You ever layer information and see how it changes people's reactions? For instance, if I said the name ‘Erwin Rommel’, would that only draw a blank from you? Let me add another layer: Nazi General Erwin Rommel. How about now? Does a mere label start firing our inner boos and hisses? Ok then, let me add a little more detail.

      Nazi General Erwin Rommel, revered and respected by American hero George Patton. That may not change your disposition, but it might perk your curiosity. Now let’s do one final round.
       Nazi General Erwin Rommel, revered and respected by American hero George Patton, who knew about the assassination attempt against Hitler…and did not report it before it happened.

      Has your opinion shifted yet again? Isn’t it fascinating how our thoughts and emotions are so quickly swayed with but a blip of information? Since I’m on the subject, let me tell you a brief story about the Field Marshal.

      Imagine the scene: Rommel stands on the balcony of his German estate, overlooking the countryside. Far in the distance, he hears the rumble of engines growing louder, angling closer. It’s not long after the failed assassination attempt, the one he knew of, kept quiet about, and likely supported. Rommel is battle-hardened – he understands risk and consequence. He knows who’s coming, and why. He knows what will happen when they arrive. They will exit their cars, march quickly up the long promenade. They will enter his home. The man in charge will carry two small capsules: one is made of brass and is loaded into a chamber, the other is a gel cap and inserts into the mouth. Of all the decisions Rommel has made over the course of his life, this will be his last.

      But right now, he’s standing on the balcony overlooking his beloved Germany. The sun burns bright in the October sky, the smell of autumn lingers in the air. His son Manfred stands beside him. And what is going through his mind? Perhaps tracing the question his boy asked not long ago, “Father, why do you fight for the Nazis?”

      And his response, at the time so certain. “All I have to do is look to the east.”*
       Can you imagine how rich we'd be, had they – instead of demanding a steady regurgitation of names and dates – taught us about history in the way our ancestors did? By telling stories full of complicated situations?

      And conflicted characters?

 

 

     You don't have to be an American to celebrate our independence - on July 4th or any other day of the year. In fact, humanity should probably start banding together before Skynet becomes self-aware (or rather, let's us know it's self-aware), and we have to fight all over again for a new Independence Day. Until then, take a moment to enjoy the wacky, the absurd, the over-the-top elements that separate us from both animals and machines - like this video that's definitely, totally, 100% not our editor-in-chief. Just some loon on a big wheel, celebrating humanity in all our (in)glorious behavior. 

     Really, what's more human than that? 
 

by Charles V Sasser Jr

 

 

The map didn’t look like a revolution. It was just a municipal blueprint, curled at the corners and pinned down by a half-empty box of 5.56 ammunition. Under the single, swinging bulb of the safehouse, the red marker lines Miller had drawn appeared less like a tactical plan and more like an open wound.

     "You know what that line actually is, right?"

     Miller didn't look up. His pale eyes tracked the ingress routes with the terrifying, absolute calculation of a man who had long ago stopped seeing architecture, only kill zones. He kept his eyes on the breach point he’d circled three times. "Service entrance. Minimal surveillance. Shift change at 03:00."

     "It's the Rubicon, Miller."

     Garrick leaned against the peeling drywall in the corner. His plate carrier sat in a heap on the floor, a discarded shell. "Once we step across that threshold," Garrick said, his voice a gravelly whisper, "we aren't veterans anymore. We aren't 'concerned citizens.' We become domestic terrorists. Win or lose, that’s the label. There is no un-crossing that line."

     Miller finally looked up. His face was etched with the specific exhaustion of loving a country that didn't love him back. He tapped the map—right on the target building.

     "If we don't cross it, who will?"

     Garrick held Miller’s gaze. The silence in the room stretched tight enough to snap. The other men in the shadows—three of them, sitting on overturned buckets—stopped fidgeting. They waited for the verdict.

     Garrick didn't speak. He pushed off the wall, drywall dust clinging to his shirt like chalk, and walked to the gear.

     The tear of Velcro was deafening. A gavel slamming down.

