Mystery / Fantasy

Infection of the Mind Begins with Silence

One by one, the chants replaced their thoughts—until she asked the one question that changed everything.

No one remembered exactly when it started—just that the hats came first.

It was a Tuesday when Carol Jensen noticed the change. Old Bill from the hardware store, who once grumbled about politics only after his third beer, was suddenly standing on Main Street with a megaphone, wearing a bright red cap that said, *“Again Means Forever.”* He repeated it like it was scripture.

“Again Means Forever!”

On a snowy winter night, a lonely widow notices a mysterious figure watching her from across the street, leading her to uncover a truth that will change everything she thought she knew about love and loss.

The wind howled down the narrow street, rattling the old glass panes of Clara’s window. She sat in her usual spot, a worn armchair nestled in the corner, wrapped in the comfort of a knitted shawl. The full moon cast its pale glow over the snow-covered street below, painting everything in a bluish-white hue. It was quiet—just the way Clara liked it.

Her row home at the end of the block was her sanctuary, even if it felt emptier these days. With her husband James gone for nearly five years, the house seemed to echo more than it used to, the creaks and groans of the old floorboards a reminder of its solitude.

Clara…

Amid a dazzling future shaped by limitless energy, a visionary's daring experiment pushes the boundaries of light and shadow, sparking unforeseen consequences.

Eilan Mosk stood at the edge of the penthouse balcony, gazing out at the sprawling city below. The skyline glittered with artificial light, a thousand towers reaching up as if to touch the very heavens. But even with all the technology at her fingertips, there was an emptiness in the air—an ache that no power, no invention could fill. She had once been the shining star of the energy revolution, the visionary who brought the sun into every home, every building, every street. She had turned day into night and night into day, providing endless energy through solar technologies that powered the world. People adored her for it.

Yet, there was always something more she craved. She felt the weight of their worship pressing down on her, the…

Beneath the shadow of a crumbling world, a daring group of eco-hackers races against time to unlock a forgotten invention that could rewrite humanity’s future.

The city of Arcadia was a smog-draped labyrinth, where sunlight rarely pierced the haze of industry. The world had grown dependent on fossil fuels, not for lack of alternatives, but because those alternatives had been buried—sometimes literally—by the corporations controlling the energy grid. Amidst this dystopia, The Rebel Collective operated from the shadows: a patchwork group of eco-hackers, engineers, and activists united by a shared dream of a sustainable future.

It began when Iris, the group’s leader, unearthed an old digital archive hidden deep within a server belonging to Dominion Energy. The archive contained schematics for a water-powered car, patented decades ago and swiftly buried under mountains of corporate litigation. The design was elegant, using a process of hydrolysis to extract hydrogen from water and…