MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets

by George Saoulidis

  A dinosaur ate him in one gulp.

  The dinosaur-god roared in the distance, demanding flesh.

  He pressed the button.

  Black. Endless black. He wasn't sure there was even something to see. After a while, he realised he was indeed in his city, he hand't moved a centimetre. It was just pitch black, no stars, no lights, no illumination sources from anywhere. In a city of sixteen billion, that was eerie beyond measure.

  The believer found his phone inside his robes and used the screen to see.

  He never expected the darkness to have teeth like that.

  A black face came from the sky and aimed to snap shut around him. He pressed the button a millisecond ahead.

  He shut his eyes, of course. He didn't dare open them. What had he done? The lazy god was perfect compared to all the other fates his planet could endure in the hands of the other possibilities. He had doomed them all, the fool, he who dared to object to the great Godex.

  Such and idiot, he was.

  He opened his eyes. Hm... Things were calm. No dinosaurs, he checked. No red flyers in the sky. It was sunny, lukewarm. He looked around.

  His dead father greeted him, tending to his old garden.

  "Oh, hell no," the believer said, and slapped the button once again.

  The city was bigger, he could tell immediately. There were overpasses and maglev trains whistling over his head. This technology seemed far beyond what the believers currently had. Well, well... Had he stumbled on a technological god that could bring about a glorious existence for them?

  He looked around, everything was sleek, over-designed, awesome.

  He felt something in his chest. Or rather, he noticed an absence.

  It took him a long while to find what the noise was. He realised there was a sound he was supposed to be hearing. Something he had been hearing his entire life.

  Ripping his robes from his person, he saw his chest, a glistening, glassy, mechanical chest.

  His heart was nowhere to be found.

  Immediately he pressed the button again. A cyborg future was not what he thought of as a paradise, oh no.

  He wasn't going to rush in. This time, he checked, he had a pulse. He checked, there were no dead relatives gardening in the back. He checked, there were no dinosaurs. He checked, there were no red flyers.

  He looked around.

  Well, this was normal, for now. But he had been fooled so many times. Weary, he took a couple of steps, looked around, checked the corners, stepped forward.

  Hm... Oh, there was a woman. His... Ah, he kept forgetting her name. She had a shop down the street.

  She saw him, smiled wide at him.

  The believer waved 'hello' back to her.

  She ran up to him and straddled him, her legs around his waist, her hands ripping his clothes away. "Take me, please, take me right here!" she begged and moaned like a deranged, horny person.

  "Uh, get off of me!" the believer said and pushed her away, grabbing a fistful of her breasts without wanting to.

  She seemed excited by that, looking at him like he was a delicacy. "Seventy-two virgins for you, and I'll be the first," she said like a predator and chased after him.

  He picked up the artifact and ran away from her.

  At the last minute, he slapped his palm on the button.

  Again, everything changed, and everything remained the same. The believer looked around, checking every nasty thing this infernal device had brought onto him.

  And then he realised that as he turned his head, he could still see at the spot he was looking at earlier.

  Very, very slowly, he raised his hand to put it in front of his face. Then he moved it to the side, and it was still in front of his face.

  "In his image," the believer mumbled, and closed his eyes. Another pair remained open, staring from his back.

  He pressed the button.

  Air. Air. He gasped for air. What was happening? Nothing. Stars. Air, no air. He flailed, the artifact leaving his grasp. It floated slowly next to his hand.

  In space. In godexdamned space!

  Air, he needed air. He snatched the artifact and squeezed the button so hard he thought he'd break it.

  But no holy artifact breaks as easy as that.

  Water. He was in the city, but everything was soaking wet. The walls, the ground, the streets. His robes smelled of mold, his joints ached. Everything was moist.

  The god of moisture splashed around the streets, making everything wet.

  "Oh, not a chance," the believer said, and pressed the button again.

  No... no... no fingers. What was this? No mouth. No arms. No legs. No skin. Pain. He was in pain. He could see the artifact, but he couldn't reach it. No, he couldn't really see it, more like sense it with his tendrils. He stretched out his pseudopod from his unicellular body and pressed the button again.

  He had his body again. Nice! He checked himself over, and his crotch, just to be certain. Things were in place, and no funny business or errant numbers. That was good. Then he looked to the side, and saw his own body, looking back at him. But he was also in that body, looking back at the first.

  Weiiird...

  Was it a mirror? No, only one had the artifact in his hand.

  In his image, a duality.

  "Huh," he said through both of his mouths.

  He entered his house with both his bodies and looked around. Everything was the same, but doubled. Two beds, two toothbrushes, twice the cutlery, two chairs.

  He went to the beds with his two bodies and pushed them together, forming a bigger one.

  Then he had sex with himself. Hey, it was technically masturbation, wasn't it? No rules were broken.

  Smiling from both mouths, he hid the holy artifact back inside the wall. Yeah, he could get used to this dual god.

  The End.

