BAIT

BAIT.

Fishing  on open sea is a sport that demands physical and mental strength. Fish like the Atlantic blue marlin are combative adversaries who test the fisherman resolution. Usually no one go fish alone in open sea, but there are exceptions, men who find the small talk a nuisance and an obstacle to the success.

One time a man went after the blue marlin, taking with him nothing more than a radio and some food for the day. He expected to return before night with time to spare, and the weather as firm like predicted.

What truly happened that day Is unknown, but close to the 11:00  AM, the lone fisher called on the radio and excited he spoke to his friends on land:

“I think I got a big one! This bastard is putting quite a fight here! Tell everyone I may get home a little late!”

*

The friends tried to reply making jokes, but the radio was mute again. Nothing unusual, he was probably to busy with his catch.

His second call, at 13:00, was less friendly:

“That SON OF A BITCH ate almost half of my bait and keep making fun of me! The bastard even smiled at me, mocking me!”

*

This time his friends were a little concerned, but when a fish escape to many times, you curse at him like it was a person. He was probably having a hard time and decided to blow off some steam. They tried to talk to him, but once again, he didn’t reply.

At  18:00 they all were concerned. The fisherman was indeed stubborn, but he was cautious enough to not stay at the sea alone at night, in a small boat.

They tried contact him relentlessly, and when they were about to call the coast guard, at 19:30, he responded. His voice was twisted by anger.

“stop annoying me at the radio! Wasn’t enough that damn fish mocking me and singing all the time, I still have to deal with you? Dammit, I have more important things to think, the bastard stole all my bait, even the lunch I brought!”

And he disconnected. Some say they listened something like a laugh in the back at the end of the transmission.

*

At that point everyone agreed to call coast guard and ask for help. The coast guard responded quickly, but even using all of it’s resources, wasn’t able to find the boat.

His family was in despair, and his friends were arranging search teams among the other fishermen when, at 02:00, he called again:

“he, I think I got it now…I solved the bait problem, and he is begging for it…can you hear? he love it so much that the bastard is BEGGING for more!”

The voice was weak, and at the back an acute low voice, like finger nails on a chalk board, clearly asked: “gimme more of it! Is delicious!”

*

They urged him to give his GPS coordinates, but the radio was silent again. Now everyone was scared. He was confuse… and maybe not alone? nobody could actually say why that strange voice sounded like a bad omen, but it drained the blood of everyone on the room.

Even scared the men decided to go looking for the lost man, and joined the coast guard.

It’s something most people don’t know, but when the weather is fine, the coast guard can pin-point every ship in hundreds of miles, but still, they didn’t found the boat until the next morning.

*

The first to find the boat was a small group of fishermen, who was part of the rescue parties. What they saw inside the boat scared them so much that they couldn’t even talk about it on the radio. Soon, the coast guard rushed in the location with other fishers on it’s tail, and what they found was cryptic and macabre.

The fisherman was laying on the floor, in a pool of his own blood. In one hand a bright fishing hook piercing a huge chunk of his on flesh, just under his knee. In the other hand, the sharp fishing knife, stop in the midway of cutting that chunk of flesh. The man was cutting pieces of his own leg to use as bait. For the wounds and the tourniquet he put above it they could guess he had cut off at least 1/3 of the flesh of his leg before fainting and dying from the bleeding.

*

No sign of other man was found of the boat, and there was no other source of sound who could explain the begging acute voice. The man wasn’t drunk, or drugged, so most people adopted the idea that the hot sun made him insane, a warning to all.

But that was not the end.

The family never sailed again, and the boat stayed on the harbor for almost a year before someone bought it. The buyer was a young man, who wants to sail around with his friends.

After spending a night at the sea with his friends, he returned to the harbor. He and his friends were all scared and look sleepless.

A man from the harbor come to them and worried asked what was wrong, if they need help.

The young man responded putting the keys to the boat on the hands of the harbor man and said:

“something followed the ship all the night, it won’t stop screaming, like a child, it kept  asking for more, it keep repeating that he need more of the delicious bait!”

/x/ thread

the thread are still up! last thing i posted on /x/:

INFESTATION.

One thing you can find on our ocean, and it’s for sure, are parasites.

They come in any sizes and shapes, and suck the life from hundreds of different species. Some of them attach themselves to the outer part of it’s host, and feed on it like a leech, but many times bigger –and hungrier- than a regular one. Others are more discrete, but not less dreadful, and attack from inside, draining the life of it’s host slowing.

Those are by far, the most interesting ones. The methods of infestation are many: Some lay eggs on the flesh of the host, and drain him not only to assure its own well-being, but also the fate of the host, controlling it’s behavior to assure his death in the mouth of a unlucky predator, soon to become a new host.

