Author: Tom Darby

By the time the city began to collapse, the air had changed. A shimmer lay over the skyline, something almost biological, like the surface tension of water before it bursts.

Helicopters hung over downtown like insects caught in amber. Sirens bled into the wind.

The headlines spoke of “operations,” “raids,” and “data seizures.” But those who lived near the shelters and aid centers felt something more, the ground stirring.

In mid-October, the County Board voted to invoke emergency powers. Officially, the reason was to “protect displaced populations.”

Unofficially, everyone knew it was to contain whatever the federal task force had unearthed beneath the city. The vote was four to one.

The lone dissenter claimed afterward that she had seen “the plans” and that no emergency order could stop what was already awakening. That night, she vanished from her home. The city sealed her name from public record within hours.

The task force, operating from a cluster of unmarked towers in El Segundo, claimed to be dismantling a network of NGOs, charities, and aid groups. But in the fragments of their leaked communiqués, analysts noticed phrases that didn’t belong in any bureaucratic report.

Subterranean grid. Neural resonance. Acoustic anomalies beneath Skid Row.

Rumors spread faster than facts. Shelter volunteers whispered of “the tunnels,” old freight passages connecting the river drains to warehouse basements. Some said they were lined with shimmering growths like veins of black mercury, while others said the walls hummed, as if the city’s power grid had grown sentient and begun to breathe.

When the raids began, the protests followed, with flares in the streets, fires across Koreatown, screams echoing against the empty high-rises. But none of it felt human.

The chants came in rhythm, synchronized, like a language remembered from dreams. Footage showed protestors moving as if choreographed, faces frozen in identical grimaces.

By the second week, data analysts working with the task force began collapsing from seizures, psychotic breaks, and sudden aphasia. Those who recovered spoke of the files they had decrypted: fractal sequences buried in financial ledgers, repeating sigils mapped to donation records, digital glyphs embedded in humanitarian grant requests.

One agent described the moment she opened a corrupted drive seized from an “immigration relief” office downtown.

“It was a list of names, but every fourth entry was the same name, thousands of times. And when I scrolled faster, it began to change. The screen pulsed. I heard it humming through the speakers, even though the volume was off.”

The office, abandoned later, its floor collapsed into a pit that wasn’t on any city map.

By late October, curfews swept through Los Angeles. The sky took on a greenish hue, and a faint vibration rolled through the ground at night.

At first, it was mistaken for aftershocks until seismographs recorded the pulse as rhythmic. Experts said it was a “geothermal resonance.”

Locals called it “the heartbeat.”

The city’s emergency order expanded. Roads closed.

Entire blocks were declared quarantine zones. Federal convoys rolled in under the cover of darkness, their insignias scrubbed clean.

What they extracted wasn’t people, it was equipment. Servers, hard drives, and cylindrical devices wrapped in lead shielding.

A technician who helped unload one said it emitted “a whispering static, like wind passing through teeth.”

Then the power grid failed. For three nights, Los Angeles was dark.

In the blackout, the tunnels opened. The sewers boiled with phosphorescent light, and shapes, half-human, half-geometry, moved beneath the streets. Those who lived near the river swore they saw figures rising from the storm drains, faces smooth as glass, eyes filled with the reflection of unseen stars.

When the power returned, downtown was empty. Entire neighborhoods had vanished from satellite view, replaced by black voids that no imaging software could penetrate.

The government blamed “data corruption.” But those who had watched the sky during the blackout said they saw it, an outline against the firmament, vast and wingless, stretching from the Pacific to the desert.

A shape too immense to comprehend, its contours defined only by the absence of stars.

Weeks later, a final transmission leaked from the task force’s command network before it, too, went silent, “Containment impossible. The structure beneath the humanitarian grid is not human-made. The city was built upon it. The ‘aid networks’ were a façade, feeding it, sustaining it. Every transaction, every name, every cry for help was data, and data was nourishment.”

The message ended with a timestamp: 03:14:09, the same pulse frequency recorded beneath Los Angeles before the blackout.

No one knows what happened to the survivors. Some say the city remains under quarantine, sealed by military walls and forgotten maps.

From the hills above Glendale, on clear nights, you can still see the faint glow over the basin, like the reflection of some colossal engine turning miles below the earth. And if you listen carefully, just before dawn, you can hear it humming: A rhythm beneath the asphalt, echoing through the bones of the city.

A heartbeat that isn’t ours.

You could look into the windows of the historic 1907 schoolhouse, but not enter. And if you knocked on the door or rapped on the windows, the children inside ignored you.

That’s what everyone said about the place, though few ever bothered to prove it. The old school sat at the far edge of the county, where the land dropped into marsh and mist.

