story ideas

Here's a couple story ideas.

Mountain Top

I've been here for two weeks now, maybe more. I'm hungry and weak. I'm on the edge of a precipice. It's peaceful here. Mostly quiet, save the sounds of nature. I came here seeking solitude and inspiration, and I do believe I've found it. Only I expected to leave at will, but instead the wild has captured me, enraptured me, taken me. There are many things of beauty and wonder here, and each reminds me of some thing in my life, some thing that I have lived. Some are wonderful, some are painful. Some I long for, some I regret.
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At first I thought it was a memory. It happens often now-a-days, a memory manifested, but they disappear, a hallucination. But I realized the sounds were very real, in the present. I heard the dogs. I heard the distant voices. They were coming closer. Here I am now in my den, covered with leaves and brush. It was the only way I could keep warm. I cannot move my limbs anymore. I am not sure I can even open my eyes, though I think they are open, only I cannot see. I smell nothing now, am I even breathing? But I can hear them, and deep within my head I can feel their footsteps on the ground. I will my voice and it comes out, a whispered, "hello." Yes, my voice seems to work. The dogs, and their handlers are close now. I part me lips to summon them. But I do not. I whisper goodbye to the world, to nobody. I am still. The dogs are near, I presume, but I am gone.

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Depression

In a recent issue of Popular Science, there is an article about scientists implanting electrodes in the brain, and using them to alter the mood of depressives, and it seems to work. Interesting. Could our moods be controlled so easily?

It would be an interesting story to explore a protagonists struggle to live life while under the control of such a contraption. It could be a strictly personal battle to grasp one's one life, or maybe make the scientists adversarial, using the protagonists solely for their gain. Or make it part of a larger conspiratorial plot by a government to control people, first enemies, then citizens. Or it can be a plot by aliens. Or by the devil? The true heart of darkness... they key to our neuronal control discovered and exploited. If our thoughts are not truly our own, than what constitutes our true selves?