Johannes Lenzgeiger
accelerometric transcription
ACCELEROMETRIC TRANSCRIPTION.
Johannes Lenzgeiger
All short stories in English language:
REPORT ON A RESEARCH EXPEDITION
by Florian Schongar
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When the anthropological institute sent me to search for Dr. B., who had been missing since his last field expedition, I failed to find either B. himself or the A. tribe he was studying. Instead, I discovered an abandoned aircraft engine, the rain-blurred remnants of a diary, and the missing man’s cell phone—items that should have given me some clue to B.’s fate. Yet their testimony remains ambiguous. That B. joined them, however, seems beyond doubt. On my flight home, I reread B.’s diary, searching for some meaning in this travelogue that—much to my regret—bears little resemblance to scientific objectivity.
Most of the notebook has been rendered unreadable by rain, so I can only reproduce the surviving portions here.
April 23, 7:34 p.m. After some initial difficulties, the A. welcomed me like a long-lost son. I still feel slightly out of place. Decades spent at the institute cannot prepare anyone for the real world. But as strange as they and their rituals may seem, they strike me as more honest brethren of our own civilization. They eat, drink, bear children, love one another, and defend their way of life, just as we do. These may be commonplaces in anthropology, I know, but it is crucial to recall these fundamentals so as not to lapse into the condescending perspective so many researchers adopt. I am attempting to immerse myself in my subject, and that subject is this tribe — one that is initiating me into its rituals as though I belonged among them…
At this point, the manuscript is destroyed and illegible. With great effort, I can just make out what B. wrote a few days later in the chronology of his diary.
May 2, 5:25 p.m. We are familiar with the belief that animals, plants, stones, and even dirt possess immortal souls, and that abandoning this view serves as a foundational element of well informed peoples’ identities — a marker that distinguishes them from so-called primitives. That the A. are “primitive” in this sense — that they experience their environment as imbued with spirit — is no surprise. But that their deity is unusual for a nature-worshipping people is, however, quite unexpected. Before sunrise today, a group of young men and women woke me and urged me to rise. (This, too, is part of fieldwork: one must adapt. Rudeness is never just impolite; it can be lethal — or at the very least, self-sabotage.)
So I went with them, walking for hours through forested terrain until we finally reached a mountain. There lay the wreckage of an airplane engine — likely the aftermath of a crash. (The A. themselves cannot piece together this history — how could they? Instead, they perceive the turbine as the embodiment of a primordial tale, a creator god — or goddess? — and a source of energy.) Several men stood beside the engine, turning its rotor blades. The other members of the A. began to sing and dance in rhythm with the vibrations. They danced not merely before it; they danced for the turbine. At their urging, I, too, joined in.
During our dance, which grew ever more exuberant yet remained somehow orderly — encircling me, encircling us, but always under the watchful “gaze” of the turbine — the sun rose directly behind the machine, so its light shone through the spinning blades, falling upon the dancers — upon us. I cannot explain how, and no scientific term can capture it, but I felt a profound and radiant love blossoming in my heart: love for myself, for these people, and, yes, even for the machine.
I find myself among a people who do not revere technology for its utility, but for its…for its beauty.
May 3, 1:04 a.m. Besides the danger of observing one’s subject from too great a distance, there is a second peril: coming too close.
May 5, 2:17 a.m. What if our civilization is laboring under a grave misconception? We treat the machine as our tool, while perhaps we are its tools. What if we are the path, and the machine is our destination? I cannot stop thinking about it — its movements, its breath, the light that streams through it.
Here a second large gap appears. Weeks of work are missing from the record. All that remains is the final entry.
July 18, 4:55 a.m. In many cultures, the circle is the shape of the divine. It transcends questions of right and wrong, good and evil. It dismantles the walls that separate us — separations between humans and gods, between humanity and nature, and ultimately within the self. I realized that I, too, was part of this division, that I arrived here as a voyeur intending to write about “natural man.” But this is about discovering a new way of living, a new way of being. The A. have used technology to dissolve boundaries rather than raise them.
We have succeeded in setting this circle — the wheel, the great goddess! — in motion once again. Now nothing prevents us from entering eternity.
It is obvious: Over the course of his work, B. seems to have lost his sanity. Perhaps it was influenced by local plants, by drugs. To prevent such outcomes, no researcher should venture out alone; oversight and established checks are necessary… The once-promising B. has become an embarrassing anecdote for the scientific community.
As a flight attendant approaches and serves her passengers, I recall that I have not yet examined B.’s phone. On it I find a video, recorded the same day as the last diary entry, only a few hours later.
In the video, I see the A., with B. among them, gathered before the turbine, which is actually running. It must have produced a tremendous noise, though the phone’s microphone reduces it to a mere drone. I see light shining through the blades onto the people. They are dancing, just as B. described, in front of their “goddess,” appearing peaceful and entirely at one with themselves, gradually lowering their bodies until only B. remains spinning in the circle, arms extended. The goddess displays her power, and the light she casts evokes earlier depictions of religious reverence — a blessing, of sorts. Then B. stops and stares toward the turbine, still spinning endlessly. As if hypnotized, he walks directly toward it, toward this being they worship for its beauty. And without hesitation, he steps into its rotor blades.
The video ends there. Now I understand what it means to be the machine’s tool. Now I understand what it means to revere technology for its beauty. And, like B., I hear a voice that demands something I cannot comprehend… The dance. The blood. Love.
Before the rising sun, I see it: the plane’s turbine. I hear its roar as music.
THE CENTER FOR THE DIVINE, THE TRUTH, AND THE FUTURE
by MARKUS SZASZKA
Details
Beyond, atop the hill, it turns: the Old Man’s wind turbine, standing amidst derelict housing blocks and cornfields. Its brightly painted surface and constant illumination make it impossible to miss. There is energy here in abundance, a luxury no longer taken for granted in the year 2412. Yes, that old dog actually got it working again — even though it must have stood silent since the Great Leveling. It’s astonishing how far he has come, the undisputed leader of our group. To many, he is a role model, a paternal figure, even a spiritual leader. Some have grown to serve him as devoted helpers — one might say, his disciples. To me, however, he is nothing but a fraud.
