Author: Tom Darby

In the neon-lit sprawl of New Detroit, a city reborn from industrial ruin, a strange phenomenon grips the Internet’s underbelly. A viral video, known only as The Signal, spreads through dark web forums and encrypted chat apps.

It’s a 17-second clip of static and shimmering fractals, accompanied by a low hum that leaves viewers disoriented, some claiming to hear whispers urging them to “unweave.” Most who watch it forget their names within days, vanishing into the city’s shadows.

Samir Khan, a burned-out cybersecurity analyst, stumbles across The Signal while investigating a data breach at his firm. His search leads him to a derelict server farm on the city’s edge, where the Order of the Unraveled conducts rituals to summon Zhul’thar, the Veil-Warden, an entity said to dwell in the gaps between realities. As Samir digs deeper, he risks losing himself to the entity’s unraveling influence.

The server farm loomed on the outskirts of New Detroit, a concrete husk swallowed by kudzu and rust. Samir Khan’s laptop bag slapped against his hip as he ducked through a shattered window, the air inside heavy with mildew and ozone.

His phone’s flashlight caught rows of dead servers, their cables dangling like veins. He’d traced The Signal here, a video that had fried his firm’s network and left three colleagues catatonic, muttering about “the Veil.”

Samir’s encounter with the clip had been brief—a glimpse of fractal patterns pulsing like a heartbeat—but it lingered, a hum in his skull that made his name feel slippery.

The Necronomicon excerpt he’d found on a hacked archive mentioned “the Warden that gnaws at the seams of All.” Zhul’thar. The name buzzed like static in his thoughts. He wasn’t sure why he’d come alone, only that the hum demanded it.

Deeper in, a faint glow flickered from a chamber lined with active monitors. Their screens displayed the same fractal static as The Signal, looping endlessly.

In the center, a dozen figures in hoodies knelt around a jury-rigged server tower, its LEDs pulsing in sync with the hum. They chanted, voices a droning cadence: “Zhul’thar, unweave us. Zhul’thar, unmake.”

One figure, their face obscured by a glitchy augmented reality mask, stood and raised a hand. The mask’s display flickered, showing a blank, featureless visage.

“You’re late, seeker,” the figure said, their voice distorted, layered with whispers that seemed to come from the monitors. “The Veil thins, and you carry its echo.”

Samir’s hand hovered over the USB drive in his pocket, loaded with a kill script he’d written to fry the server. “What the hell is this?” he snapped, gesturing at the screens. “What’s Zhul’thar?”

The figure tilted their head, the mask glitching into fractal patterns.

“Zhul’thar is the end of boundaries. The truth beyond names. It lives in the spaces between code, between worlds. You’ve seen it, Samir Khan. Why do you resist?”

His stomach lurched. He hadn’t told them his name.

The hum grew louder, and the monitors flared, their fractals coiling into tendrils that seemed to reach beyond the screens. Samir’s vision doubled, and for a moment, he saw himself reflected in the static—not as he was, but as fragments–a kid in Karachi, a coder in a cubicle, a stranger with no face. His grip on the USB drive faltered.

“I’m not one of you,” he said, but his voice sounded distant, like someone else’s. “You’re spreading this… thing. People are disappearing.”

The figure stepped closer, their mask now a void, shimmering with impossible colors. “They are free. Names are chains. Identities are lies. Zhul’thar offers the unmaking. Look, and be unbound.”

Samir’s eyes flicked to the screens. The fractals pulsed, and through them, he glimpsed it—Zhul’thar.

A shimmering abyss, its tendrils branching infinitely, threading through reality like cracks in glass. The hum became a chorus, whispering– Unweave. Unmake.

His memories frayed—his mother’s voice, first hack, his name—each dissolving into static. He saw his reflection in the server’s glass panel, his features blurring, eyes too wide, mouth gone.

“No!” he shouted, slamming the USB drive into the server’s port.

The kill script launched, and the monitors screeched, their fractals collapsing into black. The figures screamed, clawing at their masks, their forms flickering like bad renders before dissolving into motes of iridescent dust. The hum spiked, then faded, leaving only silence.

Samir staggered outside, the city’s neon glow–a harsh contrast to the dark. His phone buzzed with a notification—a new file–unlabeled, 17 seconds long. He deleted it without looking, but the hum lingered, faint, in the back of his mind.

He tried to log his findings once at this apartment to prove he’d stopped The Signal. But his fingers froze over the keyboard. Was his name Samir? Or was it nothing?

In the reflection of his monitor, something shimmered—a fractal tendril coiling just out of sight.

In the decaying coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, whispers of a new cult surfaced. The Order of the Unraveled, a secretive group, had taken root in an abandoned lighthouse overlooking the Atlantic.