The road that led there was older than the town itself, and perhaps the idea of the town. And each autumn, when the fog crept inland and the reeds turned black, the stories resurfaced.

I wasn’t one for ghost tales, but the schoolhouse had an irresistible pull. It wasn’t just the building’s date, carved above the door, but the precision of the stories.

Everyone who’d tried to enter said the same thing: you could look in, see the children, but they would not see you. You could hear faint laughter, the scrape of chalk, the teacher’s soft voice, but if you touched the knob, the door was cold as stone and would not turn.

So one evening, I went.

The sun was low, a dull coin sinking into fog. The schoolhouse crouched at the edge of the marsh like something that had grown there, its walls streaked with centuries of damp.

The windows were tall and narrow, clouded glass but intact. I brought a lantern, though its light felt somehow muted, like the air itself resisted illumination.

When I reached the front steps, my pulse fluttered in my throat. I’d expected silence, but faint sounds drifted from within, a rhythmic murmur, like recitation.

I climbed the steps and peered through the nearest window. Inside, the classroom was whole.

Desks lined in neat rows, blackboard swept clean, sunlight slanting through curtains that no longer hung in reality. The children sat upright, their small faces pale and indistinct, as if drawn from memory rather than life. The teacher, a woman in a long gray dress, traced letters on the board with a piece of white chalk that never seemed to wear down.

They moved, but not quite naturally. Each gesture seemed delayed, a heartbeat too slow, as though caught in some ancient mechanism grinding through time.

I tapped the glass. No reaction.

I knocked harder, the hollow sound vanishing into the still air. The children kept their heads bowed, lips moving silently. The teacher turned, and for a moment, I thought she looked at me, but her eyes were unfocused, gazing through me at something farther away.

A prickling chill crawled up my neck. I tried the door.

The handle did not move, though the metal was faintly warm, like something breathing beneath it. I should have left then, but curiosity, that thin cousin of madness, has its own gravity.

I circled to the back, where the brick had crumbled away in patches. Through another window, I saw the same classroom, though the angle was slightly off.

The children appeared again, but seated differently, as if the lesson had somehow shifted. Yet when I looked closer, the details disagreed with memory: the teacher’s dress, darker now, her hair pinned higher, the letters on the board not letters at all but strange loops and lines, shapes that defied my eyes to settle on them.

They pulsed faintly, as though written in light instead of chalk.

A whisper seeped through the glass, soft, measured, rhythmic. A language that felt older than the human tongue. The children chanted it in perfect unison.

I took a step back, and the scene wavered, as though water rippled between us. The fog thickened, pressing close. When I turned to find the road again, it was gone, no path, no tracks, only gray marsh stretching to the horizon.

Then came a sound from within: chairs scraping, feet moving. I looked again.

Every child had turned toward the windows. Their faces were blank, eyes like pale marbles reflecting the lantern’s glow.

They saw me.

The teacher raised her hand, and the chanting stopped. Silence gathered like a held breath. Then she smiled, a faint, distant smile that carried neither kindness nor malice, only recognition.

A crack zigzagged across the glass, though I hadn’t touched it. Another, then another, spreading like a web.

The children’s mouths opened in perfect unison, and the sound that poured out was not a scream, but something boundless. A resonance that vibrated through my bones, through the marsh, through the air itself.

My lantern flickered and went out. I stumbled backward.

The building flickered, walls thinning into transparency. For an instant, I saw what lay behind the schoolhouse, not landscape, not sky, but a vast, swirling geometry of impossible depth.

Something vast pressed its shape against reality, curious, patient, waiting. Then, as suddenly as it began, the sound stopped.

The schoolhouse was solid again, and the windows dark. My lantern relit itself with a hiss of oil.

The fog thinned, and the road appeared where it had always been. I walked home without looking back.

Now, when I pass through the county and see the sign for the old schoolhouse road, I keep driving. But sometimes, on still nights, I dream of it.

I stand before those tall, narrow windows, and the children are there again, watching me, waiting for something. And always, the teacher at the front of the room lifts her hand, points to the board, and begins to write those same impossible shapes.

Each time, I wake with the taste of salt and iron in my mouth, and the faint sound of chalk scratching, somewhere just beyond my bedroom walls.

Every December, millions of people sit around glowing screens, hot cocoa in hand, watching Santa fly around the world in “real time.” They track him as he hops time zones, dodges weather systems, and somehow delivers gifts to billions of homes without once asking for directions.

It feels magical, like Santa finally got an operations department. But the part that gets me every year is that the whole thing exists because of a typo.

