The Lights in the Deep Dark Night Lights and the Peripheral Sentinel What do you see when driving at night? Travel Sketches by metamodernist artist JJFBbennett The night swallows the road long before the mind settles into the rhythm of the drive. Out here, where the bitumen cuts a narrow ribbon through the vast dark of the Australian bush , the headlamps carve out only the immediate seconds ahead—a tunnel of white glare against an ocean of shadow. Yet, vision at night is never truly confined to what sits directly in the beams. In the peripheral sweep, just beyond the hard edge of the headlights where the eucalyptus canopy dissolves into the black sky, the landscape breathes with another kind of presence. Reflected softly on the wet glass of the side window, the world folds inward and outward at once. The rain-streaked pane catches the amber glow of the dashboard and smears it against the deep gloom outside, blurring the boundary between the cabin and the scrub. And there, riding ...
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The 12 loops of Goodbye
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The Twelve Loops of Goodbye
The fluid rises. The cryo-hiss is deafening. And then... the program starts.
Twelve times. The system cycles, and twelve times I see you.
It starts the same. The image freezes in the dark. It’s you, BK. Or... It’s your idea. You’re wearing the rig. The goggles are locked on me. I try to say your name, but my mouth is filled with ice. I love you. God, I love you. But you don’t blink.
The Neural Glitch. Something is wrong. The memory corrupts. I see "corrupted code" trying to stabilise across your face. Your eyes... behind the lenses... they twitch. Microscopically. Are you hurting? Or is that my pain rippling through the connection? A low-frequency pulse warps your skin. You look like a stranger. You look like the machine.
The Shuddering Breath. This is the one that breaks me. Total stillness. Then... a faint mist forms at your mouth. Condensation beads on the goggles. I scream at you to breathe! Just breathe! But it’s slow. Irregular. It’s a "slow horror." I watch the condensation slide down in zero gravity. I try to wipe it away, to see your eyes one last time, but my hands are ghosts. The frame distorts. You exhale... and you vanish.
The Data-Possession. You’re coming back wrong! Ghostly glyphs are phasing over your face. Like a ritual mask. "Lines of code flow like linen strips"... wrapping you. Binding you. Just like they’re binding me! Your goggles rotate. You aren't looking at me anymore. You’re looking at the void.
This is the fear, BK. The "Cyberpunk I became." Is this what I turn into? A vessel? A hard drive with a heartbeat? Don’t let me forget you. Please, don't let me overwrite you.
It’s fracturing! "Chromatic aberration" tears you apart. The colours are screaming. Red. Violet. Static. I see your hand twitch—fingers flexing—reaching for me! But "soundless shockwaves" push us apart. I am panicking. My mind is a "relentless tempest." I am losing the signal!
The silence falls. "Stabilisation Protocol... Engaged." The chaos stops. The geometric grids slide over your face. They smooth out the fear. They delete the glitch. You look perfect. Calm. Ordered. But you aren't you anymore. And I am not me.
Then it ends. The screen goes black. Goodbye, my love. I’ll see you in the code.
This artwork is protected by U.S. and International copyright laws. Distribution and/or modification of the artwork without the written permission of the sponsor is prohibited.
The Highway and the Lost Soldier The midday sun around Adelaide River does something violent to the bitumen. At forty-five degrees, the Stuart Highway softens like melting fat; it turns into a black mirror, rippling with an unnatural, liquid glare that pools over every low rise. That is where it waits. He is always trudging south, away from life and deeper into the blistering furnace, his boots making no sound against the tar. The Highway and Lost Soldier Standing From two hundred yards out, he resembles a stranded traveler you’d pull over to save. He wears sun-bleached, disintegrating drill cotton that matches the bone-white dust of the termite country, his head angled down at an impossible, broken angle against the glare. No broad-brim hat. No swag. No water bottle. Just stiff, unnatural limbs jerking with every stride. “Driver... look at his face. We need to stop—why won't he turn around?” He is no lost tourist. Could he be the linesman from the Overland Telegraph days who tore ...
The Terminal Horizon Tourist Bus Discovering the Terminal Horizon The Long Highway Out here, the world ends not in silence, but in fire. The asphalt bleeds into cracked red earth, stretching toward a bruised horizon where the sky refuses to cool. Behind the glass, you drive chasing ghosts through a desert that forgot rain a lifetime ago. Beneath the Scorch Every road leads deeper into the furnace. Even below the surface, the rock fissures and weeps, hot steam rising through subterranean fractures where molten veins pulse in the dark, feeding an ancient, unforgiving heat. Broken Arteries What we built couldn’t hold. Rails twist into the dunes, swallowed by iron sand and wind. Bridges split down the seam, concrete splintered into raw bone, tangled rebar, and dying wires crackling into the smoke. The machines stopped; the wasteland stayed. The Last Horizon And when the road finally runs out, there is only the ash, the petrified stumps, and the quiet. You are a lone figure sitting in...
Every stop is a story - Darwin to Adelaide River The Adelaide River Rupture The storm did not break over the Adelaide River plains; rather, reality tore open along the track. To the left, the familiar Top End landscape clung fiercely to its quiet melancholy. A lone gum tree stood sentinel over the charred scrub and dry earth, its leaves catching the last bruised light of a brooding wet-season sky. In the hollow below, the old fictional homestead crouched beside the rutted dirt road, enduring the heavy stillness that always settles before the atmosphere ruptures. Then came the tear. It began not with thunder, but with an overwhelming, luminous heat that shredded the grey overcast into molten ribbons. You could feel the vortex of raw energy sweeping through radiant ambers, searing cadmium oranges, and blinding celestial whites. The vortex descended like a folded dimension brushing against the earth. Where the atmospheric rift touched the ground, the landscape blurred into fierce gestura...
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