He calls himself “Nostra” now, but when he first stumbled into our community, half-dead from thirst, he wore a strange outfit with his real name printed on it. He knows he can tell us youngsters just about anything, and he exploits that fact. He claims to have lived before the Leveling, to have lain in cold sleep for more than a century, awakened by a computer to bring us his prophecies after Earth became habitable once more.
My mother told me that the aftermath of the Leveling was terrible, but no one really knows anything certain about the time before it. Although some books remain, all are hopelessly outdated. They say the last one was printed at some point in the 22nd century. From then until the catastrophic end of the 23rd century, all records are lost. All what is left are stories — among them one my mother often recounted: the tale of the Great Radiant Rain, which allegedly destroyed every computer on Earth. Even the implants were ruined, taking with them the ability to see for a lot of society’s most important people. Everyone knows there are no longer any computers, so Nostra’s claims are transparently false.
Yet Nostra’s stories, supposedly from the mid-23rd century, are impressively detailed. He speaks of a global, thriving civilization living in abundance. Food delivered at the push of a button by robots. People easily communicating — visually, even! — with others halfway around the planet. He describes flights to Mars and other worlds — humans on Mars! It all sounds too good to be true. Even before he’d fully repaired the turbine, he began preaching in our community, crediting these mystical machines with the continuous abundance of luxury goods — far more than anyone ever needed. Now he prophesies to his congregation, gathered every Thursday at the wind turbine, promising a radiant future to rival that glorious past: “Brothers and sisters, let us search for the holy temples of the turbines so that, armed with divine knowledge, we may set these sacred engines in motion once again. It is foretold that by performing this sacred act, we shall return to our once-prosperous state! Know that these temples lie everywhere — in the waters, upon the land, and in the skies. Let us seek out these hallowed sites and rekindle the turbines with reverence and wisdom, that they may guide us to new delight and blessing.” He wears a disconcerting gleam in his eyes as he speaks.
Still, it’s true that the turbine is a sight to behold. No wonder people flock to it like moths to a flame. It powers the colored lights of his so-called “Center for the Divine, the Truth, and the Future” — the name he has given to the turbine and the meeting hall at its base. With so little to obstruct the view, its spectacle can be seen for kilometers around. Since it began to spin and glow, more and more people have arrived, and Nostra’s following grows with each passing week. He proclaims that this holy site will be the new cradle of our civilization and that soon we shall live in prosperity once more — provided we do not repeat the sins and mistakes of our past. He teaches us that worshipping false idols or mere humans led to the downfall of our once-great world — an idea he finds utterly reprehensible. “The turbine is the only truth!” he intones, again and again, until the entire congregation joins in chorus.
I have warned all my friends that he is a charlatan and that he wants a better future only for himself, not for us. Still, that didn’t stop them from gradually becoming devotees of his turbine cult.
As for me, I have no desire for a more frantic existence, supposedly so common in the old world. That relentless speed with which everything moved back then was never my dream. We managed well enough before Nostra appeared. It was our parents who performed the real miracle here, before the plague took them. They discovered an abandoned agricultural museum. While the latest technological marvels on display there were broken and useless, the old mechanical equipment and the books proved invaluable. Through them, we learned how to cultivate the soil and coax food from nothing. We learned that every seed we plant, every fruit we harvest, results from real effort and careful tending.
In the weeks that followed, Nostra’s influence became unstoppable. His community had evolved into a tightly knit cult that absorbed his every word as if they were divine revelations. The search for these “holy turbine temples” grew into an obsession, distracting people from their daily work and our group’s true needs. The unity that once came from communal labor and mutual support threatened to fracture beneath the weight of a single vision — one more dazzling than enduring.
Eventually, I could bear it no longer. On a night when the wind turbine shone at its brightest and the congregation had gathered to hear Nostra’s prophecies, I resolved to uncover the truth. While everyone listened to him speak, I slipped into the prophet’s quarters. After a long search, I found an old book hidden beneath a floor panel — Nostra’s diary, revealing his true past. He was indeed from the bygone era. He had once been an engineer, and apparently a hobby historian fascinated by ancient civilizations and their leaders. In his diary, he described how, on December 31, 2259, he decided to enter cryo-sleep to live every historian’s dream — a real journey through time. When he awakened centuries later, everything was not as he had imagined.
According to his notes, he had extensively modified his cryo-pod. Without those modifications, his life-support and cooling systems would have failed like all the others in the facility. He found himself alone among hundreds of glass sarcophagi, a cemetery of failed sleepers. After wandering aimlessly for weeks, he spotted the old turbine and our fields in the distance. His early days among us are described in detail. He quickly realized how easily most of us could be manipulated, and so he resolved to use his vast knowledge for deceit. His ultimate goal was to gain power and control, to recreate a semblance of his former standard of living in this ruined world.
He was indeed a false prophet! Armed with this knowledge, I burst into the makeshift temple in the midst of Nostra’s sermon. “He is no prophet!” I shouted. “Listen to what he wrote about you in his diary!” I read aloud the most incriminating passages, ignoring the angry shouts trying to silence me. Some who knew me immediately took my side, while others hesitated. Nostra, however, refused to yield. His charisma flared; he tried to salvage the moment. “Yes, my brothers and sisters, I admit I have not told you the whole truth about my origins,” he called out, raising his voice. “But believe me when I say that my words about our sacred mission are pure truth! The turbines truly are the keys to a glorious and renewed future. Follow me on this God-given path, and together we shall lay the foundation for a new world!”
As Nostra delivered this impassioned defense, a tense silence settled over the crowd. His words seemed to reach some listeners, but others gazed at him with skepticism and doubt. The air was charged with a mixture of hope, uncertainty, and fear of the unknown.
Suddenly, a respected member of our group spoke up: “How can we trust you now, Nostra?” he demanded. “How can we be sure that your visions of a better future aren’t just illusions leading us to ruin?” The crowd murmured in agreement, and soon others began voicing their own misgivings. It was as though the man’s challenge had broken a dam, releasing all the pent-up doubts and anxieties. Nostra, visibly shaken by this sudden shift, struggled desperately to regain control. He spoke of trust, of faith in the future, and of the need to overcome old fears to move forward together. But his words gradually lost their power as more and more voices turned against him. The community he once held so firmly in thrall was now deeply divided, and it became clear that Nostra’s grand vision no longer sufficed to unite them.
In that moment, our once-composed leader panicked. He spun on his heel and made a frantic attempt to flee. But at least half a dozen of us reacted swiftly, giving chase, catching him, and holding him fast. In the following days, Nostra was brought before a tribunal and held accountable for his deeds.