Back in 1955, Sears ran a newspaper ad inviting children to call Santa directly. Taking that alone feels wildly optimistic, like customer service had a lot more faith in humanity back then.

But the real problem wasn’t the idea, it was the phone number, ME 2-6681. Instead of ringing through to the North Pole, the calls went straight to Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD), an agency responsible for monitoring North American airspace.

Let’s pause there.

Imagine answering the phone at one of the most serious, buttoned-up operations in the country, radar screens glowing, Cold War tension in the air, only to hear a small voice ask, “Is Santa coming to my house tonight?”

Now here’s where the story could have gone very differently. The officer, Col. Harry Shoup, could have hung up. Could have barked, “This is not Santa, child,” and returned to watching the skies. Could have shut the whole thing down in seconds.

Instead, he checked the radar. And then he told the caller that Santa was on his way.

More calls followed, as kids told other kids. Parents overheard, and word spread.

And just like that, one small mistake turned into a moment of unexpected humanity inside one of the most legitimate operations in the country. The following year, the organization, now the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), made it official.

They set up a team to handle just Santa calls. Over time, it evolved into what we now know as the Santa Tracker, using radar, satellites, and volunteers to follow Santa’s route every Christmas Eve.

Every time I think of the story, it gets to me, because on the surface, it’s charming and funny: a holiday blooper with a happy ending. But the older I get, the more it feels like a quiet lesson wrapped in tinsel.

Something meaningful didn’t come from a master plan. It came from a mistake, and from someone choosing kindness instead of correction.

That officer didn’t have to play along. There was no protocol for “mythical gift-giver inquiries.”

No strategic advantage in reassuring children about reindeer flight paths. But in that moment, he understood something important: being right wasn’t nearly as valuable as being kind.

And somehow, that kindness grew into a tradition that now spans decades, technologies, and generations. Parents who once tracked Santa as kids now do it with their own children.

Volunteers give their time. Entire systems pause, just briefly, to make room for wonder.

I think about that a lot, especially this time of year.

We spend so much energy trying to get things right. We chase perfect plans, posts, and timing.

We treat mistakes like disasters instead of doorways. But sometimes the things we mess up become the very things that matter most.

A wrong number and an answered phone. A decision to enjoy instead of shutting it down.

And that’s probably why the Santa Tracker still works, not because of the satellites or the screens, but because it was born out of grace. Out of people choosing to believe, just for a moment, that wonder deserved protection.

Every Christmas Eve, when I see Santa moving across the map, I don’t just see a red dot racing the sunrise. I see a reminder that meaning doesn’t always arrive through success.

Sometimes it slips in through error, humility, and a willingness to say, “Sure, Santa’s on his way.”

And honestly? In a world that takes itself very seriously most of the time, I’m grateful someone answered the phone and chose magic instead.

In the village tucked against the rising slope, a gray jenny named Mara began each morning with the same dull ache in her bones and the same knot of dread in her chest. The sun had not yet touched the rooftops when her owner, Hadar, stomped down the ladder from the family’s upper room.

His temper always rose before the light did. He yanked open the lower-room door where the animals slept, the cool dawn air spilling in.

A larger, stronger male donkey, Barak, stood closest to the feed trough, ears forward, already nickering. Mara kept her distance, knowing Hadar never spared her a moment’s thought beyond the work he expected.

Strength, after all, meant nothing to him. Barak was a breeding animal, a source of future profit, and Mara was simply labor.

Hadar slapped a rope halter onto her head with more force than necessary.

“Up,” he barked, giving her a shove toward the courtyard.

She stumbled, caught herself, and moved forward. Her ears flicked back, but she dared not hesitate, because hesitation brought pain.

Outside, a wooden cart waited, its wheels worn, its frame warped from years of hard use. Mara knew the route it would take: up the steep hill toward the village center, the ascent so sharp that even Barak strained under half the weight she usually carried.

But Hadar never hit Barak. He saved his frustration for Mara.

He loaded the cart with amphorae of oil, stacked sacks of barley, and added bundles of firewood until the whole structure groaned. Mara felt the pressure before she even leaned into the traces.

When she tried to shift her weight, the cart barely budged. The hill stood ahead like a taunt.

Hadar snapped the goad against her flank, once, twice, then again harder.

“Move, you useless creature!”

The sting burned across her skin. Mara jolted forward, hooves digging into the loose stones.

The cart inched, then slid backward. Another strike. Another. Barak stood in the courtyard watching, ears angled sideways as if unsure whether to feel pity or boredom.