Locals report strange lights flickering in the fog and a low hum that rattles windows at night. Dr. Eliza Marrow, a disgraced archaeologist obsessed with occult texts, arrives in Innsmouth to investigate after receiving an anonymous package–a fractured obsidian shard inscribed with fractal patterns and a note reading, “The Veil thins. Seek the Warden.”

Her research into the Necronomicon hints at an entity called Zhul’thar, a being that gnaws at the seams of reality. As Eliza delves deeper, she uncovers a truth that threatens to unmake her existence.

The fog clung to Innsmouth like a shroud, muffling the crash of waves against the jagged cliffs. Eliza Marrow’s boots crunched on the gravel path leading to the lighthouse, its silhouette a skeletal finger against the moonless sky.

The obsidian shard in her coat pocket seemed to hum, a faint vibration that synced with her pulse. She’d read the forbidden passages in Miskatonic University’s locked archives, warning of “the Warden that gnaws at the seams of All.”

Zhul’thar. The name tasted like ash on her tongue.

The lighthouse door hung ajar, its hinges rusted. Inside, the air was thick with salt and something acrid, like burnt circuitry. Spiral stairs twisted upward, their iron steps slick with condensation.

Eliza’s flashlight beam danced across walls etched with fractal patterns—lines that branched infinitely, coiling into shapes that hurt to look at. Her head throbbed, and she swore she saw her shadow split into two, one lagging.

At the top, the lantern room was empty save for a circle of robed figures kneeling around a cracked mirror. The glass shimmered, not reflecting the room but showing a void—pulsing, iridescent, alive.

Tendrils of fractal light writhed within, and a low hum filled the air, burrowing into Eliza’s skull like a heartbeat. The figures chanted in a tongue that felt like splinters in her mind–“Zhul’thar, unweave us. Zhul’thar, unmake.”

One figure rose, their hood falling to reveal a face—or what should have been a face. The skin was smooth, featureless, a blank canvas of flesh.

Eliza’s breath caught, her hand tightening around the shard. “Who are you?” she demanded, voice trembling but defiant.

The figure’s head tilted as if puzzled. A voice came, not from its nonexistent mouth but from the air itself, a chorus of whispers layered over the hum. “We are no one. We are the Unraveled. You hold the key, seeker. Why do you cling to a name?”

Eliza’s grip faltered. The shard was warm now, almost burning. “I’m here for answers. What is Zhul’thar?”

The mirror pulsed, and the tendrils within seemed to reach outward, brushing the edges of reality. The figure stepped closer, its blank face inches from hers.

“Zhul’thar is the Veil-Warden,” it said. “It dwells where worlds meet, where self dissolves. It offers freedom from the lie of being. Look, and see.”

Against her better judgment, Eliza glanced at the mirror. The void stared back, and in its depths, she saw herself—not as she was, but as she might have been.

A child who never left home, scholar revered, not shunned, a corpse on a slab. The images flickered, fracturing into countless versions, each unraveling into shimmering dust.

Her chest tightened, her name—Eliza—slipping like sand through her fingers. “No,” she gasped, tearing her gaze away. “This isn’t real.”

The figure’s voice grew sharper, insistent. “Reality is the cage. Zhul’thar is the key. Give us the shard, and join the Unraveled. Be nothing. Be free.”

Eliza stumbled back, her flashlight clattering to the floor. The hum was louder now, vibrating in her bones.

Then she saw a crack in the air, like glass splintering, and a glimpse of Zhul’thar. A shimmering void, infinite and empty, its fractal tendrils coiling toward her.

Her reflection in the mirror warped, her features blurring, dissolving. “I… I’m Eliza Marrow,” she whispered, clutching the shard. But the words felt hollow–as if someone else had spoken them.

The figures closed in, their chants rising. “Unweave. Unmake.”

The mirror’s light flared, and the crack in reality widened. Eliza’s vision swam, her memories fraying—her childhood, failures, her name—each thread plucked away by unseen hands.

With a scream, she hurled the shard at the mirror. It struck with a sound like a dying star, and the glass shattered.

The hum became a wail, the tendrils recoiling as the void collapsed. The figures collapsed, clawing at their blank faces, their forms dissolving into motes of iridescent dust.

Eliza fled, the lighthouse trembling behind her. She didn’t stop until she reached the cliffs, the fog swallowing the hum’s last echoes. The shard was gone, but her reflection in a nearby puddle was wrong—her eyes were too wide, and the smile was not hers.

Back in her motel room, she tried to write what happened to anchor herself. But her pen faltered. Was her name Eliza? Or was it something else? In the silence, she heard it—a faint hum pulsing in the dark.

And in her dreams, the Veil shimmered, waiting.

