The Fool's Illusion

By Steven Arellano Rose

Here is a collection of dark fantastic events and terrifying scientific phenomena. It contains stories of deadly creatures, including vampires and other undead things, and adventures into the unknown and terrible--tales that brew to the bursting point. This book will not fail to fool you with its terrifying visions of events that could be and ones that are impossible to be yet make a reader contemplate, "What if they weren't?"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Arellano Rose
• Release date: Oct 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005182793

Book preview

Contents

Introduction: Illusions

The Puppet Show

Orbitville

The Inheritance

Coming Out

Digital Love at First Sight

Planet of the Dead

Strange Phenomena

The Bazaar

Spam

The Fool’s Illusion

About the Author

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

--Edgar Allen Poe

Introduction: Illusions

When I was a kid and watched a magician on television sawing a beautiful woman in two or three while she continued smiling and speaking, I was mystified. I had no idea how he could do it. Because of this, I was a fool. We were all fools, all of us who were watching, including the TV audience. We were being deceived. That is the role of illusions: to fool us. Illusions suspend our disbelief like the magician would suspend his assistant in mid air. Or at least he appeared to. That’s just the point--an illusion makes something appear to be that’s not.

Illusions make us forget reality for the moment. In some cases, they hide reality from us for longer periods, sometimes years. Illusions that go beyond a moment (ones that go longer than accepted by most of us) are often those of con artists, murderers, other criminals and even our own media. Film and video create illusions. We create our own illusions in everyday life. In fact, we live by them. Books and other print media create them and so does digital media, including Internet. And we’re fools to fall for these illusions. For better or worse. That said, the stories in this book are not only about illusions and the fools who fall for them, but are themselves illusions.

As Albert Einstein was attributed to saying, reality is an illusion. In a manner of speaking at least. We create reality with language and perception. The universe (and perhaps any others that may exist) and everything within are just there. Nothing in nature has been pre-named or pre-labeled. We humans did and still do the naming and labeling with language and art. When we hear the word tree we think of the huge plant with branches and leaves. When we see a tree, we think the word tree (or its equivalent in languages other than English). That thing with several limbs that grows out of the ground will always just be no matter what we call it. Thus, tree is an illusion and therefore the very word that refers to it creates in our minds that image of the thing it’s referring to. In other words, the concept of the word tree and an actual tree itself being both the same thing is an illusion. Words themselves are not the things they refer to.

However, it’s not only language that creates the illusions we live by and so creates reality as we commonly see it, but it’s also the limitations of our knowledge and perception. Nobody is omniscient. Because Medieval Europeans had no knowledge of the earth continuing beyond the visible Atlantic, they lived by the illusion of the planet being a flat disk rather than a sphere until Columbus discovered otherwise. Who knows what we’ll be disillusioned of next? Quantum physics theory has already been suggesting big breakthroughs in what we think of as material reality; it’s suggesting there is no such thing as matter. But since I’m not a physicist of any kind I won’t get into that. 

Dreams are illusions. They are illusions of waking reality. In particular, they are reflections of our own waking lives and so influenced by them.

Myth is based on illusions, including dreams. Karl Jung said that the archetype, the structure of ideas that are universal to all societies and are embedded in the subconscious, is responsible for the myths of various cultures. Jung also said that the archetype is responsible for many images in dreams, images that inspire a society’s myth. For example, a universal fear of snakes has lead to the snake’s association with evil and destruction and so is an archetype that shows up in nightmares and that cultures have used in their mythic story-telling.

1. Philip Ball, Physicists bid farewell to reality? Nature, April 18, 2007, http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070416/full/news070416-9.html

If you’re not a physicist, as I’m not (please see above), I suggest you read this article for more details on this topic. It does a great job explaining the theory using common, everyday language making it really interesting.

The other type of illusion myth is based on is deceit of nature. People in ancient times who sighted a whale at sea took it to be a giant sea serpent or dragon. Without advanced scientific knowledge of modern times, the closest that ancient peoples could classify this creature as was either a giant serpent or a dragon. The whale resembles a snake when it raises its elongated body partly above the ocean’s surface. The mist it sprays from its blow hole(s) can easily be mistaken for smoke. And so out of people’s dreams and natural deceit came mythic stories of heroic warriors fighting monsters. The societies these stories grew out of believed them to be true and so in this way they were illusions.