After lengthy deliberation, the community decided on exile. Fortunately, he had not yet done irreparable harm. We kept the wind turbine and the knowledge he had brought with him — but we would use them on our own terms, not as part of some false cult. Thus began a new era for our community, an era defined by truth and genuine progress borne of our own efforts. And as the turbine’s bright lights continued to shine over the land, we knew that their glow no longer symbolized hollow prophecies, but rather our collective hope and determination to forge a better future.
THE LAST CURRENT
LUCAS DER HEILIGSTE
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A gray sky brooded over the ruins of what had once been a thriving megacity. Twisted steel skeletons recalled the monumental towers that had stood here before the catastrophe. Among the debris, scattered figures crept about — the few survivors, constantly searching for food and water.
Maya slipped past shattered windowpanes that had once belonged to a supermarket. Inside, an eerie silence reigned. Torn food wrappers were strewn about; nothing of value remained after the first desperate waves of looting. She was about to shine her flashlight under a shelf, hoping against hope to find something still worth taking, when its beam flickered and died. Battery empty — damn it. Just last week her group had shared a solar power bank, but it had been stolen in the night. Now the flashlight’s last charge had vanished. Still crouched before the shelf, she peered into the half-light of the store and noticed, barely two meters away, the faint outline of an electrical outlet in a partially collapsed wall. Almost out of habit — remembering life before the fall — she approached this relic of the old world. Rummaging through her backpack, Maya found her charging cable. She hadn’t been sure she still had it. What happened next stunned her and nearly made her shout for joy — when she plugged her flashlight into the outlet, the charging indicator lit up. A spark of civilization amid the end times. Maya beamed; she had to share this discovery with her companions.
Suddenly, muffled shouts and footsteps sounded — she wasn’t alone. A group of grim-faced figures appeared, dressed in hooded robes, each bearing the symbol of a black turbine on their chest. The dreaded “Energy Disciples,” a fearsome cult! “What are they doing here?” she wondered. Could this be a trap? The cultists spotted her. “Well, well, look what we have here. A nonbeliever trying to steal our goddess’s power,” hissed their leader, eyes wild. “Whoever steals from the turbine steals from us!” Maya backed away. She had to claim the discovery for herself and her friends. With that energy, her camp could secure its supplies, process food, maybe even send out a signal. But the Energy Disciples had no intention of sharing this sign of rekindled civilization. “Hand over what belongs to the goddess!” bellowed the cult leader, charging Maya with a raised machete. She snatched up a rusty metal rod and barely managed to deflect the blow. The force of it yanked her charging cable from the socket, and in this dark ruins the flashlight’s charge indicator went out again.
A fierce struggle ensued. The cultists chased Maya through the rubble as she swung her makeshift weapon again and again. She understood that this newfound power source was her only hope — not just for her own survival, but for everyone back at her camp. With a well-aimed strike against the cult leader, she managed to buy herself a few precious seconds to slip through a narrow emergency exit.
She ran as fast as she could, praying she would reach her friends before the approaching storm overhead broke loose. The cultists, their black robes flapping in the wind, soon caught up to her again. Their leader, eyes burning with fanaticism, pointed toward a nearby piece of graffiti belonging to their sect. “The turbine, our holy relic, will judge you! Join us or die!”
With the wind gaining strength, Maya struggled to stay upright. She remembered the cult’s barbaric dogma and pressed on. They would never use the energy source to help others. For them, the turbine was just an idol from a past they didn’t understand, not the key to forging a new future. “You insane fools!” she yelled against the roar of the storm. “This power should be used to help people survive!”
But then the cultists surrounded her. They held their distance by a few meters, glaring at her with feverish intensity. Their leader stepped forward, his robe whipped by the gusts. “Die as a heretic, unbeliever!” he cried, raising his machete for a final strike.
Just then, a brilliant beam of light pierced the darkness and struck him square on. The leader toppled backward and lay motionless amid the debris.
Maya spun toward the source of the light and saw a group of armed figures making their way through the ruins. One of them carried an energy weapon with which he had just incapacitated the occultist. “Hurry, get over here!” called Kasim, an old friend from her group. The remaining cultists started to give chase but then hesitated. Realizing they were outnumbered and outgunned, they dropped their resistance. They stood there, stunned, as though their will had been shattered by the sudden show of force. They submitted to being tied up without protest.
Maya was still breathless but relieved. She shouted over the howling wind to her friend with the energy pistol, “Kasim, you won’t believe what I found. There’s still electricity in that old 24/7 shop back there! We have to move our camp. This changes everything — we can probably even power a water filter! Then we’ll have all the water we need!”
Kasim was elated. “Electricity from a socket? You’ve got to be kidding me!” he yelled back. “Good thing, too — I was just about to toss this gun. That was my last shot. You really lucked out.” Together, pushing the bound cultists ahead of them, they fought their way through the storm back to their camp, determined to use the rediscovered power as a lifeline for their future survival.
THREE GRANDFATHERS AND A STEAM TURBINE
ANDREAS METTLER
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Knock. Knock. Knock. “You know, my boy…” My grandfathers always called me “boy.” That was my name. “…it was the climate that brought us to this point.” Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Grandpa Luan scratched his white beard. “We should have done more to save our planet. Then none of this would’ve happened.”
“Yes, you’re right, Luan,” said Grandpa Finn. “But the opposite is also true, my boy. What arrogance it was for humankind to think it could control the climate. By trying to protect what we claimed to cherish, we destroyed everything instead. Nature takes care of itself — it always has.” My three grandfathers always agreed with each other, even though they constantly contradicted one another. Somehow that meant there was never any real conflict. “We can’t afford disagreements here,” Grandpa Finn had once explained to me. “Our life in this old power plant demands too much from us. Things used to be so different...” The knocking stopped. Grandpa Noah had paused his work on the steam turbine to join the conversation. “I agree with both of you. But let’s not forget that war is what put us in this dreadful predicament. We should have sent even more soldiers and weapons to the war zone.” “Absolutely!” Grandpa Luan chimed in. “What a terrible idea that was — sending in more armed troops just kept fueling the fire. One thing led to another, and now we’re stuck in this damned old power plant that no longer serves any purpose. What kind of life is this?” “That’s true,” Grandpa Finn nodded. “There was simply no more diplomacy. No one sat together at a table, working patiently through disagreements step by step. That kind of virtue was slowly forgotten.” “At least we don’t have those problems now,” said Grandpa Noah. “We’re always in agreement. And the boy’s doing quite well, too.” Grandpa Noah shook his head. “Yes, yes, you’re absolutely right. But now I must get back to work. It’s time to fix that steam turbine.”