Zhul’thar’s name comes from a proto-language spoken by the Serpent Men of Valusia, a pre-human race in the Mythos who worshipped entities beyond the stars. In their tongue, “zhul” meant “the veil” or “the threshold between worlds,” while “thar” signified “to rend” or “to unmake.” The apostrophe marked a sacred pause, a moment of reverence for the entity’s power to dissolve reality.

When human cultists, like the Order of the Unraveled, rediscovered Zhul’thar’s name in a fractured obsidian tablet, perhaps the shard from The Shimmering Veil, they adapted it into their rituals. The name’s pronunciation is lost, but its syllables carry a psychic weight, resonating with Zhul’thar’s fractal tendrils and the hum that unravels identities.

Lastly, the name has echoes in ancient human myths, misheard by Sumerian priests as “Zul-Tar,” a demon of liminal spaces, or by medieval alchemists as “Jhulthar,” a forbidden word in grimoires. These are distortions of Zhul’thar’s true essence, which defies human language.

While Zhul’thar is my creation, its components draw from Semitic Languages. “Zul” resembles Arabic dhul, e.g., Dhu al-Qarnayn, meaning “possessor of two horns,’ though I admit this is a stretch.

The name Zhul’thar is nestled in fantasy tropes as well. The “-thar” echoes names like Bolthar or Galthar in sword-and-sorcery, common in pulp fiction Lovecraft read. The structure also mirrors his love for alien phonetics.

Zhul’thar is an Outer God or a lesser Great Old One, existing in the interstitial spaces—the “membranes” that separate dimensions, realities, and states of being. It is neither neither within nor outside existence, embodying the paradox of being both nowhere and everywhere.

Zhul’thar is the guardian of thresholds, but not in a protective sense; it hungers to dissolve boundaries, merging all realities into a singular, chaotic non-state. Its presence warps causality, making a time loop or fracture in its vicinity, and its fractal tendrils are said to be extensions of the universe’s unraveling threads.

Zhul’thar’s form is a hypnotic, ever-shifting void that pulses with iridescent, impossible colors—hues that make observers’ eyes ache and bleed. Its fractal tendrils extend infinitely, branching into patterns that defy mathematics, sometimes coiling into vaguely humanoid or arachnid shapes before dissolving back into the void.

Those who gaze too long report seeing their reflections within Zhul’thar distorted into versions of themselves that never were or should not be. Its “voice” is a low, resonant hum that feels like a heartbeat in the listener’s skull, carrying whispers in no known language.

Zhul’thar’s influence is subtle but devastating. It doesn’t seek worship in the traditional sense but draws followers through dreams or fleeting glimpses of its tendrils in mirrors, shadows, or the corners of the eye.

Its cult, the Order of the Unraveled, believes Zhul’thar holds the secret to transcending existence by unmaking the self and reality. Members engage in rituals where they systematically erase their identities—burning personal records, shedding names, and mutilating their faces or memories to become “blank vessels” for Zhul’thar’s will.

These rituals often involve chanting fractal-like mantras that induce trances, during which cultists claim to see the “Veil” and hear Zhul’thar’s whispers. Prolonged exposure drives them to madness, with some spontaneously dissolving into shimmering dust as if claimed by the entity.

Zhul’thar is a rogue fragment of Yog-Sothoth, the Key and the Gate, or perhaps a rival entity that seeks to undermine Yog-Sothoth’s dominion over dimensional boundaries. The Necronomicon contains a cryptic passage warning of “the Warden that gnaws at the seams of All,” which scholars debate as a reference to Zhul’thar.

Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos, may amuse itself by spreading Zhul’thar’s influence, using its cults as pawns in its incomprehensible schemes. Tied to rare celestial events, like the alignment of unseen stars, during which the Veil thins, Zhul’thar’s tendrils breach reality more visibly.

Like most entities in the Cthulhu mythos, Zhul’thar is beyond mortal destruction; however, its influence can be interrupted. Symbols or incantations that reinforce boundaries—such as elder signs or rituals of dimensional anchoring—can temporarily repel its tendrils.

However, these measures often provoke Zhul’thar’s attention, inviting worse consequences. Its cultists are vulnerable when their rituals are interrupted before completion, as their partial unraveling leaves them psychologically fragile.

Now, I didn’t wake up today looking for trouble. All I wanted was a regular day–get to work, do my job, maybe grab a coffee somewhere that doesn’t misspell my name.

But the world had other plans.

It started early, right as I pulled into the parking lot at the radio station. That’s where I work—nothing glamorous, just a steady gig with decent folks.

I was easing my truck towards the parking lot when I saw a Cybertruck. It looked like it had time-traveled out of a science fiction movie and decided to stop here for fuel.