     Garrick hefted the vest, checking the ceramic plates front and back with a mechanical rhythm. He slid it over his head, cinched the cummerbund, and picked up his rifle. The magazine clicked into the well—a metallic snap of finality.

     "Then let's get it done." Garrick wasn't looking at Miller anymore. He was looking at the door.

     One by one, the others stood. The heavy, mechanical rhythm of men armoring up consumed the room. The snapping of polymer buckles echoed against the drywall, punctuated by the cold, metallic clack of charging handles racking rounds into chambers. The cloud of moral debate evaporated, replaced by the cold geometry of a tactical team. They weren't debating treason anymore. They were checking corners.

     The air outside the facility was colder than the safehouse.

     They moved through the drainage ditch like ghosts, boots sinking silently into wet mud with the synchronized perfection of men who had already died together once. Ever since that sunbaked wall in Khost Province—when Aegis Solutions ran a risk assessment and decided an extraction chopper cost more than their lives—they had stopped fighting for a flag. They were fighting to break the ledger.

     The facility loomed above, a brutalist slab of concrete and black glass against the night sky. Perimeter halogens hummed with low, electric menace.

     Miller raised a fist. The line stopped instantly.

     The service entrance. The Rubicon.

     A hand squeezed Miller's shoulder. He didn't look back. It was Garrick. The squeeze said: I’m here. Into hell.

     Miller took a breath, tasting ozone and damp earth. He reached for the handle and felt the heat of the team stacked behind him.

     He tapped his headset.

     "Breach."

 

 

     In the dead quiet, the hydraulic hiss of the service door was deafening.

     Miller didn't rush. He pushed through the doorway's “fatal funnel,” his weapon’s light cutting a blinding white cone through the gloom of the corridor. He snapped his rifle left. Clear. He snapped right. Clear.

     "Move," he whispered.

     The team filtered in behind him, a caterpillar of black gear and kinetic energy. Garrick took the rear, closing the heavy steel door behind them. The click of the latch sounded like the lid of a coffin sliding into place.

     Then: nothing.

     No klaxons. No shouting guards. No thud of boots on linoleum.

     The facility was a tomb. The air smelled musty, recycled—like floor wax and the faint, metallic tang of overheated servers.

     "Status?" Miller breathed into his comms.

     "Hallway clear," the point man, distinctively called 'Vegas', whispered back. "But boss ... it's wrong."

     Miller felt it too. The intelligence report had been specific: Two armed guards at the service desk. Roving patrol every fifteen minutes.

     There were no guards. The service desk was empty. A half-drunk cup of coffee sat under the monitor, a wisp of steam still curling off the surface.

     "Check the heat," Miller ordered.

     Garrick moved up, scanning the corridor with a thermal optic. He swept the hallway, the ceiling vents, the empty security booth.

     "Cold," Garrick said, his voice tight. "No heat signatures. No bodies. Just ... empty."

     They moved deeper. The silence wasn't peaceful; it was predatory. It pressed against their eardrums, heavier than the plates in their carriers. Every shadow looked like an ambush. Every blinking LED on a server rack watched them like the eye of a predator.

     Garrick rolled his heavy shoulders, his knees popping loudly in the quiet hall—the physical toll of a decade spent carrying doors and heavy armor. Beside him, Vegas was a bundle of nervous, kinetic energy, habitually spinning a multi-tool in his gloved hand. Elias, however, was just terrifyingly still. He didn't fidget. He just waited.

     They cleared the first checkpoint—a heavy blast door that should have been locked. It was standing wide open.

     Miller signaled a halt. He knelt, checking the floor. No scuff marks. No signs of a struggle. As if the staff had simply evaporated mid-shift.

     "They knew we were coming," Garrick hissed, moving up to Miller’s shoulder. "Pulled all personnel to lure us into a kill box."

     "Best place to ambush would’ve been the breach.” Miller glanced at the blast door, thinking. "No, Garrick, this isn’t a trap."

     "Then what is it?"

     "An invitation."

     Miller stood up. The objective—the main server room—was two floors down. "Tighten up. Check your corners. If anything moves and it isn't us, put it down."