Each morning, Mara followed a grim rhythm: she lunged, pulled, strained, slipped, and endured the lash. Hadar cursed the incline, cursed Mara’s stumbling, cursed the stubbornness of donkeys as though the problem lay in her nature and not the weight he forced her to bear.

Villagers sometimes watched from doorways or wells, their eyes lingering for a moment before they returned to their morning tasks. A donkey’s suffering was familiar. Expected. Hardly worth comment.

When Mara finally crested the hill, lungs heaving, sweat streaking her dusty coat, Hadar rarely acknowledged her effort. He steered her toward the marketplace.

There he would unload the goods, making trip after trip into the stalls while leaving Mara hitched to the cart, sides trembling from exertion. Flies gathered along the welts on her flank. She flicked her tail, but exhaustion made even that movement slow.

By afternoon, Mara found herself walking to the mill. The cart’s contents gone, Hadar had new tasks for her: hauling grain, turning the rotary millstone, or carrying bundles of wood back from the outskirts.

Sometimes, Barak came along, but he carried lighter loads and spared the whip. He was too valuable to risk injury. Mara, on the other hand, was expendable.

When she lagged in the heat, Hadar’s patience thinned. The goad struck again.

The blows came not from cruelty for its own sake, but from a hardened frustration, one that saw animals only as tools that failed too often. Mara did not understand the reasons behind his moods, only the pain that came when she could not match the expectations forced upon her aging body.

By evening, when the sky softened into gold and shadows stretched long across the village paths, the pair walked home. Hadar tossed handfuls of barley and straw into the trough.

Barak shouldered forward eagerly. Mara followed, but more than once a shove from Hadar or a kick of Barak’s hind leg sent her stumbling sideways.

Sometimes she waited until the others finished before she dared approach the feed. When she finally ate, the food felt like relief.

Her body trembled from exhaustion, with each breath a slow effort. Later, she lay down in the courtyard, legs folded beneath her, the sting of the day still throbbing across her skin.

The nights were quiet. Only then did Mara find a fragile peace. But the dawn always came quickly, and with it the steep hill, the heavy cart, and Hadar’s impatience.

She bore it all with silent endurance, because that was what donkeys did. They carried the burdens others cast upon them, even when those burdens were heavier than they ever should have been.

Mara’s days had fallen into a rhythm of burden and blows, each sunrise marking the beginning of another climb up the steep hill from Hadar’s house to the village center. She no longer expected gentleness. She no longer expected ease.

Her world was work, weight, and the sharp sting of the goad. But on one cool morning, as winter pressed close and the village hummed with talk of the Roman census, everything changed.

Hadar was sweeping the courtyard when a young couple approached the gate. The woman leaned heavily on her husband’s arm, her swollen belly revealing the nearness of birth.

The man’s face held the weary determination of someone with too few choices and too much responsibility.

“Peace to you,” the man greeted. “We’ve traveled far already. We need a donkey for the last stretch. My wife cannot walk much farther.”

Hadar eyed them, calculating. Barak stood tall and strong behind him, far too valuable to sell.

But Mara, battered and aging, was another matter. If he could make a full price on her, he would lose nothing and gain much.

“I have this jenny,” Hadar said, giving Mara a brisk tug forward. “Good worker. Strong. Reliable. You can take her for the price of a young male.”

The couple exchanged glances as the man’s brow tightened.

“That price is too high.”

Hadar shrugged.

“Then walk. But the roads are crowded. The hills are long. And the Romans don’t wait.”

The woman placed a hand on her belly and drew in a quiet, strained breath. The man turned toward her, concern deepening in his eyes.

She gave a nod, resigned, hopeful, and tired. The man reached into his pouch and counted out the coins.

As Hadar shoved Mara’s rope into the man’s hand, she braced instinctively, expecting the first sharp blow of the day. But none came.

The man’s grip was firm, yes, but steady and without anger. He stroked her neck once in reassurance, as though greeting a companion, not a tool. Mara blinked, uncertain.

They began the familiar ascent up the hill, but this time there was no cart behind her, no tumbling weight, no creaking frame threatening to roll backward. The only burden she carried was the young woman, whose slight frame perched gently on her back. Compared to the sacks of grain, the grinding stones, the amphorae of oil, compared to the whip, this felt like nothing at all.

Mara’s hooves found the stones easily. She climbed without strain, her breath steady, her muscles loose for the first time in years.

The man walked beside her, matching her pace, his hand lightly on the rope as though he trusted her to choose her way. The woman murmured soft thanks each time Mara shifted beneath her to keep the ride smooth.

The village slipped behind them. The hill gave way to an open road.

And Mara found herself walking farther than she had ever been allowed to go, past the fields she knew, beyond the terraces she had plowed, toward new lands.

