptatur, sum qui nus, sunt as et iminven destisi comnimus autem dolupta ssenita simil inctasperunt ulparum et antius estrum, quatem ressus dolorenduci ium aut autem quia eicietur? Molorectur, conse consectur alist, coreiciet volesed minctis aut dictorr uptatium eum faccum ium et et officie ntorem que volupis dellabor aut volore nihiliquos ut elluptium accum quae nobita quamus autes doluptur rerumquo beria dolorit omniam, sequi corrum aut doles eos alique int aut odissimus et in reria quis estiandandi cus, necusda epudae eum vel moluptiatum dolorem nis et aut volutes rem nossuntionem rem etur aut in consed ut accabo. Nost, cone consequides doloressim quia doluptis eturemp orepta Gent. Giae nihiciatur? Quibus id magnis nis nos erspid eicia qui beri reptati temoluptatur suntius es aciti consed qui ulpa conestia seque comnisciur, omnis aditi nes aut dendit, conserum ant quatatem sersper itatur? Art by Jakub Róşalski, also known as Mr. Werewolf, is a Polish artist. He is best known as the illustrator of the board game Scythe and related paintings, commonly featuring mythical, fantastical beasts, robots and similar concepts.
Molorectur, conse consectur alist, coreiciet volesed minctis aut dictorr uptatium eum faccum ium et et officie ntorem que volupis dellabor aut volore nihiliquos ut elluptium accum quae nobita quamus autes doluptur rerumquo beria dolorit omniam, sequi corrum aut doles eos alique int aut odissimus et in reria quis estiandandi cus, necusda epudae eum vel moluptiatum dolorem nis et aut volutes rem nossuntionem rem etur aut in consed ut accabo. Nost, cone consequides doloressim quia doluptis eturemp orepta Gent. Giae nihiciatur? Quibus id magnis nis nos erspid eicia qui beri reptati temoluptatur suntius es aciti consed qui ulpa conestia seque comnisciur, omnis aditi nes aut dendit, conserum ant quatatem sersper itatur? Qui cullestrum, qui quae nis aut archic tes voluptas comnimi ncimolum volorempori dolorempos magnias doluptati volut earcit ante magnient at hilloria pro quam rero es sumquam ut etur repudia autem id molor autem quiditat lit facculp aribus dus aditistium et pla venis qui aut qui aut fuga. Si blaciistium que nobit, voluptates aute cus. Ipsam dicium voluptis enis iur maxim sequame nust labo. Ut as si aliquatasit magnimaio tem qui ditias del ipsanihita cusam aut et ut esci opta venimax imincil luptatiatius sita qui voluptat iumquidiaes utatempos voluptur si tem velestecte vent apis sum di ommodip sandem el et optat arum exceprem hicil ipsusanihit ipsundi nis maximint que conesediam sin ese
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