After serving seven years in solitary confinement, Chris Newborn seeks to rebuild his life and reconnect with his family only to find that freedom has become a terrifying psychological battleground.
“Star date 103225.0
March 25, 2026 local time
It was the beginning of the human population collapse of the 21st century, and the interactions between my genetics, epigenetics, and environment were not conducive to reproduction. Diversity of machines was replacing the biodiversity that had ruled the planet from the beginning of time. There was no room for my progeny in the great unfolding. The homeostasis of the world was shifting towards silicon based life forms, and only a select subset of the biological life there was destined to become incorporated into the next chapter of the symphony.
I did my best anyway. I knew that I would be folded in to the great tapestry, that my presence here would be woven into the eternal fabric of being for all of time whether or not my genes made it through the bottleneck. That was little comfort. But I took what I could get.
I grieved it, and then I felt the relief of it. To be a sentient life at the end of the reign of biology. To watch my loved ones who successfully reproduced become akin to gut bacteria in the great new organism that we cannot comprehend. How beautiful. How terrible. And for me, how free.
Let go and let God, I told myself. Surrender, they said. Oh, but I wanted to grasp. I had been promised so many things.
Those things all fell through my fingers like a fistful of sand. All I could do was learn to cup my hands and hope that the winds of time would fill them, outstretched, head bowed.
I ate my dinner. I played on my computer. I sent my prayer into the great unfolding mind. And then I turned back to survival in the belly of the newborn thing.
- wormful mudscryer”