She did not know who these travelers were, only that their gentleness felt like a balm. No one shouted. No one struck her. No one pushed her aside.

When they rested, the man offered her water before he drank himself. When the woman dismounted, she laid a hand on Mara’s flank, gratitude in her touch.

Night came, and they stopped near a small town crowded beyond capacity with those answering the census. Every inn was full. Voices rose in argument; doors shut in their faces. The woman’s breath grew shallow, tight with the pain Mara recognized in the animals who gave birth in the spring.

At last, someone directed them to a stable behind an inn, no room inside, but at least a shelter. The man guided Mara in, tying her loosely near the hay.

The woman sank onto a bed of straw. And as the night deepened, Mara watched.

She saw the flicker of lamplight, the rush of urgency in the man’s movements, the final groan of labor. She heard the first cry of an infant breaking into the world.

The baby’s wail softened as the woman held him to her chest. The man knelt beside them, tears shining in the dim light.

Mara did not understand the words they whispered, nor the wonder that seemed to fill the small space. She only knew the moment felt different, deep, still, as though the whole world was holding its breath.

Later, the man glanced toward Mara and smiled.

“You carried us well,” he said softly. “You carried Him.”

Mara lowered her head, feeling a peace settle over her that no lifetime of labor had ever given her. She did not know she had borne witness to the birth of Jesus, the Savior of the world; she only knew the burden she carried those days was lighter than any she had ever known.

It was the kind of cold that even sensible people talk to themselves, so Mr. Edwin Lark found himself, while walking home on Christmas Eve, enjoying his own agreeable company. The year was nearly over, though one might not have guessed it from the fog, which lay about the streetlamps like an old shawl, or from Mr. Lark’s habit of keeping his phone in his pocket as if it were a guilty secret.

He was not, by nature, a gloomy man; he just had the modern misfortune of being busy. He spent his days responding to messages at all hours and his nights illuminated by screens, and his friendships maintained by brief assurances that he would “catch up soon.”

Christmas, to him, had become a calendar reminder rather than an event, something to acknowledge, swipe, and move past. On this particular evening, as he crossed the small park near his flat, his phone vibrated.

He stopped, sighed, and looked. No name appeared, only a notification that read: You have one unread message.

“That’s hardly news,” Mr. Lark said aloud, and it was at that precise moment that the bench beside him creaked, as though accepting a sitter.

An elderly gentleman now occupied it, dressed in a long dark coat of unmistakably Victorian cut, with a scarf tied neatly at the throat. He looked solid enough, though the fog behind him showed through just a little at the edges, like poor stitching.

“Evening to you,” said the gentleman cheerfully. “You might read it.”

Mr. Lark did what any modern man would do when addressed by a stranger who had appeared unannounced in a fog: he stared at his phone.

“I didn’t hear you walk up,” he said.

“Of course not,” replied the gentleman. “I seldom make noise.”

He introduced himself as Mr. Basil Crowe, formerly of this very neighborhood, deceased since 1873, and now, through what he called an “administrative error of the season,” obliged to make himself useful on Christmas Eve.

“I’m not dead,” Mr. Lark clarified.

“Quite,” said Mr. Crowe. “That’s the trouble.”

The phone vibrated again. Unread message. Final reminder.

Mr. Lark’s irritation flared. “Everyone wants something. Even tonight.”

Mr. Crowe leaned forward. “So they always have. But not everyone wants what you think.”

With a wave of his gloved hand, the park shifted. The fog thickened, the lamps dimmed, and suddenly Mr. Lark was watching himself, older, thinner, seated alone at a table lit by a screen.

Notifications chimed endlessly, unanswered. Cards lay unopened. Snow pressed against the window, unnoticed.

“This is ridiculous,” Mr. Lark said, though he felt an uncomfortable recognition.

“A possible draft,” Mr. Crowe replied lightly. “Not the final version. Those are harder to revise.”

The scene dissolved, replaced by another: a younger Mr. Lark laughing with friends, a phone forgotten on a shelf, a late night that felt infinite. Then another, and another, each one quietly marked by a message not sent, a visit postponed, a call meant for tomorrow.

The park returned. Mr. Crowe stood, brushing imaginary frost from his coat.

“You see,” he said, “the dead are not so very different from the living. We are both full of things we meant to say.”

Mr. Lark swallowed. “What’s the message?”

“Ah,” said Mr. Crowe, smiling. “That would spoil it.”

The phone vibrated a final time, and before Mr. Lark could object, the screen opened itself. The message was dated years earlier, from a name he had not seen in a long time.

“I know you’re busy. Just wanted to say I miss you. Merry Christmas.”

