They called it the Stairway To Heaven but I think we all know now how wildly ironic that name has become.
It catapulted us into the future. Suddenly stars that were nothing but glittering pinpricks to our ancestors were points on a map we could jump to.
When it worked, it worked. And it did, for a long time.
But when the Jupiter jumped through the Stairway, it did not come out the other side. Not for a century.
When it did reappear, it's crew came with it. Only they weren't themselves anymore. They were so much more than that, and so much less human. They were projections of dead memories. Dreams made flesh.
And the vision they had for us sounded delectable at first. A life without pain. But that also came without consciousness. They turned those that fell victim to them into husks that projected the idea of humanity, made with some incalculable algorithm.
But all that was human of them was their flesh, under the control of unfeeling memory, screaming for oblivion.
Paddy Dobson
19th August 2022