Loose Ideas Collection Page
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About a Severed Hand:
Ok, so a 40s something widow finds a severed hand on the
beach. She sees a wedding ring on it, and goes to take it. She slowly notices
more and more about the hand, eventually believing the hand to be its own
person.
I believe it was a Tuesday when I saw the severed hand on
the beach. A quiet beach it was, I had the longest walks when I could, when the
season was down and the seaside was empty and cold. I was so silly back then, it
looked from a distance like a seashell; curled up grasping nothing, like the
house of a little hermit crab. As pale as sand, barely definite in the distance
but with a little sparkle to it. A little glimmer of sun impaling my attention.
I wandered down the grassy buffer into the sand, and recognised the shape of a
ring. Then I realised the hand wearing it.
Lonely hand, forgotten its arm or shoulder or owner. I swept
through fear and shock and awe, paralysed in waves of feeling that pinned me like
a, well like someone, anyone finding the ghosts of violence. Blood splatter,
bones, sinew, it doesn’t matter what it is necessarily, we all just freeze when
we first witness. Like I said, silly. Once I recollected my phone was already
in my hands but I stopped. This time I chose to stop. There was something… a
familiarity. Familiarity? No, a… parallel, connection. The hand, the ring on
it, it wasn’t on the ring finger, but the middle finger. But the ring finger
had its own ring, a dark groove like a half-remembered memory of what a ring
was meant to be. An echo. I looked at my own hand, my own ring finger and my
own echo.
And I had hoped to forget it, my ex-ring. I forgot the hand
for a moment, and remembered why I had sought such loneliness as the winter
coast. I tried to remember him, but all I could think of was his back, as he
walked away.
I stood for a long time then, in my own memories, staring at
the waves. They waned and flowed, and wore the sand down to a smooth blanket,
all lumps and bumps and imperfections became perfection. Why couldn’t I be like
the sand, why was I lumpy and bumpy and imperfect? Why was I alone?
The cold water broke my stupor as they invaded my shoes. Sodden
socks and squelching as I skipped and tripped to dryness. But the hand! I had
nearly forgotten it, and it was being washed away. It was an odd impulse back
then, it was odd to me in retrospect, but I gripped a finger to save it. It was
clammy, and oddly slippery, and I immediately dropped it on thankfully dry
land.
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Designated anarchy - Right. 2044, anarchy city.
A story about the last human alive, after all other humans
died, in a world of A.I.
What would the story be about? The themes? Obviously philosophical
quandaries indicative of any AI story, being what is human, why do we have
emotions and what is the true value of life.
In order for dialogue to exist in such a story, this last
human would need to have some sort of companion. But it can’t be human…
In fact, in a postapocalypse built around a single human in
a world of machines, the solution to dealing with them would be to outsmart
using things too basic for them to comprehend.
I’m imagining a scene in which the human holds a host
computer or data bank hostage with gunpowder (something too basic for machines
to interact with).
A world reliant on the online space has all data wiped in an
instant.
What about a dystopia created by sleeper agents – I mean on
a global scale. Massive amounts of the population dead and all those left with
a constant fear of each other. Better yet, maybe go for a second variety type
approach and make them machines or some other non-human force.
A story about the last human alive, after all other humans
died, in a world of A.I.
What would the story be about? The themes? Obviously
phylisophical quandries indicative of any AI story, being what is human, why do
we have emotions and what is the true value of life.
In order for dialogue to exist in such a story, this last
human would need to have some sort of companion. But it can’t be human…
In fact, in a postapocalypse built around a single human in
a world of machines, the solution to dealing with them would be to outsmart
using things too basic for them to comprehend.
I’m imagining a scene in which the human holds a host
computer or data bank hostage with gunpowder (something too basic for machines
to interact with).
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There was a ringing in the air. Not the faintest tingling of
a tiny, warping bell, nor the malevolent resonance of the graveyard tower. It
was a regular bell. An everyday, door-knocker sized bell. The kind that people
put up when they’re tired of faint scuffs against the paintwork. It clung to
the breeze with all of its fickle might, and travelled not too far upwind, but
plunged down the willowy valley with the makings of a storm. It echoed inside
the tired, decrepit structure just as it was intended, just as it was built
for.
But the door was never answered.
There was no need, really, for there was no-one ringing the
bell. There was no occupant, no waiting courier, no guest and no witness. Just
breeze greeting itself, ringing the bell at its own door. It was the breeze
that’s home, of course. No-one came to the valley anymore. It was lonely,
really. The wind would forever knock, and would always be the source of the
creak and slam of the doors inside, but it would never have the nerve to answer
its own door. There were crooks in the wall, a dabbing of age and wood-rot left
all the entrance the wind would ever need, so why get the door? Why beacon the
air in, and cease the eternal ringing.
And let the bell fall silent.
That’s what he told himself, as he lay on a bedframe
blackened with age. No-one was here, no-one at the bell. And no-one’s home. The
sun slipped a fiendish ribbon through the crack of the window boards,
doom-saying the coming summer. It cast its branding breams across the room,
disturbing the dust of the hollow painting frame. It didn’t stop; it crept its
way past the gaps of the shrunken planks, to curse the hallway with its
hallowed hatred of the dark. He liked the dark. It didn’t leave, it didn’t face
the light. It cuddled up beside him in his empty days, nights.
He didn’t have much furniture left, but he had a few boards
left after dismantling his dresser. He clutched at it with bony, empty fingers,
and wrought it up against this crack. There was a clatter of a hammer. And
again. The light was gone, gone. He was safe from the outside again. He had
little to do in his domain. There was only one thing to talk to, but the breeze
was busy ringing the bell, and so he was just left with his mirror. It wasn’t
too wide, and it clambered up the walls with ease to reach his height. But he
didn’t feel like talking to THAT either.
He took to pacing the perimeter of his upstairs walls, marking each
board and nail, checking for the leeching brightness of the day. The latch on
the hatch leading to the ground floor too was secure. It was firm, heavy, and
bordered and banded by metal in locks and chains.
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What about a world in which humanity created machines, then
left. The machines keep running, generating their own human-like society. The
reason for this parallel is that robots were made purposefully human-like to
better integrate into the human psyche.
How about a robot history lesson.
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the idea that empathy is a compulsion given to us from an entity that lives in us/ uses us to incubate or exist. It means his crop/ lives/ parts of themself are preserved. This being could be god, or could be simply called 'humanity', but it would be a brilliant idea for an existential story.
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