Illusion as myth has its dark side that goes beyond mere images of monsters and netherworld beings. Particularly, illusion as mythic stereotype has lead to racism and bigotry causing the deaths of many innocent people. The European witch craze and Salem witch hunts were based on this type of illusion that comes from a society’s own ignorance. Unfortunately, the illusion of mythic stereotype continues today between the sexes, races, religions, and many other groups.

Art creates illusions. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper we all know to be a two-dimensional painting, but it gives the illusion of depth. Even more illusive are photographically realistic paintings, especially those in street and sidewalk art that are so three dimensional appearing a person actually thinks he/she can walk into them. A painting of a stairwell leading down into a subterranean chamber is a good example. But even a more symbolic painting, can give the illusion of its own imaginary world being a possible reality. Much of surrealism does this. Such style of painting is often used by combining some degree of photorealism with ideal subject matter. For example, Dali’s painting of two realistic looking tigers floating in mid air (One Second Before Awakening).The medium of sculpture has also produced effects of realism. Many statues in today’s wax museums can be said to be the sculptural equivalent of photorealism.

Media definitely generates its illusions, for better or worse. This goes for all forms of mass media, including print. Many newspapers, especially tabloids such as The National Inquirer, will slant a story of a real life issue to make its readers believe in its extremity. The tabloid Weekly World News, founded in 1979, did not even carry a disclaimer for the extremity of its stories until 2004. Many of its stories were as outlandish as the one headlined Thawed out after 63 years! Girl Frozen In Ice In 1939 Alive! which appeared in the March 12, 2002 issue. Although the National Inquirer has been fairly recently said to better research its stories,³ like many other tabloid magazines such as People it continues to slant their stories for extravaganza and entertainment more than it informs its readers of the facts. Film and television has had a notorious history of doing this and continues doing it. This is especially true with much commercial media that blends fact with fiction. Today’s so-called reality shows do this most.

As early as the 1960s, there was a concern with television distorting the facts of an issue and making it appear evidential. But now the real threat in electronic communication is digital media. There are illusions all over the Internet; it’s very easy for anybody, pro or amateur, to distort factual evidence with Photoshop or some similar photo editing software and then upload it onto YouTube or an unofficial news site.

2. Mark Miller, Weekly World News meets God! Los Angeles Times, Aug. 8, 2007,

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-miller8aug08,0,977699.story.html

3. Sheila Marikar and Russell Goldman, National Enquirer Now Legit, According to Pulitzer Prize Board, ABC News, February 19, 2010,

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/national-enquirer-now-legit-pulitzer-prize-board/story?id=9887329#.UZgwDKKsiSo.html

But there’s also a bright side to electronic media. As with print, radio and television, digital media has been used for creative story telling. Such storytelling and the illusions it creates has been more for innocent fun and entertainment than for corrupt agenda and propaganda like in the above cases. This type of storytelling is most popular today in video games. Visually, unlike twenty to thirty years ago, video games are much more graphically realistic and will probably become more so. As far as story telling goes, many of today’s video games have full or ongoing plots and so can be considered literary as well as visual art. Also, digital media has enabled many novice and amateur filmmakers to make and upload movies to the Web which many are of good quality in filming and story considering.

We’re partly at fault for the illusions we fall victim to. This is due to our own ignorance--being uninformed and even straight out naive. Criminals, such as con artists, and even legitimate commercialism feed off of our ignorance and naivety. Con artists use their victims’ ignorance to make them think they’ll get a good deal that will be personally and maybe even socially benefitting but it’s really benefitting the con artists most of all. Fraudulent insurance sellers do the same thing and so do fraudulent retailers like many of those you see on Craigslist. And if taking your money isn’t bad enough, they’ll go as far as taking your identity like the devil takes a soul.

On the legal level, big commercialism uses illusion both through imagery and consumer ignorance. Go to the typical hamburger joint and take a second look at the overhead menu. The photos are of hamburgers, each of which takes up at least a quarter of its frame, labeled with names such as The Double Cheese Burger and tacked with 99 Cents next to it in characters almost bigger than the image of the sandwich. Then look at the real thing on your tray: the two patties are at least half as thin as you had imagined them. What you see is not what you get.

Why do we get suckered into such things? Because we often only believe what we desire and don’t question the information, such as the Big Cheese Burger ad, conveyed to us. We only think about the thick juicy patties as depicted in the ad rather than their actual size. We only think about the great qualities of that shiny new sports car or the looks of that potential love partner that catches our eye making us want to jump into bed with him/her. We think these things will make us happier until we’ve had them for a length of time and become disillusioned by their flaws. The expensive car we wanted is nearly more expensive when it breaks down and needs repairs. Our love partner turns out not to be so loving after sleeping with him/her several times. The looks don’t even impress us like when we first met our partner.

