Welcome to the sci-fi fantasy electronic and alternative opera... I'm a secular Atheist/Agnostic that leans toward Buddhism and Taoism, but I do eat meat and fish. Chicken, pork and seafood mostly, but every once in a while I eat beef. I don't play guitar and I've never owned a guitar in my life, but they certainly sound good in the hands of a skilled player.

Terms And Conditions

By using this content, you agree to the Terms Of Use disclaimer and our Views Expressed disclaimer.

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Shhhh! Digital Media Presents... Aliens: Aeternity (Work In Progress Updated March 31, 2026 EST)






Chapters

  1. Activation (Finished December 24, 2025 18:00 EST)
  2. Alienation (Coming soon March 31, 2026 17:00 EST)



Support Charity


Please support education and information access where you can in addition to these charities:


National Breast Cancer Foundation [Donate] [Hope Kit] [Women's Programs]
One of their top priorities is educating women on what they can do to be proactive with their breast health. Knowledge and early detection saves lives.


Help research that provides cures and support treatment for sick children. 


Creating a world of possibility for kids and youth with disabilities.


The Cancer Research Institute
The Princess Margaret Foundation
Cancer Research organizations that combine the expertise of many different research firms and Universities to find innovative treatments and cures for Cancer.


David Suzuki Foundation
Through evidence-based research, education and policy analysis, we work to conserve and protect the natural environment, and help create a sustainable Canada. We regularly collaborate with non-profit and community organizations, all levels of government, businesses and individuals.


Donate directly to FireAid today to help us start rebuilding our community. Direct donations will be distributed under the advisement of the Annenberg Foundation and will be distributed for short-term relief efforts and long-term initiatives to prevent future fire disasters throughout Southern California.


United Nations Fund
United Way Worldwide
Two organizations whose contribution of expertise, human and financial resources and volunteer efforts provide humanitarian solutions to real world problems the entire world over. These charities operate worldwide. The United Nations Fund supports the various programs part of the United Nations' global mandate, as much a foundation as it is a roof around the world.


World Veterans Federation (Under Reconstruction) [Wikipedia]
The World Veterans Federation is a humanitarian organisation, a charity and a peace activist movement. The WVF maintains its consultative status with the United Nations since 1951 and was conferred the title of “Peace Messenger” in 1987.


I'd like to point out that it was the incredible Gary Sinese Foundation that brought the issue of Veteran's rights to my attention. I've always had little respect for those who'd forget the great contribution made by those who've risked life and limb to defend those values that so many of us espouse. Perhaps the true measure of one's principles are by that for which they'd risk their life.

"None can speak more eloquently for peace than those who have fought in war."

Ralph Bunche, Nobel Peace Prize 1950



The Reeve Foundation provides programs for research, uniting Scientists and Specialists from many different fields to find treatments for spinal cord injury translating them into therapies and support programs.


For over 60 years, Heart & Stroke has been dedicated to fighting heart disease and stroke. Our work has saved thousands of lives and improved the lives of millions of others.


The ALS Society Of BC
ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a progressive neuromuscular disease in which nerve cells die and leave voluntary muscles paralyzed. The ALS society provides a variety of programs to combat this disease and help those with it to survive.


Muscular Dystrophy Canada
Muscular Dystrophy Canada’s mission is to enhance the lives of those affected by neuromuscular disorders by continually working to provide ongoing support and resources while relentlessly searching for a cure through well-funded research.


Humane Society International
The Humane Society protects the health, lives and rights of animals the world over, ensuring that they too have a voice in this world. We are interdependent upon the complex web of life this entire planet over for our mutual survival. This is a world wide charity.


The Global Foodbanking Network
Ensuring that people the world over have enough food day to day in order to survive and lead healthy lives. In this challenging day and age services like this are becoming more and more essential. This is a world wide charity.


The Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Because Barris told me to put it here. If I didn't, he said he'd walk. Geez. Stardom really gets to some people's heads. Maybe I could kill him and bury his heart beneath the floor boards! Or I could encase him in behind a brick and mortar wall, for shaming my family name of Amantillado

In all truth, there's a good chance that thanks to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Herbert George Wells, Jules Verne, Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, Clive Barker and Pierre Burton (for The Secret World Of Og and his ground breaking interview of Bruce Lee) that all of us are literate. Actually that goes back much farther to the Phoenecians and their first 22 character system of symbols. Literacy is important. Really it is. Literally. It allows us to approach our employer at the end of the week (with a big club) and ask: where my money?! Math important too. It help us count our thirteen fingers and toes.


