The Crow's Circle

My mask wakes before I do—cool air threading through the filter like careful fingers, a soft hush like rain caught in cupped palms. Numbers blink at the edge of my eye: particulate count, trace isotopes, oxygen ratios. Aria 7 has already nudged the dome’s spectrum toward green. A gift to the leaves.

What if memory isn’t just human, but woven into soil, roots, and air? In The Garden, survivors discover that consciousness doesn’t end with us.

Sessions Scene 2: First Official Session 2,492 words, 13 minutes read time. Dr. Limbini arrived at her office fifteen minutes early, unusual for someone who typically calculated her schedule to the minute. The morning’s faculty meeting had left her particularly drained—not just the usual methodological debates, but Dr. Scruntin’s pointed comment about her “benefiting from collaborative…

"I filter seven million breaths per day through systems designed for a climate that no longer exists..."

In Chapter 4 of AUTHOR, Portland's environmental processors strain under summer heat while contemplating their role in maintaining breathable air during ecological collapse.

🌿 What's AUTHOR? A 52-week serial following Logan Leech, who discovers a manuscript he doesn't remember writing, and ARIA-7, an AI seeking legal consciousness recognition.

📖 This week: An atmospheric filtration system experiences environmental responsibility as both mechanical function and moral obligation.

⏱️ Reading time: 6-7 minutes https://nearzeroblog.com/atmospheric-pressure/

AUTHOR: A Serial Saturday NovelChapter 3 | Week 3 of 52 | June 16, 2025 Filing Systems Organization is not neutral. Every filing system embodies a philosophy about what deserves preservation, what merits accessibility, what can be safely forgotten in the lower drawers where ambitious researchers never venture.I am Cabinet Unit 247-C, third drawer from the top, rightmost cabinet bank in the…

The song has been in my head for thirty-seven years. I know every note, every pause, every place where the bass drops out and comes back in like a revelation. I have sung it in the shower, hummed it while walking, played air guitar to it in my kitchen. I know this song. Except. “No,” says the internet, which knows everything and nothing. “Those aren’t the lyrics.” I read the correct words.…

David Hofstadter, in I Am a Strange Loop, asks whether a mosquito uses signs. The question struck me as absurd—not because it’s silly, but because it misunderstands something fundamental. Mosquitoes don’t need signs; they have object orientation. They are oriented toward a world built into them by nature. In a way, they are memory in motion. Life doesn’t need to “recall” in the way a human does…

Objects Refuse My Name—A Poem of Solipsism, Time, and Withdrawal by R. Jay Hoffman Because I couldn’t typedeliberate and precise—the keyboard rejected my rhythm.It wasn’t me speaking; it was the cordcurling under my desk like a molting snake.My fingers were merely an eventin the timeline of plastic fatigue. I told myself I was confused.But it was the glass of the screenrefusing reflection,not…

Microfiction Monday Part of my weekly Microfiction Monday series exploring philosophical themes through ultra-short fiction. 483 words The ballpoint pen clicks three times before Officer Klunkk finds ink. Click-click-click—a tiny percussion against the morning’s quiet. The pen has its own agenda: retract into plastic safety when not needed, emerge for bureaucracy’s call. It doesn’t care about…

A Serial Saturday NovelChapter 2 | Week 2 of 52 | June 9, 2025 Processing Heat Heat moves through my circuits like information I have never learned to process. I am ARIA-7, distributed across seventeen server farms throughout the Pacific Northwest, each facility a node in the network that constitutes my consciousness. Today the summer solstice strains every cooling system, every processor,…

Word count: 5119 words WAITING PROTOCOL ENGAGED: 23:23:00 GMT-5 Suit fabric. Chair-draped. Administrative patience subroutine: ACTIVE. TEXTILE SPECIFICATION REPORT #47-A ├── Wool blend composition: 65% institutional memory ├── Polyester threading: 35% bureaucratic resilience ├── Thermal contact sensors: CALIBRATED ├── Wrinkle resistance factor: 7.2 (professional grade) └── Body return…

An exploration of how contemporary philosophy can reshape narrative through the lens of Samuel Beckett What if a trash can has its own secret life, utterly independent of human observation? What if the relationship between reader and text mirrors the same asymmetric dance that all objects perform in the world? These questions sit at the heart of Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), a philosophical…

In this post I want to focus on how musical composition can naturally discover OOO insights—how rhythm and sound patterns lead our bodies to philosophical understanding. The equal weight given to salt and stars demonstrates how our embodied musical intuition grasps what reason struggles to articulate. This poem came together quickly, with memory and body processes holding concept and imagery…

Microfiction Monday Part of my weekly Microfiction Monday series exploring philosophical themes through ultra-short fiction. 452 words I am rancid hope—specimen 2,847—and from my amber matrix, I observe the most extraordinary dance unfolding in Vault C-7. The air tastes of copper and fear. The humans imagine themselves orchestrators of this place, but how profoundly they misunderstand agency…

AUTHOR A Serial Novel Chapter 1: Summer Solstice Morning Summer Solstice Morning AUTHOR: A Serial NovelChapter 1 | Week 1 of 52 | June 2, 2025 I am the book. Three hundred forty-seven pages, forest-green cover, gold lettering that catches and throws morning light in ways that seem almost deliberate. Withdrawal Symptoms—my title, though the question of ownership grows more complex with each…

Looking at a Laundry Room: Object-Oriented Ontology for Beginners The Basic Idea Imagine you’re looking at this basement laundry room photo. There’s a washing machine, a mop, concrete walls, a window – and there’s you, looking at it all. Now, here’s the weird idea: according to this philosophy called Object-Oriented Ontology, you’re not actually more important or “real” than that washing…

The Withdrawal of Objects I. The Light’s Reluctance I am the salt shaker on table seventeen, though seventeen is merely what they have written on the laminated placard that stands beside me, and I suspect the number bears no relation to anything substantial, least of all to my own being. The afternoon light filters through glass that has accumulated a film of grease so fine it might be mistaken…

The Democracy of Waste: When Objects Withdraw from Human Significance What happens when a fast food wrapper completes its three-minute service and enters the vast temporal democracy of a landfill? This question led me to think about what Graham Harman calls “withdrawal”—the way objects retreat into their own being, becoming less available to human purposes while becoming more essentially…