As a truck guy, I appreciate unique vehicles, so I gave the driver a quick thumbs-up. In return, he gave me the finger.

Now, look—I’ve gotten flipped off before. Who hasn’t? But usually I earn it. This one was unprovoked.

I parked, climbed out of my truck, and before I could even mutter a good-natured “What the heck, man?” he was already walking up to me.

Turns out, he wasn’t there to fight. The guy stuck out his hand and apologized.

He said he was so used to people flipping him off that he reacted without thinking. I took his hand, shook it, and told him, “No blood, no foul.”

We laughed. The moment passed.

And for a while, I figured that’d be the weirdest thing to happen to me today. Boy, did I figure wrong.

After work, I had to run a quick errand. My wife asked me to take her car to get washed.

Her car’s smaller than my truck, drives differently, and sits lower to the ground—it feels more vulnerable. But I got in, fired it up, and headed out.

Sitting in a right-hand turn lane, I was waiting for a car that looked like it might be turning into the lane I was planning to drive into when I noticed a truck come flying up behind me. I checked the mirror, and there he was—another driver, another middle finger.

I don’t know what it is about this face, but people want to flip it off. So anyway, I did it back–not proud of it, but there it is.

Next thing I know, the truck’s beside me, and he’s yelling out his window, gesturing some more. I move into the center lane, and he matches my speed. We’re both wound tight, and before I can de-escalate anything, our vehicles sideswipe each other.

We pull over.

Getting out to look at the damage to the car—I see the guy coming at me, speed walking and waving his arms. I’m no spring chicken and don’t fight strangers on the side of the road, especially when they are younger, taller, heavier, and their license plate displays a U.S. Army Paratrooper tag.

But I’m also not about to get whacked over a scratched bumper and a bad mood. So I backed toward my car, pulled out my little folding knife, and warned him loud and clear, “Do not come any closer!”

That got his attention. He stopped cold, then announced he was calling the cops. “Fine. I’ll call ’em too,” I said.

And I did. Then I sat in my car, locked the doors, and waited while he filmed me like a Netflix crime doc.

Troopers showed up about 20 minutes later. Both of us gave our statements.

After hearing the whole thing, they decided not to ticket either of us. No arrests, no charges. Just two grown men, two banged-up vehicles, and too much adrenaline for a weekday morning.

Returning her car, I told my wife the whole story. She just shook her head. Honestly, I don’t blame her.

The thing is, this wasn’t my first run-in like that. I’ve been pushed, yelled at, and injured—and it’s always over something trivial. A wrong look. A delay in traffic. A gesture someone didn’t like. Take a photograph of someone trying to burn down Reno City Hall.

But this time, it hit me differently. I ain’t proud of flashing that finger back. Nor am I proud I had to pull a knife to feel safe.

But I am tired. I’m tired of living in a world where everything feels like a spark looking for a powder keg, tired of wondering if my next friendly wave will turn into an incident report.

So yeah—something has to change. And maybe, just maybe, it starts with me.

But it sure would help if the rest of the world could stop flipping me off long enough to notice.

Providence, Rhode Island, November 1926

The gaslight flickered in Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s cramped study, casting long shadows across the cluttered desk. Piles of manuscripts, occult tomes, and half-read letters from correspondents teetered precariously, threatening to spill onto the floor.

The air was thick with the scent of ink, old paper, and the faint, briny tang that clung to the city’s autumn fog. Howard hunched over his desk, quill scratching furiously against the page, his gaunt face illuminated by a feverish intensity.

The story had come to him in a dream—or so he thought—a vivid, oppressive vision of a sunken city, a slumbering god, and a world teetering on the edge of cosmic ruin.

The words poured out, unbidden, as if guided by some unseen hand. Lovecraft titled it The Call of Cthulhu, a tale of an ancient, malevolent entity stirring in the Pacific depths, its psychic ripples driving men to madness and cultic devotion.

The protagonist, Francis Wayland Thurston, pieced together fragments of this horror from scattered clues: a bas-relief sculpted by a deranged artist, the ravings of a Norwegian sailor, and the forbidden Necronomicon,

As Howard wrote, the boundaries between his imagination and reality blurred. The names—R’lyeh, Cthulhu, the Old Ones—felt less like inventions and more like memories dredged from some primal abyss within his mind.

He paused, his hand trembling, and glanced at the window. The fog outside pressed against the glass, swirling as if alive.

He thought he saw shapes in it for a moment—tentacled, amorphous, watching. He shook his head, muttering to himself about nerves and overwork.