Wikipedia
The model for what may become the Encyclopedia Galactica, a complete reference and record of history, events and knowledge of humanity and its journey beyond. It is the encyclopedia of all that we know, what we surmise that we've known and will learn in the future. Yes, Wikipedia is a charitable organization of great importance. If you enjoy what I am doing here then please take the time to donate to Wikipedia. Surprisingly only 1% of Wikipedia's users donate yet the site serves pages to millions every day.


Humble Bundle
A video gaming storefront benefiting a vast variety of different Charities in the United States and United Kingdom (hopefully soon to be expanded to include other areas of the world?). By software their software bundles and choose which Charity your money benefits and how much of your money benefits that Charity. See? Gamers can do their part too.


Multiple Sclerosis is a degenerative disease currently affecting an estimated 2.3 million world wide. By donating you are contributing to effective research in finding a cure and tipping the scales of MS research to change lives forever.


If you're a resident of Ontario then please consider supporting Building Better Schools.


Other Ways To Help Using Your Computer


Join World Community Grid
https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org


Join BOINC
https://boinc.berkeley.edu




Shhhh! Digital Media Presents:

Aliens: Aeternity

by Brian Joseph Johns

Episode 1: The Eternal Sleep

Activation

K2-18
Local Group
124 Light Years From Sol

Silence was a companion to darkness, and had been since long before humankind's first steps into their mutual depths. Darkness had pervaded the night sky since the first of Earth's stellar bound species had peered at the Moon with curiosity, and then beyond, seeing the light of fusion emanating from distant hydrogen fueled bodies as they beckoned us from their distance, light years away.


Silence was as it were, a party to the night sky as much so as it was to dreams.


Dreams. The life essence of humanity eventually became understood as imperative to the sustenance of frontline conscious performance, for the mind was simply a muscle of a different kind, and required exercise all the same as its physical counterparts within the human body. Gravity and resistance was the impetus for musculature, as were dreams for their counterpart of the mind.


Humanity had also discovered that dreams were a phenomenon of proximity. That the extent of their extremity was dependent upon the species' nearness to others of their kind. Proximity in essence was the wind in the sails of the conscious mind, projected into the mind's sails. Fueling though not forming, the creativity of their dreams and the distinction of which they were presented to the mind's eyes.


When humanity had taken its first steps into the stars, it quickly learned that to sustain human consciousness in the depths of its group absence, that it must produce the hidden field that fueled the mind of sleepers. No differently than the artificial gravity field that kept the body in peak physical form through the darkness and silence of the interstellar cosmos.


The same field that had kept the muscles of consciousness well oiled and exercised the mind, had also exercised the same mechanisms of psychosis, both creativity and chaos working in conjunction to destroy the form and stability of the mind. Hence, the Gauthier-Khan field had been devised on the basis of conscious field theory, stabilizing and preserving for the first time, deep temporal human experience over interstellar trajectories. Sanity had become sanitary, both to the physical form as much so to the mind.


And yet, darkness and silence, above all else, still pervaded humanity's future, as it had that of four dreamers contained there within the hull of a USMC vessel that had strayed from its phase space hyper-field lane and into the grasp of an interbody gravity well. Within the stellar system of K2-18 as humanity had come to know the home star system of its ninth local star colony.


Four dreamers lay deep in sleep within the safety of the Gauthier-Khan field, their eyelids barely flickering as they emerged from the local phase space lane and into the physical field of real space. Of the four dreamers, it was the youngest and perhaps most inspired and energetic of them that had first awoken from the depths of hyper-sleep.


The United Stellar Colonial Marine vessel Sulaco had emerged from its automated Earth bound fueling trajectory earlier than had been anticipated by its ancillary AI navigation systems, which had through the course of its travel, guided the vessel prematurely into the K2-18 system, one hundred and nineteen light seconds from the host star.


Within the lightly damaged main cargo bay of the vessel, sirens illuminated as the automated systems of the dormant Marine vessel came to life once again as they had twenty-three years earlier in the LV-426 star system. Its elongated hull appearing like a titanic firearm, as threatening and menacing as its former Marine crew had once been.