 There are those who use the excretion system of its host to propagate eggs, so small that can infect  through the respiratory system of any possible host who cross this dangerous path. Its like a invisible mine field, who infest any creature who cross it.

The most impressive are those who actually hunt for hosts. They have great mobility, and believe, intelligence,  to search for it’s next host, and for a way to get inside his body. Those violators are vicious, and usually attack where it hurt the most, so any attempt to extract it cause too much pain to endure.

What people fail to see, it’s that for those creatures, fish or men are equally seen as potential hosts.

One case is very interesting, for account not only a human case, but for account also a unknown parasite.

The patient was a man, age 30, from north Europe, and worked as a lawyer. For his 5^th year of marriage, he and his wife decided to travel in a luxurious cruise along the cost of north Africa.

The man was healthy, and one of his favorite activities was diving with other passengers, exploring the natural beauties along the route. His wife wasn’t fond of swimming in the open and instead used one of the many pools aboard.

One day the husband walked in the ship’s medical bay, where I worked. More than half of the people who walk in is sea-sick, have over-eated, sun burns, the usual things. About 40% are those who fail to have a good sense of what is fun or what is plain stupid, and visit with broken bones and some nasty cuts, but nothing actually dangerous. About 9% are the serious cases, like exposed fractures, seizures, heart attacks, which fortunately are rare. But that man case, to my surprise would be one of the 1%, the extremely serious case.

When the husband entered, literally pushed by his wife, I first think it was a case of over eating, or that he was just sea sick. The man was pale, and his facial traits showed more discomfort than pain. I smiled and asked what he ate last night, but before he could answer his wife start talking, concerned and angry.

“he is eating ANYTHING he can find! At the restaurant he act like a hungry pig, and doctor…he was eating the food remaining directly from the garbage!”

That was more than unusual. As a medic I have some knowledge of mental illness, and it was probably the case.

Then the wife continued:

“all he do is eat, he spent the last twelve hours hunting for anything to eat, didn’t sleep, and his mouth have this atrocious smell!”

And indeed, it smelled like something very rotten. I asked to him why he was acting like that but he just answered “ I am hungry”.

I asked him to open his mouth, and the smell hit me. It was horrible. It was rotten egg’s and feces, all togheter. That case looked more serious than I tought, I said to myself, then fighting against my nausea I looked in his mouth.

My first reaction was incredulity. I could swear I saw something black, similar to a leech, but from the size of a thumb, slide down his throat to escape my light. Then I went deeper and using a clamp I caught something, I was sure of it. For my surprise I couldn’t pull it out more than a inch, enough to see something horrible.

It was very slippery, and had a mouth similar to teethed suction cup. For my surprise th patient showed no gag reflex during my struggle with that little monster. It slipped and I could find it again. Scared, I asked a dozen questions to the husband, but he was like a zombie. Then I asked the same questions to the wife, but nothing was out of the ordinary. I decided it was too serious, and could represent a potential danger to the rest of the passengers , so I put him on quarantine and contacted the local authorities

The man kept asking for food, but he didn’t moved much more. I decided to do a full physical on him, to look for marks or other abnormal signals. The first thing I noticed was that his lower abdomen was clearly becoming larger and harder. I keep examining it with my hand, when something scared me more than I was willing to admit.

It clearly moved when I touched it, and the patient felt it too, because he moaned like if he was in great pain. The second thing I noticed was that he was getting more and more pale at each hour, and strange nods keep popping on his body, from toe to the top of the head. I rushed to the nurse and ordered her to bring blood to make a transfusion, and prayed for the arrival of the rescue helicopter. When I started the transfusion something very bizarre took place under the man’s skin. The nods turn smaller in matter of seconds, and appeared to move inside him.

The man expression changed too. He was almost a non-responsive zombie, but now he giggled and moaned with strange satisfaction. It was when he said he had to go to the bathroom.

I told him he couldn’t move during the transfusion, and with unusual resistance, the man agreed in using the “pan”. What happened next was truly horrible. The man didn’t made much effort, but something literally burst from his body, a huge black mass, covered in blood and feces. The wife runned away from the sick bay, and I almost followed her, but that strange mass felt between me and the door.

It was alive and moving, probably thousands of tiny leeches moving frenetically in all directions, but to my luck, they couldn’t go much further. The mass was of the size of a fist and was the source of the atrocious smell, I was sure of it. Then I heard the sound of something soft hitting the bed, and I was horrified. A huge mass of leech-like creatures, even smaller than the ones in the “ball” start moving out of the man’s body. Was like all his abdominal organs were turned in those hideous monsters, and I realized the patient was now dead. But the horrible spectacle didn’t end. Something start crawling from the man’s throat. Was the monster I saw at the beginning, big and round large like a thumb and at least twelve inches long. The creature crawled for a couple minutes, and then died.

