Anton Crane
Bio
St. Paul hack trying to find his own F. Scott Fitzgerald moment, but without the booze. Lives with wife, daughter, dog, and an unending passion for the written word.
Achievements (1)
Stories (24)
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Colors
With the surgery, I could see colors no one else could see. I was the first of us to receive the surgery, I was the Alpha. With the color enhancement, I could see the emotions playing out in a person's mind as they read a book, as they were having an argument or enjoying each other's company, or as they were enjoying or being repulsed by food they were eating. I could see when they were being disingenuous, which required one to have some familiarity with their vocalizations matching their facial palette. Not everyone lies the same way. While some of us lie in a natural manner, others of us lie as a defense mechanism, making me wonder what had happened in their life to trigger using dishonesty as a safety blanket. The surgery was necessary because I was employed by the government as a truth marker. Since diplomacy had failed badly enough in the recent past to warrant a global conflict leading to the deaths of billions, one of the higher ups thought it would be a good idea if society could create individuals who could detect when another person was lying with 100 percent accuracy. As a comparison, polygraphs can detect a person's truthfulness at 75-90% at the most. Plus there's the issue of all the wires, sensors, and the person being connected to a box. All those factors tend to skew a test on what a person chooses to say or not say. After 2 billion people died due to a lie, we needed a much better and immediate way of determining truthfulness. While we had established a much better way of living with each other: reducing poverty and inequality on a global scale through establishing a system of agreed upon standards of behavior and diplomacy, there remained a problem of general distrust among the masses. People needed a better way of relying on what others said around them. I was the initial fix for this new reality that awaited us. The surgery went well and without any adverse errors or side-effects. I spent the next few weeks adapting to all the new colors I saw in people's faces. With most people, the initial effect was jarring but later I was able to selectively choose the degree to which I was able to apply my abilities. But then I noticed something in my interactions with others around me. At first, I thought it was something that I would adapt to and it was just an immediate result of my surgery: the newness of my new perception, kind of like the way one sees the world when a person gets their eyeglass prescription renewed after years of seeing the world the same semi-blurry way. I looked at the very old, and the very young, and I looked at their interactions with each other. I looked at lovers: current, scorned, young love, platonic, professional, and predatory. I looked at interrogations: within and outside of the legal profession. I looked at the infirm and the healthy, and the myriad grayness between those extremes. I looked at animals to see if I could detect their truthfulness in their interactions with humans, and vice versa. I looked at those in a mall and a marketplace, within a church bazaar and a comic book convention. I looked at hagglers and hustlers, sales people and saints, interviewers and interviewees. I was searching for a baseline from which I could build my color palette, learning the degrees of truthfulness as they existed in today's world. I walked in nature and I walked in the most crowded cities, studying the faces of all those around and about me. I watched diners before and after they ate, coffee lovers and junkies before and after they had their fix, and alcoholics before and after a drink, or several. I watched people in church, and in their own personal Hell. I watched people in war zones and joyful parents in maternity wards. Throughout all that, I noticed one thing. Instead of being desensitized to it, I realized that my disgust was becoming more intense with each personal interaction. I realized that everyone was lying…all the time. What I had previously conceived of as true was actually just lesser degree of lies. All that Bible stuff about not bearing false witness? Total bunk, or at least it was in today's world. There was some truthfulness in the very young…but it only lasted until they learned how to lie. Then they were all under the same spell, of deliberate deception, often with the end goal of manipulation or coercion. I realized that our conception of the polygraph was actually skewed toward telling people what they wanted to hear, rather than the actual truth. How long had the world been like this? Had it always been this way? Was our civilization actually built from the beginning on our ability to lie? If so, what would an alien civilization do upon first contact with our world? Would they label us as inherently dishonest? How were we able to progress as far as we had without truthfulness in our measurements, our technologies, our testing, and reporting of results from those tests or measurements? Were we just lucky that we’d had no awful effects from incorrect measurements? Or perhaps dishonesty was inherently built into our understanding of our measurements? Was a heart transplant actually transplanting a heart? Were other “necessary" surgeries truly necessary? Was an emergency procedure really an emergency? Or was it something inconceivably worse? All the evidence I gathered from these questions made me wither even further. One particularly dreary afternoon as I pondered these questions, my supervisor approached me while I was sitting outside my workplace on a park bench. “Hey Gus, you look troubled,” he quipped as he sat down next to me with a cup of coffee, holding an extra cup of coffee for me in his hand. “I find a hot cup of coffee can work wonders in that regard.” I looked at his face and I registered general malevolence to be disguised as outward empathy. I took the coffee from him and