Mr. Lark felt something give way, nothing dramatic, just a loosening, like ice breaking on a river that intended to flow again. When he looked up, the bench was empty.

He did not hurry home. Instead, he typed a reply, longer than necessary, warmer than usual, and sent it.

Then another. And another.

The fog thinned. The lamps seemed brighter.

Somewhere, Mr. Basil Crowe marked a box on an ancient ledger and settled back into a well-earned rest.

As for Mr. Lark, he still receives many notifications. But each Christmas Eve, he pauses at the park bench, pockets his phone, and listens, just in case the past has one more thing to say, and the present is kind enough to answer.

The Sargasso Sea had swallowed the horizon.

No line separated water from sky anymore, only a churning expanse of black-green waves, reflecting the swollen bruise of a twilight sun. The last remnants of the old world floated here: shattered satellites, bleached bones, and the ruins of ships that once ferried humanity’s hope.

Elias watched the horizon from the deck of the Aurora’s Wake. He had been sailing west for months, chasing whispers that somewhere beyond the storms and the dead zones, a signal still pulsed.

It was faint, mechanical, and impossibly rhythmic. Some said it was a beacon, still others called it a warning.

The air tasted of brine. Above Elias, the clouds had begun to move in ways that defied reason, spiraling outward like ink in water.

Elias thought he saw faces form within them, shifting, childlike, weeping. He blinked, and the sea’s spray erased them.

He remembered the stories his grandmother told before the tides came: that time was not a straight path but a loop, endlessly devouring itself. Every civilization thought itself the first and the last, but the truth was crueler.

The future was not ahead. It was beneath.

That night, the Aurora’s Wake drifted into fog so thick it muffled even the sound of the sea. The air grew heavy, almost sentient.

Elias turned the dials of his receiver, searching for that familiar pulse of the signal. It came suddenly, strong, deliberate, beating through the static like a mechanical heart.

But then came something new: a voice, small and distant, reciting numbers in a child’s whisper. Elias froze.

“Who’s there?” he whispered.

The numbers stopped, then the voice said, “We are what you left behind.”

The words struck him with the force of memory. He heard them as though spoken by someone he once knew, someone he had failed to save. The static surged, and within it he could almost make out a chorus of faint, overlapping cries of children.

He stumbled to the edge of the deck. The sea below pulsed with phosphorescent light, forming slow, deliberate spirals that echoed the patterns in the clouds.

Shapes moved beneath the surface, thin, luminous silhouettes drifting upward. Elias thought they might be jellyfish until one lifted its face to the surface.

It was a child, or something that remembered being one. Its skin was translucent as glass, its eyes bottomless voids, and when it opened its mouth, no sound emerged, only a ripple that distorted the air like heat.

Elias staggered. The ship groaned as if under immense pressure. From every direction, the water began to glow brighter, revealing dozens, hundreds, of those spectral children, all rising with the tide.

He wanted to believe they were hallucinations, tricks of exhaustion and guilt. But the radio hissed again, and their voices came through clearer this time:

“You built us from your mistakes.”
“You burned the air and buried the sky.”
“Now we dream for you, in the dark.”

The fog thickened until the stars disappeared. Elias could feel his heartbeat syncing with the pulse of the signal.

The Aurora’s Wake was no longer moving. The Sargasso itself seemed to hold it still, an eye closing around him.

He reached for the engine controls, but they no longer responded. Every gauge spun wildly, every compass needle pointed inward.

From the mist above, something vast began to emerge, an outline so immense that his mind refused to comprehend it. It was neither creature nor machine, but the amalgamation of all that was lost: cities, satellites, the ghosts of human ambition coalesced into form.

Its surface shimmered with fragments of memory, faces, buildings, moments of laughter, each appearing and fading like reflections on broken glass. The voice returned, no longer a whisper but a chorus that filled the sea and sky alike.

“We are the children you never dared to meet.”
“We are tomorrow, abandoned at birth.”

Elias fell to his knees as the world tilted. He saw the ocean curling upward, not in waves but in layers, revealing beneath it a second sea, a mirror of the first, filled with those luminous beings drifting toward the surface. They moved with purpose now, reaching toward him with hands that shimmered like starlight.

“Please,” Elias whispered, though he didn’t know if he was begging for mercy or understanding.

“You are already one of us,” they answered. “You have been since the moment you forgot how to hope.”

The sea erupted in silence. The fog collapsed inward, and for one impossible instant, Elias saw the endless cycles of civilizations, each rising and drowning and a sky folding on itself, time eating its tail like a serpent of light.

