Charon 2.

Image owned by West End Foto at https://www.flickr.com/photos/westendfoto/

Case 9045:

A sunset looms in the distant West as we blaze towards its horizon. Upon a furious pace, we barely manage to halt time as we delay the coming of the night. My companion is exhausted for old age has made it harder to outrun the sun. Press on comrade! Mustn’t let the shadows overtake us he muttered but with a hint of glee between heaving breaths. I wasn’t sure if he understood his fate or simply laughed in the face of it. After several more hours at this breakneck pace, he collapses onto the ground. Darkness creeps around us and he tells me his body can go no more. Shutting his eyes, he falls into the most peaceful of slumbers. I remove the sun so that it would never rise again.

Case 2353:

I awaken in a maze of galleries. Lining the walls are an arrays upon arrays of masks, thousands of them upon my estimation. I meet a man frantically trying on different masks. While observing him between swaps, I realized that he had no face of his own. Approaching him, I inquire as to the nature of his predicament. He replies that over a lifetime, he had lived a life of vanity in the image of others, never having discovered who he was or what he wanted. The masks, once the veneers of his successes, were more like decorations over a cast that veiled a forgotten injury.  I took all the masks down from the galleries and handed him a mirror.  Over time, he grew eyes to see his own reflection and found his way out of the labyrinth.

Case 60287:

A cancerous forest envelops us with a suffocating canopy. While the largest hardwoods thrive under a brilliant sun, there is hardly any light left for the life below. It seemed like the trees had grown too massive, too competitive in their struggle for attention. We approach a listless grove where song and mirth used to ring through time immemorial. My companion, a dryad who helped raise these woods, stares despondently at a leafless sapling wedged between a network of overgrown roots. This one has no future; she spoke with a tear welling up in her eyes. Perhaps she gave them too much love and had nothing left for herself. I uproot the sapling and transplant it on a burgeoning planet, where it would grow magnificently through the ages into tree onto itself.

Case 47135:

Drenched by the night. A single spotlight shines upon a lone warrior having hewed down waves upon waves of apparitions that lurk beyond sight. The ground beneath him is stained with his own blood, wounds inflicted upon him by his demons. His steely eyes however betray no hint of fear as he begins to press forward. His destination however is unclear as the path is circular.  Demons materialize in greater force, drawn again to his blood thirst which he satiates. I dare not approach him as to maintain the illusion. Instead, I invert his vision; once demons in light, now warriors in dark. The cycle of bloodshed was at last annulled.

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Parts 1, 2, 3

Charon 1.

Imaged owned by shahabalizadeh at http://shahabalizadeh.deviantart.com/

The year is 2718. Following the great catastrophes of the previous decade, mankind is headed towards extinction. No longer able to sustain a biological reality, humanity built virtual worlds from the dreams of its surviving members. To integrate man’s irrational desires with the facticity of his turbulent and all-to-often destructive past, a semi-autonomous intelligence was created to guide each dreamer towards a critical point where he or she could die in peace. Over the numerous trials, several notable cases are recounted from the agent’s logs.

Case 281:

I’m on a sailboat with an old man in his late 50’s out on the open sea. We’ve been hounded for days by a pack of sharks that seek to pull us into the dark depths from behind. Yet, we never see these hunters for when we turn to meet them head-on, they appear as harmless pools of fish which we caught and ate.  When I asked my fearful companion as to whom his enemies in life were, he responded, my friends, for they always in secret tried to outdo me in my endeavors. I subsequently transformed myself into his image. As we sat back-to-back, both fish and shark were no more but we began to starve. Realizing his error, he turned towards me and then dove into the sea.

Case 82:

I awaken aboard a space telescope orbiting a planet. My co-astronaut is a scientist taking scrupulous photos of distant galaxies yet all of the photos that lined the walls appeared blank. I ask him what he’s looking for and he responds, hope. I take a closer look at the planet from a nearby window and I could hardly make out its features. Ashen clouds blotted out most of the oceans but after several orbits, the planet was undeniably Earth. Have you given whilst indicating the blank plates? He replies, I am looking for hope but I do not believe it can be found. I then produce a snapshot of a young woman, an estranged daughter I suppose. Find your hope in her, not in distant realms. He took a moment to ponder his situation and then gazed back upon Earth, perhaps the first in the longest time. The planet appeared less gloomy than before.

Case 845:

Upon a busy suspension bridge overlooking a great river stood a young woman in her early 30’s. She leans too far over the railings and plummets into the river. No one else along walking along the bridge seemed to take notice. The scene then repeats itself but with a different person. I conjecture that the real dreamer is hidden amongst the many faces that pass this bridge, wishing both to maintain anonymity and to be discovered. Respecting such conditions, I start saving each person over the next hundred or so iterations. After the last person was saved, I was greeted by a collective voice of those whom I saved, “thank you for caring”.

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Parts 1, 2, 3