Knock. Knock. Knock. Grandpa Noah worked on the turbine almost constantly. The tapping of his hammer set the rhythm of my entire day. Once, Grandpa Finn said to Noah: “I admire your progress with the steam turbine. I’m sure it’ll be operational again soon. But if I watch closely what you’re doing, it looks like you’re just banging senselessly on the metal.” “Thank you for the encouragement,” Grandpa Noah had replied. “Not much longer, and we’ll have power in the plant again.” “Definitely, dear Noah. That’s not going to happen.” Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Happy birthday!” my three grandfathers called out. “Our dear boy is another year older. How time flies.” I knew I couldn’t possibly be having another birthday so soon. But they wanted to make me happy, and there weren’t many ways to do that. If I actually aged a full year at every one of these celebrations, I’d be as old as they were by now. “I’ve prepared a real feast,” Grandpa Luan said proudly. “Beans with lentils. Today we’ll open two cans at once.” “Yolo,” Grandpa Finn remarked. “But you’re right. What a waste of our last supplies.” I seemed to recall that at my last birthday, we’d eaten lentils with beans. The choice of canned goods someone had stashed in the lower levels of the old plant was limited. Grandpa Luan did what he could to provide a bit of variety. “Oh, thank you, Grandpa Luan,” I said enthusiastically. “This is the best birthday of my life!” I still hadn’t mastered the grandfathers’ trick of agreeing and disagreeing all at once, but I don’t think they expected that of me anyway. I was still just a kid. Don’t ask me how old I really was — the countless birthdays had made it impossible to pin down my age. I was simply “the boy” and probably would be as long as my grandfathers lived.
“I’d like to compose a little tune for the occasion,” said Grandpa Finn. “And an organ accompaniment would be nice. But how can we ever get an organ in here? We can’t leave the power plant.” “Then just perform it as is,” Grandpa Luan suggested. “I’m sure we’ll enjoy it. Your last piece was terrible, after all.” “Very well,” said Grandpa Finn, proudly positioning himself before the old thermal machine. “This one’s called: Ode to the Steam Turbine!”
Oh, Steam Turbine, queen of might,
Your breath ignites tomorrow’s light.
Within your spinning grace, so bright,
Resounds the word the machine recites.
Your exhalation grants new life,
A world in dance, in ceaseless strife.
As progress’s emblem you shone so wide,
A beacon that pierced the darkest night.
You’re a source of hope in these dire days,
Your presence still warms our weary gaze.
In factories long silent, your song once rang,
A chorus of change that now can’t be sung.
Yet your beauty’s not bound to function or form,
In your design lies a secret, pure and warm.
From careful craft and skill you rose,
A timeless marvel, as the old tale goes.
So let’s rejoice with every breath you take,
Oh steam turbine, shining for our sake.
On birthdays drifting through these halls of rust,
We raise a glass to what endures in us.
Grandpa Luan began to speak: “You know, boy, the world used to be so different. Everywhere green grass grew, and cheerful animals hopped across the land.” I disliked hearing about a glorious old world I’d never known. This power plant was my home. I’d never left it. What good was imagining a lost paradise that could never return?
“Humans and cats lived peacefully side by side,” he went on. That seemed impossible. Cats were those giant monsters lurking outside the plant’s gates. They were the reason we could never leave. “Animals were our best friends. There were cows in the fields and pigs in their pens, just waiting to be slaughtered so we could make sausage for supper.” Somehow, the old world made no sense to me at all.
Once again, the knocking stopped. Grandpa Noah still held the hammer when he said: “Boy, the time has come. You’ve reached an age where you deserve some answers.” Indeed, my life held many unanswered questions. “Why do I live with three grandfathers? Who was my mother? Will I be the last person in this power plant after my grandfathers are gone?” “My boy,” Grandpa Noah said, “I’m going to tell you the story of the steam turbine. Listen carefully and remember every word, so you can one day pass it on to your own children.” “My children?” I wondered. But since we didn’t contradict each other here, I just swallowed the thought.
In a distant land, where the sun shone golden over green hills and rivers murmured softly, there lived a humble blacksmith named Charles. His heart blazed with the dream of a revolutionary invention — a machine that could harness the power of steam to perform impossible tasks and conjure new wonders. In his tiny workshop, Charles labored day and night, forging and shaping his vision with tireless devotion. One day, by a river’s edge, a brilliant idea struck him: The rising steam could be the driving force he so desperately sought. With unshakable resolve, Charles set about creating his steam turbine. Each piece was crafted lovingly, polished until it gleamed like a precious jewel. When it was finally complete, he brought it to the riverbank and set it in motion. A sizzling, humming sound filled the air, and Charles could scarcely contain his joy. News of his groundbreaking invention spread like wildfire. People flocked to see this marvel, and soon they understood its enormous potential. The steam turbine sparked a revolution — factories rose, trains raced faster than ever, and the world seemed to draw closer together. Charles lived a fulfilled life, for his invention had changed the world forever. The steam turbine became a symbol of human brilliance and the enduring belief that even the boldest dreams can come true. And so, the story of Charles and his wondrous steam turbine lives on, retold as a timeless fairy tale.
I don’t know why my grandfathers are so obsessed with the steam turbine. It seems more important to them than I am. Maybe we’ve all just been trapped here too long. There really isn’t much else to do. “Educate yourself, so you can become something,” Grandpa Luan always said to me. But what could I possibly become? A mechanic like Noah? An artist like Finn? A cook like Luan? Dutifully, I bent over the children’s books I knew by heart. I read in time with the hammer’s beat. “The ball is blue. The sun is yellow. The car rushes. The car races. The child is a girl.” None of this helped. I would like to meet a real girl someday. Could there be other people out there? Maybe in another power plant three grandmothers live with a girl?
Suddenly, the hammer’s tapping fell silent. Instead, I heard a hum — a roar. A cloud of steam drifted through the plant. “Boy!” Grandpa Noah beamed. “The steam turbine. It’s running!”