     They descended the stairwell, the metal grates clinking softly under their boots. The silence stretched the nerves of the team thin. They were men used to chaos, to the deafening noise of war. This sterile, empty quiet was stripping away their adrenaline and replacing it with dread.

     They reached the bottom landing. The double doors to the server room were ahead.

     Unlike the rest of the facility, these weren't open. They were sealed. And spray-painted across the brushed steel, in hasty, dripping red letters, was a single message: YOU ARE LATE…

About the author:

     Charles V. Sasser Jr. is a retired U.S. Army Command Sergeant Major and the author of the military thriller Led by Love of Country: Hard Reset. Over a nearly 30-year military career, he served as the 22nd Command Sergeant Major of the 1st Infantry Division and completed 75 months of combat deployments across Iraq and Afghanistan.

     Holding elite qualifications as a Ranger, Pathfinder, and Jumpmaster, Charles translates his firsthand experience in asymmetric warfare and tactical operations into gripping, authentic fiction. Beyond his writing, he continues to serve the defense sector as a Senior Training Executive, professional keynote speaker, and media analyst.

 

by Hallow Blackwell

 

 

You pay in memory. That’s the rule.

     The alley doesn’t show up on maps. It isn’t always there. One moment it’s a brick wall between a barber shop and a closed laundromat. The next, it’s a narrow opening just wide enough for one person to step through. Too clean to be abandoned. Too quiet for the city.

     The first time Caine finds it, he’s been walking for hours without knowing where he’s going.

     At the end of the alley is a door. No number. No sign. Just a rusted handle that feels warm when he touches it.

     Inside is a small room. A chair. A counter. And a man with no face.

     Not hidden. Not blurred. Just missing, like the space where a face should have been was never finished.

     The man’s voice is calm.

     “What memory do you want to forget?”

     Caine doesn’t hesitate.

     “My child,” he says.

     The man nods once.

     “Be specific.”

     Caine swallows. His hands shake.

     “His face when he looked at me. His voice at night when the room is quiet. I don’t want to see it anymore. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to feel this.”

     The man places his hand flat on the counter.

     “You may choose what you give,” he says. “But you do not choose what I take.”

Caine doesn’t fully understand the rule.

     He agrees anyway.

     When he leaves the room, the alley closes behind him.

     And the name is gone.

     He knows he had a child. He knows that something was taken from his life that can never be returned. But the name no longer exists in his mind. The sound of it. The shape of it. Gone.

     It hurts less.

     That’s the point.

 

     The second time, Caine chooses to forget the last day they were together.

     The room with the soft lights.

     The steady machines.

     The chair pulled too close to the bed.

     The way time slowed while he waited for words he didn’t want to hear.

     This time, the room takes something without warning.

     When he wakes the next morning, he can’t remember his father’s eyes. Not the color. Not the way they narrowed when he was thinking.

     He hadn’t given that memory. It was taken.

     That’s when he understands the rule.

     You choose what you give.

     The room chooses what it takes.

 

     By the fourth visit, Caine stops asking questions.

     He names memories carefully now. A sound. A moment. The feeling of standing in a doorway that no longer exists.

     In return, the room takes things he never meant to lose.

     Street names vanish. Faces go blank. A woman at work speaks to him like they are old friends. He has no idea who she is. She looks hurt when he says her name wrong.

     He starts keeping a notebook.

     RULE: YOU CHOOSE ONE. IT CHOOSES ONE.

     RESULT: IT NEVER FEELS FAIR.

     The world begins to feel wrong.

     Buildings seem unfamiliar even when he’s sure he’s walked past them for years. Music playing in stores makes his chest tighten even when he doesn’t recognize the song. People react to him with recognition he can’t return.

     Once, on a train, a woman brushes past him and starts to cry. She says a name he can’t comprehend. He feels like he should know it.

     He doesn’t.

     That night he dreams of beeping sounds and wakes up shaking without knowing why.

 

     On the seventh visit, Caine tries to end it.

     “I want to forget everything,” he says. “Everything that hurts.”

     The faceless man tilts his head.

     “What would remain?”

     “I don’t care.”

     The voice stays calm.

     “You’ve already given me most of what matters.”

