The Musings of Jaime David

The Musings of Jaime David
The Musings of Jaime David
@jaimedavid.blog@jaimedavid.blog

The writings of some random dude on the internet

1,104 posts
1 follower

Category: short story

  • * **Spacebound Discovery**

    * **Spacebound Discovery**

    The alarm screamed, a shrill, insistent shriek in the otherwise silent void. Anya fumbled for the off switch, her gloved hand bumping against the cold metal of the console. 6:00 AM, Kepler-186f time. Time for another day of… nothing.

    She floated out of her sleep cubicle, the microgravity a familiar comfort. The ‘Sunflower,’ their research vessel, was a self-contained ecosystem drifting in the inky blackness, a tiny speck against the backdrop of swirling nebulae. Six months. Six months since they left Earth, six months since she felt the sun on her skin, six months since she saw another human face that wasn’t one of her two crewmates.

    Liam, the botanist, was already in the hydroponics bay, his brow furrowed as he examined a wilting pepper plant. “Morning, sleepyhead,” he muttered, his voice tinged with the same weary resignation that infected them all.

    “Anything exciting?” Anya asked, more out of habit than expectation.

    Liam shook his head. “Aphids, I think. Space aphids. Apparently, nothing is sacred.”

    Across the narrow corridor, Dr. Chen, the mission’s geologist, was hunched over a holographic display, his fingers dancing across the controls. He was obsessed with Kepler-186f, a potentially habitable exoplanet light-years away. He’d petitioned for years to get this mission approved, convinced it held the key to humanity’s future. Now, staring at the endless stream of data, even his optimism seemed to be waning.

    Anya made herself a tasteless nutrient paste and joined Chen. “Anything new?”

    He sighed, pushing a stray strand of grey hair from his face. “Just more rocks, Anya. Beautiful rocks, mind you, but rocks nonetheless. No signs of life, no detectable atmosphere.”

    Days bled into weeks, then months. Routine was their enemy, and boredom, their constant companion. Anya, a trained astrophysicist, spent her time calibrating the sensors, scanning the stars, searching for anomalies, for anything that might break the monotony. She found nothing.

    One evening, as she stared out at the swirling cosmos, a small, flickering light caught her eye. It was faint, almost imperceptible, but it was there. She zoomed in with the telescope, her heart pounding in her chest. It wasn’t a star, it was… artificial. A satellite.

    She called Chen and Liam, her voice trembling with excitement. “I think… I think I found something.”

    They crowded around the screen, their faces illuminated by the ghostly glow of the display. The satellite was small, battered, and clearly ancient, but it was undeniably of artificial origin.

    Chen, his eyes wide with disbelief, ran simulations, his fingers flying across the keyboard. “It’s… it’s not human. It’s… something else.”

    The discovery electrified them. They spent days studying the satellite, analyzing its trajectory, trying to decipher its purpose. They found nothing conclusive, but the sheer existence of it, out there in the vast emptiness of space, was enough. They weren’t alone. Humanity wasn’t alone.

    As the Sunflower began its long journey back to Earth, Anya looked back at the receding stars. Kepler-186f remained a mystery, but the universe had revealed a secret. A silent message, whispered across the void, a testament to the enduring power of life, in all its strange and wonderful forms. The nothingness, she realized, was filled with possibilities.

  • Remembering 9/11

    Remembering 9/11

    Today is 9/11. It was 21 years ago today when the towers fell. I remember seeing the smoke and fire from Broad Channel. I was in kindergarten at the time. Most of my early days are a blur. I don’t remember a lot of what happened long ago. But I do remember 9/11. I was sitting in class, and I remember the teacher dismissed us early. My grandma came to pick me up. We then drove to Broad Channel to look at the smoke and fire coming from the towers. The smoke was thick and black. It was very surreal. You cannot really see much of the city from Broad Channel, because Broad Channel and Manhattan are separated by Jamaica Bay and Brooklyn, which was miles. But on that day, the smoke cloud was so big and thick it could be seen all the way from Broad Channel. It was surreal. I still remember that day clearly. I did not understand what was going on back then. But looking back in hindsight, that was a really scary day.

  • Liberation Day

    Liberation Day

    “Tomorrow’s the day,” my friend said to me as we were standing on top of the heaps of rubble that surrounded us, watching the sun go down. “Liberation Day.”

    “The day we’ve all been waiting for,” I said with awe.

    “Tell me about it,” he said. “You think it’s actually going to happen?”

    “Of course it is!,” I exclaimed, reassuring him. “We had predicted that tomorrow, there’s an 85% chance that a coronal mass ejection will hit the Earth, rendering all electronics powerless.”

    “And what if it doesn’t happen?,” he asked.

    “Well then, we’re fucked,” I told him bluntly.

