J. Otis Haas
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Achievements (24)
Stories (120)
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The Water Baron
Life is humanity’s most precious resource, but Time, that unseen creditor, holds its receipts in a tight fist until dispatching its tireless debt-collector, Death, to satisfy the terms of the contract. For millennia, great minds toiled, mixing alchemical elixirs and sequencing genes in desperate attempts to defy this inevitability, but all such endeavors proved fruitless until the 25th Century. The Forever Protocol was a proprietary technology, invented by The TerraNova Corporation, which used nanoscopic techno-virii to indefinitely rejuvenate cells in the body. Their eternal desire finally realized, those able to afford the cost of treatments soon found themselves with enough time to become living legends steering human progress across the solar system century after century.
By J. Otis Haas9 months ago in Longevity
Awakening in Gold
Jack woke up to find his head encapsulated in a fishbowl-like hangover brought on by too many canned margaritas the night before. His wife and daughters had been away twelve days of a two week trip to visit the in-laws, and he’d already plowed through almost a hundred of the devilishly-alcoholic salty sour little cocktails. Jack didn’t normally drink, but at the bottom of each can was a code redeemable for FanPoints on his preferred sports betting platform and it seemed wasteful to pour them out. With some chagrin he checked his phone, seeing the deposits he’d made the night before. Bad luck follows me, he thought.
By J. Otis Haas10 months ago in Humor
Love in the Days of Dial-Up
09.11.1995 From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Re: Reaching Out Hey Annarchy, My name is Jack. I saw you open for Starve the Archons in Boston last week and was blown away. I bought your album (I was the guy with glasses who paid with quarters. Sorry.) and can’t stop listening to it LOL. You’re really talented. :-o
By J. Otis Haas11 months ago in History
Paella on the Beach. Honorable Mention in A Taste of Home Challenge.
I don’t remember much about my paternal grandmother other than her cupcakes. Bound up in tinfoil wrappers, they always had badly burned bottoms, which amassed on a plate every holiday as the family ate around the carbon char. Partially incinerated cupcakes remain my most enduring memory of her.
By J. Otis Haas11 months ago in Feast
Rumpl3st1lsk1n. Runner-Up in Legends Rewritten Challenge.
Milena’s career as a technology startup CEO had, to some degree, inured her to the bluntness of certain interactions, specifically when dealing with men who worked on the technical side of things, but the rudeness of the message on her screen, a considered, but impolite response to her simple request for help, caught her off guard, and she was already feeling emotionally fragile, because it was that time of the month. Each 15th Milena was contractually obligated to file a report for her venture capitalists, who expected some good news, about the project’s compression ratio, vertical integration, horizontal integration, data analyzation, or at least some positive feedback from the in-house beta testers.
By J. Otis Haas11 months ago in Fiction
People of Earth
When the moon turned red, observers of the phenomenon naturally believed they were witnessing the defining moment of their generation, but that would come later, during a televised press conference which would reveal the depth and scope of a conspiracy that had guided humanity since prehistory, as a nation’s leader stripped to his skin in front of billions of people.
By J. Otis Haas12 months ago in The Swamp
Teenage Me vs. the Technological Apocalypse
Going through old boxes of life’s accumulated detritus can uncover forgotten scraps of the past and send one down a rollercoaster of intense personal sentimentality, which is why I tend to put it off. It’s more than just the cringe of seeing one’s former-self, or worse, reading things this familiar stranger has written. These discoveries may cause pangs of embarrassment, especially when it is a collection of relics from one’s teenage years, but it is important to pardon oneself by remembering that the person so revealed, in form or thought, was subject not just to the zeitgeist of the era, but also existed without the benefit of a fully developed brain.
By J. Otis Haas12 months ago in Photography
Getting Back to Bobby. Bonus in New Year, New Projects Challenge.
Bobby and the Bitter Water is a book I began writing during Covid. It is a story about what happens in a small town after the country’s water supplies are dosed with LSD as told through the eyes of a black cat named Bobby who can walk through walls. Though incomplete at the moment, it is my favorite thing I’ve ever written.
By J. Otis Haas12 months ago in Motivation
It is 2050
It is 2050 and at 1212 on a beautiful spring afternoon, a [6523] detonates an unaliving vest in the lobby of a courthouse. By 1227 more than a dozen organizations have taken credit for the attack, which claimed the lives of 4 and injured a dozen more.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Futurism
Complicity
Each year's end offers occasion to reflect on what lessons have been learned during one’s recent revolution around the sun. Some lessons slap you in the face with instantaneous realization, while others sneak in over your garden walls like ninjas. My stunted development often precluded me from some taken-for-granted-by-most endeavors, like learning lessons, until recently. Perhaps it is the newness of the experience, but I have come to realize that the most important lessons are not just specific to one person or one situation, but can be shared and embraced by others. This is my attempt to do just that.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Motivation
The Sighting
“Adam said Santa Claus isn’t real, but I told him I’ve seen the effidence.” My eight year old son was standing there, on the first day of Christmas vacation, puffed up with the sort of indignation that can accompany encountering deniers at any age.
By J. Otis Haasabout a year ago in Families