The retro-thrusters of the vessel fired to life, slowing the vessel beyond a trajectory anticipated by its AI based navigation system, pushing it closer towards the orbit of a dark and hidden moon of K2-18b. The vessel's engines suddenly stopped, having achieved their required kinetic velocity, as the Marine vessel's momentum took it towards this dark and silent natural satellite, drifting as it had initially arrived.


Within the interior of the enormous Marine ship, the sirens continued to flare throughout the decks and corridors. Alarms sounded as the pod bay covers of three hyper-sleep pods slowly opened, revealing sleeping occupants there within two of them as the ship's ancillary systems sprung to life.


The first occupant was a woman who appeared to be aged towards her mid-life, which was at that time in her sixties. Her dark and curly hair was partially contrasted by wisps of white and grey. Now slightly longer than shoulder length, it was slicked back to her head. Her grey underwear clung to her body as she was roused uneasily from her sleep.


The second pod was occupied by a gruff and willful man, approaching his fifties. His eyes twitched uneasily as the automated medical system notified him through a cerebral interface of the medical procedures he'd undergone during his sleep. A haptic virtual interface of a medical design flashed invisibly across his eyes without the need for any special eye wear or headset. 


It was projected directly into his cognition system via the same electromagnetic field that fueled their dream sleep, while an AI generated voice explained the extent to which his treatment had progressed via nano-biotic supplementation. The tissue damage and scars that he'd suffered during his most recent deployment were now but distant history, only slight blemishes marking the left side of his face, and the surface of the skin on the left side of his chest, both of which were currently hidden behind a layer of bandages that had been applied before the trio had entered hyper-sleep.


The occupant of the third pod remained obscured under the fog and hyper-thaw.


These travelers lay in their pods as the alarms and sirens blared, until one of them, Flight Officer Ellen Ripley leaned up suddenly from her slumber, rubbing the center of her chest and her stomach as she did.


"Newt?!" she suddenly said, leaping out of her cryo-pod, her bare feet slapping on the floor as she ran over to the pod next to hers.


The neighbouring pod she inspected had just opened and the fog of hyper-thaw was only just clearing. A Marine geolocation bracelet layed flat upon the soft lining of the pod, absent of its former host.


"No! She's still...! Hicks?!!!" she turned to the cryo-pod on the other side neighbouring hers and saw the scarred and lifeless body of the Marine Corporal as he awoke from his slumber, seemingly struggling.


She watched him for several seconds before she realized that he wasn't breathing.


"No!" she slammed her hands down upon his chest several times as she watched his green Marine t-shirt bulging at his midsection. 


"Noooo!" she cried, slamming her hands down again, as the bulge grew and the recognizable form of a tiny chin and mandible jaw took shape through his bloated shirt and skin.


She ran to the controls of his cryo-pod and began hammering override codes into the unfamiliar Marine console, attempting to close it and refreeze him. She turned her head to see that the thing inside of him was ready to emerge in the most perverse form of birth.


Behind her, she heard the sound of hissing and felt the strangely cool breath of a frightful monster. She turned to see the double mandible jaws of her nightmares as the biologically hydraulic pressure of its inner jaw reached its critical point and then...


She awoke in her opened cryo-pod, leaning up and checking her body and face for any wounds.


She once again as she had in her dream, leapt out of her pod and over to the neighbouring one, spying the waking body of a young woman just barely emerged from her deep sleep of the hyper-lanes.


"She's alright. I already checked her..." Marine Lance Corporal Dwayne Hicks assured Ripley as she turned to face the younger man.


"Where's Vasquez? Hudson? Gorman?" Ripley asked him, looking to him absent of a significant portion of their time together.


"They're gone. Ripley, you're experiencing post cryo-pyschosis," Hicks said to her, still rubbing the side of his face that had years earlier been scarred by one of the monsters of Ripley's nightmares.


"They're dead? All of them?" she asked him, as tears filled the same ridges of her eye lids that had been so by countless tears and countless times.


He closed his eyes as the pain of lost memories hit him. The times that he'd spent during R&R with Hudson, Dietrich and Wierzbowski had become post cards from a past he'd never relive in their permanent absence.