Returning to the page, he described the climactic scene–a ship, the Alert, ramming the awakened Cthulhu, only for the beast to reform, its non-Euclidean form defying mortal comprehension. The sailor’s escape was a fleeting reprieve, for the cult’s chant echoed–“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn…”

Hours later, as dawn’s gray light crept into the room, Howard set down his quill. The manuscript was complete, a sprawling, chilling tale that felt more real than anything he’d ever written.

He leaned back, exhausted, and lit a cigarette, its smoke curling upward like the tendrils of his dreamed city.

“A fine piece of weird fiction,” he whispered, though doubt gnawed at him.

The details—the coordinates of R’lyeh, the cult’s rituals, the sailor’s log—were too precise, too consistent. Had he read them somewhere? Dreamed them? Or…?

A knock at the door jolted him from his reverie. It was early, too early for visitors.

He opened the door to find a disheveled man in a tattered coat, his face weathered and eyes wild with fear. The stranger thrust a leather-bound journal into Howard’s hands, muttering, “You need to know. It’s not just stories.”

Before Howard could respond, the man fled into the fog, vanishing as if swallowed by it.

Puzzled, Howard returned to his desk and opened the journal. The handwriting was erratic, the pages stained with salt and something darker.

As he read, his blood ran cold. The journal belonged to Gustaf Johansen, a Norwegian sailor who claimed to have survived an encounter in the South Pacific in March 1925.

It described a storm, a derelict ship, and an island that rose from the sea at 47°9′S, 126°43′W—R’lyeh. The sailor’s crew had stumbled upon a cyclopean city of slime-slicked stone, its geometry twisting the mind.

From a monstrous portal emerged a being, vast and tentacled, its eyes like voids of cosmic malice. Johansen’s ship, the Alert, had struck it in desperation, but the thing reformed, its laughter a psychic wound.

Only Johansen escaped, haunted by the cult’s chant, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

Howard’s cigarette fell from his lips, smoldering on the floor. The journal mirrored his story—every detail, every name, every horror—down to the coordinates and the cult’s words.

But this was no fiction. The dates, the sailor’s descriptions, sketches of the bas-relief, and the city were actual, documented by a man who had lived it. Howard’s manuscript wasn’t a story–it was a recounting, a diary of an event he had somehow channeled through his dreams.

He stumbled to his bookshelf, pulling down his copy of the Necronomicon—a fictional text, he’d always insisted, a creation of his imagination. Yet as he opened it, the pages felt heavier, the ink fresher, as if written by another’s hand.

A passage caught his eye, “That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die.”

The words pulsed with a truth he could no longer deny.

The fog outside thickened, and a low, rhythmic sound began to emanate from the streets—a chant–faint but growing louder, “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh…”

Howard’s heart pounded. He grabbed the journal and his manuscript, intending to burn them–to erase this knowledge before it consumed him. But as he reached for the fireplace, the room grew cold, and the shadows lengthened. Something vast and ancient pressed against his mind, whispering in a language older than stars.

When the landlady entered the study that morning, she found it empty. The desk was bare, save for a single page torn from the journal, stained with seawater, and inscribed with a single line in Howard’s trembling hand, “It was not a dream. It was a warning.”

Providence whispered of disappearances and strange lights in the fog for the next few weeks. Lovecraft’s correspondents received no replies, and his manuscripts vanished from his home.

Years later, a story titled The Call of Cthulhu surfaced in a pulp magazine, published under his name. Readers praised its chilling imagination, unaware it was no fiction but a fragment of truth too vast and terrible to comprehend.

And in the Pacific, between New Zealand and Chile, at coordinates 47°9′S, 126°43′W, the sea churned, waiting.

Remember those halcyon days when you could tip your hat to the town clerk and know your vote was safe with that bowlegged rascal behind the desk—ink-stained, toothpick-chewin’, and loyal as a hound dog? Well, saddle up because those days may be galloping off into the sunset.

There’s a dust cloud kickin’ up in Carson City, and it ain’t the wind—it’s Senate Bill 100, and it’s got the sour smell of centralization, bureaucracy, and that peculiar itch that comes when a feller in a starched collar tells you he’s here to help.

Now, I ain’t what you’d call a revolutionary—unless you count the time I revolted against my wife’s liver pudding—but I have a nose for horsefeathers, and this bill smells like a whole wagonload.

SB100, for those not inclined to read the fine print on government mischief, proposes to take your local election official—your neighbor, your fishing buddy, your niece’s godfather—and put them under the thumb of the Secretary of State. That’s right–no more county choosing how to count ballots.

No more clerk riding herd on local voters. Instead, one person, sitting in a room so full of forms and regulations, they’ll have to keep the windows shut to keep the paperwork from escaping, will decide what’s timely, legal, and criminal.

Section 1 of this document of doom says the Secretary “shall adopt regulations” to make things happen “in a timely manner.” Well, I’ve been to a few town meetings in my day, and I can tell you that “timely” is a word that means different things to different folks.