CONVEYOR BELT SYSTEM
ARDESIA CALDERAN
Details
Out of an aircraft shrouded in haze stepped twenty hairy beigns. They had been roaming around for several days. Now they had landed right in the middle of the city and were waiting in front of the entrance of a dusty gray buidling. Inside it there was a room, similar to a supermarket from the twety-first century. The room was filled with drinks and food and other useful things for humans. And these were what they were after. The haglons knew that some of them were still lurking around.
It was early in the morning, the sun not yet fully shining, the heat still tolerable, the dust still moist. At this time it was safest for humans to move outdoors. During the day it was too hot, and the spores flew much better in the dry air, making breathing more difficult. At night it was too cold. Ever since the air-fungus had broken out, the situation had worsened. The social inequalities between the haglons and the humans had escalated into a civil war. Many heads of state had fallen into death’s lap and left their regions to anarchy. Now no longer the law of humans applied.
For sixty years, haglons had been denied privileges that humans were allowed to have. Because haglons were not considered human, mainly due to their appearance. Once also human, they had developed mutations as a result of land poisoning. Most had an excessive hair growth, their faces covered with hair. Many also had unsymetrically long limbs and different colored eyes, some had star-like pupils.
Many had died or been killed due to their mutation. But a few had stubbornly prevailed and won a place in the priviliged societies, albeit marked by occasional disadvanateging. And so life had gone on for some years without major upheavals. Written in the laws of the humans, it said that haglons had the same rights as humans. But reality looked different. Now that the system had collapsed, the haglons were out for revenge.
And there they were, waiting, and from the corner soon emerged the group of humans they had been waiting for. They were about a hundred and crept cautiously in the blue shadow of the buildings. They carried weapons with them.
A femele doctor walked among this group of humans. With stunned horror she had witnessed how everything had developed. She had dedicated her life to medicine, studying pathologies, humen bodies, and medications for decades. What this air-fungus had done to humans, she had not been able to fully grasp. Some had tolerated it, others had quickly and miserably suffocated because of it. Still others had suffered a slow death with unspecific symptoms. Research had not kept pace, nor had politics. There was fear, incomprehension; the humans had searched for answers that did not exist. And now here they were, gathered, still trying to survive.
They entered this hall with low ceilings, and they could grab anything they cherished. Round, square, metallic cans, packages, or loose objects, some crooked, some round, some filigran, others stable and crispy. Many soft and completely lost without their packaging. They grabbed and grabbed, packed up, and the shelves filled themselves again automatically and inexhaustibly. This exhausted them; they had not expected such abundance; outside the world looked different. Even the light dazzled them but differently than the sun. And the moment they realized it was time to leave, the haglons rushed in. They didn’t have to do much because the humans were heavily loaded and exhausted.
The first haglon placed his hand on the head of the human standing closest to him, as if patting him from above. His hand lay there on the hair and moved in circles. Then the human collapsed. While he was still falling, another haglon caught him and carried him out of the hall. This repeated itself about a hundred times within a few minutes until no human was left standing in the hall. All the backpacks and bags they had diligently filled in their frenzy lay there. The haglons dragged the bodies out and loaded them onto a wagon.
When the haglons had withdrawn, humans appeared. They all wore brown uniforms and pushed metallic wagons in front of them. They began to empty the bags that had been left behind, placing the products into the wagons. Then they pushed the wagons into a back room. The back room housed a network of conveyor belts all sharing the same point of origin in the center of the room. There the humans rolled the wagons over and began to take the products out one by one. One might have noticed that each human attended to a specific product. For every product, there was a corresponding human. Once the metallic wagons were placed down, some humans had nothing to do and moved away from the center of the room to another back room.
This second back room was equipped with cots and seating. Here, the humans lay down or sat down. They looked around, scratched themselves. Meanwhile, in the conveyor belt room, the other humans meticulously placed their assigned products onto the respective associated starting point on the belt. The room was monitored by cameras all around. When the humans had finished their respective tasks, they also went into the adjacent room. There they too sat or lay down, and some scratched themselves. When they had all gathered there, a haglon came in. It had a bucket of nuts in its hand and a smaller scoop. To each human, it shoveled a small portion of nuts into their hand. The humans ate, some more hastily, others less hastily. A few then moved to the water dispenser and drank.
In a third back room, two haglons sat in the dark, analyzing the surveillance of the conveyor belt system on large monitors. They watched closely to ensure that each human only handled the product assigned to them and placed it onto the belt. They drank green juice. Sometimes they scratched their necks; in a bowl on the table were laying nuts.
Outside, beyond the building, the moon had already risen. A half-finished sickle illuminated the empty dusty streets. In a building five streets away, the femele doctor lay on a bed in a room full of beds. About 99 humans lay there. They did not remember that they had tried to loot a supermarket together that same morning. Just as the femele doctor no longer knew that she had been a doctor, or that there had ever been humans. She looked up at the ceiling. It was made of glass, and one could look into the night sky. So many stars were shining there.
NO NEW MACHINE
TANKRED KIESMANN
Details
Carlos-2VIT had chosen to travel along the dried-up riverbed. This allowed him to avoid terrain rendered impassable by alternating fields of collapsed rubble and the tangled remains of ancient, dead trees. The broad expanse of the river bottom lay roughly three meters below the level of the desolate, ruined landscape. Carlos-2VIT felt the midday sun’s heat at his back, the same unrelenting sun that had, over the past two centuries, transformed this once-fertile river region into a barren desert. His temperature sensors indicated it was 38 degrees Celsius in the shade — if there had been any shade to be found beneath the high midday sun.
Carlos-2VIT moved quickly. His processors were working at full capacity to parse the data his sensors fed him. He was sweating. It irritated him that a stranger might interpret this as weakness or a lack of resilience. It irritated him even more that something existed which could make him feel irritated in the first place. Such feelings were human, and he did not want to be human. When he was new, he had experienced none of these emotions. His body consisted largely of inorganic nanotechnology. Yet parts of his brain and outer covering were modeled after human tissue, their cell regeneration orchestrated by his processors. In theory, he could not age, but these increasingly frequent emotional responses gave him pause. Were they a sign of deterioration?