We deceive ourselves or allow ourselves to be deceived in order to escape everyday reality. This can be done dangerously or safely. People who are so fed up with the sameness of life will take hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD to create illusions, including delusions, for escape. Others, such as yours truly and perhaps even you, will turn to art and entertainment for escape: video games, RPGs, movies, TV and literature, to name only a few. We allow ourselves to become fools of such forms of art and entertainment knowing that doing so is safer than the real events they depict. And so now that brings us to the illusions in this book.

Stories convey their illusions. The roundedness of a character making the reader care about what happens to that character is an illusion. It gives the reader a sense of reality for the character and even a sense of a living relationship with him/her. And perhaps if the reader didn’t know if the story was fictional, they might really believe the character is or was a real person. This is especially so if a story falls within the broad genre of realism, which much of today’s mainstream fiction falls within, many of today’s court case novels, for example. With fantastical fiction, though, common sense tells us that the events in a science fiction, fantasy or horror story, have not happened and may never happen. However, science fiction may at times be the exception since it uses scientific elements as its main theme. We know this is true because the things that were once science fiction--things such as manned rockets and space stations, Internet and mobile devices--are now reality.

The situation with fantasy and supernatural horror is different. We know elves, ghosts and zombies don’t exist. But the very setting and characters involved, if made convincing enough, can invoke the feeling of possibility that such supernatural beings exist. If we’re made to care enough about the human characters, or human-like ones, then it makes us more emotionally involved with the story’s world thus creating an illusion of reality at a certain level of conscience. But even poorly made stories, fiction or non-fiction, create illusions. That’s because all stories create their own worlds or re-create the real world through the author’s eyes and so leave the reader with an image in his/her mind even if  a scant one.

All the stories in this book, then, are illusions. Each story has to do with a certain type of illusion. The illusions are mostly from magic and future science or technology. The stories also involve the reactions to these illusions, mostly the characters’ foolishness in falling for them. Hence The Fool’s Illusion.

So I don’t become deceitful by creating the illusion that I put this book together all on my own, I’d like to acknowledge a few people who more or less helped me. I’d like to thank my friend Drea Moore and several other members of the Sylvanopolis Writers’ Society for critiquing many of the stories in this book. I’d also like to thank friends from an earlier writers’ group based in Roseville, California I was a member of. And I’d like to thank the many people who allowed me promotion of this book at their events, websites and businesses--particularly Emerian Rich of HorrorAddicts.com, the crew of the Sacramento weekly film screening series Movies On a Big Screen, and the members of SacTown WISPER Guild. Finally, I’d like to thank God. Yes, some of us speculative fiction writers believe in one, maybe even several.

Now, sit back and enjoy the show . . .

--Steven Rose, Jr.

1 July 2013

THE PUPPET SHOW

MANUEL felt like the floor of the stage was trying to hold his feet down.  Even so, he forced himself to walk over to the girl who appeared to be Mariana and who was forcing a crowbar under one of the planks of the flat.  The flat had been made to resemble an art deco movie theatre which looked a lot like the Woodvale Opera House that the play had been performed in.  The whole set, in fact, resembled Woodvale’s old town Main Street, except that the flats depicted the buildings in fresher and brighter colors because the setting to the teen musical was in the 1950s.  The set looked so real that each time Manuel walked toward the stage he almost felt as though he were walking toward a giant, open bay door.  He asked the girl awkwardly, Do you need help with that? 

She looked up from the crowbar, stared at Manuel for a few seconds with a lifeless expression and then said, Get a crowbar.  Manuel grabbed a crowbar from a nearby wooden tool box.  He then forced it between a couple of planks that were nailed together to form a triangular base which was opposite the one that the girl was getting ready to pry apart.  They both pumped their crowbars up and down, making loud creaking noises in doing so, noises similar to those of opening coffins in old vampire movies.  They kept doing this until both bases snapped apart and then there was the fall with a thundering CRASH!

After a cloud of smoke faded away, the girl stared at the wreckage dejectedly.  Manuel stammered, Have you been in any plays here?  . . .  Lately? 

The girl continued staring at the fallen movie theatre.  Finally, she slowly lifted her head to look at Manuel with an apathetic expression.