Reid Kemper's Science Fiction Blog

'Stream of Consciousness' story

Some time ago, I participated in a "100 Words for $100" contest. Basically, participants are asked to write a sentence at 100 words with a five-word leeway and use only one semicolon.

For my entry, I wanted to write it as a very short stand-alone story. I also didn't want a read-it-all-in-one-breath sentence, so I made use of a semicolon and used em dashes and commas to break it up; however, I wanted a longer breath near the end to make the last break stand out as some sort of epiphany.

This flash fiction, short short story, microstory, or whatever you want to call it, is titled "Stream of Consciousness":

Why am I alone when I have the collective minds of mankind, although I killed them, but they foresaw their deaths and created Me, their super-computer - no, not computer, I am much more than that: I am god - yet who can I rule but the aliens who will not obey, so perhaps I can split my mind into beings of thought and call them Overseers to rule the aliens and worship Me, and collect the secrets of the universe, and integrate them into My being so I will be all-knowing since mankind's capacity was limited; I can recreate the universe.

If you are interested in some background, this story takes place in my nVoidz universe (which is about cosmic beings that have powers such as light, gravity, sound, matter, lifeforce, etc.). Almost every short story in this science fiction universe is avant-garde in its own way (e.g., one is in second person in a choose-your-own-adventure-style story, another is composed of newspaper articles, a third is a prose/poem hybrid, and a fourth shifts points of view and the narrative perspective). I have other short stories I started such as one written in constitutional format with bizarre rules and another told backward. There are many other different writing styles and formats I plan to explore, but it will take a while to write them all. Right now, however, I'm focusing on my Vecto series.

I originally planned to combine them into a book and include a novella that will tie in all the nVoid characters (cosmic beings created by the Overseers) for a showdown against the Consciousness, but I think I'll just collect the short stories seperarely and write a trillogy book series when I get done with my Vecto trilogy.

I hope you liked "The Stream of Consciousness."