Hicks nodded affirmatively to Ripley, looking down after the fact.


"Where are we?" Ripley asked him.


"I'm not a navigation specialist, but I can tell you that its Marine protocol for a light assault starship to stop at automated refueling points on a long journey," Hicks explained to her as he fastened the quick-straps of his boots.


"Really?" Ripley looked to him again.


"Yep. We're stopping at a Marine gas station. Will that be leaded or unleaded?" Hicks asked her as he responded, recalling the fossil fuel lore of his great many times removed grandparents.


"If its automated, then why did it wake us?" Ripley asked him, an unending stream of questions lining up in her head.


Hicks shook his head thoughtfully.


"Its standard procedure to wake the skeleton crew during fueling and rearming stops, and we're it," Hicks said to her, looking to the cryo-pod of the young blonde haired girl, and then to back to her.


"Look Ripley, I know this is a lot for you to take in right now, but you have to believe me," Hicks said to her, both of them looking to the cryo-pod of the still sleeping blonde haired girl as she awoke.


"Ripley!" she yelled, jumping out the cryo-pod and then running over to the de-employed Flight Officer and wrapping her arms around her.


"I'm here, honey," Ripley responded, looking up to Hicks as her memory slowly started to return.


"Your wounds? They're mostly healed. How?" she asked Hicks.


"Cryo-sleep. The Marine Corp uses class 3 medical pods. They're a bit different from commercial and civilian pods. All I know is that if we're wounded when we get in, we're generally not when we wake up," Hicks rubbed the left side of his face, finding it smooth and mostly free of scars.


"Its looks like your little girl has grown up," Hicks said her, looking to Rebecca with a smile on his face.


"My little girl? Our little girl. Are you trying to back out on me?" Ripley asked him.


Hicks smiled at the prospect of being a father, especially as the partner of such a remarkable woman as he'd seen Ripley demonstrate, despite the fact that he'd already committed his heart to a remarkable 


"Not quite. I'm just not assuming anything, but its nice to know you'd care enough to ask," he smiled both to her and Rebecca as he flipped a physical switch on the wall.


"Authorization: Lance Corporal Hicks, Dwayne," he spoke aloud to the listening AI security system.


The touch-screen panel controls by the door suddenly came to life, as they did for every door throughout the Sulaco. Each protected by a level of access deemed through the micro-space MilNet System database.


"Hicks! You're better!" Rebecca suddenly recognized one of her liberators as the psychosis of post cryo-sleep sickness faded from her body.


"I'm fine honey. How are you feeling?" he asked her softly, with a firm but concerned smile on his face.


"I'm... bigger...? Taller? Older?" she replied with the body of a woman in her late twenties, and the mind of a woman in her early teens.


"That happens honey, but don't worry, it looks good on you both," Hicks faced Ripley as he spoke.


"At least some men age like fine wine,"  Ripley replied.


The door of the cryo-chamber suddenly opened, and the air pressure difference between the spaces balanced as the oxygen levels achieved their nominal state.


"Lets go and see what we're up against," Hicks said, walking over to a panel in the cryo-chamber and pressing it once. The panel slowly opened from the top, folding downward and revealing an arsenal of Marine battle rifles.


Hicks quickly grabbed an M41A pulse rifle and checked the ammunition gauge.


"Bringing a personal friend of yours?" Ripley asked him.


"Three personal friends, but two of them can handle themselves. This one needs a capable pair of hands," Hicks responded, winking at Ripley and Rebecca.


"So we've noticed. Just stay behind us and we'll keep you safe," Ripley returned his smile, grabbing her own pulse rifle from the same arsenal.


"So I've noticed," Hicks winked to Ripley as he advanced into the corridor ahead of them, leading them towards the inner airlock of the Sulaco.


Rebecca closed the arsenal, leaving the weapons of war where they lay and instead followed Ripley and Hicks into the darkened corridors of the Sulaco as the sound of sirens and klaxons sounded around them.


They proceeded together to the deck-level airlock, Newt, now an adolescent in her thirties standing defensively behind Ripley and Hicks, their M41A Pulse Rifles leveled before them as they approached the station's airlock.

Alienation

K2-18
Local Group
124 Light Years From Sol



To be continued...