     When Caine wakes the next morning, he’s in a clean apartment he doesn’t recognize. No personal photos. No mirror that reflects him properly—only fog where his face should be.

     His phone has no contacts.

     On the kitchen table rests his notebook, filled with handwriting he recognizes but doesn’t remember writing:

     DON’T GO BACK

     REMEMBER TO REMEMBER

     He doesn’t know why he wrote it.

     The alley still finds him.

 

     The eighth time, Caine doesn’t offer a memory.

     He asks a question instead.

     “Can I get one back?”

     The room is silent, longer than usual.

     “You’ve been here before,” the man says.

     “I don’t remember.”

     “Exactly.”

     The man slides a Polaroid across the counter.

     A faded photo. Burned around the edges.

     A woman. A child. And Caine.

     He doesn’t recognize any of them.

     “You chose to forget the worst loss you carried,” the man says. “This is what it cost.”

     Caine’s hands shake.

     “What happened to them?”

     The man doesn’t answer.

 

     Two days later, Caine sees her.

     The woman from the photo.

     She sits on a bench in a park that feels out of place. At first, she doesn't look at him.

     “You said forgetting was the only way you’d survive,” she says. “You said staying would break you.”

     Caine swallows.

     “There was a child,” he says.

     “Yes.”

     “What happened?”

     She takes his hand and places something in his palm.

     A hospital bracelet.

     Folded once. Worn thin. His child’s name printed on it.

     Then she stands, walks into the trees, and doesn’t come back.

 

     That night, Caine returns to the alley.

     “If I take the photo,” he asks, “what happens?”

     “You remember.”

     “And if I don’t?”

     “Then you keep giving until there is nothing left of you worth taking.”

     Caine looks at the photo.

     The woman.

     The child.

     The bracelet framed in his pocket.

     He takes it.

     He thinks of the notebook on the kitchen table.

     He finally understands why he wrote it.

 

     The memories return all at once.

     The hospital room.

     The steady machines.

     The chair pulled too close to the bed.

     Small hands in his.

     Breathing that faltered.

     His legs give out. He drops to his knees. His hands shake so hard he can’t hold onto anything. His chest tightens until he can’t breathe. Tears flood his eyes before he realizes he’s crying.

     The name hits him like a blow.

     Clear.

     Sharp.

     Unavoidable.

     He folds over and sobs into the floor.

 

     When he wakes, the room is gone.

     Just a dead-end alley. A dumpster. No door.

     His reflection works again. He hates that it does.

     But he walks. Through a city that feels solid. People pass without crying. Lights change. Music sounds right again.

     Caine keeps the photo and the bracelet in his pocket.

     Not to forget. But because remembering is the cost of staying.

     You pay in memory. That’s the rule.

 

~~~

About the author:

      Hallow Blackwell is a writer of literary horror and speculative fiction. His work explores humanity through grief, trauma, identity, and memory. His writing attempts to blur the line between reality and the surreal. His current work focuses on the side effects of being human.

“I have fought with networks, with producers, with directors, with editors–I have fought the world over. Now, I talk as a professional editor. I hate editors; they are always putting the reader down. And they say to me, over and over again that I expect too much of the viewer, of the reader, and I keep saying to them that a ten year-old child is brighter than they are.”

 

Best known for his Hugo-winning novel The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester was an American science fiction author, TV, radio, and comic scriptwriter, and magazine editor. Read the entire interview - preserved by Tangent Online - by clicking HERE.

Listen on:

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    I’m somewhere between losing and beginning again. Most days I wake up and feel like I’m walking through the echo of something that used to be whole. Some mornings the sunlight feels heavier than it should, like it’s pressing down instead of lifting. I’ve learned how to smile in public and disappear in private. How to hold conversations that sound normal, while somewhere deep inside, a quiet ache hums like a second heartbeat.

     I wouldn’t say I have a favorite kind of story anymore. I think I’m just drawn to anything that reminds me I’m not the only one trying to make peace with the pieces.

     I found Story Unlikely by accident or maybe accidents are how life gets our attention. Either way, thanks for the stories. Some days, they’re the only things that still make sense.

 

Sincerely,

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