Skip to main content

POLYBIUS

 It sits there. How long has it been? No one remembers where it came from, when it arrived here in this dank little corner, silent and watchful. None of the bright multicolored lights illuminate it-- this place is cursed, here by dragons says the darkness. Turn back. 


It's a tall unit. Taller than most others. Imposing. Geometric, sharp sides that scream "future!", and "I'm not for kids!". Exactly the right bait for those willing to try. To undertake the test at the behest of small clustered crowds staring into the corner domain with eager, youthful bravado. A looming black display  crisscrossed by thin red stripes, silver hexagonal patterns. Slick. New. 


The screen glows green. Stares out at the world in quiet, unsettling judgement. Black patterns unfold and unfurl in complicated miasma, an interlocking labyrinth scrolling past. The simplicity is potent. Powerful. Almost too.. mature. It feels mathematical. There's something more there in the flickering. Something hungry. 


No joysticks. No buttons. Just the black sheen of the case, the green stare of the screen. Not even a slot for coins. 


What the hell?


It feels the eyes on it. The watchful stares, eager and nervous voices close by. Feels their intentions. 


Come and play, it says. 


At the head of the case lies one word, emblazoned by the same esoteric hexagonal structures. 


P O L Y B I U S

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Monsters in the Age of Men

 I saw a woman in the grocery store.  I saw her true shape, beneath raven black hair and pale eyes. She bore great wings, wings that carried endless plains across them and above roared storms, bruised clouds cracking and howling. Lightning split the sky into so many shattered pieces. She stared back at me, surrounded by the tiny people who so long ago had feared and worshipped darkening skies, crashing crescendoes.  We found each other out in the night, behind the building where trees and grass and vines grew untamed like in memories of vanished wilderness. I felt electricity when our lips met, felt spiking painful potential when I caressed her bronzed skin. In my ear I heard thrumming and pounding, shrieking wind. Building and building up into the sky, strong enough to crack mountains and scatter the stars.  I gave her the sea, brine and crushing depths between every kiss. I unfurled myself beneath massive wings, sprawling and armored and impossible, flashing colors...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Moons that Hunters Must Walk

 The Five Moons claim the sky with blood and cosmic violence. Crimson-saffron light splashes across the huge storm clouds beneath their fierce visages, and turns the world eerie. Dreamlike. Haskes, the Moon of Windfall. Storms curl into whirlwind frenzies across the bone-colored face. It is the place of howling furies and hellish nightmares, where hunters must walk across the Stormchasm to stand strong against endless wind-- or be thrown into bottomless abyss. Ahnios, the Moon of Waves. Hunters know the Tidesong, a deep welling howl of sorrow and exultance, the song to be sung out when those worthy sailed out across tsunamis vast enough to sunder continents into crushing abyss. A moon of an ocean untamed, beautiful, and unforgiving. Khinq, the Moon of Dunes. Those beneath the chaotic sky know the Blood Passage as a time of fear and annihilation, a time when the Moon of Endless Sand has returned from distant void to once again reign among its brethren. Red glows like silent, crawlin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bobby and the Big Time Swing

 The angry, unfamiliar star gets closer every day. It throws mean light over Cretaceia. Makes the gem-green jewel of Jurassica look sickly under nasty light, blanches the red deserts and crimson badlands around Triassican searing white. Ferns lilt. Fliers chirp ugly possibilities on the wing and it all rains down like so many bad premonitions.  But Bobby ain’t scared.  Bobby is big as a mountain, old as the sea. His people are the backs of the sky and the muscles of this mighty Earth, each one a nation containing multitudes. Starlight seeps down Brachiosaurus scales to drench the world in constellation light. His steps beckon cartographers as each one reforms valleys, reshapes the deltas. The unwelcome star threatens all that. Bad dreams beckoning fire and ash.  But Bobby ain’t scared.  The big-brains on two little feet tell him the Plan. Simple as can be, simple as gentle breezes and succulent plains of ferns for munching, simple as all things natural and corre...
Post a Comment
Read more