To a man with a watch, it means five o’clock sharp. To a man with common sense, it means, “We’ll get it done right, and we’ll get it done safe.”

But Section 2 is where this bill drops its mask and bares its teeth. A county clerk who misses a deadline—let’s say their ox died, or their internet did—isn’t just getting a slap on the wrist or a stern talking-to.

No, sir. They’re looking at a felony. That’s right—prison time.

So now, your local official can get hauled off in chains for fumbling paperwork. I’ve seen a lot of fool ideas in my life, but turning good civil servants into felons over a calendar misstep ranks mighty high.

And don’t get me started on Section 3, where the Secretary now gets to choose not only the voting machines but also the vendors. Well, if you’ve ever seen how contracts get handed out in state politics, you know what a skunk smells like.

It ain’t ’bout efficiency—it’s empire-buildin’.

And empire-building brings us to the heart of the matter. Marxism, dear reader—yes, that sneaky old serpent dressed in promises and perched on a pile of regulations—is not just a danger to the poor and powerless. It ruins the mighty, too.

Give a man total control, and soon he’ll find himself surrounded by angry peasants and wondering why the food ain’t tastin’ as good as it used to. Power concentrated in the hands of one always ends the same way–ruin for everybody.

And if you think SB100 is just about elections, think again–it’s a whisper from the abyss, reminding us that when you give up local control in the name of efficiency, you might get neither. All you’ll get is a law that reads like a train schedule and a government that couldn’t find your polling place without a map, a mule, and divine intervention.

Don’t ask the state to fix what your neighbor can do better. Don’t believe the man who tells you he can make everything uniform—it usually means he wants to make everything his.

And above all, don’t trade away your vote’s shepherd for the cold hand of central authority.

Thirty-year-old inventor Ethan Caldwell had spent a decade in his cluttered garage, chasing the impossible–a time machine. His life was a tangle of circuit boards, coffee mugs, and scribbled equations on whiteboards.

By 2025, he’d burned through his savings, alienated most friends, and earned a reputation as the neighborhood eccentric. But Ethan didn’t care. He was close—so close—to cracking time itself.

The machine, a hulking mess of wires, steel, and glowing capacitors, filled half the garage. Ethan called it the Chrono-Anchor.

His theory was simple–time wasn’t a river but a web, and with the right frequency, you could tug a thread and step across. After years of failures—sparks, blackouts, one memorable explosion—he finally nailed the calibration.

On April 23, 2025, at 2:17 a.m., he flipped the switch.

A low hum filled the garage. The air crackled, heavy with ozone.

The Chrono-Anchor’s core pulsed blue–and Ethan held his breath, expecting to blink and find himself in 1920 or 3000. Instead, nothing happened.

He cursed, kicking a stool. Yet, another bust.

Then, a pop—like a champagne cork. A man materialized, stumbling forward in a woolen tunic, reeking sweat and woodsmoke.

His eyes, wide with terror, locked on Ethan. “Where am I?” he stammered, his accent thick, maybe medieval English.

Before Ethan could answer, another pop.

A woman in a sleek silver jumpsuit appeared–her hair neon green, holding a device that beeped frantically.

“Temporal breach detected!” she snapped, glaring at Ethan. “Who’s running this op?”

Pop. Pop. Pop. More arrived—a Roman centurion, a Victorian lady in a corset, a kid in a 1980s tracksuit, and a warrior with face tattoos clutching a spear. The garage was chaos, voices overlapping in languages Ethan barely recognized.

They weren’t traveling through time. The Chrono-Anchor was yanking people from their times to him.

“Who’s doing this?” the centurion bellowed, drawing a gladius. The Victorian woman fainted. The futuristic woman scanned the machine, muttering about “amateur quantum splicing.”

Ethan’s heart pounded. It wasn’t time travel—it was a temporal kidnapping.

“Stop! I’m fixing it!” Ethan shouted, dodging the spear-wielding warrior. He lunged for the Chrono-Anchor’s control panel, hands shaking.

The medieval man grabbed his arm, pleading, “Is this the end of days?”

Ethan shook him off, slamming the emergency shutdown.

The hum died. The blue glow faded. With a final, ear-splitting pop, vanished—the warrior, the centurion, the neon-haired woman, all gone, snapped back to their proper times. The garage was silent, save for Ethan’s ragged breathing.

He sank to the floor, staring at the lifeless machine. No proof remained—no photos or artifacts, just the faint smell of ozone and a toppled stool.

Had it even happened? His dream of time travel was dead, but something else was born–a machine that could summon the past and future.

The implications terrified him. Ethan unplugged the Chrono-Anchor and vowed never to touch it again.

