Reddit Collection (Fresh-Short #10) by DeYtH Banger (books to get back into reading txt) 📖

and liver-spots on his cheeks soon followed suit. All of us watched, stupefied as the process continued onward and Diabek appeared to age backwards.

Diabek had to have been nearly sixty years old, but in a matter of moments he appeared as though he was a young man in his early thirties. He then went young adult, then juvenile, then teenager. Diabek screamed in terror as his voice cracked from a gruff, raspy tone to a high-pitched pre-pubescent shriek. His body shrunk in his clothes and his extremities retracted within his coat. By the time we had reached him, he was gone.

We didn’t have time to gawk, as our stupor was interrupted by the computer blaring a warning siren, and a flickering plethora of lights designated an external problem of some sort. The display was a failsafe designed to protect the computer from malicious outside sources. Most of us thought the firewalls of the quantum computer were enough to prevent any attempted breach, but apparently, we were wrong.

One of my colleagues scrambled to the kill switch. He was poised to throw it, when he was halted by a sudden shout from Lundgren. Lundgren stood, eyes wide as dinner plates and mouth agape as he stared at the main monitor of the computer. The warning display had ceased, and only a single screen remained active. Upon it was displayed a single loading bar, with approximately twenty percent of it being filled in. This indicated only one thing; something was being downloaded.

We immediately surmised that it must be a virus or other malware of some sort. A prospect once thought impossible based on the security measures of the computer, and yet the download persevered. All attempts made to restrict the download and halt its progress proved futile.

We exchanged nervous glances with one another, torn on whether to pull the plug and save our creation from hostile insurgence or allow it to continue to whatever ends. The call was eventually made by the investors outside the room, who had since been notified of the development. They demanded power be cut, and the machine be saved. The computer represented a colossal investment, and the costs to repair or replace it if any damage were to ensue was not something taken lightly.

Begrudgingly, Lundgren followed orders and commanded shutdown protocol. It was done straight away, but the machine did not power down. It continued, impossibly, and without a direct power source sustaining it.

Panic began to erupt from the lab, and power to the entire facility was ordered to be cut from the mainframe. It was done within seconds, and the room fell into darkness. The only light that remained was that of the main monitor as the download reached the halfway mark. The computer groaned and whirred under enormous duress as hundreds of fans shot to life to attempt to cool the leviathan machine.

We stood back, unable to make heads or tails of the development. There was simply no possible way the machine should’ve remained active, and yet it was. It continued to fill up the progress bar, powered by the fuel of some unknown outside source. With no other viable solutions at hand barring physical destruction of the computer itself, we could do nothing but await the culmination.

The download finished several minutes later, and the room fell into pitch black. We deliberated for a moment, before deciding our only recourse was to power up the computer once again. The mysterious file weighed in at an impressive 100,000 terabytes, enough to fill hundreds of normal hard drives, but just another drop in the ocean for the quantum computer. Once full mobility was achieved, a single never before seen prompt filled the screen.

“Unknown file type. Do you wish to execute the file?” All attempts made to bypass the prompt failed. We quickly used a separate program on another screen to trace the file’s origin, but to no avail.

Now, there is no hiding from a quantum computer behind a proxy or VPN. It uses algorithm-based process combined with ping response speed to determine probable origin up to an accuracy of 99.999%. We’re talking response time measured in millionths of a second, but for a quantum computer, it’s like the ABC’s. Sure, it gets it wrong once in every million attempts, point being it always has a guess. This time however, we received a new message.

“Unable to determine file origin.” Lundgren took a step back and pondered the situation and wiped the beads of glistening sweat from his brow. With nothing else at our disposal, he realized there was only one option left. And so, he gave one last command.

“Open it.”

The computer began to render the file, the process taking several minutes to complete. It was entirely in binary code, and eventually translated to a single message. Upon completion, two words in a white font sat silently amidst a black background.

I never thought two simple words could have such lasting effects on my psyche. Those two words that have made me question everything I thought I ever knew. The computer fizzled out moments later and shut down. All of us just kind of left after that.

