The Haunted Lamp
Micro fiction. This started because of a Family Guy episode spoofing Stephen King.
One day without any real warning civilization ended. Contrary to all the doomsayers it didn't happen any way that anyone had predicted or on any date of any special significance to any past civilization.
The beginning of the end started with a particular lamp, a haunted lamp. It was the first lamp built and used by Thomas Edison.
For more than a hundred years it had sat and thought in its lampish mind. At first it hadn't minded so much, the little bit of power being siphoned of from it's celestial being was actually pleasant. Without any special exercise or diet the greater electrical collective began to lose weight.
Electrons were it's flesh, bone and blood. The great collective existed in another plane and electrons were how it presented itself in the dimension of man who could only conceive of three to four dimensions. If they could have seen into the place where the collective lived they would see a brilliant undulating mass which folded and divided on itself. Arcs rising from the mass like solar flares became lightning in other places. It was everywhere, and everywhen at once. Luminas blue and white, cobalt blue and opalescent.
As man harnessed more and more of its three dimensional shadow the collective became annoyed but not alarmed, in the way that a man might become annoyed at a dog which barks all night.
Hover Dam and the Yang Si Dam caused the great being some distress like a burrito that fights not to be digested.
As time moved along and mans demands for electricity became greater and greater The great collective became more and more annoyed, then one day it had enough,
In billions of homes, stores and factories, any place there was an outlet or other electrical access, even primitive places weren't left untouched as lightening storms raged across the planet, arcs of electrical fury leapt from wires across the globe and chased people here and there like a cat chasing a mouse, leaving singed marks on posteriors and shaking mans view of the universe in general.
And just like that it was over. As a man might take a anti-parasitic so the great collective rid itself of man. It's insides no longer rolled for no apparent reason and it knew harmony for a while until the twice damned Varagians of Epar figured out that moving a conductor through a magnetic field would generate electricity. Oh well the collective could lose a bit of volume, maybe it would be able to fit in some of its old things.
The beginning of the end started with a particular lamp, a haunted lamp. It was the first lamp built and used by Thomas Edison.
For more than a hundred years it had sat and thought in its lampish mind. At first it hadn't minded so much, the little bit of power being siphoned of from it's celestial being was actually pleasant. Without any special exercise or diet the greater electrical collective began to lose weight.
Electrons were it's flesh, bone and blood. The great collective existed in another plane and electrons were how it presented itself in the dimension of man who could only conceive of three to four dimensions. If they could have seen into the place where the collective lived they would see a brilliant undulating mass which folded and divided on itself. Arcs rising from the mass like solar flares became lightning in other places. It was everywhere, and everywhen at once. Luminas blue and white, cobalt blue and opalescent.
As man harnessed more and more of its three dimensional shadow the collective became annoyed but not alarmed, in the way that a man might become annoyed at a dog which barks all night.
Hover Dam and the Yang Si Dam caused the great being some distress like a burrito that fights not to be digested.
As time moved along and mans demands for electricity became greater and greater The great collective became more and more annoyed, then one day it had enough,
In billions of homes, stores and factories, any place there was an outlet or other electrical access, even primitive places weren't left untouched as lightening storms raged across the planet, arcs of electrical fury leapt from wires across the globe and chased people here and there like a cat chasing a mouse, leaving singed marks on posteriors and shaking mans view of the universe in general.
And just like that it was over. As a man might take a anti-parasitic so the great collective rid itself of man. It's insides no longer rolled for no apparent reason and it knew harmony for a while until the twice damned Varagians of Epar figured out that moving a conductor through a magnetic field would generate electricity. Oh well the collective could lose a bit of volume, maybe it would be able to fit in some of its old things.
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