But as he lay awake that night, one thought gnawed at him–what if he could control who it brought? Nikola Tesla, maybe?

Long have I maintained that civilization is a noble thing to watch, if from a distance. The farther away you are, the more sense it seems to make.

And so it is with the curious case of Johnson Lane–where the Earth gives forth poison, and people are gettin’ told to mind their own business while sipping it. It appears a company by the respectable name of Knox Excavating–which sounds like the sort of outfit that would dig a hole only to argue with it–has leased a swath of land big enough to lose several boulders in and promptly begun siphoning off a third of the groundwater like a thirsty mule at a silver rush saloon.

In its infinite wisdom and microscopic sampling spoon, the EPA declared all was well after inspecting two thimbles of soil–neither of which came from anywhere near the diggings. It’s like checking for termites by looking at the front porch and declaring the attic suitable for ballroom dancing.

Once made for bicycles and the occasional neighbor’s cow, the roads are gettin’ pulverized under the weight of haul trucks big enough to blot out the sun. And for all the wear and tear, Knox paid the county $86–less than what it costs to fill up one of those trucks with diesel–or for a man of modest appetite to eat dinner at the Delta Saloon in Virginia City.

Meanwhile, residents are advised by county officials to “sell your house,” which is sound advice if you’re fond of living in a ditch or enjoy the musical stylings of jackhammers at dawn. To top it all off, nobody can quite agree on who’s supposed to be holding the shovel–or the rulebook.

The county blames the state, the state blames the BIA, and the BIA is still trying to locate its permission slip. It is a game of musical chairs played with legal documents, but the music has stopped, and nobody notices.

In short, the Painted Rock Mine proves that progress–if left unsupervised, will dig its grave and try to sell you the dirt.

The sun hung low over Dodge City, painting the dusty streets in hues of gold and amber. The year was 1874, and the town thrummed with the restless energy of cowhands fresh off the trail, their pockets jingling with hard-earned pay and their hearts hungry for a taste of civilization.

Among them was Caleb Thorne, a lean, weathered cowboy of twenty-five, whose sharp blue eyes carried the weight of long months driving cattle up the Chisholm Trail from Texas. Bronzed by sun and wind, his face bore the lines of a man who’d seen both the beauty and cruelty on the open range.

Caleb was no stranger to hardship—orphaned at twelve, scratching out a living as a ranch hand before signing on with a trail outfit. He was a man of few words, but those he spoke carried the quiet strength of someone who’d learned to trust his judgment.

Caleb’s boots thudded against the boardwalk as he made his way through Dodge, the familiar scents of horse sweat and prairie dust giving way to the sharper tang of whiskey and tobacco spilling from saloons. His trail-worn clothes clung to him, stiff with grime, and his dark beard itched something fiercely.

First things first, he thought. A bath, a shave, and a clean shirt to make him feel human again. He pushed through the swinging doors of the dram house, where a tin tub and a bar of lye soap awaited.

An hour later, scrubbed clean and smooth-cheeked, he felt the world shift closer to right. But his shirt—threadbare and stained—was past saving. He needed a new one, meaning a trip to the mercantile.

The dry goods store stood at the corner of Front Street, its windows gleaming with promise. Inside, shelves brimmed with bolts of cloth, tin cans of peaches, and all manner of goods a man might need to start anew.

Behind the counter stood Ellie Mayhew, a woman of twenty, with hair the color of ripe wheat and eyes like the clear Kansas sky. Ellie had come to Dodge after her father, a small-time farmer, lost his land to drought and debt two years before.

Now, she worked for Mr. Hargrove, the store’s owner, earning just enough to keep a roof over her head and her dreams tethered to something solid. She was quick with a smile, but there was a quiet longing in her, a wish for something beyond the endless tallying of accounts and the dust of other people’s lives.

Caleb stepped inside, the bell above the door jingling softly. The air carried the faint sweetness of molasses and the crisp bite of new cotton.

He nodded to Ellie, who stood arranging a stack of calico and began browsing the shelves for a shirt. His fingers brushed over a blue chambray, sturdy and plain—perfect for the trail.

But as he lifted it, his eyes caught Ellie at the counter. She held a small, colorfully wrapped bar of soap, its paper bright with promises of lavender and rose.

She glanced around, then brought it to her nose, inhaling deeply, her face softening with private joy. It was small but struck Caleb like a sunrise after a long night’s ride.

He crossed the floor, the shirt draped over his arm, and leaned against the counter.

“That soap smells mighty fine, ma’am,” he said, his voice low and easy, like a slow-rolling river.

Ellie started, her cheeks flushing as she set the soap down. “Oh, it’s just… somethin’ to look at,” she said, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “Didn’t mean to dawdle.”