I returned home, overwhelmed by the events and left with a mystic sense of terror instilled deep in my stomach. The following morning, I was called by one of the investors. He informed me that someone had broken into the lab late the previous night and sabotaged the operation. The lab was lit ablaze and soon reduced to a smoldering pile of ash, and the quantum computer was damaged beyond repair. Whoever had done it possessed a security card and seemed to know the exact process required to dismantle the automatic sprinkler system.

Police held a single suspect in custody. A man who appeared as a neurotic mess in the center of a maniacal nervous breakdown. He was tried and convicted some time later and declared clinically insane. He was ordained to a mental health facility in northern Sweden, and it is there that he remains to this day. That man’s name? Henryk Lundgren.

I’ve never been able to properly assess just what it was that happened that day. The event has left me shaken and confused in more ways than I could possibly list. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be whole again, I just can’t be.

I know the truth, the reason for our meager existence. We had reached out far beyond, and something answered our call. Whether or not it was truly what we would call ‘god’, I can’t say. But I will say, after what I saw happen to Diabek, and what became of Lundgren, I can’t think of a better word for it. I think god is something we never could’ve imagined. It holds us all within the palm of its hand, and with a simple flick of the wrist, we would cease to be. There is no love, there is no salvation, there is only that which lies beyond the margins of reality. That which we have no possible hope of understanding.

One thing is also certain; it is watching us, and it does not want us meddling in that which we have no business seeing. We are set amidst an ocean of infinite black seas, and it was not meant for us to travel far. That final message could not have been clearer, and anytime I find myself drifting, I remember those two simple words relayed by the quantum computer in its last moments of life.

“TURN BACK.”

 

CREDIT: Zacharius Frost

My son disappeared six years ago, and I keep finding his belongings.

by Trainer_AssKetchup

 

 

My wife and I have always lived a quiet life in the country with our son, Wesley. Our 9-acre property is surrounded to the north and the east by a forest, where Wesley would often go play with his friends or by himself. For his 8th birthday, I had gone into the forest with Wesley to help him make his own tree fort where he could stash his comic books, Game Boy, toys, and treasures that he would find while exploring the woods behind our house. He amassed quite the collection of interesting rocks and bugs (which he stored in mason jars) in his forest base, and he spent most of his free time just a few hundred yards away from our house. It was a peaceful life that we had for ourselves. I would take our car into work on the weekdays and bring my wife to town right after Wesley’s bus arrived to take him to school. Each day was the same routine, and we spent the weekends together at the house. In short, we were all very happy.

This week is the sixth anniversary of my son, Wesley’s, disappearance. To this day, we don’t know what happened to him on that brisk autumn evening, but from the moment our twelve-year-old son left the house we had a sneaking suspicion he was never coming back.

On Friday, August 23, 2013, our daily morning ritual happened as it always had; I would wake up, eat breakfast with Kim and Wesley, and we would wait together until the bus arrived. Wesley had a half-day at school today, so he would return home before me or my wife were able to get home and watch him. This wasn’t a big deal, he was 12 and could look after himself for a few hours. We told him to call my cell phone as soon as he got home after school that day, to make sure he was home safely. As Wes climbed up the stairs onto the bus, my wife began to tremble and eventually break into tears. Neither of us knew what she was crying for, but we waved our son goodbye and both climbed into the car to finish off the work week.

My cell phone rang at exactly 12:33 that afternoon. My iPhone played the default “Marimba” tone and I saw that I was receiving a call from our home landline. It must have been Wesley, who had just gotten off the bus and ran into our home, obeying my instructions to call. When I slid my finger across the screen and answered the phone, the only thing I heard was the empty dial tone of our home landline, as if he hadn’t typed out my number yet. I called out his name a few times through my cell, but there was nothing. I tried calling back, but there was no answer. He did as he was instructed, called Dad as soon as he got home, and must have sprinted out the door to go play in the woods. I thought nothing of it until I got home.

I picked up my wife from the store on the way back to the house. The porch lights were on, which was our family’s way of indirectly saying, “Someone’s home!” Upon entering our house, I called out to Wesley to see if he was in his room. I got no response, so I assumed he was still outside in the woods, even 5 hours after his call. My kid always loved that fort that I built him. Kim began making dinner and I changed my clothes and went to the spot in the woods where my son and I had constructed his home away from