  Crayon Warfare

  The Magenta Caterpillars' leader gathered everyone up. "We need to wipe out the Greens!" he shouted.

  "Yeah!" the Magentas cheered from below, rippling their bodies. "They're a scourge," another said. "Wipe them out of the face of the earth," a third said, disgusted by their presence alone.

  "Great," the Magenta Leader said and waited for them to be quiet. They quickly shut up and listened out of respect. "What we need to do is to attack them where it hurts."

  "Yeah!"

  "Right at the heart of their lands," the leader carried on.

  "At the Cocoon?" one of the caterpillars asked, his voice trembling.

  The other caterpillars rippled agreement through their bodies.

  "Exactly!" the leader said, smiling at his prearranged plant. He wasn't going to risk proposing such a dangerous plan by himself. He had a trusty Magenta inject the idea at the right time as if it was the voice of the people. And now, after seeing their reaction, he wasn't gonna let this chance go to waste. Inspiration rippled through his body. "We are going to make them pay tenfold for all our lost Magenta brothers and sisters. We are going to attack the Greens' Cocoon, and we are going to be triumphant!"

  The Magentas marched on the Greens. Big and small, the caterpillars engaged the enemy and started to kill left and right. The element of surprise was to their favour and they squished a lot of Greens on their initial charge.

  Alas, the Greens regrouped and fought back.

  The Magentas started to suffer losses too. First it was the smaller members that got squished, then the Greens ganged up on the bigger ones and managed to squish them too despite their strength.

  There was death on each side. The ground soaked up the blood of both Magenta and Green without distinction, it did not care about sides, it did not care about war.

  The Magenta leader stood alone but one man, battered and bruised before the Green leader. He too was near death and was on top of a rock.

  "No!" the Magenta leader screamed. But it was too late.

  The Green leader jumped from the rock and fell on the last Magenta soldier, squishing him, splashing the Magenta leader with his
own soldier's juices.

  "You monster!" the Magenta leader shouted at his adversary and wiped his face on a leaf.

  "You're the one who attacked first," the Green leader snapped back, his body rippling accusingly.

  "You killed three Magentas last week!" the Magenta leader retaliated, but felt a bit silly in the middle of this bloodbath. He looked around. Everyone was dead. Every single Magenta, dead.

  Sure, every single Green was dead also.

  That was happy news, at least.

  All that was left was one Magenta and one Green, the leaders of their tribes.

  The Green leader managed to gather up his strength and recoiled his body, ready to pounce.

  The Magenta saw it coming and dodged at the last minute.

  The Green fell on the rock behind the Magenta and broke it with the momentum of his leap, sending pieces all over. They both got injured, cut and bleeding.

  "You need to die!" the Magenta said and attacked the Green. Hitting him again and again, with no remorse about his own bruised body. He slammed on the Green leader, squishing some of his legs.

  But the Green was strong.

  He managed to cover up his vital organs and retaliate. Now the Magenta was on the defensive. Slamming him again and again, they tore up the place, stepping on the soaked up dirt of their fallen tribemembers. They fought for so long, evenly matched. Their fight brought them under the Cocoon.

  "No!" the Green leader shouted, seeing what his adversary was about to do.

  "You leave me no choice," the Magenta said, panting. He coughed up transparent blood on the ground.

  "It's the Cocoon," the Green pleaded.

  The Magenta turned up to look at it, then back at his enemy. "If you can't have it, no one can."

  "Stop!" the Green pounced to stop him but he was too injured, too slow.

  The Magenta gathered up the final shred of energy he had and slammed his body onto the Cocoon.

  He smashed it.

  The Green caterpillar fell onto him by momentum alone and they both wrestled inside the sticky strands of the Cocoon.

  Trapped, they were unable to move.

  "Look at what you've done!" the Green caterpillar said.

  "No, look at what you've done," the Magenta caterpillar said.

  They got trapped inside and turned into cocoons. Their bodies melted into soup and reformed into a completely new body with folded wings.

  The season ended and another one came.

  They emerged from the cocoon and unfolded their wings, genetic memory letting them know how to fly.

  And they flew into the skies, swirling around one another as two identical butterflies.

  And then they fucked, producing the next generation of caterpillar Magentas and Greens.

  The End.

  The Lighthouse at the Edge of the Galaxy

  Pharos woke up from the sounds of screaming.

  He yawned and slowly rubbed his eyes as the bloodcurdling screams went on and on, reverberating along the metal corridors of the lighthouse.

  He stood up and washed his face, the screams so loud now that his eyes vibrated and he saw ripples in his eyesight.

  "Will you shut up?" he said, holding his head. This was the lousiest way to wake up, ever.

  The e-person floated next to him. It looked like one of those toolcases people keep in their automobiles for emergencies. "I would, but nothing wakes you up anymore, sleepyhead."

  "Phylax, I swear, one of these days I'm gonna rip your circuits out and take a dump on them," Pharos threatened in the same teeth-clenching tone he always had when talking to that stupid machine.

