impending feeling of doom

His head was nearly all filled with joy, but a small shadow hanged at the back of his thoughts. As he kissed her lips and fumbled his hands around her waist he could feel a small itch, a little something deep inside his consciousness. Everyone was feeling it, not just him, a taste of impending doom, nearing, growing, a small spot of darkness in the blissful light of the oscillating twin suns of Sheliak.
 She had been just another girl, for a while, but as time passed on he did really fall for her and now he was thinking of asking her to become his wife. He had already begun the preparations, having bought the ritual beggar's cloth and the ticket for a shore trip, where he had to find a pair of perfectly round stones, one yellow and one blue. In a couple of days he'd arrange for them to be together at sunrise, but since he wanted to make sure that she wasn't expecting it, he had asked for the help of friends, in two days time. They were to show up, unexpectedly, at his place and insist on taking the two of them out for a couple drinks, and then, as sunrise approached, they would leave one by one, until the last of them asked for a ride home.
 That way he'd be alone with her, close to the gardens, and he could say to her "oh well, if we are here, we might as well watch the sunrise, sitting on the grass", and even if she did suspect anything he'd just say "oh come on, no way I could have planed all this!" until the suns started to rise, when he would remove his clothes, showing the beggar's cloth on his skin, and then he'd present her the round stones - "As the two suns revolve around each other, feeding each other with love and heat, so I want to revolve around you. As the two suns live forever bonded, so I want to live with you" - and she would say yes and he would be filled with joy and they would dance under the trees, the two stones firmly in her hand, her arm around his naked waist, and the birds would sing of their love.
 Even as he made plans for that, the feeling of doom grew bigger, but he was sure it was just his fear of she saying no, not knowing that what he felt everyone else in Sheliak-Three felt on the back of their heads. If he hadn't been so focused on her eyes and her every word and her every smile, he might have noticed the old man ranting about the end of the world on the street. But even focused as he was on her, he noticed the bright shine of a object entering the atmosphere as everyone did. And those few that missed the first, saw the second, or the third, or any one of the other hundreds of antimatter bombs that fell om the surface of the planet. The deaths of all living things on Sheliak-Three happened in a short span of seconds, barely enough for him to think that at least this way they'd be together forever.

Test Flight

It wasn't her first time aboard a Dragonfly class space ship, but this was one of the new Imperial Army ones, and the controls were placed differently. It took her almost two minutes to find the starter, and another full minute before she figured out how to turn the radio off. Once she did, the console filled with messages from the control tower (she never understood why they called it a tower, most of the times it was just another room, lost inside the stations, with screens and little angry men screaming at her because she wasn't respecting her vectors to the line) telling her to turn the radio back on. She replied, as soon as she found the keyboard that had been hidden on her side, where she usually found the user manuals.
  "I can communicate through here. Don't disrupt my music. Speaking of which, how do I turn the music on?"
  "The DF-4XTN is a fighter ship. There is no music."
  "LAAAAAAAAAAME" - she typed and said at the same time, reaching for her ear buds as soon as she pressed the return key. After checking that she had enough battery time on her wrist-comp to last the test, she selected a song at random from her "epic fight music" folder. The cords of the quantum bass echoed in her ears as she read the exit vector and waited for the "OK to go" from the tower. After a few more back and forth with the poor low ranked soldier tasked with controlling her lane, she finally hit the release button and the small ship was shot out of the station into the minefield. She should let the computer take care of dodging the obstacles, but it was too much fun to do it herself, and the voice was singing in her ears "Dance in the nebulae, dodging lasers and shooting aliens!" so she flew, pressing the trigger (locked, luckily) and blasting imaginary aliens from the skies of Jupiter. The console was screaming at her
  "TURN THE COMPUTER ON!", "THAT'S NOT YOUR EXIT VECTOR!", "YOU ARE HEADING TO A NO-EXIT ZONE!"
   She took her time to reply to that one, typing with the left hand and controlling the ship one-handed :   "there is a exit, it's just tight" - and directing the ship to a small gap between two mines and a asteroid, the left wing almost scrapping a bit of ink from a mine. She turned the radio on for a few seconds to scream a "HEEEEEEEEEEEELL YEEEEEEEEAAAAAH!" and then turned it back off. Sometimes she wonder how long it would be until she got expelled from the army, but most of the time she just wanted to have fun. The console blinked a "ENEMY AHEAD" warning, and the targeting system directed the aim to the closest test-enemy. She turned the targeting comp off and aimed manually, blasting the small satellite from the sky, and then flying through the debris (rule thirteen of space battle : never fly through the debris of a just destroyed enemy) to take aim for the next one. A few moments later she was returning to the station and feeling so good, she let the dragonfly take control of the entry, leaning back as much as she could in the stiff chair, singing with the radio back on. She would be heavily penalised for a lot of technicalities, but the truth was, she did a better than perfect score in the part that mattered : 16 shots, 17 enemies down. Although she had to admit that the the alignment of those two satellites next to the asteroid she blasted to get rid of both was luck.
    There would be more next week, and next time, she'd do it by the book. If she felt like it.

