The Myth of Sysiphus
Bio
Sisyphus prefers to remain anonymous as he explores the vicissitudes of the human condition through speculative fiction.
Stories (26)
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Inversion - 17. AI-Generated.
Chapter 17 Laurel studied his hands in the morning light, turning them palm up, then back again. They looked the same as they had when he first went into the forest, more than twenty-five years ago. There were no mirrors in the camp, but he had glimpsed his reflection in a puddle. It too looked the same as it had then.
By The Myth of Sysiphusabout a month ago in Chapters
Inversion - 18. AI-Generated.
Book V: The Unbound Chapter 18 Laurel stood at the edge of the gathering, watching his followers arrange themselves in the usual semicircle for the evening teaching. Two hundred faces turned toward him expectantly, some weathered by decades of following him through wilderness and settlement, others bright with the enthusiasm of recent converts. The sight filled him with a weariness so profound that his knees buckled.
By The Myth of Sysiphusabout a month ago in Chapters
Inversion - 16. AI-Generated.
Chapter 16 Laurel woke before dawn to find Asher’s journal lying open beside the dying embers of their fire. The page was visible in the faint starlight, covered with his cousin’s cramped handwriting, and despite himself, Laurel found his eyes drawn to the words.
By The Myth of Sysiphusabout a month ago in Chapters
Inversion - 15. AI-Generated.
Chapter 15 The morning mist clung to the valley floor like a shroud, and Laurel found himself watching it from the ridge where he had chosen to make camp. Below, his followers were stirring – fifty-three now, by Asher’s count. They moved with the deliberate quiet so as to not to disturb their teacher’s contemplations, though Laurel suspected they attributed more profundity to his silences than they deserved.
By The Myth of Sysiphus2 months ago in Chapters
Inversion - 14. AI-Generated.
Chapter 14 By autumn, there were twenty-three. Laurel couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it happened. The original five had been joined by others in ones and twos – a dropout from seminary school in Oregon, a retired librarian from Phoenix, a pair of grad students who’d abandoned their dissertations to follow rumors of a man who had transcended death. Word spread through networks he didn’t understand: online forums, intentional communities, the loose confederation of seekers who moved between ashrams and retreat centers like migrant workers heading to wherever seasonal crops of enlightenment could be ready to be harvested.
By The Myth of Sysiphus2 months ago in Chapters
Inversion - 13. AI-Generated.
Chapter 13 Laurel left at dawn, or tried to. He made it perhaps two hundred yards down the mountain path before his legs gave out, depositing him unceremoniously on a fallen log beside the trail. His body, stripped to its essentials during the long sitting, had forgotten how to coordinate the complex business of walking on rough terrain.
By The Myth of Sysiphus2 months ago in Chapters
Inversion - 12. AI-Generated.
Book IV: Shape from the Void Chapter 12 Laurel awoke to the sound of voices, which was wrong on several levels. First, because he had been certain that he was dead – not metaphorically dead, but genuinely, biologically dead, his consciousness dissolved into whatever quantum foam may underly awareness. Second, because voices implied other people, and other people were the last thing he wanted to encounter in whatever state he now found himself in.
By The Myth of Sysiphus2 months ago in Chapters
Inversion - 11. AI-Generated.
Forty-nine days. Asher counted them later, marking each sunrise and sunset like a rosary of bewilderment. Forty-nine days during which his cousin sat motionless against the boulder, eyes closed, his breathing so subtle that it barely disturbed the air around him. No food, no water, no movement beyond the barely perceptible movement of his chest. Laurel should have been dead within a week.
By The Myth of Sysiphus3 months ago in Chapters
Inversion - 10. AI-Generated.
Chapter 10 The cabin sat at the end of a dirt road that barely deserved the name, thirty miles from the nearest town and a thousand miles from anything resembling civilization. Laurel had found it through a classified on a prepper forum: “Off-grid retreat, solar power, well water, absolute privacy guaranteed.” The owner, a grizzled ex-Marine type who went by Hendricks, had asked no questions when Laurel paid for six months’ rent in cash and asked that the location remain confidential.
By The Myth of Sysiphus3 months ago in Chapters
Inversion - 9. AI-Generated.
Chapter 9 The synthesizer looked like the bastard offspring of a microwave and a particle accelerator. Maya had spent weeks cannibalizing parts from the teleportation equipment, repurposing quantum field generators and matter rematerialization matrices to create something that had never existed before: a device that could invert the molecular handedness of food.
By The Myth of Sysiphus3 months ago in Chapters
Inversion - 8. AI-Generated.
Part III: Quantum Chrysalis Chapter 8 Maya’s lab became Laurel’s second home, though home was perhaps the wrong word for a place that looked so much like a hospice. Two weeks had passed, and his weight loss was only declining faster despite Maya’s attempts at intravenous nutrition. The IV solutions helped a little, but they weren’t going to save him in the end.
By The Myth of Sysiphus3 months ago in Chapters
Inversion - 7. AI-Generated.
Chapter 7 The nausea struck again as Laurel hunched over his desk, trying to focus on quantum field equations that swam before his eyes like tadpoles in murky water. Three days of dry heaves, and his body felt hollow, a discarded shell. The campus health center had run more blood work, urine tests, even did an MRI. Nothing. Dr. Mukherjee had suggested stress when he called her, perhaps delayed concussion symptoms, and prescribed rest. Rest. As if he could sleep when his stomach felt like it was digesting itself.
By The Myth of Sysiphus4 months ago in Chapters
