TENTH YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the SCIENCE FICTION MICROSTORY CONTEST (Critiques only)

[Jot]

Theme: The Unconsidered Country

This month's challenge is being presented by October's winner, Thaddeus Howze.

Writing prompt: The Unconsidered Country

Personify some aspect of the Universe. Science, folklore, animism, mysticism, Gnosticism, cosmology, all attempt to raise (or lower) our awareness to include the Universe or parts of it as aware of us as we are of them.

But what if they were more aware than we thought? Previous tales of myth personified lightning and thunder as gods, magical forces as Djinn, and the hereafter as various Heavens or Hells as the perspective permitted.

What if the Universe or some part, we have thought, non-sentient, not only had personality, but was self-aware?

What if those hidden aspects of the Universe appeared to the right persons or people, and deigned to speak to us.

All we needed was the right language, algorithm, technology, magic, social structure, pentagram, or ritual to make the connection...
• Did you trap lightning in a jar and teach it to do math?
• Can you talk to buildings or does your house talk to YOU?
• Do you suspect your neighbor is the Grim Reaper? Is all of his talk of his garden actually about flowers?
• Do fleas have a secret life? Do they discuss their lineage in the stories of cats they ride like great ships crossing the city?
• Are you a friend to the Darkness Between Worlds? Is everything we have learned about it wrong?
• Do you have an intimate relationship with your local forest? Does it ask you to intercede on its behalf or bemoan the inevitable passing of humanity?
• Can you speak with insects? What do they talk about when we aren't spraying RAID on them. How do they feel about that, anyway?
• Can you hear stars singing? What are their songs about?
• Can you commune with the vibrations of matter? What does the 5% of the Universe's mass (baryonic matter) think about the rest of it's more invisible and significantly more numerous cousins (non-baryonic matter)?

Tell us a tale of a self-aware aspect of the Universe, a personification of a concept like Infinity, Eternity, Death, Oblivion, Destruction, or of a smaller aspect of self-awareness such as stars, or forests, trees or whales, or perhaps at the microscopic or sub-atomic such as viruses or the very stuff of reality itself, the very virtual particles which spring into and out of existence without warning, all around us.

The genre isn't as important as the relationship between the players in your story. Can the personification be represented by a person? You bet. But, it doesn't have to be.

I want to get the feeling of something otherworldly, a new perspective, a visit to the Unconsidered Country...

The story is up to you.