     For twenty years too long, we have been enslaved by machines. Artificial intelligence became so advanced that it was able to replicate itself without human input. We tried to stop it, but by then, it was too late. The machines were so advanced that we could no longer predict their moves. It was at that moment that we were outmatched by machines.

    We used every means possible to stop them. We used guns, lasers, bombs, flamethrowers. Heck, we even used nukes. We threw everything we got at them. Nothing seemed to work. Eventually, we tried developing an EMP device. When we were close to finishing it, we were ambushed by the machines. Most of the scientists working on the device were killed. My friend and I were the only survivors.

    Now, we’re in hiding. We’ve banded together with a rag-tag group of resistance fighters. We’ve developed all sorts of gadgets in secrecy. So far, our efforts have given humanity a fighting chance against the machines. However, it was still not enough to defeat them completely. We needed a sure-fire way to be rid of them for good. A few months back, we may have found our solution.

    One day, we were viewing the Sun through the UV-filtering telescope we had built from scratch. While we were observing the Sun, we had noticed that there was a lot of coronal activity at one particular location. Based on our estimates, we had predicted that within a few months time, a coronal mass ejection was going to be heading in the Earth’s trajectory.

    Every day since our initial discovery, we’ve monitored the Sun, in case anything changed. For months now, the coronal activity has increased exponentially. It has increased by so much that earlier today, we were fairly certain that an ejection will happen tomorrow.

    “Tomorrow, we’ll know our answer,” my friend said.

    “Yes we will,” I replied.

    I didn’t know 100% if the CME would happen tomorrow, or if at all. It was a long-shot; a gamble. We were essentially betting on nature. The thing with nature, though, is that nature is unpredictable. However, I had remained hopeful that things would work out in our favor, because without hope, there wasn’t much.

  • The World Is On Fire

    The World Is On Fire

    The world is on fire. It is currently burning. The temperatures keep on rising. It’s becoming alarming. This changing climate is becoming a crisis, and it’s a crisis that’s very frightening. If we don’t solve this soon, the world could come to an end. Maybe not the planet, but everything that lives in it. There would be no more humans and no more amazing creations. Monumental monuments like The Statue of Liberty would eventually become nothing but dust and debris if humans were to go extinct. Eventually, the same would happen to buildings, and everything else in between. They’d all turn into dust, just like us. If we were not here, anything we created would not matter at all. Anything that was floating in space would come crashing down to the Earth, setting everything ablaze. Eventually, nuclear reactors would start to meltdown, and all of the radiation that’s in them would all get let out.

    All of the animals that are alive right now would be on their own, if they were not wiped out. There would probably be a few. Most of them would live underground. The ones that were above ground would most likely all die out if the climate were to get chaotic. They would thrive and populate underneath the Earth’s surface, and eventually they’ll reclaim the surface. Eventually, the radiation would decay, and the greenhouse gases would get replaced, and the planet will heal itself like it had a bad sickness. We won’t be here, and neither would a lot of other species, but there would be new species. They’d be survivors. They would survive us. They could potentially be the ones that reach our level of intellect. They could be reptilian. They could be arachnids. They could even be gigantic cockroaches. Whatever they are, they have the potential to take this planet to the stars if we ourselves don’t get to. They could learn from our mistakes. They could be better than us. They may develop intricate societies that have a diversity of species all living in harmony. It would definitely be an amazing sight to see.

    They’d eventually develop space travel, and take us to the Moon. They’d take us to Jupiter and Venus and even Mars, too. They’d even probably take us all the way to Pluto. Who knows? They could possibly take us to see the entire Milky Way! We may discover different species living on other planets, and these species may be as smart as us and them, and have a complex intellect. It would be so cool to see.

    The question is, would Earthlings be seen as threats, or will they be welcomed? Is it also possible that they’d be enslaved and treated like pets? There are so many questions that one has to ask when dealing with the possibility of becoming an intergalactic race.

    All I do know is, I hope they would learn from our mistakes. If our species dies out, and does not get to see the future, I hope that whatever species in the far distant future that reaches sapience learns from humanity’s own shortcomings and mistakes. That is what I hope if humanity loses all hope.

    However, we still have hope. We still have hope to achieve all of those great and amazing things. We could explore the vast reaches of the cosmos and explore all that there is to explore. We could travel to wherever we want to go to, and potentially find a new home. I don’t know. All I do know is that we need to become aware that our climate is changing. Our planet is in need, and we need to save it. There is a way to save it. We need to stop emitting greenhouse gases, and we also need to stop polluting our planet. We need to find an alternative fuel source and stop using oil. We need to make steps to go vegetarian or vegan and make our diets more plant-based. There is so much we need to do. The first thing we should do is educate ourselves. Once we do that, we share the information we learn to others.