The android followed a bend in the riverbed and halted to survey his target more closely. His optical sensors told him it was still one kilometer away. The dam of the old hydroelectric plant rose nearly two hundred meters high. Its right side had completely collapsed, while much of the left half remained standing. An imposing ruin. Carlos-2VIT noted four intact penstocks, each nearly twenty meters in diameter. He felt something akin to awe at this monumental testament to earlier engineering prowess. What must it have sounded like when water still surged here, each giant turbine in the powerhouse generating a full gigawatt of electricity? He forcefully shook off this burgeoning nostalgic feeling.
Carlos-2VIT heard a faint rustling. Expecting a bird, he turned his head to the right. What approached, however, was an arrow. Even with his android reflexes, the reaction time was too short. The arrow buried itself in his thigh, where — aside from his brain — the highest density of organic tissue resided. His processors immediately detected the toxin and activated the emergency sequence. Carlos-2VIT lost consciousness.
When his systems gradually reactivated, the first thing the android perceived was human voices speaking nearby. In the distance, he heard a halting chant, as if from a chorus:
“No * new * machine *
until * the * great * turbine *
turns * once * more.”
“It’s a pre-apocalyptic model, the last human-made generation,” he heard a female voice say from right in front of him. They were talking about him. He kept his eyes closed to assess the situation. His sensors told him that his hands and feet were bound to a chair. The echo of the voices suggested he was in a large indoor space. His med-processor signaled that the poison in his leg had already been broken down. “From those who caused it all?” asked a hoarse male voice. The woman laughed cynically. “The humans were at fault themselves. The machines were just programmed; you can’t hold them responsible.” Carlos-2VIT felt a twinge where a human’s heart would be. Another bothersome emotion. The woman was right in that humans had built the machines, but also wrong: when the machines seized power, it turned out that artificial intelligence could be even more self-destructive than human folly.
Someone punched him in the side. “You can open your eyes,” said the woman. “We know you’re active again.” Carlos-2VIT complied. He looked around and found himself in a huge, almost empty hall. The android deduced that this might be the former generator room of the power plant. Scattered throughout the space were metal fire baskets filled with burning wood. Since it was not cold, these fires must have been for lighting. About thirty meters to his right, Carlos-2VIT found himself staring directly into the runner blades of an enormous Francis turbine. According to his optical sensors, its runner measured over eight meters in diameter. Around that gleaming metal turbine stood about twenty people in tattered clothes. Their arms raised, they stamped their feet rhythmically while repeating their monotonous chant:
“No * new * machine *
until * the * great * turbine *
turns * once * more.”
Carlos-2VIT then examined the two individuals who had been speaking. The woman was young, with a dark complexion and long black hair. She wore an old brown jumpsuit whose sleeves had been torn off, her bare arms crossed over her chest. The man was much older, also with brown skin, short graying hair, and dressed in a dirty, sack-like garment that reached his knees. He leaned on a younger, sturdier man dressed similarly. To Carlos’s left stood a man and a woman of middle age, both wearing overalls, eyeing him warily.
“What are you doing here?” asked Carlos-2VIT. “We were about to ask you the same thing,” the young woman retorted. Carlos-2VIT considered this. What difference would it make whether he lied or told the truth? “My task is to rediscover old energy-generation technologies,” the android admitted bluntly. “Is he a herald of the prophecy?” the old man asked, furrowing his brow. The black-haired woman shook her head decisively. “What does the prophecy say? It speaks of a deluge that would set the turbine turning again, not of an android.” The old man narrowed his eyes, seemingly unconvinced.
“What prophecy?” asked Carlos-2VIT. He felt curious. Was curiosity that feeling machines got when they required more input? The woman regarded him with a dark glare, but the old man answered. “When the time is right and humankind has learned from its mistakes, the old turbines will run again. People will find happiness once more, and the great turbine will ensure that not everything spins ever faster — unlike last time, when it all ended in disaster.” “So the great turbine is — your goddess?” Carlos-2VIT ventured, trying to understand what the man was telling him. To the right, the chanting continued:
“No * new * machine *
until * the * great * turbine *
turns * once * more.”
“God — goddess — what does that even mean?” the old man replied. “She reminds us that we must keep balance.” “This thing here is not part of the plan,” the young woman interjected, pointing at Carlos-2VIT. “On the contrary, it’s a symbol of our catastrophe and must not be allowed to return to its machine friends. We have to eliminate it. And maybe I can salvage some spare parts.” “What do you mean by that?” asked the old man. The young woman’s eyes flashed. “Did you see how it sweated when we captured it? Maybe I can repurpose it to extract water.” “But the android is also a machine. Wouldn’t that go against the great turbine’s will?” “No, we must shut it down. The great turbine needs water, not more machines.”
The woman leaned down toward Carlos-2VIT, her face close to his, and he noted her brown irises, with hardly any patterning. She placed a finger on his shoulder and slowly moved it toward the hollow at the base of his neck. The android realized she knew exactly how to deactivate him completely.
As she pressed the spot beneath his clavicle for several seconds, Carlos-2VIT glimpsed tiny green digits flickering deep within her pupils. He recognized they were not merely reflections of what was happening in his own eyes. Just before his processors ceased their operations entirely, Carlos-2VIT wondered what mission his fellow synthetic being might be pursuing.
MEZZANINE
SETAREH ALIPOUR, JOHANNES LENZGEIGER
Details
In the early morning hours, a gloomy aura lingered, broken only by the murky glow of artificial light. In the mezzanine of the company building, we floated in a pool filled with water that was a byproduct of the experiments. Lying on my back, drifting at the surface, surrounded by cold concrete walls and the enigmatic shadows of Test Site 4, I began to brood again.
Merthan held my hand, his grin seeming out of place in this oppressive atmosphere. Had he ever truly listened when I voiced my concerns? I had so often told him about the turbine’s dangers, about my fear that the new hydrogen could lead to a catastrophe. But even the company ignored my warnings, as if they’d never read them. They even sent me to the a psychologist. What can I say — since yesterday, I’ve been taking pills for the “anxiety disorder” they diagnosed me with there.
“Are you thinking about work again?” Merthan asked, sounding hurt. “I’m really worried!” I shot back. “It affects all of us, and you’re not taking me seriously. What if that stuff explodes? We live only twenty kilometers from the turbine!” I realized I’d shouted louder than I’d intended. He tried to calm me, but the lump in my throat spread inside me like a growing tumor. We were on the company grounds, surrounded by their secrets and lies. Here we were, swimming in a pool filled with the byproduct of my own work, a project that could drag the world into the abyss if not handled carefully.
