Dissidents-Tube

 ‘Hello, Orlando. Please, confirm your DOB and your postcode, then sign here, before we can proceed.’ The 43Bot moved closer, stretched out its arm, and put a tablet right under their nose . Orlando had never seen such an old model before. Beep, pause, beep-beep.

‘Make it stop. Please, make it stop,’ Orlando said, hands pressed against their temples.

‘You are late for the interpersonal therapy meeting, and the one-to-one daily evaluation.’ Beep, pause, beep-beep.

‘Inter-what? I won’t sign anything before you stop that mental sound.’

The last thing they remembered was falling on the station’s pavement, while chasing the train. Beep, pause, beep-beep. A thought. T he marks on my leg! Orlando got flashbacks. One at a hospital, during an X-ray, and one in a dark room without any windows, and many beds around. They remembered trying to scratch their nose. They remembered their hands being tied up.

‘Female, 33 years old, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, fibromyalgia, ADHD, OCD, and PDA.’ Its voice was glitching a bit.

Lexi-Crisis II 'Empathy'

 Dear Reader,

I am Story and I have a tale to share with you. It’s about our last Christmas party in which Empathy had a bit of an identity crisis. 

Before I start, I need to inform you about a technicality. In Greek some words are female, some male, and some are actually non-binary. For example, Enigma and Chaos reflect the later. I will refer to them as such.

For Bot’s Sake (Short Story)

‘Happy 100th birthday sweetie. How do you feel to be joining us in the middle-aged community?’

‘Hey Sis. Thank you...? OK, I guess.’

‘Do you accept guest?’

‘Did you pay your privacy-tax today?’

My ancient history

(I wrote that story about 20 years ago. Soon I am turning 40 and I thought it's a good time to return to my-ancient-history, so I translated it from the original Greek to share it with you, my only-English-speaking dear future historian and contemporary reader.) 

The Death of My God

Dear Future Historian,

I was about six or seven, I think. It was Christmas. I was backstage, in the amphitheatre of the church I was ‘going to’ (or was dragged to) back then. I was wearing a costume, but I’m not sure if I was an angel or a sheep. I guess I was a sheep because I remember that it was making me very itchy.

Lexi-Crisis

And now, I must rely on this questionable literal-abilities student, in just 2200 words... but so be it. I know that Story is risking a lot by helping me. Let's see if that will work. I've been  trying to speak for centuries, but it's our fate for my kind -as the Moires wanted it- to need a host, even though we are not a Parasite. What an I rony!

'Salvation'

 So.. once upon a time (let's say at the end of the 80s) there was a girl with a long bucket list. Going to see the Olympic games was part of that list. She wasn’t really interested in sports

It was the history of the games that she admired. The ancient custom of stopping battles, even during war, that she admired. Well.. she knew that was not happening anymore, but still, she always wanted to be part of history. The Olympic games had (in her mind) some of the magic of the ancient philosophers or something.

'The ultimate Truth' Short story

‘What it would take you to believe that you have found the ultimate Truth?’ His interlocutor asked our protagonist.

That was the stupidest question he ever heard, he thought. Yet, his initial impression, of the obviousness he thought the answer had, faded away when he couldn’t find any words to form it.

‘Well, everyone’, he heard himself say, without being sure of what his next sentence would be, ‘has different standards to that question, influenced by their character, their environment and their experiences. No one can really be objective. I don’t even trust what would convince me as the ultimate Truth. In order to really make a believer out of me, I have to have multiple people’s accounts; people that I will know every little detail about them.’

Cosmogony myth and gods' family dysfunction

The Mother-goddess and the Father-god.. were struck by the arrows of Eros (or Cubit if you prefer,) which pre-existed.

At first, their chemistry surprised even Eros himself.

Their wedding was magical. And it was a source of inspiration to songwriters and storytellers over centuries, echoing the magnificence of their union. Yet, as the "Chinese whispers" or maybe as some kind of distorting mirror, the ‘wedding’ was considered to fit at the end of a story, and gradually moved itself there.

About Short Stories

Dear future historian,

I didn't always appreciated short stories. They left me an uncomfortable feeling, like hearing a song for the first time. I thought that they don't give me enough time to connect with the characters, emotionally, or feel that I have enough evidence to make a certain moral judgment about them.

It was only last year that I realised the ability that short stories have to teach us how to zoom and focus in the moment, in the 'Here and Now.'

Plus I feel lately that I just can't make a long term commitment to a story atm. You see, I always spend a lot of time thinking of the characters and the plot of any novel I read. But now I have to focus on other things, quite a lot of things.

Καλημέρα Ήλιε

(Also available in English:

https://dearfuturehistorians.blogspot.com/2020/05/good-morning-sun.html?m=1)

Trigger alert: suicide & mental health issues

Dear Future Historian,

I need to talk, even if it’s been 13 years.

At the cemetery. Everyone is dead here. Everyone but me. A cat suddenly appears from behind a grave. I keep walking. At some point, I reach John's grave.

‘Hi mate, I told you I'd come'.

I take off my shoes. Graves are holy ground. I place the sleeping bag on and sit down. Next, I take the bottle of wine that I had brought and open it.

‘Cheers John'. I drink a bit, then I get up, lift the sleeping bag, and pour some wine on his grave.

‘Cheers’.

Μύθος Κοσμογονείας

Η θεά Μητέρα.. κι ο Πατέρας θεός.. χτυπήθηκαν από τα βέλη του Έρωτα, που προϋπήρχε.

Αρχικά η χημεία τους εξέπληξε και τον ίδιο τον Έρωτα.

Good morning Sun

‘Good night Sun. Good night. Bring something good with you tomorrow, please, and I will try to write something beautiful, to offer you’, the girl said to the Sun. And then she was lost in the shadows, behind the hill. 

The Sun was surprised! It had been centuries since someone spoke to him. It was not that this girl had something special. Or that he used to deal with such kind of requests. It was just... It has been a while that no one had asked him anything at all, no one had promised him anything.