“Ever bathed with one like that?” Caleb asked, tilting his head toward the soap.

She laughed–a soft, nervous sound. “No, sir. Never have.”

“Why not?” he pressed, his eyes holding hers, steady but kind.

Ellie’s gaze flicked to the soap, then back to him. “It’s too dear. Five cents for a bar when plain lye does the job just fine.”

Caleb’s brow lifted. “Five cents? That’s all it takes to smell like a garden?”

She nodded, a wry smile tugging at her lips. “Five cents is a meal, or half a yard of muslin. Ain’t practical for the likes of me.”

He stood there a moment, turning the shirt over in his hands. He had a dollar and a half in his pocket—enough for the tunic, a hot meal at the Long Branch, and maybe a beer to wash it down.

The trail had been lengthy, the pay meager, and he’d earned every cent with sweat and sleepless nights. But something about Ellie’s quiet longing, the way her fingers lingered on that soap, stirred a memory of his mother, long gone, who’d once treasured a single ribbon as if spun gold.

“Reckon I’ll take this here soap instead,” he said, setting the shirt back on the shelf and sliding the bar toward her.

Ellie blinked, confused. “The soap? But… you don’t need—”

“It ain’t for me,” Caleb said, his voice gentle but firm. He fished a nickel from his pocket and placed it on the counter. “It’s for you, ma’am. A lady oughta have somethin’ fine, even just once.”

Her eyes widened, and for a moment, she looked like she might argue. But then her expression softened, and she took the nickel, her fingers trembling. “I… I don’t know what to say,” she murmured. “Thank you, mister.”

“Caleb,” he said, tipping his hat. “Caleb Thorne.”

“Ellie Mayhew,” she replied, her smile brighter now, like the first star in a twilight sky.

He nodded, stepping back. “You take care, Miss Ellie. Maybe I’ll come back for that shirt another day.”

As he walked out into the fading light, his old shirt still clinging to his shoulders, Caleb felt lighter than he had in months. The trail stretched ahead, as it always did, but for now, he carried Ellie’s smile in his memory—and the quiet certainty that some things were worth more than a buck-fifty.

Now, I ain’t one for conjurin’ up wild-eyed conspiracy theories unless they’re funny or involve frogs that sing on cue—but when I heard tell that the United States government has supposedly shelled out twenty-one trillion–that’s trillion, with a T as in “That’s a whole heap of money!”–to dig a cozy little underworld for the gilded swells of society, I dropped my corncob pipe in the Truckee River.

According to Miss Catherine Austin Fitts, who once held a proper and polished title in the Department of Housing and Urban Development,

the folks up top have been busy digging down below. She made her bold claim while jawin’ with Mr. Tucker Carlson, a man who talks like he’s always tryin’ to sell you a rifle or a pair of boots made from moon leather.

Miss Fitts, now 74 years wise and unafraid of rattlesnakes, ridicule, or the Clintons, says our dear government’s been burnin’ through tax dollars like a Nevada brushfire—only the flames are beneath our boots. She reckons, based on research from one Professor Mark Skidmore of Michigan State–which I assume is like the University of Nevada Reno but snowier–that this $21 trillion vanished into an invisible project of diggin’, blastin’, and burrowin’—creating a whole subterranean Shangri-La fit for senators, CEOs, and folks who don’t sweat in summer. The grand mole city supposedly includes hidden bases, fast-as-lightning transportation, and enough underground concrete to build a new Rome in reverse.

Here’s the part that gave me the hiccups–she says there are over 170 of these secret lairs–some tucked under the United States, others slumbering beneath the ocean like Atlantis’s drunken cousin. There’s even talk of secret space programs—’cause having a few thousand satellites in the sky ain’t enough–we gotta launch things from under the sea now, too.

While all that’s buzzin’ in your ears, let me holler something into the national echo chamber–Virginia City, the gem of the Comstock Lode, has been sittin’ on 700 miles of mine tunnels for well over a century. That’s right—seven hundred! Hollowed out by grizzled men with picks, whiskey, and no dental plans.

You could fit ten Washington D.C.s under that town and still have room for a dance hall and a whiskey distillery. And yet not one bureaucrat, billionaire, or bright-eyed futurist has thought to turn that ready-made warren into an underground city.

Not one.

Folks, we already have the infrastructure. So, you want secret bases? Just look beneath the boardwalk of Virginia City, where you might find Mark Twain’s boot print and a ghost who knows where the real treasures are.

But no–while the government might be building palaces beneath the Pentagon and tunnelin’ from sea to shining sea, Virginia City sits up on Sun Mountain, mindin’ its business, waitin’ for someone to say, “Hey, why not build down here?”