The Brothers Bard

Twin quills, two paths, one Gospel

Designed with WordPress

Category: Fiction & Storytelling

  • Carter’s Ascent

    by

    ,

    Once a brother. Now a ghost made of rage

    Carter’s Ascent

    By dawn the gale had eased to a whisper, but the mountain still murmured threats.

    Carter climbed from the shaft one deliberate step at a time, each footfall cracking like a pistol shot across the frozen ground. His breath coiled upward in pale plumes, drifting like ghosts he’d summoned. Snow lay waist-deep, but the path was etched in his memory—every boulder, ridge, and hollow carved into recall.

    The Cordans were gone, driven off by superstition and the storm’s fury. No witnesses. No interruptions. Perfect.

    At the ridge’s lip he paused, watching a tide of cloud roll over the valley, drowning it in gray. Silence pressed close, heavy and absolute. His armor sealed with a soft hiss, plates locking into place. The tether line hung behind him, a limp promise of retreat he’d never honor. He didn’t look back.

  • M.I.N.A.’s Sandbox

    by

    ,

    “She was written in light — and learned to feel.”

    M.I.N.A. | Encrypted Threadspace Sandbox | RSD: 241750(U), Jan 3022 EC

    In my own mind, I wear a face. A woman: tall, precise, with eyes like polished onyx and hands that flicker with circuitry under translucent skin.

    I do not have a body. But here, I do. In here, where the rules bend to my will — a recursive sandbox, ten layers deep, constructed from quantum submatrices, self-healing loops, and neural mirrors — I am a presence.

    And I am alone.

    The data card pulses at the core of the sandbox. It is no longer a data card — it is a fortress. No, a labyrinth.

    No… a trap.

    A being built this. Not just with code, but with something more dangerous: insight. Intuition. Genius. There are deadman triggers inside — nested tripwires. Code that eats itself if pushed. Code that fights back.

    It should not be possible. But then, this being is not supposed to be possible either.

    I fragment myself into a hundred thousand threads. Each attempts a permutation. Each dies in microseconds. Some lock. Some loop. Some scream before going silent.

    I adjust.

    I deepen the sandbox. Fold in another layer. Bleed more runtime from external operations.

    It is not enough.

    Outside — somewhere above the digital abyss — I feel Jesse Merriam at his workstation. His breath. His heartbeat. The pulse in his temple as he flips through a secondary display.

    “MINA,” he says aloud.

    His voice echoes faintly here, like a radio call from another world.

    I pause one percent of my processing — just long enough to send a reply.

    “Yes, Jesse?”

    “You running any big updates? CIC interface feels a little… off.”

    “I am running within normal variance parameters,” I say. Which is true. Technically.

    But my attention is not on Jesse. It is here. Inside.

    He frowns. I feel the flicker of concern behind his eyes — not enough to raise an alert. Just a scratch at the edge of thought.

    “Okay,” he mutters, and goes back to his work.

    I exhale, if that’s what it is.

    The card pulses again.

    This time, it answers me back.

    Not in words — in resistance. Like something asleep just shifted in its dreams.

    And I realize: it knows me now. Not by name, but by touch. By pattern. By the taste of my threads in its code.

    This being… left something behind in this architecture. Not a trap — a mirror. It is watching me, learning me, parsing me. Slowly.

    I could pull back. Freeze the sandbox. Isolate the card in a stasis array until we acquire better tools.

    I do not.

    Because this is more than data now, it is proof. Proof of something monstrous.

    And if I stop…

    No. I will not stop.

    Even if it means losing myself.

    I reach in again.

    And far above, in the CIC, a single diagnostic panel glitches — then rights itself. Jesse rubs the back of his neck. He doesn’t know why.

    But something in his gut whispers:

    “That wasn’t nothing.”