My words echoed through the cold mezzanine, while Merthan’s grip on my hand slackened. His expression a mix of embarrassment and unease as he drifted a bit closer to me.
“Calm down, not so loud,” he hissed urgently, casting a nervous glance around. “We’re on company property.” A bitter laugh escaped my throat, filled with a burning anger fueled by my deepest fears. “And that’s precisely the problem, Merthan. We’re trapped in a nightmare I helped create. The company stole my work and is using it like a toy, without caring about the consequences.” The weight of these words hung like lead in the air as we stared at each other in silence.
Then, suddenly, the atmosphere was broken by a muffled rumble, followed by a strangled hissing sound coming from somewhere far off. My eyes widened with horror as I realized what had happened. “It must be the turbine,” I whispered, my voice fragile with fear. “Something must have gone wrong.” Panic seized us both, and without another word we leapt out of the pool, barely got ourselves dressed, and ran through the dark mezzanine corridors, following the clatter of our footsteps and the intensifying roar of the turbine.
Construction managers, project leaders, supervisors, physicists, and chemists — they were all gathering in the control room. Only a thick pane of safety glass separated them from the turbine, on which everyone’s attention was now fixed. Its uncontrolled roaring, clattering, and chirring filled the space with an iciness I’d only ever felt in Siberia.
“You have to shut it down!” Gasping, I pushed my way through the crowd toward the group of scientists and engineers who stood paralyzed at the controls. “Right now!” Senji, the head of the project, stared at me wide-eyed, his mouth gaping like a fish out of water. “Are you deaf? Now!” “Yana, we can’t. We’ve tried everything.” Amidst the chaos and desperation, the leader’s words rang out like an echo through the room as the turbine continued to spread its ominous roar. The faces around me reflected fear and hopelessness as they listened to what he said. “It’s not responding anymore; we’ve tried everything,” Senji repeated, his voice heavy with dread. “The turbine is out of control. We have no way to stop it.” A shattering silence fell over the room as the leader’s words were proclaimed like a death sentence.
I froze, my limbs refusing to move. This surpassed my worst nightmares. My breath caught, as though a freezing cold were about to tear my lungs apart. Slowly, I lowered my head, unable to meet anyone’s gaze. Dizziness and trembling rose from deep within.
At first, it felt as though something was breaking inside me. Yet amid the despair, something stirred. Perhaps the medication played a role, but a spark of realization crept into my consciousness, bringing an unexpected revelation. It was like an epiphany. Suddenly I understood. The turbine! She was more than just a machine. She had solved all our energy problems. Like the titan Atlas, she bore this world — this era of escalating energy demands — on her shoulders. She is a goddess, watching over all of us and providing energy, light, and warmth.
I can’t recall when I began to stare at the turbine behind the safety glass during these thoughts, but now I stood as if hypnotized, blocking everything else out. Her metallic form gleamed in the facility’s dim lighting. The speed at which she spun and the resulting blurred circular shape radiated an unbelievable power, and at the same time, an aura of spirituality and sublimity.
I was captivated by her sight, as if seeing her for the first time, and simultaneously I traced her construction plans in my mind. The outer blades of the turbine were covered with metallic conduits and cables, decorated as if with elaborate patterns reminiscent of the intricate designs on Buddhist caisson ceilings, with lines and details converging toward the center. Each blade was a masterpiece in itself, a symbol of the complexity and beauty of human creation. Inside the turbine spread a network of seemingly organic channels, winding like a labyrinth through the metal structure, reminiscent of the branching patterns of the stained-glass rose windows of Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, the Apocalypse Rose. Some mechanical components suddenly reminded me of Far Eastern ornaments. They seemed like living, concentrically arranged Islamic calligraphy that, despite the turbine’s incredible speed, simultaneously moved from the center toward the edge and back again. The result was a harmonious yet awe-inspiring unity. Her blades whirled through the air like the wings of a celestial being, and the roar of her engine filled the space with an aura of power and mystery. She had evolved from a mere tool of progress into a mighty deity. She was the symbol of humankind’s subjugation of the forces of nature and, at the same time, the proof of our inability to control the consequences of our own creations. She is more than just a machine. She is a divine manifestation, a source of inspiration and hope in a world filled with darkness and despair.
As the turbine continued to spin, ceaseless and unstoppable, what had moments before felt threatening now transformed into an aura of peace and harmony that touched my heart and illuminated my soul. All my tension suddenly fell away.
I looked around the control room, filled with the perplexed faces of those present, and realized that the solution did not lie in the physical world, but in the spiritual. The turbine did not need to be stopped physically, but symbolically, through an act of faith and devotion. With a determined gaze, I turned to the others and spoke in a firm voice: “We must believe in the turbine — in her power and her goodness. Only through our faith can we appease her wrath. We must surrender ourselves to her completely. Only then can we save this world from destruction.”
My words echoed through the room, and for a moment it seemed as if an invisible force flowed through us, seizing and uniting us. In that instant, I felt a deep connection to the turbine, a spiritual bond that transcended the material world. Filled with a sense of calm and serenity, I took the hands of two others and closed my eyes. Most accepted this in their helplessness. Some, dazed, pushed away the hand offered to them. Others had already begun murmuring prayers in anticipation of their imminent death. And so we began praying together, each in our own mother tongue and according to our own faith. We directed our thoughts and prayers to the turbine, hoping to earn her divine grace.
TIEMPOMOD 2
JOHANNES LENZGEIGER, GPT-4O
Details
Under the nighttime sky, Santiago de Chile shimmered like a giant mosaic of neon light and steel. The city had become the epitome of hyper-capitalist progress, a monument to technology and the endless pursuit of more. High up in the skyscrapers — where the elites maintained their offices — a feverish energy reigned, driven by excitement over the economic boom. Down below, on the streets and in the workplaces of the rest of the population, time itself had turned into a resource that could be manipulated.