Entry 26 - Cogs

The jacket looms there, hanging on the door, a reminder that today is the last day. Tomorrow, the world of youth and happiness ends forever. Tomorrow he becomes another cog in the machine, and that will be his life for as long as he is expected to live : a cog. A piece of machinery that no one really cares for as long as it works. And if it stops working, well. There are more cogs everywhere. The days will move by, one after the other, all the same. His sadness will not be cured, his depressions and fears won't disappear, but they won't matter anymore. Everyday, from 9am to 7pm, his life will be meaningless. And from 7pm to 9am he will have his free time, to do the chores at home, to sleep, to take care of his body's needs, to tend to his pets, poor pets, now with the house all for themselves all day long, to keep up with the news from the world. Day after day of always the same, a endless hoard of pointless work and pointless talk and pointless existence. He misses it already, the carefree days of youth that end today. He misses the days spent in bed, the holosystem playing concerts and knowing that doing nothing is all he had to do that day. He misses the random call of a friend, a chance meeting on his morning walk that turns into a great day. Now the calls will remain unanswered until he returns from work. Now random chance encounters will last 5 minutes or less, because he can't be late : being late is anti-patriotic. Being late is wrong and God will punish you, if the machine doesn't get you first. He knows today it all ends. No more free passes. He misses studying already, and to think a few years back he'd kill to never have to listen to teachers and tutors and the ever present machine, yammering at his ears for him to study, for him to apply all his effort, for him to enjoy. Only now, the last day before it all ends, did he understand that what he had thought to be sarcasm from the machine was actually a well meant advice. There would be no more to enjoy, starting tomorrow. He lay there in bed, tears dry in his eyes, and a feeling of dread and doom hanging over his head. He signaled the sensor and the mechanical voice beeped once, to confirm it was ready for a command.
 "call her" - he said, knowing the machine to know who she was. She wouldn't pick up the phone, but if it rang long enough he could listen to her voicemail and in it the sound of her words. "I can't pick up the phone right now" had never sounded so good as in that moment when he lay in bed, Waiting to die by is own hand. He knew how to do it without the machine noticing it, thanks to the classes he'd taken on machine maintenance. The machine emptied the surveillance RAM every five days, and so he'd have to take one step at a time, slowly. The final step would simply be, to drink the water in the cup resting on his desk and wait. And now he waited for death to come, and free him from his future. His last words, coughed between blood, were a shaky "I will never be a cog."

Entry 25 - Buddha Talking to Buddha

 Two Buddhas, sitting face to face, arms folded and resting on top of crossed legs. Their speech is strange, each speaks at his own pace and their replies are often mismatched :
  "I'm not going.
  and have you seen the new episode?"
  "why not?"
  "the main dude killed his father!"
  "haven't seen yet! Don't spoil!"
  "not going because I don't feel like going."
  "oh fuck, I said no spoilers!
   and of course you are going."
  "you took to long to say it!
   no not going."
   "fuck you then" - something funny about a peaceful looking buddha saying "fuck you" with rage in his voice.

  It wasn't a room as much as a set of walls, and they weren't sitting on the floor, they were somewhere in the middle of the walls, and one couldn't tell which was ceiling and which was floor, all the walls seemed to be one and the other, at one point, but you'd never notice the room spinning.
  You'd never notice bugs anywhere either but every word was recorded, processed and stored, by the room.

   "she still hasn't said a thing"
   "she won't"
   "she will"
   "when?"
   "I don't know"
   "so.. you'll wait forever?"
   "for as long as I can"

   The sound filled the emptiness between walls, forming words, barely visible, outlines of letters one after the other, illuminated by the reflection of the buddhas on the wall. Sometimes the words would appear briefly and then disappear before they could transverse between walls, and something was left out of the talk. Yet the buddhas hardly noticed it, voices going left and right, three, four unconnected talks, all in one.

   "I won't go, go alone.
    and I haven't spoiled the important part"
   "I don't know no one else there!
    oh, got a text, wonder if it's her? [not delivered | retry?]
    and yes you did! He kills his father!"
   "of course you do! You know her!
    and the important part is how he dies"
   "nop, just some stupid ad."
   "what ad?"
   "the text I got."
   "what text?"
   "nevermind.
    she'll be busy with everyone else."

   Time passes slow and fast there, no clocks, no sunlight, no stars and no moon : time is meaningless between the walls. A buddah might go away and return just in time to listen to all that he missed. You can see, in rooms just like this one, buddhas talking to themselves, alone, and another buddha, sitting outside the walls, listening to every word he can see. There is no space separating rooms, all there is is a void that cannot be penetrated by sight sound or thought. Every set of walls is a closed file in the directory of time, and every word ever said is there saved, and only a format to the universe can erase them.

 "maybe it's time I just give up." [not delivered | retry?]
 "maybe it's time I just give up." [not delivered | retry?]
 "maybe it's time I just give up." [not delivered | retry?]
 "maybe it's time I just give up."
 "do it then, and then regret it until the end of time comes
  I'm off."

 One buddha slowly uncrosses his arms and legs, slowly stretches into a human pose, does a very small bow and falls out of the walls, vanishing into the void, no more a buddha, no more a voice.

 "maybe I will."

 the lone Buddha utters, his words like a fluorescent graffiti on the wall

 "maybe I will."