Surely you have read of the beast in Carroll’s work; that manxome thing hidden behind a veil of language. Over the course of a handful of stanzas, the Jabberwock is sought and allegedly slain by a nameless hero, who then brings its head to his father as a trophy. Shortly thereafter, something curious happens. Despite the gory evidence in his son’s hands, the figure asks him a question that seems somewhat out of place:
“Hast thou slain the Jabberwock?”
“This won’t be like your average rainbow-riding operation. We’ll be placing you inside of a research-grade kaleidoscope,” she explained to me as we ascended. “Hundreds of bifurcations per square millimeter. The human brain can absorb the patterns and colors of maybe half this, but the optic nerve is going to attempt to take it all in at once. I can imagine that you’re worried right now, but I promise that you’re going to witness something really special.”
“Pannasosia?” Her date narrowed his eyes. “There’s no way that’s a real state.”
“It’s as real as it needs to be, I suppose.” She sipped at a spoonful of wild rice soup. “The whole place is an underground lake, save for a few aquifers and caves. It’s actually pretty big, but not many people live there.”
“Hmm.” He thought back to memorizing the state capitals in middle school geography, all those annoying songs they had him memorize. Alabama and Alaska, Arizona Arkansas… “I can’t say that I’ve heard of it. You sure that it’s not a Canadian province or something?”
The arcade burned down three years ago, along with the rest of the mall. Without cabinets and circuitry to support them, all that remained of the games within were their electric ghosts. They stood shoulder to shoulder, quivering beings of naked neon, waiting for the chance to be experienced once more.
I once heard that every warm-blooded species has its own devil; just as there is a devil of humans, there is a devil of wolves, and a devil of owls. They only appear among their own kind, and thus elude zoological study, but the results of their cruel pacts can be found in the depths of our world’s wilderness.
Payphones are an endangered species, soon to be extinct. Though they continue to be taken out of service, one after another, technicians across the country have been leaving their iron stalks behind. Given the expense and labor required to remove them from the concrete below, this is understandable. They have likely grown thick roots over the years, having been watered by thousands of voices.
My father was a hologram, yet my mother was fully human; she didn’t have a virtual bone in her body. I am unclear of the process by which I was made flesh. All I know is that at some point after he left, I emerged from one of her eyes as a ray of living crimson.
The secret of your smartphone is that it is most powerful while turned off. In truth, its screen is the surface of an endless black sea shared among all others of its kind. Messages and information sent from one phone sink down through this vast darkness until they bubble up to the glass of another. All who gaze within are looking downward, no matter the direction of their eyes.