tried a cautionary sip. Way too much sugar for my taste, but I decided to not let on that I didn't like it and that the gesture was genuinely appreciated. While I hated that I was lying, I couldn't let him know what I saw. “How did that surgery go for you? I'm supposed to get it next week,” he shrugged, trying to look nonchalant and, from my perspective, failing horribly. “I imagine one of the benefits of having that surgery will really help with my son when I ask him if he’s done with his homework.” “Yeah,” I replied as I tried another sip, which was many times worse. “It definitely will.” I looked him in the eyes then to search for any shred of truthfulness in his manner when he spoke. I knew he didn't have a son. I also knew he wasn't married and he usually spent more time in one of the local bars than in his home. Yet before this surgery, I would have just gone with it openly and accepted whatever he threw at me, even horrible coffee. I choked down a few more sips of the sickingly-sweet coffee before asking my question. “Can I ask you something?” My supervisor blew out a long breath from his mouth. It looked like he was readying himself for my obvious question. “Why did we elect to give you this surgery?” he asked, his eyes fixed on mine. “Well…yes,” I stammered as I almost spilled the coffee. “How did you…” He took the coffee cup from me and placed a firm hand on my shoulder. “Frankly Gus, working with you has always been a pain in the ass,” he replied, surprising me as I witnessed the first time someone had actually been honest with me since my surgery. There was none of the typical discoloration present in his face when one was lying. It was almost…refreshing…except for the fact that he just told me I was pain in his ass. “Just yours?” I asked, trying to insert some levity. “Oh Hell no,” he laughed as he looked upward. “You’re a pain in the ass to everybody.” I could tell he was actually serious, and truthful. He kept his hand firmly on my shoulder as he redirected his steely-eyes toward me. “It's simply because you are the only one, the unique individual, we've ever known, that anyone of us has ever known, who is…well…honest,” he bore his eyes into me. “And you take everything that people say to you as the honest truth.” “And that's bad?” “YES!” he replied, exasperated and loosening his tie. “It sucks because all of us can't assume that you’ll get the underlying hint, the hidden meaning in all that we do here without being uncomfortably honest and direct to you in what we expect from you. And for that matter how we want you to see us.” “How do you want me to see you all?” “As the biggest and best liars on the planet, dumbass,” he brought his hand down like a vice on my shoulder again with the last word. “Our entire society is built on lies, and you're the first person any of us have ever met who doesn't implicitly get that. Do you have any idea how maddening it is for any of us to be in the same room as you?” I gulped as I watched this man speak openly, and truthfully, to me for the first time in his life. I watched my coworkers, all my coworkers, come out of the building and gather around the two of us, all of them whispering and snickering as they pointed at me. I also saw that all of them, for the first time, were speaking truthfully to each other as they spoke about me. “I gather,” my supervisor stepped away from me and dumped the rest of his coffee into a nearby bush. “…that the surgery definitely did have an effect on your perception of me, and all of us. I can tell by your wide eyes and facial expressions that you're seeing things, if not as they actually are, then at least differently for the first time, which I and everyone else here will happily consider to be the most joyful progress even if it's the latter. “But you have to tell us,” he paused and looked at all my coworkers before turning his attention back to me. “Did the surgery work?” I thought about my answer for about ten seconds before replying, contorting my face as I did so. “No,” I lied.
By Anton Crane9 months ago in Futurism
Cuneiform Cuddlies
While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has granted scholars the chance to decipher the previously burnt scrolls of Herculaneum near Mt. Vesuvius, an increasing amount of study has been dedicated to the fragments of tablets chiseled in the dialect Akkadian language of standard Babylonia. One of the tablets was missing most of the text, having been broken into previously indecipherable fragments. By applying AI to these fragments, a series of love letters has been revealed between Gilgamesh, the demigod king of Uruk, and Ishtar, the Anunnaki goddess of love, war and fertility.
By Anton Crane11 months ago in History
Wingfolk
Luke sneezed out the bitter tasting mud, mixing his face with the expulsion in the process. Face down in soft worm food, he carefully brought his arms beneath him. As he pushed himself up, he saw what triggered the sneeze, sticking up in the mud where his nose used to be.
By Anton Crane3 years ago in Fiction
Sirens
The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. You’ve been lost in the woods for days, carrying an axe, trying to find a main road leading back to town, or at least away from these never-ending woods. You have no memory of how you came to be in these woods.
By Anton Crane4 years ago in Horror
Yoga Bro versus the dragons
There weren't always dragons in the Valley. But, then again, the valley didn’t always have you as their Yoga Bro. You set up shop in the valley yesterday, marketing your wares as “Hardcore Yoga”. You had just completed intensive teacher training with Swami Hardcore. You knew him as the Swami who ditched his masters in order to divine the mysteries of why his hernia flared up only at times when there was trash to be picked up off his floor. You had been coerced into learning the skills required to appraise and acknowledge the holy hernia, or at least to realize it was holier than your abdominal muscles would ever be, even with all the trash you had picked up off Swami Hardcore’s floor.
By Anton Crane4 years ago in Fiction