  "Oh, the skatology again. That's a low point in the conversation every time. And you, Pharos, of all people are achieving it at record-speed," Phylax said, bobbing up and down, nodding with a tilt of its boxy body.

  "The skatologist needs to take his morning dump, so beat it."

  Phylax left the bathroom.

  When he was fully awake and ready, Pharos started his rounds, checking the diagnostics. "This is pointless," he muttered, checking his tablet and then moving on to the next panel. "Why am I doing this? It's all automated anyway," he complained.

  "As I said for three-hundred-twenty-six times over, automatics can fail. The chance of that happening are miniscule, of course," the floating box scoffed, "but it cannot be ignored. Redundancy is important."

  "Yeah, redundant. That's exactly what I am," Pharos said and shuffled to the next panel. Everything was operating as expected, everything was great, just fucking great.

  "No, don't think of it like that. You are the Observer, and there aren't many left in these parts of the galaxy," Phylax said, apparently trying to reassure him.

  "That stupid argument again!" Pharos turned to the silly box and shouted at it, arms extended. "The universe will not break down simply because there is no one left to observe it. That's hogwash," he spat, and the little box swerved and avoided his spittle because nothing ever failed and humans were useless.

  "I assure you it is not. Yes, it is a theory and yes, it hasn't been proven because of its teleological nature."

  "Stop making me dizzy with those big words, Phylax! It's not enough that you woke me up with the screams, again," he pointed out.

  "You never wake up," the box explained himself.

  "Okay, let's say you're right. So, you think that if I, for example, go blind someday, you'll cease to be?"

  "We say observer but organics observe through many senses. All that matters is that your mind perceives its surroundings."

  "You're full of shit," Pharos concluded, pressing his chin on his throat.

  "Again with the skatology," Phylax said, pointing out the bottom of the argument.

  "Argh!" Pharos grunted in despair and paced away from the source of his misery, the bane of his existence, the antidote to his peace of mind.

  Phylax followed him with no remorse and no real effort. "Are you having a migraine again?"

  "Of course I have a migraine! You woke me up inside a horror movie!"

  "Hyperbole," Phylax said simply.

  "I said, stop it with the big words," Pharos pointed a finger at him and then moved on. The sooner he was done with his rounds, the sooner he could relax and maybe take a nap to reset his brain.

  The was done with the last couple of checks and then finally got to the light room. This was his favourite, he never got tired of it, really.

  "Again with the light-beam. You'll hurt your eyes," Phylax said.

  "You're like a mother in a box. They should ship you out, sell you with that marketing angle," Pharos mocked the damned e-person and stepped inside the rim.

  The light coming from the moon's core was the most brilliant white you could ever see. He had to put on goggles, naturally, and even with those it was so bright that he saw afterimages for hours after each exposure. But he didn't mind, as long as he got his daily fill of light.

  "Tell me again," Pharos said softly, tilting his head a little, not taking his eyes off of it.

  Phylax was there next to him, of course. He never left him for more than a minute or so. The box sighed, impossibly. "Again?"

  "Yeah..."

  "You never get tired of this, do you? Anyway, the lighthouse emits a unique type of beam. It's infinitesimally faster than the speed of light."

  "But that's of course, not possible in this universe," Pharos mouthed as Phylax said the exact same words.

  "That tiny, tiny variance adds up over long distances. And that's how the lighthouse is used, warning away ships that are coming this way at light-speed. The computers on board detect the faster light a femtosecond before they crash into the asteroid field."

  "And that's how we keep them safe," Pharos said. He bobbed on the balls of his feet. He took in a deep breath, and turned away, reinvigorated.

  The afterimage was killer, he had stayed too long. He grabbed the railing and Phylax floated close.

  "See? You can't see. Your squishy little eyes cannot take th
is every day," Phylax said.

  "And my squishy little ears can't take the screaming, but I don't see you stopping that crap anytime soon," Pharos snapped back, pushing the little piece of shit away and pulling himself by his own strength.

  The e-person could help him, of course. He could manipulate fields, heck, he could pick him up and carry him like a baby. The e-persons could do anything, everything, all of it.

  But they couldn't observe the damn universe. Or so they said.

  Pharos stumbled towards the rec room and took a nap on the couch, alone.

  He woke up to the same bloodcurling screams. "Argh!" she shut his ears with his hands. "Stop it, Phylax."

  The screams stopped.

  He stood up and went to prep a meal for himself.

  "I can make food for you," Phylax said, hovering beside him.

  "Fuck off," Pharos said, beating his eggs. He had no idea how he could get eggs in this tiny moon at the ass-end of the galaxy, but he was glad he did. He made an omelete, saw it, and snorted all by himself, thinking how his brains were as scrambled as his eggs.

  The smell was invigorating. He wolfed it all down from the frying pan, basically scalding his tongue and washing it down with some orange juice. Now, that one he could believe that it was manufactured. It tasted like wet carton. Whereas the eggs were delicious, even though there were no chickens around for light-years.