Brian Joseph Johns

Credits and attribution:


Special Thanks To Rocket Fuel Lakeshore Blvd West, perhaps the best place in history to get a coffee, circa 2001-2004. Miss you all very much.


Artwork: Amy WongWendy PuseyGhastlyBirdman, Brian Joseph Johns, Daz3DUnreal Engine...


Tools: Daz3DCorel PainterAdobe PhotoshopLightwave 3DBlender, Stable Diffusion (Easy Diffusion distribution), InstantIDSadtalkerGoogle ColaboratoryMicrosoft Copilot (Windows 11), HitfilmPhotoPea (a great web based Photoshop stand-in if you're on a low budget or in a pinch), Borderline Obsession...


DeepSeek AI for suggestions on exercises to improve aspects of describing scene and settings with a more sensory focused grammar.


InstantID by: Wang, Qixun and Bai, Xu and Wang, Haofan and Qin, Zekui and Chen, Anthony. Research Paper Title: InstantID - Zero-shot Identity-Preserving Generation in Seconds.


Sadtalker by: Zhang, Wenxuan and Cun, Xiaodong and Wang, Xuan and Zhang, Yong and Shen, Xi and Guo, Yu and Shan, Ying and Wang, Fei.
Research Paper Title: SadTalker: Learning Realistic 3D Motion Coefficients for Stylized Audio-Driven Single Image Talking Face Animation.


Gratitude: Our Mentors, Senseis, Sifus, Sebomnims, lifetime inspirations, family, friends, the Nomads (ask Stanton about that one), the Music, the Movies, the Theatre, the Arts, ASMR, (both YouTube and Bilibili and the many other creators on those platforms), the Gaming and Developer communities and of course, the audience.


Martial Arts (in the words of real experts and at least one comedian): https://brucelee.com (home of the real Dragon and an entire family of inspirations), http://iwco.online International Wing Chun Organization (International presence of a very scalable intensity martial art, protected and developed by Shaolin Nun Ng Mui) and the alma mater of Jinn Hua's own specialized variation thereof, https://iogkf.com International Okinawan Goju-Ryu Karatedo Federation (even Hanshi had his teachers), https://itftkd.sport International Taekwondo Federation (Here there be Taegers), https://tangsoodoworld.com Tang Soo Do World (the path of Grandmaster Chuck Norris), https://www.aikido-international.org International Aikido Federation (how else would Navy Chef Steven Seagal liberate a Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier from a team of hijackers?), https://www.stqitoronto.com Shaolin Temple Quanfa Institute (The City Of Toronto's own Shaolin Temple), https://www.enterthedojoshow.com Master Ken's Ameri-Te-Do presence (If we can't laugh at ourselves, then we can at least laugh the loudest at others, and other Zen)


Magic (performance, illusion and perhaps the real thing): Magic Week Archive (I'm currently growing this section so stay tuned)


Special thanks to AitrepreneurMickmumpitzHugging Face and the YouTube educational content producers, including those catering to the AI content production pipeline and of course AlphaSignal.


Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life


Shi Heng Yi Shaolin Training For Self Mastery 
A reknowned Sifu under whose tutelage you can study the theory and practical applications of the Shaolin Arts for health, physical and mental wellbeing in every day life


Jesse Enkamp: Karate Nerd
Jesse, a reknowned Sensei who runs his own dojo, explores the world of Martial Arts, traveling to many exotic locations to meet practitioners of a variety of different arts


Sensei Rokas: Martial Arts Journey
A reknowned Sensei of Aikido who in seeking to understand the roots of Aikido and its applications, seeks to stress test its effectiveness in a number of real world situations while studying its history


Seamus O'Dowd
An extensive growing archive Katas, Techniques and Waza (mostly Shotokan)


Iaido: Train For Katana Mastery Like Samurai 
The original weapons focused curriculum under which Samurai became masters of their art



Extensive courses for calisthenics and body strength, stamina and flexibility


Special thanks to Canva for inspiring other creators and giving them the tools


Special thanks to Captain Crunch and his wonderful sister!


Special thanks to Bandcamp for giving indie music artists a home under one roof


Something to give you perspective: The very first teacher had no formal education, didn't graduate and was self taught, but only because they had no other choice. We do.

This content is entirely produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at 200 Sherbourne Street Suite 701 under the Shhhh! Digital Media banner.

Click image for contact information...