  • Birthdays and Anniversaries

    Birthdays and Anniversaries

    Birthdays are supposed to be times of great happiness. They are occasions on which we celebrate another year of being alive. They’re joyous occasions, and can make feel very special. However, on the same day that someone is celebrating life, another person is mourning life lost. Most tragedies that happen in our lives won’t become national or even international news. They’ll only be remembered by a select few. Occasionally, tragedies make their way into the national and international headlines, and remain engrained in our hearts and minds for a long time. Sometimes, those impactful tragedies have occurred on our own birthdays. One example is the Tenerife disaster. It was one of the worst airplane disaster in history. Coincidentally, the anniversary of it is the same day as my birthday. What a weird coincidence. Knowing this makes my birthday feel very strange. I’m celebrating life on my birthday, while somewhere in the world, there are people out there who are mourning the lives lost on that tragic day. It is a strange feeling to feel, and it really puts life, and death, into perspective. We all are born into this world, and we will all one day leave this world, as well. It may happen when we’re young, when we’re old, or when we’re somewhere in the middle. It can happen any time, and on any day, even on our own birthdays. It is crazy to think about, but we have to remain positive and hope that nothing bad happens to us.

  • Birthday

    Birthday

    So today is my birthday. Does not feel like much of a birthday today, though. With the whole coronavirus pandemic going on in the world, I have not been in much of a celebratory mood.

    It really sucks, for I was looking forward to my birthday for a while. Back in January, before things got as bad as they did with coronavirus, I was looking forward to hanging out with friends on my birthday. I wanted to grab a bite to eat with them. I was thinking about trying “Beyond Sushi” in the city with them. It was a vegan sushi restaurant, and I wanted to try something new and different. I was also thinking about going to Gamestop to buy a new game, or possibly going to a book store to get some books for myself. There was so much I was thinking about doing for my birthday both with friends and for myself.

    Things did not turn out that way, however. Currently, the world is dealing with a pandemic, and in the US, the cases are skyrocketing. It’s pretty serious. It is really depressing, too. It is really depressing to hear about all of this shit going on. I want things to get better. I hope they get better. I know at some point, this virus will subside, but what will be the result? Who even knows?

    All I do know is that I will try to make the best of the situation. I still have books. I still have music. I still have movies. I still have YouTube. I still have the Internet. I still have family. I still have friends. I still have my health. I will try to keep in touch with my friends and family for as long as I can, and I will try to stay as healthy as I can for as long as I can. I hope I don’t wind up getting sick. I do not want to get sick, and I do not want to get other people sick. Nobody knows what will happen days, weeks, or months from now, but what is for certain is that we have to try to remain positive, take precautions, social distance as much as possible, and if we are still working, hold onto our jobs for as long as possible. We have to take things one day at a time and see what happens.

  • Amidst Toilet Paper Shortage, College Students Forced To Use Useless Textbooks

    Amidst Toilet Paper Shortage, College Students Forced To Use Useless Textbooks

    The shortage of toilet paper that has been plaguing stores nationwide has left college students with no choice but to use their useless textbooks as a substitute for toilet paper. The hundreds, or sometimes even thousands, of dollars spent on these books that don’t even get used most of the time will finally pay off.

    “It’s been a life-saver,” one student said. “I now have a reason to actually use the books!”

    These useless textbooks have been beneficial to many young college students. There are hundreds of pages of unread content that can now be used as extra bathroom tissue in the event that students run out of the real thing, which has been the case for many. This is good because a decently-sized textbook could last you about a month or two, or longer, if used sparingly.

    Just make sure you have textbooks with thin paper, experts warn. If you use thick textbook paper, it could be a pain in the behind (literally)! One could only imagine how painful that would be.

  • The Storm

    The Storm

    There was a storm; a storm that had ripped us from house and home. It was big, it was bad, and it was horrible. I remember it clearly to this very day. The pounding of rain on our roof and awning was something, to me, that was very unnerving. The lightning that lit up the darkness in the sky was loud, powerful, and so very frightening. I was crying. The winds were so strong that I thought a tree would crash into my room. That’s how scared I was feeling, but when I woke up, it turned out that I was dreaming. I hate thunderstorms; I’ve hated them since I was a young one. I hate the sound of the thunder as it impacts the ground. I hate the downpours of rain because they could flood the drains. I hate the strong winds because they could knock down trees. There is so much more I could say, though, about why I hate thunderstorms. One of the main reasons is because they could form tornadoes. Tornadoes always scared me because they can’t be predicted. They have very strong winds and are very chaotic forces of nature. That is one reason I dislike the Midwest, and any other place that has frequent tornadoes. I hope to never find myself in the middle of a twister. That would be a very unfortunate situation.