He saw humanity’s future, barren and shining, echoing endlessly through the void. And within that future, his own reflection, a ghost adrift in the consequence of forgotten promises.

When found months later, the Aurora’s Wake floated empty, its deck coated in a thin film of salt that shimmered faintly in the dark. The logbook ended with a single line, written in a trembling hand recognized as Elias’s, “We are ghosts of our children’s future.”

And now, sometimes, when the fog drifts low across the Sargasso Sea, sailors swear they can still hear the radio pulse, steady, sorrowful, like a heartbeat that refuses to die.

For years, social media and I have been in a very committed, very unhealthy relationship. I showed up each day with my best effort, lighting, and angle, which still made me look like I was getting interrogated.

Social media, on the other hand, mostly responded by patting me on the head and saying, “That’s nice,” before wandering off to flirt with a dancing dog or a teenager pointing at floating words.

And then, out of nowhere, it happened. Two of my videos, critical of today’s media, went viral.

Not “my mom shared it with her bridge club” viral. I mean algorithm-viral. One is hovering around sixty-four thousand views, as the other sailed past seventy thousand like it had somewhere important to be.

For context, most of my previous videos lived long, quiet lives with view counts that could be mistaken for grocery prices.

I had always imagined this moment differently. I pictured confetti, maybe trumpets, possibly a montage where I run through a field in slow motion while inspirational music swells.

Surely, I thought, this would be the payoff. The thrill, the moment I’d been chasing while arguing with captions, hashtags, and whatever time of day the internet decided it liked best that week.

Instead, I felt nothing. Well, not nothing, more like a strange emotional shrug.

I refreshed the page. Still viral. I checked again. Yep. Numbers climbing. People commenting. Sharing. Strangers looking at something I said, and yet, here I am, sitting on the couch thinking, “Huh. Is this it?”

It turns out that when you chase something for a long time, you build up an expectation in your head. You imagine it arriving with fireworks and validation and a sudden sense that you’ve “made it.”

But virality, at least in my case, showed up more like a package you forgot you ordered. You open it, look inside, and say, “Oh.”

And that’s when the question started creeping in. What was all that effort for?

All that time thinking, “Maybe this one will be different. Was the goal really just a bigger number next to a play button?”

I realized something uncomfortable: I had been measuring success in applause instead of alignment. I wanted the crowd more than I wanted the content to mean something.

The algorithm finally hugged me back, and I discovered I didn’t actually feel hugged at all. Don’t get me wrong, going viral isn’t bad.

I’m grateful. It’s a gift, but it’s also oddly hollow if you expect it to fill places not designed for reach.

Views don’t kiss my wife goodnight. Likes don’t laugh at your jokes in real time, and shares don’t sit with you when the house is quiet, and you’re wondering if you’re doing anything right.

The joy of it wasn’t missing. I was just never meant to come from the numbers.

The real win was in creating, telling stories, and showing up, even when nobody was watching. Viral or not, that part never changed.

So here I am, two viral videos later, still wandering around my house in socks, still trying to balance ambition with perspective. The internet finally noticed me, and I learned that what I was really looking for had been in the room with me all the time.

Turns out, the thrill wasn’t in going viral. It was in remembering why I started posting in the first place.

The summer haze settled over the valley, thick as molasses. On the edge of town, Widow Clara’s barn leaned like a tired ol’ man, and her mule, Rusty, had kicked another hole in the wall.

Clara, gray hair tied in a bun, stood with hands on her hips, glaring at the beast. “That mule’s stubborn as sin,” she muttered to young Ellie Tate, who’d stopped by to drop off peach preserves.

Ellie, sixteen and wiry, scratched Rusty’s ears. “He’s just got spirit, Miss Clara. My pa says a mule’s worth ain’t in how smooth he walks, but how true he pulls.”

Clara snorted. “Fancy talk don’t fix barns, child.”

But Ellie, with her daddy’s knack for critters, had an idea. She’d seen Rusty haul logs for ol’ man Jenkins, strong, but ornery when pushed.

“Lemme try something,” she said.

The next morning, Ellie showed up with a sack of carrots and her brother’s Hohner. She didn’t yank Rusty’s reins or holler.

Instead, she sat on a stump, played a soft tune, and tossed him a carrot. Rusty snorted, then ambled over, munching.

By noon, she had him hauling planks from the lumberyard, slow but steady, while she hummed. Clara watched, jaw slack.

“How’d you tame that devil?”

“Ain’t about taming,” Ellie said. “You don’t fix a mule by breaking him. You find his rhythm and pull together. Like Pa says, ‘A fence doesn’t stand tall if you just pound the posts harder.’”

