FIRST CAMPAIGN CHALLENGE - FLASH FICTION - "NUNIVERSE"

NOTE: If you just want to skip right to the flash fiction, scroll down to where you see the white line...

Anyone involved in Rachel Harrie's Fourth Platform-Building Campaign will know all about her first challenge, which involves writing some flash fiction. Here's the brief:

Write a short story/ flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. It can be in any format, including a poem. Begin the story with the words, “Shadows crept across the wall”. These five words will be included in the word count.

    If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional), do one or more of these:

        end the story with the words: "everything faded." (also included in the word count)

        include the word "orange" in the story

        write in the same genre you normally write

        make your story 200 words exactly!

So, I went ahead and (belatedly) got involved. Below is my 200-word little sci-fi short, "Nuniverse".

WARNING TO THOSE HOPING FOR FUN AND FROLICS: This flash fiction is not exactly a feelgood treat!

See you on the Campaign trail...

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NUNIVERSE

Shadows crept across the wall; it was his wife and son, come to sneak up on him as he lay sunbathing. He smiled, overwhelmed by love...

    ...that quickly became horror when he saw his hands: they were too youthful. 

     He was lost in another memory.

    His son, who was over fifty now -- it was easy to lose track, stuck in here -- had been the one to convince him to upload his consciousness to the Nuniverse when his body had failed.

     It's about more than preservation, Dad, his son had said. It's about me not losing you like I did Mum.

    There, we can still interact. You'll exist within a universe of infinite possibility -- anything you think of can be real. It's freedom without limit, indulgence without boundary. Please, Dad… for me…

     So he had done it, and quickly learned the truth: that his consciousness couldn’t cope without his physical self, with the inherent fakeness of the Nuniverse. Without his wife.

     It was impossible to create himself anew. His soul was gone, just like his body.

     He was doomed to wallow in the memories of his physical life. 

     The fake orange sun sickened him.

     He retched.

     And everything faded.