When rescue arrived, all the little devilish creatures were dead. Apparently they couldn’t live long outside the water, or without a host.  But, once again, the horror wasn’t over. At least a dozen other passengers were infected, we didn’t discover how. Those patients were treated with strong combinations of antihelmintics and we mananged to purge most of the parasites from the hosts without other fatalities. But the outcome was still scary. Huge amounts of dead parasites were found on each patient feces, for weeks after the treatment. Some of those parasites were microscopic, and were found also in the blood strain of each patient. At the end, the passengers were never “healed” but with constant medication managed to avoid the propagation of the disease.

We never found the initial source of the infestation, even with the help of the authorities. The ways it spreads was also a mystery. It obviously use the host excrement as propagation, but we found microscopic parasites on patients saliva, blood and even sweat. The ship was seized and , and are still quarantined somewhere near the north coast of Africa.

The infected were hold for years and even today are constantly under supervision.

How the first patient was infested? And where? For how long he carried it? The cruise crossed around the coast of dozens of countries, and the patient zero swim on all those waters, did he propagate the disease on those locations? I don’t know. Nobody does.

um conto que escrevi em tempo real para o pessoal espetacular do /x/.
NO SURVIVOR

did you ever wachet that tv show, the deadliest catch? a show about tough guys fishing crabs on bering strait?if you did you know what the bering is, a dark deadly ocean, where is very easy to die, or simply disapear to never be seen again. dozens disapear there, eery year, at least those we can count. sometimes the weather play tricks on the radar screens, and ships come and go from nowhere, like ghosts, but it's just the weather. the coast guard ger SOS calls all the time, and they have a brave and respectable history of sucessfull rescues to tell to anyone who asks. But sometimes they didn't get there on time. the cold water can kill a man in few minutes, and a hole of the size on a needle in a survival suit WILL get you killed, there, the stormy ocean can split big ships in half, if they don't know how to break the waves right. small boats can get swallowed by the ocean in a second, so some times, when the rescue get there, all they see are flooting debris,not even a corpse is left to be found.

but sometimes, ships appear out of nowhere, and those are real ships, not the weather again. mostly fishing ships, with 5 or 6 men, who suddenly stop answering to the radio. when a ship dont reply to calls, rescue is called, nothing is left to the chance, not on those waters. once there, rescuers climb on the ship to see what is wrong, but they dont find nothing.

tanks full of crabs or fishs, TVs on, something smelling good on the kitchen, with food on the tables. all systems working perfectly, and all life boats on their places, ready to go, if anyone need them. but the crew isn't there. simple as that. six men, sometimes more, simply disapear. no signs of fight, no sign of danger, not a single possible explanation for where those men went. it's like they just vanished in thin air, suddenly.

some people say it was a wave, who caught everyone on the deck by surprise, and dragged then to a death in the cold waters, and most people accept that, but anyone on the job know that the odds of such thing happening with every single man on the ship at the same time is close to one in one million. others spoke about more dark possibilities. some times people get insane, they just pop and brake, and then is just wait and see the bodies hitting the water.

but such possibilitie is also very hard to belive, after all one man losing his mind is common, but six, it's simple not possible.

with all new tech, ou can have a cam everywhere, and sometimes those cams are found recording.

the footage is, in lack of a better word, disturbing

its a roaring sound, not loud, but very very low, like metal against ice, or waves, huge waves, breaking at the beach the beach, but you may say “nothing extraordinary”, but that is not the disturbing part. Every time some of those “waves”break, you can hear an almost inaudible sound of voices, female voices.

It’s not a beatifull singing, it’s not something you can hear on radio. It’s an eerie sound full of hatred, the sound of women growling like animals and cursing on a strange dialect that no one can recognise. He talk fast, and for ten to twelve minutes all you can see is darkness.

At the end, you hear something different. Most people recognise the voices as the voices of the crew members. They scream for help for few seconds then everything turn in silence.

A couple years ago, the coast guard found one of those ships, but this was different, it had a  survivor. The man was inside one of the tanks, in his fishing suit, with only his head exposed. At first they thought He was already dead, but once they touched him, He started to scream.

He didn’t called for help, nor threatened the rescuers, He Just screamed until He fainted. He was taken to the hospital more dead than alive, and spoke to no one.

The man was wounded, but nothing serious. Police conclude He got a beating, but no one could explain why. In his face, deep cuts resembling claw marks. Soon his body was healed, but not his mind. He didint spoke a single Word for several years, mosto f the time He would spent in silence in a dark corner, like a small child hiding. The most interesting part was his fear of two thngs: water and women.