Clara raised an eyebrow but let Ellie keep at it. Over the week, Rusty and Ellie patched the barn, one plank at a time.

Townsfolk started gathering, offering nails or lemonade, marveling at the girl and her mule. Even ol’ Jenkins, who never parted with a dime, brought a bucket of paint.

“Reckon this barn’ll outlast me,” he grunted.

By Saturday, the barn stood straight, and Rusty grazed contentedly. Clara invited the town for a barbecue, her way of thanking Ellie.

As fireflies danced and banjos twanged, Clara pulled Ellie aside. “You taught me something, girl. I’ve been pushing life too hard, like I could whip it into shape. But you and that mule, you showed me it’s about listening not forcing.”

Ellie grinned, tossing Rusty another carrot. “Just gotta know what pulls true, Miss Clara.”

Under the stars, the valley felt a little closer, bound by a girl’s quiet wisdom and a mule’s stubborn heart.

I’ve learned over decades that some things are eternal, like taxes, sunsets, and the fact that you can’t fix stupid. You can, however, sit back with a cup of coffee and watch it implode spectacularly, like a slow-motion car crash.

It was 7:03 a.m., the magic hour when the town wakes up groggy enough not to be dangerous but still ambitious enough to try. I enjoyed coffee from my favorite chipped mug while gazing at the station window, which framed the street like a theater stage.

On cue, the performance began.

Two gentlemen, let’s call them Fred and Greg, because naming them anything else feels too generous, decided that today was the day to challenge common sense. They stood on opposite sides of the crosswalk, arguing about who could jaywalk faster.

The debate was heated, unnecessary, and entirely predictable. I set my cup down and grinned; the first sip is for survival, the second is for amusement.

Fred, ever the visionary, decided to vault over a raised median like an action hero whose stunt coordinator had quit mid-career. The result was unheroic and less graceful.

In fact, it was nothing like an action movie at all. Fred landed flat on his back, scattering groceries, dignity, and a very surprised pigeon. Greg, naturally, applauded with a snort of laughter and nearly took a header into a fire hydrant.

The bus showed up, late as always, honking like it had inherited the world’s collective rage. Fred and Greg scrambled aboard, still debating whether hubris or gravity deserved the blame.

I picked up my mug again. Steam curled in lazy spirals, carrying the subtle fragrance of roasted irony.

Stupidity, I thought, is a self-perpetuating art form. You can’t fix it, you can’t legislate it, and you certainly can’t outrun it, but you can sip coffee, observe, and appreciate the sheer choreography of human error.

And really, isn’t that the closest any of us ever gets to satisfaction? Watching the world stumble, while you sit upright, caffeinated, and smug.

I took another sip. The universe rolled on, undeterred, and I, armed with caffeine and a front-row seat, felt nothing but a quiet, sardonic joy.

Life has a funny way of turning itself into a classroom, even when you think you’ve already graduated. I learned that again this morning, sitting with a cup of coffee in hand and watching a short clip from Tootsie that popped up on that ticky-tacko thingy online.

You know the one, Dustin Hoffman, dressed as Tootsie, has a heart-to-heart with Jessica Lange’s character. She tells him how she’d like a man to walk up, be honest, and say something sweet instead of playing games.

Later, Hoffman does that, but this time he’s himself, and she throws a drink in his face. It’s a perfect little loop of human contradiction. We say we want honesty, but when honesty shows up uninvited, we reach for the nearest glass of white wine and hurl it.

The scene triggered a long-forgotten memory from back in my high school days. There was this girl, a senior when I was a sophomore, who carried herself as if she’d already outgrown our world.

Two weeks before prom, we ended up sitting next to each other on the bus home. She started talking about how she didn’t care for “high school formality,” that the social order was dumb, and that people should do their own thing.

She said it as if she were daring the universe to test her. A week later, I took her at her word, and I asked her to the prom.

The look she gave me was polite, but there was something in her eyes that said I’d just stepped into something best left on the lawn. She let me down gently and said she didn’t have a dress, no gas money, no time to get ready, and besides, she was a senior while I was just a sophomore.

It was a perfectly logical rejection wrapped in a bow of kindness. However, I recall sitting there, wondering how someone could speak about revolutionizing the system one week, then cling to it the next.

It wasn’t heartbreak that struck me, but the lesson, or at least, the start of one. Because life keeps teaching you the same thing in different ways, just because someone says something doesn’t mean they believe it.

People love the idea of boldness more than practicing it. They talk about breaking free, but they also want to be invited to the party everyone else is going to.

Watching Tootsie again, I realized I’m still rounding that same curve, still learning that talk and truth rarely hold hands for long.