T. R. Darling

Whales live in a post-apocalypse. The oldest of them still remember a time before, the thriving exchange of stories and dances, a society caught between the abyss below and eternity above. Now, the ocean is a lonely place. All their songs are old, and they only hope to survive.

Common dog beliefs:
• Houses are just cars that don’t move much.
• The Moon is quiet because it is very shy.
• Humans don’t really understand human words either, so barking is just as good.
• The wind is an invisible friend who brings fun new smells.
• Carpet is fancy grass.

It was a slow apocalypse. Anytime someone opened a door, there was a chance they’d find a better world on the other side. Those who went through never returned. Few even tried to resist. The planet emptied. Soon, the other realities didn’t even need to be better. Just different.

The hour we gain at the end of Daylight Saving Time is not the same one that was taken. Once they’re set loose, the lost hours will trade timelines, like hermit crabs lining up to swap shells. Our timeline isn’t very popular, but there’s always a misfit willing to give us a shot.

Our deep-space habitats were pristine and self-sustaining. Residents could wander for days and not see another person in the cavernous halls. We hoped they would use their limitless free time to make art, but we weren’t ready to see what a soul, so isolated, would find beautiful.

This is my ode to Twitter. Not X, Twitter. I quote it over there every time the new owner does something foul.

www.axios.com/2023/09/19/m...

Oh, perfect. I’ve been looking for more amazing artists to follow.

Thank you for your kind words, and for sharing your creations with us!

We found alien ruins everywhere. Observatories on the dark side of the Moon. Settlements on Ceres. Outposts in the Oort Cloud. Trendy cafes in Saturn’s rings. All advanced. All intact. All dead. The news was terrifying. Civilizations more powerful than ours could go extinct.

It broke your heart to see the robot now. Gone were its blue eyes and curious expression. It was a shamble, held together by string and nylon straps, cared for by villains who laughed at its broken, angry mutterings. You barely recognized it, and it didn’t care to remember you.

Atlantis did not sink under its own weight. Atlantean scientists were the first to build a temporal beacon, a vital part of primitive time travel. As soon as it was turned on, a hundred thousand misaligned time machines crashed into the doomed city, dragging it below the waves.

Humanity created giant robots to pilot from within, but not for war. That would be wildly impractical. The first aliens we found were spaceborne leviathans, too big to see a human, whose intense depth perception did not lend itself to screens. We built giant robots for diplomacy.

To the aliens, we were cosmic beings. They lived on planets wrapped in thick clouds, and knew little of the universe beyond until they developed space flight. Humanity named the stars before it invented the wheel. We knew the shape of the galaxy a century before we could fly.

Real estate is a powerful tool for vampire hunters. If a vampire is hiding in some abandoned or blighted building, quietly purchase the property, effective at midnight. This will invoke the need for an invitation to enter. When dawn comes, the creature will be trapped outdoors.

Telepathy is more common among animals, but our brains are too complex for them to read our thoughts. Dogs prefer to read our emotions. Crows are a bit smarter, probing for secrets of human language. Whales are mostly interested in how we cope with heartbreak. We’re not sure why.

Most UFO sightings are of the same malfunctioning time machine, struggling to slow down as it hurtles into the past. It skips like a stone across time, appearing only for brief moments to send its distress signal:
“.elbuort ni teg ot tnaw t’nod I ,yad tsrif ym s’ti ,pleh esaelP.”

She ran a digital apothecary in the part of town they didn’t bother to patrol. Her best seller was a fog potion, brewed from distilled CRT static and wild-caught computer bugs. One sip could hide you from facial recognition software, but your selfies would always show a stranger.

Time travelers debated for decades² about the ethics of visiting past and future loved ones. It is easy to slip up and share paradoxical information with those you trust. However, visiting pets was universally accepted. They are always happy to see you, and don’t ask questions.

Deer had philosophers as well, ancient beasts with antlers like forests who thought deeply on the meaning of hunger and the need for wolves.

For every thriving timeline, there are ten thousand where the Earth is a wasteland. Some bubble with radiation or languish under toxic clouds, but the fates of others are more mysterious. He found worlds covered in empty carnivals, the dust shaken only by distant calliope music.

The king would not have banned alchemy if all it did was transmute lead into gold. Such a process could be controlled to profit him. No, the real threat was turning gold into lead. If people started thinking of gold as something temporary and transient, his fortune was worthless.

Tree hugging gets a bad reputation, but the practice is never futile. Trees worldwide are connected by a communication and support network of roots and mycelia. As long as your favorite tree is on the same continent, it will feel your hug, and be able to return the affection.

Androids weren’t allowed the honor of having human names, so many chose names better suited for bands. His robotic coworkers included They Have Each Other, Jupiter’s Outer Edge, and Maybe I’m Not Afraid. He wasn’t supposed to, but they liked when he called them by their acronyms.

Nothing adapted to spaceflight like bats. They thrived in the chaotic microgravity and perfect blackness of the void. Our spindly castles of nanotube lace stood miles tall on dim asteroids, eagerly gothic, the atmosphere thick with tiny squeaks and the flutter of leather wings.

While cryptozoologists search for Sasquatch, cryptoarchitects track down elusive, anomalous buildings. An unattended bookstore on the outskirts of Grand Rapids leads into a vast subterranean library. A wandering bodega in New Orleans sells baked treats with extinct ingredients.