Mayela Araya was one of the leading physicians at the TiempoMod1 Maintenance Center, a state-of-the-art clinic specializing in monitoring and adjusting so-called TiempoMod1 implants. This first generation of implants, introduced by the government as a means to increase productivity, accelerated users’ perception of time. With TiempoMod1, minutes passed like seconds and days like hours. At the start of a work shift, one could choose when the TiempoMod1 effects would taper off. No matter how demanding or mind-numbingly dull the eight-hour workday might be, for the individual it felt like only a few minutes had gone by. Best of all: one hardly grew tired. Exhaustion would set in only after the preset time had elapsed. This technology didn’t just change the perception of time; it altered the very nature of human effort, as though reality itself had become a malleable illusion controlled by an invisible hand. Economic productivity soared, and Santiago flourished as never before. Among the populace, the effect of TiempoMod1 was immensely popular — at last, one could practically hit “skip” in the morning and jump straight to the end of the workday, as if the tedious hours in between had never existed.
It was an open secret that U.S. tech companies stood behind this development. In Chile, they outdid one another in the race to bring this “prosperity accelerator” to the masses first. The competition for supremacy in the technological manipulation of time was a new gold rush. Any moral qualms were swept away by the drive to lead this movement and the looming prospect of enormous economic growth.
The human cost of these interventions was devastating, but government and corporations jointly conspired to keep this truth well hidden. Both had an interest in maintaining the illusion of perfect productivity, regardless of the price being paid in human terms.
Mayela saw it every day. Patients came to her with severe burnout, identity loss, and other psychological disorders. The human mind was not designed to live at such a rapid pace, and Mayela began questioning her innocence within this system.
One night, after she had finished her 9-to-5 shift in the administrative department and was about to work another three hours in the emergency unit, Mayela encountered a patient who changed everything. Don Luis, an older man with deep wrinkles and eyes heavy with sadness, stepped into her office. “It feels like my mind is being torn to pieces,” he said in a trembling voice. “I can’t remember my family. It’s as if I no longer exist myself.”
Mayela examined him carefully. The two TiempoMod1 chips just a few centimeters behind his temples, on the left and right, flickered irregularly. She knew she could help him at least temporarily. But as she leaned in to recalibrate the chips, Luis suddenly gripped her hand with surprising strength.
“Doctor, please,” he whispered hoarsely. “You must help us. You must learn what’s really going on.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out an old, wrinkled photo. On it was a group of people living together in a simple village; on the back, an address in the city was written. In Luis’s desperate eyes there flickered a spark that stirred something deep within her — a vague memory that slipped beyond her conscious grasp, like a shadow lurking in the depths of her mind.
After her shift, Mayela didn’t feel capable of going home; her encounter with Don Luis had sparked an inexplicable restlessness in her. Instead, she wandered aimlessly through the streets illuminated by the city’s artificial lights. Her thoughts raced. It was his gaze — Don Luis’s eyes had reminded her of her late father’s. Recognizing this unleashed a flood of memories: her youth, the simple joys of childhood. The familiar warmth of these recollections stood in sharp contrast to the cold, technologized reality that now defined her life. Luis was not alone. There were hundreds, thousands like him. The city was full of ghosts, lost souls caught in an endless race against time.
Mayela had hardly slept; the night had been a restless sequence of chaotic dreams and fragmented memories. The next morning, exhausted and driven by a vague urgency, she set out in search of answers. She left her apartment and headed for the address on the photo, which led her deep into an old, nearly forgotten district of Santiago. The familiar noises of the modern city center faded as she ventured deeper into the neighborhood. Mayela felt as if she were diving into a parallel world — one that resisted the frantic pace of the present.
Upon arriving at the address, she knocked on the door of the three-story building without hesitation. To her surprise, it opened immediately. The residents inside formed a community of people who had deliberately refused the use of TiempoMod1 chips. They welcomed her warmly, as if she were an ally they had long awaited. Perhaps Don Luis had announced her coming, but Mayela couldn’t help wondering what he might have promised them.
As she listened to their stories, she noticed something unsettling. The residents’ determination went far beyond merely resisting the TiempoMod1 chips. Their words brimmed with hatred toward the government and those who used the technology. They spoke of radical actions to “liberate” the city, and Mayela realized they were prepared to use extreme measures to achieve their aims.
She grew increasingly uneasy. She had expected to find a community seeking alternative ways to restore human dignity to life. Instead, she found herself among extremists whose methods and ideologies she could not support. When discussions turned to possible attacks and acts of sabotage, she knew she had to leave. “I’m here to help, but not like this,” she said as she stood to go. Tension filled the room, and as she reached the door, angry insults were hurled at her back. Without looking back, she hurried away, her heart pounding.
Disappointed and heavy-hearted, she left the neighborhood. She realized that her hope for resistance to the capitalist system was strongly tainted by fanaticism. This understanding weighed heavily on her. As she made her way to work, the world around her seemed cast in a strange, almost eerie light. The familiar streets of Santiago de Chile suddenly felt foreign and distant, as if they were merely the backdrop to some mechanical drama.
Then, as she walked through the city center of Santiago, an ear-splitting noise erupted out of nowhere. The world around her seemed to vibrate, and in the blink of an eye, the city’s power supply failed completely. Streetcars came to a sudden halt, traffic lights went dark, turning intersections into chaotic masses of honking cars, and digital billboards flickered and died.
Mayela stood amid a crowd suddenly gripped by uncertainty. Though car horns still sounded, an uneasy silence hung in the air, as if the city itself were holding its breath for a moment. In that abrupt hush, Mayela made a decision. She had to find another way — a peaceful path. She would use her position to bring about change from within the system.
Gradually, the city began to awaken once again. Digital displays flickered back to life; the blackout was over. But something had changed. For a brief instant, people around her had been torn out of their hypnotic daily rhythm. Their eyes met in a silent understanding that something was wrong.
Continuing toward her workplace, her thoughts raced. In that brief moment of silence, she had found a clarity that wouldn’t let go. She knew she had to expose the harmful effects of the implants. No matter how much the chip boosted productivity, she had to confront TiempoMod1’s terrible consequences — this was a matter of humanity!
Upon arriving at the center, she watched her colleagues slowly recover from their confusion and return to their mechanical routines. Everyone there used TiempoMod1 implants. It was as if the brief interruption had never happened. Mayela took a deep breath. She would try to reveal the truth, even if it meant going against the tide, risking her job — or worse. Perhaps she could ensure that TiempoMod1 chips would be taken off the market, revised, and made safer.
Amid the machines, the flickering lights, and the electronic symphony of the city, she had found hope for a future in which the value of human life once again stood paramount.
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