The man wound freeze IF touched or even spoken to by any women, old or Young, and He always obeyed any command of them with great fear, several times urineting himself in fear. At first the nurses found it amusing, but soon they got worried and scared with his extreme reactions.

The water was other issue. The man wont drink water unless He was forced or commanded by a female, and oftenly would vomit it soon afterwards. To save him the hospital had to feed water to him though a tube down his throath.

Some Day, a man stormed in the hospital and demanded to speak with the survivor. The man was the father of one of the missing fishermen. The father was about to be taken away by force, when a soft, sound came from the room where the survivor was. His doctors rushed to the room in time to see the survivor pulling the tube from his throat and trying to talk.

He refused to speak to the doctors, and pointed at the desperated father,. The medics, now  curious, let the old man approached the bed, and when He got close enough, the survivor pulled him close to his mouth with surprisingly speed and strenght. For almost two minutes He whispered in the old man’s ear, so no one else could hear it.

Then He let go of the man and felt in the bed. He was dead.

The medics tried to bring him back, but everything failed. The man was dead and cold, almost freezing, something no one could explain. In the confusion, the old man vanished. To never be seen again. He didnt returned to his house, He Just vanished.

At the hospital, na last disturbing event took place. Shocked by the man sudden death, the hospital conducted an autopsy. But what was found only brought more questions.

All his organs where rotten, after less than a Day since his expiration.

No one could explain it, and to be honest, no one wanted to try. It was like a silent agreement between the authorities, no one would ask questions and no one would try answering them. The man was cremated and the case buried under piles of paper.

But one Day, several years later, one of the medics found, by pure blind luck, the father Who disapeared since that tragic Day. His first impulse was to not contact him. He had turned into a homeless person, and was very sick, for what He could tell. But the medic simply need to know what the survivor told before He died.

Slowly He aproached the old man, and present himself as one of the medics Who took care of the survivor. The old man Just look at him and Said:”He told me that they all were dead. All of them”

That was not a total shock. The poor old man went after the survivor to know the fate of his son, and He found it. The medic put his hand on the shoulder of the old man and Said:

“so the survivor told you that all the other fishermen were dead?thats why you disapeared?”

The old man looked deep in the eyes of the medic, and spoke slowly:

“listen me carefully doctor. He told me they were all dead. Every single one of them. He is dead too, you know that.”

The doctor looked to the old man with pity.

“Yes, He died that same night, Just after talking to you.”

The old man turned his back to the doctor and walked away. But before dsapearing in the streets He spoke for the last time:

“stupid man. He was dead from the beginning, dead from the beginning. There was no such thing as a survivor.

The medic was shocked. He couldn’t see that one coming, it was for sure.


That night He went to his house and opened the files He keept with him in secret.dead from the begining?stupidity. He was alive and healthy, at least his body. It was what He thinked until He saw the first Picture:  beside him was the survivor, but it was wrong, very wrong. The survivor, the patient in the Picture, was clearly a dead man, a corpse with initial signs of decomposition. But was indeed, the same man, He could see that. 


He rushed to see the other pictures, the one from the rescue, and several others He took for years. At every single Picture He would see the survivor, or better say, the dead man, rotting and aging, turning in a hideous carcass.

That was impossible, those pictures showed a healty patient in the past, how could they changed like that?

The doctor burned his files, with the pictures, and quit the job at the city hospital. Some say He moved to some place far away. But no one know to where. The old man was never seen again, and no one looked for him anyway.

But in that city, fisherman know one thing. There was no survivor left from that boat.

Fin

Tendências...

Tendências.
Eu tento não ser tendencioso, mas eu adoro robôs. O aspecto que me fascina neles é que eles são de certa forma uma projeção dos desejos, medos e necessidades das pessoas. Alguns querem um robô amigo, e compram um aibo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBuTFblUyrw). Outros não tem a mesma necessidade de amizade robotica, e desenvolvem um big dog (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHJJQ0zNNOM ).
Surfando por ai, achei este site (http://www.robotonline.net/en/list/robots/) com uma lista muito útil para se avaliar qual é a tendência do mercado de desenvolvimento de robôs para um futuro próximo.
De uma lista de 50 robôs, 27 foram definidos como de entretenimento, 11 de serviços, 5 de pesquisa, 4 militares, 2 exploradores e 1 de serviços de saúde. Apesar de não ser uma pesquisa profunda, esta lista já serve para indicar que o mercado é mais favoravél a "robôs amigos" pelo menos para o público em geral.
Opiniões?

afinal, em todo lugar
blog:http://atariownersgeneration.blogspot.com/
twitter:@atariownersgen
e-mail:atariownersgeneration@gmail.com

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